Born with Teeth: A Memoir (28 page)

Four a.m. I walked into the kitchen where the coffee, on an automatic timer, was ready to be poured. It was dark, and very quiet. The house would not come to life for another three hours. As was my habit, I spread out my script on the kitchen counter and looked over the scenes I was to shoot that day. I’d learned the lines the night before, but always brushed up in the morning, particularly when the technobabble was unusually challenging, as it was today. We were going to be spending the entire day in engineering, and despite the fact that Stage 9 was exactly the same size as Stage 8, it somehow felt more cramped to me and more confining. I anticipated a good sixteen hours of shouting, running, climbing up and down the stairs in engineering, because the warp core was misbehaving again, and B’Elanna Torres, our chief of engineering, would be at her
most exasperated. God have mercy on me, I mumbled to myself as I packed my script away, put my cup in the sink, and, finally, looked in on Alec, who lay sleeping as teenagers do, as if in a dark, remote cave with velvet-covered walls and a stream of perfumed oxygen filling their lungs with an endless capacity for more sleep.

The drive to Paramount was uneventful and, five years into my
Star Trek
career, I could have done it with one eye closed. I flew down Sunset like a seasoned race-car driver, zipped across Melrose, and was waved through the studio gate by my favorite guard, Doug, who always reserved for me an expression that was equal parts respect and sympathy. The Captain Look, I called it, pulling into the Tank and turning off the ignition. And now, my favorite part of the whole day was upon me.

I had found a shortcut to my trailer, one filled with eerily lit offices and dark alleys, where delivery boys on bicycles sped past me with breakfast orders, and golf carts carrying writers rolled smoothly along. I opened the door to the rear entrance of Stage 8, one few actors knew about, and made my way through the pitch-black sets, the mess hall, the galley, past the captain’s quarters, and through a small corridor of tiny offices, all brightly illuminated and busy with the activities that stood outside the filming itself but were nonetheless imperative to it. The assistant sound engineer was labeling mikes, and I thought, Oh, damn, we’re going to have to be body miked for engineering, such a to-do with our skintight uniforms. The mike was always strapped to the inside of my narrow thigh and as the day progressed began its inexorable journey to my ankle. I passed a young PA, whose name I could never remember (and thus invariably mumbled something that could be interpreted as any one of a variety of common monikers), carrying sheaves of revisions to deliver to every actor working that day. Finally,
as I crossed in front of the bridge, Johnny Craft Service looked up at me from the feast he had laid in preparation for arrival of cast and crew. Johnny knew my habits well. “Coffee, white?” he asked. I nodded, gratefully accepted the Styrofoam cup, and made my way through the heavy doors that led to the alley outside, where my trailer sat, brooding.

Up the two metal steps, through the door (already unlocked by the PA, who also knew my habits), lights switched on, coffee placed on the desk, script pulled from the script bag and placed next to the coffee, open to the first working scene, uh-oh, a tricky line, new to engineering vernacular, I’d have to nail that before going in for rehearsal, otherwise it would continue to nag at me, let’s find the key word and work around it—suddenly, the phone rang and I jumped. Who in God’s name would be calling me in my trailer at five a.m. on a Tuesday? The kids, I thought, and my heart skipped a beat.

I reached for the receiver and said, “Hello? Lucy?”

There was a slight pause, and then I heard a woman’s voice on the other line, a gentle voice, unfamiliar to me.

“Is this Katherine Mulgrew?” the voice asked.

I hesitated, momentarily thrown by the formality of her question, then answered, “Yes, it is, but I’m afraid I’m about to go into work, so what can I do for you?”

Then the woman actually said, “Miss Mulgrew, I think you should sit down.”

An invisible hand cut me hard under the knees, and I sat abruptly in the desk chair.

“Miss Mulgrew, this is Anne Lowry from the International Soundex Reunion Registry, and I would like to ask you a few questions. Are you available to answer these questions now or would you prefer it if I called later?”

I breathed in; I breathed out.

“I am available now, of course,” I said as a bolt of anxiety
was screwed into my spine, because it was time for makeup, and the PA would be knocking any second, any second.

“Please go on,” I said, tethering the urgency in my voice, slapping it into submission.

“Miss Mulgrew, is your full name Katherine Kiernan Mulgrew and were you born on April twenty-ninth, 1955, and did you give birth to a baby girl on May third, 1977, at New York University Hospital, and did you give her the birth name of Phoebe Colomba Mulgrew?”

My heart had stopped, I couldn’t feel it beating, and all I could provide was the weakest of emanations and I whispered, “Yes, yes, that was me, I gave birth to that child, yes, that’s me, that’s right, that’s her, yes, yes.”

The briefest of pauses, during which I understood that my life was about to end, that the truth was near and that it was catastrophic, hopeless. Anne Lowry seemed to catch her breath on the other end, there was a sound of—what? Discomfort?

Uncertainty? Disappointment?

Then she spoke clearly and this is what she said: “Katherine Mulgrew, we have received documents from your birth daughter, and it is my pleasure to tell you that we believe we have a match.”

Oh, Father in heaven, oh glory be to God, oh forgive me my sins—knock, knock!

“Kate, it’s time! Makeup!”

Cupping the receiver, I said in a tone so contained, so utterly foreign to my own, that I knew I had fashioned it to save my life, “Miss Lowry, please hang on for exactly one moment, will you do that for me?”

Knock, knock!

“Yes, of course,” Anne Lowry said.

Covering the receiver with my hand, I wrenched open the door, and, grasping the collar of the second AD, Mike DeMeritt, I pulled him to me and whispered with a ferocity unknown
to past whisperers, “Now listen to me, Mike, and listen carefully. I need to take this phone call and it may take fifteen minutes, it may take longer, but I am not to be disturbed while this door is closed, do you understand? Tell them to start on someone else, tell them it’s urgent, and tell them that if I am disturbed before I open this door myself, I will leave this lot and not come back, and tell them that I mean it. Do you understand?”

Poor Mike DeMeritt, so well intentioned, so professional, so kind, didn’t know what to do with himself, and simply muttered, “Yes, Kate, okay. Okay.”

I closed the door and locked it, brought the phone to my mouth, and said, “Miss Lowry, forgive the interruption, I’m at work—”

“Yes, Miss Mulgrew,” Anne broke in, “we know you’re at work, but we felt it was important to share this with you as soon as possible. Do you have a few more minutes?”

“Oh, yes,” I assured her, “I’ve just spoken to production and they told me to take all the time I need.”

“Well, then, Miss Mulgrew, if you will just sit tight, I believe your daughter will be calling you in the next few minutes.”

“Calling me? Here? She will call me, or I will call her?”

It made no sense, it was senseless, it was time out of time, I was lost, I was found, and Anne said, “Miss Mulgrew, your daughter will call
you,
if you will just be patient and wait at this number.”

“I am patient,” I replied. “I am very patient. I will wait until she calls. I will wait right here. I should wait, right?”

Anne Lowry, at last, made a sound I understood. It was laughter. And then, this angel whom I would never know, said, “You must wait and I
promise
you that your daughter will call you shortly. Now, please, hang up, so we can facilitate that phone call.”

“Thank you, Anne,” I whispered. “I’m hanging up now. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Good-bye? Anne Lowry said good-bye. Not hang on, not sit tight, not just a minute, but good-bye. Oh, did she know something I didn’t know? How would I reach her again? Was this a dream? I stood up, I paced, I listened to the early morning studio sounds that I suddenly loathed beyond expression. I wanted to throw open the door and scream at everyone to go away, get a life, leave me alone! This is a television series, it isn’t real,
this
is real! Oh please dear God in heaven, make everyone go away! If Mike DeMeritt knocks one more time, I will slap him in the face, I will slap him so hard and fast he won’t know what hit him, oh but that’s wrong to think that, wrong and unkind and unjust, but what if—the phone rang! It rang again! I looked at it, I saw it not as a phone but as an angel and in slow motion my hand reached for the receiver. As I brought it to my ear, I noted the dust motes dancing around the venetian blinds hanging in the window, and I put the receiver to my mouth and said, “Hello? This is Kate Mulgrew.”

A muffled sound, unintelligible, and then, “Hello, Kate? This is Danielle. Danielle Gaudette.”

Her voice. At last. A voice so unexpected, so light, so sweet, from a place I could not recognize. But what name was this? How could this be?

I tightened my resolve, I breathed deeply, and I replied, “Hello, Danielle. My name is Kate Mulgrew, and I believe I am your biological mother.”

There was a sharp intake of breath.

“Oh, yes, they told me. They told me I am your birth daughter.”

“Who told you?” I asked, would have asked anything, anything, to keep her on the line.

“The people from Soundex, they sent the documents. We filled them out, but my father mailed them.”

“Danielle, I don’t have any idea what you know or don’t know about me, but I’m an actress and I’m at work and pretty soon they’re going to start worrying about me and then they’re going to come for me, so I want to ask you something right away, before that happens,” I explained, and waited for an affirmation.

“Yes?” she asked, so lightly, like a little bird.

I could feel Paramount Studios encroaching, I could hear them all in a heated conclave,
Go get her, We have to start shooting, Enough is enough, Someone knock on that door, Goddammit, we’re losing money!

“Danielle, I know this may sound pushy and maybe it’s too soon, but I would like to meet you, if that’s possible. Do you think that’s possible?”

Silence.

“Well, um, I’ll have to ask my parents first,” she replied. Her parents.

Whom she loved. She would need their permission.

“Yes, of course, you should ask your parents. Are they there with you? Can I hang on while you ask them?”

I heard a shuffling, muted voices in the background, a brief negotiation. Then that voice, my daughter’s voice.

“They said it would be all right,” Danielle whispered, probably in an attempt to protect their feelings.

“Oh, how lovely of them, they must be wonderful people to have helped you find me,” I asserted, and then, before she had an opportunity to change her mind, or slip away, or ask for another phone call at another time, I asked, “Do you think I could come and see you this weekend? Would that be possible?”

I sensed, now, through the line and far across the country, a slight hardening, a recognition of fear, of a possibility too large to handle, and she again said, “I’ll have to ask my parents. Do you want to wait?”

“Yes, yes, of course, I’ll hold on, I’ll wait,” I almost cried and almost but not quite added, I’ve waited twenty years, what’s a few seconds more? Soon she came back, and I could hear in her voice a rising up of feeling, an expectation, and she said, “My parents said that would be all right.” I leaped, then, into the sea.

“Well, then, I will come to you this weekend. This Saturday. Is that okay with you? Can you meet me this Saturday?”

“Yes,” my daughter replied, “I don’t have work this Saturday.”

Suddenly, I was struck by an awkward realization, oddly painful to reveal.

“But I don’t know where you live, Danielle. Where do you live?”

There was a letting down inside of me, the beginning of the unfolding of twenty years.

“I live in Watertown, but we can meet in Boston. There aren’t really any good hotels in Watertown.” Watertown, Massachusetts. I understood, in that moment, that there was nothing to do but go to her. Go, and see. My daughter had something to say.

“You could stay at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, that’s easy for me to get to.” But she didn’t live in Cambridge. She lived in Watertown.

“That’s perfect,” I responded. “I will meet you in the lobby of the Charles Hotel this Saturday at noon. Is that good?”

My daughter hesitated and then she, too, jumped into the sea.

“Um, yes, that’s good. Okay, then, I’ll see you Saturday.”

“I’ll see you Saturday,” I repeated. “At noon. In the lobby of the Charles Hotel.”

Danielle giggled. It sounded like a giggle, but could have been relief that the phone call was finally coming to an end. “I’ll know who you are,” she said. “See you then.”

My daughter hung up, and I went to work.

The Charles Hotel is designed for people who have money. Not pretentious money, not fast money, but money as old as time itself. The people who stayed at this hotel had attended Harvard, and their children, in turn, had attended Harvard, and their grandchildren, if all went according to plan, would attend Harvard. The colors of the interior of the hotel were blue and white, the rooms were nautically themed, also blue and white. Nothing fancy, nothing suggesting luxury, but all meeting in a place of perfect comfort and serenity. A bowl of apples sat on the foyer table. The beds were low, the pillows ample, the reading lights superb. I had taken a late flight the night before and arrived at Logan Airport at midnight. I had unpacked, taken a bath, and slipped into bed, but not before calling the front desk for a wake-up call as well as setting the alarm clock next to the bed. “It is imperative that you wake me at eight o’clock,” I told the operator. The operator assured me that she understood.