Friends: A Love Story

by Angela Bassett

  Although I was now working in New York and Angela and I were living in Los Angeles, emotionally we had finally gotten on the same page. We had begun to “secure the perimeter” logistically and financially, so whenever we were together we started trying to have a baby. We bought books and talked to people and watched live births on the Discovery Channel. But the natural methods didn’t work. We moved to fertility treatments and then to in vitro fertilization. These fertility treatments meant Angela was constantly getting shots, going to the doctor and getting poked and prodded. The procedures were very invasive and some of them had to hurt her. She toughed them out but I felt guilty. We had reached a very wonderful time in our marriage when we wanted to do things for and sacrifice for each other. As much as she wanted children, I knew she was going through all this for me because she knew how much I wanted kids. I dreamed of being a father. One night I dreamed we had twins!

  In spite of the fertility treatments, we went through menstrual cycle after menstrual cycle with no results. We went through the hopefulness, the joy, the pain, the heartbreak and the questioning when we considered whether to start all over. But throughout the whole process of trying to conceive, I am very proud that we remained focused on loving each other. We did not implode and begin blaming each other. On my end, this was chiefly due to the Bible telling me to “love my wife.” I also recalled Angela’s sister Lynn’s advice to take care of our relationship. Lynn’s encouragement also reinforced in my mind what Dr. Little kept telling me and I was reading in the Bible—that my wife is first and must remain so!

  After much trying, praying and soul-searching, we let go of our dream of having our own biological children, and moved on to the next option—adoption. I was fine with the idea. I thought the idea of giving a child a loving home was a good idea. “My sister did it, we’ll do it,” I figured. Angela thought so, too, and we began to research the process. Adoption was the plan until the day she came home and told me that one of her friends was about to have triplets through something called “surrogacy.”

  “I really don’t know what that is, honey,” I told her. “Talk to your friend and we’ll do whatever you think is best.”

  Angela started investigating. Her friend thought we should talk to the folks at the surrogacy place she used. So we sat down with the director for a couple of hours and thought it was very, very interesting.

  “Someone else can carry our egg and our sperm?”

  “These are pictures?”

  “Wow!”

  “People come from all over the world to California to do this?”

  “Who knew?”

  The meeting went well but I recognized right away that if we went on this journey it was going to be very emotional, expensive and fraught with all sorts of opportunities for disaster. I was almost obsessive about making sure we were working with an organization that knew the landscape very well and could protect us and guide us down this very tricky path. For me to feel comfortable that we would be protected, I thought we needed a company that was more corporately structured and organized than this one was—that could orchestrate the whole thing, act as intermediaries between us and the surrogate, manage all the finances and make sure that both we and our surrogate parents were legally protected. The last thing we wanted was to get in the middle of the situation and find out that it cost more than we’d planned and that they’d quoted us the bare minimum. Or end up with a surrogate who’s pregnant with our babies but doesn’t eat right and take care of herself. Or have some other kind of emotional disaster. I couldn’t allow our family to be exposed to that. So we called some very good friends, who recommended a larger organization, where the process is much more formal and comprehensive. There, in addition to speaking with the director, we went to a day-long education process, met with people who walked us through all the financial aspects of surrogacy, and talked to the legal department and people in the counseling department. The company assured us the surrogates are screened and tested emotionally for months so they can be matched with the right people. We were impressed. When we left, we understood everything. We decided we were going to do it and began to go through the process.

  Before long, we met the woman (and her husband) who was considering being our surrogate family, we fell in love with them. They were a quiet, humble couple with a loving and servant spirit. Apparently, the woman had read something about surrogacy and decided she been blessed with beautiful babies and easy pregnancies, and wanted to share her gift with someone else. At first her husband asked, “What are you talking about? No!” But she explained her reasons and he told her, “Talk to me in six months.” Six months later, when she still wanted to do it, he agreed and got completely behind her. As they told us the story we were struck by the fact that after six years of marriage and two children they still made goo-goo eyes and held hands. They made me want to hold Angela’s hand—and I did—that’s how loving they were. Once we saw their spirit we knew they were the right people for us. You can’t pay anyone enough to do something like this for you. There’s no dollar value to set on it. We felt blessed that they wanted to share this gift and knew God had brought them to us. And as a man, I particularly appreciated the husband. I knew it took a lot for him to be on board—to have his wife carrying another couple’s child. In fact, I was in tears over this man. Angela and I were just weeping.

  That same spring of 2005, Angela and I agreed that our marriage was strong enough to try acting together for the very first time—people had been asking us about it for years. Over the previous summer I had reconnected with John Guare, the writer of Six Degrees of Separation, when I traveled to Valdez, Alaska, to be a part of the Last Frontier Theater Festival. John and I taught a master class together, which reminded me how much I missed working with him. About six months later, John called me up with an offer to perform the leading role in His Girl Friday.

  My agent at the time suggested that Angela might enjoy performing in the play because it had a great leading role for a woman.

  “Do you think she’d do it?” John asked when I brought the idea up.

  By now I’d learned not to try to think for Angela. “Her decision-making process is very different from mine,” I told John. “I’ll give the play to her and we’ll have to wait for her to read it.”

  So I gave her the play and explained the opportunity. I hoped that she would do it but I knew to let it go and allow her to make her own decision. After a month John called. “What does she think, Court?”

  “She has the script and she knows you’re waiting to hear from her. She’ll read it, but I’ve learned not to keep asking her.”

  A few weeks later Angela had read the play but still hadn’t decided what she wanted to do, so I suggested that we have lunch. That way Angela could meet John and the director, Joe Dowing, and learn more about the play. We met, and Angela fell in love with John and Joe. “Courtney, I’ve been wanting to do something new and exciting. I think this is it!” she told me.

  When Angela decided to come on board it was a momentous occasion for me. I had been not been onstage in twelve years and had never done physical comedy. Angela had not been onstage in at least five years. But we knew the foundation of our relationship was strong enough for us to be able to work together. To top it off, shortly after we began rehearsals we began our surrogacy process. It was a very exciting, very full time!

  In the end of May we headed to Minneapolis’s famous Guthrie Theater, where the play was being staged. We fell in love with the city and were surprised to discover how beautiful and well developed a theater town it is. We stayed close to the theater in two separate apartments, across the hall from each other. When I first suggested getting two apartments, Angela thought it was a good idea: “Our guests will have a place to stay.” But I didn’t want guests to come anywhere near that apartment; I intended to rehearse in it. That was the smartest thing I did. Angela and I have different rehearsal processes. Angela is a genius. She has a photographic memory. She can watch televis
ion at the same time she’s learning her lines and blocking. Someone can change the script, and she can look at it once and say, “Yep. I got it. Okay, Court, what’s for dinner?”

  My process is much slower. It takes me longer to learn lines. While Angela can lie on the couch and learn her part, I need to physically walk through my blocking as I state my lines because I remember the lines based on what I’m doing and where I am on the stage. Walking through my performance causes it to drop down into my muscle memory. I need to do this as I learn new lines each day. Doing this would require my own space. The second apartment was going to be that space. Plus, I have my own process for building up my confidence to be onstage. His Girl Friday is a very complex play, and my role was very demanding. There was a lot of movement, and my actions and dialogue drove the whole play. Every member of the cast was reacting to my character. If I didn’t know what I was doing the whole piece would fall apart.

  I was used to having six weeks to rehearse, but this was a regional theater so we would only have four. I was very excited to be doing this play with my wife, but I was also very frightened. I kept my head in my script and notes. At the theater I picked dressing room 33, downstairs and as far from the stage as possible. The theater staff said, “Are you sure you don’t want to be next to Angela? She’s up by the stage.”

  “No, I’m fine. I need to be in a quiet, tucked-away area so I can begin the next phase of my process.”

  Of course that didn’t stop Angela from invading it. When I first walked into her dressing room, she had all sorts of nice stuff—great chairs, a rug.

  “Where’d you get all this?”

  “Down in dressing room 33.”

  “That’s my dressing room! You took my stuff?”

  “Oh, that was your dressing room? Hee, hee, hee!”

  “Angela, you are wrong!”

  “Hee, hee, hee!”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  Once we started rehearsing I had to trust that my old skills were all there. We had less time to rehearse than normal, a script that was twice as long, and it kept changing every day. I was scared out of my mind. My stomach stayed on edge. I lost my traditional ten pounds. Each morning I prayed and really leaned into my faith.

  In the meantime, Angela could skim her script once and say, “Honey, let’s run lines.”

  “I’m not ready yet,” I’d tell her. “Please give me a little time.”

  “You don’t have to be perfect. We can just—”

  “Honey, just give me a little time, please. We’ll run lines. Believe me! I just need a little more time to walk my blocking.”

  “Okaay…” She was very patient with me.

  At the end of four weeks we began preview performances. I barely knew my lines and blocking. I was afraid that I’d completely lose my place in front of all of those people and the whole play would fall apart. I had to trust it was all in there. But I’ve done a lot of theater and after Six Degrees, when I had to go onstage after my dad’s suicide and during my breakup with Ahren, my ability to focus is legendary among my peers. I wasn’t comfortable with my part, but God had placed me in a situation where I couldn’t do anything but depend on him. Angela and I prayed together; we knew God would take over. During the previews I worked moment by moment by moment: Say this. Now go here. Say that. Now go there. God put everything in place. When I pulled off the first show, everyone was asking, “Where did that come from?” By opening night two weeks later, I had my part down, and the whole cast was flying!

  Onstage each night I got more and more confident and my performances got stronger and stronger. Working with Angela was amazing. She is a monster onstage—she is so good! And she’s not just a good actor, she’s a good director. Of course, even though Joe Dowling directed the play, she couldn’t resist telling me what to do. But she was right—and she’s my wife!—so I did what she said and it was all good. We are proud that we worked lovingly and prayerfully with each other, our cast members and the Guthrie team. The people of Minneapolis really embraced Angela and me in a wonderful way.

  In the meantime, this wonderful surrogate process was unfolding. On the Monday immediately after opening weekend, we flew home to find out if Stephanie was pregnant. We had met her and Kevin only a few weeks prior, but we were choked up with gratitude when we saw them and could feel their warmth toward us in their smiles and sparkling eyes. Everyone was nervous and excited. It was such an intimate, amazing moment! We were all huddled in front of the monitor as the doctor moved the ultrasound probe over Stephanie’s abdomen.

  “Look, a heartbeat!” the doctor said.

  “OHMYGOODNESS!” Our eyes welled with tears as we watched a small area on the screen flutter.

  A moment later he said, “Oh, oh, here’s another one!”

  “WHAAT?” Angie screamed and looked at me wide eyed. “Stephanie, six years ago Courtney had a dream that we’d have twins!”

  “Hallelujah!”

  I just shook my head. Praise God! We hugged and celebrated with the doctor and this lovely couple that was helping us establish our new family, said goodbye, rushed to the airport and flew right back to Minneapolis for the Tuesday performance. Needless to say, we were in a tremendous state of shock.

  After the play closed a month later we returned to Los Angeles with a new sense of hope and expectancy.

  At our monthly appointments we connected with Stephanie and Kevin. Our appointments were our rhythm, and Angela scheduled our lives and our work so we could be there with our new surrogate family. I can’t begin to express how many prayers we said for our developing babies, for Stephanie’s health and for this amazing couple! After all Angela had gone through to try to bear children herself, to have this process that was fraught with so many potential disasters go so smoothly for us was a complete blessing. We bonded so much at our monthly ultrasound appointments, in between appointments we started to miss being around Stephanie and Kevin! We began to think that maybe our relationship would extend beyond the terms of our contractual agreement. We came to the conclusion that they would be our family for life.

  Our son and daughter were scheduled to be delivered on February 17, 2006. Since Stephanie’s previous pregnancy was a Cesarean birth, this would be a C-section, too. About two weeks prior to the due date, it dawned on me that trying to get Angela to sit down with our business folks to finish adjusting our wills and trusts to accommodate the babies after they arrived would not work. So we decided to conclude all of that work before the babies arrived. After the meeting, Angela said, “Let’s get something to eat.”

  “No, let’s eat at home,” I told her. “We have food in the refrigerator.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you there.”

  Angela left to run a few errands and I banged out a few e-mails while sitting in the car before I heading home. Fifteen minutes later my phone rang. It was Tracy, our assistant.

  “I need you to get home now. Stephanie’s water broke and you have to get to the hospital.”

  “Oh, my goodness!”

  “Is Angela with you?”

  “No, she left twenty minutes ago. She should be home by now.”

  “Well, she’s not here yet but come on home.”

  I boogied back to the house expecting to find Angela waiting. In true Angela fashion, she still wasn’t there. Earlier she’d told me she’d forgotten her phone, so it was impossible to get in touch with her. She was probably out shopping for baby clothes that we wouldn’t need because of all the gifts we would receive the next day at her baby shower. I learned that our surrogate had been at a doctor’s appointment when her water broke. So she just walked right down the hall to a private room and waited for the fun to begin. Stephanie’s C-section had been scheduled for four o’clock. We were an hour from the hospital and it was only one o’clock now, but we would be in Friday-afternoon traffic. There was still time but Angela would have to get home soon. My hospital bag was already packed. I grabbed this and that from around the house then called our neig
hbor and great friend, Mattie Lawson, to ask if she’d bring Angela to the hospital when she got home. As long as there were at least two people in the car, they could move quickly in the carpool lanes and, maybe, make it in time. Then at two, with no word from Angela, I hit the road, Jack.

  Angie surfaced at about four. She was just traumatized. “Courtney, what’s going on? Where is everybody? Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. Her water broke. She went into labor.”

  “Oh, Courtney, I should have had my phone…”

  “Honey, it’s okay.” I told her that I had made arrangements to get her there as quickly as possible. A few hours later she came running into the hospital just as the doctors told us we had to go into delivery. There must have been 15 of us in the operating room, all scrubbed up and masked. Stephanie and Kevin were huddled up talking. Tears were streaming down her face. He was telling her it would be okay. We met her mother and father for the first time, as well as her mother’s mother. So there were three generations there at the same time, plus the babies. I thought, “This is just amazing!” Angela and I just looked at each other’s eyes over the tops of our masks. Her eyes were big and round and moist: “Oh, my goodness!”

  Standing there watching another woman give birth to our babies was absolutely surreal. After all we had been through, I thought, “Lord, this is it, isn’t it? We’re finally parents!” I just wanted to take it all in. Once the babies were out, everyone focused on them. The nurses cleaned and bundled them up so we could hold them. I looked at their tiny hands and fingernails, their little eyes, noses and mouths, the hair on their heads. They were perfect—positively perfect! They also showed the twins to Stephanie and Kevin so they’d know they were okay before they were whisked away. I found myself feeling torn. The babies I’d been dreaming of were here, but I wanted to be there for Stephanie as she had been for us.