My Father's Daughter by Tina Sinatra

Author:Tina Sinatra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Dad wanted his mother close to him after Marty died. During his sabbatical, he moved Grandma into a house he’d bought next door, where she’d pore over the Racing Form with Jilly over breakfast each morning. (To help persuade Dolly to uproot herself, Dad also moved Grandpa’s remains to the desert. Grandma came with Uncle Vincent, a tiny, darling man with a severe limp from World War I, where he’d earned a Purple Heart. With no family of his own, he’d lived with my grandparents since the late thirties.)

Dolly was Dad’s cross to bear. They had a very particular dynamic. He adored her, indulged her, took care of her; she drove him crazy five times a day. Dolly knew all of Dad’s buttons and freely pushed them. She’d exhaust him in a way that only she could get away with.

Their breach over Barbara cut deep and took months to heal. Then peace reigned for a while on Wonder Palm Drive, but soon they were at it once more. Dad would sigh and say, “She’s not speaking to me again.” They’d go for days without so much as a greeting—which wasn’t easy, since they lived about a hundred yards apart.

In the end, it was Dolly’s stubbornness that killed her.

At eighty-two, she still proudly followed her son’s career and went to see him perform whenever she could. On January 6, 1977, Grandma was to join Dad and Barbara on a chartered jet to Las Vegas, where Dad was set to open at Caesars Palace. At the last minute, for some unarticulated reason, she changed her mind and opted to go later in the day.

Dad reluctantly agreed, on one condition: that Dolly leave before dark. It was a violent, stormy day, with the weather expected to worsen that evening. The chartered plane turned around and was set to take off again at three o’clock, but Dolly stalled and delayed, even after the pilots called her house to hurry her. She would leave when she was ready.

To her housekeeper’s surprise, Dolly chose not to wear her best mink coat or good jewelry that day. She was in a strange, reflective, prayerful mood. As our gardener, Angel, delivered Dolly to the airport, she told him, “If anything happens to me, everything goes to my grandson.”

The two pilots, meanwhile, were rushing Dolly and her friend, another older woman, to say good-bye and get on the plane. It was five o’clock, and the sky was darkening by the minute.

At five-thirty, Dorothy Uhlemann reached me at home and said, “Your father wants you to know that your grandmother’s plane has gone off the radar screen. He wants you to sit tight and not go anywhere. He’ll call you soon.”

Dad did his first show, performing in shock and suspension, and even taped a Brazilian liquor commercial immediately afterward. But he sent apologies for the second show. There’d been no sign of Dolly’s plane. When Dad called me from home, his voice was grim, his message honest: “It doesn’t look good, Sweetheart.

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