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One morning, three weeks after I had spoken at Fay Franciss funeral, Rebecca Brightman arrived in my hospital room to remove my staples and to tell me it was time for me to go home. Lucy Jane Wasserstein Age. To the right are the short-term residents, who will stay anywhere from one night to a week. But apparently this is privileged information. She had seen a lot of things in the N.I.C.U., but she wasnt accustomed to bellowing Cuban men in feathers. He split with her sometime in 2008. When I was a child, Lola would always kiss our kepele (Yiddish for little head) before any major test. And Labor Day was when my brother Bruce and his wife were expecting their second child. I see Audrey Hepburn. I held her closeall ten pounds of herand told her not to be frightened. A graduate of the Calhoun School (she attended from 1963 to 1967), Wasserstein earned a B.A. She came from a family of four children. My daughter, like some other critical babies in the N.I.C.U., was under a plastic container, as if she were a hydroponic Bibb lettuce. ''I just assumed I would have no trouble, being a big, hearty girl,'' she said. She attended Mount I arrived at Smith College some 20 years after Wendy Wasserstein attended neighboring Asked about the rumors that he was gravely ill, he told reporter Anthony Bianco, Its just silly, and added, Im exactly the same weight I was ten years ago. When I called my friend Jane Rosenthal to tell her about my new fall plans, she immediately swung into action. Cindy does yoga and is working out all the way through. Lie on your left side and the doctor will be with you in a few minutes.. Of course, as with most families, the majority of mine who had gathered at St. James that morning didnt have the slightest idea what was going on in my life. Wendy Wasserstein (1950-2006) By Tamsen Wolff. I want you to get into a taxi and go over to Mount Sinai Hospital. I imagined Lola grabbing her heart and knocking over several Isolettes. In the sixties and seventies, fighting for the rights of queer people was considered radical activism. Half an hour later, my gray St. James suit was strewn over a stool in the Labor and Delivery ward at Mount Sinais Klingenstein Pavilion. An affected fetus can suffer from stunted growth, or can die if the placenta separates from the uterus. You have a daughter, Becky Brightman said to me. Anyone can read what you share. Why is your proposal for Mars different from anybody elses? Sternly, she showed me how to pump each breast separately or, if I liked, both together, a sort of duet for mammaries. With dark hair and bright-blue eyes, she reminded me of Suzanne Pleshette in her pre-Bob Newhart phase. There are at least fifteen nurses on duty at the N.I.C.U. The Newest Wasserstein Creation Comes Home, https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/23/arts/the-newest-wasserstein-creation-comes-home.html. Bernard Gersten, executive producer of Lincoln Center Theater, was there. How One Mothers Love for Her Gay Son Started a Revolution. Pinterest. Thank you, Catherine., I hate that Irish nurse, Lola said. Preclampsia, I came to learn, is better known by the name toxemia. Lying on her side, she had a C-pap (continuous positive airway pressure) tube in one nostril, to keep her lungs inflated. Perella says he has never spoken to Forbes about the split but explained, Some marriages last forever. When the condition occurs late in the third trimester, mothers are immediately scheduled for childbirth. At the end of the conversation, Reichstetter told Rosen, He really believed in people. That comment got Rosen thinking. She weighed less than 2 pounds. The writer James Lapine (''Passion,'' ''Sunday in the Park With George'') and the set designer Heidi Ettinger (''Big River,'' ''The Secret Garden'') brought mother and baby home. Ad Choices. Wasserstein became ill in 2001. For most of my life, my mother, Lola, who has the petite build of a Fosse dancer, had told people that her age was twenty-one plus. When her oldest granddaughter turned thirty, my mother became thirty, too. Des Moines, Iowa. And so, if you believe that, youre not bound by common morality, and youre just incredibly ambitious and impatient and not held back by that.. I had called my brother Bruce just before the delivery, and at nine that night he approached the desk at the N.I.C.U. So I hope you dont mind, but I asked her to come only with you or with scheduled permission. or. Its classic Bruce, one of his former partners tells me. ''She came early because she knew it was hard to get in,'' Ms. Wasserstein said. So, around her 40th birthday, along with ''Lose weight,'' ''Write a play'' and ''Read more,'' she put, ''Have a baby.''. On her chest were penny-size sticky pads holding down wires that were attached to a machine that measures heart rate, pulse, and oxygen level. Mother: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Wendy Wasserstein. In a pregnant woman, the condition can lead to a seizure, and possibly a coma. In his opinion, my preclampsia was potentially life-threatening and I should prepare myself to have the baby that afternoon, depending on the lab results. I think he met some unexpected problem that caused his untimely endvery sad, amazingly sad, says one of his longtime friends. There was Tina Howe, Marsha Norman and Honor Moore. Even at thirty, she takes Broadway dance classes every day. It never varied, and I had a lot of meals with him, right? dog razor burn after surgery. Im O.K., and Ive given up on that other thing., Thats why I came over, he said, his voice cheerful and, as always, a little too quick. Michele K. Silverstein came to see me. It was almost time for Shayna to go home, too. But when we stopped seeing each other I felt there was no reason to abandon the project. It was very complex. Ms. Rosenthal's personal assistant mingled with her baby sitter and housekeeper. In a sense, she has lived most of the stories in her plays. Contact info. is a large open space divided in the front by a long reception desk and ringed by a wallpaper border of rabbits and Teddy bears in hot-air balloons. I opened my sweater and put her inside. She had another sonogram, and the ventricles are still enlarged.. You need a laugh on the third line, I said. With no information about Lucy, I couldnt bring myself to go back inside to the fluorescent lights, the ringing bells, and Mrs. Kaur endlessly knitting afghans for her twins. lucy jane wasserstein college. But a mother just holding her baby, skin to skin, makes an enormous difference.. He was accessible, and, with the right anecdote, I could make him giggle. Linda Janklow, chairwoman of Lincoln Center Theater, and Lynn Nesbitt, the agent, attended. She got serious first at City College, where she found encouragement in Joseph Heller, followed by Yales famously cutthroat drama program, where she was barely Call me. I began to sing to her softly: Picture yourself on a boat on a river where tangerine peaches meet marshmallow skies. I knew that those werent the right lyrics, but they were close enough. Meryl Streep, Ms. Wasserstein's friend from the Yale Drama School, sneaked in to see the baby, incognito. She wheeled in a breast pump that looked as if it could bail out a battleship. in the morning, a friend called to warn me that there was a large item in a daily tabloid speculating about the identity of my childs father. As I rocked her, I whispered to her, We are so lucky!. If you look at the success of the firms with which Bruce was associated, says Rosen, I believe that what made his life remarkable was the impact he had on people: the people in whom he believed, the people who he supportedand obviously there were those who he didntand the effect that he had on the professional and personal development of those people over a long period of time. After a while, you just began to cave. So, thats the way he was. Another? I hadnt heard of the first one, and I panicked, just as my mother would. in creative writing from City College of New York in 1973, and an M.F.A. At the same time, Ms. Wasserstein's brother, Bruce, the investment banker, whose wife was giving birth to a son elsewhere in the hospital, went around the building proclaiming of Lucy, ''It's my child! Twitter. You know, its impossible to lie on my left side and to be out of this room at 11 a.m. Im a person, not a grouper!. *. Add photos, demo reels. I slapped him back and kissed my daughter. Ventricles are completely normal! He put up his hand for a high five. She doesnt know if you want to see her. Bruce had told my mother about the birth. My pediatrician later explained that the illness was hyaline membrane disease, a lung affliction common in premature babies. She thought Id pick up a little art history plus a husbandand security. I spoke at a funeral this morning. I held up Cindys pregnancy photos. Names are a big deal to a playwright. On Monday morning, as I was trying to translate Dr. Phillipss cardiovascular-speak, my troika of female obstetriciansLaurie, Michele, and Rebecca Brightmanappeared. He had a remarkable ability to get his way, even among the headstrong and rather self-important bankers and lawyers who make up the mergers- and-acquisitions community. In January 2008, Wasserstein wrung from his handpicked board of directors a new five-year employment contract that paid him $900,000 a year in salary, plus an annual unspecified bonus, plus 2.7 million shares of Lazard, worth just under $100 million the day the deal was struck. Congratulations! Im the babys father.. Even in her Isolette-brand incubator, my daughter was elegant. Together with the Asian, Caribbean, and Irish nurses, our wing of the N.I.C.U. Your daughter had a bad night, he informed me gently. On hand, it seemed, was much of the theater establishment, including at least two of Lucy Jane's ''fathers,'' Mr. Graham and Mr. Bishop. She needs a name, he said. It was really quite special because they were arm in arm, Toby Myerson explains. Wasserstein and Perella had a reunion of sorts in February 2008 at the Lotos Club, in New York, during a dinner celebrating the 20th anniversary of the founding of their firm. In January 2009, a few months after the birth of that childa daughterhe married another woman, Angela Chao, then 35, an executive at her fathers shipping-and-finance conglomerate, and the sister of Elaine Chao, George W. Bushs labor secretary. Born Oct 18, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York; died Jan 30, 2006, in New York, NY; dau. There wasnt enough room in the corner of the N.I.C.U. Nobody knew more about Wasserstein, and in particular this aspect of him, than Perella, the founder of First Bostons fledgling mergers-and-acquisitions group. But when Georgette asks Pamela if it would be all right to be interviewed, she nixes it. Lucy Jane Wasserstein. Looking out at the stars, I began to weep. ''She's home. Becky Brightman is a beauty. And the idea that either Bruces or Wendys admirers might want to pay their respects by visiting their gravesite is not received kindly. Ms. Wasserstein had a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, where she was writing ''Old Money,'' a play about money and class to be produced at Lincoln Center next fall. Hello, darling, he said. But even a man in a suit is no guarantee against lung damage and anemia. Lazards apparent obfuscation of Wassersteins health issues is nothing new, however. Dr. Goldstein is deeply committed to womens-health issues, and she still wears the insignia of her activist generation: dangling earrings, little makeup, and evolved-graduate-student attire. My family genes do not specialize in shoulder blades or collarbones. The only cure for preclampsia is delivery. These babies tend to be twins with a touch of jaundice, or full-term newborns with some small complication. Relax for a few minutes. This was a reporting coup for sure, since Wasserstein had all but abandoned the idea of allowing himself to be the focus of a major magazine story after Deirdre Fanning of Forbes had written the infamous Bid Em Up Bruce cover story, of August 1989, which suggested that Wasserstein encouraged his clients to hugely overpay for companies. I will never forget this place.. Fay was a descendant of New Yorks Harriman family, a Wasp doyenne who lived on the Upper East Side and was always properly decked out in pumps, gloves, and Schlumberger brooches. Shes a good baby, even if she does look like you wouldnt pick her out in the poultry department.. (Ms. Wasserstein is writing a prose account of her pregnancy.). '', Finally, just before Thanksgiving, Lucy was doing well enough to go home for the holidays. Suddenly, Michele K. Silverstein burst in. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. We continue to mourn his loss. Compassionately, wed ask a nurse if everything was all right when a cardiac monitor light suddenly blinked on. There were forty babies in the N.I.C.U., and each was attached to monitors like these. I got on a flight to Europe the next night. His success in building firms was his success in building people. Not bad for a guy who was willing to make it up as he went along, as his old friend Larry Grafstein put it. Those Latin women over there come snooping around here, and I wont let them get near either of our babies.. Relax and lie on your left side.. Now, suddenly, I felt like Hester Prynne, and my daughter, who was in intensive care with a possible brain malfunction, was fodder for gossip columns. Cindy never has to lie on her left side. Would you like to hold Lucy? Catherine asked me that morning. The brain ventricles are slightly enlarged, but I wouldnt worry about it, he told me. Twenty minutes later, Dr. Laurie Goldstein came into the room. Someone else came in who said he was the father, she said, referring to Gerry, who had been given a hospital bracelet marked Father when we were in the delivery room. Yes. A graduate of Mt. On Shaynas Isolette was a sticker that read Please Call Mother Day or Night with Any News on Her Condition. At first, Miss Hutchinson seldom said hello. By - November 27, 2022. I told my daughter I had named her Lucy because when she waved to me from the sonogram I thought of her as Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, saying hello. Do you have some I.D. Every two hours, I was awakened to have my blood pressure taken. You have your work and your friends, but you deserve some personal happiness, too., For the funeral, I put on a gray suit and gray pearls. I left a message on my mothers machine: Hello, Mother. . I sat down on the freaking steps, and he stood over me, Perella says. All rights reserved. How would you like to have a baby today? she asked. I washed my hands as Catherine opened the incubator. (Claude, who was said to have been heartbroken, declined to comment for this article.) what happened to deidre on rock 92. [After such negotiations] you were always off-balance and exhausted, Perella recalls. He left all the day-to-day work up to [newly appointed C.E.O.] She asked me where you were., My blood pressure was up again. It was a millennium prophecy close to a miracle. I put my hand through the Isolette porthole and stroked her tiny fingers. (Years earlier, it is said, he suffered from a heart condition and had quadruple-bypass surgery.) I couldnt bring myself to smile one more minute or pretend this was all just routine for me. She reached William Ivey Long during the final dress rehearsal of Contact and told him to get up to Mount Sinai to redecorate my room. She mentions one particular relationship with a man that didn't worked out. Born: Sept. 12, 1999, in Mount Sinai Hospital, New York. Manolo Blahnik. Michele passes Becky an instrument. Wendy Wasserstein (October 18, 1950 January 30, 2006) was an American playwright. Im in the middle of a sentence right now, he said. Not yet, I answered. With bells going off constantly, the place sounded like S. Kleins during a lingerie sale. WebWasserstein's daughter Lucy Jane was born three months premature, weighing in at one pound twelve ounces. There is even debate inside the firm about the role he had in Krafts prolongedand ultimately successful$21.4 billion acquisition of Cadbury, the British chocolate company. I put my hand through the porthole and touched her head. They knew that Wasserstein had pledged to the analyst community that Lazard would pay out a maximum of 57.5 percent of annual revenue in the form of compensation, so this was a zero-sum game: what he took for himself would necessarily cut into what they could make. Theres going to be a human settlement on Mars, and I want to be part of Mount Sinais advisory team.. When he came to see me, he said, You should know that babies born after only twenty-five weeks gestation are at a higher risk for having lung or brain damage than those born even at thirty weeks. In a nearby corner was Mrs. King, another African-American woman, and her son, and to her right were the Kaur twins, Tony and Tina, whose father owns an Indian restaurant on Columbus Avenue. Hes fine. Lola is my fathers official spokesperson. I called William Ivey Long, an old friend from the Yale Drama School, who had been my fertility confidant. He was my first and most compassionate fertility doctor. She died today of lymphoma. Seeing himself as the Nietzschean bermensch, he believed he played by different rules than everyone else. All rights reserved. Wendy Wasserstein is survived by her Im working on it, I told him. Her brain was doing fine, though. While I was being injected with hormones that could make a tyrannosaurus give birth to a foldout couch, my oldest sister, Sandra Meyer, who was an advanced breast-cancer patient, was having monthly chemotherapy treatments. A nurse had just told me that my brother Bruce and his pregnant wife, Claude, had booked the delivery room across the hall from me for the following week. She was Holly in ''Uncommon Women'' (1977), about a Mount Holyoke graduate and her friends who cope with the uncertainties of identity in the new age of feminism. I was to be moved to the fourth floor for a weekend of observation. Not a problem, he told me. The day after I delivered, the news that I had had a baby flashed through the theatre community. The bells in the N.I.C.U. She cares for at least four premature babies and, perhaps even more difficult, deals with their mothers. Your blood platelets are beginning to drop, Becky Brightman informed me at 10 a.m. Dont panic. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Most of us didnt really notice for a while that he was gone because most of us had very little interaction with the guy. I looked over at Shayna. The longer we can keep that baby inside of you, the better the babys chances for survival are. He smiled at me. I was examining a twinkling ruby light on my babys big toe. Years active. Im at St. Barnabas Hospital, in New Jersey.. (As was chronicled by Wendy herself in the pages of The New Yorker, she had conceived her daughter in 1999 through in-vitro fertilization. She wore a tiny pink-and-blue-striped cap that made her look like Santas tiniest elf. Im going to the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, he told me. Rob Phillips. I tried to take deep breaths and think about those pears from the Fruit of the Month Club. Lucy Jane (born September 1999) Comments. Catherine was off duty. A nurse stuck her head in: Your ex-husband is here! I had no idea whom she could be talking about. Dr. Green interrupted me as I was feeding Lucy one night. Mother of. (I learned a few weeks later that his group had been accepted to advise on missions to outer space. WebWasserstein, who never married, became pregnant at the age of forty-eight; her daughter Lucy Jane was born in 1999. I was the nurse who admitted your daughter and will be her primary-care nurse during her stay here.. The fact that he was sick wasnt noticed by a lot of us for a month or two., In July 2006, Wasserstein was seen around town again. He was just given over to complete narcissism. The decade of loss had almost passed, and I was content to be uprooted, in space, alone. I knew that I was teetering on the high end of high risk. There is a rhythm to visiting the N.I.C.U. He was 61 WebAmerican playwright. the firm would now be a shadow of its former self, assuming it was even still around. in critical condition. He first encountered the young, disheveled, and brilliant Bruce Wasserstein in 1976, when Wasserstein was an energetic associate at Cravath Swaine & Moore, the white-shoe Wall Street law firm. Her next play in Most preemies turn the corner when they weigh a kilo (2.2 pounds). The light was heating up her capillaries and tracking her blood pressure. She received the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1989 for her play The Heidi Chronicles . Cindy never has swollen fingers and legs. Itd be the best thing that could happen to the firm! (Lazard declined to make any of its board members available to be interviewed or to comment on any part of this story. Bruce had the ability to take what he knew about the law and translate it into action that was going to accomplish the clients objective. Nowadays, Perella recalls what he really thought when he first saw Bruce in action: I dont know who this S.O.B. Then a hospital social worker came into the room. Within a week, she had gained a pound, although, Ms. Wasserstein noted, ''weight gain runs in my family.'' ''He once named a sheet after me,'' Ms. Wasserstein said. When Im frightened, I become excessively polite. Leaving the N.I.C.U. By this time, Shayna and Lucy Jane were each strong enough to drink from a bottle. After his death, Lazard issued another cryptic statement: Mr. I lowered my voice. Although I remain a religious skeptic (St. James and Temple Emanu-El notwithstanding), throughout my days of awe at the Klingenstein Pavilion I had a kind of blind faith. Unfortunately, instead of making my hair straight, the hairdresser decided to express herself through my natural curls. ', ''And that has been very true in my life. My decision to keep my pregnancy a secret from most of my friends was a simple one. After assuring me that everything was O.K., she said, I think I may also have overstepped myself. Log in or sign up for Facebook to connect with friends, family and people you know. Listen to Episode 2: At the Core from Sweet Stories in the Dell. ''It was: 'Get the nightie. Wasserstein had been hospitalized in serious condition for an irregular heartbeat. No one sleeps in hospitals. My daughter was attached to an I.V. At four in the morning, a nurse told me, Its one-eighty-nine over ninety-five. The costume designer William Ivey Long (''Crazy for You,'' ''Chicago,'' ''Guys and Dolls'') decorated the hospital room. Bruce was a consummate gentleman, a man of his word whose handshake was the same as a written agreement, said Marty Lipton, the senior partner at Wachtell Lipton. It was kind of, well, I won. I just spoke to one of the leading experts on preclampsia, in Tennessee, he told us. Theres nothing like sitting in fertility doctors offices, looking at photos of the children theyve nudged into creation and knowing that youre the negative statistic. However, Antonio Weiss, Lazards global head of investment banking, who worked with Wasserstein closely on the deal and led it after Wasserstein died, couldnt disagree more: Bruces last deal was specifically designed to acquire the target company at the lowest possible price, he says. I have a photograph of Sandra from the mid-nineteen-sixties, surrounded by men in suits, when she was the first female product-group manager at General Foods. Word around town was that Chao was fine with his decision to adopt Wendy Wassersteins daughter, Lucy Jane, and have her come live at 927 Fifth after Wendys death. Honest you do, honest you do, honest you do. I had never been hospitalized before, and hadnt realized that the experience was a non-stop meet and greet. So Ive gotten you a room back on the Labor and Delivery floor, and well just keep you there as long as we can., Gerry Gutierrez pushed the gurney down the hall. Lucy herself, though, was not present; it was cold season and no one wanted her to catch anything. I brought something for Shayna, I said, and handed her a package. But I was panicking, and not just about my platelets. It's quite emotional. Because she had been ill the previous Christmas, we had cancelled our lunch, but I had called to wish her well. Share. I looked up at the screen and saw a tiny hand waving at me, as if to say, Hold on, Mom. Before I returned to the N.I.C.U. But before moving ahead, she first had to decide whether to have the baby alone. Bruce and Kathleen had a very, very animated discussion about politics and the present state of political affairs. But I had lost my momentum. Female. During Lucys hospital stay, my brother visited her regularly. Wasserstein and Perella met while working a corporate acquisition, and within 20 minutes of their first encounter, Wasserstein had taken control of the meeting. Im not saying that you have it. I want you to teach her how to survive!, My mother dropped my hand. Bhutani and Parr were appointed to the Lazard board in January. I went home, got into bed, and cried. The approximately $7 billion bankruptcy filing was the largest ever in retailing at the time. So I shouldnt front-run them., Indeed, the story that lots of people are telling is that Wasserstein was living an unhealthy lifestyle. Her dark eyes were shining as if she were still a girl playing by the Vistula River in Poland. Hurricane Floyd was raging outside, and incision staples were pinching my stomach. In this episode, Caperton interviews President Meredith Woo, professors Carrie Brown and Jeff Key, and students Cailey Cobb '20 (now an alumna!) I got up at 5 a.m. on August 27th to write Fay Franciss eulogy. Or maybe I was starring in a pro-life Christian docudrama warning young girls not to grow up into self-centered heathens: Marry young and procreate! More at IMDbPro. We were there, I hoped, for the long haul. The drama, starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, is a study of male lonelinessa familiar theme in prestige TV that finds renewed urgency in an Asian American context. A lot of doctors wear them. Finally, a bout with a rare form of lymphoma Dr. Holzman came over to me as I looked at my baby from my wheelchair. My anxiety level, however, was mounting for a different reason. On August 2, 2006, after Lazard reported its second-quarter earnings, the Financial Times asked Steve Golub, who had been acting as the firms C.E.O. Its wonderful having my daughter home, but the other one being here is very hard. (In December, I learned that the twin in the N.I.C.U.had not survived.).

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