Once we were back in LA, I decided that we needed to get out of town again, if only for a weekend, to rest and try to reconnect. Marriage is a fragile and, presumably, valuable object. Even as we deliberately smash it on the ground, we are compelled to sweep up all of the pieces and attempt to put it back together. Also, I feared divorce, as I equated it with a deep, personal failure. We drove up to the San Ysidro Ranch for a weekend. Soon after we got back, Kim discovered she was pregnant.
During the first three years Kim and I were together, I had completely cut myself off from thoughts of having a family. With Kim, she led and you followed regarding any important, life-changing decisions. After we were married and throughout her legal battles, any limited talk about children was weighed against how it would stall her career revival. For me, the idea of forgoing a family was difficult. I recall one moment when, watching a man carry his sleeping child through an airport, I said to myself, “I’ll never have children.” I sighed, shoved down those feelings, and boarded a plane to go to work.
Then our daughter, Ireland, was born. The moment that your first child arrives is a transcendent one. And, regardless of the state of our marriage, Ireland’s birth inspired Kim and me to set aside whatever doubts or fears we had and allow the day to be the remarkable event it truly was. Ireland was a healthy, beautiful baby. Like any husband, I spent that day dedicated to providing whatever assistance I could to my wife. But for most of it, I was simply overwhelmed by the arrival of my daughter. At one point, I tried to recall how I imagined this day would play out. This child, this person, is finally arriving; what would she be like? I would stare at Ireland, mesmerized, and say to her tiny being, “My God, it’s you! I wondered who would show up and it’s you!” After sleeping in the chair next to Kim’s hospital bed that first night, I went home to shower. In our bedroom, I lit a candle and thanked God for Ireland and prayed for the health of mother and child. I have lighted a candle or, for lack of one, a match, every night since. Twenty-one years. If I was on a red-eye, heading home to New York, I lit the candle when I arrived home in the early morning. If I’ve missed a night, I am unaware of it, as there’s surely the chance I passed out here and there. But, I don’t think so. Every night, for twenty-one years, I go to sleep and say, “I love you, Ireland.”
When Ireland was an infant, Kim designed a thank-you card for the many thoughtful people who had sent along gifts. The card was perhaps one of the more powerful insights into Kim I had ever come across. On the cover was a na?ve illustration that showed a bare tree colored in a muted matte gray. Stuck in one of the high branches was a bright pink ribbon blowing in the wind. There it was, I thought. There was the meaning of Ireland’s arrival in Kim’s life: our child as the only sign of hope, of light, to come into Kim’s world.
My friend Ronnie once said that I had loved Kim the iconoclast who didn’t care what anyone thought. “Little did you know that included you, too,” he quipped. I had felt that I was losing at this game for some time. Everyone wants to believe that they are capable of making someone they love happy, be they a spouse, lover, sibling, or child. I believed that kind of union, that happiness, was my destiny. When you finally face the bitter reality that they will never be happy in the relationship because they are incapable of being happy anywhere, with anyone, you implode. You are powerless.
Love is an object that we hold in our hands. It is visible and it is ours to share. Sometimes, the person you love withholds theirs from you. But it is still there, hidden behind their back, kept from your view. Until one day, the one you love stands in front of you with both of their hands at their sides and their hands are empty. There is nothing there anymore. Nothing. After Ireland was born, all of the love Kim had went to her child. And every moment we were together after that, the emptiness that resulted moved us toward the inevitable.
11
Of Course, Of Course
The list of men I admire in the movies is quite long. It goes from Lon Chaney Sr. to Gable to Tracy to Fredric March. It includes Mitchum, Clift, Kirk Douglas, Lon Chaney Jr., Michael Douglas, Tyrone Power, James Garner, Burt Lancaster, Yves Montand, Colin Firth, Albert Finney, Robert De Niro, Robert Preston, Paul Newman, Peter O’Toole, Gregory Peck, Maximilian Schell, and Gary Oldman.
My favorite movie actor is William Holden. On-screen, Holden is handsome, graceful, charming, and funny. He is tough and resourceful enough to handle himself in any type of predicament. In a range of films from Golden Boy to The Bridge on the River Kwai and Sabrina, from Sunset Boulevard to Stalag 17 and The Wild Bunch, Holden could do it all. I knew that developing a style like his was not practical. He was an original and tough to imitate. Plus, the scripts in those days were tailored for him. Writers today, in most cases, don’t necessarily write for a particular actor. But what I wouldn’t give to have been born in 1925 or so, to have survived the war and gone on to a career in films in that Golden Age of the 1940s and ’50s.
In small and not so small ways, many young actors seek to latch on to the persona of a particular star and channel that star in their early work. Some newcomers try to bring their Brando, Dean, Mitchum, Pacino, De Niro, or Nicholson to the roles. Women may try, especially when they’re young, to pull in everything from Monroe to Katharine Hepburn. They may try to emulate, not only in terms of style but also career choices, someone who is a contemporary like Meryl Streep, Cherry Jones, or Cate Blanchett. Young actors have to come up with something and haven’t had much experience. So why not steal from the best?
I don’t remember stealing from anyone, at least not in any overt sense. (Maybe a bit from Joe Maher!) But an actor who says they don’t borrow from others in their early years is a liar. I’d see an actor like Edward G. Robinson snarl a line (“Yeah, see?”), and at some point, I’d think, “I’m gonna snarl like Edward G.” Cagney was so cocky—let’s sprinkle a little of that in there. Bogart was so subtle, so silky, yet so playful—let’s layer a little of Bogey into this line. Let your face relax while holding a faint smile, like you just woke up from a nap, like Mitchum. Make the zingers zing, like Nicholson. Say the line with a smoldering, quiet tone, then thunder on the last phrase, like Pacino.