know, Esther steps out of the pool au naturel. I cannot take my eyes off her. With her luscious, languorous locks of hair and curvaceous, robust figure, she is like a goddess standing there as she towels herself dry. Soon she disappears into their bedroom through a sliding-glass door off the patio, and my flirtation with the goddess is over as quickly as it started.
Next, Dad gets out. He is very much the man I imagine him to be, with a trim and athletic physique that complements his manly package. For a second, he looks my way. I shudder at the thought of him catching me. Fortunately, he doesn’t see me. He picks up the other towel off the chaise lounge, dries off, and joins Esther in the bedroom for a very long time, like a half hour. I go back into the living room to watch television. It’s getting close to dinnertime, and I’m getting hungry. In the meantime, I walk into the study adjacent to their bedroom and start my homework. The bedroom doors are still closed.
Suddenly, Dad appears right behind me. I turn and look. He is standing there naked with a huge erection. Never in my life have I seen anything like it. I am this seven-year-old kid, a guest in my father’s home. Still learning the ways of the world. Still trying to figure things out. And now my father is standing there as if nothing is wrong, his corn dog sticking in my face as I try not to stare.
“Hey, amigo,” he says, “you must be getting hungry.”
I avert my eyes away from Dad’s big salami. “Yeah, a little,” I mumble. I’ve watched National Geographic specials and stared at enough pictures in magazines to know what penises look like. Dad’s, however, is beyond my comprehension.
I add, “I was wondering when you guys were going to come out.”
Dad carries on like we are having a normal conversation, as if nothing is out of the ordinary as his flagpole still stands at attention. “We took a swim, amigo,” he says matter-of-factly. “Esther is taking a shower and then she is going to start dinner.”
I can only think of one thing: “Wow, is that the way I am going to be? I hope so!”
The fact Dad is so well endowed makes me realize later why women loved him and put up with his shenanigans. As the years went on, I never mentioned the incident of the erection or its effect on me. I do ask once, much later, “Did you ever play around on Esther?”
And Dad says, “I never fooled around on Esther.”
“Nothing ever stopped you before with other people.”
“Well, with Esther, it’s different,” he admits. “She loves having sex and we do it a lot.”
I laugh. “Oh, thanks, Dad.”
“More importantly,” he adds, “she treats me so well I could never live with myself if I did anything to hurt her.”
It is a very mature thing for my father to say. Especially for the biggest corn dog in the studio system who, along with Douglas Fairbanks, had more tail than two of Gene Simmons of KISS fame. Simmons brags about how he has had two thousand women, but he has nothing on my father. Between his stardom in Argentina and glory 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.