Born with Teeth: A Memoir (18 page)

My third pregnancy developed naturally and without incident. I worked, I played, I indulged in the occasional glass of wine, I stayed up late, I was happy. This probably explains why Alexander James was so reluctant to step onto the real stage of life. I imagined him, after his nine-month bath of endorphins and serotonin as I pranced about in various phases of creative
delectation, far too comfortable to decamp for cooler climes. I labored for nearly fifteen hours before a frustrated obstetrician (presumably late for a golf game) threatened a C-section, citing fetal distress and prolonged womb worship as justification for the knife, whereupon a very Viking-like Robert Egan took me by the shoulders and practically shouted, “You do
not
want a C-section and you are
not
going to have one! You’re young and you’re strong and you need to fight! Now get down on your haunches, goddammit, and push that baby out!”

I did as he instructed and, lo, the angels were pleased, and a very large, very pink, very serene baby slipped out of his blissful cocoon and into his father’s arms.

This little boy, my second son, had none of his brother’s intensity and twice his appetite. How strange and sweet the moment when a newborn infant, with eyes that cannot yet quite see and hands that cannot grasp, still finds his way immediately and unerringly to the breast, as if it were an extension of himself. For me, this moment was unmatched in its tenderness.

“Look,” I said to Robert, who was reading the birth coach’s postpartum manual, “his eyebrows are absolutely white. Little running elephants of eyebrows,” I cooed, stroking the baby’s brows.

Robert glanced up and shook his head.

“Elephants, to the best of my knowledge, are not white. We should call him Alec, he’ll prefer that growing up.”

“You mean you’ll prefer that,” I countered, too enthralled with my offspring to argue.

“Christened Alexander James, but known as Alec. Celtic,” Robert stated, with finality.

“English,” I murmured, “Alec is English.”

Silence from the fatherland, but as the baby suckled and I nuzzled his downy cheek, I put my lips to his tiny ear and
whispered, “You may be Alec to him, but to me you will be known as Little Running Elephants of Joy.”

The rented house on Montana Avenue held a certain conventional charm, in that the bedrooms were actually upstairs and everything else a floor below, opening onto a garden that, instead of sloping dramatically into our neighbor’s backyard, as it did in Seattle, expanded upward, in tiers. The second floor had three bedrooms, one of which housed a peculiar young woman I had brought with me from Alaska to help me look after Ian during the run of
The Misanthrope.
When we moved to Los Angeles, she begged to accompany us on the drive down and then pleaded with me to let her stay just a bit longer, until we’d found our sea legs. While her devotion to me was clear, I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure of her commitment to the babies, and so I was always pricking up my ears or lying rigidly awake in my bed, waiting with an invisible cudgel for some sign of aberrant behavior.

It was not unusual for me to gather my offspring into my arms and take them to bed with me. One night, as Alexander lay contentedly suckling my left breast, and Ian had burrowed his way into my right armpit, I saw a shadow fall across the top landing of the hallway, then another, immediately behind the first. Instantly frozen, I searched frantically in my mind for the most efficient mode of escape and, barring that, the most effective and accessible murder weapon. Just as I was about to dislodge Ian from his nesting place and reach for the telephone on the side table, the two shadowy figures fell to their knees and began creeping slowly into the master bedroom, where we lay. Risking all, I pushed the babies under the blanket, and just as my hand grasped the telephone, a mass of yellow roses bloomed in front of my eyes, and slowly, one by one, the flowers were placed on my body until I resembled a lovely corpse.

Suddenly, the shadowy figures pressed their faces forward, and one of them, a well-known playwright, whispered, “Dear Kate, I am begging you to do my play, and if you agree, I will be forever in your debt.”

Another voice, far more familiar, chimed in and said, “We’ll work it out about the babies, but I had to fire the leading lady—she was a fucking nightmare—and we open in two days. You’ve got to save us.”

At this very moment, Alexander attacked my nipple with unusual ferocity, and Ian, shifting beneath my right arm, gave me a swift kick in the ribs with unnecessary vigor and precision, but I, the actress-mother, looked into the faces of Jon Robin Baitz and Robert Egan and said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, all right. I’ll do it.”

This established the pattern that would define my marriage, and although I was delighted to be reunited with my great friend Daniel Davis in Jon Baitz’s
The Film Society,
I staggered home each evening, guilty, happy, and conflicted, as well as increasingly concerned about the girl with the wide-set eyes living in the third bedroom.

Every other week, a Mexican woman by the name of Josephina came and cleaned for me. She was tall, trim, and stern, with jet-black hair swept up into a bun, and dark, careful eyes hidden behind thick glasses. One morning, as she vacuumed and scrubbed, never pausing in her labor, I asked her if she knew anyone who might be looking for employment. I explained that I needed a woman, preferably on the youthful side, who would live with us and look after the babies while I was working. Josephina straightened, put her hand on her hip, and said, “My niece, she just come from Mexico.”

“Can she speak any English?”

“No, señora, but she smart, hard worker, she learn fast.”

“When can I meet her?” I asked, now offering Josephina a
cup of coffee and a cookie, which she declined, saying, “I bring next week. Okay with you?”

“Fantastico,”
I replied, popping the cookie into my mouth.

The following Tuesday, Josephina arrived for work at the customary hour, bringing with her the young woman who was her niece. The girl could not have been more than twenty-five years old, short and stocky, with long, pitch-black hair that fell in thick sheets to her waist. The face, though not immediately beautiful, was striking. There was a certain nobility to her features. The mouth was set in a frown; the brow was furrowed. She held herself with pride, and her eyes, a rich chocolate brown, were intelligent and curious. She stood at the door, hesitant and shy, and refused the offer of refreshment with an abrupt shake of her head.

As she stood there with her arms folded tightly across her chest and her posture so erect as to seem almost defensive, I found myself at a complete loss for words. She spoke no English, and my Spanish was rudimentary, at best. Suddenly, from his cradle in the adjoining room, Alexander began to cry, and his distress had a reflexive effect on Ian, who started to howl with alarming gusto. Not missing a beat, the young girl unfolded her arms, put her purse down on the counter, and walked out of the kitchen. Moments later, she reappeared, with Alexander neatly tucked in one arm and Ian held firmly in the other. The babies were silent. She was silent. Josephina was silent.

I said, “You’re hired.”

She put her hand into Alec’s diaper to test for dampness and then, looking at me, asked, “Pamper?”

I pointed to the adjoining room, and just as she started to walk away with my babies secure in her arms, I called after her. “What’s your name?”

Back came the answer, unexpected. Perfect. “I Lucy.”

“My name is Kate, please call me Kate!” I shouted, and then
came the response, as she bent over the first of thousands of dirty diapers, in words that, from that day forward, would never change.

Decisively, she said, “Sí, señora.”

Lucy changed my life. Her presence filled me with confidence. I trusted her implicitly with my babies and did not hesitate to send the strange girl from Alaska on her way. I felt a new sense of freedom and went in search of opportunity. Immediately after
The Film Society,
I was offered a part in a movie starring Fred Ward and Joel Grey. It was called
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
and would be shot almost entirely on location in Mexico. This required a negotiation between Robert and me, and unlike so many of our interactions, this was neither protracted nor messy. Our commitment to each other as artists was an understanding more cohesive, and more respected, than any other in our relationship. The tougher negotiation demanded a confrontation with myself, but I was unwilling to subject myself to that scrutiny—not as long as I could have my cake and eat it, too.

In Mexico City I sat over drinks with the cinematographer, Andrew Lazlo, with whom I had become friendly, and on this particular afternoon we found ourselves immersed in conversation about work and parenting. I was defending my right to leave a four-month-old infant in the hands of a good nanny and a responsible father and to go on location for a few weeks. My voice rising, I told him that I was flying home whenever possible, and that the money I made working in movies was our financial bedrock.

“You don’t have a leg to stand on in this argument,” I bristled, “since your wife—
without discussion
—stayed home to raise your five children, leaving you free to go off to work, wherever it might take you, doing whatever strikes your fancy.
So please don’t tell me that your relationship with your wife is one of equals. You’re the alpha male, and she’s the beta who stays at home, putting a brave face on it.”

Andy leaned forward and, cupping my chin in his hand, whispered, “You’re a very attractive woman and a lovely actress, and I am exceedingly fond of you, but you’ll never be a natural mother.”

Shocked by the unexpected venom of this opinion, I jumped up with such force that my chair tipped over and, tears streaming down my cheeks, ran from the room. Andrew tried hard to make amends, protesting that he’d meant nothing by the remark, but the alpha had bared his teeth and I, with my tail between my legs, had gone into hiding.

When I returned home, after having been in Mexico for nearly three weeks, I ran up the driveway and into the kitchen, shouting to Lucy as I approached that I needed money for the taxi and did she have any, and when I entered the kitchen and dropped my bag on the floor, I was greeted by a stranger sitting in a red rolling chair, eating a banana. The child appraised me with cool hazel eyes, and what had begun as a smile on his face now suddenly faded and fastened itself into a frown, a serious frown, a frown of righteous disappointment, and those bright eyes, at first glance so merry under those running elephants, turned into dark pools of fury, and with nary a backward glance, my shockingly ambulatory baby turned his chair around and skittered away from me, as fast as his little legs could propel him. I stood there, devastated, with Andrew Lazlo’s words echoing in my mind.
You’ll never be a natural mother.
And then I felt before I actually saw the whirling dervish that was Ian, as he hurtled into my arms, miniature Superman cape attached to his shoulders with safety pins, flying through the air, shouting, “Mama! Mama! Mama!”

That night, I knew to leave the babies in their cribs, and
when at last I heard Robert’s weary step on the stair, I sat bolt upright in bed, snapped on the light, and said, “Hi there. You know, I made a few bucks in Mexico, Lucy’s room is nothing more than a glorified closet, and Alexander isn’t speaking to me. We need to buy a house.”

Egan ran his fingers through his hair and, sitting heavily on the bed, said, “We should also discuss a play I’m directing. Shakespeare’s
Measure for Measure.
There’s a part in it for you.”

“But I just got home—” I began to interrupt.

“Shhh,” my husband said, turning off the light, “sometimes you talk too much.”

It is strange to me, even now, that a house that brought me so much happiness also stirred up a yearning I could neither understand nor articulate. I wanted to imbue it with the charm and grace of Derby Grange, but I wanted my house to have, unlike the chaos I had known as a girl, a sense of order. It was meant to be a place where all were welcomed, and none were judged. It was a house bustling with activity, from the early hours of the morning until well past midnight, when Robert would come through the front door with a few of his cronies, ready for music, for drinks, for talk. If we were working on a play together, then we would arrive home at approximately the
same time, famished and buzzing with adrenaline. Lucy had transformed herself into a superb housekeeper, as a result of which the kitchen was always spotless, stocked, and inviting. Robert and I and whoever else we’d invited over at the last minute would make our way into the kitchen, clattering pots and pans into submission, pouring wine, piling plates high with bread and cheese.

If it was an opening night, I knew to expect a full house and that many would not leave until dawn, not until the last paper had been found and delivered, the last review dissected with surgical precision, the last hope dashed or confirmed. Egan was a gifted director and an exceptionally talented dramaturge, so his productions quickly acquired a reputation for their visual elegance, their unexpected boldness, their capacity to tell the story on a high and intelligent level without having to lead the audience by the hand.

Measure for Measure
was a success at the Mark Taper Forum, particularly among the cognoscenti, many of whom joined us after the opening in our living room, until the first light of dawn crept through the windows and our little boys ran helter-skelter into the room, clamoring for attention, for breakfast, for nickels hidden in the crevices of couches. Robert and I walked the boys to their preschool, just a few blocks away, urging an exhausted but exhilarated Kelsey Grammer to stay put, assuring him that we’d be back in no time and would prepare him a breakfast fit for a king. His electrifying performance as Lucio, opposite me as a passionate and strong-willed Isabella, had created a stir in the theatrical community, as a result of which Kelsey and I had developed a mutual admiration, and it wasn’t long before Kelsey had arranged an appointment for me to meet with James Burrows, the creator of a television sitcom Kelsey was on called
Cheers.

I was hired to play Ted Danson’s love interest in a multiepisode
arc. The half-hour show was taped weekly in front of a live audience. The money was fast and easy, although hardly what the stars of the show were making, I learned as I stood backstage waiting for my cue to enter, listening to the actors’ rather glib chatter regarding their exorbitant salaries. Later, I passed Kelsey’s dressing room, where he sat tinkering on a baby grand, and blew him a kiss. I was going home. How much simpler it was in the theater, I thought, where there was never any talk of money because there was never any money to be had. Simpler, I mused, but not necessarily fair.

When I came through the front door, I saw Robert’s long silhouette reclining in a chair in the backyard, close to the pool. He had his feet up on an ottoman and was smoking a cigarette. I stood for a moment weighing the odds and then, as was so often my habit, dropped my bag on the floor and made a beeline for the backyard, itching to pry the lid off Pandora’s box. A bottle of wine rested on the glass coffee table, next to an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.

“How did it go?” he asked, perfunctorily. He was always much more interested in my career when it was directly involved with his own.

“Fine,” I answered, “fun. Boy, are those actors raking it in. Hundreds of thousands per episode, or so a little birdie told me tonight before we went on.”

“No kidding,” Robert said, drily, as if the subject of expansive salaries was somehow beneath him.

“Yeah, good for them. And good for me, too, don’t you think?” I asked, lighting a cigarette. Robert chuckled, uncertain as to where this was going but feeling the first tightening of a long noose. I poured myself a glass of wine and took a deep breath.

“Robert, I know that you think it is best to pool our resources and to work out of a single account, and I know that you feel
in better control of the household money when you’re in charge of paying the bills, but the thing is—I don’t. I don’t feel better giving you my paychecks. I’ve always made my own money, I’ve worked hard to make it, and I’ve always had my own manager and my own accounts, and that’s what I want again. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to hire a money manager, and she can cut you a check for my share of the household expenses. Okay?”

There was a long and uncomfortable pause.

Finally, Robert stood up and, not looking at me, demurred, “I think it’s bullshit. We’re married or we’re not. It’s common money, for a common purpose. Who makes what makes no difference. It’s called a shared life.” He lifted his wineglass to his lips, drained it, and walked into the living room.

A shared life. Does this include all that came before, as well as all that comes after? Are memories shared, are sorrows shared? Or, when someone refers to a “shared” marriage, do they mean strictly the obvious—children, money, acquisitions? And why is the mention of money between spouses so unsettling, so divisive? Money, by its very nature, does not seek to be shared, any more than old memories do, or deeply hidden sorrows. If an independent nature is cut in two, is it then shareable? I didn’t think so. The next day I hired a business manager.

Blind to its implications, but aware of its incomparable beauty, Robert presented me with the Hope diamond, for surely Hedda Gabler is that jewel among all the roles written for women in modern literature.

It was virtually impossible to say no, although careening through my memory were snatches of reviews of this play, historically famous for its difficulty, notoriously challenging for the actress playing the central role.

“We’ll take the journey together, and I’ll guide you. You have
her in you, you know you do. We’ll coax her into perfection,” Robert said, triumphant. “What’s more, I’ve got Michael Gross for Tesman, Linda Purl will be perfect as Thea, and we’ve decided on George Deloy for Lovborg. Dark, handsome, dangerous.” Robert paused, then added, “You should enjoy that.”

From the beginning, from the moment I sat at the table in the rehearsal room for the first read-through, I knew that I was looking at Kilimanjaro. And it was not the play alone that filled me with trepidation, but something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, something that I sensed might have the power to change the nature of my marriage. Robert approached
Hedda
with rigor and passion. He hired the head of the Scandinavian department at UCLA to edify us about Henrik Ibsen, the master of modern theater, and the world of the Norwegian middle class in the late nineteenth century. She was lithe and reserved, with a head of hair gone wild in salt-and-pepper curls, and I instantly sensed in her the long-lost friend I had been impatiently waiting for since we arrived in Los Angeles. As we listened to Robert explain his ideas for the play, the relationships within the play, the set that would frame the play, and the marvel that would be the play, Mary Kay Norseng and I looked at each other across the table and grinned. As of that moment, our allegiance would be to each other.

Rehearsals were demanding, Robert unrelenting in his need to realize exactly what it was he’d sculpted so meticulously in his imagination. He was tough and exacting with all of the actors, but he was merciless with me. Maybe he assumed that our relationship was sufficient to protect me from the exigencies of his directing, but in this he was misguided. I felt as if I was dancing on the head of a pin.

In the little time we had off, which usually fell on a Monday, Robert would ask to go over a certain scene with me in the backyard. It was always the same scene, always the same lines,
always the same direction. At one point in the play, Hedda looks out the window and says, “The leaves, they’re so yellow, so withered.”

Invariably, Robert would pounce on me. “What are you
doing?
Just. Say. The. Lines. It’s not sad, it’s not reflective, it just
is.
Now, walk around the pool and say it over and over until it’s falling out of your mouth like it should, simply and organically.”

And I did; I did walk around that pool, saying those lines over and over until I felt that if I had to say them one more time, I would scream. Was this Robert’s idea of guidance? Did he intend to fill me with frustration and loathing and then watch as I, the skilled professional, took the antipathy I felt toward him and channeled it into a magnificent performance on the stage?

I grew wary of him.

At night, it was our habit to have a glass of wine when we got home from the theater. Often, we discussed the day’s work, but increasingly I wanted to share with him my feelings about my daughter. Feelings that would not change and that would not go away. Perhaps some of the terror and pressure I felt playing Hedda heightened my sense of loss, but I was caught in a private cycle of sadness, and the only conceivable relief I could find was in the telling.

Robert shifted in his chair, always uncomfortable with my tears. He didn’t want to hear about the daughter I’d given up, and how this continued to haunt me, the futility with which I fought the sense of regret, the sadness that had become malignant. I didn’t blame him, but I yearned for the comfort and shelter of his empathy. “You need some sleep,” he said, standing and crossing in front of where I lay sobbing on the living room floor. “Go to bed.”

Mother flew out for the opening of
Hedda Gabler
and, at the dinner party that followed, said to me, “Oh, Kitten, I thought
it was exquisite. In fact, I thought it was Robert Egan’s valentine to Kate Mulgrew.”

Stella Adler was in the audience as well, and I greeted her after the show in the lobby of the theater. “Well, darling, you’ve done it,” she said, looking at me with those piercing gray eyes, “you’ve done what few have managed to do. You found Hedda Gabler.”

The morning after
Hedda
closed, I woke with a splitting headache. Robert lay next to me, dead asleep. I slipped out of bed and tiptoed from the room. Downstairs, I found my purse, opened my wallet, and pulled a small, tattered piece of paper from its folds. Written on it was the number of a private investigator that Richard Cushing had given me years earlier, after he had witnessed my distress firsthand. He had stuffed it into my wallet himself, saying, “Just in case.” I stared at the paper for a moment and then, carefully closing the kitchen door behind me, picked up the phone and started to dial.

Occasionally, on the spur of the moment, we would pack a bag, collect the children, and drive up to Santa Barbara for the weekend. We would stay at a cozy little dive off of Main Street that offered a hot tub and cinnamon rolls, or sometimes at the El Encanto Hotel, which truly was enchanted, nestled in the hills overlooking the bejeweled city and valley below. Sometimes, Robert would challenge me to walk into one of the swankier beachfront hotels, inform them of our nonexistent reservation, and when they would express their surprise and confusion at finding no such reservation and their regret that the hotel was fully booked, I was to assume an air of disappointment and frustration, as if my assistant had screwed up yet again or, even more effectively, look directly into the manager’s eyes and say, “You know, I’ve had problems with your hotel in the past.” Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t.
When it did, Robert grinned slyly as if we’d pulled off another clever heist.

On the way home, tired and sun-kissed, Robert would engage the boys in made-up games. One of his favorites was called Katy at the Beach, and it ramped up pretty quickly to a level of hysteria, all at poor little Katy’s expense, because Katy was always doing something naughty or stupid or even vulgar at the beach. At some point, it always became overextended and calculating. It was then I would cry, “Enough, enough, not fair!” and would spend the rest of the drive staring out of the window, deaf to the ongoing taunts of the two little boys in the backseat and the big bully of a boy in the driver’s seat.

Dinner parties were a staple of the early years of our marriage. We had ceaseless energy for entertaining, and did it on a generous, if not lavish, scale. I learned to cook wonderful dishes in that narrow galley kitchen, which I sometimes preferred to the actual event itself. Planning the menu, doing the marketing, filling the house with fresh flowers, music, and silver coolers of wine, gave me a sense of order and satisfaction. The boys would have been fed and bathed by the time the guests started to arrive, and the cocktail hour was an opportunity for everyone not only to become acquainted with one another but to admire my offspring, who looked so fetching in their striped pajamas, smelling of soap and baby powder. Of course, thirty minutes of this was sufficient to satisfy my guests, and invariably the boys went off to bed tired and annoyed, baffled by the injustice of their house being overrun, yet again, by strangers.