Joan Juliet Buck | 03/23/2009 12:00 am
Joan Juliet Buck: A Kind Witness in a Dark Moment
In response to: What was your most embarrassing moment in the workplace? The boardroom? The executive dining room?
I’m going to write about Natasha Richardson here. I knew her very little, but every time I saw her, she always was so present and so immediately aware of whatever was going on that you felt she was part of your story, somehow in the same script. Her death has left me stunned and very sad, out of proportion to the death of a famous person or the death of an acquaintance, and I realize it’s because in some way she was a kind witness in a dark moment.
Just before I left a French magazine, I had to go through a bunch of files, letters and lists with my assistant. It all had to be done in great secrecy. I didn’t want to do it at home, because my assistant was a sobbing, intrusive sort who tended to erupt in loud wails. My father was so upset by the whole thing that he’d moved back in with me. I was trying to keep him cool.
So I met the sobbing assistant in the most private public place I could think of, a tiny annex to the bar at the Bristol Hotel. It’s just big enough for one sofa, which we took. Cappuccinos and files on the little table in front of us, and the air filled with the assistant’s sobs.
Her eyes red and a wad of Kleenex in her hand, she was asking, “What do I tell so-and-so?” and I was trying to think of a nice, generalized euphemism when I heard English voices. I didn’t look up.
“Oh Mon Dieu!” cried the assistant “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” she began to tremble.
I still didn’t look up.
“Mon Dieu!!” she keened, and pointed.
I looked up. There stood a knot of blonde fame. Vanessa Redgrave with Joely and Natasha Richardson. All three of them staring at us, speechless. In ordinary times I’d have jumped up, hugged Natasha, shaken hands with Vanessa and Joely. In the magazine times I’d have asked them to pose for the magazine. Right now I had no idea what to do. The assistant coughed and cried into her Kleenex. I felt busted, revealed, exposed. No way to explain why I was there at 11:30 on a Wednesday morning, sitting with a woman wracked with sobs.
I think I said, “Aaah.”
Natasha took charge, told her sister and mother, “There’s a lovely table out there!” and swung them around. Then she came over, gave me a hug, and whispered, “I’m not going to ask how you are, but you really have to cheer that woman up.”
Just before I left a French magazine, I had to go through a bunch of files, letters and lists with my assistant. It all had to be done in great secrecy. I didn’t want to do it at home, because my assistant was a sobbing, intrusive sort who tended to erupt in loud wails. My father was so upset by the whole thing that he’d moved back in with me. I was trying to keep him cool.
So I met the sobbing assistant in the most private public place I could think of, a tiny annex to the bar at the Bristol Hotel. It’s just big enough for one sofa, which we took. Cappuccinos and files on the little table in front of us, and the air filled with the assistant’s sobs.
Her eyes red and a wad of Kleenex in her hand, she was asking, “What do I tell so-and-so?” and I was trying to think of a nice, generalized euphemism when I heard English voices. I didn’t look up.
“Oh Mon Dieu!” cried the assistant “Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” she began to tremble.
I still didn’t look up.
“Mon Dieu!!” she keened, and pointed.
I looked up. There stood a knot of blonde fame. Vanessa Redgrave with Joely and Natasha Richardson. All three of them staring at us, speechless. In ordinary times I’d have jumped up, hugged Natasha, shaken hands with Vanessa and Joely. In the magazine times I’d have asked them to pose for the magazine. Right now I had no idea what to do. The assistant coughed and cried into her Kleenex. I felt busted, revealed, exposed. No way to explain why I was there at 11:30 on a Wednesday morning, sitting with a woman wracked with sobs.
I think I said, “Aaah.”
Natasha took charge, told her sister and mother, “There’s a lovely table out there!” and swung them around. Then she came over, gave me a hug, and whispered, “I’m not going to ask how you are, but you really have to cheer that woman up.”
Read more about: Career, Embarrassing Moments, France, Joely Richardson, Natasha Richardson, Paris Vogue, Vanessa Redgrave, Vogue, Work
- Dear Margo: When Dad/Gramps Just Ain't Interested
- Could Mammograms Fall Victim to Obamacare? by Liz Peek
- Liz Smith: Sharon Stone, Steve Tyrell, Sarah (You Know Who), Glamour, Lesley Gore – and More!
- LIZ SMITH FLASH! The Kennedy Conspiracy and the Mafia
- Remember shopping pre-Internet? What era/memory in the evolution of shopping do you think of most fondly?
- The Love Goddess: In Sickness and in Health ... But Hold the Sickness
- Let Down and Felt Up? by E.D. Hill
- Mr. wOw: Falling in Love Again With 'Marlene'
- The World in Vogue (Photos)
- Caption This!
- LIZ SMITH FLASH! The Kennedy Conspiracy and the Mafia
- Dear Margo: When Dad/Gramps Just Ain't Interested
- Liz Smith: Sharon Stone, Steve Tyrell, Sarah (You Know Who), Glamour, Lesley Gore – and More!
- Liz Smith Remembers the 'Good Old Days' of Department Stores
- Could Mammograms Fall Victim to Obamacare? by Liz Peek
- Remember shopping pre-Internet? What era/memory in the evolution of shopping do you think of most fondly?
- Mr. wOw: Falling in Love Again With 'Marlene'
- The Love Goddess: In Sickness and in Health ... But Hold the Sickness
- Caption This!
- Lily Tomlin Is Coming to NYC!
- Could Mammograms Fall Victim to Obamacare? by Liz Peek
- Dear Margo: When Dad/Gramps Just Ain't Interested
- Let Down and Felt Up? by E.D. Hill
- Caption This!
- Remember shopping pre-Internet? What era/memory in the evolution of shopping do you think of most fondly?
- LIZ SMITH FLASH! The Kennedy Conspiracy and the Mafia
- Mr. wOw: Falling in Love Again With 'Marlene'
- The Love Goddess: In Sickness and in Health ... But Hold the Sickness
- Liz Smith: Sharon Stone, Steve Tyrell, Sarah (You Know Who), Glamour, Lesley Gore – and More!
- The World in Vogue (Photos)
wOw Features
Reader Voices
Caption This!
Dear Margo: When Dad/Gramps Just Ain't Interested
4 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
Isn’t it just crazy… how people touch each others lives? that’s a beautiful story about connection and empathy. I of course never met her, never knew her, but her reaction "fits" my image of her.
sometimes when i’m bitchy and mean feeling I remember stories my mom used to tell me about waiting tables. and how many peoples lives she’d affected without knowing it. and how her simple kindness to some of her customers meant the absolute world to them in that moment. and then I try… not always succesfully… but I try.. to change my attitude and to be kind. becasue you never know who needs it that very second. like you did that day you ran into Natasha and her famous family.
Just thouhgt of a story that I have to tell that goes along with how you never know what’s going on in someones life the day you see them. and how you react to them could affect them.
About a decade ago I knew a family that had three gorgeous daughters. movie star beautiful vibrant girls. One of them was off cheerleading for an NFL team while two of her sisters remained home going to school and working. two of the sisters were raped and tortured and murdered along with another girl on one brutal night with one brutal man. The mother found them alive but dying in a home full of gore one morning.
about a year after that tragedy I was out at a bar and the remaining sister who had returned home after the murders was coctailing at this bar. the parents were sitting at a table in the bar with another couple. it was a busy busy night in a popular bar. and i watched as this girl did her job and saw how some people were assholes to her and I thought "what would they think if they knew about what this beautiful child and her family had just suffered" would they behave like that? I think not.
so the times when i’m feeling mean. when i’m pmsing or im self righteous or impatient and there is someone in front of me i’m about to react to. sometimes i’m blessed and i recall her face and that moment and i stop.
The power of images. Do you remember the lovely photographs in Vogue of the (for want of a better word) Redgrave women? I think they must have been taken at Millbrook. Rachel Kempson in a regal brocade robe, all of the generations intertwined. The love was palpable on the page. I always felt Liam Neeson landed in the thick of it, and what luck. When I saw one photograph of Vanessa Redgrave entering the hospital last week, her head covered in a grey scarf, the press didn’t have to tell me what was going to happen. Her eyes told me everything. Once you have been exposed to a traumatic death in the family, you don’t have to be told what those eyes mean, and Ms. Redgrave has always been such an open valve letting us in. Very brave, to leave yourself that open. I am sure we have all been thinking of our own losses this past week. I also read the lovely piece you did with your childhood friend, Anjelica Huston, and what she has lost so recently. Another woman touched by an early traumatic loss. And she has the most charming habit. I read an interview a while back where she described the different jewelry of her mother that she wears in her films. What wonderful saved images for her to have in memoriam.