The Beautiful Kind

“I can’t get the thumb tack in the wall — I’ve got the saddest life” - Edie Beale

I finally saw the documentary called Grey Gardens. It was about this old mother and her 55-year-old mentally ill daughter who lived an isolated, impoverished life in a 28-room dilapidated mansion in East Hampton, New York. (The estate got its name from the grey color of the dunes, the cement garden walls, and the sea mist.) The pair were also the aunt and cousin of Jackie O. They lived in the house for over 50 years. Unable to keep up with repairs, there were raccoons coming and going through holes in the walls, and their eight cats pissed wherever.

The mom, big Edie, sat for the most part in her bed piled with junk, doing things like singing to her old records and cooking corn. The daughter, little Edie, wandered the grounds lamenting lost loves, adjusting her head scarves, bursting into dance, and bitching about her mother. It was fascinating to watch them go at it, the manipulative dance, pushing each other’s buttons.

The mom died not long after the film, and the daughter sold the house (it was fully restored) and wandered the country as a cult figure. She died alone in 2002. A movie based on the documentary is now in the works, and will star Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore. Now that I’ve seen the film, I want to call outfits “costumes,” lunch “luncheon,” and when I have to leave a place, I’ll announce that “I must be on my course.”