With my hair in Shirley Temple ringlets and Steve holding my hand, I went to the ceremony wearing a dress that Baa had made for me at the last minute. Then in the midst of the show, and without any rehearsal, I was connected to the damn wires by a man who assured me that he’d flown Mary Martin in Peter Pan billions of times, and without warning, he nonchalantly hoisted me up like a flag on the Fourth of July. And off I went.
Suddenly I was sailing across the historic grove wearing a pink taffeta culottes outfit and heading toward the stage doing what felt like forty-five miles an hour. Directly in front of me, the man onstage widened his stance, bracing for the catch, and at that moment, I realized I was about to make physical contact with John Wayne, one of the most legendary actors who has ever lived. As I got closer to the Duke, I began nodding a polite hello, like we were entering an elevator together. Holy Mother of God, let this night be over. After the catch was accomplished with a thud, he held me in midair while I opened the envelope to read that the best newcomer of the year was Dustin Hoffman for The Graduate. Big applause. Dustin comes to the stage to give his speech of appreciation, as Mr. Wayne steps awkwardly to the side with an armful of smiling me. The happy winner leaves the stage to return to his seat, at which time Mr. Wayne proceeds to put me on the ground (or what would have been the ground if my feet could have touched it, which they could not). Thinking our work together is done, he turns to leave while I begin to dog-paddle my feet. Foolishly, I then look out at the forest of faces, the entire industry, and quickly grab the back of his tuxedo jacket to hitch a ride, pleading, “Oh, Mr. Wayne, Mr. Wayne.” If I’d had a gun I would’ve shot myself, but with the way things were going, it would’ve bounced off the harness and hit some innocent bystander.
And waiting for me at our table in the back sat Steve, smiling sweetly through it all, looking like a young Steve McQueen to my insane Baby Jane.
Right after The Flying Nun pilot was picked up, I’d moved from my first apartment in Encino to one in Malibu, just down from the Colony. It was in a twelve-unit complex standing on tall wooden stilts, like telephone poles, allowing the waves to roll under the building at high tide, vibrating the floor and tingling your feet. When production started in June of ’67 my MGB started racking up mileage as I drove to and from work every day—PCH before the sun came up and PCH long after it went down.
I remember dragging myself home one night, relieved to be out of the scratchy wool for a few hours, and when I opened the door to my apartment there on the sofa sat Steve, happily sifting a large brick of grass through the sieve I used to drain spaghetti. Like most of our generation, he had found marijuana, and on the coffee table before him was a small mountain of freshly cleaned weed, waiting to eventually be dumped into the two-foot-tall Brach’s candy jar standing empty on the floor. He’d push and plead and criticize, but I rarely participated in either the cleaning or the smoking of it. I told myself it was because I had so little time and that frolicking through the night, eating Hostess Ding Dongs with abandon, was something I didn’t need. That I had a job. Which was all true but in reality, I didn’t know how to frolic and Steve did.
During the day while I was at work, Steve would often rescue Princess from her life in the Valley, bringing her to the Malibu apartment to get her away from our incoherent mother, who was in the process of falling apart, and her father, with his freak show of false posturing. Jocko’s career was down to an occasional low-paying personal appearance, and soon he disappeared, abruptly departing with one of the many women in his life, leaving me to pay the rent on a small apartment in the Valley for my broken mother and little sister.
Now fourteen, and almost six feet tall, Princess ran wild like an escaped puppy frantically sniffing and peeing everywhere with no one to grab her collar. One moment she seemed like my comrade, and the next she felt like a responsibility I didn’t know how to accept. But unless I took her to work with me—which I did frequently—I wouldn’t see her. Too often I’d drag myself into the apartment late in the evening, and everywhere I looked would be the remnants of the fun-filled day that Steve and my sister had enjoyed. Sand still on their feet, they’d sit on the balcony smoking a joint, and no matter what I said—or didn’t say—my “adult supervisor” tone always gave me away. I began to feel like the boring grumpy ant to their happy-go-lucky grasshoppers.
Steve really needed to have a life of his own, separate from mine, with his own identity. But how do two people grow up together, build strength in their own legs, when they’re always leaning on each other? How could he find his place in the world when my life kept sucking him in, making it hard for him to take those first wobbly steps to begin a craft or career? Maybe that’s part of the reason why he’d lose interest in everything after his initial burst of enthusiasm. He’d won a track scholarship and though he had real talent, he was impatient with the coaches, aggravated by their rules and the mindless, repetitive tasks he was forced to do, so he stopped going to practice.
As I look back right now, I realize that it was all of those mindless, repetitive tasks I was forced to endure day after day, the getting up and doing every scene the best I could, over and over, that gave me a kind of “miles in the saddle.” They strengthened muscles not located in my body but in my heart—muscles not easy to access and certainly not fun. But easy is overrated and fun is extremely relative.
As that year crawled away, month after month, summer somehow becoming fall, I began to change for reasons I couldn’t name, other than the fact that I was working all day then coming home and instantly turning into Ebenezer Scrooge. And when, in a moment of anger, Steve told me with a dismissive air that this “acting stuff” was nothing, that anyone could do it, that he could do it too if he wanted, the self-righteous out I needed presented itself. Midway through that first year of the Nun, I found myself alone. I was without Steve and my brother and my mother. I didn’t drink, as Baa did, so I ate. And for the first time in my life I wanted food, over all else.
I would drive to work early in the morning, work all day, drive home at night, eat, and go to sleep. Next day, I would wake up before it was light, drive to work, work all day, drive home, eat, sleep. And on Saturdays, I would go into the recording studio or do a photo layout, then fill the rest of the day cooking and eating, trying to drown my loneliness in a vat of spaghetti with gobs of meat sauce and a whole chocolate cake, unable to stop eating even when I was in physical pain. And always I was alone, hiding in a closet of food.