Audition (67 page)

Getting a child into private school in New York is notoriously horrendous, so I was very happy that I had good contacts at the Dalton School, considered to be one of the best in the city. It was also coed, and I thought that Jackie, coming from our all-female house, should get to know that boys existed. Dalton was large for a private school. It went all the way through high school, and the kids more or less had to be self-starters. It was also known as a place that gave special attention to each individual child, and Lee and I thought that would be good for Jackie. So we applied and Jackie was accepted. Not only that, she was chosen to play the number one angel in the kindergarten Christmas play. This time she faced the audience. By this time, too, Lee and I had separated, but we came to the play together. All seemed fine.

As the years went on, however, things did not seem so fine. Jackie had a few friends, but she said, wistfully sometimes, that she was not really accepted by the girls considered the most popular. (This reminded me of my own childhood and, though I never showed it, I worried for her.) Occasionally she would invite one of the so-called popular girls to the house for a sleepover, but they never seemed to invite her back. Jackie acted as if it didn’t matter. On Valentine’s Day she sent a valentine to almost every child in the class. She received few back. I ached for her. Again, Jackie said it didn’t really matter. Of course it did. I went to see her teacher and the school psychologist. Not to worry, I was told. Girls were cliquey. As for boys, Jackie was inches taller than any of them. If she went to a party and the kids played Spin the Bottle and the bottle happened to point toward her, the boys would often say, “Ugh.” Today I think that is why those popular girls shunned her. The boys didn’t want my big awkward daughter around, and the girls wanted the boys. None of this did I know. None of this did Jackie tell me until much later.

As for schoolwork, she did okay in general and excelled in art. Unfortunately neither the school nor Jackie considered that a very important accomplishment. When I talked with Dalton about possibly transferring Jackie to a smaller school where she might do better, I was told again and again that next year, she would do better at Dalton. Was this because I was a celebrity? Did the school just want to keep her name on the roster?

Could I have done more? If I had not been concentrating so much on my own work, the tough hours, the necessary travels, would I have known more?

When Jackie got to be fourteen, in 1982, it was as if a teenage warning bell went off. Her grades fell sharply. Up until then Zelle had helped her with French, and I struggled to help her with the math, but that didn’t seem to be enough. We hired special tutors for both subjects. Then Jackie, who could walk home from school to our new Park Avenue apartment, started to come home later and later. One day I went to surprise her by meeting her after school only to be told by one of the girls that she had left early. The girl looked at me kind of funny and said: “She’s with the boys on Eighty-fourth Street.”

I ran to Eighty-fourth Street. There I found my daughter with a small gang of tough-looking boys, smoking and leaning against the cars on the street. They disappeared when I appeared. I took Jackie home, and in tears she told me that she was in love with one of them and she saw them every day and there was nothing I could do about it. The boys, or rather, young men, were called the Eighty-fourth Street Gang.

The next day, while Jackie was in school, I revisited the Eighty-fourth Street Gang. I told the leader that if Jackie was ever seen with them again, I would have them arrested, and that this was something I could do. They later told Jackie what I said and told her to go home. Jackie promised me that she wouldn’t see them again. It was a promise she never meant to keep. I never told Lee. Jackie was barely fourteen. I couldn’t imagine that things would get worse. They did.

Jackie began to sleep later and later each morning. I couldn’t get her out of bed. By this time I was no longer on the
Today
show, so I was home in the mornings. I would shake her, sometimes pour cold water on her. Nothing woke her. Drugs? Not my child! (There was even a television special with that name.) If I mentioned drugs, Jackie swore she wasn’t on any. I never found marijuana in the house, but I probably wouldn’t have known as I had no idea what marijuana looked or smelled like. But it wasn’t pot I had to worry about. Much later I learned that Jackie was on amphetamines. She was swallowing all kinds of pills. No wonder she couldn’t get up in the morning. Fortunately she didn’t like cocaine and never got into hard drugs. But the pills were enough.

Remember this was more than twenty-five years ago. We didn’t know about kids and drugs the way we do today. Besides, I had never touched pot or any kind of a pill except the Valium I took before I married Merv. I couldn’t recognize the symptoms.

Jackie barely finished Dalton that year. I made plans for her to go the next fall to a small girls’ school in the city that seemed to be so desperate for students that they said they would accept her. But her behavior got worse. When she finally did wake up in the early afternoon, she would scream at Zelle and me, bang out of the house, and return when she felt like it. She dressed all in black with tons of makeup. She would not tell me who her friends were and, short of having her followed, I couldn’t find out.

Our relationship was coming apart. Some days she all but refused to talk to me. Yet with it all, she never, ever said to me, “You’re not my mother.” She never touched one of my things or stole anything to buy drugs. In calmer moments she would hug me and tell me she was sorry and that she knew how much I loved her and that she loved me.

By this time, though, I knew we were in desperate trouble. I went to a child psychologist for advice on how to handle my daughter. I also wanted Jackie to go to the doctor and get the help she needed. She kept one appointment and absolutely refused to go again. All this time I was appearing on television, the picture of composure and tranquillity. It was a nightmare.

Finally I realized that Jackie needed to get out of New York City. Lee and I agreed to send her to an all-girls boarding school in Connecticut (since closed). On the surface it was a lovely place. Pretty buildings. Lots of trees. The headmaster was out of a movie—English accent, tweeds, charming, sure he could help our little darling. He couldn’t.

Jackie started to refuse to come home on weekends. She had a new friend named Nancy, whom the school kicked out midterm for bad behavior. She and Jackie had been found in the nearby town, high on God-knows-what. My daughter, though, was not told to leave. The school obviously didn’t want to lose Barbara Walters’s daughter.

After Nancy was expelled, we heard that once or twice, on a weekend, Jackie had gone to Boston to visit her. When I got the name of Nancy’s parents, her mother seemed not to know whether Jackie visited or not and said that Nancy, then fifteen, lived her own life. I told the school that Jackie was never to be allowed to visit again. I didn’t know what else to do. If I took Jackie out of the school, where would I send her?

It was around this time that I met Merv. He and Jackie immediately took to each other. She said that she could talk to him. This gave me some hope. I was so grateful to Merv.

The school year finally came to a close. It was now 1985. Merv and I were engaged. What to do about the summer with Jackie? I heard that the Parsons School of Design, a well-regarded school with all kinds of artistic programs, had a summer session in Los Angeles for high school students. Great. Merv and I would be spending time at his home in Malibu. I had a close friend in Los Angeles with a daughter Jackie’s age, and they knew and liked each other. So we made plans for the two girls to take a summer course and live at Parsons. Jackie liked art and agreed to go. For a moment or two things seemed as if they would work out.

Two weeks into the course, Jackie disappeared. She had run away from the school with someone who, I later learned, was Nancy. Frantic, I got in touch with a wise and experienced friend, Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal, who runs Phoenix House, the foremost drug rehabilitation center in the country. “Don’t call the police,” Mitch advised me. He said I would end up on the front page of every newspaper, which would make Jackie hide even further or perhaps induce someone who saw her to kidnap her. Could there be a greater hell?

Days went by with no word. That was neither good news nor bad. I was going crazy. During that time Mitch and I made a plan. When we heard from Jackie, because I had to believe I would soon hear from her, he would arrange to have a “transport” person pick her up and help us decide what next would be best for Jackie. Transport men and women are brave and experienced people whose business it is to find wayward or difficult children and, usually against their will, transport them to either what was known as an “emotional growth” school or, if necessary, to a lockup facility where they could be treated. Mitch put me in touch with one such man. His name was Mike. I will forever be grateful to Mike.

During this short time I visited three schools, as well as Mitch’s own facility, Phoenix House, so that when we did find Jackie, we would know where she should go. The one I liked best was in the Midwest, about a two-hour drive from the nearest city. It had no train station, no airport. It was hard to get to and hard to run away from. It has since closed, but it was one of the first such schools that primarily treated adolescent boys and girls, like Jackie, who had no mental illness or criminal behavior but were suffering from severe problems ranging from drug abuse to general rebellion.

The school didn’t stress academics. It had no psychiatrists or even psychologists. Instead, by strict rules, many hugs, outdoor wilderness activities, and a great many group experiences, it attempted to inspire in the kids a feeling of personal identity and self-esteem. It was a three-year program. The school felt it couldn’t really accomplish much in less time than that. Three years seemed a lifetime to me, but the kids I met there seemed relatively happy and told me the school was helping to change their lives. When Jackie was finally found, I decided, I would send her there.

By now, almost four days had passed with no word from Jackie. I decided, front page or not, that I had to call the police. Then the phone rang. It was the sister of a man Jackie was hitchhiking with. Her brother had stolen Jackie’s wallet and gotten our home number. He was a bad man, she said, and told me not to give him anything. She did not give me her own name but told me where Jackie was, thank God, and gave me a phone number. It was in a Midwestern state.

My heart in my mouth, I telephoned. After a great many rings, a woman answered. I asked for Jackie. She got on the phone and said she was fine and didn’t want to talk to me. Did she need money? I asked. Yes, she said. She and Nancy wanted money to go back to Boston. “Fine,” I said. “Give me your address and I will send you both airline tickets.”

Maybe Jackie was tired of running. She told me later that they had hitchhiked across the country, ending up in the home of some guys they met. They were all stoned. How she was still alive, I will never know. She says she doesn’t know either. Anyway she gave me the address of where they were staying. I was all sweetness. Immediately I called Mitch Rosenthal. “Don’t do a thing,” he said. “I’ll send Mike.”

Jackie told me later that Mike, who was a very big man, bigger than Jackie, arrived at the run-down house in the early morning hours. The door was open, and Jackie barely protested as he carried her off to his waiting car. He took her to a place where other transport counsellors brought their runaways and spent a good day and a half talking with her. He then called Mitch and Merv and me and said that Jackie was essentially a good kid. He didn’t feel she needed any kind of a lockup facility. Indeed, he said, she almost seemed relieved to have been removed from the house she was in, and he thought the school I had chosen would be a good place for her. We arranged for Mike to bring Jackie there at once. ( Jackie later told me she was actually glad to go with Mike. She was becoming afraid of Nancy and didn’t want to see her again. She never has.)

As I said, the school was a hard place to run away from. The path leading into town was long and forbidding, and the town itself was so small that any new face would be quickly noticed. The kids lived in wooden dormitories, boys and girls separated. As the school got larger, the older kids helped to build some of the structures for the newer kids. The counsellors, many of whom had themselves graduated from the three-year program and decided to stay on, seemed to know just how much toughness and how much affection to give the kids.

All the music the children listened to was carefully chosen. Only selected television programs or movies were permitted. If a child lied or misbehaved, he or she was considered not to be “clean.” Appropriate steps were taken. Mostly the students were forbidden to talk or be talked to for a matter of hours or days. The regimen was strict but supportive. Parents could take their children out at any time, and some did, but the school advised strongly against this. “Give the program a chance,” they advised.

Above all the children were told they had to be totally honest, both with the counsellors and, most important, with their parents. For the parents this was often torture. It certainly was for me.

When Jackie was first brought to the school she was allowed one phone call to me. Sobbing, she told me how sorry she was, how she would never, ever do anything like this again. She had learned her lesson, could she come home, please. “Don’t leave me in this horrible place, please, please, please.” I was shattered. But I knew, I just knew, she needed more than I could give her at home. Sobbing myself, I told her she had to stay. She hung up.

As bad luck would have it, the day Jackie telephoned was the day Merv had arranged for the whole cast of
Dallas
, Lorimar’s huge television hit, to go to the city of Dallas itself. There a big celebration was planned. Merv had begged me to participate and to make the cast introductions. All I wanted to do was to stay in bed and pull the covers over my head. The last thing I wanted was to take a plane to Dallas and fake a smile all day. It brought back to me the day my sister died and I was far away making a speech. But Merv had been kind and concerned about my daughter, and if this celebration was important to him, I felt I had to go. I went with the brightest lipstick and the heaviest heart.