Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (7 page)

B
esides my parents, the person who worried most about my driving was Katherine Jackson, the strong-willed matriarch of the Jackson family. I’d met the Jackson 5 about a year and a half earlier when they visited us in the recording studio where we were doing the voices for the
Brady Kids
animated series. Michael was a fan, and we became friends—as friendly as one could get with Michael.

But I think Michael really liked me. He called me and then I started driving over to his house, where we hung out and talked about TV and music. He let me watch him sing and dance in their studio, which was a thrill, as I had been a fan of the Jackson 5 for years. Having performed onstage myself, I envied his talent. Once we went ice-skating and he held my hand as we glided around the rink. I wondered if he might try to kiss me, but he didn’t. After another outing, he did give me a kiss good-bye. But it was only a gentle peck on the cheek.

Michael’s parents made me nervous. I was a little afraid of his father, and his mother struck me as the strong, silent type. I became even friendlier with Michael’s sister LaToya than I was with Michael. She was fun and had a good sense of humor. She used to confide in me about how strict her parents were. It was funny. We were shopping buddies, and when I picked her up, she always said she couldn’t wait to get out of their house.

I was also friendly with Susan Cowsill, a member of the popular family singing group whose pop hit “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” was one of my favorites. We met at the Hollywood Professional Children’s School, where I enrolled for eleventh grade instead of returning to Taft High. The two of us used to skip out of class and prowl the hot stores like Judy’s and Pigeons. Sometimes we bought six-packs of beer at a nearby liquor store, drank one or two at the Griffith Observatory, and then returned to school tipsy. Thank goodness there weren’t paparazzi like there are today.

I did something to Susie that I still regret. It happened one day when we were at the mall. I’d driven the two of us and a friend of hers. We were browsing in Pigeons, and we decided to shoplift. It was for kicks. To this day, I don’t know if all three of us stole something, but I put a T-shirt in my purse, continued to shop as if nothing was wrong, and then walked out with the other girls.

As soon as I stepped through the doorway, the store alarm went off. It was right after electronic sensors were introduced. Once I heard the siren, I took off and ran through the mall as if I were an Olympic sprinter. I was afraid of getting busted, the headlines that would appear if I were caught shoplifting, and the damage that would do to my girl-next-door image.

I’d never run as fast in my life. Nor had I been as scared.

Unfortunately, Susie and her friend were caught. While police dealt with them, I hid in my car for hours. I lay on the backseat, careful not to raise my head in case someone was looking through the parking lot. I didn’t want to go home either, in case the cops were waiting for me there. It was like an episode from the show, something so surreal Bob Reed would’ve complained it made no sense. It didn’t. I felt like a fugitive from the law.

When I finally did go home, I pretended nothing was wrong. But Susie’s parents had already called and spoken to my parents, who relayed the information Susie’s parents had given—all accurate—and said they agreed with them, that if I had stolen anything I needed to turn myself in. On
The Brady Bunch,
this would be the moment where Marcia breaks down in tears and admits the truth. But this was real life, my life, and I vehemently denied doing anything wrong.

I’m sure everyone knew I was lying, and consequently my friendship with Susan ended. Sadly, I haven’t seen her since the moment when I fled from the mall. It was stupid, cowardly. If I had the chance, I’d apologize to Susan, own up to being a jerk, and ask if she would forgive me.

Even now, when I hear a security siren go off in a store, I reexperience that surge of anxiety, and then it changes to guilt. That was thirty-six years ago! It’s a painful reminder of what was the first of a long line of mistakes.

To Be or Not to Be Brady

W
hen we shot “A Room at the Top,” the final show of the fourth season, the tension between Barry and me was at an all-time high. Lloyd Schwartz directed this episode, which revolved around Greg and Marcia both wanting to turn the attic into their own bedroom. I couldn’t read the word
bedroom
in the script without conjuring up fantasies of the two of us. It was as if
bedroom
had turned into a code word for something illicit and wonderful.

Barry wasn’t much better. Shooting the scene where we sat next to each other on the bed was more than either of us could handle. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. After more than a dozen takes, Lloyd, frustrated at the time it was taking, walked over to the bed and told Barry to make a fist.

“Keep that much distance between the two of you,” he said. “I don’t want to see you touching.”

He didn’t see us the following season. When we returned for the fifth season, Barry received his own dressing room, separate from Chris and Mike. It was something he’d lobbied for since the third season, and in what would be our final season, he was finally rewarded, as he should’ve been. At nineteen, he was an adult, and he deserved star treatment.

Of course Barry turned it into a bachelor pad. I was impressed by the sofa, thick carpet, and great sound system. We rolled around on the sofa and the floor, fumbling with each other’s clothes, but every time we got to a crucial point, we seemed to be interrupted by a knock on the door and then the knowing voice of the assistant director saying, “Barry, we’re ready for you.”

I was ready to lose my virginity to Barry, and it might have happened one night at his house if not for his parents busting in on us as we listened to music and made out in his bedroom. We’d gone swimming beforehand. Even though we wore swimsuits, I felt as if we were naked. I am sure his parents sensed that we were hot and heavy and crazy. In the fall, we had another perfect opportunity to do it when Bob Reed flew all of us kids to New York and took us to Europe on the
OE2
.

The trip was a generous gesture of affection from Bob. And as I just said, it was also an incredible opportunity to finally go all the way with Barry. Except that I wasn’t into him on that trip. As always with us, the timing was off. If it wasn’t a parent or adult walking in on us, it was usually that he was dating another girl, though in this case I was dating other guys—and I didn’t two-time.

Still, that cruise was a blast. Eve and I shared a room. We drank rum and Cokes on board the ship, and once in Europe we enjoyed wine. We could have called ourselves the Boozy Bunch. I think the trip was Bob’s way of saying thanks, it’s been great working together. By that fifth season, he had mostly given up fighting for better scripts. His passion flared up occasionally, and he went after Sherwood. But it was known that if the show came back for another season, the producers planned to do it without him.

Bob wasn’t alone. Touring and being together nonstop over the past couple years had taken its toll. We were cranky and petty with one another. Egos got bigger and I sensed tension among some of the parents, who were jockeying for more screen time for their kid as they began to eye post-
Brady
careers. In a very real sense, it was much like the stuff that goes on in families.

Like Bob, we also wanted more mature scripts. Barry and I still played kids living at home even though he was nineteen and I was seventeen. It was as if we lived in a time bubble. It was 1972! Our home was untouched by the world around us. Imagine if the writers had dealt with Greg worrying about the draft, Carol and Mike spicing up their sex life by skinny-dipping with the neighbors, Marcia hiding a boy in her bedroom, or Jan staying out all night after seeing a rock concert.

What if Mike and the boys had sided with George McGovern and Carol and the girls with Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election? It could’ve been great if, like America, the Bradys had undergone some changes.

It happened off camera. Barry smoked weed. When we shot at a theme park in Cincinnati, Susie got drunk for the first time. And you know times have changed when your little sister starts to get a buzz. I rebelled quietly by taping a show without wearing a bra. I convinced Eve to go braless, too. It was also our subtle way of telling the producers that we were too old for the same old stuff.

We got away with it on a show or two. Then one day Lloyd noticed while he was watching dailies. Nothing was ever formally said to us. There were no dictums stating Maureen and Eve must wear a bra on shows. But apparently it was a no-no. Every time we came on the set for a scene, Lloyd made it a point to say something to us, then put his hand on our backs to see if we were wearing bras.

Most of us thought the show would run another year since it was holding its own in the ratings. Then all of us got a call from Sherwood saying that the network had decided not to renew. As we counted down the remaining shows, I felt both bittersweet and excited about the new opportunities that lay ahead. In truth, I was ready to move on, and in my own way I had already started to do so.

E
arlier in the year, I fell madly in love with Freddie Lopez, a friend of the guy my girlfriend Carin dated. Freddie, in his early twenties, was gorgeous. “I can’t get him off my mind,” I wrote in my diary. He ran an import-export business, and he seemed mature and worldly. I debated whether I should lose my virginity to him. “He’s damn good-looking and wonderful to be around, but I feel as if he’s giving me the rub-off since he feels no sex will come of our relationship.

“I don’t know,” I continued, confused. “I feel it is a great time for me to break my virginity and enjoy that part of my life. My desire is very much there, so why should I keep it to myself?”

There was a reason. It turned out Freddie was seeing another girl!

“I can’t believe it,” I noted after his painful admission. “He said it was a heavy relationship.”

After Freddie, I dated Steve Hartunian, another great-looking guy. He was hot in a totally seventies way. He had long, sandy-brown hair, wore his shirts unbuttoned to the middle of his bronzed chest, and drove a Corvette. He was a player, too. He had a roving eye, which made me never feel quite pretty enough. I don’t know why I always went after those type of guys; it always ended in disappointment. And that’s how it was with Steve. (P.S. I don’t
think
I lost my virginity to him, not in a strict interpretation. But I can’t be sure, since some of our fooling around may have qualified.)

I wasn’t with Steve anymore when my father tried to interest me in a guy named Robert. Normally my parents didn’t meddle in my love life, but this was different; in fact an odd, and as it turned out, frightening situation. Robert came into our family, and my life, after writing my parents a letter from his home in Florida, saying he had ideas about how to take over my fan club and help my career.

What impressed my parents and especially my father is something I’ll never know, but my father corresponded with him several times and then invited him to Los Angeles. Once in Los Angeles, he befriended my parents further. They thought he was brilliant. He was in his late twenties, smooth, and smart. One day he took my mother on her first shopping trip to Beverly Hills, and she returned gushing like a schoolgirl after her first date. He bought me an expensive set of luggage. My father was the one who really liked him. He invited Robert for dinner, and the two of them schemed for hours at a time.

It’s scary to think back on how easily he ingratiated himself. Once he was “in” with my parents, Robert became more ambitious. Instead of taking over my fan club, he tried to move in as my manager. At some point, he confided to my father that he had fallen in love with me and wanted to get married.

That should’ve been a tip-off. But it wasn’t.

I didn’t like Robert. I’d been sheltered from any stalkers or weirdo fans of mine. If they existed, I never knew about it. But Robert made me uncomfortable. I would never have come right out and called him a con man, but my antennae were up. Then one night after dinner, Robert made his move. Again, I don’t know what he said as he talked with my father, but at some point, my father pressed me to spend some time alone with Robert, and he basically pushed him into my bedroom.

“Talk to Robert,” he said. “Listen to what he has to say. Get to know him.”

It creeped me out to have Robert in my bedroom, but there was nothing I could do about it. We sat on the bed, and Robert moved quickly. He took my hand (that was weird), then put his arm around my shoulders (even weirder), and then, a few moments later, he tried to kiss me. With that, I pushed him away and hurried out of my room.

He followed, probably anxious to hear what I was going to tell my parents. Upset, I told my parents that it wasn’t working out. The expression on my face emphasized the point. Once Robert left, I insisted they get rid of him. I flatly said I didn’t want him involved in any part of my life.

My father delivered the news to Robert. Fortunately, we never heard from him again. Later, we found out that Robert was a convicted felon who had been released from prison shortly before he’d come out to Los Angeles. We surmised that he might have written my parents from jail or right after he got out. From what we heard, he returned to Florida, violated his parole, and was put back behind bars.

I felt lucky that all he’d tried to do was kiss me.

T
he Brady Bunch
ended without fanfare or celebration. Bob Reed was so infuriated by the script that he didn’t appear in the final show. As I think back, after five years, during which time we literally grew up with one another, made out with one another, got drunk with one another, and so on, it was oddly unemotional. Maybe it was because all of us knew that in one way or another we’d always remain…a family.

I had this notion of being free; it was more like being unmoored. I returned to Taft High for my senior year. I stuck close to Debbie, Julie, and a few others who’d been my close friends since junior high, but my reentry was still difficult. I didn’t have any interest in academics. Nor was I prepared for the work required to graduate. To help me study, Debbie and Julie introduced me to White Crosses, tiny pills that they said would help me stay up as I crammed information into my head.

The pills put me in such a good mood that I started taking them on Friday and Saturday nights. It was like they peeled away the layer of disquietude that had gradually resurfaced after I no longer had my life as a Brady to keep it at bay. I didn’t consider any deeper connections, like maybe the transition to Maureen from Marcia might be more difficult than I ever imagined; it was just that those little pills let me laugh.

As the senior prom neared, we also popped them to lose weight. I wasn’t fat, but I always seemed to be five pounds away from being happy with myself. If I took a pill in the afternoon and another one at night, I could go till dinnertime without eating much. Within a few days, I shed those extra pounds.

I wish I could’ve shed the senior prom, too. It’s funny to think back on all the different stories fan magazines published featuring me giving advice to other teen girls about boys, dating, and dances, as if I were an expert, and then my senior prom turned out to be a disaster. It was because I set my hopes on going with Phil, one of the school’s most popular guys. Then he asked my friend Debbie.

I was so sure I was going with Phil that I brushed off the few guys who hinted that they wanted to ask me. I’d had this vision of the two of us lighting up the ballroom as we walked in. It was so vivid that it seemed real. By the week of the prom, though, I didn’t have a date. I was destroyed. Finally, Debbie arranged for me to go with Phil’s brother so we could double-date.

I agreed, mostly because I still wanted to be around Phil. But I felt like the word
loser
was stamped on my forehead.

On prom night, Debbie and Phil rode in the cab of Phil’s truck while Phil’s brother and I sat in the back and bounced up and down on the freeway. My hair was a windblown disaster by the time we arrived. I got out of the truck looking like I had survived three weeks at sea in a hurricane. Bummed, I got drunk on Mateus rosé wine and cried in the bathroom.

I didn’t understand how I’d turned into a lame chick who couldn’t get a date to the prom. Until them, I hadn’t dealt much with reality.

A
fter graduation, I moved into my own apartment. My father and mother found me a one-bedroom condo in Woodland Hills. He rationalized it as a good investment. Regardless, it was a bold move since I wouldn’t turn eighteen until the end of the summer. But I wanted to have more control over my life, and though I didn’t say this part, I also wanted to get away from the craziness at home.

The problems there were more upsetting than unbearable. They revolved around the Mine Shaft. After reaching the end of his rope with Kevin, Mike put his friend and the club’s manager Bill Antil in charge of Kevin. A month later, Bill fired Kevin for not showing up for work. As Mike said, Kevin thought he could do what he wanted because his parents owned part of the club.

In the meantime, everyone else worked their butts off. As a result, Mike paid back all of the loans. My parents gave Kevin a portion of their income from the club, though he wasn’t to work there. They bought him a condo in the same building where I lived; in fact, it was on the second floor, almost directly above mine. They also bought him several cars; he seemed to get into a lot of wrecks. They encouraged him to paint and do something with his artistic skills.

Basically, they wanted him doing something productive, and they tried to set him up the best way they knew how. They may have given him too much. With Mike and me doing well, they felt bad for Kevin. They wanted to help him find himself. Kevin didn’t seem to get it. He continued to hang out at the club every night. Mike knew that he and Craig were using coke. Craig was also still dealing. That was way too risky.