Happy Accidents (25 page)

Because of her strong and steady nature, Lara’s plight did not trigger my “rescue” impulse, as it might have otherwise. She was a
substantial
person, with great integrity, and that was clearly no projection on my part. I was, however, in danger of falling into hero-worship and idealization, but Lara would not be amenable to taking this on, as I would find out later that night. . . .

Lara’s best friend (and soon-to-be maid of honor at our wedding), Trish, was the one who had told Lara to get me to sign her boob. In between the time Lara saw me in the lobby and this photo session, she figured out that I was the actress Trish wanted her to meet. Trish was a
Two and a Half Men
fanatic, and when Lara had told her I would be at the event, her first response had been a very jealous “You suck.” So I have her to thank for putting me on Lara’s radar. Trish had been trying to get Lara to watch my portrayal as Charlie’s therapist for a long time, telling her she would love me. Though Lara had never caught the show, Trish was
convinced
we would have a lot in common: I played a therapist and she
was
a therapist; I was a lesbian, and she was a lesbian, too. It was perfect!
She
was perfect! And that night as we were making out in her hotel room, I told her so.

“You’re perfect!” I exclaimed.

“No, I’m not,” she said in a very measured tone. “You’re turned on and I happen to be the woman who is on top of you.”

Oh my god, I thought,
even more perfect!

In between kisses during
the
best make-out session I’ve ever had, we talked and talked. She had just turned forty and had a therapy practice in Sarasota. She’d gotten her bachelor’s from Smith College, master’s in philosophy from Columbia, and a PhD in psychology from the University of Washington. I don’t think I had ever kissed anyone so educated. She was originally from Alabama, and her parents were both doctors, Mom a radiologist and Dad a forensic pathologist. (I’d
played
a forensic scientist in
The Fugitive
,
so I sort of knew what that was.) She had a brother who was doing his residency in radiology and he was married, with a little boy. She had acquired those terrific guns from rowing, which she had done since her Smith crew team days. She loved her kids fiercely; her birth daughter, Haden, was seven and, as she put it, a “pip.” (When I met the child the next day, I would find that to be an understatement.) She showed me a school photo of her freckle-faced older daughter, by then nine years old and at that time in neither Lara’s nor Haden’s life.

As I listened and Lara offered me bits of her life story, the piece of her past that seemed to weigh the heaviest on her was the devastating loss of her older sister in a car crash when they were in their early teens. That her two daughters had lost each other was unbearable; it was clear that she would do everything in her power to reunite these sisters.

I was so taken with her peaceful countenance and self-assurance, in part because it contrasted so much with me. I am a whippersnapper, full of anxious energy and all go-go-go. Her steady tempo calmed me, and helped me keep guard over my enthusiasm, because after one evening with someone, even someone this wonderful, I had no business deciding I’d found my soul mate. And yet that was what I was feeling.

At around
3
A.M.
, Lara needed to take her leave. Haden had slept over at a cousin’s home nearby so Lara could attend the event, and Lara didn’t want her to wake up in the middle of the night and not know where her mom was. This warmed my already warm heart. My insides jumped up and down when she agreed that I should return to her hotel room in the morning with coffee for us. I also wished I had brought one more outfit to wear.

I went back to my hotel room and barely slept, watching the clock, waiting for the moment when I could get up and get the coffee and see her again. Could she possibly be as wonderful as I felt she was? I did not want to repeat my tendency to create, sometimes out of whole cloth, an entire person based on nothing other than my projections, resulting in my being shocked (
shocked
, I tell you!) when she turned out to be someone completely different.

Dressed in the clothes she’d seen me wearing in the lobby the day before, I went to Starbucks and got us soy lattes. After I got back to the hotel, I realized I had completely forgotten to get anything for the kid: no hot chocolate, no treats. I was not at all used to considering the needs of children, and this wouldn’t be the last time I would forget to feed the child.

Haden was in the shower when I arrived, which gave me a moment to look at Lara in the light of the morning. My feelings for her had not eroded in the least during the night. I was still completely goo-goo-eyed.

Then I met the freshly showered Haden. Seven years old, with long, curly brown hair just like her mom’s, she wore glasses with transition lenses that were starting to go dark in the bright sunlight pouring into the hotel room. My dad had worn transition lenses, as had many old people I’d known, but I’d never seen them on a child. She danced around, kicking up her legs for us to examine the pants she was wearing, wondering aloud if they qualified as capris or gauchos. I suggested they were gauchos because they had very wide legs. She considered this a bit and then agreed. Suddenly we heard a loud noise from down on the street below and a man yelling furiously. Haden raised her eyebrows and said, “
Someone’s
having a bad day.”

I’ve never found kids very interesting; I’m a dog person. But this kid was charming and she was
ironic
. I thought that maybe I could deal with a kid if it’s
this
kid. Again, I had to be careful to keep my feet on the ground, e.g., not suggest they move across the country to live with me just yet. Before they left, the kid sat in my lap for a photo.

Photographic evidence of the moment I met Haden Ryan Embry.

They were flying back home to Sarasota later that day, so I said good-bye. As I was leaving the hotel room, Lara took me in her arms and held me; it felt so wonderful and right. As I walked to the door, I sang, “
When will I see you again?
”

She smiled. “I hope soon.”

We would talk even sooner. While I was in the airport later that day waiting for my plane back to LA, we talked on the phone for about two hours. We were having the “relationship interview,” the conversation where you learn as much as you can about each other, usually served up in sound bites. We lined up in all the important areas: she loved coffee and the
New York Times
columnist Frank Rich; her few good friends were long-term and of good quality. I remember I had just passed through security when she brought up the subject of my past relationships. My heart started to pound and I felt all the blood rush to my face. I did not look good on paper; I was nearing fifty, and with a couple of exceptions, most of my relationships had lasted two months, max. As I had in the past felt embarrassed talking about my relatively unremarkable drinking history, I was ashamed of my pitiful dating life and seeming inability to connect—I sounded like such an underachiever. But she did not gasp in shock or send me on my way. She simply listened with what felt like no judgment and then shared her answer to that same question: she had been with her ex-partner for almost ten years, but she said that it probably should have been over much sooner. I thought to myself:
So her relationship history isn’t anything to write home about either
. As I breathed a sigh of relief, we hung up so I could board the plane back to LA. Once on board, I got on my BlackBerry to look into flights to Sarasota.

I was so elated to find there was a direct flight to Tampa from LAX; I don’t change planes. Tampa was only an hour drive from her home in Sarasota. I checked the schedule and called Lara right there on the runway. “I can come to Sarasota next weekend. Are you around?” She had a very good friend coming into town that weekend and was so sorry, but she wouldn’t be available. I was afraid that the shock of my relationship history had sunk in and she was blowing me off, until she asked, “How about the week after that?” I would be back to work on
Glee
, so no could do. We hung up saying we would talk again when I landed.

Just before the plane took off and I was about to turn off my phone, she called me back. “My friend is fine with your coming into town the same time she’s here, so book that flight for next weekend.” This was Lisa, her best friend from high school who was like a sister to her. Wanting Lara to find love, Lisa even offered to watch Haden so we could have some time together
.
This was music to my one hearing ear. My heart was full and pounded all the way back to LA.

My hopeful mind reeled along with my heart:
Could this wonderful, amazing, beautiful woman be “the one”?

Whereupon my practical mind interjected
: There’s no such thing as “the one,” Jane.

And my hopeful mind snapped at my practical mind,
Why do you have to be such a killjoy?

When the appointed day and time arrived for me to board the plane to visit Lara in Sarasota, I was on the phone with her. I said, “I just want to say how brave we both are right now. Me for getting on a plane to fly across the country to visit someone I just met, and you for inviting someone you just met to fly across the country.” She agreed. I flew on the direct red-eye flight into Tampa, arriving at about five-thirty in the morning. Already almost ninety degrees and about
80
percent humidity, the hostility of the air almost knocked me to the pavement, a la Patsy and Edina in the “Morocco”
Absolutely Fabulous
episode. I hoped to god she didn’t want to live in Florida forever.

No rental car company would give me a car, because I had only brought a debit card and they required a regular credit card, so I took a cab to Sarasota that cost me around $
200
. I declined to tell Lara about this, as I didn’t want to look like an idiot right away. I was staying in Turtle Beach, about a fifteen-minute drive from Lara’s home. She had cleared her Friday of appointments save one first thing in the morning and would arrive at around
10
A.M.
As it was early in the morning and the front office of the small resort where I was staying was not open yet, a key to my little cabin on the bay had been left for me, taped to the screen door. I walked in after my all-night flight, thrilled but exhausted. When my head hit the pillow of the huge bed that took up the entire room, I fell into a deep sleep and had a very vivid dream that Lara, followed by what I imagined was her Mexican cleaning lady and her Mexican cleaning lady’s family all carrying suitcases, had filed into my hotel room. I made the mistake of texting this dream to Lara before I could think about it, and she texted back, “Worried I might have too much baggage?” I learned another important lesson: never tell a therapist a dream unless you want it analyzed and your covers pulled.

I was coming into Lara’s life during a very trying time for her. She had a lot on her plate; she was raising one child by herself, fighting to regain joint custody of the other, all the while needing to be available and sane enough to deal with other people’s problems in her very busy therapy practice. I had a job on a TV show that had the potential to become a phenomenon and felt myself to be on the brink of a career explosion. Perhaps that dream was my subconscious trying to knock on my door of awareness:
Do you want to get involved in all this? Do you really want to take this on?

I had no answer just yet; all I wanted was for her to get to my cabin, already. She arrived mid-morning, all dreamy-looking and self-assured and bearing soy lattes. I met her at the door with a kiss, after which we rarely left my place for the rest of the weekend. We took full advantage of Lara’s friend Lisa, happily having Haden play with her daughter, Amelia.

In and out of sleep on our first night together, I had another very vivid dream. In it, a trio of lisping musicians dressed as clowns was performing an oompah band rendition of “At Last
.
”
This time,
I didn’t need a psychologist to tell me that I was falling deeply in love with Lara.

She really was up to her ears in her own life, with a long road ahead of her full of legal twists and turns as she fought for her daughters. I would watch as she underwent this ordeal, amazed at the way she always remained calm and steady and focused. Even on the rare occasions when she became frustrated or angry, I never saw her freak out or lose her temper.