Christina Crawford - The Mommie Dearest Collection: Two Memoirs of Survival

The Mommie Dearest Collection

Two Memoirs of Survival

Christina Crawford

CONTENTS

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

These works are memoirs. They reflect the authors present recollections of her experiences over a period of years. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed in order to protect the identity of certain individuals. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

Mommie Dearest copyright 1978, 1998, 2017 by Christina Crawford

Survivor copyright 1988 by Christina Crawford

Cover design by Amanda Shaffer

ISBN: 978-1-5040-4906-1

This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com

Mommie Dearest

CHAPTER 1

Dead. New York City, May 10, 1977 at 10 a.m. Eastern Daylight time. Official cause of death: coronary arrest.

As the wire services sped the news around the world we heard a brief obit on the radio all-news station on our way to the airport.

The only time so far that I had cried was when an old fan had called to tell me about the TV news station coming to film his collection of her clothes and photographs in his living room and to ask if he could have her dog if no-one else had asked for it. Would I bring the dog back with me? Shes barely cold and someone wants the dog! It was the same story all over again the old clothes and the anklestrap shoes and the 810 autographed glossies and the goddamned dog. The rage made me shake and tears spilled down my face yet somehow my voice sounded ever polite. I hung up the phone.

Superstar is dead. Now the closet door will open and every weirdo in America will be on parade waving their faithful notes signed God Bless Joan. I cried. But it wasnt sorrow, it was anger a flash of the old rage like one of those violent thunder and lightening storms that sweep across the eastern sky and are gone.

The rest was just phone calls and plane reservations.

I had a terrible headache and felt sort of shaky inside, but there were no tears. David held my hand and I felt his strength slowly calm me. Somehow if I could just hold onto his hand, I could make it through this.

Mercifully there was no food on this flight because I felt like I couldnt swallow anything. I tried to sleep and fell into a kind of suspended dream I could hear everything but my eyes were closed. I was cold and uncomfortable and Id already been in the same clothes for fifteen hours.

It was dawn when we landed in New York. Outside the baggage claim area a dark haired man with a slight accent asked if we wanted a taxi. I said yes and he took our bags. There were no yellow cabs in sight. David and I followed him to a black limousine parked at the curb. I looked at David and smiled well, why not? Twenty bucks was fair enough and it would be a nice change for us. An English woman going to the Village sat in front chatting away about how glad she was to be home again and how she loathed Los Angeles. As we drove through Queens, the dirty old buildings, the knee-deep potholes, the elevated subway trains rattling overhead and the people pushing their way through another day made me feel deeply relieved we didnt live in the city.

My brother Chris arrived at the hotel about 10:30. He looked older and much thinner. Hard times and troubles were so clearly evident that he may as well have been carrying a sign. We held each other in greeting and consolation and a kind of under-standing that went back thirty years deep into childhood. Im really glad youre here, Chris is all I said. It was very tough for him. Chris hadnt been included in any family event since he was 15 years old. The four of us kids had always been in touch but privately. Mother had rarely mentioned his name for the last 19 years. Now that she was dead we were all together again. Hed gotten a 6 oclock train in from Long Island. Actually, he only lived about a hundred miles from the city but it was like another world out there. His town he belonged there he knew almost everyone married and owned a house did his job had been a volunteer fireman for a couple of years found a place for himself after coming home from Viet Nam. I really love Chris.

We drank black coffee out of slightly soggy paper cups from the delicatessen around the corner and Chris took another Excedrin. David had changed into his blue Cardin suit and my heart overflowed with pride. What a terrific man, this husband of mine. Im the luckiest woman in the whole world.

At noon the three of us took a taxi to the Drake Hotel. There, we were to meet the lawyer, the secretary and one sister with her husband.

The greetings were strained. Everyone was being polite and there was a lot going on underneath all that niceness. Words seemed hollow and as I looked from face to face I sensed there was something strange. Chris sat across the room from the secretary. At one time years ago they had been arch enemies. She had gotten Chris in a lot of unnecessary trouble in her own struggle for a permanent place in the household. Chris had been a good target and she hadnt missed many opportunities. Chris smoked his cigarettes and watched. My sisters husband talked and talked Joan this and Joan that I looked at David and then at Chris. My sister and the secretary had very defined ideas about what mothers wishes were, or rather, would have been for funeral arrangements. Nothing had been written down before her death except that she wanted to be cremated. It was odd that someone so fanatically organized should leave all the details to anyone else, let alone to group decision particularly considering the people in this group. But nevertheless that was it somehow we had to decide and soon like right away. The lawyer mediated, which was all he could do anyway. And there we were a disparate group to say the least deciding how to arrange the formality of burying mother when never in any of our other experiences with her had we decided anything in relation to her except how we would each live our own lives. As the hours dragged on it became painfully clear what some of those life decisions had been. A student of group dynamics would have had a field day with the shifting interaction, the assumptions of right and power.

Then, during one of the many phone calls to Campbells, the lawyer got a really strange expression on his face as he listened to the voice on the other end. It was the only emotional expression I saw on his face during the entire time it was surprise.

Your mother has been embalmed. You may see her if you want to. He said it straight and without emphasis. It wasnt ordered because she was to be cremated. It wasnt exactly authorized either, whatever that means. I guess it means that it was just done. Maybe because of the time involved. She died on Tuesday, we didnt all arrive until Wednesday and she couldnt be cremated until Thursday because I guess everyone had to agree to the cremation. Well, whatever the reason there she was embalmed at Campbells. Weird. In fact all of this was beginning to take on a spacey, weird feeling. I had to keep contact with David to hold onto my sense of reality it was fading in and out. We were like a sequestered jury decisions had to be made and no matter how much anyone would have liked to take over, some kind of ritualistic primitivism prevented autocratic rule. Nothing in anyones relationship with mother prepared them for making decisions for her so they had to be made for us, by us. The secretary and my sister seemed to feel that they had an inside track to mothers thinking. Chris, I think, had vowed to keep his mouth shut as long as possible. David had never met mother and was being very diplomatic and rather quiet. My sisters husband jabbered on and on about their close relationship with Joan. I felt my anger again. I was the oldest and had assumed that some courtesy would be given to me, but not much was. The lawyer seemed to look to my younger sister and then to the secretary. It galled me but I put in my two cents worth whether I agreed or disagreed and somehow it worked out. Then it was off to Campbells. My sister was to sign the papers and pick out the urn.