Though I never saw him again, I’ve never forgotten the kiss.

  The kiss across the lake opened up a whole world of possibilities for me. Throughout my life I’ve had some wonderful, compassionate, and caring boyfriends. In the short run, however, the magical kiss with the boy across the lake was the only magical kiss for a while. But next door to us at Denbigh Farm lived this guy who had braces and a crush on me. He would leave me little valentine notes in my mailbox, sometimes accompanied by a rose. The notes would read: “Meet me in the woods down the hill by the wooden bridge over the creek and we’ll kiss.” I guess I agreed to meet him because he was sweet, and I felt bad rejecting him (a people-pleasing pattern I am still trying to grow out of).

  When the day came I was very nervous. I too had braces (and headgear, yikes!) and I asked my friends if I’d get stuck to him if I kissed him. I remember exactly what I wore that day: high-waisted, baggy jeans from the Gap, a button-up cardigan sweater embroidered with little flowers over a T-shirt, and brown suede hiking boots to complement my bob haircut, bushy eyebrows, and braces. Sexy.

  We met by the wooden bridge and stiffly faced each other. “Ready?” he asked. I nodded “Okay, one, two, three…” It was about as romantic as a sack race, not the same as the kiss on the dance floor at all. I was so disappointed.

  Things weren’t much better in athletics. At an all-girls private school you’re forced to participate in sports all year long: field hockey was in fall, basketball in the winter, and lacrosse in the spring. I was not good at sports. I was not competitive. It was not fun. I was so confused. In my disease-inflicted body I felt as though I were running in molasses while surrounded by cotton candy. But the good news is, I didn’t give a flying fuck about sports. The only reason I participated was that I had to. I was the chick who would score a goal for the other team. The coaches would speak to us and I couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying.

  What I didn’t know was that Lyme sufferers aren’t cut out for the rigors of sports. One time I dropped unconscious, from what we assumed was low blood sugar. This was a feeling I would become very familiar with throughout my life, and one that is familiar to most longtime Lyme sufferers. There was another time I went away to squash camp in New Hampshire with Liz Meyer, a friend. I hated it from the moment I got there, and as I remember, Liz wasn’t all that thrilled, either. Our first night I said how great it would be if something gave us a reason to leave the camp. The next morning I was in a fetal position in pain. Our moms flew up to New Hampshire in a small plane because I was in the ER with ovarian cysts (a common abnormality in Lyme sufferers). There was no hotel nearby for them to stay in, so they ended up sleeping on the floor of our dorm in sleeping masks and D. Porthault pajamas. That was pretty much the end of my squash career.

  I did much better in drama and art classes at Sacred Heart. I was a pretty good painter. Once we had to pick a famous painting and try to re-create it with the material the artist used. I chose one of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. I did such a good job my mom put it in a fancy frame and hung it in our living room, right over the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s furniture (minus the chaise longue) in Denbigh Farm. An interior decorator once came to the house to take photographs for a book that was going to include Denbigh Farm and, thinking it was a real Van Gogh, took a photo of my painting, which they used for the book! I was ten years old.

  By seventh grade I started to feel more socially at ease, but that comfort level had an unusual side effect. I would sit with my coterie of Courtney, Alex, and Danielle at lunch and we’d just die laughing. We’d be wearing our uniforms—blue and white pin-striped polyester cotton blend skirts with white Polo shirt—and someone would say something hilarious and I would laugh so hard I would pee in my pants. Literally, just as I did in the Piggly Wiggly when I was a kid. Spontaneous peeing became a bit of a theme for me. It was only later I would find out that Lyme disease can cause a whole host of bladder problems.6

  At one point, Mom decided to take me to a urologist to find out why I peed when I laughed. She scheduled the appointment on Halloween. I went dressed in a black, stretch cotton evening gown, long white gloves, a pearl necklace, big black sunglasses, and my hair up in a French twist topped with a tiara. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, one of my mother’s favorite movies. My mother loves Audrey Hepburn, especially in her role as Holly Golightly. I walked into the appointment fully in character. “Do you mind if I call you Fred?” I asked the doctor as coyly as Holly Golightly said to her upstairs neighbor.

  He gave me a pamphlet that explained Kegel exercises, which pregnant women do to strengthen their bladders, but I didn’t do them because I was in sixth grade!

  By seventh grade at Sacred Heart (the school had classes from first grade through high school) we had a very strict headmistress named Mrs. Hogan, who wore a lot of vintage Diane von Fürstenberg wrap dresses. She was all about manners and being “proper young ladies.” We were made to study Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers, which I was forced to teach to my younger siblings every Saturday for one hour because I was the eldest, and put into a mothering role, and my mom was adamant about proper manners. At Sacred Heart, all that rigorous training made me feel as though I were in military school; we weren’t even allowed to link arms with our friends in the hall. But I found a way to lighten things up.

  Like my anger outbursts, laughter took me out of myself, away from the emotional and physical pain, but in a much more enjoyable way. That’s probably why I let go the way I did (and do). I wanted to squeeze every bit of… well, juice out of it. When I was younger, my dad always made me laugh. He’s really funny, and he can imitate anyone he’s just met. He’s also quick-witted. When Anna Wintour presented the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award to my father, she mentioned his talent as a mimic onstage and asked if he’d like to imitate her.

  “Not to your face,” he said.

  I came to find that laughter had the power to transport me out of the pain and isolation that came with Lyme, but back before I knew I had the disease I laughed just because I couldn’t help myself. I still do.

  I love Cup of Noodles soup. I ate it almost every day at lunch. One day, when I was sitting with the same cast of friends, I laughed so hard I inhaled a noodle. I thought it went into my eye and I was still laughing but then I was peeing in my pants. I ran to Sister Sheehan in the lunchroom and told her that I had a noodle stuck in my brain. Luckily, Sister Sheehan was the cool nun—she used to tell us to pray in the shower because it was the easiest time to do it—but she might have overreacted to my situation. She put me in the front seat of her white minivan and tore up the pavement to the emergency room at Greenwich Hospital. They called my parents, who met us at the emergency room. The doctor poked inside of me.

  “Honestly, the noodle is going to dissolve,” he said.

  six

  VALIUM AND HELICOPTERS: “ZE DOCTOR VIL ZEE YOU NOW”

  “Don’t tell me what I’m doing; I don’t want to know.”

  —FEDERICO FELLINI

  My mom and dad went out of their way to ensure there were outlets for my innate creative talents and I found that, like laughter, acting provided an escape from the cloud of Lyme disease that had begun to choke me. I took every extracurricular acting class in Connecticut, I think, and performed every chance I got. My parents sent me to acting camps both in Nantucket and at Stagedoor Manor in the Catskills.

  My first night at Stagedoor, I was getting to know some of my bunkmates when someone asked me where I was from. I reluctantly told them Greenwich, which I hated to do because I always felt judged and categorized. Then one of the girls said that she heard Tommy Hilfiger’s daughter was coming to camp.

  “Really?” the other one chimed in. “I thought Tommy Hilfiger was gay.” The rest of the heads around the room nodded. “He’s a fashion designer, after all,” one of them said.

  I wanted to set the record straight and tell them that Tommy Hilfiger adored women, had four children, and was very comfortable in his heterosexuality—he was also very comfortable around others’ sexuality, no matter what it was. But I thought discretion was the better part of valor in the situation. So I just kept quiet and waited to see how things played out. I eventually set the record straight and owned up to who I was. I am sure this might have embarrassed these people, but sometimes I liked to have a little fun and watch people dig themselves into the dirt.

  At camp and in school, I acted in plays like The Wizard of Oz (I was the Lion), Oliver Twist (I was Oliver), and Jack and the Beanstalk. At Stagedoor Manor we performed The Good Woman of Setzuan and I played an old woman. I took any opportunity to be involved with acting; it let me express the emotions and frustrations that continued to build within me.

  As I look back on the character of the Lion from Wizard of Oz, I can relate to him more than I imagined at the time. Courage—that’s all I needed. I can gratefully say that I found courage, not by visiting a wizard, but by digging deep down into the tunnels of desperation and blind faith.

  When I was in eighth grade I got my big break. A family friend named Mary Pat Kelly wrote the book and lyrics for a musical called Abby’s Song, a Broadway workshop production. The show was a Christmas story that posed the question, What if the shepherd boy in the Christmas story was actually a girl? Several of the roles in the play were young girls and Mary Pat thought that one—the lead’s best friend—might suit me. I read some lines and sang for her and was cast in the role.

  I was thrilled, but high hopes were almost dashed by my rigorous Catholic school. My rehearsal schedule was such that I would miss a considerable amount of time at school. Around that time, I went with my parents to Scotland, where they were going to renew their wedding vows. I remember being on a plane and reading something that, even with the new glasses my parents had bought me, was all blurry. I looked up from my book and began to plead my case. I wasn’t getting anything out of school anyhow, I said. I couldn’t keep up with the kids anymore. I was nervous about going to high school there. My parents knew how much I really wanted to do the play. To their credit, it didn’t take too much to talk them into it.

  For ninth grade I was enrolled into Eagle Hill, a school for children with learning disabilities, which I guess I qualified for, but the main reason I went there was that it was the only school in Greenwich that would accept me with the busy acting schedule. I suppose going there came with some type of stigma, but I never gave it much thought. To be honest, attending Eagle Hill gave me a lot of confidence in my ability to study and boosted my ego because, frankly, I could perform better than my classmates. Once again, though, I felt different and apart from the other kids. This time I was at the other end of the spectrum—I was the smart and well-behaved one in class. Still, my experience at the school was mostly positive and productive. The same, however, can’t be said for my time during winter break.

  My parents were skiers. We arrived in Lech, an Austrian ski village, at a darling little ski lodge hotel that was very quaint in a time-warp way. Elizabeth was only about four years old, and Kathleen was two. My brother and I were assigned a snowboard instructor and we hit the slopes as soon as we could go.

  After getting warmed up and accustomed to being on a snowboard, I felt confident and cool enough to start trying to impress my attractive, blond sixteen-year-old instructor. My brother and I sat on the chairlift and were excited to practice our new moves and finally get a cup of hot cocoa. As we debarked the chairlift, I went to snap my foot into the board as fast as I could and prove that I had this down. While reveling in my glory of being all ready and waiting for the boys, I turned and the top half of my body fell to the left side while my legs stayed grounded to the board and snap! Something felt as if it broke on the right side of my body. I heard the pop.

  I blacked out and woke up to the loud sound of a bright red medi helicopter landing in front of me. I was stripped down to my undershirt and the medics asked me where it hurt. I pointed to my right hip and cried. I was whisked up into the helicopter and injected with something that knocked me back out.

  Meanwhile, down the slope, in a stone and wood restaurant with lovely views of the mountains, my parents were sipping rosé and eating homemade Austrian sausages in their Moncler ski outfits. Their blissful lunch was rudely interrupted by helicopter-roaring overhead on its way to the hospital one hour outside of the resort.

  “Oh, I hope that poor person is okay,” said my father to my mother.

  Moments later a waiter dressed in traditional Austrian lederhosen approached my parents with a cordless phone, telling them they had an urgent call. My mother told me later her heart dropped and my father’s face turned as white as the plate on which their now-cold sausages were sitting.

  “Oh my God, where is she?” my father asked, holding his breath. When he looked back to tell my mother that they had to go to the hospital, she was already in the women’s locker room removing her ski boots from the heating tubes, throwing off her white fur slippers, and packing to rescue her daughter.

  Beige lipstick application? Check. Boots? Check. Are my two-year-old and four-year-old going to be okay if I leave to help my eldest daughter? Check. (They had a nanny.) Get Tommy to rent a helicopter to transport us to the hospital ASAP? No check. There were no helicopters available to leave at that hour. Driving in a tiny Audi in a snowstorm with a man who looks like he ate too many homemade sausages and who doesn’t speak English? Check.

  As I emerged from the MRI, I regained consciousness. German-speaking doctors and nurses in old-fashioned white uniforms surrounded me, explaining (in broken English) that “ze hip joint of you has slightly disclocate and zere is traumatic from your bones in zat area of your joints.”

  “I want my mom! Where is my mom?”

  “I’m right here, sweetie. Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay. Daddy is talking to the doctor. I love you.” She turned. “Where the hell is that doctor? My daughter needs more drugs!”

  A nurse brought a needle to inject into my IV. Warm. Calm. Dark. Sleep.

  I learned later that my mother requested another hospital bed so she could sleep next to me. Beige lipstick? Check. Cashmere blanket? Check. Mason Pearson hairbrush? Check. Bergdorf Goodman pajamas? Check. D. Porthault cotton sheets? Nope. She went in anyhow. Roughing it! I can do this. It’s happening. I woke and began to vomit from the strong painkillers they were giving me. “Get her a bedpan now!” I heard my mother yell. “She is throwing up all over! I can’t stand the sight of vomit! Please give her something else! Oh this morphine, these doctors! Where are we? I can’t have my daughter in this place! Where the hell is the doctor?”

  A nurse in her white uniform strutted in as if she were coming to refill Mom’s coffee. “Madam, ze doctor is at his annual New Year’s Eve party. He will be here in ze morning. May I offer you some Valium, madam? It calms ze nerves for you.”

  Did I fail to mention that this event occurred on New Year’s Eve?

  Waking up in a strange hospital in the middle of Europe on New Year’s Day is like waking up in a dream—or better yet, a Fellini film set in the Alps in 1959. But it was 1999. The doctor finally graced us with his presence and my mother scrambled out of bed, ran into the bathroom to brush her hair, apply her lipstick, and slip her feet back into her Ferragamo bow shoes.

  I, on the other hand, was puffy, pale, my hair a knotted, greasy mess. I had dried vomit crusted on my mouth and sheets, and I could barely see straight.

  “Young lady, well, I am glad to say that today is ze day which you can leave only if you do zis one sing first wiz yourself for me.”

  “Okay, anything, I’ll do it, tell me!”

  “You must walk viz ze crutches from one end of ze hall to ze oza.”

  “Okay! Where are they? Mom, stop fussing with my hair! I have to do this so we can get out of here!” My mother put down the hairbrush and pouted at the sight of my hair, which she had attempted to conquer.

  The nurse walked into the room carrying the crutches. Moving even to use the bedpan to pee was a challenge for me, so imagine my trying to get out of the hospital bed to walk. I believe they had given me doses of ibuprofen, since I could not tolerate the morphine, and I could feel a lot more. I felt as if someone were yanking my joint back and forth really hard. I had to make this work.

  I told myself, Don’t be dramatic, just suck it up. Breathe, pretend you’re that character at the end of the movie who is walking for the first time with her new leg and it is a miracle!

  Everyone was silently hunched over, staring, waiting, collectively hoping I could work the old-fashioned crutches.

  One step, okay, fifteen more steps, don’t put any weight on that right leg! Just lightly step and make it look like you’re walking. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. I really don’t know how much more of this I can do, and I have to take a break. Stop, breathe, don’t cry, Ally, don’t do it. Damn it, you’re doing it!

  Tears streamed down my face like rainwater off roses.

  I was scared and felt very helpless, but the overarching feeling I had was pain. Shit was it painful!

  I gave myself a pep talk: Ally, you are used to pain, you can act your way out of this, you are strong, you are a fighter, a faker, a champion. Do one thing to make yourself proud. Now, come on! We can’t have Mom making another scene, they will commit us both. Just do it.

  And I did it. Don’t ask me how. When you really put your mind to something and feel that you have no other choice, some power comes over you and gets you through it. It’s like a dream.