Being a part of the New York City Marathon was one of the most exciting things I've ever done. I'd worked so hard to be there that not even David's presence could dampen my excitement. On October 24, I joined more than 16,000 other entrants at the starting point on the Staten Island end of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, and when we heard the sound of the starting gun we all took off.
David, being a faster runner, took off ahead of me and I never saw him again until after the finish. Val and I started out together but she got a sharp persistent side cramp and dropped back in the first five miles. I loved running in the sea of people. At the start, it was about 41 degrees and there was a light drizzle; many of us came prepared, wearing big green Hefty bags with arm and head holes cut out. One of the great things about this race in New York was that the citizens really come out in support of the runners. They hold their children up to see you and their babies' hands out to touch you as you run by; they offer drinks, orange wedges; they play music, they cheer and applaud and yell encouragement. They seem to really know and appreciate how big a commitment it is.
I was hitting the halfway point right at the punishing incline of the Queensboro Bridge, when I heard one of the race officials announce, "We have a winner! Alberto Salazar in 2:08:13!" And all I could think is, "Anybody can run for two hours. It's those of us out there for four and five hours who should get the kudos."
At around the nineteen-mile point, I really started to fade. I was overheating somewhat although the temperature never got much over about 46, which is perfect for me. I wasn't drinking enough water and my lower back was killing me. I'd slowed to a foot-dragging shuffle as the throng pushed through Harlem. I stopped to stretch out my lower back and calves, wondering how I was going to continue, when a very large African American woman stepped off the sidewalk, came up to me, and briskly slapped me on the shoulder. "Honey," she said. "Don't you know no one walks in Harlem? Now you get movin'!" She meant business! Her slap was just what I needed. I slowly started up again, merging back into the runners.
The last three miles of the New York marathon takes you through Central Park. I wound up next to a guy wearing a green and white singlet and we just fell into synch together. We ran closely, picking up the pace, locked into each other's tempo; I felt the surge of his energy. My exhaustion lifted and I felt incredibly strong. As soon as we got within visual sight of the end near Tavern on the Green, my silent running partner leaned over, gave me a fast kiss, and just took off. I'd been carried but we'd not spoken at all. When I crossed the finish line, I couldn't believe it. I'd just run 26.2 miles in 4:08:30. As all the runners finished, officials wrapped us in shiny Mylar blankets to help maintain our body heat in the cold morning air. We looked like a bunch of baked potatoes milling around, searching for familiar faces. I was tired and I ached, to be sure, grateful not to be running anymore, but I didn't feel wiped out. I felt great! After having trained so hard, completing this race was a personal triumph for me. I was jubilant!
One Saturday in early December of Family Ties' first season, I was at home when I got a call from the riding stables up at Will Rogers Park in Pacific Palisades where my fourteen-year-old daughter, Eva, was taking lessons. She'd been thrown from her horse and couldn't move. We got her to Santa Monica Hospital, where X-rays showed she had crushed her third and fourth lumbar vertebrae.
She stayed in the hospital almost a week while the doctors tried to determine the best way to proceed without compromising her spinal cord. That Monday I had to go back to Family Ties, so David handled interviewing the doctors and surgeons, long-distance conferences with medical friends on the East Coast, and determining which surgical option they would pursue. David can be good in an emergency and he was very helpful here. I split my time between rehearsing, checking on Kate and Ted at home, and trying to be with Eva in the hospital. Her surgery was on Friday night, the show's tape night, and I was in anguish that I couldn't be with her.
My memory of that evening's performance is so blurry. Tom Hanks was playing Elyse's brother for the second time, so it had been a lively week. But I don't recall even being present while we taped. My memory was of fear and anxiety about Eva, forgetting speeches, trying not to cry, and calling the hospital during scenes I wasn't in. However, just the other day, I found that episode online and watched it, looking to see if the distress and agitation showed, expecting to see it laced through my performance. But I didn't. It wasn't perceptible. Now, I guess this is a good thing, that maybe I'm so professional that the show just went on and I rose to the occasion. But I felt a shock of concern that I didn't look as troubled as I know I'd felt. It took a moment to realize this was one of the results of compartmentalization; those feelings were shut down and they did not exist for that suspended period. That's how I lived so much of my life during those years.
Eva's surgery was complicated and difficult. Donor bone was combined with her bone to rebuild her spine and she was in a body cast for five months. It was just before Christmas, and David followed through with our original holiday plans and took Kate and Ted skiing in Park City. I felt just a bit abandoned but I don't think it was the wrong choice. Eva's recovery was a very tough time for her but I experienced much of it as a sweet time for the two of us since we were on our own. I remember reading stories and laughing together; I acquired a new respect for her and how hard she worked through the pain to regain her strength.
She was out of school for several months and kept up her studies through in-home tutoring. We realized we really didn't like her current school and spent hours poring through catalogs of possible boarding schools for her to attend in the fall. In the spring Eva was still in a body cast but able to travel and she and I went to visit a few schools, eventually choosing Kimball Union Academy in rural New Hampshire.
When I went there to visit Eva in the fall of '83 during Parents' Week, I found out that she was competing on the cross-country team and I was there for their first three-mile race. She got out of her cast back in May, before school had started, and she was much stronger, but cross-country was a surprising choice. Running had never been Eva's thing and I wasn't sure her back had healed sufficiently. It was a really hot morning and the girls took off down a path, running through the woods; I was worried that she wouldn't do well. My heart went out to her. I thought I had a part to play; I thought she could use some encouragement so I took off after her. I don't know what possessed me--I was wearing shorts, a silk blouse, and sandals and was carrying a big leather saddlebag purse--but I ran alongside her gasping out, saying, "You're looking good, honey! You can do it!" I think I had an overinflated sense of just how helpful I was being. Eva had several times waved me off but I was in motivating-mother mode and I just whacked my way through the underbrush alongside the race path. I'm sure Eva didn't appreciate it much--she was almost disqualified because of me--and I don't think she did any better than she would have had I left her alone. But I ran the whole three miles with her. In sandals. Carrying a huge purse.
Thinking back, this must have been so embarrassing for Eva. What? Her mother runs one marathon and now she's running through the woods like Natty Bumppo, thinking she's leading the way for the child who can't? I actually thought I was helping, making a bit of a spectacle, yes, but helping just the same. I think I wanted Eva to experience me helping her, as if I were desperate to make an impact. I think it was about being seen.
Chapter 10
With Eva, Ted, and Kate during our Caribbean vacation in 1983. Our sailboat is in the background.
For some time David had been talking about wanting to have another child. Kate was nine, Eva was fourteen, and Ted, sixteen. Honestly, I didn't want another child. My life was so full, so busy. It was hard to spend as much time as I wanted with the children I already had. Over the months his talking escalated to berating. David maintained I had no right to decide whether or not he had another child. On a few nights, when I'd been long asleep, David would come in and wake me up with a tirade about how selfish I was, how important
being a father was to him, how I was withholding this from him. I'd sit up and try to participate, but I was too afraid to ever say what my argument was, that I felt so lonely as a mother; he gave me no help, just criticism; I loved the children we had and they were enough. It wasn't until the night he said, "If I don't have one with you, I'll have one with someone else," that I felt pushed to the wall. I just sobbed and asked was he leaving me? Did he already have someone else lined up? I was so exhausted, upset, and confused. Maybe I didn't have any rights here. I felt crazy and selfish. Was it not okay to consider what I wanted? I think I ultimately decided I had no choice. Oddly, I couldn't bear the idea of his leaving me. Love had nothing to do with it; I was convinced I'd be useless on my own; I wouldn't know how to parent the children, do anything. So my solution was to work my way into deciding that I wanted another child.
By March of 1984, I was pregnant. The second season of Family Ties had just wrapped, and though the ratings weren't great, we knew we were coming back for another season. So when I told the producers I was expecting, they decided that we'd return in April when I'd only be four months along and shoot an Elyse-is-pregnant episode that could kick off the third season in September. But as I started getting bigger and bigger I was concerned when my call to the set never came. Finally I put in a call to the Family Ties production office and said, "Guys! We've got to do this! Now! I'm getting huge!"
By the time the script was ready, it was May. At four months along, I was much bigger than I had been in other pregnancies and was already wearing maternity clothes. The episode was supposed to be about Elyse not feeling quite up to par and then--bingo!--realizing, oh, she's pregnant. The problem as I saw it was that she'd have to be a chowderhead not to know she was pregnant. Hasn't she already had three children? Ah, well. Silly or not, that was our show.
We were midrehearsal on the soundstage when I got a call from my doctor. They'd done an alpha-fetoprotein test and found a sizable amount of protein in my blood, which was an ominous sign. The doctor said, "You either have a baby in trouble or twins. You've got to come in immediately for a sonogram." Of course, all I heard was "a baby in trouble," and that the child I was carrying could have spina bifida or brain damage and was sloughing off too much protein. I just said to the stage at large, "I'm going!" and drove as fast as I could from Paramount to the imaging center in Westwood. David met me there, and when they rolled the ultrasound conductor over my belly, one of the technicians said, "I see either two or three babies in there." Ohmygod. I was thirty-six, already the mother of three children, and I was having multiples. I burst into tears of gratitude that they were all right. Before we left that day it was determined there were only two ... which felt more than sufficient.
I remember telling my kids about the upcoming babies. We showed them each the sonogram photo of the two little heads. Ted was low-key and feigned indifference, but was boy-excited; Eva was overjoyed with delight at the novelty of twins; Kate put her nine-year-old head down and wept. No more being the youngest for her!
And how did I feel? Okay, I had been bullied but then I had "decided" I could want another child. But could I want two? Like Eva, I was taken with the novelty of two, but I knew it would take so much. Of everything. Somehow I just leaned into faith that I'd be okay, faith that I'd not relied upon before. It all felt so much bigger than me, although, trust me, I got much bigger.
David figured our lives would never be the same (now he decides this?), so after I finished filming that one interim episode, we took a trip to Italy. There were many lovely aspects of the trip and we took in much of the beauty of Padua, Ravenna, Siena, and Venice. Because I'd been a vegetarian for a couple of years, my pediatrician was insistent that I eat copious amounts of extra protein to provide for the babies' needs. This was fun to do in Italian restaurants. They greet pregnant women warmly anyway but when I'd rub my swelling tummy and say, "Gemeli!" (twins!) they'd rush to seat me and get me anything I wanted. Twice a day I'd order two cups of yogurt in a large bowl and mix a fist-sized lump of protein powder into it. It was disgusting and could only be compared to eating wallpaper paste, but I'd dutifully clean my bowl, trying not to gag, and prayed my twins would someday thank me for their strong teeth and bones.
One night David and I were having a late (nonyogurt) dinner at Harry's Bar in Venice. It was loud and crowded and we were tossing about possible names for the babies. At this point we knew we were having fraternal twins--a boy and a girl--so David suggested Brendan for the boy, and maybe Elizabeth for the girl. I offered, "What about Lorca? I think it's pretty and musical?"
I was reading some of Federico Garcia Lorca's poetry at the time and had been struck by the name. It seemed an innocent suggestion, but for some reason it enraged him. He told me there was nothing classical about Lorca, that it wasn't a queen's name, not even in the same genre as Elizabeth. Lorca, he continued, was a perfect example of how stupid, uninformed, and poorly educated I was. Then he got up and left the table.
I thought he'd gone to the bathroom or was cooling off outside or something. But he never came back. I didn't even realize that he'd left the restaurant until I paid the bill and discovered he'd taken his raincoat with him. I was pregnant with twins, it was late at night and pouring rain, and I could not remember the name of our hotel or where it was. I had to use landmarks to find my way back, crying all the way. I was blind with shame, humiliation, and self-loathing. What was wrong with me to just be left like that? I should never have suggested Lorca.
This is how toxic the situation was. Instead of feeling angry at David for his terrible behavior, I blamed myself. I was someone to be left kept running through my mind.
He was asleep by the time I found my way back to the hotel. The next morning I got up and left the hotel room very early. I think I left a note saying I was gone for the day. That was the best "Fuck you" I could muster. I had a great day. It was a very hot morning and it was exciting and daring to be off by myself. I got some coffee and a croissant outside of the hotel. Then I booked myself on a boat tour that went to the island of Torcello and I concentrated on the people and families around me, the seventh-century church and ruins. And, you know, it may seem like a tiny act of defiance on my part, but I felt really good, not quite so impotent. It was like I gave him the finger. Okay ... a very little finger, but I asserted myself.
When I saw David back at our hotel at the end of the day, we both pretended nothing had happened, as I knew we would. We just resumed the trip and then flew home. No discussion. Nothing would change.
But I wanted things to be different in my house. I wanted to be a different person, for myself and for my children. I didn't know how to show up for them. I had this huge voice in my head that kept a running monologue of my ineptitudes and failures. I didn't need anyone else to undermine me; I could do it to myself. I felt acutely impotent when David would be agitated and target Eva. It felt as if David approached Eva the way his father had treated little Betty Jeanne, his half sister. David was always harsher with Eva than with the others; seemed to lay in wait to find fault with her. He'd be swift to jump on Ted or Kate or me as well and I felt just as inadequate to protect any of us.
Thinking back on those days, I'm heartsick at how abandoned my children must have felt. Yes, I can argue that I learned how to parent from watching my mother. But I had many years to look at that nonintervening method of parenting, see how it worked, and reject it; her way had crushed me; why would I choose to do the same thing to my children? However, unlike Whitney, I was at least there, I told myself; I couldn't stop what David was doing but I could at least be a witness--it wouldn't happen in a vacuum. But it was a choice because I chose between defending them or defending myself. I chose myself because I was so afraid of what he might do to me.
I think back to late one night in the second or third year of our marriage, when we were coming home from a party. I can't remember what had been said or done at the party or in the car that prompted my comment but I said, "I'm afraid we are goi
ng to be the modern-day Ed and Jeanne." I was referring to his parents and the sad repressive dynamic between them. He was a smart, cold tyrant with an iron fist around his family; she was a sweet but mousy, shut-down, manipulative martyr. Those were the dreadful roles I saw inescapably ahead for us and was naive enough to say so.
He hit me. From behind the wheel of his Datsun Z, he backhanded me in the face as he drove, striking my big thick Gloria Steinem aviator glasses. The glasses broke against my face, cutting my left eye. The whole area swelled up immediately. David drove to nearby Santa Monica Hospital, where they took me right in because I was impressively bloody and swollen. Upon examination they said that the broken lens had sliced through the left lid into the cornea; the lid required stitches. A handsome young doctor asked how it happened as he prepared to sew me up. I was lying on the gurney in the examining room, the bright lights over my head. I could see David standing a few feet behind us. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see David as I told the lie that would protect him.
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