The response in the country was enormous and impossible for me to wrap my brain around. The reaction wasn’t simply because of the quality of the work—which I still can’t properly evaluate—but because it was the first time that child abuse had been tastefully, but graphically, explored in any film, much less on television, where millions and millions of viewers were watching. Some of those viewers—to one degree or another—saw their own lives. It opened a national dialogue. People stopped me in the market, or on the streets. Once, a man jumped out of his car after braking at a red light, then ran to me as I stood slack-jawed on the sidewalk, just to shake my hand. They didn’t want an autograph or a photo or to take anything from me. They wanted to give me something: their appreciation. I got letters, not only from fans but from doctors, psychiatrists, and social workers and from the people who were struggling to pull their fragmented selves together, to heal.
I felt that reaction and was undeniably strengthened by it. But I didn’t talk about it at all when I was with Burt, and I was always with him or preparing to be. What would have happened if I’d allowed all of me to enter the relationship? Perhaps Burt would have been different as well. I don’t know. But as I got quieter, he got louder, becoming short-tempered and impatient, constantly snapping at me as if I’d piddled on the floor. I didn’t live with him in his Holmby Hills backyard cottage, but long before he hired his wonderful British “manservant” Harry, I took care of him, doing all the cooking and cleaning, guarding his health as he began Semi-Tough, his next film. Every day was spent trying to make his temporary spot comfortable, buying things for him, fulfilling his every wish before he could even wish it, prepared to give him everything I had. Need some oxygen? Here, take mine.
But I wasn’t a child playing in my little pinewood house, and at some point I had to speak up, I had to tell him that everything I was feeding him, every comfort I was providing, was coming out of my own empty wallet. Why couldn’t I just tell him that I was flat broke and that if he wanted those towels or vitamins or toothpaste, for God’s sake, then I needed the cash to go get them? I hemmed and hawed, rehearsed the words in my head over and over, delayed saying anything whenever he was feeling an attack coming on. One day I finally blurted it out. For a moment, I thought he hadn’t heard, then he matter-of-factly replied, “My business manager gives me only a thousand dollars a week. If I give you two hundred, that’ll leave me with almost nothing.” I took it once and felt ashamed.
Still, woven through everything were so many good moments, real and lasting things. When that revolutionary device, the VHS player, first came on the market in the late seventies, the big black box immediately appeared in the Holmby Hills house. Long before there was a channel called Turner Classic Movies, or a Blockbuster—which didn’t open until 1985—Burt gave me the movies. Movies I’d never seen, no matter how often I’d stayed home from school to watch Ben Hunter’s Movie Matinee on TV. He gave me Red River and The Searchers. Sat with me as I watched Now, Voyager and Kings Row and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, all the time chattering with excitement about a moment coming up, or explaining the backstory on an actor, details that added to the impact of what I was watching. Together we’d watch grainy bootlegged copies of Mr. Skeffington and Rear Window and The Letter. We loved something together, which made us love each other.
There were also times when he’d shove the big clunky cassette into the machine, then leave me sitting there while he went off to do God knows what, wandering in to check on me periodically, as though I were a child being distracted in an effort to keep me from the grown-up conversations. And perhaps those mostly black-and-white stories did distract me, allowing me to forget for a moment the painful fact that Peter and Eli weren’t there, and they were rarely there. I kept thinking if I brought them into the relationship slowly, we might transition into becoming a family. But Burt was uncomfortable having them around and they were uncomfortable being around. They’d lean on me, pulling my shirt with a flat “when are we going home?” look on their faces. Burt’s few attempts to charm or seduce them always flopped like a juicy fart at a family reunion. Bless their little hearts, they were not impressed with anything he did, not even the go-karts he gave them for Christmas. Peter at seven and Eli, just four, would have nothing to do with him, and couldn’t be bought or bribed out of it. They were the guards at their mother’s gate, and to have me he’d have to go over them—not easily done. Torn in two, I’d fix dinner for my boys, put them to bed, give them a quick back rub, then pack up the dinner I had prepared for Burt. Making sure my mother had his phone number, I’d then drive to Holmby Hills and serve dinner to the man in my life. The next morning, I’d get up in the wee hours, drive home, fix breakfast for the kids, and take them to school.
I can still see my mother standing at the kitchen sink holding a cup of hot coffee in one hand and her robe closed with the other. She’d watch me, saying nothing as I slammed through the back door in a race to beat the morning. She’d say nothing in the evening as she watched me pack up the car, not hindering but not helping while I covered the flank steak with tinfoil to keep the marinade from spilling on the drive back to Burt’s. And when I was overwhelmed with guilt, with an anxiety I couldn’t identify, when I would turn to her and bow my head, muttering the only thing I could say, “Thank you, thank you,” she said nothing. But as I see myself now, leaning toward her, was there a part of me that wanted something other than her wordless support? Did I want something from her she could not give because she was as blinded as I was?
Me and my boys. Can’t believe we had a cat. Peter was allergic.
She had never warmed to any of the few friends I’d had in my life, never responded with anything other than quiet scrutiny or out-and-out disapproval, saying, “I have to tell you this for your own good.” She had loved Steve the child, but she had felt certain that I shouldn’t marry him when he became a man, and though always pleasant to him, she had barely tolerated Coulter. But when I introduced her to Burt, I watched my mother turn into the young woman she once was, her eyes sparkling with a look that I remembered. And my grandmother put her rumpled hankie over her mouth, just as she’d done when she first met Jocko.
Perhaps Joy was automatically charmed by this kind of man, but when the press started reporting about Burt’s adventures with other women, it was my grandmother who made sure I knew about it, sometimes calling early in the morning to report what the National Enquirer had printed, describing the included photos. If I avoided talking to her on the phone, then she’d mail them to me, thick envelopes filled with carefully underlined articles, stories that always included my name. Not one missed her attention or, ultimately, mine. At first I was annoyed and aggravated, then I just tried to ignore her. With Burt, I held my head up, too proud to say anything. I’d think, What the hell, I’ve been on countless fan magazine covers with stories linking me to people I’ve never met. I didn’t just fall off that godforsaken turnip truck. But part of me knew it was all true. I felt duped and a fool.
A rare hug from Joy at a 1977 family gathering.
I never mentioned it and neither did he, but those were usually the times when Burt would toss gifts at me, some of them very expensive things that felt as though they were meant for someone else. Once he gave me a yellow Corvette, reminiscent of the long-ago blue Ferrari and equally ridiculous. Why give me a small sports car with virtually no back seat? I’d never expressed any interest in cars and had two young children, plus I was frequently expected to chauffeur Burt’s Great Dane, Bruiser, around with me during the day because the dog got lonely. Can you picture what the four of us looked like in that car?