In Pieces(49)

What I remember clearly is waiting for Jimmy to call after I returned from Mexico City. If I wasn’t on the set working, then I was home waiting breathlessly, in proper girl fashion. He must have phoned me again, but if we ever went on an actual date somewhere, I don’t recall.

I have only one clear memory of us being together. Crystal clear. I was in Jimmy’s rented Hollywood house, about five miles from mine, sitting next to him on his piano stool while he played on and on. There I sat, beside that talented boy who was just as young and probably just as lonely as I was. We never spoke. I just sat there listening to him sing his songs as he smoked a joint filled with hash. I rarely smoked pot, which drained me of energy and not only reinforced my inability to speak but left me unable to remember what I wanted to say even if I could. And I had never smoked hash. At that moment I wanted to be someone I wasn’t, someone Jimmy would like, so when he handed me the joint, I smoked it.

I don’t know how long we sat there—it seemed like an eternity—but slowly the colors in the room got vibrant and bright, slightly fuzzy on the edges, and I started to feel disoriented. I stood up, asking for the bathroom, then wandered through his empty bedroom, trying to put one foot in front of the other. I found the room, locked the door, then sat down to pee—even though I wasn’t sure I had to. Suddenly, everything began to tilt, and a black dot appeared in the center of my vision, like a flashbulb had just exploded. Feeling panicky, I curled up on the cold tile floor, wishing I could go home, and passed out. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember where I was, had no idea how long I’d been facedown on the floor, and even worse, I couldn’t feel my arms and legs, couldn’t locate them on my body, couldn’t locate my body. It seemed to take a massive amount of time to finally connect with my limbs, pull myself up, gather my wits enough to move out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, where I could lie down again, perhaps snap out of this horrifying condition. I felt like the child I once was, terrified in the night and afraid to call for help. Very softly, I called out for Jimmy to please come help me, then slid into darkness again. I don’t know what signal he thought I was giving, or if he didn’t need one, or if he was in the same half-conscious dreamlike state as I was (which quite possibly was the case) but when I woke again—an undetermined amount of time later—Jimmy was no longer singing but on top of me, grinding away to another melody. Even though I was barely conscious, thoughts rolled in my head: Maybe I had asked for this by lying on his bed, maybe I hadn’t pulled my pants all the way up so what was he to think, maybe this meant he liked me. Then I couldn’t think anymore.

I woke before it was light, gathered my things but couldn’t find my shoes or my car, until I remembered that he had picked me up at my house so I had no car. With that realization, I walked home barefoot. The sun hadn’t yet warmed the asphalt streets as my feet pounded down numbly, speaking the words my mouth couldn’t, leaving the soles of my feet covered in a thick, solid blister.


When Steve appeared at my front door, slightly out of breath and almost instantly after he called asking if we could talk, I felt like smiling. Here was my best friend, my fingers-crossed, King’s X spot in the world, standing in front of me. We’d been filming the second season for weeks and I hadn’t seen him in all that time. Nor had I seen him during my hiatus, spent mostly at the Actors Studio. In reality, I hadn’t seen him in almost a year, except for the few times I’d come home to find that he had broken into my house and was waiting, wanting to talk to me—something he did no matter how completely I tried to lock him out. This time he’d called.

Without any catching-up words or “how’ve you been” chatter, we moved directly into the living room to sit on my new green velvet couch, purchased at Bullock’s department store, and looked at each other. Then, as if preparing to give me the results of a biopsy, he carefully told me that he’d met someone at a Sigma Chi party, that she was a wonderful person, and that he was going to marry her. All the blood went out of my body.

It was the last thing on earth I thought he was going to say, and in a state of stunned confusion I asked him, “Why?” over and over. It made no sense. He was going to school, living in a house with a bunch of other guys. Where was he going to live with his new wife? How were they going to live? I didn’t know what made me more upset, the fact that he was going to attach himself so completely to someone else, or that he was forcing me to deal with something completely removed from all the things I was actually dealing with. And no matter what I said, no matter how logical I was, he kept repeating that he wanted to get married and simply wanted me to know. “She and I have discussed it; nothing’s decided yet,” he continued. “But I told her I had to talk to you first and that’s hard on her. She’s a little sensitive about you.”

He then went on to tell me that, oddly enough, he was going to marry the actress Screen Gems had hired to play the Flying Nun after I’d originally turned the part down. Unbeknownst to him when he met her, she was the same person who had shot for two days on the pilot before being abruptly fired when I suddenly changed my mind. As mind-boggling as that was, I could barely hear him, much less register how Steve’s new girlfriend must be feeling now, knowing that he was in the midst of meeting with me. I was rapidly flipping through all the stages of grief: disbelief, then anger, then haggling, then sadness. Finally, after mindlessly arguing back and forth, trying to convince him that this was a ridiculous idea, that he hardly knew her, that he shouldn’t be getting married at all, there was a long heavy silence before he said, “Then you marry me. I may not know her very well, but I do know you, and you know me. We belong together. Marry me.”