Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me. Tony Cointreau
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stage costumes. In less than three hours, I packed four trunks, five valises, and other baggage.
The next day she boarded a ship, La Touraine, and escaped to America, as her daughter also would, twenty-five years later.
The last clipping in my grandmother’s scrapbook ended with,
Mme. Martha Richardson, who for four years has sung leading roles in grand opera in France, has fled from the bombs falling on Paris and arrived safely in Boston with her two young daughters. Madame Richardson was scheduled to sing Aida at the Grand Opera in Paris on September 8, but, sadly, the Opera House closed its doors on September 3.
World War I effectively ended my grandmother’s career as an opera singer. After she arrived back in Boston, she sold her piano and never sang again. My mother told me that only once, at the end of a large dinner party, was her mother inspired to sing Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” moving everyone to tears. She never explained the reason for the eternal silence of her magical gift—not even to her children.
When I first met Mémé, she had a regal bearing and still wore her hair swept up and held in place by diamond combs from another era. Wherever she went, one could still feel the magnetism that had mesmerized her audiences many years before.
I loved Mémé and felt she loved me and thought I was perfect just the way I was. She also treated me like a little adult and encouraged my early love of music. The only time I can remember desperately wanting to stay up beyond my bedtime was during her visits—I was happy just being in the same room with her.
One of the greatest memories I have of Mémé was once when I was four or five, and we were alone at my aunt Ashie’s house, where I went every day to practice the piano. While I was playing the piano, Mémé looked far into the distance and started to sing—just for me. I immediately stopped my childish playing and sat rapt in the magic of this enormously private moment.
From the very beginning, Mémé touched a sensitive chord in my soul. I was no more than five years old, sitting in my parents’ living room in New York, when I saw her discreetly get up and go into my mother’s bedroom. I could sense something was wrong and found her sitting quietly on my mother’s chaise longue with her hands clasped, looking at the floor. Realizing that she was not well, I sat next to her, and for the first time in my life consciously felt the healing energy of love flow between two human beings.
After a few moments, I heard her ask, “Do you want something, darling?”
I looked up and replied, “I just wanted to see if you were all right.”
Mémé took my hand and we sat peacefully together until she felt well enough to rejoin the others. Many years later, after my mother’s death, I found a letter among her papers in which Mémé mentioned that moment we had shared on the chaise longue and how touched she had been. She added, “He will always be loved. Yes, he has what it takes!”
On a Sunday morning in November 1947, when I was six years old, Ashie (whom I always called Tata, a childish pronunciation of “Tante Ashie”) brought Richard and me home from church. As soon as we walked in the door, we saw the devastated look on Mother’s face. Tata, who was very intuitive, immediately said, “It’s Mother, isn’t it?” Without saying a word, Mother fell into her sister’s arms, weeping. That was the first and last time in my life that I ever saw my mother cry.
The phone call had come while we were in church. Mémé, who had been at home in Boston, had awakened early that morning and told her housekeeper that she was not feeling well. She went into the living room, sat down in an armchair, and waited for the housekeeper to bring her a brandy. By the time the housekeeper returned, Mémé was dead.
After Tata went home to pack for the trip to Boston to bury their mother, Lucy took me into my bedroom and explained, “Mémé is in heaven with the stars.”
I said, “I don’t want her in heaven with the stars, I want her here with me.”
I was confused and frightened but Lucy offered no comfort. So I went alone into a dark hallway that connected her room with mine and started to cry. Later, still fighting back tears, I went to my mother’s room, but I was not allowed to go in. I had never seen such a look of sadness on my mother’s face before, and I could only stand helplessly in the doorway and watch while she packed. There was no way for me to accept that Mémé would never hold me in her arms and make me feel special and loved and wonderful again. I remained inconsolable and cried myself to sleep that night.
On the other side of the coin was my other grandmother, my father’s mother, Geneviève, from whom my older brother, Richard, and I never felt any love. Real love—or the lack of it—transcends all the pretty words and cannot fool children. In the summertime, after the war was over, we would go to France and visit her château outside of Angers. Life at my grandmother’s château could be fun because of the animals, beautiful parks, and wonderful places for kids to get into mischief. But as time went on, I saw a darker side of Maman Geneviève that did not coincide with the perfect picture she presented to the world.
Night had already fallen when we pulled into the station, and I clutched the hem of my mother’s tailored grey suit with my little hands so that I would not fall down the steps and under the wheels of the train. It annoyed her when I wrinkled the hems of her dresses, but this time she didn’t seem to notice.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw a cluster of elderly figures dressed in black, as in a funeral cortege, coming towards us. The men all wore black armbands, a symbol of mourning, and the women’s faces were hidden behind heavy black veils. I turned my head away, hoping that these ghostly apparitions would disappear. One was even more frightening than all the rest—my father’s mother, Geneviève, who coldly appraised me before moving on to my older brother, Richard, who was eight.
I was six years old in 1947 and had enjoyed my first trip from our home in New York City to France on the magnificent British ocean liner, the Mauretania. I already adored traveling first class and meeting movie stars such as our shipmate Rita Hayworth. Richard, however, couldn’t have cared less about the glamour that surrounded us. He felt it was a waste of time to dress up every evening in the little white jacket, short black pants, and black tie that made up our formal attire. We would first sit with our parents in the bar drinking ginger ale with a dash of grenadine, and then move on to the grand dining room to start our dinner with all the caviar our little hearts desired.
After the Mauretania docked at Le Havre, we had a long train ride to Paris. My parents passed the time at a table with cocktails and a leisurely lunch, while I stared out the window at the devastated cities and the charred remains of homes. But there was one house that affected me more than the others. The only thing left standing was the chimney, and I wondered what had happened to the family that had called that house their home.
At first it all seemed unreal, as though I were still in the comfort of the United States, watching a newsreel with my aunt Tata at a movie theater in New York City. But by the time we reached Paris, I was consumed by the devastation and somberness of post-World War II France.
This was my introduction to the Cointreau family, and to Paris—the “City of Light.” As far as I was concerned, the light had gone out of this city and the ravages of war terrified me.
All I could do was cling to my impatient mother and silently beg her not to abandon me. For the first time that I can recall, a cloud of deep depression descended on me and I had no possible defense with which to fight it.
The drive down dark streets and past ornate buildings to my grandmother’s home in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris did nothing to allay my apprehension. It may have been during that ride that I took a profound dislike to anything old or antique, associating it all with the aura of war. One of the most beautiful cities in the world was