Mom was a tad schizophrenic about my career. She was always encouraging, giving me advice, wishing me the very best, but then, whenever I actually did something, she would not-so-artfully suggest that I was wasting my time. I could never figure out what she wanted for me, or expected from me. If only I could talk to someone who understood her better than I did, someone who really knew her, someone like…
Well, Uncle Warren. He’d grown up with her, he’d followed her escape route out of the alcoholic Baptist world of their parents, and he’d experienced the same kind of dizzying success. He of all people could probably shed some light on her paradoxical thought processes.
Except that Warren was not a part of my life. I wanted him to be, but there had always been a cool distance between us, and the gulf had widened considerably over the years. I was too young to command his attention when he was coming into his own, and by the time I got back from Australia and France, he was a superstar, with Bonnie and Clyde, The Parallax View, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, and Reds under his belt. For the latter two, he received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay, the only person to achieve that distinction twice. (The only other person to do it even once was Orson Welles, for Citizen Kane.) He won the Best Director Award for Reds.
Warren Beatty was a major Hollywood player in his own right, so much so that people often tended to forget that he and Mom were brother and sister. They seemed so distinct and original, each in his or her own way. They never acted together, and they approached performing from completely different directions: Warren was a serious actor who could do comedy; Mom was an entertainer who could do drama. Warren never did a musical, thank God, and Mom never did an epic movie or a gangster flick. They didn’t even look that much alike.
Only in attitude—in their drive, their ambition, their laser-like focus on success—did they display a genetic similarity. Warren was, if anything, more driven than Mom, more ruthless in his determination. He still had that “don’t come too close” aura, and it was now even more pronounced. You couldn’t get near him: he had the isolated, impenetrable façade of the very powerful.
Around this time, I was working on a play in class with a dark-haired beauty named, I think, Laura. We’d go out for drinks afterward, she and David and I, and in the course of a conversation she casually let drop that she was Uncle Warren’s girlfriend. Here was a happy coincidence! Admittedly, Warren had dozens of girlfriends, so it wasn’t unlikely that you’d run into one sooner or later. Still, the fact that Laura and I had become buddies prior to the disclosure made it much easier to cultivate her friendship without inviting suspicion.
“How is my uncle doing?” I asked innocently. “I haven’t seen him in such a long time.”
“You should come over for dinner,” Laura said.
“That would be fun,” I said, trying not to sound overeager. “When?”
“How about right now? Come on!”
We got in the car and drove over to Mulholland Drive. I was a little nervous that Warren wouldn’t be happy to see us there. He had very definite boundaries set up around his life, and you crossed them at your own peril. Yet, as it turned out, he was surprisingly gracious. He welcomed us in, and made us feel entirely at home.
There was no dinner ready, but Warren had a cook on call, who was happy to whip up a delicious meal for us. The kitchen had a row of refrigerators filled with food, so we could basically pick our own menu. And since Warren loved ice cream, too—he had that in common with his sister—every possible flavor was stocked in the freezer.
Warren was a wonderful host to us, and made us feel completely at home. I hadn’t seen him in several years, but he acted as if it hadn’t been more than a couple of days. At the same time, he gave little outward acknowledgment that we were closely related. We didn’t discuss family matters at all—he didn’t ask about Mom, and I had enough sense of diplomacy not to bring her up. (They had such a volatile off-and-on relationship, you were never quite sure which way the wind was blowing; better not to set sail into that changeable sea.)
He invited us both back again, and David and I visited several times after that. Even after he broke up with Laura—which was inevitable; the girlfriends came and went—Warren still invited us over. He really liked David. They immediately clicked. They were like two college buddies who had that guys way of talking in shorthand, making unfinished observations and understanding each other perfectly. David would have a scotch, and Warren would have maybe a club soda—I never saw him drink anything stronger—and they would sit around on the couch shooting the shit. I would sit off to the side, listening. Warren never gave any indication that he noticed I was there or not, but I didn’t care. It was gratifying just to be there with him, closing the family circle.
I think Warren liked David so much because it was obvious that David didn’t want anything from him. David was neither starstruck nor ambitious. To him, Warren was just another guy. They could hang out, joke around, talk about cars or baseball or anything, and it never went any further than that. As for Warren, who was constantly surrounded by climbers and hangers-on, he found in David that rare thing: a person whom he could trust.
• • •
IF you’re an ordinary noncelebrity, you will seldom feel more vestigial and out of place than when you’re walking down the red carpet at a big Hollywood premiere. I walked down a number of them with Mom, including the Academy Awards, and I knew the routine cold—she would swan ahead, escorted by her latest boyfriend or her agent, and I would trail a step behind, basking in the residual glamour but keeping a low profile. Every few feet, Mom would stop to give an interview, and then I would have to stand behind her and smile and look interested. It was a true acting job, because I knew I was on camera, but there was nothing for me to do. Nobody wanted to talk to me; nobody cared about my opinions. If I had been really gorgeous, at least there’d have been a reason for me to be there, a fetching piece of scenery. Yet I was just a cute girl in a nice dress. I wasn’t even blonde.
One time, we went to some kind of flashy benefit in Century City, and there was the red carpet waiting for us again. As usual, Mom stopped to hold court with her fans, being very gracious and bubbly—“Hi!…Hello!…How nice!…You’re too kind!” Then that moment came when her eyes glazed over and she’d had enough. “All right, we’re done”—and she left them flat and headed into the theater.
I started to follow meekly behind, as my role demanded, when suddenly I heard someone yell from the crowd:
“It’s Sachi Parker! Sachi Parker! Tracy from Capitol!”
At that time, I was in the soap opera Capitol. I played Tracy Harris, a young mom who used to be on drugs and whose daughter was taken away from her. Tracy struggles to pull her life together and get her daughter back, but she often finds herself in locked battle with the unsympathetic social worker. I remember at one point my character loses it and screams at her nemesis, in the grand soap opera tradition, “Get out! Get out! Get out!”
Mine wasn’t a major character, but soap opera fans are devoted to the point of obsession. They know every character, every actor, every twisted plotline. So when Mom moved on and I momentarily emerged from her shadow, they spotted me, and they went crazy. “Sachi Parker!”—they knew who I was! I was instantly mobbed by adoring fans. It was surreal and disconcerting—I was nobody; what were they getting so excited about?—but at the same time, I loved it. For the first time in my life, I was signing autographs and posing for pictures!
“Miss Parker, Miss Parker! Over here! Smile, Miss Parker!”
I was finally having a moment in the sun! It was really cool.
In the midst of this ego-stroking orgy, I looked over at my mom, eager for some recognition, some maternal pride—but she was livid. Her eyes were these narrow slits shooting out beams of concentrated fury. She was actually being made to stand around and wait—on the red carpet!—while people made a fuss over insignificant me!
Sensing the inappropriateness of my celebrity, I tried to sign my name faster. I should have just broken away and moved on with her, but so many people wanted to talk to me, and I was having so much fun! Finally, Mom gathered herself up with an imperious shrug, turned to her agent, and rasped, “Let’s go,” and she stormed into the theater without me.
That was my last red carpet for a long time.
• • •
DAVID and I ended our relationship in 1988. It was an amicable breakup, probably the most civilized I’d ever had. Everything about David was and still is civilized.
I met Mitch Garvey at a party in Venice. He was tall and handsome, and had a sort of midwestern casual cool. I thought he was a big producer, which was just the type of guy I was prowling for at a party like that. I knew I looked hot—I was wearing a clingy spandex-type dress and my trusty push-up bra—so I went up to him and flirted, turned on the charm, used all the old tricks.
It turned out it he was just an assistant director, but by the time I found this out, I was already hooked. He took me out for sushi, and in the midst of our dinner, I mentioned who my mother was. “Who?” Mitch said. “I’ve never heard of her.” It was fairly unlikely that someone working in Hollywood didn’t know who Shirley MacLaine was, but I wanted to believe him. How cool—he was interested in me just for me!
It wasn’t too long after that—a couple of months—that we got engaged. I know I seem to be getting engaged every time I turn around, but I think I always felt a loneliness and insecurity at my core, and I hoped that marriage would solve that problem.
For some reason, Mitch thought I should contact my dad and tell him about the impending wedding. Maybe it was because Mitch was a proper midwestern type of guy, and he wanted things done correctly. Or maybe it was because he thought Dad had money. Either way, Dad and I hadn’t spoken since the deposition. I didn’t know if he would even pick up the phone.
I called our home number in Shibuya, Tokyo, and waited nervously for Dad to answer. He didn’t. The new owners answered. I didn’t know the house had been sold.
I shrugged off my disorientation and asked the new owners, “Do you know where my father is?” They didn’t, but they gave me a phone number. It was an American exchange, and when I looked at the area code I discovered that it was in the Boston area. So I called the number.
Yukie answered.
I was baffled. I recognized the voice immediately, but what in the world was she doing in Massachusetts?
“Yukie?”
“Yes?” she said warily.
“It’s Sachi.”
“Hello.”
“Is this your house?”
“Yes.” She was being very frugal with her information.
“Is my dad there?”
“Well, I don’t know.”
What did that mean? “You don’t know if he’s there? Because I really want to get in contact with him.”
“Yes, well, I really can’t say right now.” And it was crystal clear, from her inflection, that she couldn’t say because Dad was right there in the room with her.
I wasted no time. I found out the address from the phone number—it was in Hingham, Massachusetts—and Mitch and I grabbed the next flight from LAX. We had to get out there before my father moved somewhere else.
We landed at Logan Airport the next morning in the freezing cold—which was unfortunate for us, because we were still dressed for Santa Monica. We rented a car and found the house. We didn’t call ahead—this would be an ambush, pure and simple. When we pulled into the driveway, we saw two little girls watching from the window. They were Yukie’s children, Audrey and Emily.
I knocked on the door, and little Audrey answered. “Hello!” she said brightly. Then suddenly Yukie was at the door.
“Yukie,” I said, “is Dad here?”
Then Dad walked up behind her.
We went to lunch together at a seafood restaurant on the water, Dad and Yukie and Mitch and me. It was an odd, awkward meeting at first. Dad pretended that nothing was amiss, that we were all on great terms. He was in his charming mode. “Sach the Pach!” he said, shaking his head with a grin. He was happy about my engagement to Mitch, and gave us his blessing, and then we launched into a lot of inconsequential talk. Yet, there came a point when I felt it necessary to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
“Dad, I’m glad that we’re talking again.”
Dad smiled tightly, and rattled the ice in his scotch. “Sure.”
“It’s been very tough being apart from you, because I love you.”
I could see him withdrawing now, putting up the force field. So I forged ahead.
“I just want you to know, whatever’s happened between us, I forgive you.”
Dad was startled, and turned red with anger. “What do you mean? You forgive me for what? I should be forgiving you! You’re the one who opened your big mouth!”
I looked over at Yukie; she gave me a sympathetic look. She knew what I was feeling. Then an interesting thing happened—I reached out and took Yukie’s hand, and her hand tightened over mine. I felt a strong, pure current of love coursing between us. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t know where it went, but for an extraordinary moment, we were soul mates. It was such a powerful, sweeping feeling that everything else at the table, including Dad, became incidental. Tears sprang to my eyes, and to Yukie’s, too, and we both started sobbing uncontrollably, in a silent way, trying hard to be composed and stoic as the tears streamed down our faces.
Then, quite suddenly, the moment was gone. Our hands broke off, we pulled ourselves together, and the rest of the meal passed in awkward silence.
When we returned to the house, Yukie gave me a tour of the upstairs and downstairs, but she didn’t want me going into the basement. So naturally I had to go into the basement. I managed to sneak down there while Mitch kept them distracted.
What I found was a rambling living space, completely furnished. There was a huge kitchen, a fireplace, and a bedroom with a king-size bed. In the kitchen, I found special Japanese cooking utensils. I’d heard that Yukie’s mom would sometimes visit, so maybe this was her room? Yet, I knew it wasn’t. Traces of Dad were everywhere: in the refrigerator were his special mustards and his Dom Perignon. In the cupboard, I found his elegant bone china teacups, and his Darjeeling tea. And in the bedroom closet: Miki’s clothes. Clearly she was living here, too.
I looked around the bedroom. On the bed-side table was a photo of Dad and Miki on their wedding day. So they had gotten married! Miki was now officially my stepmother! There were also photos of Yukie and her kids, and Yukie’s mom. And a picture of Dad walking Yukie down the aisle on her wedding day. It was now one big happy family.
I flew back to L.A. feeling both fulfilled and confused. I tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Dad had clearly fallen on tough times since Mom cut him off, although he still possessed that confident swagger, the sense that prosperity was well within his grasp (and he still possessed that chalet, that yacht, and that private island, so times weren’t that tough).
Yukie, for her part, probably felt that she owed him for her education and support, so she provided him with a place to stay, as any good Japanese daughter would. But why didn’t anyone tell me what was going on? Why didn’t Dad tell me that he was married to Miki, and living with Yukie and her family? Why was I purposely kept in the dark?
Maybe the bigger question was, why didn’t I just ask? Why didn’t I confront Dad about his secrets? Why didn’t I ask Yukie, especially after our epiphany? Because I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t good form. Because I still couldn’t shake off that stubborn Japanese insistence on decorum at all costs.
• • •
MOM had a house in Seattle, Washington, with a view of Mount Rainier. We would often fly up there, she and I, and spend a weekend. I was the resident cook. There was a pool and a hot tub, and Mom would sit out there reading scripts while I went for hikes in the nearby forest.
We had some beautiful moments up there, but one day stood out for me, and not in a happy way. Mom and I were in the hot tub relaxing. We were talking about various things, and I don’t know how the conversation turned in this direction, but for some reason, out of the blue, Mom announced, “Sachi, there’s something I want you to know. I’m not leaving you any money.”
“What?”
“In my will.”
“You’re not leaving me any money?” I was bewildered on two fronts: why was she bringing this up now, and why was she not leaving me any money?
“I’m giving it all to the Kronhausens,” she said.
The Kronhausens? Those freeloaders who had coaxed me into losing my virginity? Those characters who had already talked Mom into buying them a farm in Costa Rica? Those Kronhausens? They get the jackpot?
She was also planning to leave some money to a Spiritual Awareness Center somewhere in California, or was it New Mexico? The plans sounded a little vague, but the main point she wanted to get across was that I was getting nothing.
“Okay,” I said quietly. I didn’t argue with her, or ask her why. It was her money; she could do what she wanted with it.
Still, at that moment, I felt utterly abandoned. I don’t know why: she’d never given me any money before, cutting me off when I was eighteen, and she’d even made me pay her back for that broken-down car. There was no reason for me to expect her to take care of me in her will. Still, I held out the hope that, because she was my mom, she cared about me.
There was always this twisted, tangled confusion of love and money in our family. Mom used to tell me, “Your trouble is, you need money to feel love.” It was an odd contention, because I never had either. I think it was Mom and Dad who had created this love-money equation, in the way they doled it out or withheld it. I came to understand that, in their world, material gifts equaled affection—and I was clearly undeserving of both.
To give her her due, maybe Mom was afraid of spoiling me. So many Hollywood parents tried to buy their kids’ love, lavishing money and sports cars on them, and it almost always turned out disastrously. Mom wanted to avoid that for me, so she went to the other extreme. Her intentions were good—she was protecting me—but in the process, she made me feel unloved.
Mom laid her head back on the edge of the tub and closed her eyes, as the water churned around her. She had made her statement and had moved on. There was nothing more to discuss.
This really ruined hot tubs for me. Seattle lost a lot of its charm, too.
• • •
NOT surprisingly, I started seeing a therapist. Jean was a heavyset white-haired lady in her fifties with a quality of softness and kindliness about her. She had twinkly eyes and a very round, maternal shape. I told her about the growing conflict with my mother, and she suggested that maybe I should bring her in for a joint session and see what we could work out. It could really be helpful and could bring us together—or (more likely) it could blow up in our faces. Jean was right, though: one way or another, the issues had to be addressed.
“Mom, I think we should go into therapy.”
“You and Mitch?”
“No, you and me.”
She laughed. She thought that was ridiculous. For all her cutting-edge enlightenment, Mom didn’t think much of therapists. She considered them manipulative charlatans who preyed on weak-minded wimps—like me—and she did not suffer them gladly.
Still, I worked on her and managed to get her to a counseling session in Jean’s office. Jean welcomed us warmly, and kicked things off in a soothing voice: “Okay, what would you like to talk about?”
Mom shrugged. This wasn’t her idea, and she wasn’t going to give it the validation of an opening remark. She passed to me.
“Well,” I started, “I’ve been trying very hard to get my career going, and I feel that my mother could be of some help, but it seems that sometimes she’s just not on my side. It’s a very tough business, you know, and you need all the support you can get.”
“It is a tough business,” Mom countered, “and that’s why you have to be tough to survive in it. People don’t help you? So what? Help yourself. Hey, I could make a phone call and get you a role like that”—she snapped her fingers—“but is that what you want? Do you really want to get a job that way?”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“People don’t like nepotism in this business,” Mom said. (This was one of her favorite maxims, although I didn’t see much evidence for it in Hollywood.) “You have to make it on your own. I did.”
“Yeah, well, you had Charlemagne and E.T. helping you.” I was being sarcastic again, but I didn’t think she would hit me in front of Jean.
She glared at me evenly. “All right, I’m going to put this as gently as I can: everybody in creation knows that you’re my daughter, but you still can’t buy a job. What does that tell you? Maybe you’re just not very good.” A hit, a palpable hit.
“Okay, let’s take a step back,” Jean said. “Sachi, talk a little about your childhood.”
“Well—”
Before I could get started, though, Mom was back in there with a preemptive strike: “She had a wonderful childhood. She traveled all over the world. I spent my entire childhood in Virginia. That was a treat.”
Jean asked, “Was it a wonderful childhood, Sachi?”
“I was raised by my father in Japan. I saw Mom only once in a while.”
“I was a working mother,” Mom explained.
“And do you feel that she abandoned you?” Jean asked me.
“Abandoned her?” Mom answered. “I saved her! The Mob was after her. They wanted to kidnap her. I saved my daughter from the Mafia.”
Jean kept focusing on me. “Sachi?”
“I wouldn’t say she abandoned me, but I did feel there was something missing from my childhood.”
“Oh, really? What was missing?” my mother said. “I gave you everything you needed. Got you clothes every summer. Bought you that stupid car. Name one thing I didn’t give you.”
“I wanted to go to college…”
Mom exploded. “You have some fucking nerve! I sent you to the best boarding schools in Europe. It cost me a fortune! You wanted me to spring for college, too?”
“And I wanted a baby.”
Mom turned to Jean for support. “A baby, at her age!”
“I was twenty-seven!”
“You didn’t have the maturity.”
“You were twenty-two when you had me!”
“And look what happened to you!” This was like one of those courtroom moments when the defendant inadvertently blurts out a damaging admission, and then is stunned by the self-realization that maybe she is guilty after all. Except Mom didn’t look guilty. She just looked more pissed off.
I waited for Jean to step in, but she was watching quietly, waiting to see where this would lead. So I took the initiative, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “Look, Mom, you didn’t have to spend a dime on me. I didn’t want your money. I wanted you. I wanted you to take care of me, tuck me in bed, make sandwiches for me. I wanted you to make those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for me every day. That’s what I wanted.”
Jean turned to Mom. “How do you feel about that?”
Mom had had enough, and pushed herself out of her chair. “How do I feel about it? I feel that this is a big goddamn load of nonsense! I feel like I’m swimming in bullshit!” She turned on Jean. “And you’re bullshit! And I’m not staying to listen to another word!”
Mom was heading for the door when she had one more thought to share. She stormed back at Jean. “You know what happens when you break down therapist? It’s ‘the rapist!’ How do you feel about that?”
Having nailed Jean with that sally, Mom steamed out the door, confident in her sanity.