My mother could make me anything I wanted to be. As a child she transformed me into a swan, a mermaid, a white Persian cat dressed like an elegant Victorian lady with a porkpie hat and a ruffled bustle to accentuate my tail. She’d trained as a costume designer. At a time when most of the women from her milieu were headed to the Seven Sisters to study French or literature and get a ring on their finger, she was painting nudes at the Art Students League, sleeping with handsome men poised to become actual Hollywood legends, and earning herself a spot at the Yale School of Drama’s design program even though she didn’t have a bachelor’s degree. She could create worlds from paint and cardboard and cloth. Edith Head, who would go on to win countless Oscars for her costumes, wanted my mother to come out to LA and make movies with her. Her teachers wanted her to stay at Yale and teach. Sondheim wanted her in New York on Broadway.…