EXCERPT: 'The Kids Are All Right'

Sept. 28, 2009— -- Amanda, Liz, Dan and Diana Welch grew up in the wealthy community of Bedford, N.Y., born to glamorous, successful parents. Then, a series of devastating losses upended their lives as kids: In 1983, their oil executive father was killed in a car accident, leaving a large debt behind, and their mother died of cancer 3½ years later.

In "The Kids Are All Right: A Memoir," each describes, with humility, candor and humor, what happened next. Dan became a hellion, and was eventually kicked out of boarding school. Amanda got into drugs and dropped out of New York University. A neighbor reconsidered adopting Diana after she reached her teens. Meanwhile, Liz traveled to free herself of all of it.

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a note on the text

Does it feel that your life's become a catastrophe? Oh, it has to be for your to grow, boy. -"Take the Long Way Home," SUPERTRAMP

introductionOur mother died three times. We have the first death on tape,recorded the day it aired in 1976: Morgan Fairchild, wearing a trench coatand pale pink lip- gloss, shot her in the back. Over the past thirty years,we've each watched the tape several times, pulling it from dusty cardboardmoving boxes and crossing our fingers it doesn't get eaten by the VCR.It's our only copy.

The scene opens with Morgan, as Jennifer Pace, hiding in a darkenedhallway. Our mother, playing Eunice Wyatt on the soap opera Search forTomorrow, is kissing actor Val Dufour good- bye at their apartment door.His square jaw and dimpled chin are powdered an orangey tan. As JohnWyatt, Eunice's cheating husband, Val is dressed conservatively in a suit andtie, but we know him as the guy who once wore a kilt and a feather boato our parents' annual Christmas party.

The music swells. Commercial break.

Back at the apartment, our mother turns away from the camera, andthere is a loud bang. A tiny circle of dark red appears on the back of herpink satin robe. The next shot is a close- up. Our mother's face fills thescreen in a death snarl revealing upper teeth.

And so our mother's decade- long run as Eunice Gardner Twining MartinWyatt came to an end. It was her third soap gig, and her longest. Shestarted out in 1962 as Erica Brandt on Young Doctor Malone before makingher name in 1964 as the original Dr. Maggie Fielding on The Doctors.Born in 1965, Amanda is the eldest of the four Welch children. She wasintroduced to soap fans in a splashy Dialing the Daytime Stars magazine spreadas "The Baby Who Took Ann Williams off TV." We still have the article,now yellowed with age, tucked away in the same manila folder where Momstuck it more than forty years ago. When Liz was born, in 1969, Mom hadbeen playing Eunice for three years. Instead of getting written off entirely, Eunicehad a breakdown and was temporarily sent to a mental institution. ByDan's birth in 1971, Eunice was so popular that the pregnancy was writteninto the show. But Mom wasn't pregnant when Jennifer shot Eunice; rumorhad it that Mary Stuart, the show's diva and Dan's godmother, was jealous ofMom's fan mail. That's what Mom told us, anyway.

Diana was born in 1977, a year before Mom landed the role of the villainousMargo Huntington on The Edge of Night. Which brings us to ourmother's second death: Margo was bludgeoned with a fire poker off- camerain a whodunit story line that continued for weeks after her body was discovered.Margo had a lot of enemies; she was a successful businesswoman whoowned the only TV station in Monticello. Her story line involved an illegitimatechild, a sham marriage to an ex- cult leader, and pornography.

During the Margo years, as part of their after- school chores, Mom enlistedAmanda and Liz to record her episodes on our VCR, one of the first, whichwas the size of a stuffed suitcase. At night, when she came home from her dayof shooting, Mom labeled each tape with the date, show name, and episodenumber and placed it chronologically on a bookshelf in her study.

Today, only five tapes remain, the labels peeling off from the dust that hasweakened their glue, their images scratchy and worn. Amanda is the reasonwe have any tapes at all: After our mother's third and actual death, the onethat followed our father's by three and a half years, Amanda carted thosetapes around in boxes, stored them in a friend's garage, and drove themacross state lines. They have been packed up, unpacked, sent parcel post, andpopped into VCRs in New York, Virginia, and Texas. They're our familyheirlooms, a fuzzy, dusty connection to the person whom waitresses atChock full o'Nuts recognized as Eunice or Margo but whom we knew asMom. Watching them now, we see bits of our lives on the screen. The diamondring Eunice wears is really the one Dad gave Mom when he proposedin the early sixties, just a few months after meeting her. The red mugringed with fat white hearts that Margo drinks out of spent the eightiesstained with coffee in our kitchen sink at home in Bedford, New York. Theyellow organza dress that she wore to announce her engagement to the cultleader is the one that Diana wore, fifteen years later and tripping on acid, tothe junior prom. Though the ring was stolen years ago, and the mug is longgone, Amanda saved the dress, as she did the tapes, and the grandfatherclocks, and the Etruscan trunk. Like Mom, she keeps the clocks wound tochime on the hour, and she fills the trunk with sheets and blankets. And,like Mom, she saved the manila folder that holds magazine clippings documentingthe highlights of our mother's career.

"Ann Williams: 'I Relate to Children and Animals Better Than toAdults!' " shouts a bold headline across the opening spread of a 1976 articlefrom Day TV Gossip. It chronicles life at Twin Meadows, the fourteen- acre estatewhere we grew up. In it, Mom describes Amanda, then ten, as a "serioushuman being" who likes to ride her pony and wants to be an animal trainersomeday. "Lizzie," six, is a "backgammon whiz, you can't beat her!" andalso the "most giving of people," one who would gladly give up her dessertso that another child wouldn't be left wanting. Daniel, four, is a "lover" who"practices his best Clark Gable moods" on Mom. He also has a "vivid imagination"and likes to go "elephant hunting in the backyard with his Daddy,"she says. "They shoot them out of the trees." Diana wasn't born yet.

In one of the photos accompanying the article, Amanda, Liz, and Danare all piled on Mom's lap. In another, Amanda and Dan pose with theirstuffed animals. There's one of Dad, his salt- and- pepper hair elegantlyparted on the side and slicked back, like a Kennedy. He has a kind Irishface, freckled and dimpled, and smiling eyes. They described him as an investmentbanker. He was on TV with Mom only once, for a Newlywedstyledshow called Tattletales that Amanda, Liz, and Dan remember watchingwhen they were kids. Every time Dad got an answer wrong, Mom wouldswat the air, smile big, and shrug her shoulders. Diana has seen the photosomeone took of the black- and- white television set the day the show aired.Mom is sitting on Dad's lap, biting her bottom lip. He looks nervous andserious, though in real life he was neither.

Amanda has that picture in one of many family albums, glued beneatha thin plastic sheet alongside other images, proof of where we come from,of who we were before everything changed: our parents at fox hunts, regalin their red coats and top hats; childhood birthday parties with frosted cakes,lit candles, and paper hats; horse shows with ribbons and trophies; beachpicnics and Thanksgiving dinners. Amanda also has several grainy 16-millimeter home movies that Mom and Dad made, the sounds of whichhave gone wobbly and deep.

One year, as a Christmas present, Dan edited the films together and layeredsad- but- funny songs like Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home" andElvis's "Don't Cry Daddy" on top of their slow, distorted narration. Afterfive long years apart, it was the eighth Christmas we had spent together asa family; our separation and subsequent reunion had reinforced the importanceof childhood rituals. That Christmas Eve was spent the same as theones before it: We prepared a dinner of Yorkshire pudding and roast beef,hung the four patchwork stockings that our mother had made, our nameshand- stitched in white rickrack on each cuff. We dressed the tree with oldfamily ornaments and placed the gold papier- mâché crèche at its base.Then, in keeping with another Welch tradition, we each opened one smallpresent. Amanda opened one from Dan— our new home movie.

On that Christmas Eve in 1998, we watched our father hold Amandaup in the window of their apartment in New York City so she could see theMacy's Thanksgiving Day Parade drift down Central Park West, and wewatched him hold her at her christening at St. Patrick's Cathedral, and asshe sat in his lap on her first birthday and tried to eat her card. We watchedour mother, puffy from giving birth, wave to the camera and smile, holdinga fat newborn Liz in her arms. We watched a determined Liz trompup a grassy hill in tights and fancy shoes, struggling to hold an Easter basketnearly as big as she was. We watched Amanda wave at the camera andpat Dan's back as he lay belly- down in his bassinet, her mouth formingthe words "Hi, Mom." We watched Liz help Dan take off his tiny terryclothrobe at the beach in Cape Cod before she left him sitting in the sandand ran to catch up with Amanda in the waves. We watched the three ofthem splash around in our pool, held up either by Styrofoam floaties or byMom in a bikini and a big sunhat. It wasn't until the tape finished that werealized Diana wasn't in any of those warm, sun- splattered scenes that ourparents recorded and Amanda saved and Dan edited and scored. It madesense. Those home movies recorded the idyllic times, and Diana doesn'tremember much of those.

part onespring 1982 – summer 1983

LIZI wanted to be an actress just like Mom. In the fall of 1981, I cameclose to getting the part of Jon Voight's daughter in the movie Table forFive, but then Ricky Schroeder was cast as the son. We were both blond,and the director wanted the daughter to be a brunette, so I was out. Atleast, that's how Mom explained it to me.

The following spring, I had another audition. This time, I was up forthe part of Mariel Hemingway's younger sister in Star 80. Mariel was playingDorothy Stratten, the Playboy playmate killed by her jealous husband.Mom thought I had a good chance because I looked like Mariel, sameblond hair and blue eyes, dark eyebrows, and square jaw. Even strangerstold me so. Some said I looked like Brooke Shields, but she had brownhair and brown eyes so that never made any sense to me.

Mom picked me up early from school to take me into Manhattan. Usually,her coming to get me would be an endless source of embarrassment.She'd barge into volleyball practice dressed in too- tight velour sweatpantstucked into gardening boots, her big dip sunglasses perched on top of thesilk scarf she'd wrap around her hair instead of brushing it. Worse, she'dholler "Yoo- hoo" in a falsetto across the court, waving her arms at me asif I didn't know she was there. She was impossible to miss. During thewinter months she wore a floor- length coat that looked like a skinned deadcollie turned inside out. It was mortifying.

But that afternoon, waiting in the parking lot, she looked glamorous.Her brown hair was curled under and combed into a chic bob, her gardeningoutfit replaced by a silk shirtdress and burgundy knee- high boots.This was her city outfit.

Usually Mom liked to help me prepare for my scenes during the hour longdrive into the city, but this afternoon, she had other things on hermind. "Lizzie Bits, you'll be the decoy," she said as we pulled out of FoxLane Middle School's driveway. "You'll distract your father as I set up."

She was planning a surprise party for Dad's fiftieth birthday that weekend,and she had invited old college friends from Johns Hopkins, businessassociates from Houston, Dad's brothers and sisters, as well as friends fromthe Bedford Golf and Tennis Club and the Goldens Bridge Hounds. Morethan fifty people had RSVPed, but Dad had no idea. "I'll make eggnog,"she said excitedly as we drove down Bedford's packed dirt roads lined withstone walls and ancient oaks. "We'll use the big punch bowl," she added."We'll use all the good crystal."

Mom started her cut- glass collection when she married Dad in 1964,and over the last eighteen years, she had managed to fill the shelves of thebutler pantry that lined the narrow hallway between our dining room andkitchen. She had cake plates and platters and champagne glasses, too, plusa dish designed specifically for celery and another for deviled eggs.

"I'll make lamb stew and Irish soda bread," she continued, turning ontoInterstate 684, her diamond engagement ring catching and releasing themid afternoon sun. "And an angel food cake for dessert."

Angel food cake was Dad's favorite, and mine too. For my thirteenthbirthday, only one month earlier, Mom made me an angel food cake withstrawberries and whipped cream.

She wanted me to keep Dad away from the house for three hours thatSaturday afternoon. I gazed out the window at the messy paintbrush strokeof pine trees. I needed to come up with a good plan. Dad was smart. Hepaid attention to detail. He wore pressed shirts and pants, even on weekends.Duping him would be hard.

After several minutes of silence, I asked, "What if I ask him to take meshopping?"

"Ehhh," Mom made a sound like a game show buzzer. "Wrong answer.Try again."

Typical. Mom never wanted to take me shopping, and when she did,she'd let me buy things only if they were on sale. Dad, on the other hand,would deposit me at the Stamford Bloomingdale's and tell me to meet himat the cash register in twenty minutes. It's because of him that I was thefirst girl at Fox Lane Middle School to own Jordache jeans. On our lastspree, I got the kelly- green Ralph Lauren cable- knit sweater I was wearingthat day for my audition.

"How about tennis?" I offered. "I'll ask him to play a set." I had beentaking lessons that winter at Chestnut Ridge, an indoor tennis club in town.I could show off my new and improved overhead serve. It was the perfectploy, Mom agreed.

Soon we reached the outskirts of the city. Dingy buildings replaced treesalong the parkway, which had doubled from two lanes to four. Suddenly,the buttery sweet scent of vanilla biscuits penetrated the diesel and gasfumes; then, minutes later, the Stella d'Oro factory whirred by.

"Lock the doors, Lizzie," Mom instructed as we approached the ThirdAvenue Bridge. She always said this here— not back in Bedford or anywherein Westchester County, but here, as we were about to enter Manhattanthrough Spanish Harlem.

After we parked the car, we passed a blind man selling pencils. "Canwe buy one?" I asked.

She shook her head and then said under her breath, "He makes moremoney than you do." I wondered if that was true. Other than the fivedollarweekly allowance I got for feeding the dogs and loading the dishwasher,the only money I had ever made was one hundred twenty- fivedollars in seventh grade to model for a Macy's catalogue, and five hundreddollars for a Jell- O pudding commercial I did when I was eight. I'd had toeat so many bowls of chocolate pudding that I got a stomachache. Afterthe twelfth take, when the director said, "Action," I looked into the cameraand instead of saying, "It's delicious!" I said, "I think I'm going to throwup." And then I did.

For the Star 80 audition, I had to do a sad scene. The waiting room waschaos: Young girls dabbed their lips with gloss and brushed and sprayedtheir hair into place while their mothers filled out call cards and handed inhead shots. Mom and I found a quiet corner in the back stairwell to goover lines. She was more interested in craft than in cosmetics.

"Never rely on your looks, Elizabeth," she warned. "They'll only getyou to thirty."

People always said Mom was beautiful, and in her cast photos and headshots pinned on the wall of her study at home I could see she once was.My favorite photo was of Burt Reynolds, signed, "To the prettiest girl inall of New York, love, Burt." Mom had guest- starred on his cop showHawk. This was before Smokey and the Bandit made him famous, beforeLoni Anderson. There was the cast shot of Pajama Game, Mom in a silknightshirt that just barely covered her tushy, and a close- up of her whereshe looks like a young Ingrid Bergman, the curl of her chestnut bob kissingher full lips, her big brown eyes hypnotizing the camera. In anotherphoto, she's in Lauren Bacall's dressing room in Applause. Lauren is wearinga caftan and holding Mom's hand, and they're both laughing. Butthose photos were taken in Mom's twenties— when her skin was taut, herhair a natural dark brown, her eyes sparkling and bright. Now, at forty- six,her hair had turned brittle, a lighter, unnatural shade from two de cades ofperms and dye jobs, her skin was puffier, like unbaked bread. Once a sizesix, Mom now struggled to get into a twelve and blamed her bad luck withbooking jobs on being middle- aged. "I'm too young to be a grandmotherand too old to be a mother," she'd often lament. Still, it didn't stop herfrom working on her craft. She went to the Actors Studio weekly to workshopscenes and often asked me to read lines with her back home. She hadstudied with Lee Strasberg, and she taught me what she knew. It was calledMethod acting. For this audition, my character had just learned that hersister had been killed. Mom asked me to imagine the most terrible thingever.

"Like when we found Frodo?" I asked. Frodo was my cat. He was blackand purred when you looked at him. He had gone missing for several daysthat winter, and we finally found him on West Patent Road, roughly fiftyyards from our driveway, his skull smashed against the pavement, his furcrusted with dried blood.

"Even sadder," Mom urged. "You have to inhabit the character, Bitsy.Imagine if Frodo were somebody you loved."

I closed my eyes and replaced Frodo's smashed skull with Dad's, andreal tears began to simmer deep inside me. They slowly began to bubbleup as I read the lines.

"Good, stay there," Mom said as the casting director popped her headinto the hallway.

"Annie?" she said. All the casting agents in New York knew Mom."He's ready for her."

I walked into the audition room and sat on a couch facing Bob Fosse.He had intense eyes and a full beard that made up for his thinning hair. Noone else was in the room. "Whenever you're ready," he said kindly. As Iread, hot tears streamed down my face. I looked up at the end and sawthat Mr. Fosse's eyes were glistening, too. "Very good," he said. "Very, verygood."

I left the audition feeling, for the first time, like a real actress. Maybeduping Dad wouldn't be so hard after all.

Several days later, on the morning of the party, I trotted downstairs toask Dad if he wanted to go play tennis. He was sitting at the breakfast table,scanning the Wall Street Journal, his reading glasses perched halfway downhis nose. He kept his head bent toward the paper but moved his eyes sothey looked over the glasses and at me.

"So, you think you can beat your old man?" he said with a wink.

Dad didn't look old. The biggest difference between him at fifty andhim in his wedding photos at thirty- two was that now his hair went fromblack to salt- and- pepper, though with the same reddish- brown highlights.His body may have thickened up a bit, but it was still athletic— cut calves,broad chest, and not an ounce of excess fat. He was only five- feet- eight inches,yet he had been captain of both the football and the basketballteams in high school. And he watched his weight carefully, priding himselfon always leaving a bite of food on his plate at the end of every meal."Self- restraint is a virtue," he liked to say.

That afternoon, we both dressed in our tennis whites— Dad in shortsand a polo shirt, his arms and legs a spotty tan from freckles grown togetherwith age. I had Mom's skin— a spotless pale that turned goldenbrown in the sun. I wore a sweatband on my wrist, and as I got into thefront seat of the Mercedes, I saw Dad was wearing one, too.

"Like father like daughter," he said with a smile, and off we went.

We hit back and forth for two hours. I won the first set, and Dad wonthe second. Even though I was leading the third, midway through I startedto worry about time. As much fun as it was to have Dad all to myself, Iknew I had to get him back home by six o'clock. That was the wholepoint. "Should we call it quits, Dad?" I shouted over the net. The scorewas two to one, and it was Dad's turn to serve. "I'm pooped."

Dad had one ball in the front pocket of his white tennis shorts and onein his hand, which he bounced several times before saying, in a disappointedtone, "Elizabeth Morgan Welch, what's my motto?"

"If you're not going to do it right, don't do it at all?" I said meekly,embarrassed that I hadn't thought that through. Of course, we'd finish theset. Bob Welch's kids were not quitters! That was another one of his favoritesayings. So was "The only things you have to do in life are die andpay taxes," which I never quite understood.

"Right," he said. "Ready?"

He aced the serve. And the next one. I returned the third, and we hada good rally hitting back and forth, hard. I won that point and the third setand still wonder to this day if he let me.

By then, it was six and we were late. I kept a cool facade, but by thetime we turned into our driveway, the butterflies in my stomach hadmorphed into slam- dancing frogs. Dad was still talking about tennis, andabout how I should consider joining the Bedford Golf and Tennis Club'sjunior team that summer, as we began the ascent up the narrow, quartermile-long strip of tired pavement that had cracked in the middle like amessy part. Dad didn't see the cars until we drove through the opening ofthe privet hedge that set our house, with its gray shingles and hunter- greenshutters, apart from the rest of the property. They were parked not onlyon the gravel circle in the front of the house but also to the right, besidethe garage, and even on the lawn out toward the pool and down near theswing set. He pulled up to an empty spot by the front door, turned to me,and said, "Elizabeth, what is going on?" not in a serious way but with asmile as though he had a hunch.

I shrugged and said, "Let's go find out." I had practiced that momentin my head and was impressed by how coolly I pulled it off.

As we got out of the car, I could hear the hushed silence of the peoplewaiting inside. Several silhouettes flickered across the drawn window shadesin the living room. One shadow was hunched over, perhaps a personcrouching down, another was walking toward the front door, and anotherlooked like a four- headed blob. I walked ahead and flung open the frontdoor. The lights flicked on, and "Surprise!" resounded throughout thehouse.

Mom rushed toward us wearing a floor-length chiffon gown the colorof lemon meringue pie and pale peach high- heel sandals, the ones I alwayswore to play dress- up. Her hair was swept back off her face with twotortoiseshell combs. "Happy birthday, my darling," she said as she threwher arms around my stunned and smiling father.

Everyone who was important to Dad was there— his sisters and brothersand old college friends. My siblings stood in a line in front. Diana wasdressed in green velvet. Her unruly red curls had been coaxed into twoponytails that bounced off her tiny shoulders as she shouted "Surprise!" inher sweet four- year- old voice that sounded more like a Sesame Street puppetthan a human being. Dan stood next to her, and they looked like twins,despite the six years between them, with their red hair, freckles, and dimplesthat pierced their cheeks whenever they smiled. Everyone in thepacked room was smiling, even Amanda, who usually wore her scowl likea badge of honor. A chubby sixteen- year- old with a Pat Benatar shag haircut,she hated dressing up, preferring her ripped jeans and concert T-shirts.To night, she was wearing a skirt.

I turned and looked up at Dad, who was beaming. "Nice job, toots,"he winked, before being swallowed whole by the crowd of outstretchedarms. I went upstairs to change, and when I came back down, the partywas in full swing but Dad was gone. He then reappeared dressed in tartanslacks and a crisp white button- down shirt, a bow tie, and navy- blue blazer.Mom burst out into "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," and the whole crowdjoined in.

An hour or so later, Mom clinked a champagne glass to get everyone'sattention. It was time for presents, she said, Amanda and Dan's cue. Theyentered the living room holding a large rectangular gift between them,which they handed to Dad. He was seated on our gold brocade couch,and the whole party gathered around to watch as he neatly untied the bowand then slid a finger beneath the taped corners, careful not to rip thepaper. It was a family tree. Ever since she saw Roots on TV, Mom was obsessedwith genealogy. She had spent the past six months in the New YorkPublic Library working on our family history, unbeknownst to Dad, whothought she was going on auditions. She used gold and silver pens topainstakingly mark each name, birth date, and place.

At the top of the two- by- four- foot sheet of thick ivory paper, Momhad written "Ann Morgan Williams married Robert Daniel Peter Welchon September 19, 1964," in her near- perfect curly cursive. Our namesand birth dates: "Amanda Gordon Welch, August 15, 1965," "ElizabethMorgan Welch, February 3, 1969," "Daniel Merryman Welch, March 24,1971," and "Diana Rebecca Welch, September 30, 1977," floated aboveour parents' names like tethered balloons. Dad beamed. On the bottomright, you could see that his family came to Boston from Ireland in theearly 1900s. On the left, in a longer entanglement of roots, you saw thatMom's family came to Mary land from Scotland and Wales in the 1600s.One ancestor, Mary Ball, married Augustine Washington. They had a sonnamed George.

"Bob, your children are descendants of the first president of the UnitedStates," Mom boasted as Dad studied the tree.

"Not from your side, Bob," Aunt Barbara shouted out above the crowd.She was Dad's older sister, and she pronounced his name with a thickBoston accent so it sounded like "Bab."

"You got that right," Uncle Russ, Dad's brother, chimed in, and all hissiblings laughed their distinct Welch laugh that sounded like a drunken,jolly Dracula.

Aunt Gail, Dad's youngest sister, gave her gift next. It was a potato thatshe had written a poem on with a calligraphy pen, decorated with smallgreen shamrocks and shellacked.

"To keep you connected to your roots, Bobby," she said.

The room grew quiet, someone murmured "How sweet," and thenBarbara gave him her gift. It was a book called Sex After 50. All the pageswere blank. The room filled with laughter again.

AMANDAI have our family tree hanging on my wall in my house in Virginia,where I have most of our family heirlooms— the two grandfather clocks,the hand- carved wooden Etruscan trunk, even the unfinished oil paintingof some cows on the beach that our great- aunt did when she was at theCorcoran Gallery of Arts in Washington, D.C. It's funny, because backthen, when I was sixteen, I couldn't have cared less about our genealogy.I didn't even like the family I had. Why would I care who came beforethem?

That was around the time I stopped going on family trips. A monthafter Dad's birthday everyone went to Myrtle Beach for spring break, exceptme. I used the animals as an excuse. Mom was a sucker for strays. Inaddition to the three dogs, two cats, and a litter of kittens, we had a stablefull of horses. "Who's gonna feed the horses and muck out their stalls?" Iargued.

But really, I just didn't want to do any of that family bullshit. I was a ju -nior in high school, a fat misfit who wanted to ride my horses, listen tomy records, and smoke pot with my friends. I certainly didn't want to goon a family vacation. To do what? Play miniature golf and go to the beach?I hated the beach. What do you do at the beach? Get sand in your bathingsuit and up your crack?

So Mom and Dad agreed to let me stay home alone. It was great. I hada party. We drank gin and tonics and did shots. It was the first time I everblacked out.

LIZMom and Dad may have been sad Amanda wasn't coming to MyrtleBeach, but I was relieved. Amanda hated me. She called me Big Shot and adumb blond and tattled on me for talking on the phone with my friends,which I would do for hours on end. A week in Myrtle Beach without hermeant I could work on my tan in peace and quiet, and put lemon juice in myhair without her sneering at me or putting her finger in her mouth and pretendingto throw up. Or singing that Carly Simon song "You're So Vain."

Auntie Eve was coming instead. We all adored Auntie Eve. She used tobe our live- in nanny, but when Diana turned two, she moved to YorktownHeights, twenty minutes from Bedford, to live with her son and hisfamily. She still came twice a week to clean the house and do the laundrysince Mom wasn't keen on house work. "It's not my forte," she'd say. AuntieEve was in her seventies, I think, but if you asked her how old she was,she'd always answer, "Old enough!" Dad joked that between Auntie Eveand Mom he had the perfect wife.

"Why aren't we flying?" I asked Dad as he strategically stacked Mom's golfclubs on top of a cooler in the back of our Jeep Wagoneer. "Isn't it far?"

"Road trips are fun!" he bellowed, rearranging two suitcases to fit thelast duffel bag, this one full of beach toys. "Plus, we'll get to see a bit ofthe East Coast."

Dad hopped in the driver's seat, and I sat directly behind him. Momtook her place in the front seat, and Auntie Eve took hers, behind Mom.Dan was squished in the middle, and Diana bounced from my lap to Eve'sto Mom's before crawling in the back and making a nest on top of theluggage, where she fell asleep, her pale cheek smashed against Mom'sleather golf bag, forcing her lips into a pucker. By the time we crossed theGeorge Washington Bridge and entered New Jersey, I was bored stiff.We'd only been driving one hour and had thirteen more to go. Dadstarted a game of punch buggy, and then Mom suggested the capital gameand we all moaned. Then Mom started singing, "Fasten your seat belts,it's going to be," and everyone sang the part that sounds like human horns,"eh eh eh eh eh," before she finished the line, "a bumpy night." It wasthe song she had a one- line solo in when she did Applause on Broadwaywith Lauren Bacall. The solo went, "She's laughing a bit too loudly, that'show the last one began."

After that song, Mom tried to get me to sing "Tomorrow" with her,but I refused, having sworn never to sing that song ever again, not afterauditioning for Annie on Broadway the year before. The casting directorasked me to do the part that goes, "When I'm stuck with a daaay that'sgraaay and lo- onelyyy, I just stick out my chiiiiin and griiiin and saaay . . . !"They were the highest, hardest notes in the whole song. My voicestrained to reach them and then cracked when I got there. The directoryelled "Cut!" before I could even sing the refrain. "I'm sick of that song,"I said, rolling my eyes.

Mom caught me doing it out of the corner of her eye and frowned."Don't be a bad sport, Bitsy," she said. "It's unbecoming."

DANMyrtle Beach was like a carnival, with all these rides along theboardwalk in town. After standing in line forever to ride a roller- coaster, Istood on my tippy- toes to pass the height requirement. I was so exciteduntil I got in the seat and realized I was going to fall out for sure. As theride started, I held on for dear life, and when it turned upside down, Iclosed my eyes and fought hard not to cry. When it was over, I felt sick,like I was going to puke. I had eaten an ice cream right before and toldMom I had a stomachache from that, but really I just didn't want to go onany more rides.

So Mom took me to the Ripley's Believe It . . . Or Not! museum. Iloved that kind of stuff: my favorite TV show was In Search Of . . . withLeonard Nimoy. I loved seeing all these photographs of impossible- to believethings that actually existed in the world, like those African tribesthat wore rings to elongate their necks. I also liked all the gory stuff, but itscared Mom. She couldn't even look at it. But she did like this grain of ricethat someone had written a poem on so tiny you had to use a magnifyingglass to read it. And her favorite thing was a matchbook that a man hadtaken and cut into a long, one- hundred- foot strip without breaking it.

We stayed at a condo right on the beach, and Dad taught me how tothrow a perfect spiral football there on the sand. He told me to use my lefthand to point to the sky in the direction I wanted to throw the ball. Withmy right hand, I was to keep my fingertips on the laces at all times, breakingmy wrist just as the ball passed my face and then letting go. I tried reallyhard, but I couldn't do it. My hands were too small. Dad didn't makeme feel bad about it, but I never wanted to disappoint him. I wanted togrow up to be his carbon copy.

The next day we all got into the Jeep to go to this sculpture garden. Aswe pulled up to the entrance to the parking lot, there were these two giantstatues of fighting stallions. They were up on their hind legs, lashing at oneanother with their front hooves and biting each other's necks. I was theonly one in the family who didn't like horses. I'd been terrified of themever since Rascal, my Shetland pony, rolled over with me on top of himwhen I was eight. He nearly crushed me to death. It was awful, but Dadmade me get back on him right away. I did what he asked because I wantedto please him. Still, I've hated those beasts ever since. As we drove beneaththe statues, I looked up and saw their huge marble testicles, and I justknew: This was not going to be fun.

LIZAfter spending four hours looking at boring statues, I was desperateto get back to the beach to work on my tan. We got back into thecar— Mom in the passenger seat, Dan and I in back with Diana strappedin the middle. Auntie Eve had stayed at the condo, claiming statues were"not her thing." Dad started the ignition without any cause for concern,but as soon as he put the car into drive, it lurched forward, then groaned,and then we all heard a gigantic thud. Then the car let out a big sigh andwent completely silent.

Dad quickly got out of the car and down on his knees to look beneathit. We heard him mutter, "God damn it."

"What is it, Bob?" Mom called from the passenger seat.

"It's the drive shaft," he shouted back, still under the car.

Mom turned in her seat and looked at us quizzically, "The what?" sheasked, unsnapping her seat belt and opening the door.

"The thing that holds the car together," Dad said quietly as he got upoff the ground and brushed gravel from his hands and knees.

As he went in search of a pay phone, I climbed out of the car and sat onthe pavement, determined to get some sun before it set. I pulled the bottomof my T-shirt up through its neck to make a bikini top, rolled the sleeves upon top of my shoulders, and leaned back on my arms with my face andbody lined up with the sun. Eventually, the cab came, taking Mom, Dan,Diana, and me back to the condo while Dad waited for the tow truck. Thefollowing day, while our car was still at the shop, Aunt Barbara called Dadto say Grampy was in the hospital. He had pneumonia; his lungs were fillingwith liquid. His doctor gave him only a few more days to live.

Dad flew to Boston the next day to see his father one last time, leavingus three kids behind with Mom. Suddenly, the vacation was less fun. Momdidn't know how to throw a perfect spiral football with Dan, and she kepttelling me I was spending too much time in the sun. Worse, I had given upthe chance to be in Star 80. Three days into our vacation, my agent hadcalled to say that Bob Fosse was considering making the sister older for meand would I fly back for another audition. I had told Mom that I didn'twant to, that I was having too much fun. Now I wasn't so sure.

The Jeep got fixed, and the ride home seemed twice as long withoutDad. He liked to play punch buggy, and he let us eat at Burger King. Momonly liked word games and made us eat soggy tuna fish sandwiches on Bran -ola bread that Auntie Eve made the night before. Plus, we were all worriedabout Grampy. Mom said she wasn't sure we'd ever see him again.

We made it back to Bedford by nightfall. I was happy to be home, happyto see Max, our German shepherd, who jumped up to look inside the caras soon as Mom parked. We had dropped Auntie Eve off at her son's housein Yorktown Heights, so I helped Mom unload. I already knew that Iwanted to wear my white button- down shirt to school the next day, sinceit would best show off my tan, so I emptied all of the suitcases and starteda load of whites. An hour or two later, just as I was ironing my shirt, thephone rang. It was Dad.

"Hiya, toots," his voice boomed through the receiver.

"How's Grampy?" I asked.

"He's a fighter," Dad replied. "He's going to make it."

We chatted a bit more, and then he said, "Tell Amanda not to pick me upat the airport. And tell your mother I'm renting a car and driving home."

And then, "Kiddo, don't worry about a thing. I have everything all figuredout."

And with that, he hung up.

Amanda's room was on the third floor. I walked up the two flights ofstairs and knocked gently on her door. It had a sign on it that read, donot enter under penalty of death in chunky block letters. Supertrampwas blasting on the stereo. "Take a look at my girlfriend / She's the onlyone I got" wafted through the closed door.

I pounded harder, and then heard the scratch of the record needle anda gruff "What?"

She wasn't going to let me in, so I shouted through the door, "Dad saysdon't pick him up. He's renting a car."

Instead of answering, she put the record needle back down.

DANI woke up to Mom sitting on my bed, crying, her hands covering herface.

It was a clear night. I remember the blue glow of the moon reflectingoff the wallpaper and the silhouettes of my hobby toy cars and planes andmy battery collection.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

She told me Dad died. She said that Dad was never coming back, andthat God wanted him. And I started crying. We hugged and stuff like that.And that was that.

LIZamanda decided to go to school the next morning, but the rest ofus stayed home. Every time the doorbell rang, I'd shout, "I'll get it!" I wasgrateful to have something to do besides wander aimlessly through oursuddenly huge and foreign house. Even Max sensed something was wrong.He accompanied me to the front door each time growling softly, his hairon end. It was either a deliveryman with another arrangement— lilies,tulips, roses, and carnations, all in muted shades— or a concerned neighbordropping off a tuna casserole or a pineapple upside- down cake.

Mom remained in her bedroom all day, mostly on the phone. I eavesdropped,standing in her doorway or sitting outside on the steps going up tothe third floor, and listened to her tell the story over and over again: "It wasa car accident . . . He was on his way back home from Boston . . . He fellasleep at the wheel . . . He was only two exits from home."

No matter how many times I heard the words, the reality of what shewas saying never sank in. I kept waiting for him to pull up the driveway,tooting the horn, laughing, "Ha! Ha! Ha! I really had you all going!" Dadwas a joker. He loved a good prank. When the phone rang and he washome, he'd answer by saying "Ku- Ni- Chi- Wa" in a ridiculous SaturdayNight Live Japanese accent. Or "Vinnie's Pizzeria," winking at whoeverwas nearby to include that person in on his joke.

Plus, he was still everywhere. His brown leather slippers were sitting atthe foot of the green corduroy ottoman in his bedroom where he had lastkicked them off, and his blanket- soft baby- blue cardigan was hanging on ahook in the mudroom. I couldn't resist grabbing it, burying my face in itssoft folds. It still smelled of pipe tobacco and Colgate toothpaste, Dad'sscent. If his scent was still alive, how could he be dead? In the fridge therewere three cans of Ballantine ale and a half- eaten wedge of Stilton cheesewrapped in cellophane, which would stay there for weeks until someonerealized, I'm not sure who, that Dad was the only person in our housewho drank ale or liked Stilton cheese. And then there was the note, writtenin his choppy, left- leaning scrawl, all sharp angles and straight lines,pinned to the bulletin board near the phone: "Annie, I'm out in the barn."

I floated and fumbled through the day, lurking in hallways and listeningto conversations, hunting for clues that would prove my hunch right. Dadwas in the barn! That was what the note said! Or perhaps he actually tookthe plane and was waiting at the airport! We need to send someone to JFK!Or maybe to Newark? Or maybe the man who had died in the car crashwas someone who looked like Dad. Uncle Harry, Auntie Eve's boyfriend,identified the body. He told Mom that Dad was unrecognizable. I overheardhim say that Dad's head was so badly smashed that the only reason heknew it was Dad was because of the red, brown, black, and silver mustachesmeared across his lip. I thought, lots of men have mustaches! And UncleHarry said he was unrecognizable. So maybe it wasn't him. It couldn't behim. How could it be him?

Later that afternoon, after Amanda came home from school, I sat midwayup the stairs that led to her bedroom, listening to the conversation shewas having with Mom. The do not enter under penalty of death signhad been ripped down from her door, but the sentiment remained, as didtwo paper corners beneath pieces of stubborn tape.

"You cannot wear leather pants to your father's funeral," Mom pleaded.She sounded exhausted. I crawled silently to the top of the stairs and peekedthrough the crack where the door was ajar. Mom was sitting on Amanda'sbed, just beneath the poster of a half- naked Jim Morrison, his arms outstretchedin a slacker crucifixion pose.

I loved Amanda's leather pants. She bought them with money she gotfor her sixteenth birthday, and said she was going to wear them to concerts.She was so proud of them, she even invited me into her room oneafternoon to show them off. She had ripped out the lining to get them tofit, and still she had to lie down on her bed, suck in, and tuck her stomachto one side, then the other, in order to zip them up without catchingany flesh. Once she was in them, she looked amazing.

"They're black," Amanda said, scowling.

She was slumped in her desk chair, arms crossed.

"We'll go shopping tomorrow," Mom suggested.

"I hate shopping," Amanda said without moving. She was staring outthe window, with her back to Mom.

That's when panic first struck me— I had nothing black to wear to thefuneral. I ran down to my room and ransacked my closet. Dad had justbought me a cotton sundress for the eighth- grade spring dance, but that waswhite with purple and turquoise stripes. I also had a Gunne Sax dress, aChristmas gift, but it was pale gray calico with a white lace collar, not remotelysomber, not close to black. Dad prided himself on his attire. Healways dressed appropriately. Even though he didn't like to ride horses allthat much, he had a dashing red coat with a black velvet collar and amatching top hat he wore to go fox hunting with Mom. I needed a blackdress.

I ran to tell Mom, now back in her bedroom, her eyes raw but still leakingtears.

"You're too young to wear black, Elizabeth," she said quietly.

A lightning bolt of anger shot up from somewhere deep inside me. "IfDad were alive, he'd buy me a black dress," I said through clenched teeth,my bottom lip stuck out at her instead of my tongue, my top lip clampeddown holding back the tears whirling in my chest.

Mom looked as if I had slapped her in the face.

"Well, I'm sorry," she said. "Your father is not . . ."

I don't know how she finished the sentence because I was already running,my hand covering my mouth as my lips were parting against thehowling pressure now in my throat. I slammed my bedroom door andflung myself on my bed. For the first time that day, I cried.

AMANDAYeah, I went to school the next day. I had to get out of that fuckinghouse. Everybody was all crying and weird. And Mom was driving mecrazy; she cried nonstop from the time Dad died until after the funeral.It's like, you cry, and then you stop. You don't cry, cry, cry, cry, cry. Don'tget me wrong; I cried. I just didn't sit around all day doing it in front ofeverybody. Also, when Dad died, Mom and I didn't have a very good relationship.I was in the middle of my sixteen- year- old angst, and shewas . . . well, she was really annoying. That morning, I just couldn't dealwith her, so I drove Dad's Mercedes to school.

Up until that day, I had been trying to lose weight by walking the fourmiles to school and eating only every other day. I wasn't obese, but I wasfat compared to other kids. I mean: I had to rip the lining out of thoseleather pants because I couldn't get my fat thighs in them otherwise. It wasMom who taught me to make up my own hare-brained diet schemes. Iwas seven when she first brought me to Weight Watchers. By the time Iwas a high school junior, we were doing the Shaklee diet together becauseMom was out of work and started selling the disgusting meal- replacementshakes. I flavored mine with maple syrup extract and ended up smellinglike pancakes for the entire semester.

Then, the day Dad died, food was dropped off on the hour, like, wholebaked hams and ziti, just casserole dish after casserole dish. There was foodeverywhere. And I thought that was so funny, like, what, our dad died sowe're not going to eat? Nobody's going to open the refrigerator? But Iguess they just wanted to do something. Anyway, when I came home fromschool that afternoon, I ate an entire pineapple upside- down cake. It was thebest thing I had ever eaten in my life.

DANI didn't go to school for the longest out of everybody; I just hungaround the house for about a week. It felt big and lonely even thoughthere were all these people coming over to say they were sorry. Then myfriends Curtis and Jeremy came over after school one day. We stood in thedriveway, right in front of the house. It was awkward. We were only elevenand we didn't really know what to say to each other, so we just hung out.But it was really nice of them to come.

When I did go back to school, some kid made a joke about my fatherbeing dead and I started crying in class. Curtis stood up and hit the kid.And that felt good, seeing him do that for me. It made me feel less alone.

LIZAmanda wound up wearing her leather pants to the wake. I woremy gray Gunne Sax dress and sat in a folding chair, cocooned by seven oreight girlfriends who had pulled their chairs around me. Their eyes werefixed on me, but mine were set on the coffin, only ten feet away. Momthought I was too young to wear black, but I guess she figured I was oldenough to help her pick out Dad's coffin.

Just the day before, I sat in the undertaker's wood- paneled office listeningas Mom answered a series of questions. A man in a dark suit and whitestarched shirt sat behind a large desk and wrote her answers on a clipboard.

"Do you want him cremated?" the man asked.

"Do you have a funeral plot?"

"Will it be a religious wake?"

"How many people do you expect?"

"Do you want an open or a closed casket?"

Mom sat straight up in her seat and cocked her head to one side, confused.Now I understood why she brought me along. This man might aswell have been speaking Cantonese. This was a new role for her: Dad wasthe one who handled practical things. He paid all the bills, filled out allthe forms, hired the handymen. So she answered each question hesitantly,with a shaky voice, her bottom lip quivering.

It hadn't stopped quivering since Dad died. I had seen this expression before,but mostly on TV. It was her trademark: She'd bite her bottom lip andwrinkle her forehead, and then her chin would shake. It always irritated me,and I never once thought it was sincere, until now. I wanted to reach overand hold her face between my hands to steady her chin, to wipe away hertears. Instead, I just sat there, feeling useless. I was no help at all.Then this man asked, "What type of coffin?"

Mom stared at him and shrugged, prompting him to pull out a three-ring binder filled with glossy photos, which he placed in front of us. I flippedthrough until I saw a shiny, deep purple- y red mahogany casket with a royal bluevelvet lining.

"This is it, Mom," I said. "This is what Dad would want."

In a way, it felt as though we were shopping for a celestial car, one thatwould zoom Dad to Heaven. He had only ever driven a Mercedes- Benz aslong as I could remember, so mahogany with brass hardware and a royal bluevelvet lining seemed fitting. It was the Mercedes- Benz of coffins.

Nodding his head, the undertaker agreed and said, "Your daughter hasexcellent taste."

Mom sighed and said, "She gets that from her father." Then she askedfor the price, and I felt instantly ashamed. How could she be thinking ofmoney at a time like this?

The figure he quoted was high enough to shock Mom out of her sadstupor. "That's ridiculous," she said, then softened. "It's more than we canafford."

She continued flipping through the book, her hands shaking along withher lower lip, tears splashing onto the laminated pages, and I wondered ifthat was why they were laminated. She finally settled on an oak casket withno lining— a waste of money as, even the undertaker agreed, Dad's faceand body were so badly smashed up that a closed coffin was the only wayto go.

Sitting in the funeral home staring at the casket, I wished it were mahogany.But then I saw Mom, standing an arm's length from her husband'sbody, thanking people for coming, nodding her head as they told her howsorry they were, and agreeing with others about how awful it was. I realizedit simply didn't matter.

I spent most of that night comforting my friends, especially Adrianna,the girl who addressed all notes to me throughout seventh grade as "MBF,"short for My Best Friend, and signed them "YBF." We were no longerclose friends, but Adrianna was crying so hard that her face was slick withtears and snot, her wailing mouth webbed with saliva. "It's going to beokay," I told her, over and over. I didn't mind, though. It gave me somethingto do.

My siblings were like zombies. Dan stood with two friends, kicking ata spot on the floor, his hands shoved in the pockets of his gray flannelslacks. Amanda sat with her best friend Anna in one corner, stony- faced.And Diana stayed home. Mom thought she was too young for such sadnessand instead brought a photograph of her and Dad to place on the casket.It had been taken the summer before: Dad standing in the shallowend of our pool, waist deep in water, with Diana on his hip, her pale armswrapped tightly around his neck, her freckled face smashed against his asif she wished she were clay and wanted to mold into him. They were bothsmiling so hard, it was surprising the frame could contain the happiness ofthat moment, surprising that it didn't shatter into a million pieces, floatingall over the funeral home like dust.

DIANAI remember when that picture was taken, the one that took the placeof both Dad and me at his funeral. It was a sunny day, and we were by thepool. I was wearing a hand- me- down bathing suit that I had inherited froma cousin, a brown calico number with large circular cutouts that left onevertical strip of material to cover my belly button and one to cover myspine. I had put it on that morning, all by myself, in the bathroom I sharedwith Liz. All those holes made the suit difficult to negotiate. Bare ass on thecool tile, I stuck my feet through the wrong holes and yanked the suit up mythighs. I had to get up and sit down three times before I got it right. Ithought it was the coolest thing until my sisters told me it was hideous. Thiswas after Dad, towel slung over his shoulder, had scooped me up for thecamera that Mom held beneath the wide brim of her straw hat. I squeezedhis neck, smushing my cheek to his. He laughed and said I was getting big.Then he threw me up in the air and into the pool.

DANDad never cri ed. I cried a lot when I was little. I was a momma'sboy, always hiding behind Mom's legs because I was scared of a bunch ofthings: cats, horses, geese— you name it. This one time, Dad and I werewalking down the driveway, and I was crying and acting spoiled. Finallyhe said to me: "Stop crying, or I'll give you something to really cry about."He never told me that men shouldn't cry, but it was implied.

Like in the movie The Great Santini, there's a moment where Santini'swife has died. He and his son are in the hospital, and he says to his son,"Okay, you have fifteen minutes to go cry. And that is it." The son wentinto the hospital room and cried for fifteen minutes and that was it. Themourning was over. That stuck out in my mind. I thought, "That's whatI should do. That's what men do."

When the pallbearers walked down the aisle, each holding a corner ofDad's coffin, I saw a tear roll down one man's face. For the first time, Ithought it was okay for men to cry.

DIANAI don't remember much else about the four years I spent with Dad.I now know he was one of seven, born in Quincy, Massachusetts, threegirls and four boys, raised by a widower. He was the quarterback for NorthQuincy High, making the local paper a couple of times for his handlingof the pigskin. He worked, got fair marks in school, and teased his sistersmercilessly. My grandfather, known to us as Grampy, was a drinkingman born to a long line of drinkers, and after school, our father andhis brothers were often greeted in the kitchen by their surly and slouchingdad, his bottle half empty on the table in front of him. The unluckyson who was ordered to the basement for a bout with his old man wouldglumly descend the wooden stairs, strapping on some gloves. Uncle Russ,an artist and interior decorator who died of liver failure in 2003, got itthe worst.

It was Russ who held me the day Dad's coffin was lowered into theblazing green earth of the cemetery grounds. I hadn't been at the wake orthe funeral, but Mom brought all of us up to Massachusetts for the burial.There were people crying all around, looking at the coffin, the hole, thegrass, their shoes, the sky. Russ looked at the grass. My hands gripped theback of his neck and patted his puffy, prickly cheeks. I looked at his eyes,red and wet. They looked as if they hurt. I looked at his big ear and at thehairs that curled from the waxy hole.

"Is my daddy in there?" I whispered to him in the silence. He ignoredme, so I leaned in closer, my lips touching the hairs, and asked him again.Then I saw his eyes spilling and shut my mouth so hard I bit my tongue. Icould taste the blood, metallic like the water from the fountain at school,licking its way to my teeth. I started to cry and put my hands to his cheeksonce more, just like the cheeks I had touched in the sunshine by the pool,in the dimly lit hallways of our house, in my bed before I fell asleep.

"You look just like my daddy," I whispered. "You look just like mydaddy." My uncle turned his head and began to sob as some gray- hairedlady took me from his arms, my hands scraping his stubble as I was carriedaway.