In Pieces(54)

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


THREE MONTHS AFTER wrapping the third and final season of The Flying Nun, I was a thin, determined twenty-three-year-old woman with an eight-month-old son. I owned a house in Bel Air, supported a husband in college, wore a Joan of Arc haircut, and had changed so radically it’s hard to look back and see myself as the same person.

For sure, my restless generation was pushing me to rethink everything I had always accepted as “the way things are.” Betty Friedan’s book The Feminine Mystique had begun to trickle into my awareness. And I eventually heard the challenges from Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch, inviting women to own their bodies, to examine that mysterious part of themselves by holding a mirror between their legs, to taste their menstrual blood and, most important, to be outraged. But because I could never make myself crack open the books, it felt like a conversation I could hear from down the hall, like I was eavesdropping and never actually in the room.

Much of the change in me had to do with my constant participation at the Actors Studio and the secure place it gave me to experiment with myself. No longer an observer, I had been accepted as a member after doing a scene with Madeleine from A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney. Unfortunately, Mr. Strasberg had returned to New York for the winter and wasn’t sitting in his familiar front-row chair for my audition. Instead I performed for a group of longstanding alumni, which included Bruce Dern—who was frequently the moderator in Lee’s absence and for whose focus and support of me I will always be grateful. Ultimately, I was given a lifetime membership. I was in the club.