There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me (19 page)

I honestly didn’t fit in there, and I worried that Mom actually did not, either. Mom was one of those unbelievably sly, influential drunks who could hook you in, all the while cutting you down. It was borderline sociopathic, minus the murder. St. Mary’s was, and is, a great and reputable institution that came highly recommended and regarded, but sadly it was not a good or effective fit for my mother. Had I made a mistake? Was Mom right, once again? I felt Mom really was smarter than most of the patients and even cleverer than some of the counselors. Why had I not been even smarter than she was for once? She was right again! Mom wasn’t, however, smart enough to choose health over addiction. I wouldn’t realize until many years later that my doubts were all part of my codependence. The venue may or may
not have been ideal for her, but it was not necessarily because she was too much of a genius. It was more a product of her inability to be honest with herself or strong enough to choose to be healthy.

Aunt Lila and I completed our “family week” and left Mom to finish out her stay. Mom made one lifelong friend at St. Mary’s. Except for one relapse a few years later, Mom’s friend would remain sober for the rest of her life. I always wished Mom had been that type of a recovering alcoholic.

Overall, Mom played by the rules but never did the “steps.” I don’t believe she ever committed authentically, and the therapy never fully registered with her. She used the recovery catchphrases like a dutiful student. But all the while she was scoffing at how they didn’t actually apply to her. She beguiled the staff with her humor and her street smarts. She was incredibly intuitive about the way others behaved and what their needs were. She could outwit almost anyone. But, sadly, she was still an alcoholic and hardly two steps closer to recovery.

I truly believe she thought she didn’t have a problem and that she could control her drinking. But I’m not convinced she ever did the work that would help her get there. Vulnerability equaled weakness for my mom. One of the early steps in AA deals with admitting helplessness about your problem. Well, being helpless was never something Teri Terrific could cop to. I don’t believe she ever fully admitted to the severity and authenticity of her disease.

•   •   •

Mom returned home after three months. I made a sign and got her flowers to celebrate her homecoming. Lila and I had taken a photo of us together and had put it in a little frame. It was the kind you get in a photo booth. Mom for some reason got so angry that it was of the two of us that she tore it up. I told her it was only supposed to mean
we loved her. Shockingly that was where my sweetness ended. In the next few weeks and months I was horrible to her in any way that I could be. I may have been lashing out and punishing her for years of drinking. I may have been testing her to see if she would crack and start drinking again. Maybe I was just so uncomfortable with her sobriety that I was acting out.

I was putting her on trial for some reason, and I got a quietly maniacal thrill when I hurt her. I felt terrible about it, but in a weird way, I wanted to create a new dysfunction because that is what was familiar.

I couldn’t stop being nasty to her. Yet she neither fought me nor began drinking just yet. It was all so awkward and foreign, and I realized I had no idea how to act around her when she was sober. I was so used to navigating her drinking and being sad, angry, or afraid, that without the existence of trauma, I was floundering. I hated her drinking but at least I knew what to expect. The protocol of being the child of an alcoholic was second nature to me, so without it I was again slightly lost.

I also realize that, in a way, I saw myself as a better person than she was when she drank. I liked that feeling. Most of my life I just wanted my mother’s approval. But admittedly, when she was drunk, there was a type of freedom for me. I was justified in fighting her when she drank, but take away the booze and I just didn’t know what to fight.

I could have never anticipated it, but I unexpectedly hated her for her sobriety. If Mom and I were not getting along for some reason or if I was feeling the growing pains that all kids go through, I did not have anything on which to place blame. It was very unsettling facing her insecurities and her behavior without accusing the booze. Having the troubles actually be a part of my mother’s deeper personality was even more tragic. I even secretly wanted her to start
drinking again so I could say, “I told you so. I knew you couldn’t do it.”

I was also so angry at St. Mary’s and the Freedom Institute for seemingly having more control over my mommy than I did. It was all so fucked-up and confusing and I began lashing out at everybody.

The sweeter she was, the more I punished her. The more people tried to help me, the more I stomped and pouted. I even turned against Lila and cast her aside emotionally. On top of all that, I was getting my period for the first time and my hormones made me an emotional and irrational mess. I had been used to my codependence, and as much as I thought I wanted it, I was resisting the change. I wanted to hurt my mother. It was plain and simple. I pushed and pushed until I got tired.

•   •   •

I don’t know how she did it, but my mother didn’t crack. She stayed steady and loving. She was the most mature I had ever seen her. Maybe they’d told her at St. Mary’s to expect difficult behaviors from family members. But for whatever reason, she waited it out, but it remained.

There was no alcohol to blame or to retreat toward. We all needed to adjust to this new dynamic.

The tragic part to me now is how idealized I had made her recovery. As a child of an alcoholic, I believed in a silver lining. One day it would all be better. I believed in the idea of a promise. Once this or that milestone was reached, then she would see and she could smile. One day she would be happy.

But the truth was that as kind as she was being, Mom had trouble being honest with herself about anything. How could she suddenly morph into this fully resolved and self-actualized being? I don’t think my mother ever released her pain or her hurt, and therefore her
healing was going to require more than just stopping drinking. I could not know this then. I was just baffled at how there was no rainbow.

I don’t remember ever being told at the time what I learned later, which is that even if you remove the alcohol, there is still unresolved pain and hurt in a relationship. Damage has often been inflicted by both the drinker and those closest to the drinker. It must be acknowledged.

But just because the booze went away, it didn’t mean the damage went with it. The term
dry drunk
means that the drinking may not be current but the precipitating feelings that drive the drinker to abuse alcohol have not gone away. People told me that drinking revealed a person’s true personality, but I could never believe that. I refused to believe that, deep down, my mom was honestly that ugly. I did believe that deep down she could have been that damaged and hurt, but not ugly. There were wounds that needed to be faced and attended to for both of us. The problem was, however, that for me, I didn’t want to ruin these moments of sobriety by stirring up my old hurts. It is so much easier to sweep them all under the carpet and pretend they never existed. This, unfortunately, took a toll.

My mother really did seem to try to stay sober at first. I could tell it was tough for her. I even dreamt of a world in which she could be able to drink moderately. Addicts must abstain completely. There is no such thing as an alcoholic being able to be a social drinker, but I secretly wished that she could find a way to reasonably drink so we could all be happy. This is how codependent my thoughts were and how much I wanted her to enjoy life and be healthy and happy. Because if she was happy, I did not have to worry. I never liked any part of her when she was drinking. She may have been fun for others but I really authentically enjoyed her only before she took her first sip. When she laughed sober, I felt oxygen in my blood.

I really thought everything would be better if she stopped drinking. But it wasn’t. We fell back in the same patterns, just with different details. It was time to do something new and different. To go far away and get back to the golden age and good feelings we’d had shooting movies in the past and sticking my head in the sand about everything else. And as luck would have it, my next movie role would take us farther away than I could have imagined.

Chapter Eight

Blue

I
n early 1979, just as my mother and I were adjusting to post-rehab life, I got an intriguing offer. An author named Henry De Vere Stacpoole wrote a novel back in 1908,
The Blue Lagoon
, that had already been made into a movie twice. The first version was from 1923. It was black-and-white, silent, and filmed in England. Neither my mother nor I knew anything about the silent version, but my mother was a fan of the 1949 version, which was filmed in both England and Fiji and starred Jean Simmons and Donald Houston. Mom had loved Jean Simmons and thought the idea of a remake was wonderful.

The Blue Lagoon
tells the story of two cousins, Emmeline and Richard Lestrange, who survive a shipwreck and grow up together on a tropical island in the South Pacific. Through most of the movie they’re completely alone, eventually developing a romantic relationship and having a child.

Shooting this film meant we’d be on location again, this time for months. We’d leave for the South Pacific in June and not return until September. Mom and I had always loved being on location. It was like this great sanctuary in which I worked hard and Mom played hard. We were excited and I was anticipating feeling relieved because Mom
had not been drinking and I believed her sobriety would continue on this deserted island. After all, there would be no bars.

The director, Randal Kleiser, who had just had a huge success directing the movie
Grease
, and the studio, Columbia Pictures, wanted Matt Dillon to play my character’s cousin, a choice that thrilled me. But Matt’s mother was against the idea and they turned it down. I was devastated because I knew Matt and thought he was cute and talented. He was very sweet about the whole thing and made it a point to tell me that his decision was in no way a personal affront to me.

The filmmakers began to search for someone to play Richard. This choice was, obviously, a very big deal for me, since the two of us would basically be the only actors in the entire movie. Minus some flashbacks it would be just us. By this time I had been in seven films and was very worried about working with an amateur. The studio finally found a kid with straight blond hair and a beautiful physique who had no film or acting experience and had spent his extracurricular time as an athlete. The director had called to tell us that they had found my counterpart, an eighteen-year-old student from Rye, New York, whose dream had been to go into sports medicine. His name was Christopher Atkins and I was going to love him! I was skeptical but had no say and his photo looked fine. I had worked with many veterans but this would be the first time that I was the actual veteran.

Mom and I packed our suitcases, sent our two rescue cats to a boarding house, and left for the island of Vanua Levu in Fiji. We had to fly to the mainland and to the city of Lautoka, via Australia, and then take a seaplane to Turtle Island, where we would be living for the next four months.

We touched down on water and taxied to the dock, where were met by Randal and Chris and some Fijian men to help with the bags. Chris’s light-blond, naturally stick-straight hair had been given a perm. I didn’t understand why it was necessary for him to have curly hair but it was not up to me to decide. He looked different from his
photo but cute. Once on the dock, I was instructed to leave my bags to be taken to where we would be staying and go directly to the tanning area. Some preparations needed to start right away. There was still enough sunlight to get color and I was told I needed to start to build up enough of a tan so that it looked as if I had been living on an island my entire life. The tanning space consisted of two small areas enclosed by mats of woven palm fronds. I was to take off all my clothes and begin that day by getting a base. Chris had already been on the island for a week so he was already darker than I was. I would have to catch up. I was told I could choose to live on the big sailing ship that would be featured in the film or I could remain on land.

At first, I was sure I’d choose the ship. I had this fantasy that I would have a quaint little cabin where I would write in my journal and be rocked to sleep nightly. I would stick pictures on my wall and write letters to my friends back home and it would be as if I was part of an expedition a hundred years ago. But after getting off the scary seaplane that sat only three people and being confronted with the real-life version of my fantasies, I took one look at the ship and changed my mind. It was ancient and had rats and creaking planks. I opted for a
bure
, or hut, as non-Fijians called them.

The bure I would share with my mother was right on the beach and basically consisted of a cinder-block square with a standing sink and a partitioned-off toilet.