Savage Grace - Natalie Robins (44 page)
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Orin and Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman, July 3, 1971
New York
Dear Wendy & Orin—
My thanks for the time arranged for me with your doctor friend—he was very helpful.
Tony was discharged yesterday and the hospital is assuming all expenses—very chic of them, not to say enormously kind. I asked if Tony’s discharge was because of our inability to meet the bills (Tony’s trustees refused to invade his trust and Brooks refused to pay) and I was assured that it was not, that he had made great progress, and that they were satisfied that he was on the way to a recovery.
Thank you so much, again.
Love,
Barbara
Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman
I probably knew a lot of people better than I knew Barbara Baekeland but there’s something sympathetic in my memory of her that is not there for a lot of
them.
She had called to ask me if I knew of anybody who could help Tony. My heart really went out to her. I always had the feeling that behind the façade there was a great spongy three-dimensional sort of person.
I remember some time after she wrote us that letter she came into P. J. Moriarty’s, an Irish bar on Third Avenue in the Sixties somewhere—not bad—when Orin and I were having dinner after the theater, and she acted a little upset or drunk at the table. I think I remember her spilling a drink. I was sort of embarrassed for her—I mean, I knew something was wrong. You know that feeling you get and you almost don’t want to see it clearly because you don’t want it to be that way?
Cleve Gray
She called us up several times that summer and we didn’t see her, but one day Francine and I were meeting someone at the Isle of Capri, and there was Barbara, having lunch all alone, which was very unlike her. She looked blowsy, she looked like an unhappy, beaten-down woman, and she was eating grossly and acting very strangely.
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Sam Green, July 3
,
1971
New York
Darling Sam—
Tony was discharged yesterday but as he is extremely photosensitive because of the medication he is taking, we decided to forgo the weekend on Long Island. He is, in any case, not up to the hassle involved in getting there and back and people wandering in and out, so we are having a lovely peaceful time in the apartment here and he is helping me with my chores—mostly gardening on the terrace and keeping the floors clean (the doctor said to give him lots of tasks).
He is still under very heavy medication which is being gradually reduced while he is spending these few days with me. The doctor told me that his illness is not secondary—that is to say, induced by drugs—but primary—which is to say, genetic. But they are impressed with his intelligence and insight and hold forth a great deal of hope.
Anyway, he is looking forward very much to seeing you—he is not well enough to see very many friends and then just one or two at a time.
Love,
Barbara
Sam Green
Barbara began paying me unexpected visits that summer. She would appear at my apartment on West Sixty-eighth Street at two in the morning and bang on the door. Once she walked across Central Park barefoot. At two o’clock in the morning I just did not want to have drop-ins—Tony would show up anytime
he
felt like it, too.
“I must see you,” Barbara would say. “It’s very important. Open the door! I have to tell you what’s happening”—you know, whatever emergency it was. Several times she spent the night in the hallway outside my apartment, when I wouldn’t open the door. She would always be gone by morning. Once I opened the door and said, “Stop it! Get out of here, I’ve got to get
up
in the morning—I have a very important appointment. Please just go home. Here’s five dollars, take a taxi!” I remember I grabbed her by the hair and pushed her, and that was the only time I ever pushed anybody. She stumbled, or something, down the stairs.
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Sam Green, July 23
,
1971
New York
Darling Sam—
I found your lighter—the one you lost last year. Hesitate to deliver same in person as with advancing age my hair seems to be getting thinner! So much was left at your threshold during our last
rencontre
, I can’t afford another visit—except I would so very much enjoy seeing you. So if you ever feel you can have a quiet few minutes to extend me, I will arrange to meet you at your convenience.
Where shall I leave your lighter?
Love,
Barbara
Henry H. Perkins
My brother Mike, who was Tony’s greatest friend from Avon, and Michael Nouri, who’d gone to Buckley with Tony and who’s now an actor—he was the star of
Flashdance
—and Checka Draper and I all went over to see Tony. He wasn’t in but Mrs. Baekeland was home and she said, “Hi, come on in. Tony’ll be back in a little while.” She asked us if we would like some wine and we said, “Yeah, sure,” and we were all talking and suddenly she just, you know, took her glass of wine and threw it into the fireplace and threw back her hair in the most amazing display of—I don’t know…. Who could have done it better was Lauren Bacall, you know. And I started to laugh because, you know, I thought I’d missed something, but I noticed my brother wasn’t laughing at all. So to sort of change the atmosphere, I began asking her about this lighter that was on the coffee table. I said, “This is very attractive. What is it? Alabaster? It looks like a candy cane.” And she looked at me and said, “Eat it!” I didn’t think I’d heard right. Then she said it again, she started screaming it: “Eat it, goddam you, eat it, eat it, eat it!” And we ran out of there.
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Sam Green, August 12
,
1971
New York
5:00 a.m.
Sorry to have to write you but I would like to have some explanation of just why you were so furious with me the other night. I waited for three hours on your stoop and asked for that, along with a glass of water. There was water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink, except on the lip of your paint cans on the terrace and it tasted of lead. You were not very polite and I hadn’t even the chance of thanking you for looking after Mr. Wuss.
I’m really beginning to feel you really don’t like me at all, Sam. And I find it altogether incredible—I have such a good time when I’m with you and usually that kind of pleasure is
réciproque.
Am I going to have to wait another year before you’ll come to dinner again? For I will not give up trying to see you.
Saw Marisol the other night at Peter Gimbel’s soirée—looking lovely—but, Sam, some people make voyages on the surface by walking over it and others voyage through space and time. It’s a different kind of trip—both valid. I think the latter is perhaps more difficult—connections count for a lot.
I will be distressed if you don’t call me and shall probably leave town if there is no possibility of ever seeing you. I only seem to be able to relax with you. I am so sorry you are angry with me again. I still don’t understand why. It is not my wish to importune, but you are the only person I have ever known, with the exception of Brooks, of whom I have been truly fond who has turned his back on me—and even Brooks hasn’t really done that! However, I’ve decided I’d rather be my own victim than his. I am attempting to have him give me back all moneys I had when I married him and to secure a divorce by asking for nothing else! I still haven’t heard from him, nor will his lawyer communicate with mine.
Always,
Barbara
Samuel Parkman Shaw
I met Barbara at Daphne Hellman’s. She had another lawyer at the time, with whom she was dissatisfied, and someone had said to her, “Why don’t you try Sam Shaw?” I did relatively few divorces, partly because I didn’t like them—you get people at their most anxious, and you rarely get a solution that’s happy for anybody. So I wasn’t particularly inclined to take her on as a client. There was an element of charm involved in it. She said, “Oh, please do it,” and so forth and so on, and I said all right.
I met Tony perhaps a year after I first met Barbara. I met him at Daphne’s, too, and I don’t think I saw him more than three or four times after that. I thought he was quite beautiful that first time I saw him. I didn’t really talk to him, but I did have an impression that he was strange. The second time I saw him was at a stand-up lunch at Barbara’s, and on that occasion I talked to him for ten or fifteen minutes and thought him rather agreeable and interesting—imaginative.
The next time I saw him—well, he was beating up his grandmother and Barbara called me at my office, about six o’clock in the evening. By that time I knew a good deal about Tony’s troubles and I said, “Why don’t you call his psychiatrist?” She said she was too upset to and for me to please come over right away. So I said, sure, I would. I jumped in a cab and I got over there and Nini was down in the lobby of Barbara’s building. She seemed quite cool. I said, “What’s going on?” and she said, “Tony tried to hurt me.” Then Barbara came down and I said, “Well, what the hell are we going to do?” She said, “I’m scared to death of him.” I said, “Did you call Justin Greene?” She said, “No. Would
you
call him?” So I went out to the public phone on the corner and called Greene, and he said, “I’m not going to come over. Whatever relation I have with Tony I don’t want to jeopardize or destroy by seeming to be on his mother’s side. If he’s violent enough, just call the police and they’ll come and take him away.” So
he
was useless, and I went upstairs with Barbara, Nini going off in a cab to her own apartment. Tony was in the living room, he was looking distraught, but he didn’t seem to me violent, so I sat down and chatted with him. Barbara was right there. It was my view that it was very dangerous for her to have him there for the night. I wanted to get him out of there but I didn’t want to take him anywhere myself, I just wanted him to go somewhere and stay with friends or find himself a room somewhere. We sat there for quite a long time, I trying to convince him that he ought to go, and finally I decided that the best way to get him out of there was to take them out somewhere for supper and then figure out a way from there. They said fine and I said I just wanted to take a pee first.
So I went to the bathroom and when I came out Barbara was lying on the living-room floor—apparently unconscious. I thought she might even be dead. I knelt down to see whether she was alive. I felt her pulse and I couldn’t find it. Tony was standing over her, with a very strange grimace on his face. I told him to go get some water. So he went and got a glass of water and I put some on a handkerchief and put it on her forehead. She didn’t revive, and I said, “Tony, we’ve got to call a doctor right away.” I was still down there with my hand on her pulse. And then I felt this terrible blow. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. I think he hit me with a cane, because there was a cane on the floor—sort of a big knobbly cane. He belted me right across the nose with it. From on high.
When I woke up, I was really scared shitless. I figured he was out to kill me. I got up. Barbara was still unconscious and I thought maybe dead. And Tony was still standing right there, with a savage look on his face. I figure I’ve got to kill
him
or he’s going to kill
me.
So I grappled with him and we rolled around the floor and I’m thinking, Shit, what a terrible way to die. He was very strong—I don’t know how the hell he got that way because I don’t think he ever did any exercises to speak of.
I finally wrestled him into the corner, I had his back against the wall and my right foot in his crotch and I was holding him there, but by that time I was so trembling and weak from all of this exertion and maybe the shock of being belted that I knew I couldn’t hold him there for very long. I put my hand up to my nose—it felt like a bag of marbles, it just seemed to me to be all cracked—and I said, “Jesus Christ, Tony, you’ve really
ruined
my nose, and I’m afraid you’ve
killed
your
mother.
Listen, be a good fellow and go get me a towel with cold water on it.” You see, I wanted to calm him down, because if I’d continued in this contest, he’d have killed me. So he went into the kitchen and got a towel and ran cold water on it and brought it over to me and I put it on my nose.
By this time Barbara was climbing to her feet, so
she
was okay. But I was just shaking with cold—you know how you get when you’re in shock, you tremble uncontrollably—and I got her over to one side and I said, “Listen, while I talk to Tony, call the police.” And then I said to Tony, “Come over and build me a fire in the fireplace, will you—I’m just shaking myself to pieces here.” So he found some pieces of timber, put paper underneath, and lit it, and we sat by the fire, and in about ten minutes Barbara came back in with the cops.
They took him away. He went perfectly willingly, philosophically—he didn’t struggle, he didn’t curse. They had an ambulance downstairs for him. And Barbara went with him over to Metropolitan Hospital, a public hospital over on Ninety-seventh Street and First Avenue.