Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me. Tony Cointreau
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Photo by Stephen Mosher.
For Jim Russo
My Angel Protector
Eternity
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part I: The First Mothers
Prologue
Dotie and Jacques
The War
Hello, Little Baby
Escape
“Mother Only Loves You When You’re Perfect”
Mémé
Maman Geneviève
Family Battles
My Annus Horribilis: Winter 1949-Summer 1950
Tata
Panic Attacks
My First “Other Mother”
Boarding School
Being Different
Arthur
The Gossip Columns
My Second “Other Mother”
The Runaway Heiress
Another Nervous Breakdown
Summer Stock
Ethel, Judy, Mr. Sinatra—and Jim
A Tragic Mistake
My Beautiful Friend
“They Found My Navel”
The Unimaginable
“And Who Are You?”
Hooray for Hollywood
Lavender Tulips
“Le Tout Paris”
The Family Pact
The Best of Friends
Part II: The Last Mother
Calcutta
Gift of Love
Tony the Volunteer
“My Kids”
The Man in Black
Not My Fault
Meeting Mother Teresa: My Third “Other Mother”
Choices
“A Light That Leads Home”
Back to Calcutta
Mother Teresa’s Last Easter
Agnes Bojaxhiu
Between Two Worlds
Goodbye, My Beautiful Friend
“That Was Your First Mistake”
Our Wedding
Epilogue
A Tribute to “My Kids”
Ethel Merman and Mother Teresa had a lot in common. At first glance, that might seem highly unlikely, but in my years with them both, I discovered that though the differences were huge, surprisingly, there were also great similarities.
Often I would be in a restaurant with Ethel Merman, “the Queen of Broadway,” who was known for her loud voice and brassy persona onstage, and after dinner I would ask her, “Would you please, very quietly, so no one else can hear, sing your favorite song for me?”
And—always—she would then begin to sing, “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.…”
Not many people knew about it, but Ethel also served as a volunteer at Roosevelt Hospital for many years, beginning when her mother was hospitalized after a devastating stroke, and continuing until Ethel herself was too ill to work any more. She was wonderful with sick people. She would sit at their bedsides and hold their hands and comfort them, something you might have expected from Mother Teresa.
One morning as I sat next to Mother Teresa, who was considered a living saint, on her balcony in Calcutta, she was particularly tired after a long meeting with some of her Sisters. I leaned close to hear her weakening voice over the sounds of traffic from the main road below, expecting to hear words of wisdom.
“How much does your hotel cost?” She whispered. When I told her, she said, “I don’t mean per week, I mean per day.”
“That is per day, Mother,” I said. “I did not take a vow of poverty.”
“No,” she laughed, “you took a vow of luxury.”
I knew her sense of humor well, and was not surprised at her laughter—something you might have expected from Ethel Merman.
Ethel Merman and Mother Teresa, along with a remarkable woman named Lee Lehman (the wife of Robert Lehman, the chairman of Lehman Brothers), were like mothers to me, and the three of them helped to heal the parts of me that had been damaged as a child. Their humor, their support, and their compassion finally gave me the unconditional love I had been seeking my whole life.
I was brought up in another era, a time when parents from a certain level of society had little to do with the daily care of their children. People were hired to raise the children while Mother and Father watched from a discreet distance. This is not to say that they didn’t care what happened to their offspring—every aspect of their children’s lives was carefully monitored—but they didn’t feel the need to be involved in the daily chores of raising a child. This is the way it had been done for generations