Blessed Life

by Kim Fields

  Finished, my mom waited for a reaction from me. I held it together, letting her know I had understood the message. The young Corleone bride was only looked at in that special way because she was innocent and pure. Michael was going to be the first and only one to have been with her. But I could not believe her unique approach to this uncomfortable rite of passage, and finally I lost it. I cracked up. “Did you really just use The Godfather for our sex talk?” I asked.

  She nodded—and I hugged her.

  “I love it,” I said. “And I love you.”

  6

  The Senior

  My senior year was not supposed to start this way. Like a patient listening to a bad diagnosis, I sat motionless on the sofa, light-headed and numb, taking in all the gruesome details. Loy had cheated on me with another girl, actually a friend of mine, which was even worse. As far as I was concerned, that was it. Our relationship ended then and there.

  My heart was shattered. I was one of those girls who fell in love hard, and now that it was over, I fell apart. My mom cradled me in her arms and said, “You will be okay.” I cried for days. I couldn’t concentrate. I moped around, lost and unable to focus. “This is just one of those things we all go through, baby,” my mom said, trying to comfort me. “It doesn’t get easier. But it will get better.”

  I found that hard to believe, but she was right. I stuck around home until Facts started the new season. I played with my sister. I participated at church and volunteered at functions. I went fishing with my Uncle Luther at Castaic Lake, one time catching two bass and boasting that I had put the worms on the hook myself. I inherited my first car, our beat-up Honda Accord. After the radio broke, I used three-year-old Alexis’s plastic Fisher-Price cassette player and rotated through my three essential tapes: Sade, Commissioned, and The Winans. I guested on several Dick Clark specials, including one where my old friend Malcolm-Jamal Warner and I shared a brief kiss. (He says I kissed him because it sounds better to him to recall it that way.) And gradually, I found, as so many of us do, that with time, my heart proved more resilient than I thought.

  At school, I loaded up on activities. I was elected student body vice president. I managed the baseball team. I participated in mock trial. I enjoyed geometry, history, and science. Thanks to an inspiring biology teacher, I thought about becoming a marine biologist. I didn’t know Jodie Foster, but the former child star, who’d been raised by a single mother and had gone to Yale, served as a role model from afar.

  Like her, I knew I was going to go college, which would make me the first in my family to do so, but I hadn’t decided where or what I would study. I fantasized about going away to either Evangel University, a Christian school in Missouri, or to San Diego State. But because I was still doing Facts, I had to stay in LA. So I applied to Pepperdine University—and prayed.

  I had fallen in love with the Pepperdine campus when we lived in Malibu and while taping Battle of the Network Stars there. It was nestled in the green hills above Malibu, with breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean. On a tour of the campus, I asked if anyone went to class—it was that beautiful. I also noticed the diversity of the student body. People of every color, shape, size, and type crisscrossed the campus the day I was there. It looked like they could be my friends.

  The school’s Christian affiliation was also a key factor. Faith was encouraged, not frowned upon. It was studied, discussed, appreciated, celebrated, explored, and practiced out in the open, and that was the way I approached my faith. In early January, I came home to find a large envelope waiting for me. With my mom standing nearby, I ripped it open. Apparently my GPA, test scores, personal essay, and prayers had worked. I was in. Of course, you know how we celebrated. No matter what we’re celebrating, it’s always screams, jumping up and down, and tears.

  With the pressure off, the rest of the school year zipped by. At the homecoming football game, we played our crosstown rival John Burroughs High. I helped make posters and put them up all over school. Go Burbank! We won the game 14 to 10 and celebrated late into the night. At lunch the next day, I convinced a few of my cheerleader friends to drive to Burroughs with me and flaunt our victory. We taped posters to the side of my Honda, cruised their parking lot, and yelled our cheers through open windows. The Burroughs kids bombarded us with food. A cheeseburger flew smack into the side of my face. I felt naughty—and loved it.

  Only one thing went missing that year: a boyfriend. I put out the vibe that I was available, but it went unanswered, something that still mystifies me. I had lots of guy friends, but none of them took that next step. I do not think anyone was intimidated. Nor was I unfriendly, inaccessible, distant, or stuck-up. Was it possible I was too nice? Maybe I didn’t fit a type. I was not the peppy cheerleader or one of the girls in the bathroom doing their makeup and hair. Nor was I edgy or naughty. I was me: accessible, open, funny, interested, curious, and scrappy.

  For whatever reason, though, none of that was right. The boys liked me, but apparently not as girlfriend material.

  Interesting the way that stuff stays with you.

  Maybe you know what I mean.

  Ugh.

  But what could I do? That was the reality. When it came time for the senior prom, I was left looking for a date. At the eleventh hour, I asked a family friend to take me. Though he was a few years older than me, he was a good sport and helped me through a sensitive time. In fact, I had a good time.

  When the yearbook was released, I was honored that my classmates had voted me Most Talented. I still treasure that recognition. Then, before I knew it, came graduation. Our theme was “Take a Look at Me Now,” and I was one of the student speakers. I worked on my speech for weeks, trying to summon all of my accumulated teen wisdom in a scant three minutes. I used the analogy of the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly to show our transformation over our high school years. In the end, here’s what I dropped on my fellow graduates: “Remember when we were kids? We’d see butterflies and say, ‘Mommy, Daddy, look at the butterfly!’ Well, Mom, Dad…take a look at me now!”

  While “drop the mic” wasn’t the catchphrase then that it is now, I sure did flap my graduation gown as I took my seat like I nailed it, a.k.a. like I dropped the mic. I wanted to leave my schoolmates inspired, full of hope, proud of their metamorphoses into young adults (which wasn’t easy for any of us, was it?), and ready to go get what the future had for them. The cool thing was, I really felt that way.

  My Voice

  7

  The College Girl

  What’s that saying about making plans? Well, it happened to me. Instead of starting school in the fall, I deferred enrollment when the Facts of Life producers scheduled production of a two-hour movie special, starting in the middle of summer, June and July 1986. This was our first movie special since Paris, which had been an exciting, broadening, and educational experience. This time we were headed to Australia. It made all my talk about going off to college a bit anticlimactic, but you heard no complaints from me.

  The three-week trip Down Under began in July. Between shooting, Mindy, Nancy, Lisa, and I visited the Sydney Opera House, climbed Ayers Rock, and ventured into the outback in Alice Springs, where, as part of Mindy’s and my story line in the movie, we spent time in an aboriginal village. Yes, it was cutesy, clichéd stuff, but I felt privileged to meet and learn about the country’s indigenous people.

  Above everything was the time I spent with the crew. I was already a “crew baby,” meaning that whenever I had free time on the Facts set back home, I sat on the cameras, the boom, and near all the other equipment, and asked how things worked. I shadowed the crew. I wanted to learn—and on a set, no group is more eager and willing to share their knowledge and skill set than the crew. In Australia, I found a talented, patient instructor and friend in John Mahaffie, our camera operator and second unit director. A charismatic New Zealander, John, who went on to work with writer-director Peter Jackson, let me sit at his feet, carry a camera case, and tag along whenever he
went on location to shoot with the second unit. By the end of the trip, I’d had a master class on composition and lighting. It shaped my eye forever.

  After the movie wrapped, we returned home and went straight into production on the show’s eighth season. Charlotte Rae had left at the end of the previous season to pursue other projects at a slower pace—or rather at her own pace. Enter Academy Award–winner Cloris Leachman, whose credits included The Mary Tyler Moore Show and her own spinoff, Phyllis. The handoff between the two brilliant actresses occurred in the emotional two-hour season opener, as Edna Garrett turned over the keys of her general store, Over Our Heads, to her sister, Beverly Ann.

  My eyes were full of tears as Charlotte took her final bow. In my opinion, her work on the show had been overlooked. Though the public mainly saw the four girls, and so much of the writing was about us girls, the show belonged to her. An enormously talented actor, she made it look easy, which is not generally the case when working with kids and comedy. I felt immense gratitude.

  As for Cloris, I was a big fan of hers from the classic Mel Brooks comedy Young Frankenstein. I knew that movie inside and out. On the day we met, I had to prevent myself from screaming like Frau Blücher, “He vas my boyfriend.” To her credit, Cloris did not try to rebuild or renovate our house to suit her. She respected that it was already built. As an actress, she was physical and liked working with props. She wanted something in her hands. Sometimes that made the director a little nutty, but she was Cloris-freaking-Leachman—and more, she was really funny.

  Speaking of funny, George Clooney joined our Facts family full time that season, building upon a guest-starring arc from the previous season. Facts was his first regular gig as an actor and my heart warms every time I hear him talk about those early days in his career, because he does it with fondness, appreciation, and affection. Yes, he is Hollywood’s biggest leading man, and one of the nicest leading men, but back then, in the mid-1980s, he was an up-and-coming actor with a winning grin and a messy mane of dark curls. His dad was a local news anchor and way more famous than him, and his aunt, of course, was the singer Rosemary Clooney, which I thought was the coolest thing about him.

  All of us remember him not as the suave leading man he has become but rather as a jokester who did not take himself seriously. He was incredibly funny. I specifically remember him entertaining us between scenes with impressions, particularly with dead-on impressions of Back to the Future’s Christopher Lloyd and Sammy Davis Jr. His Sammy was hilarious—and he could go on forever, turning himself into a lounge version of that coolest of cats.

  I found a pretty cool cat myself. His name was—well, never mind his name. He was not famous and probably enjoys his anonymity. He was a courier on the production crew. He was cute and charming. He delivered the scripts to the cast, and when he delivered mine, he always included really sweet, handwritten notes. One night I opened my script and found a missive that said, “Will you go out with me? If so, circle YES and send it back to me.”

  We kept things hush-hush but didn’t hide anything. We had fun. One night we went for a romantic gondola ride on the canals next to Naples Island in Long Beach.

  That turned out to be a good warm-up for a trip I made to Rome to work on the network special Andy Williams and the NBC Kids: Easter in Rome. Unfortunately, I did not get to meet Pope John Paul II, as some of the other kids did; my Facts schedule prevented me from flying there in time. Still, I spent ten wonderful, amazing days in the city. I pinched myself as I visited the historic sites and museums. As a little girl, I had looked through magazines and dreamed of traveling to Rome, and now I kept saying to myself, “Here I am.”

  Every corner I rounded seemed to surprise me with a beautiful church, a cheese store, a bakery, or a wonderful tiny boutique or leather shop. Mr. Williams wanted to capture the flavor of Rome, and we shot all over the city: on the streets, in front of the historic sites, and in restaurants and stores.

  One day the two of us were shooting a segment in the Ferragamo store, their flagship on the very tony Via Condotti. We were singing a duet. I spotted a pair of chocolate-and-ivory fine leather shoes. They were gorgeous—I mean gorgeous to the point where I gasped the first time I saw them, then pointed them out to one of the young makeup women on the crew, and every few minutes snuck a peek at them from across the store as if they were a hot guy. Except they were shoes. Amazing shoes.

  There was also a matching purse. Also amazing. And expensive.

  Finally, at the end of the day, I decided to buy the shoes as a present for myself. “It’s now or never—and never is going to kill me,” I said to myself. And yes, it was a splurge, but I had not indulged in a single thing the entire trip. So I found the manager and told him that I wanted to buy the shoes. He asked which pair. I started to tell him and then decided it would be easier if I showed him.

  We were halfway across the store when I noticed the shoes were gone. So was the matching purse that had been next to them. Stunned, I turned to the manager and practically cried. “What? How are they gone?” I had been in the store the entire day. “Someone purchased them,” he said. Then he reached under the counter and handed me a box. I opened it and there they were, the shoes and the purse I’d admired—along with a card that said, “Enjoy. Andy Williams.”

  I still have the shoes, the purse, and the memory.

  * * *

  Then I came back to earth. In early January 1987, I finally started college. It was the spring semester. Since Facts still had several more months before the season wrapped, I commuted from our new home in Woodland Hills. But I was finally a college girl.

  I enrolled in the general education courses required of all first-year students and loved everything. Buying my books was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I spent hours looking through the student bookstore, holding the reading lists for my courses but unable to resist the distractions of all the other books. I was giddy at the idea that I was going to read these texts and acquire the information on the pages, get it explained in class, and discuss with classmates. This romanticized vibe of new college life was heightened when I thought I had decided on a major—English Lit. Mom looked at me with all the love, patience, and realism in her and said, “What? Kimmy, have something to fall back on. In case you never act again, have a backup plan.” No classic movie reference was needed for this life lesson from her. I got it. It’s another “Chip Wisdom Nugget” that has stayed with me, guided me all of my life.

  About two weeks later, I was walking across the quad, the center area of the campus and the place everyone gathered, when I stopped. A colorful sign for a club caught my eye. Then another sign. There were tables and signs everywhere for clubs and activities. Sororities. Culinary clubs. The Black Student Association. The Physics Club (probably not, but maybe there were some cute boys). Student government. Everything looked fun and interesting.

  Everything.

  I was thrilled with the sense of opportunity—the opportunity to be in this club or that club, to take this class or that one, to have new experiences, to make new friends…everything. One day, while walking across campus, I was swept up by a wave of joyfulness. I stopped and turned in a circle, trying to take it all in. Suddenly, I realized what I was doing. I was channeling Mary Tyler Moore and throwing my hat into the air.

  And I continued to juggle school, the TV series, and my courier boyfriend. I spent so much time on the freeway I felt like I lived out of my sporty Nissan 300ZX—a graduation gift to myself, along with a personalized license plate, GODZKID. I also took a night class once a week to maintain a full load and signed up for several study groups. Active socially, I met students from the UK, Canada, Liberia, and South Africa. I even met the daughter of the president of Botswana.

  Emboldened by the college life, I wanted to experiment a little, play things a bit less safe, and have fun. To me, that meant hanging out past 10:00 p.m., occasionally breaking my diet on a weeknight, and maybe meeting someone new (my courier flame and I were no
t long-term). So when a guy friend of mine invited me to a party at his house, on a Wednesday, instead of saying no thank you, as was my habit, I thought why not have some fun? Except it wasn’t that easy for me.

  It was 9:00 p.m., and after I changed into clothes more suited to a party than TV with Mom and Lil Sis and headed toward the front door, my mom gave me a look that asked what was up. “I have to go back to campus,” I explained.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I just need to take care of some stuff,” I said. I can’t explain why I reverted to childish behavior, but she knew I wasn’t telling the truth and it set off her mother-hen alarms.

  She put down her book. “I’ll drive you.”

  This was my biggest worry come true. “No thanks,” I said. “I got it.”

  I lost that round. We got into her car and about ten minutes later, when we were about halfway to Malibu, she turned to me and said, “What are you doing?” I stared out the window. “If you’re just starting your night now, what are you doing?” I refused to answer until I could no longer take the implication of her question and suddenly I burst through the tense silence.

  “I’m not messing around,” I said.

  “You better not be messing around,” my mom said.

  “I’m not messing around!” I said.