by Sally Field
Feeling as though I needed to gather all the necessary equipment, I closed my eyes and visualized that rock-solid piece of me, then picked up the phone and called Steven’s office. After waiting a moment, I heard a click and then his friendly “Hey, Sal, I’ve really owed you a call.” And like the first shots at Fort Sumter, I knew the war had begun. He went on to tell me how thrilled he was that D.D.L. had agreed to play Lincoln but—and here it was—unfortunately he no longer saw me as Mary, saying that he’d always imagined me playing opposite Liam and just couldn’t see me with Daniel. With certainty I said, “I’m ten years older than Daniel and Mary was ten years younger than Lincoln. I know all of that. I’m older than Mary was at that time, but she was worn. They were both worn.”
“But we’re not going to be using prosthetics,” he said. “And the lighting will be harsh.”
“Daniel will be brilliant, with or without prosthetics, I have no doubt. And my Mary will not look older than his Mr. Lincoln, I guarantee you. Not in any kind of lighting.”
But I also felt that some of Steven’s reluctance had little to do with my chronological years and a lot to do with my many years in the public eye, whether in television or film, whether in worthwhile projects or not. That it was my accumulated persona he would rather not lug into his film, that he’d rather find a Mary who could meet the audience as a fresh, blank slate.
“Steven, I know who I am, know the baggage I come with, and if I thought there was another actor to bring Mary to you—her age, her physicality, her emotionality and volatility—then I’d throw up my hands and walk away. But I’m telling you right now, this is mine and if you disagree, then, with all due respect, you’re wrong.” And before he could fire another shot, I tossed out, “Test me, Steven. How about that?”
“But Daniel’s not ready to do that. He’s in Ireland just beginning his transformation,” Steven explained.
“I’ll do it without him. Let me have wardrobe and hair, the whole nine yards, and test me.”
There was a moment of silence, then, “Okay, Sal. You got it.”
Saturday, about two weeks later, looking vaguely like Mary Todd Lincoln, I stood on the floor of Amblin’s screening room at Universal Studios, where Steven’s offices are located. With Academy Award–winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski operating a small video camera and Mr. Spielberg standing at his side, I delivered a two-page monologue from Tony Kushner’s screenplay.
Maybe I couldn’t wrap my mouth around the brilliant but difficult and newly learned dialogue, or maybe my concentration was strained because the actor I was working with was in reality a piece of tape stuck on the wall. Or perhaps I couldn’t quiet my heart and get out of my own way. Maybe all of the above, but ultimately there’s no excuse. As hard as I tried, I never lifted off the ground, only ran along the edges of the scene. You either take flight or you don’t. And that day, I didn’t. I knew it and Steven knew it.
When he called me at work a few days later, struggling to tell me how sorry he was, how he just didn’t see it, how he had put it against old footage of Daniel and how it just wasn’t going to work, I begged him not to feel bad, thanking him for his generosity and for giving me the chance. Turning off my phone, I sat down on my dressing room sofa, feeling as old and worn as it appeared to be. At least it was over, at least I didn’t have to feel anything for a while, until the day the film was finally cast, until the day someone else would be playing Mary and it would not be me. Dragging through the rest of the day, I kept telling myself to be grateful for what I already had, to focus on the work right in front of me. No matter that it was the same dialogue I’d been saying for the last five years, it was work. Brothers and Sisters was good enough. I was earning a living. I was lucky.
The next morning, as I was about to step into the first shot of the day, my phone rang. It was Steven again. Eagerly, he said that he couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation, couldn’t get it out of his mind, that he’d spent the day walking around the studio lot and finally… that he’d talked to Daniel, who thought that the tape was quite moving. At that point, I actually squealed, then stuffed my fist in my mouth. I didn’t know whether to be thrilled that Daniel had responded to the test or appalled that he’d seen it. “He wants to meet you,” Steven said, and before I had time to figure out what to say, he suggested that since Daniel was in Ireland, we should meet in the middle, fly to New York for a drink or a cup of tea.
By then, if there was air in the room, I no longer needed it. I had quit breathing altogether. “Okay” was all I could say.
“Great, let’s do it next week,” he said, and hung up. I stood, with both arms out straight, leaning against the big dirty window that looked down at Disney Studios below, until the second AD banged on my door, calling me to the set.
The following week I waited to hear about the Big Apple meeting and when it was to take place, hoping I could be released from filming. It wasn’t until ten days later, as I was dashing up the stairs from my dressing room to the production office, that I received a call from Spielberg’s assistant asking if I wanted to use the same hair and makeup people.
“For what?” I said. “A cup of tea?”
“Oh, no,” Christy said. “I thought someone had told you. Daniel felt Steven really needed to see the two of you on film together, so he’s agreed to come here. Hope that’s okay.”
Two weeks later, in the same rigged-up makeup room, I slowly became the vague version of Mary I’d been a short time before. I hadn’t met Mr. Lewis, didn’t even know where he was presumably going through the same readying routine as I was. The whole thing felt like a bride and groom sequestered out of each other’s sight until the big moment. With my dress overflowing the golf cart, almost blocking the driver’s view, I was once again taken across the Universal lot to Amblin, then guided to an office adjacent to the screening room’s lobby, and in a regal-looking high-backed chair, I waited—the corset as well as my instincts dictating my posture.
A sliver of sunlight broke through the blinds, beaming itself onto my throne just as I heard a shuffle of movement coming from across the lobby. Motionless in the Vermeer-like shaft of light, I kept my eyes on my hands until I felt the energy approach, and when I could wait no longer, I turned to face the figure loping toward me. Wearing his black top hat, a coat with sleeves that were slightly too short, and a wry smirk on his face—which I returned, smirk for smirk—he positioned himself at my side. Only then did I stand, give him my hand, and say, “Mr. Lincoln.” His face curled into a smile as he placed his lips on my hand, and just as Lincoln would have responded to his wife, he said, “Mother.” Did I hear a barely audible gasp from the many people who had faded into the shadows? I don’t know. But when I buried my face in his chest, whispering, “Thank you,” and he put his face in my hair, replying, “My honor,” I felt radioactive.
What followed was an hour-long improvisation of sorts, a blur in actuality. I’d done enough research to have a decent idea about the Lincoln-Todd relationship—as had D.D.L.—so we instantly became something. If not precisely the Lincolns themselves, then at least we were two actors unafraid to poke around in the right direction. When the filming was stopped and things were winding down, I thanked Steven and Daniel, and with Mary still clinging to me, I nodded to all the others, saying it was time for me to leave so they could talk amongst themselves. I then bundled my dress and my heart out of the room and back to the Malibu mountains.
Mary Todd and her Mr. Lincoln.
No matter the outcome, I walked away from it all feeling awake and alive. An hour later, as I stepped through the door of my home, the phone began to ring. “We’re both on the line, Sal,” Steven said. “We want to ask you together. Will you be our Mary?” Then Daniel: “Yes, will you please?”
Sharing any of this unfolding adventure with my mother had seemed out of the question. I don’t remember even mentioning the film to her until that Saturday after the two men had called, and then only because she had rushed out of her
room, worried that a rattler had gotten me, since I was jumping around the kitchen, screeching like a stuck pig. Yet when I relayed the events to her it was with unemotional brevity, containing all my excitement, never inviting her to relive it with me. And in that way: cutting off my nose to spite my face.
But at the same time, a force was building inside me, an urgency to face her, to finally jump off the platform, over the pool pole, and into the icy water. Baa had been determined to try every different treatment that the doctor suggested, some making her sicker than others, until now she looked like a baby bird, big-eyed and featherless. Seeing her made me want to find something she would eat, so I was constantly making things like tapioca pudding or peach cobbler or rice and beans, foods that might seem appealing.
One evening, not long after Mary had become mine—a Friday, I think—I’d been released from work early and decided to make Baa’s favorite dinner: pot roast with egg noodles. I hadn’t planned to talk about anything, didn’t pick the time or gear myself up. It was just an ordinary night. And as she sat at her usual counter spot, I leaned against the sink a short distance away, watching her cut up the food on her plate into tiny pieces like she was about to feed it to a two-year-old. When I’d felt trapped as a child, caught in the heat of my stepfather’s scorn, I would look for my mother’s eyes, hoping to be saved. And now, so many years later, I looked for those eyes again, half-hidden in the loose folds of her shrunken face, and started to talk.
I began with Joy, asking her questions about my grandmother, the woman whom I had loved but who had always seemed rigidly straightlaced. “Joy could be funny, and even playful when she was young,” Baa told me. I shook my head, sympathizing with how difficult it must have been for my mother to be raised by someone who herself had received so little parenting, who had spent her childhood in a loveless world of fear. We both smiled, recalling little things about my grandmother, then laughed when we remembered how she would grit her teeth at the hint of anything sexual, even a word. Aware of my own jabbing discomfort, I asked Baa about her sexuality, if she’d ever found it difficult—then watched her flinch, just as Joy would have, just as I was. She turned her head, looking out the window for a moment, then reluctantly told me that there had been a time, once in her life, when she had seen a psychiatrist to “work some things out.” And oh, how I wish I had that moment back again or had more time, or could have been the me I am now. I never asked her about that. Never asked her how old she was when she’d seen that psychiatrist or what it was she had hoped to “work out.” I wish I had.
But on that night, I was focused on where I needed to go and couldn’t get sidetracked. “You told me once that Jocko had confessed to you, told you that something had happened with me, that he was seeking your forgiveness.” (Her forgiveness, mind you, not mine.)
With a quick nod she said, “Yes.”
“What did he tell you had happened?” Without taking her eyes off me, she took a deep breath, and with a slight stutter she recounted how he’d explained that it had been one terrible incident, that he’d been drunk, that he’d always felt awful and had suffered because of it. And when I calmly asked her again what exactly he’d told her, she braced herself, took a beat, then continued.
“He said he’d put his thing between your legs and…” She took another breath and gave me a gift, which cost her a lot. “And… and came.”
I was slapped in the face with the truth. What he had done was real and it was unforgivable. And for years and years and years my mother had known, talking to my sister about it but never me. Only then did my heart begin to race, my insides vibrating as they always did whenever the memories came near.
Without looking away or hesitating I flatly told her what needed to be said. “It was not one moment of drunken indiscretion, Mother. It was my childhood. My whole childhood.”
She sat back in her chair, horrified into silence for a long moment before defiantly crying out, “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you!!!”
I waited, not angry or frightened, feeling only clarity. “Mom, why would I lie? Why would I do that right now, knowing what’s happening in both our lives? Why would I do that?”
With her face trembling, her meal cut up before her, she searched my eyes until all the tension drained from her body and she knew it was true. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me? Why, why?” she kept repeating, over and over.
Very quietly I replied, “I was a child, Mother. I was a child and didn’t know that it was any different than any other child’s life. I was afraid. I don’t know, Mother. I was a child.”
I could see her wander around in her head, not knowing whether to eat or to remain as stunned and overwhelmed as she truly was. “Then he was a monster. You never told me what a monster he was. You should have told me.”
“I don’t know if he was a monster or just a wounded, flawed human like the rest of us. Well, yeah. Okay. Maybe a little worse than the rest of us.” She silently nodded, hardly moving, her frail, defeated body sagging with shame and regret, and I felt engulfed by her pain, instantly wanting to take it away, to beg for her forgiveness. “I’m sorry to tell you about this right now when you’re struggling. I’m so sorry. I’ve been alone in it and needed you to know.”
My job had always been to protect her from everything—most especially from me—and my need to do that begged me to forget myself and to keep her unimpaired. When in reality it had been her job to protect me, not the other way around.
But that was then and this was now. “Mom, it’s fine, really. Look at me. I thrived,” I said, doing a clownish jig around the kitchen. “Come on, let it go for now. Don’t let me ruin your night.”
And after that understatement of all time, she agreed with a meek “Okay.”
I put her dinner on a tray, then carried it to her room, demanding she let it go, telling her she needed to eat and then to sleep. “That’s enough, Mom, let it go.”
“Okay,” she said with her eyes down. After closing the door slowly, I climbed the stairs to my room, feeling just as stunned and shamed as she did.
I don’t know that I slept that night. I’m certain that she didn’t. The next morning when the house stayed quiet, absent of its usual door slamming, I went to her room praying she was still alive. Gently knocking, I called to her, heard nothing, then tried again. Suddenly she threw the door open with a strength I didn’t know she still possessed, then grabbed my arms as though she were about to scold me. In a strong, clear voice she said, “You are not alone in this anymore. It’s mine too and I want to hear it all, every bit of it. You will never be alone in this again. I let you down and I’m so very sorry, Sally. This belongs to me too. I own it with you.”
I couldn’t move for a moment. Then awkwardly, I wrapped my arms around her emaciated body, clinging to this person who was now even smaller than me. The once-beautiful woman who had held me, soothed me, had encouraged and enabled me. The mother I’d spent my whole life looking for and who had ultimately given me everything she knew how to give. There we stood, not a mother and a daughter, but one whole person.
Feeling as drained as she must have, I said, “Later, Mom. We’ll talk later. We’ll sit outside under the oak tree and talk. But not now, okay?”
“Okay, Sal, my baby girl. We’ll talk, for as long as it takes.” We stood in the doorway of her room, looking into each other’s eyes until slowly we started to laugh, wiping the tears from our faces in exactly the same way.
I promised her I would tell her everything. But I never did. I never brought it up again. I didn’t need to.
Epilogue
THE SMALL TIN dressing room was the lower half of a two-banger—a long cargo-size container separated into two units, then placed on wheels to be trucked from location to location. And on Friday, November 4, 2011, while wearing Mary Todd’s underwear—or at least a close facsimile—I stood in the middle of this overly heated little room trying not to move, knowing from experience that I could get three bars
on my cell phone if I stayed in that one spot. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, the company had just broken for lunch, and even though it was three hours earlier in California, I hadn’t waited till the end of my day to call, aware that by then, she’d be too tired to talk. I wasn’t looking for a long conversation, only had a half-hour break, and wanted to hear my mother’s voice and for her to hear mine. Baa always laughingly said she felt like the photo of the little kitten clinging to a bare branch: just hanging in there. But she’d promised she would continue to cling to that branch for the three months that I was to be in Richmond, Virginia, filming Lincoln. And every day, I called.
After Brothers and Sisters had wrapped, and during the months that I was preparing for Lincoln, Baa’s health had been declining. Then, just as summer was beginning she made a final request—make that a demand. She wanted to live near the ocean again, and to have a place of her own. Princess and I both felt that our mother living alone at this point was a frightening notion, but Baa was determined. So with my sister’s help she found a tiny apartment located directly on Carbon Beach, walking distance from the famous Malibu waves. One last time, we packed all her things, or at least I did, with Sam and Eli helping. When the tide was high enough to roll under the building, Peter and his two daughters, Isabel and Sophie, appeared, just in time to help us carry everything inside.
By late September, when I was departing for the Virginia location, Baa was in a serious uphill battle for tomorrow. Luckily, Princess had taken a leave of absence from Shameless, the television show where she’d been working as the production manager/producer, so she’d be able to visit daily—though my mother preferred to be left alone a good chunk of the time. Even the lovely hospice helpers had restricted hours and needed to keep their distance.