Stewart was raised as one of six children in Nutley, New Jersey and considered herself the favorite child of her father Edward because she was a “per
Stewart was raised as one of six children in Nutley, New Jersey and considered herself the favorite child of her father Edward because she was a “perfectionist” like him. But according to Stewart and some of her siblings, Edward could be a volatile presence in the home—“a dissatisfied, unhappy human being” who began his days with a cup of coffee and a glass of red wine.
Her father’s alcoholism meant he struggled at work and “couldn’t support six children,” says Stewart. She began gardening, in part, because the family struggled to put food on the table. Edward could allegedly be critical of his kids’ gardening efforts. “We had our whippings,” Stewart’s brother Frank Kostrya says in the doc. Adds her brother Eric Scott, “To this day, I despise gardening.”
Stewart later enrolled at Barnard and began dating Andy Stewart, who was studying law at Yale and would become her husband. “I had never slept with anybody before this,” she says in Martha. “He was very aggressive. And I liked it.” But when she broke the news of her engagement to her father, “my dad slapped me,” says Stewart. “Slapped me hard on my face and said, ‘No, you’re not marrying him. He’s a Jew.’ I remember getting that slap,” she continued. “I was not at all surprised because he was a bigot, and he was impulsive. But I said, ‘I’m going to get married no matter what you think.’” They wed in 1961.
Martha didn’t revel in becoming a mother.
Stewart’s daughter, Alexis, was born a few years later in 1965. “Turns out it’s not natural at all to be a mother,” she says in the film, tracing her discomfort with being a parent back to her own upbringing. “There was not a lot of affection in our house. How could I be a really great mother if I didn’t have the education to be a mother?” Stewart’s friend Kathy Tatlock says that Stewart was often relieved when Alexis took a nap and she could be alone. “She took care of Lexi, but she didn’t dote on her,” according to Tatlock. “She was always a bit chilly.” Alexis herself, who still maintains a close relationship with her mother, says: “I grew up in a very uncomfortable house, and I learned to suppress most of my emotions.”
Martha and her husband Andy were both perfidious during their marriage.
While on their five-month honeymoon in Europe, Stewart admits that she got caught up in a moment with a stranger. As Andy stayed at their hotel, Martha opted to tour the Duomo in Florence. “It was a very romantic place, crowded with tourists, and I met this very handsome guy,” she recalled. “He didn’t know I was married. I was this waif of a girl hanging out in the cathedral on Easter Eve. He was emotional. I was emotional. It’s just because it was an emotional place. It was like nothing I had ever done before. And so why not kiss a stranger?”
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