Heart of Glass (27 page)

Then, just as with my relationships with Michael and Graham, it all drastically changed. Suddenly, he turned the tables on me and went from being my sweet boyfriend to my nemesis, full of angry criticisms of me. Why wasn't I confronting my past? Why wasn't I going to Al-Anon meetings because my mother was clearly a drunk? He bullied me into calling my mother—it was the first time I'd spoken to her in six years. Feeling as if I were going to vomit, I listened to the phone ring while he stood there watching me.

“Hello, Mother.” There was a pause while I listened to her smoke. “It's Wendy.”

“Oh, it's you. You no longer have the right to address me as Mother. You will call me Georgann.”

“Okay, Georgann.” Just hearing her voice on the phone made me ill. Her palpable hatred and vitriol made me want to curl up in a closet in the dark. “How are you?”

“How am I? I don't hear from you in six years, and you call me up out of the blue to ask me how I am?” Her tone started to become more shrill, becoming slightly louder and even more nasty. I couldn't speak. I was trembling, my hands sweaty from gripping the receiver so hard. “Well, I'll tell you how I am. I have cancer!”

With that, she hung up the phone.

I crawled into my bed and wept. After all this time, she could still reduce me to a quivering mess.

Stewart sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing my back. “See? You did it. You can't let her have all that power over you.”

Over the next few weeks, he continued to funnel his frustration over his own childhood disappointments, his stalled writing career, and his resentment toward Jews (didn't I real­ize they ran Hollywood?) into acting out a drill-sergeant routine on my psyche. I started hearing that old sound in my head, the voices of boyfriends past.

Didi never liked him; she thought he was a loser. “He delivers sandwiches for a living! I mean, come on!” she'd snort.

Reeling from what I perceived as a crushing betrayal and an epic—and repetitive—mistake on my part, I felt that I was back in free fall. Once again I had chosen a man who belittled me the way my mother did. I sank into a monumental depression. Unable to eat, sleep, or stop crying, I frantically called my old Boston shrink, Dr. Keylor, who kindly listened to me, then told me to take care of myself and that unfortunately she didn't know anyone in the city. So I called the only other therapist I could think of—Jenny's mom and Stewart's aunt, Phyllis.

She listened patiently while I blubbered into the phone about, well, everything. Why hadn't I been able to resolve my issues with my mother? Why did I continue to find guys who treated me badly and didn't value my worth? What was wrong with me?

There was a slight pause before she spoke. I blew my nose noisily.

“Well, I think you need to spend some time really mourning the fact that you didn't have a mother. I mean, ­really feel sad about it.”

“Okay.” I sniffed.

“Then I think you have to ask yourself a question.”

I waited.

“What would happen if you decided to grow up?”

Her words stopped me. I looked into the mirror on my bedroom wall. Tears streaming down my face, I looked so small, so crumpled. Who was that girl?

Phyllis gave me the name of a shrink in Manhattan, Elaine Livingston, whom she'd met at a conference in California. “I only spoke to her for twenty minutes, but she seemed great.”

“Thanks, Phyl.”

“Hang in there, kiddo. Lots of love. And call Elaine.”

Elaine Livingston's office was in London Terrace, an elegant prewar block of apartment buildings in Chelsea on Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Streets between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. From her first-floor window, she had a lovely view into the courtyard garden. Somehow the hush of this cocoon-like room, with soft, dusky lighting and trembling, leafy trees outside, made it easier for me to pour out my feelings. I felt secure, hidden, safe.

She dug right in. “So, why are you here?”

Elaine was a tiny, fine-boned brunette in her mid-to-late thirties with fiercely intelligent eyes and a warm, caring voice that bordered on the maternal. I liked her right away. She sat back in a comfy chair that almost enveloped her petite frame with a yellow legal pad poised on her knee and listened intensely as I spewed all my problems and concerns out like so
many hair balls: my apparently superpower-level ability to find critical guys, the feelings of worthlessness and sadness that threatened to incapacitate me, and my toxic relationship with Georgann. Elaine jotted notes down on the pad, looking up at intervals to smile or give me a look of concern. I sat on a couch across from her, surrounded by piles of balled-up, damp tissues.

She nodded and leaned in toward me. “Let me explain a little about the way I work. I practice something called brief therapy with clients. It focuses on the present and the future. Your past is important, of course, to help me understand where you're coming from, but it's more important to identify the problem and what behaviors are sort of holding up your ability to change or reframe the situation. Does that make sense?”

“Kinda,” I croaked. I had been crying so hard and talking so much, my nose was completely stuffed up, and I felt as if I couldn't breathe.

“Next week, I think we should discuss your personal relationships and why you gravitate toward men who don't nurture and accept you.”

“Okay.” I sobbed, trying not to gag on my own saliva.

“See you next week, Wendy.”

“Bye. Thanks.” I hobbled out the door and home.

After a few sessions with Elaine, I broke up with Stewart, which I hadn't formally done; I was too afraid of confronting him with my true emotions—that he made me feel weak and preyed upon. She had suggested taking time off from the re
lationship so I could figure out what I thought I should do, and I agreed.

“The great thing is, you don't have to decide now.” She shrugged and gave me a sly smile.

I met Stewart one evening later on the steps of Ninety-seventh Street.

“But why?” He clearly had no idea.

“Because I deserve better.” I had thought about this moment for a while; I'd rehearsed it in my mind and now knew it was the truth.

“What do you mean?” He looked at me as if I were speaking Swahili.

“I can
do
better than you, Stewart. Good-bye.” I turned on my heel and strode up the steps into the building.

Fuck that,
I thought as I walked away from him. A rush of adrenaline pulsed through me from the power of doing the right thing for myself—from choosing what Wendy wanted over what some guy wanted.

I smiled to myself as I punched the button for the elevator.

chapter twelve

GROW UP

My roommate Dave was off in San Francisco for the summer, working at Alice Waters's Chez Panisse in Berkeley, and Molly had followed him out there, so Dave had rented their room and the small one by the kitchen out. Feeling uncomfortable living with strangers and not wanting to run into Stewart, who lived only a few blocks away, I went to visit Pete and Jenny at their new home in Albany—she was four and a half months pregnant, and Pete was doing his medical residency. She and I went trolling the town for baby clothes that weren't ugly, which in 1988 wasn't easy. We cooked and hung out, talked and listened to records—Bonnie Raitt, Dwight Yoakam, Ry Cooder, or the Supremes. Somehow Jenny, a lifelong WASPy New Yorker, had always dreamed of being a Motown backup singer or Dolly Parton. It was great to be together, to reconnect with that part of my found family. But it was not the same. Jenny and Pete had grown up. Albany
was a town for grown-ups. I was unemployed and just learning how not to have a bad relationship—clearly just a visitor to the real world.

Back in New York, I camped out at Didi's place during the week, sleeping in the bunk bed above Ali or on the puffy couch in the living room. I kept my stuff in my room at Ninety-seventh Street but stopped in as little as possible to avoid running into Stewart. Sometimes on weekends I tagged along with Didi and Ali to a little guesthouse Didi rented with her mother behind a mansion in East Hampton. We'd roller-skate along the flat, winding roads past the grand houses of the truly wealthy; the constant whirring of lawn mowers accompanied the dragging clack of our skates. I still had my skates from playing Cherubino, and Didi was the only person I knew who fearlessly roller-skated to work in Armani on the sidewalks of Manhattan. And here we were—back in the Hamptons together for the first time since the crazy food-fight summer twenty years ago, when I was a towheaded little girl and she a caustic, cigarette-smoking teenager.

Wall Street money from the go-go eighties was rapidly changing the low-key, old-money tone of East Hampton and creeping out toward Amagansett and Montauk. Even Grey Gardens, the famously dilapidated haunt of Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier, had been completely renovated—its creepy, broken-down charm just a memory to be visited in the Maysles brothers documentary. We'd walk to the beach at the end of the street and eat fries and greasy burgers to
ease our hangovers, while Ali, who was now five, ran around in a bathing-suit bottom, digging in the sand and splashing in the water. Sometimes we'd get a babysitter and go out dancing. Other times we'd watch
The Money Pit
or
Witness
, dunking Oreos in Maker's Mark bourbon or eating Häagen-Dazs out of the container with the same spoon. We comforted each other, commiserating over the end of her second marriage, and my seeming inability to navigate relationships at all. Grateful for her care and concern, she felt like my older sister, truly. I had always been the big sister to Robin, and though we were close, our birth order informed our relationship. In the same way I had protected and “mothered” my sister to a degree, Didi looked after me, gave me security and happiness, despite my tumultuous love life and challenging career.

All through that summer, I continued my therapy sessions with Elaine once a week. I was still struggling to resolve my issues with my mother on my own. But now I felt strong enough to take action, to reach out to my mother in an attempt to make some kind of peace, if that was possible.

So I called my mother, careful to say
Georgann
instead of
Mother
and to keep things on a light, even keel. It was a fairly civil—if chilly—conversation, during which she told me she was proud of my accomplishments as an actress. She was working in Connecticut for a company that placed retired senior executives in temporary consulting and advisory positions with companies and nonprofits. She liked it and got on well with the people there and had even made some friends,
though I couldn't help but think they wouldn't last long. I gave her my phone number, and we agreed that it would be nice to talk occasionally and keep up with each other.

Then, as they always had, things went bad.

“I've been raped!” she screamed into the phone, startling one of Dave's boarders at Ninety-seventh Street. Hearing her shriek from across the kitchen, I took the receiver from his hand, attempted to talk to her calmly, and ended up having to hang up.

The crazy calls started again—a couple, several, sometimes ten times a day. Most of them were hang-ups, but she also left messages on the answering machine—her voice a hoarse whisper as if she was calling from her desk at work. After one of her calls, I crawled into a dark cupboard underneath the bathroom sink and stayed there for an hour, sobbing.

“Well, Wendy, this is one way of dealing with your problem.” Elaine recrossed her legs, switching the legal pad to the other knee.

“Whaddya mean?” I had been up all night, after another horrid telephone call from Mother. I hadn't picked up but had listened to her poison-filled voice on the message ­machine—the usual tirade about how she was sick, or broke, and I couldn't muster the strength to care.

“If you don't eat and sleep, you'll make yourself sick. Then you won't have to worry about dealing with your mother. You won't be able to.”

Suddenly, I saw what she meant. By being a big mess, I
wasn't taking responsibility for my life or my actions. I wasn't taking care of myself. Maybe this had been what Phyllis had meant about deciding to grow up.

When Mother called back a few days later, shouted her usual tirade, and hung up hysterical, I paused for a second, then called her back.

“Hello . . . ?” she answered in her calm voice, one that I hadn't heard in quite some time. She sounded as if she was sitting on her living-room couch, reading a magazine. At that moment I realized that it was, once again, all an act; and it certainly wasn't worth losing sleep or crying over.

“Georgann, if this is the way you're going to behave—the robo-calling and the nasty messages—I just don't think we can be friends.”

Silence.

A declaration of boundaries clearly wasn't the response she had been expecting. She would have preferred if I'd been crying and had snot coming out of my nose.

“Well, Wendy, that's fine. I don't want to be friends; I am too angry at you.” She hung up.

A huge rush of relief swept over me. I had drawn the line and she had made her choice, opting out of contact with me. As I turned this small victory over in my mind, I realized that, in a larger sense, all the hurt she'd caused me in the past was over, done with. She could never do that to me again. I simply wouldn't let her.

•   •   •

Except for Shakespeare in the Park, summer is traditionally a pretty dead time in the city for work in the theater. I had my unemployment and then got a short-term temp gig answering phones at Juilliard's traveling company, the Acting Company, where Nina was now working with her old boss Gerry Gutierrez. I just took down messages on little pink pads of paper and transferred calls—a skill for which the deli had trained me well. It gave me a place to go in the morning, for which I was grateful. The people were nice, and so was the income.

I took the subway to Times Square, but from the subway station, walking Forty-second Street to Eighth Avenue, the commute could be treacherous, calling for serpentine moves to avoid the bums and drunk guys who harangued me and asked, “Can I see your pussy?”—or if they were slightly more sober, tried to grab my boobs. I carried my cup of coffee like a weapon, in case any of them came too close.

The Acting Company office was a shabby little hole on the second floor, ruled over by a mercurial, fireplug-shaped force of nature named Margot Harley, who yelled a lot in a Bryn Mawr accent and expected everything to be done perfectly, which of course meant her way.

“Get Edward Albee's agent on the phone!” she'd roar at me, even though her desk was less than four feet from mine.

I'd look the number up in the Rolodex and place the call. “Hello? It's Margot Harley calling. You know, Harley, like the motorcycle?”

Margot basically ignored me unless I was placing a call
for her, but I enjoyed trying to get her attention and crack that frosty, upper-class veneer that she was either born with or had picked up from her predecessor, John Houseman.

Nina's boss, Gerry, often called the office and always pretended to be some famous actress—sometimes dead, sometimes a lesbian, always female. I took messages from Rosalind Russell, Agnes Moorehead, Mary Martin, Bea Arthur, and Dame Judith Anderson. When he found out I'd been through a classical-acting program, he asked if I wanted to audition for the company. I had never been sure that he even liked me, so I was touched by his generosity. I did my pieces for him and Nina and was called back and offered the job: small roles and understudying the other actors on the next tour, all of them from Juilliard. Afterward he took Nina and me across the street to a crappy Mexican restaurant to talk more about what we'd be doing. From his point of view, he was giving me the chance of a lifetime—to work with people from the top school in the country. Juilliard actors were the crème de la crème, along with NYU graduates, or kids from Yale.

“And let's face it, darling,” he said as he started in on his fourth martini, “it's not like you'll ever be Kevin Kline. I mean, you're good, but you're not
that
good.”

I smiled and sipped on my jumbo-sized margarita on the rocks with salt.

“It'll be great to have you along.” Nina smiled, reaching over to squeeze my arm.

I was torn. I'd be on tour, living out of a bus with a group
of strangers, who most likely had all been classmates. I was afraid of being lonely and far away from my friends—the only family I had, here on this coast—and then I had my appointments with Elaine. Without my newly woven safety net, I suddenly saw myself buying crack in a supermarket parking lot in Nebraska. I stalled for a week, agonizing over whether I should take the job.

When I told Didi about it, she didn't try to hide her disdain. “What the hell are you going to do on a tour bus, playing a lady-in-waiting, booked into every shit-hole town in America?!” She felt I should commit to staying in New York, or at least on the East Coast.

“But I don't have anything else.” I moped, imagining the headline: “Classical Actress in Period Costume Jumps off Grain Silo After Bus Stalls in Dubuque.”

“Well, I have an audition for you for
Midsummer Night's Dream
at Hartford Stage tomorrow. Mark Lamos is directing. Here are the sides they want you to read. It's for Helena. You're probably not gonna get it because you're not tall enough, but give it a shot. Just go in there like you already have the job.”

I knew Helena's big speech in act 1 by heart because I had watched an actress named Lisa Sloan do it every night at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, when I was working as a dresser eight years before. So I was able to go in and do it off-book. I had always adored the speech—all about unrequited love and peppered with beautiful images and words. Helena enjoys her suffering and is totally
desperate, throwing herself at this man whom she adores. I identified with her “love is a many-tortured thing”
attitude. I had tried to make guys want me and had longed to be truly and deeply loved, searching in all the wrong places for that man who would devote himself to me and our life together. Perhaps that showed because Mark Lamos offered me the job right there in the room.

“I'm sorry. What?” I knew I'd heard wrong.

“I want you to come to Hartford and be my Helena,” he repeated with a sort of kindly delight. A slim, puckish fellow, he wore tennis shoes and practically flew around the room like Peter Pan.

I stammered and shook my head, not knowing what to say. I told him I'd been offered a job with the Acting Company.

“Have you signed the contract?”

“Uh . . . no.” I almost blurted out my vision of the dive off the grain silo, but stopped myself.

“Well, I think you should come work for me.” He smiled. “Unless you're afraid of Margot. Are you afraid of Margot?”

I shook my head. Of course I was a little afraid of Margot—everyone was.

“So, tell her you got another offer—no, tell you got a better offer! And I'll see you in two weeks.”

“Thank you, I'm so excited!” I wanted to kiss him, but instead I skipped out of the room and down the stairs out into the street. I found the nearest phone booth right away and called Didi. The theater had already called her with the
offer. I asked her why she had said that I'd never get the part.

She laughed. “I had to psych you out or you'd overthink it. Now you have a job near the city. See?”

When I told Gerry that I was taking the Hartford job, he looked down at me disapprovingly and made it clear that he believed I was making a big, career-killing mistake. It might be, but I knew that for my mental health I was making the right decision. Like ending my relationship with Stewart and standing up to my mother, I had done the right thing for myself—and it was getting easier every time.

•   •   •

Mark only liked to rehearse for four hours a day—he believed that after four hours, your brain just couldn't absorb any more information. Helena was a demanding part—she's brainy and loquacious. Mark told me that I was often behind the metaphorical horse, holding on to its tail, in terms of keeping up with the language. Striving to run faster, keep up, and perhaps eventually jump up on the horse, I felt challenged and lucky to be surrounded by talented people. I worked hard and wanted madly to make the director happy with me.

Hartford was an oleo of ugly, new glass skyscrapers and gorgeous, old brick and brownstone buildings built in Victorian or Colonial Revival style. It had been the home of Mark Twain, would be Katharine Hepburn's final resting place, and contained the oldest public museum in the country, the Wadsworth Atheneum. I found the city a bit gray
and sketchy in terms of safety; it went block to block as in New York, but the actors always traveled in a pack from the theater to our housing, which was on the second floor of a shopping mall, usually stopping off en masse at the Irish bar on the first floor. I had an enormous apartment all to myself, big enough to ride a nonmetaphorical horse around in. It was a very social group—lots of parties, poker games, and barhopping. I had a crush on the guy playing Demetrius, the object of my affection in the play, but luckily he had a serious girlfriend. Bradley Whitford lived down the hall from me and would stop in for a sandwich; everyone at the theater lusted after him, except me. We were just buddies, and I was done with actors.