by Sally Field
I’ve tried to piece together my childhood and early career most of my adult life, relentlessly going over the memories, occasionally telling some of the stories to a captivated few, and I realize I’ve become my own lore, halfway falling in love with the drama of it all. But when I try to look at my early years of motherhood, my relationship with Steve, and what it became, I run out of lore. Maybe it’s easier to remember myself as a powerless victim and not the perpetrator, not a player in the mindless damage game. I’ve never wanted to see the reality: that I was a young woman who began to have violent rages, who needed to find her sexuality in other men, and who hurt Steve. And more than anything, I don’t want to acknowledge how often I placed my children into the arms of my mother and walked away, only to feel jealous of her relationship with them when I returned.
My mother, my sister, and I had lived a life of musical chairs, never staying in one place very long before the music would start up again, and off we’d go. The only stationary structure in our lives was Joy’s house, and even though I was now paying my mother a small salary to help me with the kids, that’s where Baa went to live, along with Princess, who tried to convert another garage into a room for herself—this time Joy’s spider-ridden, car-less barnlike thing.
Visiting only occasionally, my brother stayed removed from most of the family chaos, first in Berkeley, where he received his PhD in physics, then in Long Island, New York, where he lived for several years to do postdoctoral research at the Brookhaven National Lab. But in 1973 he moved back to Pasadena along with his wife, Jimmie, and their son, Jason, who was only a few months younger than Eli. Rick would be working at Caltech with the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman, which ultimately became an important working relationship and a powerful friendship.
Maybe the lure of having Ricky and his young family living so close was part of the reason why my mother moved back into her childhood home, though it couldn’t have been easy for her. Over the years, my brother had become impatient and emotionally distant with our mother, like he was holding back from her any real affection. And though his disregard was palpable, she never asked for more or turned away, but always stood with her eager face toward him, waiting to be forgiven for things they never talked about. Joy once confessed to Jimmie that she could hear my mother crying every night—a tiny piece of information that Jimmie only recently told me, and the thought of that stays in my head. Baa must have felt injured in whatever direction she turned: Her husband had left for a younger woman; she was living with her mother, who criticized her constantly; and while her son was distractedly disrespectful, her oldest daughter was resentfully dependent.
And yet, on a moment’s notice she’d drop everything to drive to the Topanga Beach house and wrangle two young boys for the day. Then, when I’d drag myself home from some dumb game show, I’d walk through the door and turn into someone I didn’t want to be. Steve most often was nowhere in sight, while my mother led a little band of playtime junkies on a rampage through the house, looking for their next imagination fix. Blankets would be strewn across every piece of furniture, deck chairs pulled into the living room, and pillows piled into every woolen cave, leaving the house looking as if it had been ransacked. Never mind that she had taken good care of my children, that they had been entertained and creatively stimulated. All I could see was the fact that the toys—which I’d carefully organized into buckets and bins—were scattered everywhere, as if from a deliberate need to undo everything I’d done.
But the thing that turned me from Jekyll into Hyde was the sound of Baa’s high-pitched voice playing Bob or Joe or Martha and having a conversation with Peter’s character or Eli’s—and he, at that point, was pretty much preverbal. Most of the words were undecipherable, except for my mother’s piercing “walky, walky, walky,” which meant that whatever stuffed animal or Weeble Wobble she held in her hand was hopping around their make-believe world. The walky-walky game, as I called it. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be included in their game—which I never was—or was glad to be free from it. Not knowing what I wanted from anyone, including myself, I’d begin to clean up the kitchen, slamming pans around as I fixed dinner, torn between my gratitude for her devotion and my frustration with her presence. Eventually I’d have some sort of dinner ready and with an irritated ring to my voice, I’d call them to the table, only to hear Peter emphatically yell, “Mom, go away. We’re playing.”
Unvoiced resentment brewed into quiet rage, keeping itself hidden until suddenly that’s all I was: mindless red rage, unable to control impulses I didn’t want to have. One evening, Steve and I were sitting outside in the midst of an argument, and I remember crying and wailing, going round and round in emotional circles because I either didn’t know what was at the bottom of it, or didn’t want to admit it. Steve, in a last-ditch effort to break through, got on his knees in front of me and said, “Hit me. Will that make you feel better? Then hit me.” He kept saying it while refusing to let me move away. Suddenly I felt as if I were in someone else’s body, a body whose clenched fist hit him again and again, mashing a club of a hand into his face until his nose began gushing blood. Only then did I stop. Wrapping my arms around him, fearfully clinging as if we had faced some terrible dragon together. Me. Steve never hit me. Not ever in his life.
In early 1973, a production of A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Jon Voight and Faye Dunaway, was being mounted at the Ahmanson Theatre in downtown Los Angeles and I wanted to be in it. I knew that sending them my picture was a good idea, but I still didn’t have any eight-by-ten glossies, and the only publicity photos I had were either with my hair in pigtails or a cornette on my head. Instead I mailed them a family photo showing me looking worn and motherly, talking to Peter as I discreetly breast-fed his little brother… thinking maybe it made me look older. I had worked on three scenes, knew them, owned them, and was being given the rare opportunity to audition—albeit not with Mr. Voight or Ms. Dunaway. Arriving a half hour early, I walked around the courtyard of the Ahmanson Theatre trying to calm myself, and when that didn’t work, I stretched out on a stone bench directly across from the artists’ entrance. The day was hot and the stone felt cool as I looked up at the sky, breathing in deeply and out very slowly, like I was in the first stages of labor. “You have a right to be here, you’re good at what you do, you have a right to be here,” I chanted over and over, while flapping my trembling hands in the air to release any visible tension. But I couldn’t quiet my heart, which pounded with such force that it made my thin cotton dress bounce around rhythmically.
I could say the reason I didn’t get this part was because of my size, that I’m too small, that I didn’t fit with the rest of the cast, or that though I was twenty-six years old at the time—the right age for Stella—I’ve always had a childlike, girly quality, and I didn’t know how to leave it behind. All of that is true. But the real reason I was crossed off the list was because I didn’t know how to audition. By the time I walked onto the stage, a huge magical dark theater—empty except for the producers and the director who would judge me—I was overwhelmed by it all, overwhelmed with longing, disconnected from myself and the work and from any chance of finding my version of Stanley Kowalski’s pregnant wife. I don’t remember hearing my voice reverberate through the lofty space, don’t remember playing any of the scenes I’d worked on. Maybe I never made it that far.
What I do remember is the bumper-to-bumper traffic, and the afternoon sun smacking me in the face as I drove away from downtown Los Angeles, feeling powerless to move my life or even my car forward. Finally, I walked into a house turned upside down, as usual, while Steve lounged on the deck smoking a joint, strumming his guitar, and watching the sun go down. From Peter’s room, I could hear the dreaded “walky, walky, walky,” and as I tried to sit down on the floor with them, Peter snapped, “No, Mom, no. We’re playing. Go away.” I then trudged to the kitchen, hoping to find something to scrub, which, of course, there was never a shortage of.
When I’
d cleared enough space to get dinner going, Baa wandered in saying she had to go, and without turning I tossed out a quick “Great, see ya,” not wanting to meet her eyes. She watched me from the door for a moment, then moved to put her hand on my back and her glass in the sink, asking, “Are you okay?” I could feel the dance between us—the one, two, cha-cha-cha as she stood there waiting for my lead. Part of me wanted to cry, to tell her how desperately I wanted her to stay, to hear her talk to me from under the closet door. But instead, I denied her any glimpse of my longing, ignored her question, and punched at her with my irritated words. “Well, thanks. That’s one glass you brought to the sink.”
After dinner had been made and eaten, after the kids had splashed in the bath and crawled into jammies, bedtime thankfully arrived. All I wanted was to throw myself down the dark hole of sleep, to be unable to feel for a while, but ten-month-old Eli was not going to cooperate. He kept crying, screaming to be picked up, to be rescued from his crib, demanding that the day continue. And after the fifth or fiftieth trip into his room, after patting his back and tiptoeing out thinking I was free to drift away, after waiting for Steve to stop reading whatever volume of Sandburg’s Lincoln he was on, the banshee woman—who stood constantly in my shadow—marched into Eli’s room, grabbed my baby, thundered back, and threw him onto the bed next to his distracted father. It wasn’t a great distance, but it had been done recklessly, with the same fury-fueled impulse that had possessed Jocko when he flung me across the backyard into the swimming pool. And even though he was only ten months old, Eli felt as humiliated and outraged as I had when I was twelve. Steve picked up the wailing baby, carried him back to his room, shut the door, and rocked him to sleep. I sat outside on the wooden deck, watching the waves tumble to the sand, hitting myself in the face over and over. All in all, not my best day.
One night, maybe a week later, after putting Eli in his crib and patting his back until he seemed to settle, I slipped out and stood at the door listening while he started to cry, as he usually did. Knowing I’d probably have to go back in a few minutes, I was moving toward my bedroom when abruptly, the crying stopped. Could he have fallen asleep that quickly? I remember standing in the doorway thinking, Good, he’s learning. But within seconds, my instinct sent me back into the room. Eli seemed to be soundlessly locked in the midst of a deep wail, like he couldn’t catch his breath, like he couldn’t release the sob and breathe again. I immediately picked him up, hoping he would relax and exhale. But he didn’t. I screamed for Steve and started pounding on my little boy, saying, “Breathe… breathe.” His arms and legs began to vibrate while his body became rigid, then his back arched and his face turned from red to blue. And still he didn’t breathe. Slowly his body began to melt, until his head flopped onto my chest and he took a breath. Holding him tight against my heart, I sank to the floor, crying as I rocked back and forth. Minutes later, he opened his eyes with a look of vagueness, not really focusing on anything, and even without words, I could tell he was disoriented. I kept repeating to him that he was okay, that I knew what it was like when you couldn’t remember where you’d put your arms and legs, that I knew how frightening it was and that it was over.
But it wasn’t over; it was the beginning of what the doctors thought were petit mal seizures, although they were never witnessed by any medical personnel because I wouldn’t let Eli go through the tests. I knew that the procedure of being held down while various pieces of equipment were attached would frighten him, and being frightened made him angry. The seizures only occurred when Eli got angry. From then on, whenever anything happened, I knew I had to get to him fast. If he fell down when learning to walk, if his brother took something he wanted, if I heard him start to cry for any reason, I’d run to pick him up, to soothe him before his anger became bigger than he was. And if I missed that tiny window of opportunity, then his body would send him into a helpless fit, until eventually he’d pass out and I’d rock my little son, trying to soothe him back into consciousness. And it wasn’t just me; Baa and especially Steve were always on the alert. But the amazing thing is, at about two years of age, when Eli could say words like shit and fuck—words that Steve and I gleefully taught him—when he could use language to get angry and not his body, he stopped having seizures. Something that, in my heart, I had known would happen. But even now, I’m convinced that his episodes were my fault. Eli had to deal with a very angry mother any way he could, and if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
We’d been living in the Topanga house for about a year when one morning I found a bewildered messenger standing unannounced in the middle of my disheveled living room, having wandered in off the beach and through the sliding glass door that stood open. In his hand, he held a manila envelope addressed to me with the Screen Gems logo pasted on. It contained a thirty-five-page screenplay, the pilot for a new series written by Bernard Slade, the same man who had written the pilot for The Flying Nun—and years later, would write the play Same Time, Next Year. As soon as it arrived, the phone started ringing and a stiff, unfamiliar voice announced it was John Mitchell’s office calling for Sally Field. John H. Mitchell was the president of Screen Gems, a position he’d held for the entire time I’d been employed there, though I don’t remember ever meeting him. Nor can I remember what exactly he said that day, but I presume he told me that Screen Gems wanted me back. Then came a call from Bob Claver, who had produced the Gidget pilot, and who had been my reading partner and support system through that summer of auditions in 1964. He would be producing this pilot as well, and if the network picked it up, he’d be there for every episode of The Girl with Something Extra, which, like the Nun, had been written for me. Last, and totally least, came a call from my agent to let me know that I’d been offered another series.
I remember standing at the stove a day or so later, holding Eli on my hip and stirring a pan of Campbell’s tomato soup, while Peter sat on the floor dancing tiny plastic animals on the linoleum before him. It was just like the memory I had of my mother holding me perched to one side, my brother playing behind us, while she memorized Chekhov and cooked supper for her children. Now I stood, lost in thought, caught between what I wanted to do and what I felt I had to do to support my family. The script was funny—in a glib sitcom sort of way—and we needed money, plus I wanted to work. But I did not want to do another sitcom. I felt I’d be losing something, giving up, caving in. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t stand back and logically weigh all the pros and cons because every time I tried, fear would rise up and block any other points of view I might have.
Steve appeared in the doorway wearing shorts and a tattered T-shirt, wet from the ocean as if he’d jumped in on an impulse. I wanted him to say that I was worth more, to say, We’ll be okay, hold out awhile longer. But he didn’t. He watched for a moment, then, with a matter-of-fact “happens all the time” attitude, said that Bob Claver had offered him an associate producer position if I agreed to do the show. I felt immediately betrayed and angry and began to pound the wooden spoon into the hot soup.
“I don’t want to do it,” I flared back.
“But we could work together,” he said, trying to convince me, and after a moment of silence he added, “You have to earn some money, Sal. I really think you should do it. And I’d get to work too.”
When he left to take a shower, I watched the tomato soup boil up and over the edges of the pan, looking exactly like I felt. Was I being asked to walk away from what I’d been working toward, so that Steve could find a career for himself? Was I to give up on myself, swallow my longing, so that he could dabble in this new arena? Is that how I saw this moment, why I felt so angry? Or did I see Steve as Jocko, like a mole in my organization, appearing to be on my side but actually in cahoots with the enemy? Sometimes when I was caught in an argument with Steve, I’d be so overwhelmed with rage I couldn’t find any other parts of myself. I’d lose sight of love and trust, then literally have to start packing my suitcase, blind to anything other than my need to run. Usually
the fury dissipated before I had emptied the closet.
I think there was always a part of me waiting for a reason to walk out the door, to be safely alone and hear nothing but my own heartbeat… to put myself back into that little pine house next to the big sycamore on Libbit Avenue.
When the pilot was shot in February of ’73, Steve worked in the production office, but by the time the series sold, with a schedule to go into production in July, he was no longer an associate producer—whether he quit or I was callous enough to tell the studio I didn’t want him there, I don’t remember. He decided to focus on the completion of the house. We gave up the place on Topanga Beach to rent a house in Toluca Lake, only blocks from Columbia Ranch, where I’d be filming, allowing me to be closer to the kids. Steve didn’t live there with us.
Cecil Smith’s column in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, April 4, 1973, displayed the headline NBC DISCLOSES NEW FALL LINEUP. It goes on to say,
Most drastic shake-up of the prime-time schedule NBC has had in several years. Nine new shows, four new half-hour comedies, two dramatic series and two anthologies. The Girl with Something Extra with Sally Field as a young housewife with such highly developed ESP powers that she can read the mind of her husband John Davidson (well at least she doesn’t fly).
The Girl with Something Extra, which proved to have nothing extra, ran for only twenty-two episodes. Thank you, God.
15
Hungry
I READ THE script while sitting on the bed in the unfinished Chantilly house, propped up against a pile of pillows. It was late afternoon, and Peter sat on the floor near me, using the newly completed fireplace hearth—a two-foot-high, lumpy surface made from Steve’s collected boulders—as his artist’s desk. With paper and colored pencils scattered around, my five-year-old son quietly concentrated on the colorful creatures he called “weirdies,” drawing them, then giving each an original “weirdie” name. From somewhere downstairs I could hear work going on—hammers and saws, lumber slamming onto an unfinished floor—and above it all rang out Eli’s persistent not-quite-three-year-old voice: “Dad… Dad… Dad… Dad… look… look… Dad. DAD!” Every now and then I’d hear Steve’s distracted reply.