The Legs Are the Last to Go (24 page)

So more and more, Suzanne was left behind. I'd leave her in the care of a nanny, Monte, or my parents. And I truly thought they would smooth over my absence. But all these wonderful people were no substitute for her mother. So when she'd get home from school and find me preparing to hit the road and see my mountains of luggage in the foyer, she would break into tears and whimper that she hated luggage. It broke my heart.

Her time was always more pleasant with her father, I'm afraid. He was more easygoing, and at home for her more, and even while he was busy becoming a successful music and television producer, he loved to entertain guests who gave Suzanne the attention she craved. Monte preferred to spend time with her more than anyone or anything in his life. When she was a girl, they'd comb the beach or bookstores for hours together while trying to soothe the broken areas of our lives. Monte never discredited my ambition to our daughter. He was not a mean-spirited man. His was the pure, hopeful, and unselfish love that is necessary to build a family. We all felt it, but never spoke of it. There's no doubt that it was his love for her that sustained them both while she was growing up. Painful as it is to admit, he understood the needs of a child better than I did.

Well, every family has issues; at least all the interesting ones do. I had somehow created a competition between my daughter and my career, and my career was winning. Part of it was a simple quest for the material things that my parents had
struggled to have. I wanted them for Suzanne, too—more languages, more travel, more opportunities to develop, the best of everything. I succeeded in providing her with a fabulous home and financial security. Her infant crib, from Saks Fifth Avenue, had been handcrafted. Her pram was shipped over from Harrods of London. When we moved to Los Angeles, it was in high style. But none of it helped a child who only wanted what she deserved—more of her mother.

It became particularly difficult when she was nine, and I'd become the popular television mother Julia. I was gone in the mornings before she left for school, and although I had built an elaborate playground for her on the grounds of our newly acquired, spectacular home, I couldn't play with her on weekends often because I was locked in my room memorizing lines. My life was in high gear and she was left in its wake. It was a surreal moment for me, all that unnatural attention at once. There was the man in prison who sent me a box filled with things belonging to a fellow inmate who had died…There was a thirteen-year-old boy who called to tell me I was his long-lost sister and his whole family was coming to visit us for Christmas. Eventually, I called studio security to intercept his calls.

Poor Suzanne had to contend with the little boy who played my son on
Julia
. Marc Copage was an adorable, chubby-cheeked, lisping five-year-old. His mother had left him when he was an infant. He followed me around the set as if I were his real mother. The scenes we had together were incredibly playful. There was lots of cuddling and kissing. So of course he became very attached to me, whether in front of the camera or
off. It wasn't long before he was asking to come home with me, and I'd agree, thinking he would be the perfect playmate for Suzanne. How foolish was that? It was enough that children in school who had seen
Julia
were already innocently asking her about her brother.

“I don't have a brother,” she'd have to tell them.

When Suzanne was ten or so, she became very quiet and withdrew into herself. One night when she was invited to sleep over with friends, I could hear her begging not to be sent home to me. I knew she was justified. She probably felt more loved and tended to by the mother of her friend than she did around me. But if I acknowledged what I was hearing from my daughter, it would have meant I'd have to change my life dramatically and I could not deal with that. I'd seen my mother leaving her husband and younger child behind in order to follow me, and I knew it was negligent. Yet I also knew it was different for me because it was essential that I travel for work. Work made me rich both financially and emotionally.

I chose to leave Suzanne home the summer of 1972, when David Frost and I were invited to join Aristotle and Jackie Onassis in Greece. Suzanne had been invited. Other children were going to be there with their nannies and they were all Suzanne's age. But I was wary. I had no idea how children were treated in a family such as the Onassises, and I did not know what the daily routine was on that island and yacht. Perhaps I was wrong, but I simply did not trust that it would work for my twelve-year-old daughter.

We flew over on Ari's airline,
Olympic,
and the service was superb. Jackie met us when we arrived by boat on the island of
Skorpios. She looked adorable in a short little skirt, scarf, and big sunglasses resting on her head. She was wearing no makeup or jewelry, and it told me her defenses were down for a casual and intimate visit.

I, of course, arrived with full makeup and a mountain of luggage. Why not? My host was a man who'd been a longtime lover of Maria Callas. My hostess was a style icon who brought culture, taste, and Oleg Cassini to the White House. I was not going to show up without a full wardrobe. Even when I'm dressing casual, each detail is always excruciatingly considered.

The Onassis compound was stunning. It sat on a verdant hillside looking out over the crystalline Aegean Sea, which is dotted with rocky islands. One of the rooms in the mansion was reserved for Winston Churchill's use. I asked a butler to open it for me one day and remember seeing impressive photographs and his cigars. The terrace where we dined had the feel of a magnificent magical cave, lit with candles and with comfortable big sofas all around. It overlooked the sea, of course, which you could see rippling below until the last light of sunset. Then the stars came out, shining as bright as any I'd ever seen.

We dined in caftans and little silver slippers—all vaguely Middle Eastern, as I recall—or whatever the look would have been in 1970 of jet-set Greek-island chic. Lee Radziwell, Jacqueline Onassis' younger sister, was there. But I don't remember any conversations. I was exhausted from the flight, which followed an engagement I had had that required my doing two shows a night. I do remember observing the children, sun-kissed and gorgeous, and I kept thinking about whether their routine would have suited Suzanne. They were with staff most
of the day, except when there was an outing, sail, or game of tennis. Then, before dinner, the children were brought in to join the adults having cocktails. They were already fed, and after spending about an hour with the adults, playing games and making conversation, they were whisked away to bed by staff, while their mothers did not move.

There was simply no room for the children to have their own preferences. And I thought to myself that it would not have worked for Suzanne, who was used to asserting herself when we were together.

Even I was having a difficult time asserting my own preferences. I remember it caused David some discomfort when I asked after one evening that I be left alone in the morning to sleep in. I woke up on the yacht and everyone had gone off in a launch boat. I went up to the top deck, where my breakfast was waiting, and I sat under a big, beautiful umbrella in a big, beautiful sun hat. The boat was rocking only the slightest bit and the most perfect breeze was cooling the air. I looked out at all the islands rising out of the sea and it was just magnificent. I was at the peak of my career and in love with a fabulous man who seemed to constantly take me to wonderful places to meet wonderful people. I remember thinking, “This is fantastic. This view, this breakfast, this yacht, these people who are so charming, and this gentleman who cares for me so deeply. I have such a wonderful life.” I felt as if I had climbed to the top of the world that morning. Yet something was missing. I wasn't sure I was really in love with David. But the other part of it was that I had gone away on a vacation to this enchanted place without my daughter.

My reasons for doing so might have been appropriate. But I still felt guilty.

I missed her. And I imagined that despite our issues, she was missing me.

You'd think that with all my distractions from mothering, I'd be less controlling than your average mom. That was not the case. When Suzanne was ready for high school, again, as my way of giving her the best education she could possibly have, I put her in boarding school, first in Northern California, then in Switzerland. It was what people of means did with their children. She always invited me to visit her in these schools, and I was pleased to know she wanted me around. When she graduated, I took her to Paris for a shopping spree. She agreed to the trip. But shopping was my way to celebrate, not hers. It just shows you how little I was in touch with my own daughter's priorities.

When she didn't apply to Harvard, I was beyond disappointed and far too dramatic in letting her know it. One of the great dreams of her mother and her grandparents was now being deferred, not quite like a “raisin in the sun,” but perhaps a very expensive sun-dried tomato. My whole life I'd regretted not getting my college degree. My parents did as well. Even a degree from New York University instead of their dream school, Howard University, would have satisfied their hunger for the status of having a daughter with a college degree.

“Why didn't you apply to Harvard?” I asked Suzanne one summer day at home.

“It's too big and too conservative,” she said, making points that any other parent would have accepted and understood. “I really want to go to Wesleyan.”

“Wesleyan,” I gasped. “Where is it?”

We would soon find out. Because that fall, we found ourselves in one of the classic adolescent rites of passage, the East Coast college tour. Only ours wasn't quite as classic as Suzanne had wanted it to be. You see, her oh-so-fabulous mother could not leave well enough alone. Instead of taking campus tours like normal civilians, I had contacted each college in advance to let them know we were coming. I was insensitive enough as a mother to think that was the best way to go about things. So we'd arrive (without police escort, but with my sense of importance lending an air of grandiosity to the proceedings) and be greeted by a college president or special envoy. And I'd be in a fur coat, with my hair done just so, and in my finest fall ensembles, marching around shaking hands like something between a presidential candidate and the director of a cotillion.

“Hello there,” I'd say. “How do you do!” Suzanne had every right to be thinking, “I wish this woman would just leave me alone.” But she never said a word.

When we were asked to special VIP luncheons at the faculty club with all the muckety-mucks, frequently including the college president, questions would be addressed to me, not her. I wasn't even aware enough to see how much this hurt her. It was my “Diahann Carroll Road Show,” not hers, and when I'd detect even an ounce of discontent, I'd be shocked. I'd say to her, “Maybe it's a challenge having a mother in show business, but if I had not been in show business, then I would never have met your father, who has been so wonderful to you and has been able to offer you so much!”

She'd say, “You don't understand.” And then we'd drive to another college.

Wesleyan, it turned out, was a prestigious small school in Connecticut, known for its liberal and creative student body and excellent courses in the humanities. If Suzanne had to face issues there that had to do with being my daughter, I never witnessed them. She did tell me that when she was moving in freshman year, some girls came into her dorm room and told her that Diahann Carroll's daughter was in the class.

“Oh yeah?” Suzanne replied coolly.

“Her last name isn't Carroll, but we think it's the name on that pile of Louis Vuitton luggage over there,” one of them said about some suitcases that did not belong to Suzanne. “Uh-huh,” is all she said in response.

Later, someone saw a family photo in Suzanne's room and figured out who she was.

“Is that your mother?” she was asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “And now I know who my friends will be around here.”

She handled that episode well, but I was sorry it had to happen. She wanted to be seen for who she was, not as the child of someone people knew from television. Not that every child of a celebrity finds the privilege associated with a famous parent a burden. Some are more than happy to use their connections. But Suzanne, always a top student with her own taste and strong ideas, preferred to find her own identity. And she did so impressively. After Wesleyan, she was accepted at the Columbia School of Journalism, a rigorous and highly selective program. She did well there and went about getting jobs after graduate
school, one as an intern for the
MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour
on PBS and then at CNN in Atlanta, where she wrote the news. She was an editor at
Essence
and an anchor, along with Greg Kinnear, in the early days of
E!

Without any string pulling from me or her father, Suzanne had become an in-demand young talent in Los Angeles. The agents for Connie Chung and Diane Sawyer flew to Los Angeles to meet with her to suggest she sign with them and move to New York for the grooming that takes an anchor from one step to the next. She turned them down. She didn't want to devote herself to a career that would take over her life and make her spend hours a day in wardrobe and makeup.
Lost
is not a strong enough word to explain my disappointment. I knew she “had it,” as they say. She was beautiful on camera, charming beyond belief, and funny as hell. Still, she walked with no regrets, and never looked back. I should have applauded such a decision. But I was too stuck on the idea that fame and fortune were all that mattered. My daughter was emotionally mature and confident enough to know that the good life being offered to her was not in a world she craved. I could not see it. So I created yet another mother-daughter impasse. But let me be clear—we always loved each other.