What falls away : a memoir (35 page)

At that time I wrote a note to Maria Roach, my childhood friend in California.

Dear Maria,

I have come perilously close to a genuine meltdown of my very core. I know now that my vision has been unclear and I have spent more than a dozen years with a man who would destroy me and lead my daughter into a betrayal of her mother, her family, and her principles, leaving her morally bankrupt, with the bond between us demolished. I can think of no crueler way to lose a child, or a lover, and with them, a treasured part of my life. I have spent long years with a man who had no respect for everything I hold sacred—not for my family, not for my soul, not for my God or my purest goals. But in the end I must pity him. He has spoiled and mutilated that part of himself which is improved by right conduct and destroyed by wrong: is there any part of us that is more precious? Today I stand, with washed eyes, gazing clearly into an unknown future. I will travel lightly there, carrying only the essentials, trusting that a new life will create itself.

6 hapt er Clev en

This is the Hour of Lead— Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons recollect the Snow: First Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

— Emily Dickinson

The fact that Woody had slept with my daughter had to be kept secret from the outside world. He was terrified that the public would find out, and desperate to get the Polaroids back. But I kept them hidden in my room until February, when I took them to a lawyer, who put them in a vault. I asked the older children not to tell anybody. In our isolation, we grappled with shock, grief, and anger. At this point, I had three objectives: to protect the children from further harm, to get through this trauma intact, and to separate from Woody Allen.

Concerning Woody's forty years of psychoanalysis, my friend Lenny Gershe said, "You can't say his therapy was a failure. Who knows, without it he might have been a serial killer." But I had never been more skeptical about psychiatrists and the benefits of long-term analysis. Looking at the place psychoanalysis had occupied in Woody Allen's life, it seemed that it had helped to isolate him from people and the systems we live by, and placed him at the center of

a different reality—one that exists only after he has bounced his views off his therapist. Woody lived and made his decisions while suspended in a zone constructed and controlled almost entirely by himself—a world that he used his therapists to validate. He did not acknowledge other beings except as features in his own landscape, valued according to their contribution to his own existence. He was therefore unable to empathize and felt no moral responsibility to anyone or anything. When I turned to his psychiatrist to ask for his help in protecting my family, he told me that "it's not a therapist's job to moralize." I had to wonder what decades of such thinking had contributed to Woody's perspective.

In February I received a call from an adoption agency that had for some time been trying, unsuccessfully, to find a home for a baby boy. He was about to be placed in permanent foster care, and they wondered i^ I would take him. He was African-American, from an inner city, with the possibility of medical problems. A decision was needed immediately. I discussed it with the children, and in the midst of all the pain, we said yes. Again I placed the bassinet with the patchwork lining beside my bed.

I named my sixth beautiful son Isaiah Justus Farrow, after Isaiah Berlin, and that first Isaiah, the most interesting of the prophets.

Later that same February, Tam, the little girl I'd spent ten minutes with in Vietnam, finally arrived. We guessed that she was about ten or eleven years old. She was malnourished, frightened, angry, depressed, and covered with lice. I was as busy as I'd ever been, looking after the children, seeing social workers, and setting up elaborate braille and special-educational programs for Tam, who had never been to school.

Now I only saw Woody when he came to visit Dylan

and Satchel, for one supervised hour most weekdays. Occasionally he persuaded me to go out to dinner with him, but mvanably I left the table m tears. Sascha's wife, Carrie, recalled that "when Woody came to the apartment he was all over you. He brought flowers and kept saying, 'I love you.' We didn't know whether to hit him, or how to protect you. Sascha and I asked you what you wanted, and you looked so confused, you said you didn't know."

"What would have happened if I hadn't found the pictures of Soon-Yi?" I asked Woody one day.

"Nothing," he replied. "I thought this would be just a pleasant little footnote in Soon-Yi's history."

But her analyst told me, "Unfortunately Mr. Allen has crushed the fragile relationship you had built with Soon-Yi." Now I understood the reason for the dramatic change in her attitude the previous year, the new little laugh of superiority, the smugness, and the coldness to the other kids. I didn't know how we would ever repair things, and this thought broke my heart.

A counselor for one of the teenage kids advised me that even Woody's brief appearances in our apartment were having a disturbing effect; that both Woody and Soon-Yi had been "sexualized" in the minds of, probably, all the children. "The home has to be viewed as a safe place," she said, and the child she was counseling felt "unsafe" when Woody was present. I was advised that if I wanted to see him, I should do It outside the apartment, without telling the kids.

By early spring Woody was no longer saying how sorry he was, or that he couldn't live without me, or that he was the most trustworthy person on earth. Now he was saying, "If we don't get back together, then I'm free to date Soon-Yi, or anybody I want."

"How are the kids supposed to live with that?" I asked

him. I pointed out that, psychologically, this was incest. "What are they going to do at PTA meetings, introduce Soon-Yi as their sister and stepmother? How do you think, practically speaking, everybody would handle it? This is crazy! I can't be your mother-in-law!"

Despite everything that had happened, all the agony, and all his years of therapy, the moral dimensions of the situation still utterly eluded him. We had been over it and over it, and still he didn't get it, even though he was now seemg two therapists and sometimes had appointments twice a day, including Sunday.

When Woody's psychiatrist was unhelpful, I went to Dr. Willard Gayland, a noted ethicist, who was sympathetic, but didn't have time to take Woody on as a full-time patient. Then I went to a brilliant Jesuit priest who agreed to talk to him, but Woody refused.

By late spring, when Woody called or came to see the children, he was tough and entirely unrepentant; if I got angry or cried, he threatened to put me in a mental hospital and have the children taken away.

In the foyer of our apartment one day, I was trying to push him out, saying, "Get out. Please, please go," as some of the kids gathered around—Fletcher, Moses, Dylan, Tam, and Satchel.

"I'm going to take these kids out of here," Woody was saying loudly, over and over.

Suddenly Fletcher was coming at him, saying, ^'Get out now. Get out and leave Mom alone." Woody fled.

About that time Moses handed a letter to Woody.

. . . You can't force me to live with you . . . All you want is the trust and relationships you had in the beginning of the time. You can't have those worthy things because you have done a

horrible, unforgivable, needy, ugly, stupid thing, which I hope you will not forgive yourself for doing ... I hope you get so humiliated that you commit suicide . . . You brought these things to yourself, we didn't do anything wrong. Everyone knows you're not supposed to have an affair with your son's sister including that sister, but you have a special way to get that sister to think that it's OK. Unfortunately, Soon-Yi hadn't had a serious relationship before and probably thought "OK, this is a great chance to see what a serious relationship is like." That's probably why she did it ... I just want you to know that I don't consider you my father anymore. It was a great feeling havmg a father, but you smashed that feeling and dream with a single act.

I HOPE YOU ARE PROUD TO CRUSH YOUR son's DREAM.

Although Moses had refused to see him after January 13, Woody continued to visit with Dylan and Satchel, supervised. I did not allow him to take them to his apartment.

In April Dylan's therapist. Dr. Schultz, informed me that Dylan had to be told what was going on—that the little girl, now nearly seven years old, had seen me crying, and overheard me on the phone with Woody, and heard Soon-Yi saying she wanted to die, and Woody endlessly arguing with me, and although I'd asked the older children not to discuss the matter within earshot of the younger ones, obviously they too were upset and needed to talk. When the little kids were supposed to be asleep, we had found them listening outside closed doors.

Dr. Schultz said she had been trying to convince Mr. Allen for some time that it was necessary to tell Dylan, but he had opposed it vehemently. He wanted the little girl to

be told that somehow I had misinterpreted a joke between him and Soon-Yi. But the therapist was adamant that that would not suffice, given the very real distress in the family. So I was instructed to explain it to Dylan m the doctor's presence, and told precisely what words to use. I would have preferred to cut off my legs.

Dr. Schultz and I were both looking at Dylan as she played on the floor near the fireplace. I took a deep breath. "Dylan, I know youVe noticed that sometimes Mommy has been crying. Mommy has been sad; and Soon-Yi was crying and now she hasn't been coming home, and Mommy seems upset with Daddy, and Daddy gets upset, and now I guess you need to know what's been going on. Well, Daddy became sort of like a boyfriend to Soon-Yi. And that was wrong because daddies are supposed to be daddies. But he is sorry, and he's getting help, and we promise you it will never happen again."

Dylan was moving two little dolls around on the floor. She never looked up. I hugged her. After a few minutes of nobody saying anything. Dr. Schultz asked me to leave them alone together.

Soon-Yi didn't come home anymore, and she didn't phone me. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't ready to have her back. When, in early May, I asked her for reassurance that she would have no contact with Woody, she said, "Stop asking me for things," and hung up the phone. Her brothers and sisters, every single one of them from Moses on up, got on the phone: and although they were angry and disgusted, we all said we missed her, and we loved her. We needed to hear her say. Look, I've made a terrible mistake. I'm sorry for the pain I've caused, and it isn't going to happen anymore. We needed that, but we couldn't get it.

Summer arrived and the children and I went to Frog Hollow. When Woody came to visit Dylan and Satchel once a week, the older kids left the house to stay with friends. It was hard for us to have him there. Woody and I had already agreed to a legal settlement, scheduled to be signed on August 6, defining our rights and responsibilities with regard to the children. Most important, it ensured that his contact with the children would be supervised. And it did not entitle him to spend the night at our home. I was eager for that date to arrive because, despite the obvious distress his visits were causing to my family and my repeated requests that he sleep elsewhere, he insisted on staying at Frog Hollow. Just then I didn't press the point further because I feared he would try to have that privilege written into the settlement contract.

That summer I taught Tam and Dylan to swim, and Satchel to read. Baby Isaiah, a sweet-natured and beautiful little boy, was already smiling and growing so fast I had to move him from his bassinet to the antique crib beside my bed. As usual, I videotaped all the children's accomplishments. Throughout this time, Tam was an inspiration. Although she had lost everything—her parents, home, country, language, friends, and her sight—still, with doubts and difficulties, she was able to open up to each member of the family, one by one. I have never respected anyone more than Tam. She helped to restore my perspective, and taught me about surviving with grace and without bitterness.

I reconnected with my old friends and slowly, piece by piece, I began to reclaim my self, the identity that had somehow, over the years, slipped almost out of existence. That same essential self who emerged from the polio wards, strong and determined, awakened from a long, deep slumber.

Now, when Woody came to Frog Hollow for visitations, Dylan would get headaches and stomachaches. She curled up in the hammock, or lay in her bed under her quilt with the door closed. On three occasions during his visits, she locked herself in the bathroom, once for four hours.

When he arrived for his visits I usually took Tarn, Moses, and Isaiah out, often with Casey. I had a trustworthy baby-sitter, Kristie, and that summer we also had Sophie, a French tutor for the children; I told them both never to leave Woody alone with Dylan. He promised me that under no circumstances would he ever be alone with either Satchel or Dylan.

But in the dark of the early mornings, even though I forbade it, he would creep upstairs from the guest room to lie on the floor beside Dylan's bed. A couple of times when Tam, who shared the room with Dylan, got up to go to the bathroom, she stepped on Woody, and woke up the whole house with her screams.

Tam hated Woody. Undoubtedly she had overheard negative comments from the older kids, and through my letters that had been read to her she knew vaguely that an older sister, a sister she had met only once (but who had been described to her at length in my letters) had disappeared under ominous circumstances related to Woody. And perhaps she had heard me crying in my room at night, or whenever Woody phoned. But primarily she disHked him because he never ever spoke to her, and since she couldn't see. It frightened her the way he would suddenly be in the room, near her, telling Satchel to pull her hair, and always with bags full of presents for Dylan and Satchel, and nothing, not a word, for Tam.

With an escalating intensity, Woody tried to persuade me to giwt him the Polaroids of Soon-Yi. "Let's burn them together," he said. But I told him they would stay in the vault for the rest of my life. I would never take them out,