In Pieces

by Sally Field

  Even then, at the very beginning, a sliver of me jabbed, urging me to back out of the room with his guys. I can see it written in my journal, a line here or there, questioning why I was doing this. Why didn’t I run? But those words are disregarded when I write a rebuttal, caught in an argument between me and myself. I’d emphatically state that I had feelings for him, that he had no one but me, that I was concerned about his illness, focusing on my need to heal something unknown—nursing a wound that clearly was not located in him, but in me.

  Burt’s condition was nothing new. It had been going on for a while, and though everyone in his inner circle believed—with a shrug—that the episodes were related to stress or anxiety (serious conditions in themselves), I resisted accepting that as an answer because how could you know for sure? Whatever it was, the pain was real to him. As a result, during the day, when we were riding in that car—whether he was in the driver’s seat or I was—part of my attention was on his health, or his heart. Oh, let’s face it, on him. It was my job to dispense the only method he had of dealing with the agony, and whenever he’d signal with a nod of his head or a raise of his eyebrow, I’d hand him a Valium, then another and another, offset by an occasional Percodan or two. Good Christ almighty, he was zooming the car down narrow roads, barely able to see around the forest of equipment, and spouting reams of dialogue while I fed him barbiturates hand over fist. Clearly, I didn’t have my wits about me.

  Burt and Hal deciding what to shoot.

  Halfway through the shoot I turned into Crusader Rabbit, emphatically insisting that Burt’s health be taken seriously. He needed to know what was causing the pain, whether it was his heart or stress or some unknown condition, because only then could he accurately deal with it. Mind you, I was the girl who could barely call the operator for information—back when there was such a thing. Now I took charge, researching where to go for an examination and when in the schedule the other racing vehicles—either the one containing Jackie Gleason and Mike Henry, or the truck driven by Jerry Reed and the drooling dog—were to be photographed. During that tiny window of time, the occupants of the Trans Am, Burt and I, flew to the Miami Heart Institute with Pete the bodyguard in tow. All very hush-hush—we were to stay the night, then in the morning, under a general anesthetic, a thin tube would be inserted into Burt’s heart to check the coronary arteries and overall functioning of the vital organ. Not a risk-free procedure, but barring any complications, and if no immediate problems were discovered, then he’d be released that day. I was part guardian, part mother, and part spouse, spending the night in his room, sleeping on a chair-like futon in the corner. Early the next day, he bravely kissed me goodbye, saying with a twinkle, “Well, we’ve made it this far.” (Meaning the relationship, not the procedure.) And as they wheeled him away, I stood in the door to his room, tears actually “welling” in my eyes as though I were in a scene from Dark Victory.

  I’m not sure if Burt was relieved to hear that he had a strong, healthy heart or if he would rather have heard something dire. Certainly, he wanted to feel that he had the right to be in pain, whether from blockage in a major organ or from signals sent from his brain. It’s still pain. I tried to reassure him that he didn’t need to have heart disease to die, that stress could kill him just as dead as any ol’ thrombosis—which he found oddly soothing. But when I told him that the doctor recommended he get into therapy of some kind, that he needed to learn methods to deal with his stress and anxiety, Burt balked, saying that talking to a shrink was self-delusional poppycock. After that I dropped the subject. We went back to work, back to camera mounts, to dusty roads, to driving with the pedal to the metal, and to pharmaceuticals. Did my children ever visit? No. Did I break Coulter’s heart by telling him I’d met someone else? Yes. Did it make any sense at all—then or now? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

  After the film wrapped, my life bounced back into the familiar routines: being with my kids, my mother, my sister, and finding somewhere else to live. But no matter what I was doing, no matter how important or pressing things in my own life were, I’d instantly drop everything whenever Burt called from his home in Florida—as regularly irregular as those calls might have been.

  Burt always told me that he’d been born in Waycross, Georgia, and whether that’s true or not, I do know that he grew up in the Sunshine State and over the years, he had accumulated enough land to build an unpretentious, no-frills ranch for his family. The house he’d made for his parents was a simple one-story home, with an easy arrangement of well-worn furniture scattered atop the indoor/outdoor carpeting, which ran throughout, including the kitchen. To the side of this concrete block house was an awning-covered path connected to a smaller but identical version of the main structure, the only difference being that the smaller one had red-flocked wallpaper and black shag carpeting. And it was here that he had gone to recuperate after we parted in Georgia.

  I think Burt always considered this rudimentary compound in West Palm Beach his real home, though he’d also owned a place in the Hollywood Hills—a kind of bachelor’s pad with a backyard guesthouse where Hal Needham had been living. Right before filming had begun on Smokey, Burt had sold that Hollywood home and purchased a hacienda-style gated estate in exclusive Holmby Hills—a beautiful, perfect place with high-vaulted ceilings, polished dark wood, and terra-cotta tile floors, a house that stayed cool in the blazing summer and was almost unheatable during the mild winters (something I loved about the house and he didn’t). When Burt finally returned to L.A. that fall, his new piece of real estate was undergoing the massive renovation he’d requested, so he decided to live in the guesthouse located behind his new four-car garage. This one-bedroom cabana had already been completely redone and decorated up the wazoo with a lavish Moroccan theme—no flocked wallpaper but lots of shag, this time off-white, not black.

  In that late October of ’76, just as I was packing up to move into a rather decrepit though charming house I’d purchased in Studio City, just as my whole life was about to vanish into Burt’s needs again, I was asked to go on a publicity tour for Sybil. I hadn’t seen the miniseries, other than the few grainy clips I’d watched projected on a screen while looping (rerecording pieces of dialogue to fix sound problems). And because I’d felt popped on the nose whenever I’d talked about Sybil with Burt, I had tucked the whole experience out of sight, hidden it in the back of my mind, until eventually I quit thinking about it altogether. But then I got to San Francisco and Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, and Dallas, and I remembered that part of me, that vital part that I had worked so hard to own. I remembered my work.

  Five days later, when I returned home, it was not only my thirtieth birthday but also the night of the four-hour industry screening. I’d been planning to go with Princess and Baa, but much to my surprise, Burt insisted on escorting me. By the time we arrived at the screening, it was already full and I couldn’t find my family, didn’t know where their seats were located. Scanning the packed theater for their faces, I held Burt’s hand as we were guided to our reserved seats in the back row. It was then that I realized I was to sit on the slightly worn velvet chair situated between Mr. Reynolds and Joanne Woodward’s husband, Paul Newman… whom I had never met. The second I laid eyes on Paul, I blurted out, “Where’s Joanne?” hardly acknowledging his existence and barely listening while he explained that his wife would not be joining us, due to the fact that she couldn’t stand looking at herself on-screen. Sitting between two matinee idols in a crowded, airless theater, feeling that my head or my heart would explode, I realized that Joanne had the right idea.

  By the time the screening was over, my face was on fire and my teeth were chattering, as though a case of malaria had set in. If there was a reaction from the audience, I was too overwhelmed to hear it, and the only thing I wanted was to know where my family was sitting. I longed to see Baa’s face, to meet her eyes, to feel proud of myself because she was proud of me. Only then would I know if I had accomplished anything. I wanted t
o talk to her in the car all the way home, to have a bowl of soup in bed and watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving with Peter and Eli. But I disregarded that voice, simply shut it out. Where was the part of me that could look at the situation and realize that I felt more alone with Burt than with my children? That I felt trapped not because of him but because I couldn’t hear myself? I had found someone to love, to pour my heart into, someone I felt frightened of, and I was seeking to be loved the only way I knew how: by disappearing.

  I went to Burt’s place and without discussing what we’d just seen on the screen for three and a half hours, he gave me two Percodan for my throbbing head. It wasn’t that he was mean. In a way, I felt he was trying to take care of me for the first time. But when I said that I’d rather have an aspirin, I recognized the sound of his irritated impatience, the “how dare you doubt my know-how” tone, recognized it without registering the recognition. It was a “do it now, go!” command, so I took the pills and immediately felt sick. All night my heart raced, either from the drugs or from the day or both. I lay next to Burt, perfectly still, staring at the ceiling.

  18

  Treading Water

  EXCEPT FOR THE tasty little bits that Jackie Babbin shoved under my nose, I didn’t read the reviews when Sybil aired at the end of November. But true to form, I’ve kept many of them.

  Variety: “Sybil” boasts an extraordinary performance by title character Sally Field that is as moving as anything ever seen on TV… It is further evidence, following her ‘Stay Hungry’ film performance, that she is now one of the finest young actresses in the U.S.… The impact is devastating.

  Cecil Smith, Los Angeles Times: The bravura role here is Sally Field’s—and wonderfully does she play it… Sally’s ability to shift from one of these [personalities] to another in an instant, sometimes to find them tumbling over each other, is little short of astonishing.

  The Hollywood Reporter: But it’s Field who dominates the screen, switching from personality to personality like a sparrow hopping from branch to branch in a maple. And it is this tour-de-force performance which allows the viewer to see how nearly normal Sybil really is. After all, we all have our own multiple personalities that we fling up at a moment’s notice. The only difference being that we are in control: Sybil is not.

  The response in the country was enormous and impossible for me to wrap my brain around. The reaction wasn’t simply because of the quality of the work—which I still can’t properly evaluate—but because it was the first time that child abuse had been tastefully, but graphically, explored in any film, much less on television, where millions and millions of viewers were watching. Some of those viewers—to one degree or another—saw their own lives. It opened a national dialogue. People stopped me in the market, or on the streets. Once, a man jumped out of his car after braking at a red light, then ran to me as I stood slack-jawed on the sidewalk, just to shake my hand. They didn’t want an autograph or a photo or to take anything from me. They wanted to give me something: their appreciation. I got letters, not only from fans but from doctors, psychiatrists, and social workers and from the people who were struggling to pull their fragmented selves together, to heal.

  I felt that reaction and was undeniably strengthened by it. But I didn’t talk about it at all when I was with Burt, and I was always with him or preparing to be. What would have happened if I’d allowed all of me to enter the relationship? Perhaps Burt would have been different as well. I don’t know. But as I got quieter, he got louder, becoming short-tempered and impatient, constantly snapping at me as if I’d piddled on the floor. I didn’t live with him in his Holmby Hills backyard cottage, but long before he hired his wonderful British “manservant” Harry, I took care of him, doing all the cooking and cleaning, guarding his health as he began Semi-Tough, his next film. Every day was spent trying to make his temporary spot comfortable, buying things for him, fulfilling his every wish before he could even wish it, prepared to give him everything I had. Need some oxygen? Here, take mine.

  But I wasn’t a child playing in my little pinewood house, and at some point I had to speak up, I had to tell him that everything I was feeding him, every comfort I was providing, was coming out of my own empty wallet. Why couldn’t I just tell him that I was flat broke and that if he wanted those towels or vitamins or toothpaste, for God’s sake, then I needed the cash to go get them? I hemmed and hawed, rehearsed the words in my head over and over, delayed saying anything whenever he was feeling an attack coming on. One day I finally blurted it out. For a moment, I thought he hadn’t heard, then he matter-of-factly replied, “My business manager gives me only a thousand dollars a week. If I give you two hundred, that’ll leave me with almost nothing.” I took it once and felt ashamed.

  Still, woven through everything were so many good moments, real and lasting things. When that revolutionary device, the VHS player, first came on the market in the late seventies, the big black box immediately appeared in the Holmby Hills house. Long before there was a channel called Turner Classic Movies, or a Blockbuster—which didn’t open until 1985—Burt gave me the movies. Movies I’d never seen, no matter how often I’d stayed home from school to watch Ben Hunter’s Movie Matinee on TV. He gave me Red River and The Searchers. Sat with me as I watched Now, Voyager and Kings Row and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, all the time chattering with excitement about a moment coming up, or explaining the backstory on an actor, details that added to the impact of what I was watching. Together we’d watch grainy bootlegged copies of Mr. Skeffington and Rear Window and The Letter. We loved something together, which made us love each other.

  There were also times when he’d shove the big clunky cassette into the machine, then leave me sitting there while he went off to do God knows what, wandering in to check on me periodically, as though I were a child being distracted in an effort to keep me from the grown-up conversations. And perhaps those mostly black-and-white stories did distract me, allowing me to forget for a moment the painful fact that Peter and Eli weren’t there, and they were rarely there. I kept thinking if I brought them into the relationship slowly, we might transition into becoming a family. But Burt was uncomfortable having them around and they were uncomfortable being around. They’d lean on me, pulling my shirt with a flat “when are we going home?” look on their faces. Burt’s few attempts to charm or seduce them always flopped like a juicy fart at a family reunion. Bless their little hearts, they were not impressed with anything he did, not even the go-karts he gave them for Christmas. Peter at seven and Eli, just four, would have nothing to do with him, and couldn’t be bought or bribed out of it. They were the guards at their mother’s gate, and to have me he’d have to go over them—not easily done. Torn in two, I’d fix dinner for my boys, put them to bed, give them a quick back rub, then pack up the dinner I had prepared for Burt. Making sure my mother had his phone number, I’d then drive to Holmby Hills and serve dinner to the man in my life. The next morning, I’d get up in the wee hours, drive home, fix breakfast for the kids, and take them to school.

  I can still see my mother standing at the kitchen sink holding a cup of hot coffee in one hand and her robe closed with the other. She’d watch me, saying nothing as I slammed through the back door in a race to beat the morning. She’d say nothing in the evening as she watched me pack up the car, not hindering but not helping while I covered the flank steak with tinfoil to keep the marinade from spilling on the drive back to Burt’s. And when I was overwhelmed with guilt, with an anxiety I couldn’t identify, when I would turn to her and bow my head, muttering the only thing I could say, “Thank you, thank you,” she said nothing. But as I see myself now, leaning toward her, was there a part of me that wanted something other than her wordless support? Did I want something from her she could not give because she was as blinded as I was?

  Me and my boys. Can’t believe we had a cat. Peter was allergic.

  She had never warmed to any of the few friends I’d had in my life, never responded with anything other than q
uiet scrutiny or out-and-out disapproval, saying, “I have to tell you this for your own good.” She had loved Steve the child, but she had felt certain that I shouldn’t marry him when he became a man, and though always pleasant to him, she had barely tolerated Coulter. But when I introduced her to Burt, I watched my mother turn into the young woman she once was, her eyes sparkling with a look that I remembered. And my grandmother put her rumpled hankie over her mouth, just as she’d done when she first met Jocko.

  Perhaps Joy was automatically charmed by this kind of man, but when the press started reporting about Burt’s adventures with other women, it was my grandmother who made sure I knew about it, sometimes calling early in the morning to report what the National Enquirer had printed, describing the included photos. If I avoided talking to her on the phone, then she’d mail them to me, thick envelopes filled with carefully underlined articles, stories that always included my name. Not one missed her attention or, ultimately, mine. At first I was annoyed and aggravated, then I just tried to ignore her. With Burt, I held my head up, too proud to say anything. I’d think, What the hell, I’ve been on countless fan magazine covers with stories linking me to people I’ve never met. I didn’t just fall off that godforsaken turnip truck. But part of me knew it was all true. I felt duped and a fool.