In Pieces

by Sally Field

  After we were seated—Jackie behind his desk and me in the leather chair in front—after I said no thanks to an offer of something to drink, and after some meaningless chitchat, he settled into the heart of the matter. I don’t remember our conversation exactly, but it went something like this:

  “Sally, I’m so glad you decided to do this show after all. We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t. I really mean it. You’re doing a wonderful job, and I wanted you to hear that. Not only from me but from the studio. We would like to show our appreciation in some way. What can we do?”

  “Do?” A million things raced through my head at that moment, all vaguely having to do with getting out of the convent. But I looked at him sweetly and said, “Nothing.”

  “No, really,” he continued earnestly. “We want to give you something. Come on… there must be something: a boat, a piece of jewelry, down payment on a house?”

  Now, I am not stupid, but I could not comprehend what was being said. I’d been gearing myself up for a scolding, but instead I sat there, speechless, stunned to be offered things I couldn’t even visualize when all I really wanted were better story lines and maybe a new outfit from Judy’s clothes store. In lieu of revealing my deepest desires or my suspicion that something was not being said, I stuttered a shy “Ummm… I don’t know.”

  “Wouldn’t you like a new car?” Jackie blurted, getting excited about the idea as soon as he said it. “How about a Ferrari! You want a Ferrari?” Clearly, he wanted a Ferrari and wouldn’t let up until I got as excited as he was. I wasn’t even sure what a Ferrari was and I sure as hell didn’t want one, but I desperately wanted to leave this uncomfortably energetic meeting, so I said, “Sure. That’d be great.”

  A week later, during my lunch hour, Jackie Cooper took me to the Ferrari dealership on Sunset Boulevard and bought me a blue Pininfarina convertible, and I sold my beloved yellow MGB. Neither Mr. Cooper nor anyone else at the studio explicitly told me to dress more nunlike, nor did they demand that I keep a squeaky-clean image, but I couldn’t help feeling that this gift was some kind of bribe, a tool to keep me in place. Though why they thought a flashy sports car would do the trick, I do not know. And when I drove onto the lot the following week in my new blue prize—which felt like a horse I wasn’t skilled enough to ride—I felt both proud and skeptical. But most of all I felt embarrassed. I didn’t want this machine that made everyone turn and look when I drove by. And where were the gifts for everyone else on the show?

  The nuns discuss the facts of life with Irving, the pelican.

  I spent every day with those actors, laughing and easy. I knew I was the star, but I didn’t want to stand out any more than necessary. I wanted to be a part of the team—though not necessarily friends with anyone. Even when I went with Alejandro to the Factory, a club located in Hollywood—and the only club I’d ever been to—I spent most of the time submerged in the dark herd of gyrating bodies, completely lost in the thunderous music, never actually talking to Alejandro. Whenever any of the cast made a move toward me, I felt myself lean back, wondering if it was a genuine offer of friendship or if they saw me as a coin they all wanted in their pocket. I was suspicious, always, of everyone, no matter how hard I tried not to be. I’m sure that everyone thought I was friendly and open, because part of me was, while a more significant part wanted to hide in a dark, safe closet with the door closed, waiting for my mother to talk to me.

  The most difficult task of all was simply getting through the day, every day. Even in my high school drama class, whether in scene study or a term play, I’d been sublimely lost in the work, connected to myself, completely unaware of time as it slid by. But now every minute seemed to repeat itself, never ticking away as minutes are supposed to do but ticking up and down in the same place. To stay alive, not to mention awake, I created little games for myself, just as I’d done at the racetrack with Dick. I stopped reading the scripts beforehand, would wait until I was called to the set, then stand beside the script supervisor to look at the current scene and try to memorize my dialogue instantly. The game was to see if I could do it all in one take, then it evolved into seeing if I could do it in one breath. Both are valuable exercises for an actor, but I sure as hell didn’t know it.

  Many of the directors we had on the show—a different one for each episode—literally pushed and pulled me into place, like I was a bowl of fruit, and by then I’d gained so much weight I looked like a bowl of fruit. After they’d yank me to my spot, I’d take a lungful of air and play the game, saying every line in one breath, give or take a paraphrase or two. I would do other takes if they wanted—and they usually did—which meant the distraction of my games would wear off, and I’d be thrust headlong into deadly boredom.

  I couldn’t make myself numb no matter how much I ate, which ultimately made it worse. Then I was bored, ashamed, and fat: the poster child for self-loathing. Maybe I was only feeling the young adult in me pushing to emerge. Maybe I would have been struggling no matter where I was or what I was doing. Certainly, I was earning a living, and I can’t imagine what I would’ve done if I hadn’t been. Maybe it takes the distance of so many years to feel grateful. At the time, all I could see was this character, a one-dimensional girl whom I was embarrassed to be playing, and an endless string of days in which I was powerlessly trapped inside her.

  One afternoon toward the end of that first year, I was standing in the mother superior’s office surrounded by all the other nuns—something I had done countless times before. Just like every other day, I started to say Sister Bertrille’s chirpy words, when suddenly I hit a wall, stopped midsentence, and flat-out couldn’t continue. I put my face in my hands and sat down, begging the feeling to pass so I could jump to my feet, dust myself off, and start all over again with a big plastered-on grin. But I couldn’t. A tiny voice inside my head whispered, then pleaded, Suck it up and get on with it. I just couldn’t. I was stuck behind my fingers like they were glued to my face, couldn’t look up, couldn’t look at everyone looking at me, couldn’t even release enough to begin crying. I sat on the floor in front of the mother superior’s big desk with my legs crossed and my body bent into my lap. As if I didn’t really want to be heard, I quietly mumbled, “Please let me go home. Please let me go home. I’ll do better tomorrow. Please let me go home.” I kept repeating it, rocking forward with my palms mashed into my eyes. I don’t know what the rest of the actors were doing or how they reacted to this sight. I only know I felt a strong, unapologetic hand grab hold of my arm, seeking not to look in my face but to guide me. It was Madeleine, the mother superior. I wasn’t completely sure she was my friend. Then I heard her quiet, clear demand, never raising her voice but stating with a kind of force that no one questioned, “Get her a car and a driver. She’s finished for the day. Now.”

  If anyone said anything in reply I didn’t hear it, and I couldn’t force myself to look for fear I would see the dismay or disapproval on their faces. Madeleine placed her whole body around me—though not really in a hug. She didn’t make cooing sounds or try to be reassuring, she simply encased me as I walked blindly forward. And as she guided me toward the huge sliding stage doors, I heard the loud honking sound announcing their movement, heard the clacking as they parted, and felt the sunlight when she led me through. I never took my hands from my face as she pressed my head down, only slid onto the front seat of some vehicle—I have no idea what—and was silently driven home.

  The next day, I energetically propelled myself through the work as if nothing had happened, while fleeting looks of sympathy and out-and-out bewilderment shot from everyone, including the crew. Late in the afternoon, Madeleine took hold of my arm, pulling me into a dark corner. She lowered her head to mine and whispered, “You’re going to meet me at this address after work next Tuesday,” and stuffed a folded scrap of paper into my pocket. “You’re doing it. It’s not far from here. You can go right from work.” I looked at her, not knowing whether I felt warmed or repelled.

  “It’s th
e Actors Studio. Have you heard of it?”

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  “Well, you’re coming. I’ll meet you there.” She stopped and stood back, watching me.

  Registering the challenge I saw in her face, I replied, “I’ll be there.”

  10

  Together

  IT WAS JUST an ordinary-looking house in an ordinary-looking Hollywood neighborhood a few blocks south of the Sunset Strip, twenty minutes from Columbia. After parking on the street, I walked up the steep driveway with my heart pushing against my shirt, hoping that Madeleine’s would be the first face I saw. At the top of the drive was a small building that perhaps had been the garage at one point; now, where the wide car-size opening might have been was a long white clapboard wall with an ordinary door standing open at the end. A cluster of people gathered under the yellow glare of the naked light bulb mounted above the door, while a swarm of moths danced around the glow.

  Still looking for Madeleine, I stepped through the back door of what appeared to be the main house, sliding awkwardly between those waiting at the coffee machine, nodding at everyone who met my eyes. These were all actors and as I scanned the small group, I recognized several faces, though I couldn’t pinpoint from where. At the same time, I felt the energy of being recognized myself, if for no other reason than the fact that I was new and nervous. And there she was, lost in an animated conversation with a tall woman who wore her frizzy gray hair pulled back in a long ponytail. When she saw me, Madeleine’s pixie face crinkled into a relieved smile, as though she had half-expected that I wouldn’t show up. She moved forward, calmly introducing me to everyone while pulling me out the door and up the path to that onetime garage, where everyone eventually headed. Inside was a mini theater with gradually elevated rows of chairs facing a curtainless stage. People were taking their seats, moving with a kind of certainty that indicated they’d done this before and had a preferred spot. Madeleine chose two chairs, not in the back but not in the front where force of habit had been pulling her.

  A longtime member of this historic acting workshop, Madeleine had done her studying in New York, which had resulted in a remarkable stage career. She had originated the roles of Abigail in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible as well as “Sister Woman” in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Miss Lucy in Sweet Bird of Youth, both by Tennessee Williams. She was a force, that’s for sure: She had been blacklisted in the McCarthy era, had worked with Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement, was arrested while participating in a freedom walk, then jailed and sentenced to six months’ hard labor for “endangering the customs and mores of the people of Alabama” until her lawyer, the first African American to represent a white woman south of the Mason-Dixon Line, secured her release. She rarely talked about any of this, but you could feel it in her, like something lashing around, unwilling to settle down. A dust devil looking for loose dirt.

  Two scenes were up that night: The first was from A Moon for the Misbegotten, by Eugene O’Neill with two characters, and the second was a monologue from Euripides’s Medea, adapted by Jean Anouilh. As everyone was filing in, Madeleine explained to me what I was to see, and how I should see it. The performers were to pick one or two very specific things they wanted to work on, and the scene was in no way to be considered a finished performance. Everything was a work in progress. It was study. She also told me that during the winter months the position of moderator would rotate according to whoever was available. Veterans and longtime members like Ellen Burstyn, Bruce Dern, Shelley Winters, and even Madeleine herself would show up on different nights, always actors who had studied closely with the guru—the acting teacher who had made the Actors Studio so famous and infamous, Lee Strasberg. But during the spring and throughout the summer Lee lived in L.A., and for those months it was the master himself who taught at this little neighborhood residence.

  The lights went down and the first scene was up. I wasn’t familiar with A Moon for the Misbegotten, but even if I’d known it well, I wouldn’t have completely understood what was happening because whatever the two actors were working on, being heard wasn’t one of them. It didn’t matter. Their focus made it worth holding my breath to catch whatever words I could, as if we, the audience, were eavesdropping on something personal happening between these two people, something that they would hide if our presence were known.

  After the scene, the actors gathered their things and adjusted their clothes, never looking out at the watchers, talking only to each other, as if allowing themselves the few moments it takes to leave the privacy of concentration. Tucking their emotions out of sight, just as they tucked in their shirts and tied their shoes. Eventually they sat on the edge of the stage with varying degrees of awkward composure until the moderator (I’m sorry to say I don’t remember who it was that night) asked them what they’d been working on. After the actors explained their tasks, the moderator gave comments and finally asked for comments from the audience—all actors and members or, like me, invited observers.

  When the short break ended, everyone took their seats again and quieted as a tall, striking woman, a character actor I vaguely recognized, moved to center stage, keeping her eyes down. She stood still for what seemed to be a long time, then began to speak as Medea. Slowly, she raised her eyes and searched the audience, meeting one face, then another. And with a booming voice, she began to wail while strutting across the stage, then laughed insanely with her mouth open wide, looking toward the rafters. It was periodically mesmerizing, boldly unafraid, and at the same time hovered constantly on the edge of embarrassing. At the end of the long spew of words, she screamed with fierce abandon, ripping the bodice of her dress open, yanking it with the most authentic behavior thus far, and finally stood in the middle of the stage, breathless and bare chested. No one moved. I must admit, I admired her freedom, though perhaps not her sense of economy. After a moment, Madeleine leaned in to me, whispering a little too loudly, “She finds a way to do that in every scene, no matter what the play.” But I couldn’t take my eyes off of this exposed actor as she gathered her things just like the others had done, pulling herself back, transitioning from the place where she had been to look at the people sitting in front of her.

  I can’t say I learned anything that night, or at least not anything I could take to the set with me the next day—God forbid—but I was totally compelled. I wanted to tell the actors what I thought, how at times I was confused and then completely transfixed, wanted to ask them why they chose to work on things that were so complicated to explain. I walked away with a new hunger, and not for chocolate cake. I wanted to get up there, wanted to work, really work—not the kind of work I’d been doing. I wanted to learn the break-it-down, bit-by-bit, layer-by-layer craft of it.

  There’s a saying that actors have: “Life is what happens in between jobs.” Then there’s the riddle: “What is the worst time in an actor’s life?” Answer: “When they’re not working and when they’re working.” Both of these apply. During the months that The Flying Nun was in production, I had zero time off because I was in every scene of every script, so when hiatus arrived at the end of the first season, I tried to fill my life with everything I wouldn’t be able to do after the second season began.

  Immediately, I started seeing a therapist once a week, even though I didn’t stay with him for long. I remember shuffling into his office for my session and sitting on the edge of his hard leather sofa, feeling just as stiff as the furniture. It was perhaps our second meeting, so I’m sure I looked terrified, because I was, and deeply sad, trying to hide myself in layers of baggy clothes, looking slightly childlike. Without even registering my appearance, he opened the session by scolding me for being fifteen minutes late, telling me I was acting disrespectfully to us both. I felt ambushed, tears dripping off my chin as I tried to defend myself, explaining how every day the clock was relentlessly on me and I was never late, admitting it was a luxury to allow myself a little tardiness, something I didn’t know I felt until I heard it come out
of my mouth. I wish I could have said, “Thank you for your time, you’re not the right person for me,” and left. But I couldn’t find that part of myself, and as the session continued I fell back into my familiar cell, locked behind my face, unable to speak.

  This same doctor insisted that I attend a torturous, weekend-long group marathon as well as his weekly group therapy sessions, when a knot of strangers, usually years older, would burst out laughing when one of the members asked if I’d driven there or had I flown over, one of a hundred unfunny jokes thrown in my direction while inside my head a voice pleaded for me to speak. Please speak. But I sat with my head down, a little ragamuffin girl, mute and now with a pounding headache.

  Then on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, scene nights at the Actors Studio, I’d step out of the ragamuffin’s wordless world and become an entirely different person. And on Wednesday nights, when Lou Antonio, the charismatic New York actor, conducted his popular exercise class, I could hear my voice again and I could open my mouth and use it. This class was not an evening filled with sit-ups and push-ups—though that might have been a good idea too. These exercises had only to do with acting.

  The first time I timidly stepped into his class, I hadn’t even put my rear in a chair before I heard Lou shout, “I want six people up, now!” Without worrying if I was prepared or informed or qualified, I jumped onto the stage, then looked out at the theater, half-filled with actors just settling in. As soon as Lou had all his volunteers standing ready under the rudimentary work lights—making it somewhat brighter onstage than it was in the audience—the exercise began. It went something like this, give or take a few details: Lou climbed onstage with us, then one at a time whispered to each actor their own private motivations. In my ear, he informed me that I was desperately in love with the unfamiliar performer standing to my right, adding that I had an overwhelming urge to touch him. Then, he quietly told my love interest that one of his contact lenses had popped out and though he desperately needed my help to find it, an obnoxious odor seemed to be radiating from me—basically, I reeked to high heaven. After everyone onstage was given a secret drive, always a motivation in direct conflict with someone else’s, Lou called “action,” and what must have resembled a scene from The Snake Pit began. He would then move into the audience or stand in the back and yell out different locations periodically: You’re on a storm-tossed boat, in a roasting desert, stuck in a crowded elevator. All of which would radically change the physicality of everyone’s behavior, but not their need to get whatever it was Lou had told them they wanted.