Читать книгу Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me - Tony Cointreau - Страница 10
ОглавлениеAfter Mother arrived in New York and had made peace with the fact that she was expecting a second child, she placed herself under the care of the top obstetrician in the city. She decided that I would be born at Doctors Hospital, which in those days was set up to feel more like an expensive hotel than a regular hospital. I have been told that on any given evening, you could find a cocktail party on your floor.
As the expected date of my birth drew near, Mother informed the doctor that she didn’t want to be leaving for the hospital alone in the middle of the night, and therefore she would be entering Doctors Hospital on February 6, 1941. On the morning of February 7, she would do her hair and makeup, after which she was to be put to sleep while he delivered her child.
On the morning of February 7th, Ashie and a family friend were at the hospital waiting for my mother to come out of the delivery room. As they wheeled a half-conscious Dotie down the hall, Ashie anxiously asked how she felt, and was mortified when Mother replied in front of everyone, “I feel as drunk as you do every night of your life,” which was probably not far from the truth.
In her room, after it was all over, Mother was lying in bed fixing her hair and makeup when a nurse showed up in the doorway with a baby—me—in her arms. Mother, whose maternal instincts only went as far as life or death situations, waved to the nurse in the doorway, said, “Hello, little baby,” and went back to fixing her hair.
However, I do have two pictures of Mother holding me shortly after we went home from the hospital.
At the time of my birth, the only news Mother had received about my father was that he had been killed in action. Still in mourning, she named me after him, calling me “Jacques,” and true to the French tradition, put a name on my birth certificate that was longer than I was—Jacques-Henri Robert Mercier-Cointreau.
