In Pieces(79)
In that late October of ’76, just as I was packing up to move into a rather decrepit though charming house I’d purchased in Studio City, just as my whole life was about to vanish into Burt’s needs again, I was asked to go on a publicity tour for Sybil. I hadn’t seen the miniseries, other than the few grainy clips I’d watched projected on a screen while looping (rerecording pieces of dialogue to fix sound problems). And because I’d felt popped on the nose whenever I’d talked about Sybil with Burt, I had tucked the whole experience out of sight, hidden it in the back of my mind, until eventually I quit thinking about it altogether. But then I got to San Francisco and Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and Dallas, and I remembered that part of me, that vital part that I had worked so hard to own. I remembered my work.
Five days later, when I returned home, it was not only my thirtieth birthday but also the night of the four-hour industry screening. I’d been planning to go with Princess and Baa, but much to my surprise, Burt insisted on escorting me. By the time we arrived at the screening, it was already full and I couldn’t find my family, didn’t know where their seats were located. Scanning the packed theater for their faces, I held Burt’s hand as we were guided to our reserved seats in the back row. It was then that I realized I was to sit on the slightly worn velvet chair situated between Mr. Reynolds and Joanne Woodward’s husband, Paul Newman… whom I had never met. The second I laid eyes on Paul, I blurted out, “Where’s Joanne?” hardly acknowledging his existence and barely listening while he explained that his wife would not be joining us, due to the fact that she couldn’t stand looking at herself on-screen. Sitting between two matinee idols in a crowded, airless theater, feeling that my head or my heart would explode, I realized that Joanne had the right idea.
By the time the screening was over, my face was on fire and my teeth were chattering, as though a case of malaria had set in. If there was a reaction from the audience, I was too overwhelmed to hear it, and the only thing I wanted was to know where my family was sitting. I longed to see Baa’s face, to meet her eyes, to feel proud of myself because she was proud of me. Only then would I know if I had accomplished anything. I wanted to talk to her in the car all the way home, to have a bowl of soup in bed and watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving with Peter and Eli. But I disregarded that voice, simply shut it out. Where was the part of me that could look at the situation and realize that I felt more alone with Burt than with my children? That I felt trapped not because of him but because I couldn’t hear myself? I had found someone to love, to pour my heart into, someone I felt frightened of, and I was seeking to be loved the only way I knew how: by disappearing.
I went to Burt’s place and without discussing what we’d just seen on the screen for three and a half hours, he gave me two Percodan for my throbbing head. It wasn’t that he was mean. In a way, I felt he was trying to take care of me for the first time. But when I said that I’d rather have an aspirin, I recognized the sound of his irritated impatience, the “how dare you doubt my know-how” tone, recognized it without registering the recognition. It was a “do it now, go!” command, so I took the pills and immediately felt sick. All night my heart raced, either from the drugs or from the day or both. I lay next to Burt, perfectly still, staring at the ceiling.
18
Treading Water
EXCEPT FOR THE tasty little bits that Jackie Babbin shoved under my nose, I didn’t read the reviews when Sybil aired at the end of November. But true to form, I’ve kept many of them.
Variety: “Sybil” boasts an extraordinary performance by title character Sally Field that is as moving as anything ever seen on TV… It is further evidence, following her ‘Stay Hungry’ film performance, that she is now one of the finest young actresses in the U.S.… The impact is devastating.
Cecil Smith, Los Angeles Times: The bravura role here is Sally Field’s—and wonderfully does she play it… Sally’s ability to shift from one of these [personalities] to another in an instant, sometimes to find them tumbling over each other, is little short of astonishing.
The Hollywood Reporter: But it’s Field who dominates the screen, switching from personality to personality like a sparrow hopping from branch to branch in a maple. And it is this tour-de-force performance which allows the viewer to see how nearly normal Sybil really is. After all, we all have our own multiple personalities that we fling up at a moment’s notice. The only difference being that we are in control: Sybil is not.
The response in the country was enormous and impossible for me to wrap my brain around. The reaction wasn’t simply because of the quality of the work—which I still can’t properly evaluate—but because it was the first time that child abuse had been tastefully, but graphically, explored in any film, much less on television, where millions and millions of viewers were watching. Some of those viewers—to one degree or another—saw their own lives. It opened a national dialogue. People stopped me in the market, or on the streets. Once, a man jumped out of his car after braking at a red light, then ran to me as I stood slack-jawed on the sidewalk, just to shake my hand. They didn’t want an autograph or a photo or to take anything from me. They wanted to give me something: their appreciation. I got letters, not only from fans but from doctors, psychiatrists, and social workers and from the people who were struggling to pull their fragmented selves together, to heal.