Then Again - Diane Keaton [75]
As if that wasn’t enough, two weeks later Dexter and I flew to New York so I could complete filming on The First Wives Club, a comedy about three old friends who are dumped by their husbands. Ivana Trump summed up the film’s message best with “Ladies, you have to be strong and independent, and remember, don’t get mad, get everything.”
Dexter and I had a ritual. Every night after work, I placed her in the bouncy chair and marveled at her almost fishlike, slow-motion, underwater gestures. Sometimes she followed me with her eyes. Sometimes I tried to imitate her expressions, but how could I? I’ve lived too long to go back to the beginning. I held her against my chest. It was hard to believe she weighed less than a medium-size bowling ball. I touched her face and gave her kisses. I put the bottle in her mouth. She swallowed the formula. Simple miracles. I began to appreciate the comfort of furniture, not just the design. More simple miracles.
In the mornings at the rented loft on Prince Street, I fed her and changed her diaper. I talked to her too. There was a lot to say. Sometimes, not always, she’d crack a smile. Then came the most important task of the day: selecting an outfit, at least 70 percent of which were gifts. First I chose one of Dexter’s twenty-two hats, thirteen of which came from Kate Capshaw. Then I’d pause for a moment and go over the list of people who’d been so generous. There was Woody Allen, who gave her a flowery little dress I returned. (Too small.) Meryl Streep gave Dexter four boxes of dresses, and hats (more hats) and blankets, and jumpers and leggings and tops, and washcloths that she called a starter kit. Bette Midler gave her a health book and a very funny carrot hat with a pea on top. Then my boss, Mr. Scott Rudin, gave Dexter a fancy French coat from a store called Bonpoint on Madison Avenue. Steve Martin gave her a much needed and very practical diaper bag. Martin Short and his lovely bride, Nancy, sent her flowers and balloons that flew up to the ceiling and stayed there for two weeks. I could not believe our good fortune—a once-in-a-lifetime complete wardrobe from a host of remarkable notables.
First Ladies
Always on the go, Dexter and I went out to dinner three times a week. She came to the set every day. We took the Circle Line and saw the Statue of Liberty during a snowstorm. Bill Robinson, who’d been an intern for Ted Kennedy, made arrangements for a tour of the White House. Veteran travelers, we grabbed the first train to Washington, D.C.
We began our visit in the Oval Office. It was very yellow and blue—official blue. We took pictures in the pressroom—beside a surprisingly antiquated phone system underneath a wall of tiny black-and-white television sets monitoring the whereabouts of the First Family. The phone system was obsolete, and the television sets were tiny. In the East Room, where Presidents John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln had lain in repose before burial, Dexter dozed off in her BabyBjörn. When we moved on to the Red Room, I learned Eleanor Roosevelt had changed it from a ladies’ social setting to a pressroom for women reporters who were excluded from presidential conferences. The stipulation? Mrs. Roosevelt’s press conferences were limited to subjects centered on “women’s work.”
Every office had a gadget called “the toaster.” Like the monitors, its function was to inform the employees of the exact whereabouts of the President, the First Lady, Chelsea, and Socks, their cat. We were told that Hillary and Chelsea were actually in the White House. Chelsea was watching a movie, and Hillary was upstairs with a cold. She, of course, wanted to meet us but was feeling under the weather. Frankly, if I were her, I would cherish every moment of privacy and guard it like a treasure. Her life was nothing if not an intrusion. Imagine always being on view, always being groomed, always being judged and criticized. The more I saw, the more impossible it was to imagine the White House as a home. But then, I guess the idea of home is something