Leggy Blonde: A Memoir (5 page)

My parents asked me a thousand times, “How does the leg feel? Is it comfortable?”

I always said, “Yes!”

Nothing was going to stop me from wearing it. I kept the abrasions a secret for as long as I could, but Mom kept too close a watch. She discovered the problem, and immediately called the prosthetist and my doctors. They tripped a new alarm, which was the last thing either Mom or I needed. Apparently, an open wound by the bone could lead to an infection called osteomyelitis. Unchecked, it could spread rapidly through my entire skeletal system and kill me.

Our reactions to this news were only too predictable.

Mom pretended to be strong, but crumbled in private.

Dad was furious my graft and prosthesis weren’t perfect considering what we had all gone through.

I didn’t give a shit about the abrasions or osteomyelitis or even the constant pain of walking. Like every other mono- or biped seven-year-old, I cared about vanilla chocolate-chip Häagen-Dazs ice cream, candy, pizza, Disney World, the pictures on my T-shirts, Clever the dog, my stuffed animal collection, Shel Silverstein’s
Where the Sidewalk Ends,
and
Star Wars
. I cared about getting the good mat at rest time and the fattest paintbrush in art class. The doctors’ warnings were immaterial to me. Scrapes and pain were not going to get in my way. I would have dragged around a leg of solid steel if it brought me a few inches closer to normal.

Mom began her fanatical stump cleaning and disinfecting routine. My prosthesis was refit again and again. The manufacturers tried to use more of a cushion; they designed a larger gap between the stump
and the padding; they experimented with reinforcing my knee support. But nothing worked. The abrasions and pain were a part of my daily existence for two decades.

The wounds hurt, but I refused to go to the nurse’s office or call home from school. I would just walk through the pain. I would
run
through it. Often, I limped. Whenever I was with children or adults who did not know about the leg, they would ask, “Why are you limping?” The question was innocent, but I would boil inside nonetheless. If someone noticed, it meant I was failing at being normal. I would coolly answer, “I wear a knee brace.” There was no way that I was going to explain my whole, heavy story to a stranger.

Pain was the price I had to pay to participate in life. I didn’t know why I had to pay it, but I knew I had to. I always marched through it. I would wave at the elevator lady, and then trudge up the stairs. Some days the pain got the better of me by the end of the day. I would get grumpy and often I took it out on my mom.

When I came home from school, I unstrapped the prosthesis and gasped with relief. Mom would come into my room to check the abrasions. If they were particularly bad, she’d excuse herself to go cry in another room. Her game face was starting to falter. Sometimes, if the abrasions were really gross and bloody, she’d dash to the bathroom and vomit. In hindsight, I know now that her secret drinking played a big part in her nausea. But at seven, I had no idea what was really going on with her.

Slowly, surely, my life started to look like a normal second grader’s. Obviously, I couldn’t do
everything
. But I was able to dance (very important in 1977 when disco was king), roller-skate, and play tag at gym. I lost a lot at running bases. I was glad to lose! It meant I wasn’t getting special treatment from the other kids. They were so over my stump anyway. They didn’t forget I was missing a foot. But they didn’t
care. Kids my age were by nature little narcissists—the center of their own worlds. If my leg didn’t affect them, they didn’t think much about it.

My parents, teachers, and school administrators weren’t as blasé. The teachers stealthily kept eyes on me at all times. I learned later about the behind-the-scenes goings-on. My parents requested, and received, hourly updates. They had weekly meetings with school administration. No amount of assurance would have been enough for Mom. If the technology existed back then, she would have texted me a thousand times a day, “R U OK?” Dad was the ringleader of the Monday meetings. They gave him a semblance of control of the unwieldy situation. He couldn’t turn back the clock and undo the accident, but he could be vigilant about preventing another. He would have loved to roll me in bubble wrap and lock me in a cushioned room if he could have. Even today he would if he could get away with it. No matter how old we both get, Dad will always think of me as the little girl he told to “keep on screaming.”

•  •  •

As a child, I had some awareness that we were well-to-do. I wanted for nothing (except a foot). Not all of our friends and my classmates lived like we did. They didn’t fly off to their vacation house for long weekends. They certainly weren’t jetting to Africa for spring break. My father was a self-made man. He thoroughly enjoyed his success. Whatever he wanted, he got. Money was no object, whether it was for clothes, cars, houses, art, or food. My parents were so appreciative of all they had since both of them grew up with nothing.

At the Kenilworth, we had an entire hallway of refrigerators, five of them, with glass doors. Why so many fridges? Well, we were a family of four with a household staff of three. My dad had three
kids from his previous marriage, and they sometimes lived with us. My mother’s relatives visited a lot. Mom had grown up starving in post-WWII Germany. For her, a full fridge meant she was safe and sound. And my father did everything in excess, including stocking the larders.

My parents were fad eaters. When they heard about a trendy diet, they would buy enough of the ingredients and supplements to last for ten years. When my dad read about the
next
diet or secret to long life, they’d get rid of the old stuff and stock up on new supplies as if for a coming ice age. Mom and Dad tried Fit for Life, a regime of elaborate food combining. They’d only eat certain foods, in certain combinations, at certain times. In the end, they couldn’t keep up with the plan: they were Fit for Months. Dad read that fresh-squeezed juice was good for you, so he bought an expensive juicer and he drove out to Queens to a wholesaler to buy crates and crates of oranges. Yogurt and wheatgrass raved about by health nuts? Suddenly the fridges were packed with active cultures and the crisper drawers were full of grass, like a square of sod. Wheatgrass juice wasn’t available at Whole Foods back then. Whole Foods didn’t exist, for that matter. Dad would have to find a guy who sold the stuff—“Got wheatgrass?”—and then do his own juicing.

Diets came and went.

Fashion came and went. Out: Halston and Dior. In: Armani and Donna Karan.

Houses, too. Out: the barn in Delaware County. (A few years after the accident, my parents sold it lock, stock, and barrel. We never went back, and they didn’t see the point of holding on to it.) In: The Hammerstein estate (as in Rogers and . . . ) in Montego Bay, Jamaica, West Indies. When my dad saw the property, he was instantly smitten. The place was stunning. The estate overlooked the whole island
from the mountains to the sea and had a few individual villas surrounding a pool in the middle. Each villa had its own dining room, living room, kitchen, and bedrooms. Decorated by John Ryman, a stylist for Bruce Weber, it had an island oasis vibe, with purple and coral flowers, four-poster bamboo beds, and enormous plants. Hummingbirds were everywhere. Design was one of my mother’s passions. She was in heaven working with John, and had another house featured in
Architectural Digest
.

Why not buy a vacation house in the Hamptons? My father used to say, “I’m not spending a fortune to just sit in a backyard.” He looked at some impressive estates in Montauk and Sag Harbor, including the house that Calvin Klein eventually bought on Georgica Pond in East Hampton. (He kicked himself years later for not buying that place.) But Dad wasn’t a horses-and-luncheon Hamptons kind of guy. For one thing, it wouldn’t be the antidote to city life. Everyone we knew went to the Hamptons. It was a small, claustrophobic community. You’d see the same people on the beach as you would on your block. Dad wanted a true escape—for my sake. In Jamaica, we had a private pool in a secluded area. I could go swimming and lie in the sun with my leg comfortably exposed. No one would see me, stare at me, or pity me.

Buying in Jamaica in 1980 was risky, though. It wasn’t very safe then. A man named Sterling guarded the estate. He was old and sweet, and carried an automatic rifle. At night, we closed the villa gates and locked them with five-inch-thick unbreakable padlocks. We would always catch Sterling falling asleep at his post. We all found this hysterically funny, except for my mother, who said, “What happens if burglars come in and shoot Sterling while he is asleep?” That was typical Mom.

My parents loved to entertain, and invited friends down to Jamaica often. If the gates and guards put them off at first, they
stopped caring after smoking some ganja. Our houseman was responsible for the overall working of the estate, as well as getting pot for my parents’ guests. (For the record, Mom and Dad did not smoke pot.) One family friend smoked constantly, wake-and-bake style, out of a supersize cardboard tampon applicator. He’d fall asleep with a lit joint. As I got older and knew what was going on, I lay in bed at night, worrying about a house fire. In addition to the guard and houseman, six other people worked in the house, from gardeners to chefs.

We were members of the nearby Round Hill Club. It had a beach and a bar, and we made friends there from all over the world. Some Round Hill fixtures were Ralph Lauren, Paul McCartney, Alec Baldwin, and Kim Basinger. Celebrities didn’t faze us. Dad represented so many famous people that we were inured. Before John Lennon was shot, Dad used to go to see him at the Dakota three times a week. Regarding all of his celebrity clients, Dad would say, “Please, Aviva. Their shit stinks, too. Their finger goes through the paper.”

“Gorsghe!” Mom yelled in response.

“They just got a lucky break,” Dad continued. “Remember that.” I was trained at a very young age to be unimpressed by bullshit and fame. Thanks, Dad!

Andre and I hung out with the Lauren kids a lot at Round Hill. Our school vacations were on the same schedule, and we often flew down on the same plane with them. One Christmas break, our family got bumped out of first class. My dad’s travel agent booked the seats, but when we checked in, they told us our seats were gone. My father was pissed. We were downgraded and when we boarded the plane, in what were supposed to be our seats sat Ralph Lauren and his family. Dad flipped. He screamed, “Ralph, you paid them off! It’s not right!” followed by a stream of cursing. He actually grabbed Ralph’s collar. The Brooklyn street guy really came out when you messed with his
first-class seats! He calmed down when they came up with two seats for my parents in first class. My brother and I sat in the back.

Years later, I briefly dated Andrew Lauren, Ralph’s son. We were in Jamaica, and he asked me to have dinner with his family at their house. I was instantly anxious. What would I wear? Ralph was the king of American fashion. I wore Armani. (Major blonde moment.) I walked into their beautiful elegant home. Ralph kissed me hello and said, “Where did you get such great style?” He knew about my leg, and probably assumed I’d be nervous and insecure. A total mensch, he put me at ease with that one phrase. He couldn’t possibly know, however, what was making me really nervous. The couches were white. I had my period. All I could think of was,
What if I leak on Ralph Lauren’s white couch?

At dinner, the subject of my dad’s first-class meltdown came up. I apologized on his behalf. Ralph assured me it was an airline mix-up. He never used his name to put anyone out. I believed him. We all laughed about it. Ralph said that the incident was what drove him to buy his own jet. A pissed-off George really was that crazy.

•  •  •

When I was eight years old, I would go to sleepovers at my friend Daisy’s house. Seventy-five percent of the time, I wound up calling my parents, crying and asking them to come pick me up. Even though she lived two blocks away, I was homesick. Dad dutifully came to get me each time. Not being able to handle a separation might’ve been the first sign of my anxiety problems. I trained my parents, and myself, to let fear win. As soon as I felt a pang, I called in the cavalry. Nowadays, the conventional wisdom is to talk an anxious child down and make her stay at the sleepover to habituate her to fear. Removing a child from a stressful situation reinforces the message that she can’t handle it.

Well, I sure couldn’t. When anxious, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. There was a tightening in my chest and throat. A nameless, crushing dread stole the air from my lungs. I thought I was dying. I’d tell my mother that I couldn’t breathe. She’d rush me to the doctor, who’d listen to my chest. Since I could actually breathe, the doctor would send us on our way.

Anxiety wasn’t a popular diagnosis back in the pre-Zoloft era. People took Valium, but that was for stressed-out, overworked adults. Children were too young to get depressed, feel stress, or suffer from anxiety. Psychopharmacology barely existed then, and if it did, it was for the clinically insane. Of course, nowadays, it’s almost too easy for anyone at any age to get a diagnosis and prescription to treat neurological and psychological symptoms. As a diagnosis, anxiety has moved to the top of the list.

Thinking you’re suffocating was a known precursor to a panic attack. And yet the word “anxiety” never came up in all those doctors’ visits. This went on for three years. And then, at eleven, I had my first full-blown panic attack. It coincided with recognizing my mother’s drinking problem. I could hear her vomiting in the bathroom five or six times a day. One day, after she emerged red-eyed and shaky, she called me into the den, asked me to sit down on the couch, and then just stared at me.

I asked, “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

She said, “I’m sick.”

“Like a cold, or a tummy bug?”

“It’s a different kind of sick.”

She looked weak and fuzzy, but she didn’t have a fever. She was throwing up, but didn’t have a stomachache. None of it made sense to me, and that was terrifying. My mom was my everything, and something mysteriously bad was going on with her. I found out later
she was taking Antabuse, a pill that makes you violently ill if you drink any alcohol after taking it. It was meant to be a deterrent to prevent drinking, but Mom was more determined than that. Dad seemed upset that she was “sick.” More than upset. He acted like her illness was her fault. His anger erupted at night. He wasn’t violent, but he was on the edge—his rage was palpable. He’d scream and threaten to throw her out the window if she couldn’t stop.