Read My Lips (37 page)

That’s what I loved about Bob: his films didn’t always rock the box office, but he smiled right through it. A picture would come out, be a flop, and the next week he’d be celebrated at Cannes. Another film would come out, get panned by the critics, and the following month he’d be the toast of Lincoln Center.

“Giggle and give in,” he’d always say. Those are words to live by.

I
T WAS HARD NOT FEEL LET DOWN WHEN
I
RETURNED TO
LA. I was worried about Bob, who went in for a heart transplant as soon as shooting wrapped. And I was wondering what the hell to do about Jonathan and my marriage.

Jonathan is smart. He knows when to let me be and when to reach out. Faithful or not, he was deeply invested in our relationship. The minute I said that our marriage was over, he wanted to know how soon he could come home. But the first time we separated I wasn’t strong enough to make him understand that I would never again tolerate such a betrayal.

During that period, when there were some unexpected extra people in my marriage, I was so lucky to have Milton. If it hadn’t been for him, Jonathan and I never would have stayed together.
I didn’t have a natural instinct in my body about how to make a marriage last.

“Fill yourself up!” he’d say to me. “Get to know yourself.”

He told me that if I wanted my marriage to endure, I had to be loving and kind, even in the face of all I was feeling.

Are you kidding
? I thought. I mean, when Jonathan was away on location with the marital intruder, I was in a state of rage.

“Who is in that room with you?!” I wanted to yell over the phone.

But on Milton’s advice, I stayed loving and kind when we spoke. When Jonathan came home, I was still as sweet as I could be. Nothing else had worked—not anger, not recrimination. I kept my cool. But that only lasted so long—I hadn’t grown that much. One more infraction and suddenly the kind and loving bullshit took a backseat to fury and hurt.

“You sonofabitch!” I railed at him. “I know this, and I know that, and if you’re not completely honest with me right now, I’m gone!”

With that, I jumped in the car and tore off, going about one hundred miles per hour. Jonathan called me in the car.

“Come home!” he said. “Please! I’ll talk to you!”

When I got there, he told me how floored he was that I had been so loving to him, despite what I knew. My behavior surprised him so much that he was moved to apologize and to regret what he’d done.

Oh my God,
I thought.
Milton! It worked
!

But Jonathan still hadn’t gotten whatever it was out of his system. The second time he dabbled outside our marriage, it was right in my face. In fact, it was in the newspaper. He was seeing somebody in the business, a name people knew, and it turned out the other woman wanted to get a house with him. I was through.

Of course, I rushed back to Milton.

“Okay, Milton,” I demanded. “What? I’m supposed to be sweet now?”

Milton said, “Well, if I were you—and I’m not and I’ll back you in whatever decision you make—I would have enough self-esteem to separate.”

So Jonathan and I separated again.

It’s funny. Whenever an actor’s marriage hits a bump in the road, the media blames Hollywood. They mock the fleeting marriages of the Kim Kardashians but never bother to praise the longevity of the Christopher Plummers or the Jeff Bridges or the Martin Sheens. I don’t know if it’s Hollywood’s fault when show business marriages don’t work. That seems like an excuse. Maybe people living elsewhere in the world don’t have the same distractions and temptations that we do. I don’t know whether it’s any harder to make a marriage last here than it is in Vermont. But I grew up here, and Hollywood is all I know.

I don’t know how easy it is to be married in Seattle.

O
FTEN LOSS CAN REUNITE PEOPLE WHO ARE ESTRANGED.
I didn’t know if it would happen to me.

I am so grateful that my mother lived until the twins were seven years old. Fifteen years after dad died, she married a lovely man named Howard Benjamin. They were together thirteen years and having a wonderful time until she had a ministroke. (I love the way they try to make those sound less serious than they are.) Nevertheless, Mom rallied from that. I’d bring Jack and Hanna over to visit her at the assisted living center, and they would wander the halls, stopping in everyone’s rooms, leaving smiles in their tiny wakes. But then another, slower decline began for Mom, and soon we were having birthdays in her room instead of out at a restaurant. She just kept getting tinier and tinier, and she was only five-foot-two to begin with.

Toward the end she was in wheelchair, someplace I never thought I’d see her. I spent a whole day at Macy’s one time, trying to figure out what would be comfortable to wear for a five-foot-two woman in a wheelchair. I was so proud of the way she was handling the confinement, and I found her some pretty things she really liked, doing for her what she had done for me when I was little.

Mom was always in such good spirits. I slept in her room sometimes, and I sang to her, just as I used to in the backseat of the car. On one of the last nights of my mom’s life my sister Diana and I went to Marie Callender’s and brought back a chocolate meringue pie to share with her while sitting on her bed as we talked about all our happy memories. Mom and chocolate. Some things never change.

Mom listened to my troubles with Jonathan and surprised me by confiding, “If only I’d ever had the courage to walk out on your father just once . . .”

As Mom’s days drew to a close, I phoned Jonathan in New York to tell him. He went straight to the airport and flew out to Los Angeles. He was shocked by the agony she was in when he saw her. Mom had a “do not resuscitate” order, but the nurses were leaving her gasping for her last breaths.

“DNR doesn’t mean she has to suffer!” Jonathan yelled, and they finally gave Mom the oxygen she needed, allowing her to pass quietly.

Mom had always said that she never wanted to be a burden to her children, and she never was. Instead, she was truly generous, spiritual, full of life, warm, and humorous right up until the very end.

So many of the things she said throughout my life come back to me on a daily basis.

        
Everything we need is within us . . .

        
Nothing is too good not to happen . . .

        
We are surrounded by love. . . .

        
You are God’s perfect child . . .

        
Ingratitude is the back door through which all our blessings escape . . .

She had about a hundred more sayings, and Jonathan has heard them all. One that has come to me over and over while
writing this memoir: “Darling,” she would say to me whenever I overshared, “do you have to tell everything you know?”

Yes, I do, Mom, at least where you’re concerned.

I wish she could hold this book in her hands, to read it and know how much she meant to me in her unassuming delightfully inspirational way. At five-foot-ten, I wish I were half the woman my five-foot-two miracle of a mother was. Maybe someday I will be.

A
FTER MY MOTHER’S DEATH
J
ONATHAN AND
I
GOT BACK TOGETHER
. Yes, I endured the humiliation of his extracurricular activities. I know some people thought of me as a woman who should have walked. “One disrespectful incident, and I would be out of there,” you hear people say—usually these people have no experience at all with infidelity. I’m certainly not the only person in the world who has stayed in a marriage rocked by an affair. Although in the end Milton thought maybe I should get a medal. In any case, my marriage has survived.

My decision to try again with Jonathan began as an experiment. He always said he loved me and I believed him. And I’ve always wanted to see what happens if you let love grow. Marriage can be painful, it can be angry, it can be funny, loving, and hot. It can be all those things at once. And in the end the experience of laughing, fighting, making love, talking, arguing, and seeking counseling ultimately deepened our relationship. On the good days—and there are more good than bad—I’m so glad we stuck together.

Jonathan and I are so well suited for each other. He said he likes me a little needy. Well, honey, you’re in luck! He believes in my music—always has. He doesn’t let me wallow in self-pity. I remember that when I used to ask Rick if I looked good, he’d get frustrated and say, “Stop asking those rhetorical questions!” When I ask the same thing of Jonathan, to this day—even if he
isn’t looking at me—he says, “Sure honey, you look great . . .” My kind of guy.

Of course, more recently, when I’ve asked him if I look too thin—which at my age makes you look a lot older—he says, “Darling, I have just spent the last twenty-five years assuring you that you are not too fat. I’m not sure I can spend the next twenty-five years telling you that you are not too thin.”

Jonathan has said, “I’m so proud of you having a great life in spite of me.” In truth, he’s a major part of why I have such a good life. However, we’re all responsible for our own happiness. If something isn’t working, we’d better start by looking at our part in it.

Younger people sometimes ask me how to stay married thirty years. Well, you’re either stupid or you love each other. But one thing is for sure: both people really have to want to make it work. Now, with all those years behind us, Jonathan and I have just about seen it all and, because of that, truly know why we want to be together.

I
N
2000 J
ONATHAN AND
I
RENEWED OUR WEDDING VOWS
, again at Jennifer Jones’s house. We had planned to host the ceremony ourselves, but we were a little disorganized. When it was only a week away, we still hadn’t finalized our plans. So we decided instead to have Jennifer join us for a lovely dinner, to commemorate our marriage at her home.

Well, Jennifer wouldn’t have it.

“Absolutely not!” she said. “You had a big wedding, and you’ll have big renuptials too.”

Within a week she had her entire place redone and florists on call. The vows renewal was going to be beautiful.

Jonathan and I quickly got on the horn to invite people. Oddly enough, everyone was free: the Altmans, Milton, Marilyn and Allen Bergmans, the Rydells, my sister Diana and her partner,
Gloria, Claire, Jack and Hanna, Morgan Ames, Bob Esty, Sydney and Claire Pollack, Henry Jaglom, James Coburn and his wife, Beverly, and so many other close friends, many of whom were there the first time around.