During the fourteen months since Steve and I first married, Baa had quietly hovered, worrying that I was still feeling estranged from her and not wanting to step in uninvited. She’d been working, not as an actress but as a part-time florist, learning to make festive chrysanthemum and bird-of-paradise arrangements, and while I had gestated my way through The Flying Nun’s third season, she hadn’t been around much. But I can still see her in my mind, standing in the hospital room doorway as soon as I was out of recovery, holding her jacket closed with one hand and a bunch of flowers in the other. She stood there, not moving, until slowly we began to smile at each other. “I’ve been here all night,” she said softly, and as I attempted to sit up for the first time, she started to cry, whispering, “Oh, Sal.” Then when Peter and I were at home, away from any other supervision, I’d hear her tiptoe in through the back door every day, and feel myself exhale, letting out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. She’d then sit on the living room sofa with her knitting, waiting to see if I needed a break. I usually did. Gratefully, I’d hand the baby to her and watch. Never spouting singsong nonsense, she’d look in his eyes and actually talk to him; telling him about her day, wondering how his was, what he had conquered so early in life? She’d walk him around the room, then eventually move outside, all the time explaining things: a leaf, a bird, details of what and why they were. I felt in awe of her, wondering if she’d been like that with me or if I was watching her become something new. Just as I was becoming something new.
I know Steve was feeling the pressure of having a son, feeling he needed to be the kind of man his child would be proud of, and at the same time feeling the absence of his own father, this man’s inconceivable abandonment of him. In the twenty-four years of Steve’s life, his father had never even sent him a birthday card—not that a card would have cut it. With new urgency, Steve started exploring places to put his focus. He was good at hard physical labor, building and construction, gardening and landscaping, was instinctually gifted in these areas. When we’d first moved in, Steve had completely changed the master bedroom, had knocked out walls, enlarged the master bath to include two walk-in closets. But he refused to follow the rules, so if permits or inspections were required—and they usually were—he couldn’t be bothered. (God knows what happened when we sold this house and the new owners asked for an inspection, along with all the appropriate paperwork, because there wasn’t any.) Next, he decided to set up a darkroom in the pseudo-poolhouse hidden in the backyard. He bought all the equipment, plus stacks of books, and began teaching himself about photography. Maybe this was it. Step by step, he could learn to become a photographer. Except he suddenly became enthralled with the idea of going back to USC to get an MFA in theater arts, focusing primarily on writing, an arena where he also had talent. And he was completely dedicated to that for a while, until that energetic burst of enthusiasm faded and he began to lose interest, as though everything he did was only a hobby. Maybe he didn’t feel a pressing need to get out into the big bad world as long as I was making money. And in that way, our marriage hurt him. I wish I could have seen that at the time.
What was his role in the family, then? Steve was always an attentive, loving father, spending time with Peter, sharing in the everyday tasks, but the idea that he would stay home and take care of the baby when I returned to work never seemed to be on the table, and neither of us ever tried to put it there. Maybe it was the era, or maybe it was my own blind distrust of men. I’d never been around a father-and-child relationship, not a good one anyway, so I’d never seen a man interact with his baby boy. I’d try to stand back, to observe as Steve would throw him higher and higher in the air, watch as Peter—not quite laughing—would take a deep startled breath with each toss. Many times, Steve would toss him too high, hitting the baby’s head on the ceiling, or catch him painfully by an arm or a leg when he came back down. I’m sure every mother has stood on the sidelines, trying to allow the male relationship to be different from that of the female. But I began to hear a hint of mockery in Steve’s laugh when Peter would start to cry, a wordless challenge that chilled my heart, and I’d instantly grab the little boy, often frightening Peter more than his bump on the head. Maybe it was uncalled for, maybe I was overreacting to something I saw through the eyes of my childhood. I don’t know.
I’m calling from the set to check on Peter. Called a hundred times a day.
As each day passed, the inevitability of my having to resume the show was growing, like the Mongols from my dream riding closer and closer. Only a handful of episodes were left to shoot and the chances of the show being picked up for a fourth year were slim—which I couldn’t help but feel was my fault. I’d never actually rebelled against anything except my bangs. As a result, a tiny strip of fake hair had been stitched to my hat, meaning that Sister Bertrille had bangs and I didn’t. Where I was guilty—and consciously didn’t care—was in the publicity department. When the studio began to obliquely imply that if I didn’t agree to do more, they’d be forced to take my car, the blue prima donna, away from me, I thought, Merciful heavens, please don’t frow me in dat dere briar patch.
Nevertheless, my two months of leave would soon be over and I’d have to return to work. How would that be possible? How could I ever leave Peter? I began to understand how painful it is—and always would be—to turn and walk away, even if it’s just for the day. And yet, when I was out the door, back into my life without him, how relieved I’d feel to be free, my own person again. And still, how I’d ache to be back. A totally new and different kind of emotional pickle.
One afternoon, I was sitting on the living room rug watching Peter frolicking on a patchwork baby blanket before me, kicking his newly found feet in the air. Baa was sitting on the stone hearth across the room, leaning over her legs, watching both of us. Without thinking, I asked if she would consider quitting her job to help me. Only after I heard it come out of my mouth did I know how much I wanted it.
Baa and Peter.
“If you do that, Baa, I’ll always take care of you. I can’t do this without you. I’m afraid to leave him with anyone… and it hurts me.”
“I know,” she said.
“But it wouldn’t hurt as badly if I could leave him with you. Please, Mother, will you help me?” I remember thinking how strange, almost embarrassing: I had actually called her “Mother.”
Without hesitation and in a deeper tone than her usual light register, she replied, “Always, Sal. For as long as you need.”
So, for me, and for the love of Peter, Baa quit drinking… ish. And moved back into the center of my life.
PART THREE
I yearn for my work, because it always helps me make sense of things. For never was a horror experienced without an angel stepping in from the opposite direction to witness it with me.
—Rainer Maria Rilke, letter to Marianne Mitford
He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
—Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
13
Transition