In Pieces

by Sally Field

  And at that, my breath suddenly caught, forcing me to grunt out a barely audible “I’ve got to push.”

  “No,” Steve firmly shot back. “No. Blow… blow. Don’t push.”

  While riding in a car that seemed to have Mr. Toad at the wheel—flying down Bel Air Road and onto Sunset Boulevard—I planted my feet on the windshield and rose up out of the seat like some levitating demon, all the time forcing air out of my already airless lungs. If the contractions ever diminished I was not aware. It seemed they came faster and faster, tumbling over each other, while the intensity sent me climbing higher and higher on the windshield. I remembered Femmy saying, “If ever it becomes impossible to keep yourself from pushing, allow your body to push just the tiniest bit with each release of the forced breath. Don’t worry if you poop in your pants, who cares, you’re having a baby and you’re allowed to break all the rules of polite society.”

  When we finally pulled into the hospital’s emergency loading and unloading zone, I could feel the baby’s head crowning. Lost in frantic confusion, not knowing whether to stay with me or get some help, Steve ran to my side of the car and opened the door. I sat there, finding it difficult to peel my feet off the windshield, feeling certain that standing up would mean giving birth in the parking lot, so I awkwardly rolled out of my seat, onto my hands and knees, then crawled, crablike, onto the hospital’s clean linoleum hallway—clean compared to the asphalt driveway, at least. A wheelchair was rolled to my side by a bewildered nurse’s aide trying hard to act as if this were standard behavior, and even though Steve explained our predicament, the young man—with a “take charge” attitude—asked if I would please sit in the chair, stating patiently, “It’s regulation.” All I could do was blow air out of my mouth, which by then sounded like I was giving him the raspberries—which I was. We rode up the elevator with Steve standing next to the young man, whose hands were on the wheelchair, while I stayed on the floor.

  In the maternity ward, people took me a little more seriously. I was lifted onto a gurney—still on my hands and knees—while Steve was whisked off to fill out the frigging paperwork. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to keep from having the baby, I shook my head no, refusing to lie down, while spitting out, “I’m Lamaze, I’m Lamaze.”

  The nurse at my side put her hand on my back, speaking to me slowly as if I didn’t understand the English language. “You have to lie down so I can get your clothes off and put you in a gown.”

  “Cut them off,” I shot back.

  “Oh no, we can’t cut your clothes off.”

  I wanted to say, For fuck’s sake, cut the piece-of-shit clothes off of me, but by then I could only blow and words were not an option. So, without lying down, I let her slip my clothes off, helping as much as I could, which meant not at all. She then placed a gown on one arm, but couldn’t get my other arm to cooperate, so the garment was never fully on my body and slid around willy-nilly.

  I finally agreed to lie down when a young intern came into the room saying he needed to examine me to determine if I was truly in labor—I swear to you. His name was Dr. Paul Crane and he would eventually become a prominent OB-GYN in Los Angeles, and I will never forget him. He leaned down to talk to me as I lay on my side. “You’re about to have this baby, Sally, and your doctor’s not here yet. Do you want to try to wait or would you trust me to deliver it?” He said this while they rolled me into the delivery room, then stood at the head of the table looking into my eyes, waiting for my answer.

  I barely got out, “You do it. I trust you,” before the nurse snapped an oxygen mask over my face, which I found impossible to tolerate, immediately pushing it off to the side (but at least this time I wasn’t tied down). Dr. Crane—who years later admitted to me how brand-new he was—gave me a casual smile, then moved toward the end of the table with a forced sense of ease, tripping over the oxygen cord connected to the unused mask around my neck, which jerked my head up fast, then plopped it down with a thud, like a puppet on a string.

  Miraculously, Steve dashed through the door, tying a mask on his distraught face, looking as undone as I did, and from this young doctor came the most beautiful words I’d ever heard anyone say: “With the next contraction, you go ahead, Sally. Hold your breath and push. Okay? And here we go.” With one glorious, heavenly, orgasmic push, my beautiful, impatient, and joyfully alive son was born. Elijah.

  Steve, Peter, Eli, and me. 1973.

  14

  Culpable

  I DIDN’T LOVE riding on Steve’s motorcycle, but he wanted to show me something. So, one afternoon when little Eli was down for a nap and Baa was reading Peter a book, I wrapped my arms around Steve’s T-shirted torso and off we zoomed through the emerald community, turning onto Chantilly Road, then up a steep driveway. At the top, branching off to the right, was the private entrance to a barely visible house. To the left was a large lot with only the remnants of a brick fireplace standing in the shadowy outline of a house that had probably burned down during the disastrous 1961 Bel Air fire. The site was spectacularly beautiful, lined with tall eucalyptus trees, which had either escaped the blaze or grown in the nearly twelve years since the house last stood.

  I can’t say I didn’t know what Steve had on his mind. And even though it made absolutely no sense financially, the thought of having a home in this dream of a spot was jump-up-and-down exciting. Truth was, we had two children and lived in a rather small house, so having a larger place was not a bad idea. But I wasn’t working regularly, and Steve had no career at all, so building a fantasy home at that particular moment couldn’t have been a completely good idea either. Yet that’s what Steve wanted to do: build a house. He was like a kid in a toy store, determined to get what he wanted. And no matter how many reasons I gave as to why we couldn’t and shouldn’t, he’d come back with reasons why we absolutely could and should: He would build half of it himself, be part of the construction crew, devote his life to it, stressing the point that he knew all about our finances and was positive it was a good investment. I wouldn’t have known a good investment from a hole in the ground, plus I remained frightened of anything financial and therefore had no idea how much money we actually had. Part of me wanted to feel as if Steve knew what he was doing, that he could handle this part of our lives while I concerned myself with taking care of the kids and making a living. Which meant building a career, not a house.

  Perhaps this was the beginning of the end for our relationship and if we had just stayed in our little place with the mountain view, the marriage would have survived. But we sold it in order to buy the lot on Chantilly Road, and when Peter was three and Eli not quite six months, we moved into a ramshackle rented house on Topanga Beach, where we would live while the home was being built. And in spite of the fact that the beach house seemed to be made of cardboard, it had a large wooden deck directly on the sand and was a mind-boggling place, as long as you were looking out toward the ocean. Inside, everything was tattered and falling apart, including my marriage.

  The Chantilly construction moved forward, though I still don’t know how. Maybe I was just overwhelmed with the lives of two little boys, but I don’t remember seeing any architectural drawings or participating in the hiring of people, and I rarely visited the site. If it hadn’t been for the large round rocks collected from all over and stacked in piles to be taken to the lot, I would have forgotten we were building anything.

  As if he were on a treasure hunt, Steve would wander up and down the beach looking for the half-hidden dappled gray boulders, some huge and all of them smooth from sand and water. He would then find a way to drag or roll them back to our place, usually with little Eli tucked in a backpack the whole time. Unlike how he was with his first son—leaving most of the daily care to me—Steve kept Eli by his side as he worked around the rented house. It was as if Eli, who looked so much like his father, belonged to Steve, whereas Peter, who looked so much like his mother, was mine.

  As for me, the few jobs I was being offered were either unintere
sting or ridiculous, and the need for money, accompanied by the fear of everything being taken away, haunted me like a recurring dream. Steve and I both laughed at the half-hour pilot I was offered called The Galloping Gour-miss—a takeoff on a popular daytime cooking show, The Galloping Gourmet. Then the laughter faded, and he raised his eyebrows with a shrug of maybe it’s not so bad. When I immediately passed on the project, I could feel his impatience, hinting that perhaps I was too picky. But sweet Jesus in heaven, can you imagine going from The Flying Nun to The Galloping Gour-miss? I could feel the nails being hammered into the coffin of my career. It’s one thing to quietly learn your craft, unnoticed until that breakthrough moment, but I’d already used up my “on-the-job training” pass, and my fear of losing the house that didn’t even exist was nothing compared to my fear that acting would be taken away.

  I had to reinvent myself, to go away and not be seen until I had the right role and was skilled enough to play it. I accepted whatever jobs I thought wouldn’t attract too much notice, like hosting the ridiculous Miss Teen USA pageant, a few TV guest spots, and even some game shows. But each notch down was physically painful, as if a chunk of my body was being lopped off. Next, I’d be doing a personal appearance at Jocko’s bird sanctuary in Hawaii. How could I listen to the part of me that felt most alive when I was onstage or in front of a camera, take care of it, allow it to grow—and still be the sole financial support for my family? All while fulfilling Steve’s dream of building a house?

  Unconsciously, I felt I had to make a choice between these two loves of my life. I began to move away from the comfort of my childhood sweetheart and chose my love of acting. That’s the love affair I focused on.

  After I performed a scene from Jean Anouilh’s Antigone at the Actors Studio one night, Lee cautioned me to take care of the emotional part of my brain, to guard that it didn’t close up. He advised that I learn techniques for allowing expression without aiming directly for a specific emotional response, usually leading to a predictable performance. He then suggested I speak with him during the break, which of course made my heart lurch.

  From the very beginning, people at the Studio considered me to be a teacher’s pet, and even though that perception continued to grow with good reason, it didn’t keep me from feeling intimidated of Lee. I could see how he treated actors he felt frustrated with, those who perhaps needed a kick in the pants to help them hear what he was saying, or ones who simply rubbed him the wrong way, and I was always relieved to not be one of them. And it was true, Lee did seem to keep his eye on me. Not obviously, but I could feel it. Often, he would say something to the class, then nod at me to make sure I’d understood.

  “Get into therapy,” he told everyone one night after commenting on a scene with only a few preoccupied sentences. “If you’re blocked as a person, you’ll be blocked as an actor. You have to know how to use yourself. You are your own instrument of expression and you have to keep it finely tuned.” He used musicians as examples, like Vladimir Horowitz with his piano or Yehudi Menuhin with his violin, how they knew every inch of their equipment, were constantly practicing exercises to keep themselves and their instruments aligned. Actors should connect with themselves in the same way, he said, adding that they needed to know their physicality and habitual behavior, their history and emotional landscape, to own the information that would allow them to interpret a character through their individual uniqueness. “The pianist plays all the same notes,” he’d say, “yet it’s the way he plays… that something only he can add… his particular awareness of what he’s doing.” The great jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker once said, “Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.” But you have to know what you have lived.

  That night, as people milled around, stretching their legs and preparing for the next scene, Lee quietly told me to consider joining his master class series at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, which he and his wife, Anna, had opened in 1969 not far from the Studio. Attending the institute cost money that I didn’t want to spend, but it would mean working more intensely with Lee, three times a week. I immediately signed up and started classes the following week.

  The four-hour daytime sessions were much as I imagined a college class would be and very different from the Actors Studio. Lee always began with a lecture of sorts, telling stories about acting and stories about life—which were ultimately about acting. Eventually he’d announce the specific exercise to be taught and call six or seven students to the stage, where everyone sat in a loose semicircle of folding chairs. First came relaxation—as important as anything else we ever did in class—and Lee would slowly move from person to person, picking up an arm to shake it, testing the shoulders, pulling the jaw open and closed, hunting for rigidity anywhere, telling us that a mouth held tight or shoulders tensed, even hands that are unconsciously clenched, can block impulses. After he replaced all the body parts where he’d found them, we’d begin the work of the day.

  During the first week, we looked at ourselves in nonexistent mirrors, or sat in a windowless room feeling the touch of sunlight, or held imaginary cups of coffee, felt the weight in our hands, inhaled the aroma, tasted the bitter warmth—all sensory exercises that are about much more than the five senses.

  On one particular day—after a month of classes—Lee chose me along with six others to work onstage, then announced that he wanted to guide us through the room exercise, an exercise that he said was underused and an effective back door into subconscious emotions. After we all had properly relaxed and each had moved to a separate spot on the stage, we sat down, waiting to have the task explained. “Pick a place in your life, at least seven years in the past, which stands out in your mind,” he told us. “It could be your bedroom or your father’s study, a location from your life.” He advised us to pick something important enough to be remembered but not to worry about reproducing whatever emotions we might connect to the memory. He gave us a moment to think and when ready, we were to close our eyes and not just re-create the location in our brains, but put ourselves in it. “Do you see paint on the walls or is there wallpaper? What’s on the floor?” he asked us. “Where is the light coming from? What do you hear? What do you smell?”

  Sitting with legs crossed, eyes closed, I searched for a place to start until, without intending to, I began to see the carpet on the stairs leading to my stepfather’s bedroom. As if I were turning a viewfinder, details slowly began to appear: the stains on the edges of the rug, the flat off-white walls, the worn banister on one side of the staircase, the dirt on the scuffed baseboards, the window on the first landing where I could see the tree, hear its leaves rustling like the sound of rushing water. Then came Lee’s voice, softly urging us to investigate, to touch what we see in our mind’s eye. I put my fingers in the worn carpet, felt the slightly sticky wool, and instantly I could smell dust and summer and bacon frying.

  I feel the sun streaming in, glaring off the wall, stinging my face as I begin to walk up, my bare feet sinking into the carpet. I stop in the sun on the first landing, turn to see the next four stairs and the door. I’m wearing white shorts with a red-and-white checked blouse, and as I stand with my hand on the knob, feeling powerful, I undo the first button of my blouse and knock. I have not been called. I’m moving into his room because I want to go. I want to feel I’m important. He’s surprised, then his smile glides into a knowing smirk, as if he sees where I am heading before I do. He sits on the edge of his bed, watches me, bemused. How could he know what I didn’t? Was this my Achilles’ heel he would threaten to reveal and destroy me with two years later? Was I not a victim, but a participant? I haltingly tell him that my skin is feeling dry and he chuckles as he slathers his meaty hands with the lotion that waits next to the bed, then rolls the goo over my bare legs, smearing his hand up under my shorts while I stand before him.

  I’d become an expert at not feeling anything in that room, and though I still felt the familiar dista
nt burn of humiliation, this time I felt something else. And suddenly, with a jolt, I was yanked back to the stage I was sitting on and it hit me for the first time—the deep shame and horror of my own desires, desires I couldn’t feel when I was fourteen. Only at that moment, twelve years later, in an acting exercise with Lee Strasberg, did I realize what I had been asking for.

  The exercise continued for a bit longer but the memory instantly cut off there. As hard as I tried then, and forever after, I can’t see how I left the upstairs bedroom that day. I truly don’t believe it went any further, however that moment in my life—though never consciously registered—had been so powerful that I instantly stopped talking to Jocko for almost two years, barely responding when he talked to me. And I had never known precisely what had caused the abrupt halt to our relationship, what had flipped the switch in me from needing his approval to despising him. From that day on, and for the rest of my life, I shut him out. But I had shut out a part of myself as well, the madwoman. Had sent her away to live in the attic of my brain, disconnected from the rest of me.

  After we’d been wandering around in our heads for nearly two hours, Lee carefully called to each of us, whispering our names one at a time. Like waking a child from sleep, he said, “Sally, come back to class. Come back now and look at us.”

  I tried to squint, to open my eyes enough to see my folded legs and nothing else.

  “Look at us, Sally. Can you do that?”

  I couldn’t.

  “Look at us,” he said.

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  “Yes, you can,” he gently reassured. “We’re here with you.”

  I didn’t want to look at anyone because I didn’t want anyone to see me. When I opened my eyes, I looked only at Lee and cried for the little girl I once had been.