“Oh, good heavens no!” I said. “No bodyguard necessary!” Other than my wedding ring, I had never worn a piece of jewelry over $200. “I am SURE five hundred thousand will be enough!” I exclaimed.
Mom concurred. “Five hundred thousand is a lot of jewelry!” she said, then added sveltely, “Even if I get to wear a piece or two of it as well!”
Jessica unveiled the dress, we all admired it, and I went behind the curtain to slip it on. “I don’t need a bodyguard,” I shouted over the curtain. “I want this to be about family, you know? Private? I don’t want a bodyguard hovering over us all night long.”
Meantime, I heard a lot of phone calls being made, and when I peeked out to see what all the commotion was about, Jessica said, “Harry Winston got wind of how grand the dress is, and they said you can now have up to a million dollars’ worth of jewels with no bodyguard.” The handsome bodyguard with the blond hair smiled at me. I disappeared again, pulled up my Spanx, and stepped into the gown.
My muffled protests came again from inside the cubicle, “Oh, my goodness! That’s crazy! I definitely won’t need a million dollars’ worth of jewels,” I said. “No bodyguard—right, Mom? We just want to be free.” Mom was silent. Maybe she hadn’t heard me over the curtain. “Right? Mom? No bodyguard?”
“Hmm,” she said.
“Yeah,” I went on. “One million dollars’ worth of jewels will be plenty for us! More than enough! Right, Mom?”
“Hmm,” again. “Yes. Plenty. Even if I borrow some, too!”
I stepped out in my magnificent gown to witness Mom running her fingers over the diamonds as the security guard stiffened next to her. “Oh, and my daughter Stephanie,” she added demurely. “Stephanie will need some diamonds, too!”
Stephanie was my youngest sister who had just given birth and was heading down with her husband from San Francisco to attend Oscar night with us. I called her and asked her if she wanted to borrow some diamond earrings from Harry Winston jewelers, and she just screamed.
I posed in front of the mirror, perfecting my stance, and then Jessica said excitedly, “Diamonds! Diamonds, Marcia Gay! It’s diamond time!”
I walked over to the sewing table where the velvet boxes were laid out, and as the lids were raised the table lit up with brilliant shimmers. I immediately chose a gorgeous pair of huge diamond drop earrings, and then tried on several necklaces. When I put on a big sparkling diamond necklace, the room oohed and aahed, and I felt like Elizabeth Taylor meets Cinderella on her way to the ball, but the price tag on my neck alone was over a million dollars, so I took it off again. When I did so, the room got quiet. Same thing happened with the next necklace, I put it on, the room oohed and aahed. I took it off, silence. On went the first necklace again, and again, ooh and aah. Off went the necklace, and silence. “Guys,” I said firmly, “stop. It’s too expensive!” I asked Mom to choose some earrings, then I chose earrings for Stephanie, and we were told that without the necklace, we were now at one million. “Okay!” I said, staunchly, “this is enough! No bodyguard!”
The room stood still again. Very still. Jessica stared.
“Oh, well, okay, let me try the necklace on again, just one last time.” The blond bodyguard looked hopeful.
I put the necklace on again, and my entire being rose two inches. Rainbow shimmers rested on my wonderful cleavage. Even I oohed and aahed. Everyone stared, waiting breathlessly for my decision.
“Bodyguard!” I said. I had to have it.
“Oh, thank God!” Jessica shrieked. “It’s gorgeous! The dress needs it!”
“Yes! Just gaargeous!” said Mom. She always pronounced “gorgeous” as gaargeous. “Really, really gaargeous.”
Then it was like a feeding frenzy. I saw the ring. A big, tear-shaped diamond ring. I just had to have that, too. “Definitely bodyguard,” I said.
Then Mom saw a necklace she might like. “It’s gaargeous,” she said. “I won’t need anything else . . . other than . . . this ring!” So we added Mom’s ring to our bag of bling, then we also chose a bracelet for Stephanie since, what the hell, we were already over our mark, and before we walked out of that door, we were at four million dollars. I guess $500,000 worth of jewelry really didn’t go that far, at least not on Oscar night in a red scarlet dress.
Oscar day, we gathered at the Shutters on the Beach hotel in Santa Monica. With the doors open we could feel the fresh ocean breeze and hear the crashing waves mingle with the screams of kids on the roller coaster at the Santa Monica Pier. I met my famous hair and makeup team Richard and Collier who were so funny and fabulous that we established an immediate bond based on loud laughter, bawdy jokes and gestures, and a smattering of fabulously catty observations. All of this, of course, covered two sentimental hearts of gold, two wise minds, and two generous souls. It was clear that we would be friends for life. First with his black bag of blow dryers was Richard Marin, famous for doing Cindy Crawford’s locks, and about to glamorize mine. He was accompanied by Collier Strong, also rolling a black bag but this one full of makeup. He was famous for countless magazine covers and a celebrity clientele that stretched from Hollywood Boulevard to the runways of Milan. Just pinch me!
Dad was feeling a bit under the weather, and while he rested in his room, Mom joined us for her own panel beating. Soon all of my neighbors began to trickle in from our Venice Beach enclave just down the road. They remembered Mom from the ikebana class she had taught when I was waiting for Eulala to be born several years before and they had come to celebrate with us! “Beverly!” they cried. “You look maaarvelous!” “Well, I certainly feel just gaargeous!” she replied, as she welcomed each of them with a big hug while getting her hair and makeup applied. Jessica Pasteur had found Mom a beautiful black gown with a stunning V-neck, and when she had learned that Dad’s navy uniform wouldn’t arrive in time for the Oscars, she insisted on procuring him a Hugo Boss tuxedo.
His response was a flabbergasted, “Well, I’ll be a Goddamned son of a bitch that anyone would care about me!” He was flattered, not used to the attention, but he loved it.
“Oh believe me,” Jessica crooned, “we aalllll care about you! You are going to be one proud papa tonight! Now get out there and protect that cleavage!” Dad loved her.
We finally dressed, the bodyguard arrived with the jewels, we donned our bling, and were off!
The whole evening passes in a blur when I try to remember it. From the limousine ride with Stephanie pumping breast milk into little bottles, and me trying to write down a forty-five-second speech just in case I won. The odds in Vegas were for Kate Hudson to win. I think it was 12 to 1 against me, whatever that means. I hadn’t been nominated for any other awards, not a Golden Globe or the Screen Actors Guild. And though I had received the Film Critics award, that wasn’t a competition against others, it was more of an election. So if I were a gambler, I would have put the odds in Vegas at 12 to 0 against me to win, if there even is such a thing. Plus, all the other nominees had turned in wonderfully specific, beautiful perfomances in their films, and so it really seemed like it would be a very far away possibility to go home with an Oscar. Now I know this sounds like baloney when anyone says it, but it actually is true: The win was in the nomination. It is so much harder to be nominated than it is to win, if you are talking odds: 5 in over 1000 get nominated; 1 in 5 wins. I was just friggin’ grateful to be there!
I loved walking the red carpet that night, I don’t think I ever took my hand off my hip—that was my perfected pose. Stand slightly leaning backward, with hip thrust out and hand on the hip so that my arms looked skinnier, other hand gracefully holding the Kathrine Baumann red beaded bag, one knee bent to bring the dress in at the knees, and fishtail splayed out in back of me. With my bodyguard always nearby, I did the interviews, and kept pulling Mom into them. She loved it, she looked stunning in her black gown with the elegant sheer sleeves, sparkling Harry Winston diamonds gracing her neck and shimmering at her ears. Richard had coiffed her hair, Collier had applied her
makeup, and she was proud and at ease posing with me.
Mine was the first award up. I won. I was shocked. It was so fast. I won. I wasn’t prepared. I had no idea my category was first. Wait. Did I just say, I won? I won. Ed Harris, my hero, hugged me hard with Amy Madigan, his wife, pounding me on the back. Thaddaeus hugged me and up the stairs I went, wondering if Nicholas Cage, who gave me the award, was disappointed that I had won instead of Kate Hudson. These were the kind of thoughts flashing in my head in the few seconds of my walk onto that stage. One flash would be “Oh my God, I am so proud and happy,” and the next would be “Oh my gosh, I hope people aren’t mad at me that I won because they loved Kate Hudson more, or Fran McDormand, or Judi Dench, or Julie Walters.” And then “Oh my gosh, here I am. This is amazing, I have to take it all in,” then “Oh my gosh, do I even deserve to be here?”
I tried to catch my breath, and looked out to my seat to get my bearings and got hit with Ed Harris’s confident blue eyes. As my husband proudly smiled, I began my thank-yous, with my eyes searching the crowd for Mom and Dad, who had been seated a few rows behind me. It wasn’t hard to find them. Dad was standing straight up, his arms over his head, bellowing, “BRAVOOO! BRAVOOO!” He was crying and Mom was crying and trying to pull him down by his jacket, but he just stood there yelling “Bravoooo!”
I continued my speech, desperately hoping that Spielberg wasn’t sitting behind my dad: “I want to thank my dad for teaching me how to soldier through tough times, and my mom for showing me how to do it gracefully.”
Dad finally sat down, pulled by someone behind him. Thankfully, not Spielberg.
In a blur I finished my forty-five-second speech, and left the stage, and ran right into a tearful Carri waiting in the wings. When all the behind the scenes had been done and I returned to my seat, Dad was gone. Mom indicated he was up at the bar, so I snuck out of my seat to go find him. There he was in the middle of a crowd, around the Oscar bar in the upstairs lobby, ordering drinks for everyone! I squeezed in to see him, and we hugged for a long time. He said he sure was proud of me but that he wanted to go back to the hotel because he wasn’t feeling very well. He had been unusually weak lately, so I was a bit concerned. He said he would like to stay to see “that Goddamned Ed Harris win, (it was a term of endearment) but that won’t be till the end of the night. Are you okay if I leave, Honey?” Suddenly I could see my bodyguard jumping up over the crowd to find me. Damn! I had forgotten all about him and he was in a cold panic that he had lost me, and all those jewels!
“Of course, Dad. We’ll find the limo for you.” In truth, I didn’t need him to stay for all the festivities. He had been there, he had seen it, and now he could go rest. We walked him down the long empty red carpet, back the way we had come, and tucked him into the limo.
My handsome lawyer Ira Schreck volunteered to take Dad’s seat next to Mom for the remainder of the show, and we all glowed with happiness when Julia Roberts won, and my friend Benicio del Toro won, but I must admit I was heartbroken that Ed Harris didn’t win. We all were. Nothing against Russell Crowe—a fine actor, indeed—but Pollock was Ed Harris’s baby, and I felt like instead of him, I got to hold his baby in all the pictures. Ira stayed with Mom for the night, dancing with her at the elegant Governors Ball, and introducing her to celebrity after celebrity. She couldn’t have been happier. We partied till the wee hours of the morning, and finally, slightly tipsy from champagne, we crowded into the Vanity Fair party, posing and hugging and toasting. At last, exhausted, we got in our limo to go back to the Shutters hotel.
That’s when things got a little dangerous. The bodyguard got in the front seat with the driver, and me, Thad, Mom, Ira, and Carri all got in the back. We drove to a nearby parking lot to drop Carri off, and we noticed we were being followed by another car. The car was still behind us ten minutes later when we dropped off Ira at his hotel, and my bodyguard alerted both the police and Harry Winston security. “Probably just paparazzi,” he said, “because you won.”
“OHMYGOD!” I said to Mom and Thad. “How thrilling! This is what it’s going to be like now! This is what it’s like to be famous!”
We entered the highway, and the car was still behind us.
“Could also be thieves,” said the bodyguard. “If it’s not paparazzi.”
Mom’s heart sank. We did, after all, have four million dollars’ worth of jewels in our limo. The driver began swerving and weaving on the highway, to lose the car. Thad began filming the whole thing out the back window. The car was still on us, and we were all driving a bit frantically. The bodyguard enlisted another limo to try and intercept our path and throw the car off, but it didn’t work. We left the highway. The car left the highway. Mom’s eyes were wide with panic. “It’s thieves!” she said. “They want the jewels!”
“No—it’s paparazzi, Mom! Because I won! I’m sure of it!” I said, insistently. Hopefully.
We reentered the highway. The car reentered the highway. I heard a screech, and the chase car was right behind us now, aggressively speeding up to the side of the limo, and then tailgating us. Our mood became tense and scared; this had clearly escalated into something not safe. Where were those police? We needed help. In the middle of the swerving and Thad filming, with the bodyguard talking intensely on the phone, Mom eyed the sunroof and began to undo her earrings. “We could fling them out the sunroof,” she said. “I want to liiiivvvveee!”
“Mom!” I said, shocked. Maybe she had had more to drink than I thought. But she was dead serious, shaking and scared, with tears running down her face. She fumbled unsuccessfully with the clasp on her necklace, then she actually reached for the button to roll open the sunroof, looking at me with wild eyes, and said again, “I want to liiivvve!”
Just at that moment we careened into the Santa Monica police station and a dozen squad cars surrounded the jokers who had stupidly followed us through the gate. My bodyguard spoke to the police, while we all stood up and crammed through the hole of the sunroof, gaping at the foiled heist. As we wondered just who these jewel thieves were, I noticed that Mom had somehow managed to put her earrings back on. She still had five minutes before she lost her glass slipper and she sparkled all the way back to the hotel. We laughed uproariously the last few minutes in the limo, imitating each of us—Mom with “I want to liiivveee!,” Thaddaeus acting like a National Geographic documentarian on a wild hunt, me the vain actress hoping for paparazzi, and our trusty bodyguard giving James Bond a run for his money. Getting out of the limo, we finally took off our jewelry, and slowly laid it in the blue velvet boxes. I too felt like Cinderella, about to see the limo turn into a pumpkin, with no more adornments, just the reality of swollen feet at the end of a long night.
“By the way,” said my bodyguard as he was packing up the jewels. “It wasn’t thieves. It was paparazzi.”
“OH!” I said, thrilled. “So they were following me!” I stole a sidelong I-told-you-so look at my mother. Maybe Cinderella’s reign had just begun!
“No,” said the bodyguard. “They thought you were Russell Crowe.”
I swear to God I heard the sound that the tuba makes in a movie when the fat man sits in a chair and it sags to the ground: Wha Wha Whaaa!
Mom handed me the Oscar as the limo drove away. “Here you go, honey. You were brilliant tonight. I’m so very proud of you. You have worked hard, Marcia Gay. You’ve earned this.”
I liked the word “earn” better than “deserve.” I took off my four-inch heels, and lugged my eight-and-a-half-pound Oscar proudly though the lobby, nodding to the applauding hotel staff as we wobbled into the elevator. The silver doors closed. Finally, we were alone. No bodyguard, no thieves, no fans, just we three.
“Hi,” I said, “just pinch me.”
Thad and I walked Mom to her hotel room, and she held me again. “Marcia, I wouldn’t have missed that for the world. Thank you for letting me be a part of it. I am a proud mom!”
I wouldn’t have dreamed of her not being a part of it. She ha
d supported me every step of the way, from the Little Theatre of Alexandria, to lugging boxes up to my fifth-floor West Village apartment, to sending me a hundred dollars to make it through a particularly sparse week as I was trying to make it as an actress in New York. “You DID teach me how to soldier through rough times gracefully, Mom. Thank YOU for always believing in me! Now let’s get going on making your show, Mom! Flower Path and Beverly’s Blooms . . . here we come!”
“Oh, I would like that, Marcia Gay!” she said, beaming.
I had my brass ring; now it was time for Mom to grab hers. We teared up, then smiled at my snoring dad, kissed goodnight, and shut the door. Now it was just the two of us, Thad and me. “La dolce vita,” he said, holding my hand as we walked down the hall.
Once in the hotel room, Thad paid the babysitter and went in to check on Eulala. Now it was just me. Me and Oscar. I set my golden man on the glass coffee table, and just as I had in the hotel room in Denver when I was first nominated, I got down on my knees and prayed in gratitude. Turning out the lights, I stole one more look at him as I went to change out of my now wrinkled scarlet gown. “Good Night, Oscar! Lights out!” Minutes later, I returned, now out of my Spanx and comfy in my new pink cotton pajamas from one of the fancy gift baskets. I flipped back on the lights. Whew! Yes! He was still there! But he looked lonely standing on that coffee table, so I cuddled him up with my green Sesame Street Oscar who had been waiting in the bottom of my suitcase, just in case I didn’t win. “I have earned you!” I whispered as I shut out the lights for the second time that night.
Perhaps the feeling of being outside the circle is a universal feeling, even for those who seem to be perpetually in it. For anyone watching that night, I was the “it” girl, the unexpected winner, the glamorous girl in the red scarlet gown. And that was true, that’s who I was, I had won an Oscar, and I was grateful to all who had helped me achieve that moment. But I knew it was important not to see myself through others’ eyes. I knew that within a week, most people would forget who won the Academy Award on Oscar night. The following year even fewer people would remember. The next day, I would wake up in my hotel room, and when I looked outside the window, the lawn would not be made of emeralds. Scorsese or Spielberg would not be standing on the sidewalk begging me to do their next movie. Yet I would still be the same person. Just a little bit taller. For me, it was an honor and an accomplishment, and it was a reminder that I needed to own my own worth as I traveled my journey. In that moment, however, I was so proud that my mom had been with me to witness, and ultimately be a part of, the new inch mark on my growth ruler. A mother’s eyes will keep you real, eight-and-a-half-pound Oscar or not.
The Seasons of My Mother Page 18