As we sat, mercifully but awkwardly quiet, a pressure began to build inside my mind; maybe I could just whisper how sad I was feeling, maybe he would ask me why, maybe then I’d know how to answer. Go, Sally, go. I opened my mouth to start, and Dick cut me off.
“Sally, I have to tell you,” he said quickly, using his wadded napkin to wipe the grease off his mouth and the tears from his eyes, “I will always miss my children. Do you have any idea how much it hurt me to lose you? You and Rick? I never got over it… never.” He took a sip of water and looked at me. If only I could have said, I’m right here… You never lost me… You never saw me, but I’VE BEEN RIGHT HERE! But I couldn’t. Instead, I put my hand on his shoulder, patted him just as I had when I was four, and instantly turned into the village idiot. “Hey, it’s fine. We’re all fine. Come on, Dick, tell me, who flung gum in Grandpa’s whiskers?”
When the meal was over, the dishes were in the sink, and my promise to return was repeated to everyone, Dick walked me to the front door, stopping at the entrance, where he stood with his arms folded, legs apart as though bracing himself against a strong wind.
“Sal,” he began nervously, “you remember when you asked me to give you the twenty-five dollars you needed to join that workshop? The one where you got noticed? None of this would have happened if I hadn’t given you that money. Your mother didn’t have it. Do you remember?”
“Yes, I remember. I hope I thanked you.”
“Well, you can thank me now. I need to borrow some money. Just five thousand. Of course, I’ll pay you back. I just need it for a short loan.”
“I don’t think I have five thousand dollars. I don’t know. I… I just got a business manager… a few weeks ago, just to help me with taxes and stuff.”
“That’s great. Just great. If you give me his number, I’ll call him. Then I don’t have to bother you.”
“I don’t remember his number,” I said quickly, wishing this would stop. Knowing what it was like to be broke had made me afraid of money—or the lack of it. So much so that I couldn’t look at it, didn’t even know how much I had. But however much it was, I sure as hell didn’t want to give it away.
Dick pushed on. “That’s okay, what’s his name? Tell me his name and I’ll find the number. Then I don’t have to bother you,” he repeated.
I longed to see the interior of my dreaded Ferrari, to feel the safe isolation of my dreary rented home, but I nodded, then jotted the name on the notepad Dick quickly produced, one that still had NATIONAL DRUG CO. printed on the top. As I turned to go, Dick slung his arm over my sagging shoulder, pulling me toward a small bathroom.
“Listen, Sal, I’m your father. I want you to come here anytime, okay? Let me give you some things to take home.” He dashed toward the kitchen, returning instantly with a brown paper bag.
“I got some stuff here that you might need,” he said, opening a cabinet to reveal row after row of stacked boxes and bottles. “Here, some aspirin,” he said, tossing a large bottle of Bayer into the bag. “And Vicks VapoRub, large jar. Stick some in your nose when it gets stuffy. Works wonders.” He continued to toss items into the bag with a running commentary: “Decongestant spray? Diuretics? Peggy loves these, gets rid of all the puffies. How about some mood elevators? I use ’em when I play golf. Helps me with my game.” From a large jar he removed a dark green oblong capsule. It was either the twin or a very close relative of the green bombers I’d been given to lose weight, except now it was being called a “mood elevator.”
“How ’bout some laxatives? Here, these are great. Stool softeners?”
I nodded my head at everything, bewilderingly pleased and grateful for each added ingredient, like a kid who couldn’t get enough sprinkles on her ice cream.
I drove back in the pouring rain, blurry and dazed but knowing I had a father who cared enough to make sure my stools were soft. What the hell, it was better than nothing.
Looming on the horizon, like a funnel cloud coming my way, was the Nun’s second season, and I couldn’t find the tools to board up my brain, or the safety of a cellar to withstand the twister of another nine months of colorless nonsense. I felt hopeless, futureless. I desperately wanted to believe that I’d find my way through this, that something was possible on the other side, that someday I’d be offered roles that I’d be proud to play. I wanted at least to be considered for other projects, to have a chance—even if I wasn’t available. But in those days, there was a pronounced class system between the artists of films and the crude laborers of the small screen, especially situation comedy. And I was the Flying Nun, right at the top of the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” list.
I had hardly thought about the fact that months earlier I’d signed up to do a scene at the Actors Studio, had almost forgotten that the only date I could get was right before production was to begin again. Only now did it dawn on me how close that day really was. I hoped that Madeleine would be back from New York and sitting in the audience, because it would be my first scene performed at the Studio and the moderator would be Lee Strasberg.
I remember feeling dark and depressed, dressed in my ragamuffin clothes as I sat on the floor of the theater arts section at the public library. Flipping through play after play, though not necessarily reading them, I was looking for scenes between two characters when I stumbled upon a long one from Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Respectful Prostitute. Without knowing what the play was about, I knew I’d found it: a scene, a character to create, and my rag doll body came to life. Immediately, I asked Paul, one of the actors I’d worked with in exercise class, to play the rich southern bigot, Fred, to my Lizzie the prostitute.
To accommodate the many actors who wanted to perform for him, Mr. Strasberg had handed down an edict declaring that no scene would run longer than fifteen minutes, at which time he would stop it. In the classes that I had attended since Lee’s arrival for his six-month L.A. stint, I’d realized it was not unusual for him to halt a scene long before the fifteen-minute cutoff, which made everyone in the room flinch with the implied blow.
When Lee was the moderator, every scene night was standing room only, and the night I was to perform it seemed especially packed, every chair taken, with the overflow sitting on the floor or leaning against the back wall. I don’t remember watching the first scene that night because mine was up second, and I was only slightly aware of Lee commenting after that scene finished, speaking sharply to one actor and dismissively to the other. All I knew was, we were up.
I was standing on the cheese end of a mousetrap, unafraid or unaware that I could be crushed. I saw it only as a way to lift off the ground, to be catapulted into space, to feel alive. The grubby, worn boards of the stage became the grubby, cheap room where Lizzie lived. The filthy twin mattress, usually stored in a side room filled with props and bits of random furniture, became Lizzie’s unmade bed. I buried my nose in the sheets, into the smell of humans, fully the madwoman down from the attic, and said my dialogue: “ ‘It smells of sin!’ What do you know about that? You know, it’s your sin, honey. Yes, of course, it’s mine too. But then, I’ve got so many on my conscience. Come on. Sit on our sin. A pretty nice sin, wasn’t it?”