Dancing in the Light (29 page)

Vassy sat in the middle of the couch with his feet planted firmly in front of him, not moving. He didn’t acknowledge that he was upsetting everyone people who already felt uncomfortable around because they sensed in some primitive way that they did not do things the way he expected things to be done. I called my people in from the hallway. With their customary, but touching, professional discretion, they took the hair ornaments out of my wig and wiped the painted makeup from my face. They spoke swiftly and professionally about the requirements for the following day’s shooting and left.

By that time Bella and Martin had come to the dressing room to prepare for all of us to leave. As soon as they walked in, they could feel that trouble was brewing. I had had enough time to work up an anger born out of confused frustration and couldn’t control myself.

Vassy had not relented one iota and in fact had entrenched himself into his attitude even further. I could tell by his feet and his rigid posture. Flashes of the rehearsal hall and the “respected Russian artist” attitude crossed my mind. I wondered how I could have prevented what was happening, but I was growing more angry by the moment. It was one thing to accuse me of not exhibiting proper respect, but it was another to demand it in a “time is money” circumstance. Where the hell was his professionalism, or even common consideration for that matter? Whose birthday was it, anyway?

Bella, wanting to be friendly and communicative, said, “Vassy, why didn’t you come and enjoy
the champagne and birthday cake? We told you it was being wheeled in.”

He blazed a look across the room at her that could have started a Russian village fire. “I was not invited,” he stated.

“Invited?” she asked. “You know you were invited. We all knew about it.”

“Never mind,” he said. “Sheerlee must collect me herself. I sat alone and uninvited in this dressing room—as an outsider.” Bella’s eyebrows went up. Vassy continued, “Sheerlee is insensitive and cruel.”

That did it. Maybe it was because the thought
had
crossed my mind that I should see where he was when I was cutting the cake and had promptly decided I couldn’t leave because the dressing room was too far away. It had seemed the sensible decision at the time because I honestly thought he had gotten waylaid. For him to accuse me of being insensitive when I was exhausted and frankly confused by his demands was more than I could take.

I took a breath to blast him but Vassy had more to say.
“She
was not concerned at all with my feelings,” he said to Bella, who looked uncharacteristically helpless, “she behaved as big star.”

I sprang to my feet and leaned down toward the coffee table. Cupping my arms under the table, I felt myself lift it and turn the whole thing over in the middle of the room.

Bella and Martin eased out the door.

Vassy’s expression didn’t change. He didn’t register shock, dismay, surprise … nothing. He maintained his emotional posture, which was just as surprising to me as what I had just done.

“You
are an elitist shit,” I shouted.

“And you are violent,” he stated calmly as if he had had nothing to do with it.

“You’re so goddamned provocative. I feel like turning over this whole building.”

“You see?” he said. “You have no respect.”

I turned my back on him, leaned my hands
heavily on the dressing table, and rested a moment, head down. What energy I had left from shooting I knew I should conserve. I did not want an escalated shouting match because I knew I had only six hours to sleep anyway before reporting for the final day’s taping in the morning.

I collected the strewn objects from the coffee table. Bella and Martin came back in and helped me get together my dancing shoes and tights and leotards. Vassy calmly sustained his no-break expression throughout the whole proceedings and, when we were ready, climbed behind the wheel. We drove to Malibu in silence, with the Abzugs following in their car.

When we got home I said good night to everyone and went directly to bed, trying to secure my emotions in a neat compartment in my head, which would enable me to sleep. Fortunately, except for circumstances which were actually frightening to me, I had the capacity to shut off when I knew I simply had to. (I could always rely on my left-brain, yang, male approach to things!)

Apparently Vassy hung around in the kitchen with Bella and Martin for a while and they were honest enough to communicate their feelings about what had gone on. They said they felt he had been excessive in his demands and that the pressure of taping had really been the reason for my behavior. He said he had felt unwanted and “unspecial” to me.

The next morning neither of us said anything about the night before. Bella, though, took me aside and said, “Was that about male chauvinism or about being Russian?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “You’re Russian. You tell me. I’m only a beginner with you people.”

Vassy and Bella and Martin all accompanied me when I reported to CBS and began the final day of the marathon taping. Vassy, in a good mood, was
fascinated with the advanced equipment used in American television.

The final taping included a twenty-two-minute dance number and, not unpredictably, we got to it at two o’clock the next morning. Exhausted would be an understatement in describing how I felt. I hadn’t been eating properly, mostly because there was no time. And I had been suffering from fainting spells due to what the doctors described as hypoglycemia. So, when the big number rolled around, I was not exactly in marathon shape.

The number was shot in sections, with long waits in between while the technicians changed the scenery and the lighting. During one long wait I sat beside Vassy, parceling my energy to get through the rest of the night. Bella and Martin had, of course, long since departed.

“You are a horse,” said Vassy. “You are as a well-trained horse that has had many races and can operate automatically. A real monument of strength.”

He said it with such admiration it made me proud. I was coping reasonably with everything, until we finally finished the last section. I had some orange juice and cottage cheese, which usually worked for me during taping days (to eat a whole meal would have been disastrous to dance on). We finished the number and I sat down next to Vassy again for a well-deserved collapse. The director and technicians went on to shoot the final pickups I wasn’t needed for.

Vassy patted my knee and congratulated me again on my stamina. I breathed deeply. I began to feel dizzy. Oh no, I thought, am I having a low-blood-sugar attack now because it’s safe? It wouldn’t be costing any time to do so.

My lips and hands began to lose their mobility, familiar signs of what was happening to me. A low-blood-sugar attack was not really serious, but it could be frightening to people who had never seen it before. Vassy had never seen it. All I needed was for
someone to get me some orange juice—quickly. But predictably, Vassy reacted as though he were dealing with a four-alarm fire, at the top of his not inconsiderable lungs.

“Sheerlee is dying! Sheerlee is dying!” he shouted huskily.

The whole place was astonished as he roared for help, gathering me in his arms as though I were at death’s door.

“Sheerlee, my Sheerlee, don’t die!” he shouted again.

Someone got the orange juice. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The crew confusedly returned to their work as I tried to calm Vassy and sip the juice at the same time.

Whenever I finished taping a television special, the entire experience, in retrospect, dimmed like a bubble lost in time. The intensity of the grueling work tended to make me separate the marathon days from real life. Of course, the work involved was inhuman. I knew that as I was doing it, but the sense of isolation also made me tend to relate to events that occurred during the same period as a bubble lost in time too. Such was the case with Vassy. The drama that had occurred on my birthday, along with the passionate theatrics of the low-blood-sugar attack, receded from my memory as theatrical everyday living took precedence instead.

Vassy subsequently apologized for his birthday-party demands, explaining that upon reflection he thought he understood what he had done wrong. I apologized for turning over the table. I said I understood that living with the demands of my being a “star” couldn’t be easy for him, and he said that his frustrations from being an unemployed director contributed to his behavior.

Where my low blood sugar was concerned, however, he had decided I should go on a strict diet—to put it bluntly, a fast. I refused, and that became the
new source of conflict. He said fasting cured everything from arthritis to hypoglycemia. I said it would kill me—a Mexican standoff.

He proceeded to comment about every, morsel of food I put in my mouth, on occasion literally pulling the food out of my hand and throwing it down the garbage disposal, or if we happened to be in a restaurant, he would simply return the food to the kitchen. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I was outraged. The roller-coaster ride was in full swing.

His deeply felt convictions about my health stemmed from real fear for me and because he cared so much. In principle, he was often right, but I felt that he conducted himself autocratically, as if he were an expert in absolutely everything, and I responded by being in a constant state of very vocal protest. Nothing either of us did eased the situation.

Even as I was living through it, I found myself standing outside of my own personality observing the scenes unfold, richly endowed, as they were, with valleys and peaks of passion, floods of feeling, and hilarious humor. Smooth it was not. Confusing and bewildering it was … for both of us, I’m sure. Perhaps we continued through the melodramatic maze of it all because we were both involved in professions that used such emotional tumult as grist for the mill. Certainly we were attempting to coexist as man and woman. Therefore whatever occurred as we worked through our crossed cues was productive and contributive. Perhaps the lives we led were indeed scenarios we had mapped out for ourselves to experience long before we had been born.

Living with Vassy made me think that way. Maybe we really had chosen these circumstances with each other in order to work through values and points of view we hadn’t completed in previous lives together. Karma—cause and effect—whatever it was, I was more and more aware of the precognition that everything was happening for a reason. That Vassy and I were destined to spend time together was a
predetermination I felt more and more. Whether it would resolve anything was up to us … how well or badly we handled our problems. He recognized the meaning of what we were experiencing too. Some of it was harsh and heartbreaking, some of it was delirious delight. One evening as we lay together in the twilight zone just before sleep took over, I felt a strong urge to prop myself on my elbow and look into his face. I was not surprised to see tears welling in his eyes. I didn’t need to ask what was wrong. Without acknowledging in any way that he was crying, and totally without self-pity, he said, “I was thinking of how long it took for me to find you again.”

He said no more than that. It was so simple, so unadorned, so completely self-revealing.

“How many times do you think we have been together?” I asked gently.

Vassy sighed with the breath of ages and said, “I don’t know. I am only sure that I was a woman and you were a man more than once. Of that, I am certain. Don’t you feel it?”

“Yes,” I said, playfully kicking him in the side of the leg. “I feel it because this time around you act so macho, like you’re making up for lost time.”

“I am not macho. I am Russian,” he answered, tickling me in the ribs. I pulled his hair—an off-limits indiscretion, as I was fully aware.

He sat bolt upright in the bed, a grin of pure joy announcing his intentions.

“Now,” he said, mock-grim, “now you will have big troubles.”

With no more dialogue he proceeded to tickle me unmercifully. I laughed and screamed and laughed and screamed. At last, thoroughly frazzled, I fell off the bed and called for a truce. Flushed with playful power, Vassy affected a stern look of mock agreement and released me from his bearlike grasp. We crawled under the covers, curled up together, and hibernated for the night.

*      *      *

The next day I was driving in Beverly Hills and through a large, spacious store window I spotted a big, almost life-size furry toy bear. I slammed on the brakes, parked close by, and went in to look at it. The store sold electronic equipment, but the owner collected big toy animals. The bear was brown and cuddly with a white face and saucer-sized, Bambi-like eyes with long lashes and furry brown ears. His expression made me chuckle inside when I looked into his face. He had a pudgy stomach and outstretched furry arms. I wanted to hug the creature.

Next to the bear, sitting on the floor, was a comical lion. Vassy prided himself on being a Leo (born in August), therefore king of the jungle. I knew I had to buy both animals. I would give the bear to him right away, and save the lion for his birthday. The owner agreed to sell them to me and we wrapped them in two monstrous plastic bags.

That night I gave Vassy the bear, which of course we named Honeybear, Jr.

Honeybear, Jr., became the source of delight that alleviated our most seriously destructive moments. Whenever we reached a low point of unresolvable difference, either I or Vassy would use Honeybear, Jr., as token of humorous apology. Rather than waving a white flag of truce, we would place Honeybear, Jr., in a comical position somewhere in the house, either on his head in the sink with a towel hanging from one leg, or maybe on top of a half-opened door, which one of us knew the other would walk through, so that Honeybear, Jr., would fall on our heads and remind us to laugh. We used him as a humorous intermediary since neither of us would ever admit we were wrong. I wondered if the Russians and the Americans should bring furry toys to the SALT talks.

After my television special I went to work on my live show because I had a Vegas and Tahoe date
to play. Vassy began work on a project for us to do together. Perhaps all artists feel the need to work for their own experience and creative interests. I don’t know. But we did. I had concluded that working with Vassy would be difficult but worth it. Besides, I admired his overall plan to bring Russian and American artists together with film, using our respective countries as locations. We talked about many subjects, including
The Doctor’s Wife.
The subject that surfaced more often than any other was reincarnation. We wanted to do a love story based on the recognition that the two characters involved had lived and loved together in previous lives. We searched through old films and found that no one had successfully done that before. So we began to consider writing an original screenplay and hiring another writer, who was also conversant with the subject, to work with Vassy. Vassy was anxious to express some of his spiritual beliefs on the screen and felt he would be very good at a spiritual love story. I agreed with him. There were several American and English writers he was anxious to work with. He put his agent to investigating their availability. And so did I.