The most difficult task of all was simply getting through the day, every day. Even in my high school drama class, whether in scene study or a term play, I’d been sublimely lost in the work, connected to myself, completely unaware of time as it slid by. But now every minute seemed to repeat itself, never ticking away as minutes are supposed to do but ticking up and down in the same place. To stay alive, not to mention awake, I created little games for myself, just as I’d done at the racetrack with Dick. I stopped reading the scripts beforehand, would wait until I was called to the set, then stand beside the script supervisor to look at the current scene and try to memorize my dialogue instantly. The game was to see if I could do it all in one take, then it evolved into seeing if I could do it in one breath. Both are valuable exercises for an actor, but I sure as hell didn’t know it.
Many of the directors we had on the show—a different one for each episode—literally pushed and pulled me into place, like I was a bowl of fruit, and by then I’d gained so much weight I looked like a bowl of fruit. After they’d yank me to my spot, I’d take a lungful of air and play the game, saying every line in one breath, give or take a paraphrase or two. I would do other takes if they wanted—and they usually did—which meant the distraction of my games would wear off, and I’d be thrust headlong into deadly boredom.
I couldn’t make myself numb no matter how much I ate, which ultimately made it worse. Then I was bored, ashamed, and fat: the poster child for self-loathing. Maybe I was only feeling the young adult in me pushing to emerge. Maybe I would have been struggling no matter where I was or what I was doing. Certainly, I was earning a living, and I can’t imagine what I would’ve done if I hadn’t been. Maybe it takes the distance of so many years to feel grateful. At the time, all I could see was this character, a one-dimensional girl whom I was embarrassed to be playing, and an endless string of days in which I was powerlessly trapped inside her.
One afternoon toward the end of that first year, I was standing in the mother superior’s office surrounded by all the other nuns—something I had done countless times before. Just like every other day, I started to say Sister Bertrille’s chirpy words, when suddenly I hit a wall, stopped midsentence, and flat-out couldn’t continue. I put my face in my hands and sat down, begging the feeling to pass so I could jump to my feet, dust myself off, and start all over again with a big plastered-on grin. But I couldn’t. A tiny voice inside my head whispered, then pleaded, Suck it up and get on with it. I just couldn’t. I was stuck behind my fingers like they were glued to my face, couldn’t look up, couldn’t look at everyone looking at me, couldn’t even release enough to begin crying. I sat on the floor in front of the mother superior’s big desk with my legs crossed and my body bent into my lap. As if I didn’t really want to be heard, I quietly mumbled, “Please let me go home. Please let me go home. I’ll do better tomorrow. Please let me go home.” I kept repeating it, rocking forward with my palms mashed into my eyes. I don’t know what the rest of the actors were doing or how they reacted to this sight. I only know I felt a strong, unapologetic hand grab hold of my arm, seeking not to look in my face but to guide me. It was Madeleine, the mother superior. I wasn’t completely sure she was my friend. Then I heard her quiet, clear demand, never raising her voice but stating with a kind of force that no one questioned, “Get her a car and a driver. She’s finished for the day. Now.”
If anyone said anything in reply I didn’t hear it, and I couldn’t force myself to look for fear I would see the dismay or disapproval on their faces. Madeleine placed her whole body around me—though not really in a hug. She didn’t make cooing sounds or try to be reassuring, she simply encased me as I walked blindly forward. And as she guided me toward the huge sliding stage doors, I heard the loud honking sound announcing their movement, heard the clacking as they parted, and felt the sunlight when she led me through. I never took my hands from my face as she pressed my head down, only slid onto the front seat of some vehicle—I have no idea what—and was silently driven home.
The next day, I energetically propelled myself through the work as if nothing had happened, while fleeting looks of sympathy and out-and-out bewilderment shot from everyone, including the crew. Late in the afternoon, Madeleine took hold of my arm, pulling me into a dark corner. She lowered her head to mine and whispered, “You’re going to meet me at this address after work next Tuesday,” and stuffed a folded scrap of paper into my pocket. “You’re doing it. It’s not far from here. You can go right from work.” I looked at her, not knowing whether I felt warmed or repelled.
“It’s the Actors Studio. Have you heard of it?”
“Yes,” I muttered.
“Well, you’re coming. I’ll meet you there.” She stopped and stood back, watching me.
Registering the challenge I saw in her face, I replied, “I’ll be there.”
10
Together
IT WAS JUST an ordinary-looking house in an ordinary-looking Hollywood neighborhood a few blocks south of the Sunset Strip, twenty minutes from Columbia. After parking on the street, I walked up the steep driveway with my heart pushing against my shirt, hoping that Madeleine’s would be the first face I saw. At the top of the drive was a small building that perhaps had been the garage at one point; now, where the wide car-size opening might have been was a long white clapboard wall with an ordinary door standing open at the end. A cluster of people gathered under the yellow glare of the naked light bulb mounted above the door, while a swarm of moths danced around the glow.
Still looking for Madeleine, I stepped through the back door of what appeared to be the main house, sliding awkwardly between those waiting at the coffee machine, nodding at everyone who met my eyes. These were all actors and as I scanned the small group, I recognized several faces, though I couldn’t pinpoint from where. At the same time, I felt the energy of being recognized myself, if for no other reason than the fact that I was new and nervous. And there she was, lost in an animated conversation with a tall woman who wore her frizzy gray hair pulled back in a long ponytail. When she saw me, Madeleine’s pixie face crinkled into a relieved smile, as though she had half-expected that I wouldn’t show up. She moved forward, calmly introducing me to everyone while pulling me out the door and up the path to that onetime garage, where everyone eventually headed. Inside was a mini theater with gradually elevated rows of chairs facing a curtainless stage. People were taking their seats, moving with a kind of certainty that indicated they’d done this before and had a preferred spot. Madeleine chose two chairs, not in the back but not in the front where force of habit had been pulling her.