Both of Us (12 page)

W
riting a book is an emotional odyssey, sometimes exhilarating, other times deflating. Today I’m trapped in the latter, having to confront certain truths about Farrah. Writing about
Good Sports
in the previous chapter brought it back to me, this conversation Farrah and I had.

It was right after we had taped our last show. Farrah and I were vacationing in the Bahamas. We were having dinner at a highly recommended little restaurant on the water. A handsome couple was sitting across from us. And Farrah says to me, “I’ve been watching those people since we sat down. They don’t even look at each other. Who has dinner and doesn’t speak?” I said, “Married people.” I got that line from somewhere, and though I didn’t remember then, I do now. The dialogue was from the 1967 movie
Two for the Road
with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. It’s the story of a married couple told through a series of flashbacks that recaptures the trips that punctuate their life together. These scenes take the audience through the universal stages of every long-term relationship: love in the beginning, at its most idyllic; the baby years when responsibility eclipses romance; the inevitable disillusionment of familiarity; and
then, the ennui that either swallows you or that you both choke back and conquer. I’m making this superb movie sound more cynical than it is. Probably just my state of mind, thinking about all this and not having another chance, like Hepburn and Finney, to make it right.

Anyhow, in
Two for the Road
there’s this clever motif the screenwriter uses as a commentary on what happens when two people are together for a long time. It’s up to the audience to determine whether the message is optimistic or cautionary. At various intervals on the road, Hepburn and Finney will encounter a couple dining together in silence, and when Hepburn asks what sort of people sit together and don’t talk to each other, Finney says, “Married people.” Was it the silence of two people so comfortable with each other that they don’t feel the need to say anything; or was it a stony silence, born of frustration or, worse, indifference?

I rented the movie today and I’ve been sitting here watching it. The last time I saw
Two for the Road
was with Farrah. We laughed at all the witty parts. I’m not laughing now.

Just like those couples in the movie, at some point the conversation between Farrah and me stopped. It’s as if our love was put on mute. We could see and touch each other, read each other’s moods like fingers tracing across braille, but our mechanism for reconciling, for flushing the toxins out of the relationship, had atrophied. I never realized it until I began this book and started viewing my memories with a new lens, not an easy thing to do when those
memories are all you have left. What I’m about to tell you I’ve never admitted to anyone, not even to myself. The truth is I believe the conversation Farrah and I began that first long-ago weekend in Big Sur, where we talked for days about everything important, luxuriating in the joy of getting to know each other, stopped that autumn of 1990 when
Good Sports
started taping its first and only season.

I can see it as if I were watching a movie trailer. Pushing Farrah beyond comfort; convincing myself it’s for her own good, like a personal trainer so focused on results that he doesn’t realize he’s put too much strain on his charge’s joints; an insecure Farrah, whose hands are sweating and whose throat becomes tight trying to be funny on cue; the endless production meetings; the rigid rehearsal schedules and strained performances; the live studio audiences; the conflicts with producers; the constant scrutiny of the press; the flat scripts; the nagging questions: Will we be picked up for another season? Will the network give us a better time slot? Flashback to a younger Ryan and Farrah in Big Sur as they slip into the Jacuzzi and kiss; close-up of that same couple a decade later, returning home in LA after fourteen hours on the set of
Good Sports
, climbing into opposite ends of the Jacuzzi and reviewing next week’s script in silence, then retiring to separate bedrooms, where one will escape into sleep, and the other will write in his journal all the things he should be telling her but doesn’t.

Yes, we were sleeping in separate bedrooms by then, but not for the reasons you’re thinking. When Redmond was a toddler he’d come into our bedroom at night wanting to sleep between us. Redmond has strong legs like his mother, and he would burrow into the bed, decide he didn’t have enough room, and then start pushing with all his might, until I had no other choice but to sleep on the floor or in the other room. Eventually he outgrew this, but by then, Farrah and I had grown used to our privacy and it stuck, and even when we traveled after that, we’d often get adjoining rooms. I always thought of our arrangement as terribly mature of us. Now I wish I could have back every one of those nights we slept in separate beds.

Today at the beginning of the second decade of the new
century, I feel like an archaeologist sifting through the artifacts of his own life, trying to decipher answers to questions that keep changing with every new discovery. I recently stumbled across an original transcript of a magazine interview that Farrah and I must have done together in late 1990 when
Good Sports
was in production. I’d never seen it before. It’s missing the title page and I found it stuffed in the back of a box full of old financial statements. I started reading. “My parents were upset when I moved in with Lee,” Farrah is quoted. “They made me feel so bad about myself. They forced me into that marriage.” And Lee would encourage her subservience in their relationship. Now Farrah must have felt she was losing control all over again, little by little, bit by bit.
Good Sports
was only part of it.

Farrah saw herself at everyone’s mercy: me; the network; audiences; our family; my children; her own body, which was beginning to rebel with recurring maladies: headaches, sinus infections, strep throat. And then menopause. It was nature unleashed, and Farrah was headed toward the eye of that storm. Of course neither one of us understood it at the time. You’d think we would have been aware of the change in temperature between us, but we’d always been and remained a passionate, volatile couple. Even when we weren’t speaking to each other, the sex was tender and satisfying, perhaps because we never used it as a weapon, never punished one another by withholding affection. We were as much alive when we fought as we were when we made love.
We assumed it was our nature, that fluctuations in the atmosphere had become a normal part of who we were together. Besides, who pays attention to storms that hit fast and then dissipate? It’s the ones the meteorologists warn you about, the ones with first names that you prepare for. Farrah and I had been a couple for more than ten years at this time. We’d weathered Hurricane Tatum, Griffin the tornado, my career drought, and the vicious journalistic hail the size of golf balls that dented both our egos. The question I ask myself now is at what point should a couple say to themselves: the way in which we survive these assaults isn’t healthy.

Sifting through all of this memorabilia, I’ve found trunks of letters between Farrah and me; some are written on napkins, others across the pages of day-old newspapers. Anything we could find to write on, we’d jot these notes to each other. Some of them are loving little mementos, where I’m letting Farrah know that I’ve gone to the gym and that I already miss her.

Others are notes from Farrah to me or to Redmond, reminding me to pick up the dry cleaning, or him to be sure to finish his spelling homework.

Then there are the letters hastily scribbled in the wake of an argument, as well as the apologies, some of which I couldn’t bear to finish in one sitting. I had to read them in stages, lest regret consume the strength I need to continue with this book. To quote the great Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, “I can’t go on I’ll go on.”

Sitting here is making me realize that it wasn’t just Farrah edging toward losing control, though she was the one bearing the brunt; we were both untethered. We navigated our way past the turmoil through notes, letters, racquetball, sex, and I had my journal. All those devices are perfectly fine to enrich communication, but none of them are substitutes for an open conversation. Farrah and I became so acclimated to an elaborate system of evasion that it made us believe everything was okay. I don’t think either one of us was consciously aware that we were floating free, but Farrah’s moods made it apparent she knew that somewhere inside her she was shrinking.

During production on
Good Sports
, Farrah was more
amorous and adventuresome than ever. I had forgotten about that until I saw a reference to it in one of my journals, and it gave me pause.

I suspect she became more sexual because that was the one area where she had complete confidence. I’m not sure I’d agree that we didn’t communicate at all. We did, but it was like playing connect the dots with a pencil whose tip kept breaking.

I also overstepped my role as her mentor, and what started out as a mutually rewarding exchange evolved into something harmful. One morning I’m making my way downstairs from my bedroom and I hear Farrah on the phone in the living room. I stop and listen. I’m not sure whom she’s talking with, but it’s got to be a friend or a confidante. “He’s giving me too many instructions. It’s too much. He even tells me when to blink my eyes. I know he wants to help, but I can’t handle two directors at once. I’m afraid to say anything because it’s so important to him.” I retreat to my bedroom unnoticed.

In my defense, I had only Farrah’s best interests at
heart. What Ryan “Henry Higgins” O’Neal lost sight of was that it was one thing to encourage Farrah to take on challenges she was excited to try and another to push her into a situation that made her desperately insecure.
Good Sports
must have made her feel like a spectator in her own life. No wonder she rebelled.

So where were we? Oh yes, the end of 1990. The Christmas holidays give us a much-needed break from the show. We’re able to shed the skins of Gail Roberts and Bobby Tannen and just be Farrah and Ryan. There’s a misconception about celebrities and holidays: that we are guaranteed a sprinkling of yuletide fairy dust that civilians aren’t. I assure you that holidays, at least for us, could be as messy and wonderful, frustrating and joyous, unpredictable and mundane as they are for everyone else. Our Christmas and New Year’s consisted of family rituals we’d developed over years of putting up Christmas trees, sneaking peeks inside the tiny doors on Advent calendars with our son, and hiding presents in closets. Farrah’s mom and dad spent many Christmases with us after Redmond was born and that year was no exception. They provided a dose of normal in a household desperately in need of it. I’d come home from the gym and find Farrah’s dad, Jimbo, sitting on the couch with his grandson in his lap, reading him
The Night Before Christmas;
or Farrah helping Redmond hang the Christmas stockings over the fireplace; or her mom, Pauline, who seemed
to mellow at Christmastime, taking a roast out of the oven while Farrah set the table. I didn’t just commit these images to memory, I absorbed them, knowing they were moments I’d one day need to revisit.