Not Young, Still Restless (13 page)

I
also find myself at a loss for words trying to answer the question: “How does it feel to be presented with your own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?”

On August 20, 1993, I proudly became the first daytime actor to be given that honor. My
JEANNE COOPER
star is located at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard, at the corner of Hollywood and North Highland Avenue, a corner that has a special significance to me: five mornings a week in the early 1950s I would leave my apartment in Hollywood, drive east on Hollywood Boulevard, turn left on Highland, and proceed into the Valley to Universal Studios, where I was under contract.

It was Corbin who submitted my name to the Walk of Fame Committee, and I was nothing short of ecstatic when it was announced that I’d been accepted as an honoree. The thought of taking a permanent place in Hollywood history among the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, and so many others whose work had inspired me and impelled me, and raised the bar for the rest of us, left me in awe and still does to this day.

The presentation ceremony was every bit as much of a dream come true as the star itself. The late, great Johnny Grant, Hollywood’s honorary mayor, presided. My children and their spouses were there. Jeff Sagansky, president of CBS at the time and a man I’ll always admire, was there with a full battery of his top executives and offered such flattering words as “She’s a true professional,” and “She’s the backbone of our network’s success in daytime.” Many of my castmates were there, including Eric Braeden, Melody Thomas Scott, Peter Bergman, Jess Walton, and Kate Linder. Bill and Lee Bell were in Chicago and couldn’t attend, but all three of their children, Bill Jr., Lauralee, and Bradley were there. I felt loved and I felt valued, and how much more can any of us hope for in the course of our careers?

In case you’ve ever wondered if the impact of an honor like that tends to dissipate over the years, I want you to know that, at least for me, it doesn’t. Not one bit. I still pass the corner of Hollywood and Highland fairly often, and occasionally I see people stop to acknowledge my star on the Walk of Fame. Every single time that happens, I get the same rush of warmth, privilege, and cherished memories I had on the day it was unveiled in 1993.

F
or sheer, unmitigated glamour, though, it’s impossible to beat the annual Monte-Carlo Television Festival. Cast members from a variety of American television shows that are popular in Monaco, including
The Young and the Restless
, are invited, as they are every year, to a fabulous whirlwind of parties, events, screenings, and press receptions, and in 2005, those invitations were extended to Jess Walton and me.

My longtime hairdresser, makeup artist, stylist, and friend, Gino Colombo, was right by my side every minute of that incredible trip, keeping me from looking wilted and stale in the heat of Monaco in June, so that all I had to think about was where I was supposed to be next. Jess and I laughed and played and partied and glittered and gambled and enjoyed the endless sights of that tiny, gorgeous principality. We were treated like royalty, up to and including having a battery of security guards with us at all times and practically being carried on a litter through the crowded airport and onto our plane when we flew from Monaco for four spectacular days in Paris.

The only flaw in an otherwise flawless trip, and one that couldn’t have been helped, was that Prince Albert II, the reigning monarch, was unable to join us at the festivities. He was observing the traditional year of mourning for his late father, Prince Rainier III, who’d passed away on April 6, 2005. We were all aware and respectful of the fact that he was in mourning, and we were honored that he did choose to attend the formal reception to welcome his country’s guests from the United States.

Prince Albert and I were never formally introduced. Our eyes met briefly at that reception, though. I’m not quite sure what brought this on. It may have been because I wanted to acknowledge his having joined us so graciously in spite of his recent loss. It may have been because, early in my career, I knew his mother, Grace Kelly, and felt an almost maternal warmth toward him. It may have been because I saw a glimmer of recognition cross his face when he spotted me.

Whatever the reason, when our eyes met, I winked.

And he smiled so quickly and so subtly that I’m sure no one else noticed but me.

A tiny moment in an otherwise once-in-a-lifetime trip, but one that fondly crossed my mind from time to time after we were all back home, back to work, and back to normal again.

Four years later, in 2009, Prince Albert II was visiting Los Angeles as a part of a US fund-raising tour for the Monaco Foundation, a charity group dedicated to environmental initiatives. I attended one of the receptions given for him in Beverly Hills.

Again, we were never formally introduced.

Again, at some point, through the crowd, our eyes briefly met.

And undeniably, unmistakably in that brief moment, HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco winked at me.

I smiled back, so touched that he remembered.

I’m still smiling about it today.

All things considered, am I a lucky woman, or what?

Chapter Seven

Battling the Bad News

I
t was a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon in October 2005 when Hillary B. Smith of
One Life to Live
,
TV Guide
daytime columnist Michael Logan, and I threw a party for our beautiful friend and colleague Linda Dano, star of
Another World
and
One Life to Live
. Linda had been through a couple of heartbreaking personal tragedies and was moving part-time to Los Angeles, and we wanted to welcome her with open arms and make sure she knew how loved she was and is on the West Coast.

There was plenty of food, love, and laughter among the sixty-five guests—among them, Peter Bergman, Michelle Stafford, Jess Walton, Stuart Damon, Susan Flannery, Ian Buchanan, Finola Hughes, Ty Treadway, John McCook, Constance Towers, Lee Bell, and Corbin Bernsen and his wife, my gorgeous daughter-in-law Amanda Pays. In other words, it was an afternoon of someone wonderful to talk to and enjoy everywhere you turned, one of those special gatherings during which you realize you wouldn’t change a thing; it was everything you’d hoped for and the guest of honor was being properly embraced.

To the best of my knowledge, no one noticed that I felt as if I were watching the party through the wrong end of a telescope.

After a couple of hours I stole a few minutes in private with my close friend Lindsay Harrison, our hostess and, incidentally, my collaborator on this book. The instant we were alone behind her closed guest room door, my smile disappeared and I completely deflated.

“I need to tell you something,” I told her, “and you have to swear to me that it will stay strictly between us. I mean that, not a word to
anyone
.” She promised with a nod, visibly concerned, and I took the deep breath I knew it would take to get the words out of my mouth.

“I had my annual physical a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been through double pneumonia four times, so we always do a chest X-ray as well. And the radiologist found a tiny spot on my lung, about the size of a pinhead. It’s stage one non-small cell lung cancer, and they want to operate as soon as possible.”

Lindsay is nothing if not calm in a crisis, so there were no histrionics, just a long hug and a few tears, after which she asked who else knew.

“No one but you, me, and my doctors,” I said.

She agreed to keep the secret on one condition: under no circumstances was I going into surgery without my children and grandchildren knowing what was happening. As she pointed out, and she was right, if the same thing were going on with one of them and they kept it from me, I would hunt them down and kill them. So I assured her that I would wait as long as I could, to give them the least possible amount of time to worry, but yes, I agreed, they needed to know, and they needed to hear it from me.

A few minutes later we rejoined the party, and I found myself able to feel a little more part of it and to absorb some of that group’s warm, positive energy right along with our very special guest of honor.

First thing Monday morning, I scheduled my surgery for two weeks later with the brilliant, innovative surgeon Dr. Clark Fuller, a researcher in video-assisted surgical techniques and thoracic oncology and a highly respected educator at the University of Southern California. I then called the
Y&R
office and arranged for a two-week vacation. It was a routine enough request that they didn’t ask for an explanation and I didn’t offer one. In fact, the vast majority of my
Young and the Restless
colleagues will be hearing about this for the first time when they read this book.

I want you to know that my intense insistence on secrecy had nothing to do with denial or superstition. It has to do with one of my most basic beliefs when it comes to any kind of insidious, potentially cataclysmic illness: providing it with “air” and energy of any kind gives it life, credibility, and a chance to thrive and grow. I believe in forming a small, impenetrable psychic circle around it by limiting the number of people who know and refusing to allow its name to become a part of your mind and your vocabulary, so that, without nourishment, it inevitably withers and dies. Obviously it’s imperative to seek out the best medical specialists available and follow their advice to the letter. But success also requires that we not “overcome” it but actually deprive it of the opportunity to exist in the first place.

An added incentive to delay sharing this news with my family until the last possible moment was an exciting event on the calendar for my son Corbin that I wasn’t about to ruin for him. He’d directed his first film,
Carpool Guy
, and the cast and press screening and party were being held a week before my surgery.
Carpool Guy
was a labor of love for him, a comedy cast with a spectacular array of soap actors—Anthony Geary, Lauralee Bell, Rick Hearst, Kristoff St. John, Sean Kanan, Sharon Case, and yours truly, to name a few—as Corbin’s way of showcasing the unmined versatility to be found among daytime stars. He was justifiably proud of it, I was justifiably proud of him, and I was determined to make sure the
Carpool Guy
screening was about him, not his mother’s upcoming surgery. And it was exactly as successful an evening as he deserved.

Inevitably, though, the time came when my family had to know. So five nights before I checked into the hospital, my daughter, Caren; Corbin’s wife, Amanda; and I met for an early dinner, with Lindsay along for moral support. Caren and Amanda were as wonderful as I knew they’d be, deeply concerned but calm, falling right into their usual take-care-of-business mode, well aware of what I already knew—Corbin and Collin were going to be much more hysterical about this than all of us women put together. Caren was given the assignment of telling Collin, and Amanda took on the challenge of telling Corbin. How, what, and when to tell the grandchildren was left to each of them.

Thanks to perfect, sensitive handling on Caren’s and Amanda’s parts, Collin and Corbin were able to have their meltdowns and recover before talking to me, so that at no time did I feel as if I needed to get them through my upcoming procedure. Corbin had to be out of town for work the day before I left for the hospital. He was coming to say good-bye on his way to the airport when Caren announced, “Mom, you look like hell. Do something or, you know Corbin, he’ll never get on that plane.” If anyone knows about hair, makeup, and artificially applied health it’s a soap actress, so believe me, by the time my older son arrived, I was fabulous and he was reassured enough, just barely, to leave for his business trip.

Collin and Caren were with me when I checked into the hospital. They were with me right up to the moment I was wheeled into the operating room and handed one of the nurses a plastic bag in which I’d placed a medallion engraved with the Lord’s Prayer, the one thing I wanted with me during surgery. They were at my bedside when I opened my eyes after the procedure was over—a simple, noninvasive forty-five minutes, thanks to Dr. Fuller, that involved a small incision, a tiny camera, and a couple of small holes in my side and my arm. They stayed with me, taking turns rubbing my feet, Collin even spending the night in my room while Caren went home to her husband and daughters for a few much-needed hours of sleep before rushing right back to the hospital first thing the next morning. Corbin came straight from the airport to my bedside at home when he got back to Los Angeles. I fully recovered with no chemo, no radiation, and a clean bill of health, and I was back to work right on time with no one at
Y&R
or the soap media knowing a thing about how I’d spent my two-week “vacation.”

Thanks to an unspoken agreement to keep that “circle” intact, my family and I have never spoken of it again.

All of which is to say, between my brilliant surgeon, early detection, a lot of faith, and the most loving, devoted children anyone could hope for, I am one blessed, grateful, and healthy woman.

T
wo years later, in the summer of 2007, I decided to treat my whole family to a three-day trip to Las Vegas for a Fourth of July celebration. And by my whole family, I mean my children, their spouses, and my eight grandchildren—Corbin and Amanda and their four sons, Oliver, Angus, Henry, and Finley; Collin and his two sons, Harrison and Weston; and Caren, her husband, John, and their daughters, Sarah and Grace. It was perfect. We saw shows, we watched the fireworks displays, we relaxed by the pool, and we just enjoyed ourselves and one another in general, luxuriating in what a close, fun, playful family we are.

I will always believe that Caren spent that weekend hiding something she knew, probably from self-examination, seeming to participate with all her heart while watching it from a distance, exactly as I’d handled the Linda Dano party.

Immediately after we returned from Las Vegas, she went to see her doctor and then headed straight to Dr. Fuller’s office.

He strongly recommended a double mastectomy, sooner rather than later, and he assured her that his wife, who’s also a doctor, would make that same choice if faced with Caren’s test and X-ray results.

Her trust in him was so unconditional after my surgery that she agreed without a moment of hesitation.

And every one of you who are parents know how literally I mean this: I would have given anything and everything I have in this world to trade places with her and let it be me instead.

Since that wasn’t an option, all I could do was try my damnedest to emulate the extraordinary grace, courage, and determination with which my incredible daughter tackled the biggest, toughest fight of her life.

She was in the brilliant hands of Dr. David Fermelia for the double mastectomy. She went through what seemed like more than her share of chemotherapy and radiation before proceeding with reconstructive surgery by Dr. David Kulber. She had occasional bouts of disheartenment and depression, and frankly, I would have worried if she hadn’t—I had firsthand experience that those are an inevitable part of the process. But not once did I see her breathe life into that fear circle or waver from her underlying approach: “If that’s what needs to be done, let’s do it.”

She also wasn’t about to let chemotherapy decide when her hair would start falling out—she cut it off all by herself at
her
convenience, thank you. Her husband and daughters announced one day that they’d decided to shave their heads too, to let her know that as far as they were concerned, they were all in this together. Her response: “I love you for offering, and I appreciate the gesture. But I’m the one with breast cancer, not the three of you, so put that thought right out of your heads.”

Caren also refused to wear a wig. She didn’t want to deal with the inconvenience, and she thought she would look and feel silly in them. She was right. In an ongoing effort to do something,
anything
, to help her, I bought several wigs for her in case she changed her mind. One day we sat down together in front of a mirror so that she could try on her new wig wardrobe. I’m not sure either of us has ever laughed harder. And no one will ever convince me that the old cliché isn’t true: there really is no greater medicine than laughter.

The one thing I never, ever wanted to do was let Caren see how worried and sad and frightened I was, and to put her in the position of having to comfort me through her health crisis. I believe—I hope—I held up beautifully when we were together, and I reserved any meltdowns for the studio. Only a handful of my castmates and crew knew what I was going through on Caren’s behalf. One of them, thank God, was our amazing costume designer Jennifer Johns.

Jennifer had known me for a long, long time, and she knew me well enough to know not to escalate the drama by making a fuss or trying to talk me through it with a lot of clichés and platitudes. Instead, she did the most perfect thing for me that she could possibly have done: she saw to it that every day a dahlia from her garden would be waiting for me in my dressing room. I’ve never seen dahlias like them, before or since, and she tells me she’s never grown more amazing dahlias, before or since. They were strong, exquisite, thriving, so vibrant with color and life that they took my breath away. All I had to do was pass by them, or sit near them, and I swear the strength and energy I got from them, with blues and purples so deep you could lose yourself in them, acted as a silent, constant reminder to focus on life and hope and good health rather than on the dark fear that kept trying to pull me under.

I
n chapter six I talked about the special night of the AMEES in March 2009. I don’t remember much about my acceptance speech, other than a lot of heartfelt thanks for the honor and for the warm, gracious, perfect evening. I finished what I had to say and took a few steps away from the microphone. As I paused to acknowledge the applause, I happened to spot Caren at her table near the stage. She looked so beautiful, so strong, and so happy, her hair adorably short and growing back, her face glowing with renewal. It overwhelmed me how blessed I was to have her there with me that night, how heroically she’d fought and won the toughest fight of her life, and how full my heart was from loving her.

I stepped back to the microphone and interrupted the continuing applause with an unapologetic “Excuse me, just one more thing . . .”

Without belaboring it, I explained that my daughter was in the audience and why her presence among us was such an extraordinary, joyful victory.

“With all the respect in the world for my fellow honorees,” I concluded, “I don’t think there’s a greater lifetime achievement in this room tonight than the one accomplished by that woman right over there,
my
greatest achievement, Caren Bernsen.”

My daughter, who’s not exactly a spotlight hog, modestly stood to identify herself and then promptly sat down again. I wish you could have seen the awestruck look on her face when the thunderous applause started and every person in that huge ballroom, from Smokey Robinson to Berry Gordy Jr. to Vin Scully to hundreds of invited guests to past and present members of the
Y&R
cast to Caren’s very proud, adoring brothers, gave her the longest, loudest standing ovation of the whole wonderful night.