Then one day we went to the supermarket together for the first time. It was an outing I had only fantasized about during my life with Clem. Here I was with someone who pushed a grocery cart with me. By the time we reached the produce department, my fantasies bit the dust. Seems I hadn’t a clue about how to choose a tomato or a peach, much less thump a melon. Everything I chose went back on the shelf. Never before having had to account for anything to anyone, I hadn’t mastered the art of collaboration and saw everything as criticism. I fumed and kicked the cart, and thanked God for having bestowed on me the precious gift of Clem’s indifference to such things. At my advanced age, I had butted heads with a tough lesson—to live in a true partnership means not always assuming you’re right. And so, to protect my thin skin from future criticism, I soloed in supermarkets and ducked duets in the kitchen, that breeding ground of resentments.
That said, the getting-to-know-you skirmishes were few, considering we were two people in our forties who were set in our ways and used to being in control. Besides, they were far outweighed by the good stuff. I marveled at Russ’s boundless energy and creativity. A currently unemployed art director for movies and TV, he had a passion for painting, music, and theater and was a formidable tap dancer. And who could resist a man who took such pleasure in making room for me in his closet, bureaus, medicine cabinet, and his life? I was so happy to join, for once, a ready-made domesticity, all the tchotchkes already in place. Best of all, we liked and loved each other.
As much as I enjoyed our playtime, I intermittently began to feel the familiar tug of aimlessness that I had felt after I left the magazine. The flip side of the ready-made house and a domestically adept partner was that it was a house that didn’t need me. At forty-six, I knew from experience that if I wanted to give myself and our 24/7 relationship a chance, I needed not only to excise the aimlessness, but also to outwit the lure of losing myself in a man. That cozy exclusivity—how seductive to feel like gods on the wings of love and expectations. From there, I knew how easy it was to slip into petty dissatisfaction and eroding self-esteem.
I made a plan. I would stake out the time in a day and space in the house that I could call my own. What I would do in that time and space, I had no idea. I hadn’t been able to commit to such a plan after leaving the magazine. Now, not only did I have motivation, but I had a witness. There would be a person on the other side of the closed door while I was doing lord knows what, a person who would welcome me when I opened the door, who might even be proud of my industry.
My solution may have been simple and obvious, but the fact was, I had never learned how to bring balance to the man-woman push-pull. What began with the closed-door plan was as close as I would ever get. Russ made it possible. He was supportive and helped set me up. The room was large, with a day bed, a chair, a hooked rug, and a big library table placed next to windows that opened into the branches of an apple tree and an empty lot beyond, both rarities in L.A. I opened up the typewriter that I had optimistically packed in the trunk I had shipped out from New York and closed the door. I decided I would write.
But what? Poetry? That’s where I had started, with all those passionately innocent poems that had gushed out of me the first fall at Bennington. Poems that had become increasingly tight-assed over the next four years, until they were second-guessed stutterings squeezed dry by critical methodology and unabashed emulation of William Carlos Williams, Auden, Macniece, et al. In the past months I had written some poems for Russ about L.A., our house, our life. They had heart, an innocence reclaimed. As glad as I was to have tapped back into my poet self, that was my private voice, much like the journal writing that had been part of me for years. Besides, poems were too small, just as novels were too big. I had no appetite for the vast scale. I wanted something I could metaphorically hold in my hand. Short stories? I didn’t like reading them—well, except for Henry James, with whom nothing came up short—so why would I want to write them? But what about plays? I had come to believe that life had a way of recycling experience. Playwriting might be just the thing. And so, with years of theater improvisation in mind, I jumped in. It went something like this:
Kitchen. A phone rings, a woman rushes in through one of several French doors, dumping packages on a long butcher-block table downstage. Phone stops as she picks up. She puts away groceries. Phone rings again. She grabs it, angry.
She: What! [Pause.] I can’t hear you! [Pause.] Oh my God, Willy?
Seems “She” has just arrived from N.Y. to live in L.A. with someone she barely knows, when her bad-news brother, Willy, shows up needing a place to crash, and so on, right up to “Lights fade to black.”
The best I could say about it was that it had a beginning, middle, and end, and that it had taken only a week of my life. Beyond that, it sat there, misshapen and leaden as cold oatmeal. Fortunately, I knew that First Play, for so I dubbed it, belonged in the back of my closet, where no one would ever see it. I also knew what to do with the next one: ease back, lighten up, and listen to the voices rather than some so-called “plot.”
Over the years I would stay in L.A., the plays would get better: more intricate, the needs and dilemmas sharper, the moments funny or angry, usually both. Words—to play with them, their resonance, the rhythms; that would always be my fun. A place, a line, a face, an object—plays would bloom in my mind in wondrous ways, and always I would be led by the voices of women. Some of the lines and images still call to me:Will You See Me When I Wave?
A long-married couple on a porch. A hot, late summer evening.
She: I wish . . .
He: Got up to ninety-two today.
She: [Beat.] More, I would have thought.
He: No. Ninety-two.
(He watches as a fly alights on his arm. He lifts his arm, looks at the fly, and gently lowers his arm. Until indicated, He doesn’t move that arm.)
She: You won’t forget to . . .
He: Every Thursday night.
And so on . . .
Fine Line
A party is in progress beyond the closed door of a designer
Upper East Side bedroom. A fight is in progress between two thirty-ish knockouts, who face off across a large bed heaped with fur coats.
Dody: You do! You think I’m a victim!
Zee: [Incredulous.] Victim!
Dody: A doormat!
Zee: Look, you’re a victim, I’m a victim . . .
Dody: All these years, and now you call me . . .
Zee: . . . everyone’s a victim!
Dody: And I thought you cared . . .
Zee: . . . At least females. Men, on the other hand . . .
Dody: [Lunging at her.] Damn it, Zee! You’re my best friend!
And so on . . .
Keepers
Grace: [Offstage.] Cheese balls. If there’s anything I hate more than cheese balls!
Grace, a flamboyant, rain-drenched, sixty-ish woman, bursts through the door, followed by her restrained, voice-of-reason sister. Crouching unseen on the stairway is the virago’s forty-ish daughter, a sullen heap of damaged goods. And so on . . .
Within a few months after shelving First Play, I finished 12 Chatham Road, a marginally improved, full-length play. Soon after, at a party, I met a young actress who belonged to the Ensemble Studio Theater, a branch of EST in New York. The large group of actors, writers, and directors worked out of a theater space in downtown L.A. The actress took my play, and someone must have thought it passable, because I got a call to join the group. By that time, with Russ’s sage guidance, I had bought a Volvo. Not quite the pizzazz of a Mustang, but it was sure and steady. I was ready to open the sun roof and hit the freeways.
The Ensemble was unlike Madison Avenue, where beneath the joy of meeting a challenge there had always lurked the quicksand of my ignorance. Now, I was a one-play playwright—a ho-hum play at that—but I knew theater. The high energy, the infighting, the fellowship, the power plays were all mother’s milk to me. I had lived it all in my theater days. All I
had to do was keep writing. Hell, the plays couldn’t get worse.
That fall of 1982, the Ensemble scheduled a ten-minute-play festival. Everyone jumped in the pool; actors, directors, writers all competed for the twelve spots. I wrote Will You See Me When I Wave? over a weekend. Though a transparent paean to Pinter, it was dead-on. Here was a play I could hold in my hand, all the economy of a poem and the immediacy of theater. I had stumbled on a short form I would often return to, with pleasure and success.
One noon-to-night Saturday, everyone who had signed up read their playlets for the jury and the full-membership. The actor in me paid off; I had timed it and rehearsed it. The play was chosen. The icing was that John Randolph and Sarah Cunningham signed on to do it. Long-married, well-established actors, they were also the co-founders of the Ensemble. Not so sweet, I also learned that they were old-school actors, pragmatic, and stubborn. They wanted the sentences completed, what did this and that mean, and the silences, that would not do. I was the new kid, and the director knew where his bread was buttered; nonetheless, I stood firm. Of course, smiling all the way, they did exactly as they pleased. In the name of “honoring the text,” they “picked up the pace,” and effectively turned my filigree into a chunk of metal. But they were charming, and the play was enjoyed and was featured in the Los Angeles Times review, picture and all.
Because my plays would continue to be driven by the rhythms and patterns of the characters’ voices, I would invariably run into hassles with directors and actors. I understood the seduction of going for “real,” rather than style, but I also hoped they would have the faith to at least try to achieve both. Thinking that clear signposts might help, starting with my next play, Legacy, a full-length with a cast of eight, I incorporated slashes into the dialogue to indicate when the next actor should begin speaking her line. Sadly, actors are courteous people, programmed not to “step on” someone else’s line. I explained that half of most sentences, onstage and off, were throwaways. But the audience, they wailed, they won’t get the point. They’ll understand exactly as much as they need to, I assured. And they’ll hear the music, I didn’t say, because I knew that would be a hard sell. I also knew that actors—not the best—are driven by two things: not to make fools of themselves, and to make their characters likable—two things antipathetic to playwrights. And oh, the joy on those occasions when during a performance I would hear two trios or quartets simultaneously ride the wave to a crescendo.
By the beginning of 1983, Russ’s acrimonious divorce was finalized and we downsized to Broadlawn Terrace in the hills overlooking the Valley and spitting distance above Universal Studios. A small house with a small pool, a cottage coziness. Russ set up his studio in the one-car garage, and I worked upstairs in a room just big enough for me and my table.
Russ was now working at Universal as art director of the new series Knight Rider. Our togetherness shifted dramatically into “see you when I see you” mode. His long hours, stress, and drinking to “unwind” strained our relationship at times. In the whirl of my feelings for Russ and my excitement about a new start, I had glossed over the impact his drinking might have. With insouciance, I had assumed I could handle it, and I did. I never considered leaving; I wanted to be with Russ and I wanted to be where I was. In any case, it was soon clear that our good times would outnumber the difficult times. It took diligence not to get swept up into the whirlpool of the drinker, but I was motivated. So it was that on the “bad days” I would dust off the drill learned as a teenager: sidestep, disengage, and, most important, keep a firm grip on my own life.
My cornerstone was EST’s weekly writers’ workshop. Through one of my new friends, I also started going to a monthly workshop, the Writers Bloc. A large group, it served all genres, from screenwriters to novelists, and was more formal. One signed up in advance to have a reading by group members, many of whom were actor-writers. Criticism was fast and furious—everyone had to have their say, which ranged from gratuitously harsh to insightful—and I learned to take what was useful and toss the rest. I also honed my ear and taste by listening and critiquing the work of others.
Soon, without a whisper of self-doubt, I slipped into thinking of myself as a playwright. To be a playwright in Hollywood sounded like an oxymoron, but there was a plethora of small theaters that presented original work and attracted enthusiastic audiences. Fortuitously, I had taken up the right trade in the right place. In L.A. I could experiment and get my work produced, precisely because it was a movie town and theater was treated as an impoverished, but charming, cousin. In New York, theater was God and the turf inviolable.
Engrossed as I was in my work, I continued to make frequent trips to New York, where I would stay for several weeks. In 1983, on one of these trips, I sealed my commitment to my life in L.A. by selling the apartment at 257 Central Park West. It had gone co-op a few years after Sarah and I moved in, and, to my amazement, we now lucked into a sizable profit. I merged our two Central Park West apartments and, keeping the best of both, took the opportunity to refurbish 275, which was, and still is, a rental. Clem, as usual, barely noticed, except for the wall-to-wall carpeting. He never wore shoes at home, and, as I knew he would, he luxuriated in the deep-pile softness underfoot. I would continue my regular visits to New York to see Clem and Sarah; the only difference, now I would be staying at 275. Clem was content. I was content. I had tidied up my life.
Well, not quite. There would be one more bit of domestic tidying up when, in 1988, we sold the Norwich house. Clem not only took it in stride; he seemed relieved. I think that increasingly he had spent long periods of time at the house simply because it was there. The last time Clem and I would be at the house together was for Al Velake’s funeral. A fitting time to leave. I scattered the fossil rocks around the property to be discovered by the next wide-eyed voyager into the past. I sold the cars and put mementos and the oak furniture from the loft into a storage unit. I found I was still unwilling to relinquish those symbols of my first foray into an independent life. Otherwise, nothing went to New York that wouldn’t fit in our rental car, and the rest went to whoever wanted it. No financial bonanza from that sale. We sold it for what we had bought it for. Even after fifteen years, it was still a house too small and too offbeat for most.
In January 1984, I got a call from Billy Hopkins, who was production manager at the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York. The L.A. playwrights had been encouraged to send plays to their Marathon, a highly esteemed and well-attended annual festival of one-act plays. I sent Fine Line, the first play I had submitted anywhere. When Billy called, I screamed. He was delighted; so refreshing, he said, after the usual blasé responses he got from most writers. Not that it was a shoo-in, but I had made it to the final cut.
A few weeks later I was on the second floor of the Ensemble, listening to Christine Lahti and Judith Ivey give life to my Doty and Zee as they tried to unravel the age-old dilemma of how to leave a man. It was the first time I had experienced the joy of hearing my words channeled through actors of such sensibility and experience. I still see Lahti casually stroking a scarf she had put on the table—such a simple gesture, but one that brought the bedroom and the furs to life. Billy had done my play proud. Watching were Curt Dempster, the über-meister founder/director of the theater and a committee of judges. Afterward, I was so high I walked all the way uptown. I stopped at a florist and called Billy for the actors’ addresses and enclosed gushy notes. They had changed my life. I knew, somehow I had known from its conception, that Fine Line was a winner. And I was right; the play would be produced in the Marathon.
Again, thanks to Billy, I was gifted Harris Yulin to direct and Roxanne Hart and Jill Eikenberry to star. The rehearsals were intense for me as I learned when to battle, when to cave. The designers, the music and sound, the costumes, with Billy masterminding down to the last detail, the Marathon was first-class all the way. The experience surpassed the thrill I had felt as an actor. Now, I had created this piece and was part of the team that was devoti
ng their talent and skills to make Fine Line the best it could be. A thrill that would never grow stale.
The opening, the laughter, the absorbed audience; afterward, the long table at the restaurant on the corner of Tenth Avenue and Fifty-second, jammed with my old theater cronies—so like those days, only better. I didn’t miss a performance. There were some good reviews, followed by an offer from Samuel French, the primo play publisher, to publish Fine Line under its own cover, an honor for a one-act. The play was also selected with two others as the Best of the Marathon, to be performed at the SUNY play festival that summer. I also received a request from CBS to see more of my plays with an eye to TV work. That one I passed on. I had to—I had no “body of work” to show them.
I had gotten off to a remarkable start, from finding a home base at EST/L.A. to having my first two short plays produced. I had known from the first lines I had written that playwriting was right for me. The quick validation was the gravy. What had started as a plan to secure my sense of self while I nurtured my relationship with Russ had now blossomed into a vocation. Who would’ve thought? And as the plays multiplied, I started mailing them out to regional theaters. I had done my job; now I sent them out into the world to do theirs. Being a playwright, I had all the fun, none of the angst—no auditions, no stewing about whether I was too old or too tall, no having to shave my legs or put on a happy face.
Soon, thanks to another writer friend, Shirl Hendryx, I became a member of a third writer’s workshop, the Actors Studio in L.A. It matched its New York mother ship in intensity and tough standards of the work and criticism. It also perpetuated the cliquey-ness and elitism that ensured its edginess. However, I missed the intimacy and fellowship that was possible in New York. In typical L.A. fashion, everyone drove up alone for a session and drove off alone afterward. There was no Jimmy Ray’s or Joe Allen around the corner to hang out in. It was a daunting venue to work in, but once I had sorted out the objective folks from the die-hard misanthropes, I was able to keep my focus on presenting my work. Just as my acting life had snowballed in the sixties, one thing led quickly to the next. Once again, I was feeling that exhilaration of using myself completely.
A Complicated Marriage Page 32