One

Sydney

 

 

 

 

The day I got out of the hospital my mother sent the driver to come and get me, because as she was quick to remind anyone who asked (or anyone who didn’t, for that matter), she was doing an interview with the infamous Alessandra Bradley. Ms. Bradley was what others would call “reputable” and what my mother called “hot s**t.” Ten minutes with Alessandra was considered the ultimate fertilizer for any actor’s faltering career, and Victoria Westwood was being granted sixty, due to the fact that Ms. Bradley had grown up on her movies, and unlike most journalists in recent years, it appeared she was actually interested in talking to my mother. She had an assistant who had rang us a dozen times in a single afternoon, trying to reach my mother but only getting me, because for the first time in almost a decade my mother was busy again. Her newest movie, her latest seemingly successful comeback attempt had not yet hit theatres, but had already been well-reviewed by critics who, like Alessandra, could vividly remember a time when my mother was the actress of her generation. Only hours after the New York Times praised her revival, she had waltzed back into the spotlight as if she had never left it, or if we’re being honest, as if it had never left her. The Victoria Westwood that the world had once known had returned, the beautiful, poised, elegant Victoria Westwood that could light up a room with sheer star power. You see, my mother’s magic worked, at least on strangers. 

 

In the brief moments of my life when I considered being a journalist, I followed Alessandra Bradley’s career the way an aspiring actress might follow Angelina Jolie. To this day I can detail every nook and cranny of her now explosive career. She attended the University of Michigan with the intent of being a pre-med major, but after a few semesters, changed direction, ending up with a double degree in journalism and women’s studies. She went to graduate school at Stanford, and in the meantime began writing a monthly sex column for Cosmopolitan that she turned into a must-read, that soon became a daily blog. After getting her graduate degree, the fiercely ambitious Ms. Bradley set her sights higher and shut down her blog. What seemed to be an entire generation of women began to panic, because it seemed with Alessandra gone, no one knew how to please their men, or more importantly, how to please themselves. Then Maggie Mason, an old friend of Alessandra’s and one of the most respected (and in our house, often the most feared) film critic in the business, snagged Alessandra an internship at Rolling Stone. And in the next five years, Alessandra would rise from the ranks of the coffeepot and the copy machine to become both the harshest TV critic in the business and the prime conductor of all celebrity interviews.

And then of course there was Maggie herself, a woman who had grown up in poverty, worked forty hours a week while getting her undergraduate degree as means to pay tuition, and published her first novel at the age of twenty. She continued writing novels and freelance articles for various publications before settling into a stable career: movie critic for Rolling Stone, and a novelist who put out a new book every two years.

You may question my  fascination with these women, but I promise you, it isn’t random. You see, my mother’s happiness�"and therefore, everyone else’s happiness�"depended almost entirely on the opinions of Alessandra Bradley and Maggie Mason and those like them. And for twelve years, my mother and all who surrounded her were almost always unhappy. Her decline in the industry began in her early forties, and Maggie Mason reviewed every film my mother made in her dark period. Though my mother would rip the magazine to shreds, throw tantrums, or lock herself in her bedroom for hours after reading the reviews, I saw no malice in Maggie’s articles. She spoke of my mother the way you speak of someone you love who has disappointed you. She never denied my mother’s talent, because no one could, least of all me. She was all too forgiving of my mother’s more desperate attempts to regain fame; she would be harsh but never insulting of the insipid comedies or the action films that never seemed to have any character development, much less a plot. Like the rest of the world, Maggie Mason missed the dark, fascinating, leading ladies my mother used to play, the roles that left people breathless, the roles that won her golden statues and the respect of the Screen Actors Guild. What Maggie Mason didn’t know was that my mother missed those women too, those characters that allowed her to spread her wings and truly become someone new and different, someone her own daughters could never seem to recognize. My mother wasn’t getting those roles. No one was making her those kinds of offers anymore.

Victoria Westwood made her film debut at twenty, married a TV star, divorced a TV star, and garned half a dozen impressive nominations in her first decade in the limelight. By twenty-eight my mother had married for the second time, to the British director Arthur Colburn, who had cast her in his most famous film, Daughter of Eve, about a nun who breaks the vow of chastity. They both won Oscars for the film, and that is one of the few things I remember about life with my mother and father, the way they kept their Oscars side by side on a shelf, like snooty, golden, his-and-her sinks. They were married five years, during which my mother had my sister Claire, and then me, and won another Oscar in between. My father was in his late forties when he died of a heart attack. Neither my sister nor I remember much of his life or his death, which leaves us in the rather unfortunate position of resenting him for leaving us alone with our wildly unstable mother.

My earliest real memories begin in those years after my father died, when my mother was left with two children she barely knew, a career she was itching to get back to, and the absence of a man in her life, something she dreaded above all else. So she rebounded in three months with an over-the-hill musician, Duncan Miller, apparently the best she could get. She may have been Victoria Westwood, but no one was sugarcoating it: she was a single mom with two kids and a body that showed it, and her best and biggest roles had been given to her by her famous husbands. She and Duncan took to going out most nights, and she began drinking and smoking cigarettes instead of eating, her strategy for losing leftover pregnancy weight. It worked, but she wound up looking tired and sickly and not at all like the woman whose picture had once been worth millions. She’d bounce between ignoring my sister and me to going through phases (usually after a breakup with Duncan) when she would try and often fail to be involved in our lives. She was still getting decent film roles, but they got shittier and shittier along the decade, until she found herself reaching middle age, divorcing Duncan, attempting to achieve sobriety and expecting to be treated like she was still the queen of cinema.

But then came the criticism.

Victoria Westwood has lost the electricity she once brought to every role; she is flat, and the spark that made her famous is nowhere to be found.

Once easily the most gifted actress on the big screen, Victoria Westwood is the very definition of a fallen star.

Try as she might, Westwood’s legacy isn’t enough to recover from her long-term stumble.

I don’t know what happened to Victoria Westwood, but she’s pale and exhausted: and so is her acting.

A promising film that would have gone places with a stronger actress than Westwood in the title role.

Only sentimental fools can appreciate the latest flop from Victoria Westwood.

And it would go on like that, until she spent more and more time in her dark bedroom, until  she poured more and more vodka in her glass, and until she grew to hate us more and more with each passing day.

 

“Thank you for picking me up,” I say to Miguel, who has been my mother’s driver for almost twenty years now. I like Miguel. He never tries to talk to me, and in return, I let him play whatever he wants on the radio, usually music from his own native Mexico that I am too proud to admit that I like.

He gives me nothing but a sympathetic smile. “You take care now, Miss Westwood,” he tells me. “You rest and get better.”

“I will,” I tell him, and he drives away, and it is then that I feel the familiar rush of lonliness that happens each time I stand alone on my mother’s massive property, and that same overwhelming ache that you feel every time you realize that the world is so much bigger than you.

There is a private entrance to my mother’s estate, so blessedly, I don’t have to face the paparazzi just yet. I squint as I make my way to the front door. I haven’t been outside in days, and the sun feels unusually bright. My sister’s car is in the driveway, so it’s no surprise when I find that the door is unlocked.

I would have liked a dog, but my mother only ever liked cats, probably because they were just like her: dark, coy, all green eyes and sleekness. I don’t mind cats, but my mother’s were usually snooty ones that adored her and hated everyone else. My mother’s favorite cat, Cornelia, runs to the foyer upon hearing the door open, turning away in disappointment when she realizes it’s only me.

I find my sister in the kitchen, eating a rotisserie chicken with her fingers, the butter running down her wrists. Claire, a former bulimic, still doesn’t understand the concept of putting food on a plate and sitting down to eat it over a period of time lasting more than five minutes. She still consumes her meals in in the mindset of someone who plans on purging: rapidly, urgently, never pausing to taste or savor the flavors. She’s better now. I don’t worry about Claire slipping back into old habits. But I can’t help but pity her, because her inability to enjoy her food is just one of her many tragedies.

“Hello,” she says pleasantly, like I’ve just come back from an errand and not a three-day stay in the psych ward of Cedars-Sinai. “You’re looking well.”

“So are you,” I reply, but I’m actually telling the truth. Claire is gorgeous: tall, lean, with dark blonde hair chopped at her chin and cheekbones that could cut ice. She was a well-known model from the age of fifteen, but she left the industry to get married when she turned twenty-one.

“Thanks.” She wipes her hands on her jeans and gestures towards the television. “Mom’s coming on,” she reminds me, as if I could forget. The living room is right off the kitchen, and we can watch it from our place at the counter. It seems safer this way. To actually go and sit down and watch the interview would imply that we care, and we try very hard to pretend that we don’t.

Alessandra Bradley is doing a one-hour special on my mother, and it opens with the network music, and then cuts to where Alessandra is walking with my mother on the set of her new film, Forgotten Lovers. “It’s my pleasure today to be joined by a woman who could only be called a legend,” she begins warmly. This is Alessandra’s trick; she starts off with overwhelming flattery that makes it easier to ask tougher questions later on. “Victoria Westwood is a two-time Academy Award winner, a single mother, a fervent activist”�"this gets a justified snort from my sister, my mother has always done the bare minimum when it comes to giving back�"“and the star of the highly anticipated film, Forgotten Lovers.”

And the camera cuts to my mother, and I almost gasp, because good Lord, she’s right there, she’s back. That’s the woman I saw in photographs and red carpets and magazine covers, that’s the woman the world had forgotten, and the person she had been searching for.

“She’s such a mess,” my sister is saying, “but she hides it well.”

“Understatement,” is all I can muster.

Alessandra is beaming, and for once I think she might be genuine. “Ms. Westwood, they told me I’d be starstruck, but I never expected this,” she gushes. “You’re as beautiful and as utterly intimidating as you were in your prime. How do you do it?”

And then my mother smiles. I’ve never seen her look so radiant. “It’s easily explained, my dear,” she replies, with just the right amount of condescension. “Check your sources. By no means am I past my prime.”