I'll Scream Later (No Series) (14 page)

I would begin to build on that courage from that day on.

T
HE WEEKENDS AT
Betty Ford were hard for me; that’s when visitors could come and I didn’t have any.

Broadcast News
was keeping Bill in D.C. I asked, but my brothers didn’t come. Gloria didn’t. Liz didn’t. Only my dad would come, and it wasn’t too successful. He started breaking down in the counseling sessions, crying and unable to go forward.

My mom, still reeling from our fight during Family Week with Bill, refused to come. Here’s some of what she wrote me about her decision in a letter dated February 16, 1987:

There is more. What this letter represents is the longest, most honest, in-depth discussion my mother has ever had with me. I wish that we had been able to use that as a starting point to create a different and better relationship with each other. It saddens me greatly to say that we haven’t.

I
T SEEMED THAT
a new face was showing up at rehab every day. When it happens, it feels as if you are starting all over again—a new round of someone else’s pain to share, someone else to share your pain. More stories of the awful struggles people go through, the bottom that they’ve hit—often many times. It will all live somewhere in your subconscious forever. I tried to embrace it, but some days I was frustrated.

On day three, everything changed. Ruthie had arrived.

I remember the first time I saw her. Into the cafeteria walks this regal, tall, tall, tall, beautiful black chick, just scoping out the room. She had attitude—I liked that. She looked about my age. Finally, somebody I could maybe relate to.

Ruthie remembers, “I noticed Marlee was by herself and she seemed sad, really sad. I think I’m always drawn to underdogs. We just started talking—I was still bouncing—but the vibe from her was all this positive energy, and she was also very sure of herself, even in the sadness. I felt that energy, and I thought, ‘This is someone I want to know, someone I can confide in.’”

Ruthie would become one of my best friends for life—we consider ourselves soul sisters and that’s truly what we are. So many times she’s just looked at me and known exactly what I was thinking, and I can look at her and decode her thoughts in a second. We got each other almost immediately.

The days at Betty Ford were structured—every minute is scheduled from 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., with lights out at 11:30. One of the best parts was the time after breakfast—7:30 to 8:30—that was set aside for the morning meditation walk.

The grounds are beautiful with a creek running through expansive, manicured, green lawns—you could mistake it for a country club. February was a perfect time to spend outside—the meditation in the summers must make you feel like you’re in a sweat lodge.

Most mornings Ruthie and I would walk together—that is when you really get to know someone. You start telling them your stories, the gritty parts that you might not ever reveal in group sessions, and they tell you theirs.

We’ve always said it’s a good thing we didn’t know each other when we were doing drugs—we would have been dead! We are very, very influenced by each other to this day. If I ask her to do something, she does it. If she asks me for anything, she’s got it.

And a really deep mischievous streak lives in both of us.

In the years since, we’ve done crazy things together. Mooned Sting and his wife Trudie on a winding Italian highway when our car passed theirs on the way to meet them for dinner. Spent two crazy weeks in St. Bart’s one Christmas in which the “Maa-Ruu” song, blending our names into one crazy rap, was born:

We sang this at the top of our lungs a million times in those weeks as we cruised around St. Bart’s outer reaches. Pure craziness! I’m sure everyone loved us!

There was the David Copperfield–paparazzi incident…more on that later. And during rehab, we helped one woman escape—sneaking with her into her husband’s rental car, we all took it for a spin around the block. That was all she needed, not to leave forever, just for a little bit.

A
SHORT NOTE
near the end of my journal from February 10 reads, “I’m feeling anxious about the announcement for nominations for Academy Awards tomorrow. Then I hope to ‘forget’ about it during my stay…I want to put it away.”

I knew the nominations were coming, but I didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea how the process worked—between my näiveté and my seclusion from the real world at Betty Ford, I was completely oblivious of the industry’s Oscar craziness. For that month, I was just Marlee Matlin from Morton Grove, Illinois, trying to get better.

Just after five thirty the next morning, my counselor Jane came in and woke me up. I remember I was startled: my first thought was that something had happened to my family. You know, that phone-call-in-the-middle-of-the-night feeling. My heart was beating so hard. “No, no, no, your family is okay,” she said. “You have a phone call from Jack.”

Getting through to me was no easy matter. A strict procedure governed phone calls—and random phone calls for residents at off hours were simply not tolerated. This is one of those times when I was grateful that Jack refused to give up. He says:

“I was watching the announcements on the little thirteen-inch TV in my dorm room at NYU, and they called Marlee’s name. No one else knew where she was. I knew I would start getting flooded with calls from the studio, her publicist, the media. I had to get through to her.

“I called Betty Ford and said I have to talk to Marlee. They said, ‘You can’t.’ I kept trying to convince them this was really an emergency. Finally, I said that she had just been nominated for an Oscar and I really had to talk to her.”

Jane motioned for me to come with her. I put on my robe and walked over to the pay phone. The TTY was ready, and Jack and I had this short conversation—I have the fading roll of TTY paper still. Jack says:

“Is this Marlee?”

“Who else?” (Sorry, Jack, it was early, I was still half-asleep.)

“Well, I was looking for the actress in
Children of a Lesser God
who was nominated for Best Actress. Is that you?”

My heart just stopped.

Jack went on, “The actresses in that category are Jane Fonda, Sissy Spacek. Sigourney Weaver, you, and Kathleen Turner. The picture got five nominations.”

“Thanks for calling. I’m gonna scream later. I have to go, we’re not allowed phone calls….”

This was the first time Jack and I had communicated since I’d checked in.

“Marlee, Lois [who was handling publicity for me] said there’s something very important. She needs a comment from you. She’s gotten around thirty calls already. How did you feel when you were informed?”

“I feel great, oh, God, this lady is telling everyone…. I feel great and elated and honored being in the same category with the other great artists. I feel good.”

“You should, honey, you deserve it….”

“I’m glad you’re the one to tell me. I think Spacek will win.”

“You already won, Marlee, you already won.”

That is one of the reasons Jack and I have worked together for so long—at times he knows exactly the right thing to say.

Jane was standing right there and I looked at her and smiled, and she smiled. Later she wrote “Congratulations” in my journal.

After I’d hung up, Jane asked how I was feeling—emotional moments, even good ones, can be tough on addicts, even recovering ones. I said, “Pretty cool, pretty cool.”

“Great,” she said. “Now go back to your room, it’s time to get ready for breakfast.”

I told Ruthie, and thanks to the woman who had overheard some of the morning back-and-forth, the news was out and others offered me congratulations.

But it really slipped into the background pretty quickly.

My February 11 journal entry is filled with feelings, but it’s all about rehab—the great group session when I was finally able to talk about the conflict I was having with someone else in the group; grief and sadness at one woman’s painful story; frustration at how work on the Valentine’s Day skit was going; more frustration at the AA lecture that night: “I’m so tired of hearing about alcohol. I’m a drug addict! I’m really looking forward to the NA [Narcotics Anonymous] meeting tomorrow.”

O
UTSIDE
,
THE PRESSURE
to reach me was reaching a boiling point. Everyone was calling and yelling at Jack. He stood firm. Day after day, he fielded calls.

“No, you can’t talk to her. I’m sorry. She’s away. She’s not reachable. I can’t help you.” He must have used variations of that a hundred times. The studio was livid. Among the things I would miss was the London premiere of the movie—Princess Di and Prince Charles made it, but I couldn’t?

Finally the pressure was too much. My publicity people told Jack I had to do at least one interview, for the
Los Angeles Times Magazine.
Everyone at the studio and on my publicity team was convinced if I did the interview, I would win the Oscar. It was critical; they demanded I agree. The cover story would feature Paul Newman and me—the actors the magazine was predicting would win that year.

Long negotiations took place with my counselors at Betty Ford to get them to agree to let me leave for a day. Thankfully none of them involved me; Jack handled that, too.

It was not just a matter of saying, yes, I would do the interview. Any number of logistical issues had to be dealt with to accommodate the interview and the photo session without letting anyone—especially the writer and the photographer—know that I was in rehab. And my counselors didn’t want to see the progress I had made go up in smoke either.

Finally, we agreed that on February 21 I would be at the Palm Springs Marriott for the interview at 10:30 a.m. I got up and showered, then put on a nice outfit that I’d borrowed from Pattie, one of the women in my group. No designer duds that day. Jane, my counselor, was going to be with me to make sure I didn’t stumble. Jack was flown in to handle the interpreting.

So the masquerade began.

My little plastic hospital bracelet was cut off. I would get a new one when we got back. I asked Jane who she would be. “Your girlfriend.” We laughed at that.

I was scared—I didn’t want to be found out. In a strange way I felt like a fugitive, too. I was outside, I could easily have just walked
away. I wasn’t even tempted. I wanted to go back, it was too much freedom, more than I was ready for.

Suddenly, you are all on your own and there is no one to hold your hand.

Still, I was so happy to see Jack. And the interview went well. I felt calm and good about myself. It amazed me that people wanted to know about me, who I was, where I’d come from. The toughest part was waiting for the photographer, who was two hours late. I was angry with him, but it did give me a chance to get a sense of how I would live outside Betty Ford.

When it was over and I got back into the car, I remember breathing a sigh of relief—all I wanted to do was get back to the center.

Walking back in felt like walking into a safe zone; it was like sucking my thumb and having my security blanket, too.

T
WENTY-SIX
—
THE NUMBER OF
days I was at Betty Ford.

Fifteen—the number of letters Bill wrote me.

Two—the number of telegrams he sent.

At least this is what I’ve saved. There is even a note one counselor jotted down on a strip of paper torn from a legal pad:
Marlee, I called Bill, he also left a message—he said: Our love is more important than the nominations.

We were apart while I was in Betty Ford, but far from disconnected. I tried not to, but I lived for any word from him. The letters usually left me feeling better—loved and optimistic—our TTY conversations often dissolved into fights. Old habits die hard.

As I read through the letters now, I can ride the waves of his emotions that month. And my own. I think back sometimes to the moment Randa asked me to describe what waves are like. I would describe them differently now—capturing the way they endlessly pound, over and over, eating away at whatever shoreline they hit.

Sometimes Bill would write a letter in the morning and another late at night when yet another thought would strike him. Mostly he wrote of love and support for my recovery. Sometimes he wrote about just ordinary things—how our cats, Otis and Bully, were doing, about the house he was living in during the
Broadcast News
filming in D.C., the weather. Sometimes he sent me prayers or meditations that had moved him, insights he was finding from his own recovery that he thought would help in mine.

In some of the letters he was trying to work through his feelings of jealousy and resentment at all of the critical notice I was getting
for my performance in the film. In one, dated February 4, he finally congratulated me for the Golden Globe win. Apologizing that it was so late in coming. Amen.

On February 10, the day before the Academy Award nominations, his letter was filled with concern that he might not be able to handle it if I won an Oscar. That at twenty-one I was walking away with so much so fast while he had worked for so many years to get that sort of recognition. If the Oscar was awarded to me, he mused, it would serve as his ultimate humiliation, the innocent making him face his arrogance and pretension.

On February 10 he wrote again at midnight. It had just occurred to him that because of his
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Oscar as lead actor the previous year, he would be presenting the Oscar in the Best Actress category, which might be me. He was struck by the irony. He hoped he could be gracious.

On February 11 the nominations were announced. He tried to get through to my parents and finally got through to my sister-in-law—his conversation with her and his letter to me were all about how we were going to have to deal with this frightening time. Why did it have to be frightening?

On February 13–14, he wrote just at midnight, just a few words, asking me to be his Valentine.

On February 14 we talked by phone—he referred to it in his next letter as our own “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” The letter is dripping with sarcasm and bitterness—words underlined with instructions for me to “go look up” the definitions.

On February 17 he compares us to Cinderella and the prince going to the Oscars. The tone is light, the love is back. And I wonder how I did not go insane.

Though Bill and my first boyfriend, Mike, could not have been more different, the conflicts in the relationships in some ways boiled down to the same thing—what my success as an actress would mean for them. How would they bear that burden? Though I hadn’t yet admitted it to myself, in my bones I knew my days with Bill were numbered.

O
N
F
EBRUARY
28 I left Betty Ford, which was harder and sadder than I had expected it to be.

I started that day’s journal entry on a flight to Paris for the French premiere of
Children of a Lesser God.
My month of rehab was bookended by my new celebrity life. Here’s what I was feeling:

In Paris, right after my stint at Betty Ford

In the phone call, he had told me I was prostituting myself for going to Paris to do publicity. I could never reconcile these particular rants since he did more than his share of high-profile interviews. But I was just so tired of trying to understand things like this.

I would go to AA meetings in Paris. I wanted to hold on to my sobriety. I wanted to reclaim my life.

Paris was cold, and sometimes rainy. It was hard for me to focus on much beyond trying to figure out how to be a normal human being again without losing all that I had learned during rehab. The premiere itself is a blur.

Jack, who went along as my interpreter, had spent days before the trip getting lists of all the expat AA meetings in the city. The one I attended was in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, the room choking with thick smoke, a table filled with pastries, a bottomless pot of dark coffee, and generous people who wrapped me in emotional support.