Personal

A letter hidden in a leather journal changed the way I understood my parents' love.

I am sitting in my family’s storage unit in Glendale. I’ve been here a handful of times now, and I’m beginning to know the place—the cavernous aisles, shelves of film canisters, boxes of photographs, cabinets full of old scripts. There is the smell of polished concrete and fresh wood underneath it all, but mostly the air is scented with the damp sweetness of paper softening with time.

Today, the hours pass slowly. My head is heavy with information. My eyes are glazed from so much organizing.

An unremarkable brown box sits on the floor.

I kneel beside it.

Inside are several three-quarter-inch videotapes. Beneath them sits a small leather book, its binding worn and slightly broken. I turn it over in my hands.

Stamped in fading gold letters is my mother’s name.

Natalie Wood Wagner.

The journal and letters I found that day.

I open the cover.

On the first page is an inscription from her Rebel Without a Cause co-star, Nick Adams.

A birthday gift to Nat from Nick.

The date is 1958.

“It is a rare love that you both have for each other, and it is a rare love that I have for you and RJ. Perhaps you can use this book to keep the many memories of your beautiful and wonderful life with RJ.”

I turn the pages.

There are love notes from my stepfather. A dried rose pressed flat between the paper. Journal entries filled with my mother’s devotion to Daddy Wagner.

Then a letter slips free.

It catches my eye because it is written on blue airmail paper, the kind I remember from my childhood—thin as tissue, light as air. It reminds me of the communion wafers that dissolved on my tongue when I went to church with my grandmother.

Across the front is written Natalie Wood.

Above it, in unmistakable handwriting, is one word.

Personal.

I don’t need to see the signature.

I know Daddy Wagner’s handwriting.

The letter is dated March 6, 1962.

I start reading.

He tells my mother how proud he is that she has been nominated for an Oscar for Splendor in the Grass.

“You’ve got my vote.”

I smile because I can hear him saying it.

He writes to say that his lawyer, Andy, has spoken with her and that she is willing to proceed with the divorce.

I stop.

I read the sentence again.

The divorce.

I look back at the date.

I continue.

He thanks her for the Christmas gifts she sent to his sister Mary’s children.

“My Mother and Dad appreciated your thoughtfulness. They think you are a marvelous girl.”

He tells her she looks wonderful in the stills from Gypsy that have been published in the paper.

“I hope all is going well on the film.”

Publicity stills from Gypsy (1962)

The letter ends:

“My thoughts will be with and for you on Oscar night, and believe me, Nat, I hope with all my heart that when they open up the envelope, it’s you.”

By the time I reach the last sentence, I can no longer see the page through my tears.

I had always known my parents loved each other.

They were married twice. Their love story is a famous one.

The first time they said "I do." 1957.

What I didn’t know was how they loved each other when everything was falling apart.

Two years later, in an unpublished essay my mother wrote for Ladies’ Home Journal, she remembered hearing that my father’s first child, my stepsister, Katie had been born.

“A mutual friend of R.J. ‘s and mine walked into the restaurant and told me he had just come from the hospital. My ex-husband’s first child had just been born. I cried when I heard the news.”

This is not the love of movie stars, or the mythology that has been created around them. These are two human beings navigating real life heartbreak.

I put the letter back into the little leather book and closed the cover. Nick Adams’ inscription was still there on the first page, faded inky blue script, a wish he made in 1958 that this book would hold “the many memories of your beautiful and wonderful life with RJ.”

He was right. It just took longer than anyone expected.

I closed the box and sat with it on the concrete floor. My sisters, step-siblings, and I didn’t inherit their fame, or their fairy tale. We inherited this: a lawyer named Andy, a birth announced by a mutual friend in a restaurant, a line about an Oscar envelope written by a man in the middle of a divorce. We inherited the proof that you can be in the worst of it with someone and still write “you’ve got my vote.” That’s the template I measure my own life against — not the ending, but everything they were willing to say to each other along the way.

Somewhere in this storage unit are more boxes I haven’t opened yet. One day, I will get to them. For now, I put the book back where I found it, the sweet smell of old paper and damp cardboard. I sit there a bit longer and then I get into my car and drive home.

Family photographs and one small reminder of the love they shared.