Grateful American: A Journey from Self to Service(49)

Moira always felt close to her family, and even though Illinois State University was less than an hour’s drive from home, being away was hard for her. In high school, the twins had been together constantly, doing many of the same things together and always looking out for each other. But in college, they slowly started going in different directions, moving in different circles. Moira was never a person to go against the grain, which usually meant she followed someone else’s lead and didn’t rock the boat. When she got to college, she saw that “going with the grain” included a fair amount of partying—and she fell into it right along with all her new friends. It wasn’t necessarily a part of her nature to be wild, nor did she drink all the time, but joining the crowd at those parties became her way of coping. She wanted to fit in. Yet even at the parties, Moira was trying to escape. You wouldn’t have known that if you met her. She was a great theater student. Onstage she was dynamite, a real powerhouse, and at those parties she was always fun. But offstage, inside her soul, she was wrestling with her fears. When she had a drink, the alcohol boosted her confidence, allowed her to feel more a part of things, and helped her to mask that fear. Over the years I have known many wonderful performers who are explosive and funny onstage, but who are shy, fearful, reserved, and even a bit awkward in daily life. Performing gives them confidence and a feeling of self-worth. Sometimes they will add a little alcohol on top of that. And Moira wrestled with self-confidence and fear. Performing and alcohol helped quiet those feelings.

Our paths crossed because of our mutual friends and our love of theater. In the early days of Steppenwolf, Moira and I certainly shared many a party together. But as we began to grow up, I was able to minimize my partying ways, particularly after I became a father. But alcohol gripped Moira tighter and tighter as the years rolled on, and it wouldn’t let go.

A few danger signs were visible early on. One night sometime in the 1980s, we had dinner at a restaurant with some Steppenwolf friends. All of us were drinking wine. When the meal was over, everybody got up to leave, but some half-full glasses of wine still sat on the table. Moira sort of scoffed and said, “Hey, we can’t leave all this good wine here.” Moira emptied everybody’s glass. No one batted an eye. That’s just Moi. Everyone loves wine. She just loves it a little more. This type of thing occurred more than once. Most of our friends from that era seemed to grow out of their partying, although a few didn’t. One college friend’s life shattered from alcohol in the mid-1980s. He went to rehab, quit drinking, and pieced his life back together. But again, the way we all saw Moira—me and others close to her—was to tell ourselves things like, “Well, she just likes her wine. It’s no big deal.”

As time went on, I began to see that it was a big deal, as life with Moira’s drinking got scarier and scarier. At one point, about 1995 or so, I simply stopped drinking with her. I figured if she didn’t have me as her drinking buddy anymore then that would help and maybe she would stop. But that was wishful thinking. Alcohol was consuming Moira by then, and sometimes she would drink so much she’d pass out. As time went on, I had to be careful what I said and how I said it, because when she drank she would react unpredictably and act kind of crazy. She started to hide her drinking from me and the family. I’d get rid of all the booze in the house, but then I’d open a top cabinet and find a bottle tucked far away in the back. I’d even sometimes find a bottle hidden in the tank of the toilet. At times when she came home, she’d reek of perfume and mouthwash, an effort to hide her drinking from me.

By the time I signed on to do George Wallace toward the end of 1996, alcohol had taken control of Moira. It was as if she had two personalities. When she wasn’t drinking, she was her beautiful self, the respectable Dr. Jekyll. But when she drank, she turned into the out-of-control and scary Mr. Hyde. Sophie was about nine years old at the worst of Moira’s drinking, Mac was six, and Ella was five. Moira was always a great mom and tried her best, but because of her drinking, at times I felt afraid for our children. Each night Moira would drink. Then each morning she’d feel guilty and apologize. I’d tell her she simply couldn’t keep doing this, and she’d say, “Yes, you’re right, I’ll stop,” but the next night she would do it again. She couldn’t help it. So many good things were happening in my acting career. I had started rehearsing George Wallace with John Frankenheimer, and I was trying to focus on my role. But night after night, when I came home from rehearsals, our home turned into a battlefield.

Of all our children, Sophie knew something was wrong. She often needed to adopt a parental role with her younger brother and sister, which wasn’t fair to her. One night I came home from rehearsal, and Moira had been drinking again. The kids were in the back of the house playing, and Moira and I got in a huge fight in the kitchen. At one point during the argument Sophie came marching in with Mac and Ella, singing and dancing and jumping around in hopes of trying to distract us by making us laugh. They knew trouble was in the air and were trying to help. Sophie especially. Moira and I stopped yelling at each other. I walked them back to play in the bedroom, then came back to the kitchen and after a while was able to calm Moira down. While it hurt to see the kids trying to act as peacemakers, their interruption actually helped to defuse the tension in that moment. But it was only a momentary calm in a gathering storm. We had a wonderful housekeeper, Lulu, who had become part of the family by then, and she always tried to take care of the kids while also helping Moira. Yet every night proved difficult. Finally, it became clear that Moira had no ability to stop her drinking.