Wagner Natasha Gregson - More than love: an intimate portrait of my mother, Natalie Wood

Prologue

November 29, 1981

The voice from the clock radio is tinny and muffled.

The body of actress Natalie Wood has been found off the coast of Catalina Island.

It is Sunday morning, and Im sleeping over at my best friend Traceys house. I am eleven years old.

The man on the radio repeats the words body and Natalie Wood.

I am no longer asleep, but not yet awake; on the brink of awareness. If I keep my eyes shut, I think, the voice might be part of a dream, which means that if I open my eyes it might be real.

Now the man on the radio is saying accident and drowned and my eyes are open so this cant be a dream. But there has to be some horrible mistake. My mom and stepfather, Robert Wagner, whom I call Daddy, are out on their boat, safe and sound. My dad is the ships captain, and my mom is the first mate. They spend weekends on the Splendour all the time.

I am snuggled in Traceys spare single bed, the one her mom put in her room especially for me because I am such a frequent guest. Traceys house, in the Bird Streets neighborhood of the Hollywood Hills, is my home away from home. Janis, Traceys mother, is my mom away from my mom. How could anything bad happen to me here? Tracey has a brand-new wood-paneled clock radio. It must have gone off at seven by mistake because this isnt a school day.

I sit up. I need to call my mom. I go to the living room, but when I get there, the receiver is off the hook and I cant get a dial tone. I go to find Janis and tell her I need her help. Together we try to call my mom on the boat, but we cant get through. I decide to call the house. Liz Applegate, my moms assistant, picks up.

Liz, what are you doing at my house on Sunday?

Im just working today, lovey, she says in her familiar British accent.

Before I can ask her another question, I turn around and my nanny, Kilky, and my dads driver, Stanley, have arrived to pick me up. I look at my sweet Kilky for answers, but her face seems frozen, like someone in a fairy tale turned to stone. I immediately know that something is very wrong. Outside, the ground feels cold and damp beneath my bare feet, wet from rain the night before. Why am I allowed to go outside without my shoes on? Wasnt I supposed to stay at Traceys all weekend? I dont ask these questions. Instead, I climb into the back seat of my moms cream-colored Mercedes. Stanley gets into the front seat. He never drives my moms car, only my dads. What is going on?

On the way home, thick blankets of clouds hang low in the sky. The world is dim and charcoal gray; everything is blurred around the edges, like a picture postcard submerged in a puddle. After the engine rumbles to silence, the car door opens. We go through the front gate. In the yard, the leaves from our birch tree are scattered on the ground.

The familiar wooden front door of our house clicks shut behind me, but I dont feel the usual safety and comfort of returning home. There are too many people here for a Sunday morning, especially since my parents are away. Liz is there. One of my godmothers, Delphine Mann. Our family friends the Benjamins.

Suddenly, Traceys mom, Janis, is here too.

Whats going on? I ask Liz and Janis.

We dont know, lovey, Liz says. Were not sure. They are grown-ups. Arent they supposed to have the answers?

My dad is going to be home soon. Janis and I go upstairs and crawl into my moms bed together to wait for him. The sheets and blankets smell of my moms gardenia perfume, of my mother and her warm hugs and soft kisses. As I wrap myself in the familiar scent, Janis strokes my hair, comforting me. I have known and loved her since I was in kindergarten. Shes the physical opposite of my brunette mother, with bleached blond hair, tan skin, and a low, soothing voice. We wonder aloud what happened, why the man on the radio made that awful announcement, saying those words that could not be true.

Maybe she isnt dead. Maybe she just broke her leg, I say, trying to convince myself.

Janis agrees. Her voice is warm and gravelly. I snuggle into her embrace and pray to God that Mommie is okay.

How long do I spend upstairs with Janis? It might be thirty minutes or three hours. Then I hear the front door open and close quietly. I know it is my dad.

Down the carpeted stairs I step without a sound, still in my nightgown. Im expecting to see my dads familiar face, always smiling, with blue eyes that sparkle when he greets me or my mom or my sisters. But the man at the bottom of the stairs isnt smiling; his face is ashen and his eyes look pale, haunted, devoid of any light. He doesnt speak when he sees me and I know in a sudden horrifying flash that its all true.

The floor seems to fall away beneath me. I drop into his arms and we cry together. My seven-year-old sister, Courtney, shuffles down the stairs in her nightie, sleepy-eyed and confused. He pulls her into our embrace.

Youre not going to see Mommy anymore, he says. But I want you to know that Im never going to leave you. Were still a family.

I close my eyes. This cant be real, I tell myself. Even as I hear myself weeping and crying out, Its not fair! I still cant believe it.

Minutes or hours pass, I cant tell. I open my eyes and the house is full of people. Outside the window, reporters, photographers, and TV cameramen perch at our front gate like a roost of crows.

Shes gone. Shes never coming home again. Whats going to happen to me? To all of us?

I have no clear memory of the rest of the day. Im sure I must have eaten and slept, but I dont know what I ate and I dont remember going to bed. I just remember that everything seemed different. Our house felt different. It smelled different. There was no safe place for me. I needed a hug from my mom. I needed to hear her voice, but she wasnt there.

A few weeks later, once the autopsy is complete, the coroner and the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department conclude that my mothers death was a terrible accident, without any evidence of foul play. That she had gone down to the dinghy attached to our boat and then likely missed a step, slipping and falling into the water, her water-logged parka weighing her down so she couldnt hoist herself out. The case was closed.

Losing my mother was the defining moment of my life. No other event would ever again so sharply etch its mark upon my soul, or so completely color the way I navigate the world, or leave my heart quite as broken. We had shared only a little over a decade together, yet I missed her with such intensity that she remained on the cusp of my every thought, the echoes of her face reverberating back to me each time I looked in the mirror.

The following year, we moved out of the house in Beverly Hills. It was too sad to stay there any longer without her. My mom had decorated our home to the brim with carved wooden furniture and paintings, knickknacks, photos in silver frames. Everywhere I looked there was another object that led me back to her: the forest-green upright piano she practiced on when she was a little girl; the set of sterling-silver goblets that Spencer Tracy had given to her for her first wedding. After she died, all her belongings were boxed up and taken away, put in storage. My dad let Courtney and me pick out whatever we wanted to take with us to our new house in Brentwood. I chose a few framed photographs and pieces of her jewelry and art, precious mementoes that I would carry with me wherever I went in the world: away to college, to my first apartment, to each place I called home.