In Pieces(72)

Bob Rafelson returns to the screen with Stay Hungry, featuring an excellent Jeff Bridges as a spoiled but affable rich young Alabama boy who slums his way to maturity through relationships with street-smart characters. Among them is Sally Field, who has now and forever shed her cutesy TV series image… As a lower-class and likeable sexpot, Field is superb.



Okay, fine. I’ll take it. Don’t ask me to read any others.


As the weeks moved on, days that were filled with auditions and moving boxes and unreliable childcare, with a new house, a new man, plus an ongoing divorce, I slowly became an emotional jack-in-the-box. I’d enfold myself in Coulter’s lap to be soothed, until suddenly I’d become exasperated, resenting him for leaning on me financially when I seemed to have no trouble leaning on him emotionally, literally hiding in him like a child frightened of the thunder. My sexuality was free to roam with Coulter, but without warning, that part of me would vanish and I’d want to squash him like a bug. I never knew what all-consuming emotion would define me from one moment to the next. Each one was intensely felt, until it wasn’t felt at all, until it was totally wiped off the chalkboard and another was written in its place, in capital letters.

In one of my journals I found three folded onionskin pages, frantically typed without much punctuation and dated April 1976:


I just had a fit. The kind I used to have. Flashes of red and yellow, pressure in the backs of my eyes, my body rigid. It builds and builds while my outside stays calm. The only release is when I hit myself hard. Slap myself in the face again and again. At first I’m afraid it will hurt, then when I feel the sting I lose seconds, they flash by me in a color, a fury where I hit myself again and again. My eyes look puffy not from being hit but from the pressure behind them. Peter is screaming at Eli from down the hall. Eli. Eli. Eli, get off the phone. Eli is screaming and crying. I want to talk to my dad. I hold my voice in and carefully tell Eli to get on the other phone and then he can talk to his Dad. I don’t know the number. I don’t know the number. You don’t have to know the number just get on the other phone. Peter won’t let me get on the phone. Peter let him get on the phone. Dad’s not on the phone. Just my friend, David. I want to talk to my dad. I want to talk to my dad. I hit myself in the face mostly on my eye. I want to talk to my dad. I hit myself in the thigh with my fist, three four five times. My wrist hurts. I stand straight, wipe my red puffed face, walk in a blur to the kitchen. Eli, just a baby, only three, stands there tears in his eyes. What is it E.… what is it? I take the phone from him and hear Peter talking to David. Little six-year-old talk. I try to sound sane. Who is this? David. Peter is your dad on the phone? No, I told Eli, it’s not Dad, just David. Oh sorry. I hang up the phone and face my baby. He’s not on the phone right now. Lijah, he’s not there. He will call you when he gets to his house and I will take you to see him. Okay? I speak very calmly very plainly. I punch each word a little too hard, enunciate a little too correctly. I sound like a very bad actor in the fifth grade. As I walk out the door, fleeing to safety, I remember my baby. You’re a good boy Lijah. I can’t give him any more of me. His little dirty face watches as I rush away to finish my tantrum.



I remember now how I used to call Eli Lijah—until he told me to stop—and how I longed to talk to his dad too. But I also remember how angry I was at Steve. How he had fueled my fear of being penniless by spending money I was sure I didn’t have, how I was so afraid of losing everything, the way it had happened in my childhood, that I sold the house without knowing if I actually needed to or not. More than that, I was furious with Steve for allowing me to hurt him. I walked outside that day, through the sliding bedroom door and around the edge of the house. Standing in an unfamiliar, shabby backyard, I put my arms around my body, whispering, “I’m sorry, Sally. I’m so sorry.” Then went back to get Eli, who was playing with Peter and didn’t want me to come near. Who could blame him?


Unlike the screen test I’d done for Gidget—on a soundstage with a crew and all their equipment—the three scenes I was told to prepare for Sybil were to be videotaped in the same office where the meetings took place, using a small camera. For the first time, I was glad that my drive took so long because by the time I got there, I was ready. And from the moment we looked at one another, even before our how-do-you-dos, the relationship between the reluctant patient and the watchful doctor was in place. Joanne Woodward, with her intense gray-blue eyes, met Sybil, and I met Dr. Wilbur. We needed nothing else from each other. There was no polite chitchat, no conversation outside of the story we were telling. I can’t remember who was in the room, although I do recall someone taking the video camera off its sticks to follow me around at one point. But the memory I hold most dear is the pure, generous connection I instantly felt from this beautiful, sturdy actor. She was sitting very still in a low upholstered chair most of the time, but during the last scene—which was long and emotional—I jumped to my feet, then scurried under a conference table. Joanne walked to where I had vanished and peeked under, trying to coax Sybil—me—out from hiding. As she returned to her chair, I—Sybil—slowly crawled to sit on the floor by her feet. Not looking at the script, she leaned forward over her lap, her voice kind but unsentimental as she hovered over this emotional girl at her knee. Through the chains of Sybil’s childhood, I felt the need to touch the doctor, but knew that Sybil couldn’t touch anyone, was afraid of being touched herself, so I grabbed the sleeve of Joanne’s thick navy-blue sweater, held it as if it were a precious stuffed animal, then wiped my gushing nose on it. She didn’t flinch—only tentatively, and with great tenderness, put her hand on the top of my head. I later heard that Joanne told the production: If Sally is not cast as Sybil, then I won’t be your Dr. Wilbur. I was cast as Sybil.