Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (15 page)

Much More Than a Hunch

T
hough I distanced myself from my family during my heaviest drug years, they had always been there when I needed them, and after the experience in Westwood, I wanted them back in my life. I told them what had happened to me. I was almost embarrassed to tell the story. I had no idea what to call it—a profound event, a rapturous moment, God reaching out to me, Jesus knocking me down and lifting me up. But afterward my father wrapped his arms around me.

He couldn’t have been happier. He asked if I remembered his own experience seeing Jesus when I was little. When I nodded, he hugged me again.

My mother was thrilled that I’d found something other than drugs, but the scars she bore from years of watching my self-destructive behavior made her skeptical. She’d been through this with my father. Talk was fine, but she wanted to actually see me look and behave healthier.

I attended various Bible study groups several times a week. I took my father to the Vineyard, and I followed up by taking my brother Kevin, who was still directionless and involved with drugs. My parents and I hoped he might find inspiration and purpose there, too. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. But I continued to move back into the family fold, and I had Fred to thank for that—and for much more.

In the L.A. rock world, Fred Walecki’s name wasn’t as well known as that of his famous friends Don Henley, Linda Ronstadt, Warren Zevon, Bonnie Raitt, and David Crosby and Graham Nash. Fred owned Westwood Music, a local institution. It was the musician’s music store. He had every kind of instrument imaginable and advice for any situation. He was the guy people turned to whether they needed a mandolin or money.

Fred and I started to date about a month after I met him outside the Vineyard. He was in the process of breaking off an engagement. It was a weird situation that made us a mutual support team. We shared an appreciation for old and vintage things, which provided openings for deep conversation as we scoured antiques stores and garage sales. As sweet and concerned as he was for me, my feelings for Fred weren’t clear until I took him home to meet my family and saw the way he interacted with Denny. He was the first guy I ever dated who paid attention to Denny and treated him like a human being. He even took him out to lunch.

How could I not have feelings for him? Fred’s prized possession was a sailboat, and we spent many afternoons on the water, frequently with friends of his, including singer-songwriter Peter Cetera and his wife. Since I was a fan of Peter’s group, Chicago, I was impressed. Through Fred, I also met Linda Ronstadt, Bernie Leadon, and other musicians. They lived my fantasy. I was in awe of them.

He gave me beautiful gifts that I still have, including a silver toiletry set and a small, custom-made Martin guitar that he inscribed on the inside. After about six months, it seemed as if we might be together long-term. He had a gorgeous piece of property in Topanga Canyon, and we planned on building a house and living there. But one day Fred said that he was going to have a room in the house for his mother. I thought, Uh-oh, this isn’t going to work.

However, I didn’t say anything in case I was wrong. It was early 1982, and I was relying on Fred way too much to think about breaking up. He was my rock, the first person I called when I needed help, and thus his was the number I dialed late one night when I woke up after dreaming that my brother Kevin had died. He was lying in the middle of a baseball stadium, and I was shaking him, saying, “Kevin! Kevin! Wake up! Get up!”

He didn’t move. And I remembered looking into his eyes right before he died. One of his eyelids fluttered up and down, like a spasm, opening and closing rapidly, so that I couldn’t tell if he saw me. It was a gruesome, awful feeling to think of him as dead.

I called Fred, who picked up the phone and said he had just gotten home after spending time with John Belushi and several others at the On the Rox nightclub in Hollywood. He heard how shaken I was as I explained the dream, and he came to my Wilshire condo. Even though it was the middle of the night, he insisted on driving me to my brother’s.

I had an eerie feeling as we pulled in front of the same Woodland Hills complex where I had my first apartment. We knocked on my brother’s door. It took him a while, but he finally answered. He said we hadn’t woken him up. I immediately noticed that the eye that had looked weird in my dream was bloodshot; the other was white and normal, though slightly glassy. I explained that I’d been worried about him, that I’d had a funny feeling.

When we sat down, I saw that Kevin’s girlfriend, Susan, was there. She came out of the bedroom. Both of them were in a strange mood. I don’t remember how it came out, but Kevin said that they had been getting high, shooting up heroin and coke, which I had no idea he was into, and he’d been about to give himself a hit that could’ve killed him when Fred and I knocked on the door. That gave me the chills. Maybe I had saved his life.

Fred and I talked with Kevin and Susan for a long time, making sure they were all right. They didn’t do any drugs while we were there.

Later that morning Kevin called Fred and asked how he could’ve been with John Belushi earlier in the evening when the actor had died late that night. Fred was stunned. Neither of us had heard. My brother said it was all over the news. Belushi had OD’d at the Chateau Marmont Hotel, where he’d been doing speedballs, which is a mix of heroin and cocaine.

“Just like me,” said Kevin.

T
hat summer Fred and I went on a cruise in the Virgin Islands. On the way, we stayed overnight at his concert violinist sister’s fancy New York City apartment. It was all first-class and romantic, but midway through the cruise, I looked at Fred, who had hinted about marriage, and realized that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with him. It was a gut feeling, one that didn’t translate into words, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him. Not there in the middle of paradise. But I felt terrible.

Then I became extremely ill. Fred took me to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with dengue fever. Of course Fred took wonderful care of me. The timing was impeccable. I figured it was God bringing His hammer down on me for being such a terrible person. I wondered if I was heartless.

It got worse back in Los Angeles, where Fred proposed to me one day while we were at his mother’s house. He gave me an exquisite engagement ring, and I gave it right back. It was the moment I had most dreaded, and was horribly difficult. I didn’t want to hurt him. But I thought marrying such a good man when I knew in my heart that he wasn’t “the guy” would end up hurting even more, and so following many anguished conversations, we broke up.

Heartache is always tough to handle, but I kept myself busy with going to the Vineyard. I was so grateful to Jerry and Fred for ushering me into that community of caring people. I learned that people like to help, and I found myself trying to do the same thing. Between the Sunday services, Bible studies, socials, and concerts, I had enough structure and support to keep me sane and straight. And thank goodness, because the breakup had occurred while my career was at a standstill.

There was no work and few auditions. I thought it was because word had spread in Hollywood that I was a born-again Christian. Being a drug addict was fine, but heaven forbid you find God. No one wants to hire you. I was clean. But battling the urge to use again was a daily struggle. I didn’t know how to deal with depression, loneliness, despair, low self-esteem, worry, and anxiety. Each day, it was like being caught in a current that wanted to drag me out to deep water, and I had to kick and flail my way out of it.

I never knew whether I was going to be up or down. One night early that fall when I was at the Vineyard for a concert featuring Lynn Kellogg, Tommy Funderburk, and Bernie Leadon, among others, and I was in my seat really feeling the music lift me out of the doldrums, I turned around and saw this guy behind me. I’d never seen him before. He had dark hair, a great build, and chiseled features. I looked straight into his eyes and thought, This is the man I’m going to marry.

Much later I learned that when he looked at me, he said to himself, “Now, that’s the kind of girl I want to marry.” But at that moment—and it was a real moment where we connected—neither of us said anything.

A
fter the show, people milled around and talked in groups. I was with Carin, another girlfriend, and some guys we knew from the Vineyard. Little did I know that across the hall, Michael was with his friends, surreptitiously pointing at me and asking if any of them knew my name. They looked at him as if he’d just come from Mars. Was he serious? How could he not know my name?

Michael was serious. He had no idea who I was!

His friends asked if he’d ever heard of Marcia Brady from
The Brady Bunch.
Of course he’d heard of the show. He just hadn’t seen it.

“That’s her,” he was told. “She’s Marcia Brady.”

“Okay,” he said. “What’s her real name?”

“Maureen McCormick.”

“Is she still an actress?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He groaned. Prior dating experiences had soured him on actresses. He was also disappointed when he saw me smoking in the parking lot as he walked to his car. He wasn’t keen on cigarettes either.

In the meantime, I secretly watched him as he said good-bye to his friends. I fantasized a whole relationship starring the two of us. Then I went to work making it happen. Before we even met, I learned his name, Michael Cummings, and ingratiated myself into his circle of friends. I started going to the same Bible studies, sitting near him on Sundays, and accidentally crossing paths, so there was a familiarity by the time we formally met.

We had a mutual friend at the Vineyard in Bob Pierce. I told him about my interest in Michael, but he didn’t respond positively when I asked him to arrange a formal introduction. He didn’t think Michael and I would be a good match. Instead he offered to fix me up with a friend of Michael’s who had been one of the leads in Walter Hill’s film
The Warriors.

No thanks, I said. I liked Michael.

A short time later, Bob was offered a part in a low-budget Christian-themed film called
Shout for Joy,
the story of legendary surfer Rick Irons’s successful quest for a world championship and the events that led him to his faith. The Vineyard’s Erik Jacobson was the writer and director. Erik also cast me, and then he landed Miguel Ferrer although he dropped out before the movie was completed.

I didn’t know that Michael had been offered the lead, but turned it down because he thought the script needed work. He was at a point in his career where he was getting noticed and needed to make the right choices. He had appeared in the feature
Miracle on Ice,
several movies of the week, numerous commercials, and even started his own theater company.

But Bob convinced him to take on a supporting role by promising they could rewrite their parts. He said the three weeks of shooting in Hawaii would be like a paid vacation. And he mentioned that I was in the movie. He knew that Michael, despite his reservations about dating actresses, was interested in me.

From what I heard later, Bob worked that angle with Michael. He emphasized my skill as an actress. He said that I drew from an incredible emotional well and could tap into it at will. Michael was quiet as his friend went on about me. But Bob knew that he had him.

In early November, they flew to Oahu and went to work on a very tight schedule that had no time for vacationing. With funds for only about three weeks of filming, the goal was to finish before Thanksgiving. The weather posed another challenge. As shooting got under way, a huge storm in the Pacific churned up the waves, darkened the sky, and delayed production at least once a day because of rain.

Disaster struck the day before I was due to arrive when the storm hit the island. It caused so much damage across Oahu that production was shut down indefinitely. Bob called and told me not to get on the plane. I didn’t have to dip into that well of emotion to express my disappointment. He said that more money was going to be raised and shooting would start up at some point after the first of the year.

That was good news, I said. But it wasn’t the part that bothered me. I’d been looking forward to getting to know Michael. Now I had to come up with another plan.

A
few days later, Carin and I were at the Christian bookstore in Westwood. Carin wanted to have a holiday party at her house, and along with another friend of ours, Susan, we discussed the details. While Carin talked about food, decorations, and music, I wondered how I was going to get Michael there. The three of us were hatching schemes when something by the front door caught my eye. I glanced over and saw three guys walk in, including Michael.

Talk about providential!

They came over to say hello. With my heart pounding, I invited Michael to the party—and he said yes.

At the party, I worried that he might not show up. I kept my eyes on the door until I saw him walk in. Then, instead of saying hi, I made a beeline to the bathroom to check my hair and makeup. I kept an eye on Michael from afar, and I think he did the same with me. We crossed paths several times without saying anything of consequence; we were always talking to someone else. But wasn’t it funny how we kept running into each other?

I felt the tension build.

Finally, we met by the door leading into the backyard, as if it were time or inevitable or both, which it was. We talked for a few moments. Then we moved to a tiny bench outside in a nook by the garden. Quiet, romantic, pretty, I thought it was a perfect setting for our first real conversation. As we settled into talking, everything felt right and good. I wanted to know everything about this good-looking man, and it turned out there was a lot to know.

He was from Minnesota, the second of three children. He’d begun acting in plays in junior high school and continued through high school and college. In 1971, he won an award as the top actor in the state. He took a year off from college to backpack through Europe. He spent time in England, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, where he settled down, translating a play and putting together a show that toured several cities.