Wendy and the Lost Boys (41 page)

She wanted Lucy Jane to understand that she was a New Yorker and a Wasserstein; resilience was ingrained in her fiber.

WENDY WROTE MUCH OF
THIRD
, HER FINAL PLAY, AT THE MACDOWELL COLONY.

Twenty-two

WELCOME TO MY RASH

2002-04

In late 2001 Wendy’s friend
Bill Finn felt compelled to intervene. Disturbed by her illness and concerned she wasn’t dealing with it seriously enough, Finn referred her to his internist, Richard Meyer, who was also an oncologist, specializing in leukemia, lymphoma, and other blood disorders. Meyer found evidence of T-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a rare form of the disease. However, Wendy’s neurological symptoms—the recurrence of Bell’s palsy, the problems with balance, the eye condition—were unusual.

Meyer sent Wendy to Kanti Rai, internationally renowned expert in CLL, chief of the department of hematology-oncology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Great Neck, New York. Wendy immediately liked this charming white-haired doctor, born in Jodhpur, India, married to a Jewish woman, of whom he would say mischievously, “If anything, I’m more Jewish than my wife.”

After examining Wendy, Rai was stymied. In all his experience, he hadn’t seen Wendy’s kind of neurological abnormality connected to the T-cell CLL. However, because her condition was deteriorating and the neurologists she had seen couldn’t explain why, he decided to treat the leukemia part of her problem. “In my mind it makes sense to treat what is treatable and see what happens,” he told Wendy. “If the leukemia is successfully treated and in that course the neurological findings are improved, then it obviously is related. If it does not improve, we haven’t lost anything, because at least we have the leukemia part treated.”

He acknowledged that there was a chance things could get worse. “We are shooting in the dark,” he told her.

In February 2002, Wendy began treatments with Campath, a monoclonal antibody, administered via an intravenous drip. She made the drive from Manhattan to Great Neck—which could be anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour and a half, depending on traffic—in a town car paid for by her brother Bruce. As with earlier medical appointments, she trusted Angela Trento to come along, and occasionally Rhoda Brooks.

During this period, while she was undergoing the Campath treatments, Wendy took two-and-a-half year-old Lucy Jane to see
Carnival,
starring Anne Hathaway, a young actress who had just finished her freshman year at Vassar and had already become a star, for her role in the Disney fantasy film
The Princess Diaries
. Wendy had adapted the musical for the Encores concert series at City Center.

Shortly after the play opened, on February 8, 2002, Wendy visited a neurologist, who told her she’d gotten a decent review from Ben Brantley in the
Times.

“Really?” she responded.

“Now you say it,” he told her. One of her symptoms was difficulty pronouncing the letter B. The name of the critic she had come to despise was a perfect test.

In her notes for a memoir, Wendy wrote, “It takes me a minute to prepare.”

“Mmmmmm Ben,” she said. “Mmmmmm Brantley.”

“I can’t believe his name has become a vocal exercise,” she observed, appreciating the irony.

She likewise tried to find humor in the Campath treatments, a more challenging task. Named for the Cambridge University Department of Pathology, the treatments had a tony British pedigree that appealed to Wendy. But Campath involved a miserable process that could take several hours each visit. She experienced her share of the possible side effects listed on the Campath Web site:
fever, chills, nausea, rash, dyspnea, cytopenias (neutropenia, lymphopenia, thrombocytopenia, anemia), and infections (CMV viremia, CMV infection, other infections).
Also:
vomiting, abdominal pain, insomnia and anxiety
.

Chained to an IV drip in a well-lit cubicle in a modern cancer ward, Wendy escaped through writing. She brought along a spiral notebook and a soft-tipped pen; her grim predicament emerged as a bleak comedy.
Welcome to My Rash—
a one-act play with two characters—is essentially a long dialogue between a well-known writer, “Flora Berman,” a leukemia patient, and her doctor, “Kipling Varajan.” Wendy describes Kipling as “sixty-five, a demure Indian man, in a white coat. . . . Though serious, he has a bit of a twinkle.”

Wendy told Kanti Rai that she had written a play with a character based on him, but he never saw it performed. Later, when he finally read
Welcome to My Rash,
he realized how extraordinary her powers of recall were. Many of their conversations were there on the page, only slightly fictionalized.

The character Flora Berman tells her doctor about a mysterious rash she had when she was in school; Wendy had experienced a similar outbreak when she was at the Yale Drama School. A physician she’d consulted there told her she might be allergic to her menstrual cycle; her condition was so rare that she became the subject of a dermatology conference at Yale–New Haven Hospital.

In the play Flora tells her doctor, “I broke out in question marks between my legs because I was so ambivalent about my entire gender. I single-handedly redefined feminine self-loathing.”

Dr. Rai experienced an equally rare phenomenon with Wendy, one that occurred with perhaps a half dozen patients in more than forty years of medical practice. “The doctor-patient thing faded away, and trust and friendship developed,” he said. After the treatments were over, Wendy took three-year-old Lucy Jane to Great Neck to have dinner with the doctor and his wife.

Usually he tried to avoid such relationships. “I have learned over the decades of my professional life to be on guard,” he said. “I cannot afford to get personally involved, not because I don’t like the person but because it will be injurious to my ability to remain objective.”

Wendy told very few people—not including Lola—about the treatments. One day, however, she called Betsy Ross, her Madison Avenue fashion maven, to pick her up at the hospital in Great Neck. She knew that Ross was trustworthy. As style adviser to rich and prominent women, being circumspect was part of her business.

“Wendy knew I was a little in shock when I went in there,” said Ross. “I never asked her questions and told her I wouldn’t tell a soul, but I had been in enough chemo wards to know what it was.”

Wendy was tired but insisted they have lunch at the Miracle Mile, a deluxe shopping center in Manhasset, near the hospital. It was Madison Avenue in the burbs, with Gucci, Hermès, Carolina Herrera, Cartier, and Tiffany among the vendors. “We went into a restaurant, and people recognized her, which happened everywhere we went in New York, especially in the theater district,” said Ross, “but I was sort of surprised out there in some random restaurant.”

Wendy was amused as people came over and told her, “You wrote that book for me! That’s me! You and I are so much alike!”

Wendy whispered to Ross, after a blond, Waspy woman stopped by, “Don’t you see the similarities? Oh, yes, we are so much alike.”

In June 2002, three months after the treatments concluded, Wendy returned to Great Neck for a checkup. Her symptoms had improved. She flew to California a few days later, where Jill Eikenberry interviewed her onstage at the Jewish Community Center in Marin County. The Bell’s palsy hadn’t cleared up entirely; her face was still distorted. Eikenberry was impressed by Wendy’s willingness to appear in public, acknowledging her imperfection in front of an audience. It reminded Eikenberry of how she felt about Wendy when the actress first read for the part of Kate in
Uncommon Women and Others
more than twenty years earlier.

“She was clearly looking kind of odd and yet was so able to be out in front of people and talking about it in a way that made people feel comfortable,” said Eikenberry. “That’s a big thing to offer to a room full of women who had thought a lot about what they’re wearing today, how they look. It says it’s okay, whoever you are, it’s okay. It was a big deal for me, because that was never my way. I always had to put myself together and look fabulous, look like you’re in control all the time.”

A
t home Wendy had assembled a team to manage the somewhat-controlled chaos of her life. When Lucy Jane was a year old, Wendy hired Emmy Casamassino to be her nanny. Emmy was Italian-American, an energetic, grandmotherly type, though not much older than Wendy. Emmy ruled the household, having stepped into the void created by Wendy’s meager domestic skills and insecurity as a mother. Wendy relied on Emmy, even as she complained to her friends that Emmy held too much sway over Lucy, who adored her. “I believe Lucy loves Emmy more,” she jotted in a notebook.

But Emmy was reliable and honest and didn’t drink like the proper English governess who had previously taken care of Lucy. Emmy was also able to tolerate Wendy’s frenetic existence, which was more than other nannies who had come and gone before her managed to do. Wendy occasionally interviewed possible replacements without Emmy’s knowledge but ultimately was too intimidated to get rid of her. She saw how Emmy loved Lucy.

Emmy was not stamped from the Hamptons/Upper Fifth Avenue/ Central Park West nanny mold. She was not a British or an Irish governess, nor a hip young au pair; she was pure outer borough, Brooklyn bred, living on Staten Island, a family friend of Wendy’s assistant, Angela Trento. Emmy generally subscribed to the same philosophy as Angela’s Italian-American mother, who believed that children couldn’t be overindulged or overprotected. She didn’t rush toilet training and allowed Lucy Jane to drink from a baby bottle as long as she liked. She wasn’t concerned that Lucy ate nothing but “white food,” preferring her pasta plain with no sauce and refusing all vegetables. Emmy believed, from experience, that Lucy would eventually grow out of her baby ways—and she wasn’t interested in opinions to the contrary.

Emmy was one warmhearted component of Lucy’s out-of-the-ordinary childhood. Also unusual were Lucy’s playmates, many of whom were Wendy’s friends, including a large contingent of theater people. These adults were fanciful and perhaps childlike, though not children. Lucy didn’t have a father, but she had a slew of godfathers and godmothers. “Wendy’s life was like a fantasy,” recalled Rhoda Brooks. “It was incredible. She and Lucy would go to Bergdorf’s and get their hair cut, and they would give it to Lucy free
and
Wendy free.”

Wendy believed that Lucy was happy. She rode the tricycle Rhoda bought her and went sledding in Central Park, usually with baby-sitters but at least once with her mother, who captured the moment for posterity in the pages of the
New York Times.
In the article Wendy gave Lucy Jane’s sled the emblematic name of “Rosebud,” after the sled in
Citizen Kane
that symbolizes childhood happiness.

“The morning was a clear winter blue,” she wrote. “The skyline on 59th Street was twinkling brightly in the sun. Lucy Jane sat on her sled, ready to descend. I looked down over the park, and at my daughter, and said, ‘Lucy Jane, this is a real New York childhood.’ ”

Jill Krementz, a well-known photographer, came to their apartment to help create more happy memories for Lucy Jane. Krementz photographed Lucy Jane in her nursery, wearing a leopard outfit, while Wendy and Lola—both barefoot—twirled around singing old show tunes.

Recalling the affecting scene, Krementz was struck by a memory of
Peter Pan.
“Wendy was the perfect name,” she said. “I see her now, dancing around the nursery, . . . off to tell wonderful stories to all the lost boys.”

Yet for Wendy, there was much heartache in being a mother. Her illness made it impossible for her to participate fully in parenting; she and Lucy were rarely alone together. Wendy almost never missed a speaking engagement or stopped working, but she was often too tired to play. “I should be with my child,” she wrote one day when Lucy was outdoors with someone else. “I can’t be with my child. I have aches in ankles and thighs.”

James Lapine—“Tats”—became even closer to Wendy because of Lucy Jane. He knew from experience how exhausting young children could be and stepped in to help when Wendy wasn’t feeling well.

“Sometimes the three of us would just cuddle on the bed and watch a movie, when Wendy really couldn’t get out of bed, so we’d have a picnic on the bed,” he said. When Lucy Jane was rambunctious, he’d find ways for her to release energy so she wouldn’t wear Wendy down. “Sometimes I’d take her out and we’d go do things,” he said, “or I would roughhouse with her, like I did with my own kid, run her around to get her to calm down.”

Wendy’s uncertainty about motherhood was reinforced when she was around her family. Just as Lola had competed with Aunt Florence, there was a natural tendency to compare and contrast Lucy with Bruce’s younger children, who were close in age. Wendy herself questioned Emmy’s method, which was simply to love Lucy without imposing restrictions. The impeccable Claude raised her two sons with rules and schedules, nothing like Wendy’s Auntie Mame approach.