The Legs Are the Last to Go (27 page)

My dad with his one and only favorite granddaughter, Suzanne. (© Diahann Carroll)

FOR THE LAST FEW YEARS OF HIS LIFE, MY FATHER
and I would talk once a week on the phone. He was living in a rest home in New Jersey, near his younger sister, who is six years my senior. Even at ninety-five, John “Johnny” Johnson sounded like a kid and remained a strapping and handsome man. But he wasn't a kid anymore. His heart was weak and there would soon be cancer metastasizing in his body, and he needed help getting around. And so, after years of eating very carefully and exercising assiduously, he was finally feeling his age. I tried not to nag him too much on the phone about taking care of himself. The one thing that I did get him to do was tell his sister, Eleanor, how much he appreciated her selfless interest in him—for her invitations to dinner and offers to take him on outings on a regular basis. I am the first to confess to the self-involvement that comes with being a performer, so it always delights me to see how selfless family can be.

“Dad, tell Eleanor when you see her later how lovely she
looks,” I'd remind him. He'd laugh. But he didn't argue. He knew he was charming to all women, even well into his nineties, and he knew what his compliments and attention could do for them. In the rest home, where he was one of dozens of patients, he had the nurses fussing over him as if he were their very own father. He was more dapper than any man his age.

When it became necessary for him to settle into a nursing home several years ago, it was hard to accept that it would not be near me in California. But then, we were never as close as I was with my mother. I was, after all, my mother's primary relationship in life, and I've recently come to understand that she was mine. With my father, it was more complicated. His devotion could be erratic. His demeanor could be very stern. He did not attend my first wedding in 1956 because I was marrying, as my father saw it, “the enemy,” and he only came to accept my new life after Monte, my generous husband, made it clear to him that he was welcome to visit his granddaughter anytime. To his credit, Dad eventually let go of the issues he had with our interracial marriage, and we saw each other often. And oh, it was just so sweet to watch him play with Suzanne!

 

More than ever, I have to give him credit as a man who grew up in another time. He learned to adjust to the very different world he found himself exposed to when his daughter was getting into a career far beyond his understanding. It was not in his nature to trust white people. After all, he had seen a classmate set on fire by white men during his childhood in South
Carolina. And once, when we were driving together during my own childhood, he was stopped for no reason by a white policeman who called him “boy” and interrogated him until he was quivering with fear and rage. So for him to come to accept my first marriage was a huge step. Hell, for a man like my father, who once became furious when a well-dressed neighbor brought me into a local bar in Harlem to buy me a glass of ginger ale, and who had a hard time with a career that would bring me into contact with men and women drinking alcohol in a bar, his willingness to accept my life was a credit to his increasing open-mindedness. And what tenacity he had, to be able to escape poverty and a violent father and to build us our comfortable life!

It's impressive that he became a man of the modern world against his impulses, largely because of his love for me. But that doesn't mean he was perfect.

Many years after he came to accept my interracial marriage, primarily because of his love for his granddaughter, he pulled away from me again, when he decided to remarry. I know now it was more my fault than his. But that's because at seventy-three, at a time when I'm trying to ease up on my judgments, I see things differently. Back then, in my thirties, I was having a very hard time watching him with someone who wasn't my mother. I knew the divorce was as much her fault as his—maybe even more her fault than his, given the time she spent away from him to be with me. But that didn't mean I wasn't resentful when he brought someone new into the family. Had I been nicer to his new wife, I'm certain he would not have pulled his disappearing act.

It was the late 1970s when he first invited me to meet her. I didn't really want to, but felt I had no choice. I was living on Riverside Drive at the time, and I drove up to Westchester, where he was living in her big house. He was proud of its size and the white Cadillac she kept in the driveway. He was proud that she was a successful college graduate, too. She was younger than he was, and I think that pleased him. She also prided herself on her taste, which I, in my own small-minded way, didn't like at all. I was not in the mood for the trip to the suburbs to see them, the white carpeting in her living room that she thought was so elegant, or the ranch house he found so fabulous.

It bothered me that my father was wowed by what I saw as nothing more than a mundane lifestyle and by a deeply ambitious new wife. (Ironic, coming from me, the queen of ambition!) For my own petty reasons, I didn't like seeing him enthralled with this new woman at all. So I was quiet through our first meal. How dare this woman replace my mother? She had put a great deal of effort into dinner, and was laughing a lot. She was also bragging a little more than I cared for about the careers of people in her family and their various achievements. I really didn't want a new family. I must admit, she was doing everything she possibly could to make the evening as comfortable as it could be. My trouble was that she was just a bit too aware that I was Diahann Carroll. There were too many comments about my career and celebrity friends and not enough acknowledgment of the fact that my father had started a new life. Not that it was her place to discuss my mother. I don't know what I was expecting from our conversation, actually. But
I do know I was in no mood to discuss
Julia
or Sidney Poitier or Sammy Davis Jr. at this woman's table. Oh, was I poor company, chilly at best, and it made my father uncomfortable.

The situation worsened a few months after that, when he told me his new wife wanted me to join them at a family holiday party. I told him I didn't think it was a good idea, but they both insisted that I would enjoy the evening and told me everyone wanted to meet me. So they picked me up in the city and we drove to the house of one of her relatives in the suburbs. I sulked in the car like a morose teenager, thinking, “Why doesn't my father understand that I don't want to share my life with this new family of his?” It was very small-minded, I know, because he seemed to be so happy with this perfectly nice lady.

At the party, I found a place to sit in the corner, and was barely cordial. When it was time to leave, Dad's new wife insisted we drop by to see a relative around the corner. “He's a judge and I really want you to meet him,” she said. At this point it was late in the evening, and I wanted to go home. I thought she was being inconsiderate at best, pushing this extra family visit. When we drove around the corner, the house was completely dark.

“It's right here, John,” my father's new wife told my father. “Let's go!”

“But they're asleep,” I argued.

“Don't worry, they'll be thrilled to meet you,” she said.

I sat in the backseat, seething. But they insisted I get out of the car. She rang the doorbell several times, and I can still remember feeling mortified as the lights went on in the house. “Somebody tell me why are we doing this?” I moaned.

What I really wanted to know was how my father, who was always well mannered, could be allowing such behavior. Clearly, he was being swept up into this woman's world, and more than happy to allow her to run his life. This relative of hers and his wife came down in bathrobes, and invited us in. I was introduced as John's daughter. I found a chair in the corner and sat down. Then, as they were chatting away, this couple in their bathrobes started looking more carefully at me. Finally, one of them asked, “Aren't you Diahann Carroll?” I told them I was, apologized for waking them, and then walked to the front door. I was livid by then, and felt my father's new wife had behaved disgracefully.

She should have asked if I minded dropping by to see these people rather than forcing the situation on us. Now that I'm older and wiser, I recognize that my expectations had been way too high about how she should behave. It's really only lately, in the last ten years or so, that I have eased up a bit on what I think is and isn't correct behavior. Maybe if I'd been easier on everyone at that time, my father would not have disappeared on me, and caused me such anguish. He and his wife were moving to a new house, and when I asked for the address and phone number, he refused. “I'll get a post office box and let you know about it,” he said.

He never did. I couldn't believe it. He was cutting me out of his life because of the tension between me and his wife. We stayed out of touch for several years, and it pained me constantly. To his credit, he eventually called me and I invited him to lunch at the Plaza. “I'd like that,” he said. “But I can't come without my wife.”

And then I said what I knew was the most important thing for him to hear.

“By all means, bring her, Dad. I'd be delighted.”

We ended up having a very nice lunch. Can you believe we talked about Judith Lieber handbags, of all things? And they were also very excited to talk about a college reunion of hers they'd both attended. Neither my father nor my mother had gone to college and so a degree was always something he held in highest esteem. To have a wife with a college education and college friends delighted him, and it was one of many things this new woman brought to the relationship that he enjoyed. She was a woman of means. As I said, she was younger, and I could see how affectionate they were with each other. As I sat there with them, I saw the look of pleasure on my father's face. He was really enjoying himself and enjoying seeing that his two women were now congenial. After they left I told myself, “She is making him happy, and that's all that matters.”

I had been too busy judging her to see that. He deserved happiness. So did his wife. Eventually, she became ill, and my father nursed her until her death. After that, when he'd visit me in California, it became clear that he still cared deeply for my mother. She was delighted to receive him in her nursing home, and he was delighted to be with her. It taught me a real lesson about forgiveness. I'm the kind of person who would never have forgiven him. But that doesn't really work if you want to have peace in your life.

About eight years ago, after my mother passed away, I tried to have it out with him to clear the air. I wasn't sure how much longer he'd be well enough to participate in a conversation like
the one I wanted to have, and I had issues I wanted to resolve. What else to do with so many years of intense psychotherapy? So I dredged up my distant childhood memory of him taking me to see a woman when I was a child. He looked stricken, and stammered an apology. “I just wanted her to see how beautiful my daughter was,” he said. Then I dredged up the old South Carolina abandonment story, which I had turned into a full-time obsession.

“I was just a little child, Dad. Do you have any idea of the effect that had on me?”

He looked confused and said it was so long ago he was surprised I had any memory of it at all. “And all I can say is that it was necessary so that we could put some money away before bringing you back to give you a better life,” he said.

“And when you remarried and moved, Dad, you didn't give me your phone number and address. That brought up more abandonment issues for me.” Am I a pain in the ass or what?

He denied he'd ever intended to disappear at all. It occurred to me that he might be telling the truth. But I could also see that he wasn't going to let me drag him into my psycho-drama. He was an old man interested in peace in his family and he was due to go visit my mother, and so he ended our conversation by standing up and reaching out to give me a big hug. I still remember his arms around me in my sunny living room that looked out onto the city. He loved my new condo, he kept telling me that, and he was very pleased I had made the decision to downsize and prepare properly for my senior years.

“I'm very proud of you, you know that,” he said. “And I love you very much.”

And I don't know why, but that's all I really needed to hear. I think by then I was ready to let go of my heavy baggage, which was the weight of two Louis Vuitton trunks.

I still remember his last visit to my home. He had asked if he could come stay with me for the holidays. “But, Dad, Suzanne is planning to be in labor and I've got to be with her,” I said. He told me he understood, and that he'd make other plans. But I didn't feel right about it. He had had a rough year, in and out of hospitals, and clearly wanted to come see his children. I didn't know if he'd be up for the trip another time. So I made the decision that he needed me more than Suzanne did. Her mother-in-law would be with her, a wonderful woman who raised three children. So my father came to me.

Suzanne's labor over the holidays, it turned out, was difficult. I kept calling and leaving messages in hope of hearing a report on how it was going, and I was hearing very little.

“Why don't you return my calls?” I finally stammered into her voice mail.

Eventually, she called back and said, “Why don't you stop these hysterical phone calls? You're just acting out because you're guilty that you're not here with me.”

I stammered that it was more complicated than that. If I'd gone overseas, then my father, her grandfather, would not have been able to visit me in California for the holidays. “A new life is starting for you, but his is coming to a close, and he misses me,” I told her.

Suzanne understood, of course. She was not interested in dwelling in resentment. And my father and I had a lovely visit. I loved watching how carefully he ate his healthy breakfasts, and I
admired his self-discipline. He was a believer in healthy eating long before it had become fashionable. He had purchased a juicer for my apartment so he could use it on his visits. Juicing was something he believed in deeply, and he would make us delicious drinks from apples and carrots and celery and then explain their benefits. It was from him that I learned to eat more conscientiously. And when I realized how carefully he dressed each morning, I laughed out loud, and understood even better why it is that I am completely unable to just throw something on from my closet and leave my home in five minutes to run even the smallest of errands. I really am my father's daughter. We had such a nice visit, and there was real peace between us.