days in Hollywood, my father had so much tail he easily eclipsed that mark.
As for Mom, now thirty-seven, romance blooms again and she is married for a fourth time, this time on Christmas Eve 1965, to Alexis Lichine, a prominent vintner and entrepreneur fourteen years her senior. They marry at Queen Forts House in Bridgetown, Barbados. His daughter, Sandra, who is a little older than me, and his son, Sasha, children from a previous marriage who continue to live with their birth mother in New York, are also on hand. Alexis, born in Moscow, USSR, seems like a fine fellow. He is refined, well spoken, well educated, and very ambitious, just like my mother.
In the beginning, Mom and Alexis maintain a bicoastal marriage. My sister, Carole, and I reside with Mom in Los Angeles while Alexis lives in two places: a beautiful Fifth Avenue two-story townhouse in New York and his lovely chateau at his world-famous vineyard, Château Prieuré-Lichine, in Margaux, Gironde, France.
I never really question the living arrangement Mom and Alexis have chosen. It is working, and of course, I love California, the beaches, and the weather so much I can never imagine leaving it, ever.
Despite marrying such a wealthy man as Alexis, Mom keeps pushing the envelope with her career. She writes a syndicated column that appears in some seventy newspapers and publishes a book on beauty care from a man’s point of view, Always Ask a Man (the book soon has three studios negotiating for the film rights). In addition, she makes countless personal appearances at beauty clinics.
Not until I enter third grade do I realize Mom is a celebrity. In March 1966 she pioneers a completely new concept in television with a daily five-minute show called Arlene Dahl’s Beauty Spot. It is broadcast on ABC affiliates between Those Who Think Young and Where the Action Is. She films sixty-five shows in four weeks and claims, “From now on I’ll work six weeks in the fall and six weeks each spring on the show and take the rest of the year off.”
Then I understand: My mom is famous. Then the reality really hits me: I will see even less of her now that she is. Later I am always happy that people ask for her autograph, but back then it has dawned on me that I have to share my parents with the world. They do not really belong to me.
TWO
Getting My Act Together
THREE YEARS AFTER I develop a close relationship with Dad, my whole world comes crashing down again when Mom announces in late spring of 1966, “We are moving to New York to live with Alexis.”
I am slack-jawed, speechless over the news, and cannot believe this is happening. Not now, not at this critical time in my youth, not when Dad and I have bonded and become so close. It is a very painful time for me, as I dearly miss the daily contact I had with my father and the relationship we had built together.
Home for most of the year now becomes Alexis’s beautiful Fifth Avenue two-story townhouse, easily worth two or three million dollars. In the summer, home is his spectacular chateau in France.
Everything that follows Mom’s announcement is such a whirlwind that I barely get a chance to feel settled. In May of that year, I finish school, and then we fly to New York. Soon after, Mom ushers Carole and me onto a passenger liner bound for Europe to spend three months with Alexis, Sandra, and Sasha at the chateau in France. Sandra, Sasha, and I spend our summer vacation there like one big, happy family. I’m an eight-year-old kid getting my first taste of vineyard life, never knowing someday I will star in a television show about one.
The vineyards are sprawling and majestic, with grapes succulent to the touch and vines of strong, healthy stock. Most days a cloudless blue sky makes the perfect backdrop. The whole operation is so impressive. I remember watching with amazement as Monsieur Godin, one of Alexis’s workers, makes wine barrels by hand. With his huge Popeye-like arms and hands, Godin cuts the wood, sands it, and fastens steel bands around both sides to form the barrels. He has worked with his hands his whole life and has absolutely no body fat, even though he’s a man in his fifties. I find being around him nothing short of inspiring.
But then there’s New York. I have spent my whole life in California, doing just about whatever I want, when I want. Living in New York is rough most of the time. It is all so depressing—the dreary, rainy, cold climate, the claustrophobic lifestyle of the city, the regimented school environment—everything. I am simply miserable. And the whole time I never see my father. The longer that goes on, the harder things become for me. I feel a tremendous loss in my life without him and the daily personal contact we once had.
Further compounding my frustration is a house servant who comes as part of the package with Mom’s marriage to Alexis. Madame Lasaire is an angry, overweight, gray-haired old French woman. She moves in with us in California even before we relocate to New York. She and Emmy butt heads immediately and never get along. As a result, Mom unfairly fires Emmy, which breaks my heart.
Madame is no Emmy. It is absolutely horrible living with her. Anytime something goes wrong, she blames me. For some reason, she has it in for me; I am not sure why. But then one simple incident brings Mom to her senses: It’s the night Madame makes lamb chops with string beans for dinner.
I love the lamb chops but hate the string beans. That night I merely pick at them with my fork, lift them up, look at them, put them down, but never eat them. In her thick French accent, the wardenlike Madame says, “You will eat those string beans or sit here all night.”
I choose the latter. I sit there, past my bedtime, until finally I fall asleep with my head on the kitchen table. There is no way I am going to eat those string beans. Anytime my eyes flutter open I still see them; the mere sight makes me sick to my stomach.
I wake up at two in the morning and sneak off to bed. Later that morning, I get up and go into the kitchen with my sister, Carole, to have breakfast and then get ready for school. There on the kitchen table are those damn string beans, sitting cold and limp on my plate. They have not moved from the very spot where Madame left them.
Suddenly, as if she has a GPS tracker on me, the tough-as-nails Madame appears out of nowhere. “You will eat those string beans,” she commands firmly.
The sight of them makes me want to puke. “They’re gross and cold,” I tell her flatly. “I am not going to eat them.”
Madame snaps back, “You will not have breakfast until you eat those string beans.”
“No, I won’t.”
The string beans and I have a staring match. Finally, I skip breakfast and go to school. That afternoon when I get home, the string beans—by now a cold, shriveled lump of green something—are still there on my plate. Madame pounces: “You will eat those string beans for dinner, then!”
“I will not eat those string beans”—I pause and look down at the mangy lump—“or whatever you call them.”
Later, Carole is eating her dinner, and I have my string beans sitting in front of me, which I am not eating. I stubbornly refuse and go to bed. The next morning, I walk into the kitchen, and they are still there, on the same plate, now beyond recognition. Madame keeps insisting, “You will eat your string beans.”
I stand firm. “I will not. They are disgusting.”
Unruffled, Madame says, “You will eat these string beans or you will not eat another meal!”
“Fine, I’m not eating.”
Mom, who never gets up before ten o’clock, rises
