When it was over, I was standing with a few friends in the sunny parking lot talking. I was anxiously awaiting my mother's reaction and she was taking a long time coming out from the theater. "Well, Meredith," she said when she and Allan finally emerged. "It's time." Then she placed two fingers on the upper part of her cheekbones and pulled the skin back--the universal semaphore for "face-lift."
That was it. No congratulations, good job, or I can tell that you're stretching yourself as an actress. I never spoke to my mother about my work again.
About a month later, Andrea Baynes invited me to meet her for lunch at The Mandarin in Beverly Hills. We were talking about Burning Bridges and rehashing our adventures in Vancouver when she asked me if I thought I had a problem with alcohol. I stopped breathing. I had ordered a glass of wine with lunch but, sensing some kind of scrutiny, I'd barely touched it.
"Andrea!" I said, genuinely floored. "How can you say that? On the basis of what?"
She explained that during the filming of Burning Bridges, as the editors were piecing together a rough assemblage, they often had to cut around me because my eyes weren't focused and they couldn't understand me. I'd not noticed any of this during the screening! She said they'd held production meetings at the end of the day and asked themselves, "What are we going to do about this?"
What were they going to do about me? The idea that they were sitting around talking about me, that I was being perceived as a problem, just shocked and appalled me. Being the focus of such negative attention was agitating ... horrifying.
Andrea suggested that I get into a program for recovering alcoholics and gave me a couple of names of women she knew who might take me to a meeting.
I was thinking, "A program? For alcoholics? Isn't that a little bit over the top?"
But even one person in the industry thinking I had a drinking problem and talking about it was untenable. It never occurred to me I had a problem ... I just had to deal with their perception of a problem. Word travels very fast in Hollywood. This was not good for business. As I drove away from The Mandarin, I decided, Well, I've got to do something to get them off my back.
When I got home, I called Helen, one of the names on the list. She was the wife of someone I'd worked with in the past. When she answered, I unaccountably burst into tears, said I thought I had a problem, and asked if she'd take me to a meeting. I have absolutely no idea where those words came from. I certainly didn't believe them. She said she had been hoping to hear from me for some time.
The meeting we attended was for women and was in the Pacific Palisades, and outside of Days of Wine and Roses, I had no idea what to expect but I knew I wouldn't like it. I had contempt prior to investigation and afterward. People raised their hands and said, "My name is ... and I am an alcoholic." I was aghast. I thought, This is the most hideous, ridiculous thing I've ever done.
I could see women recognize me and turn to whisper to their neighbor. I was dying; I felt so exposed. They were going to think I was an alcoholic because I'm at this stupid meeting. I saw a woman in production I'd worked with years before. I saw a woman I suspected David had had an affair with. I put my head down and met no one's eye. Inside, I was screaming, Don't look at me like I'm one of you. I wanted to shout, You don't know me. You don't know ANYTHING about me. Leave me aloooone!
I kept drinking. But a few mornings later I met Helen at another meeting. I just sat there silently howling, Don't give me your telephone number. Don't say hello. Don't hug me, for crying out loud. Don't don't don't. I wasn't on what you'd call good behavior. People would come up to me and say so kindly, "Oh, you must be new." I'd say, "How the fuck do you know?"
The speaker at this second meeting was a woman who had written and produced a movie I'd done. At first I was frantic that she'd see me and wonder what I was doing there. As I listened to her story I remember thinking, She's telling my story. Someone called ahead and coordinated with her to talk about me. I thought I was going drop through the floor in humiliation. I was so angry I was trembling. Months later, I realized none of the facts in her story paralleled mine. But I had heard and totally identified with the feelings of sadness, separateness, and devastation. And I wouldn't admit that to myself or others for many months to come.
I left that meeting before it was over and went home; God knows I wasn't going to be saying any prayer at the end with these folks. I was tense and unnerved as I repeatedly circled the long counter in my kitchen. It felt like they were all telling me what I could and could not do as if they knew me. I opened up the refrigerator, poured myself a very tall tumbler of cold white wine, and downed it in anger at them. I was shaking and crying; I just had to get out of the house. For no reason, I drove to Beverly Hills, parked my car on a tree-lined street next to a church, put my head back, and fell asleep.
When I woke up, I realized it was time to pick up Mollie and Peter from kindergarten so, woozily, I made my way up to their school.
That was my last drink, April 4, 1990.
Chapter 13
Bump in the Night, my second sober movie.
I kept going to meetings but I didn't really think I had a problem. My daughter Kate might have commented once or twice in the past about how much I consumed but I just thought she was being overly observant and worrying about nothing. I simply moved the wine bottles up to my bedroom closet so as not to agitate her; it seemed the thoughtful thing to do.
I had a hard time identifying with stories I heard in meetings about people trying and trying but not being able to stop drinking. I'd never tried to stop drinking because I never felt it stopped working. I didn't identify with those who spoke of losing their homes, livelihoods, or relationships due to their drinking. Nope. Nope. I never drank like that. A few glasses of wine, a couple of nice margaritas, are what made my life possible. Sure, I'd had a few incidents when I'd had way too much, might have blacked out, but I was pretty sure that was the same for most people. Alcohol wasn't my problem; David was my problem and promised to be for many years to come. Alcohol was a refuge, I didn't have to feel all the pain. I thought it was working for me!
Here's the odd part: although I absolutely did not believe I was an alcoholic, I stopped drinking. I really didn't want industry people to be talking about me; I didn't think a 12-step program would work for me; I didn't see how the joy and laughter and freedom I saw in these people's faces could ever be mine, but I was so lonely, so desperately lonely, and without any other ideas, I took steps I did not believe in so I could stay among them. For the first few months, without the alcohol, I was agitated, angry, and cried a lot and I ate lots of hard candy to replace the sugar, but I stayed with it.
Slowly, I could see that my life seemed better just because I wasn't drinking: I didn't fall asleep reading to the children anymore, I had more energy, I wasn't forgetting appointments as often, I felt more present, perhaps, but there was nothing to take the edge off my anxiety. I knew I was supposed to be doing some kind of writing, to figure out causes of the anxiety, but I didn't go in for the self-examination stuff. It seemed too heady, tedious; it made me sag with fatigue at the very thought.
After a while, I came to understand I was a periodic, which was why it was so hard for me to identify with much of the daily drinking stories. I didn't always drink every day. But whenever I drank, I almost always got drunk and frequently blacked out, which I later learned was another good indication that one is an alcoholic. It made me think of passing out on the Cherry County stage when I was a teen, blacking out after that party in Dallas, the many times I'd no idea how I got home. Having more evidence that I belonged in the 12-step program helped combat the ambivalence I still struggled with.
Even so, I'd go to meetings as often as I could, racing to get there on time, desperate to be there among the people. Against my will, I started to feel the hope and the love in the rooms. I was frantic I'd arrive late and have to walk into a full room where heads would turn and I'd be seen. When I felt so exposed with all the eyes on me, then I had a
hard time listening. I felt I didn't get to enjoy the anonymity most of them took for granted and that made me angry. I felt because I was known, people thought they knew something about me and that made me angry; I was so self-absorbed and focused on how I felt all the time, I could hardly hear what was being said. Sometimes I'd stand outside the closed door, knowing the meeting was starting, unable to turn the knob. It was like standing outside my mother's bedroom. I could feel the tears come but I didn't have permission to open the door. Usually another latecomer would open up and then I'd slide in behind, hopefully hidden from view.
I loved the laughter inside. A guy told a story of his home being foreclosed on, his car being repossessed, and his family leaving him all in the same day, while he observed it all in detachment with a highball in his hand ... and everyone in the room was falling out of their chairs in uncontainable hysterics. I saw how they didn't take themselves so seriously and I came to understand how very self-centered I was, how very insular my world. I could see the warmth and acceptance that was available to me if I could bring myself to trust it.
I barely followed suggestions. I'd been told to get a sponsor in the program, someone I admired and could confide in, someone I'd allow to guide me. I thought this was a revolting idea. There was no way in the world I'd trust anyone enough to confide in them. I recoiled from and immediately dismissed any concept of a higher power; I was not at all interested in addressing how I might have caused harm to others, drinking or sober; I was confident I'd been done wrong almost all my life and saw no reason to question that belief.
Eventually, in an effort to appear compliant, I decided to pursue a sponsor--the woman I thought had had an affair with David. I figured we had something in common. She was an actress who had worked with him a few years earlier and had even had dinner at our house a few times, although she had to remind me of that. She quickly straightened me out and assured me there had been no affair with David. I just wanted someone who understood what my life had been, someone who might feel sorry for me in the process, and she seemed as likely as anyone. She was great and agreed to work with me and gave me some general directions, which I followed, generally. I think I saw myself as a profoundly emotionally damaged person. I didn't hold out much hope that any program, any kind of self-analysis, was going to resolve the deep-seated pain and trauma I'd felt over my lifetime. I'd put myself in the hands of multiple therapists over the years, with little to no results. How likely that some woo-woo program was going to fix me? I was willing to stay for the meetings and the support because I really had no place else to go, but I put in only the most cursory effort.
A Mother's Justice was my very first movie job after getting sober. It was about a young woman, played by Carrie Hamilton, who is raped, and I played her mother who acts as a decoy to catch the rapist. I deeply identified with wanting to stand up for and protect my children ... not really what the movie was about, but so what? That was my subtext. This was also shot in Vancouver and I knew that many of the crew members had also worked on Burning Bridges and probably witnessed some of my alcoholic behavior. They had no way of knowing I had gotten sober. Since I was desperately afraid that people would be talking about me, waiting to see me sneak a drink or hide in my dressing room, I was pretty quiet, sat and read out on the set where I could be seen between shots as much as I could. And I was word-perfect and clear as a bell.
I only had one instance of anxiety on this movie: when the director asked me to create a more emotional, cathartic moment in a final scene where there's just me, no dialogue. My immediate response was no, wrong choice. But the truth was I was fearful of my ability to produce the desired effect without first priming myself with wine. There was no time to call my actress-sponsor for guidance, because the director just whispered, "Action." So I silently envisioned wanting a drink, feeling shaky and desperate, and making a call to a sober friend in the program. I wept emotionally and cathartically as I silently imagined her words of support and understanding. "Cut." It was okay. Actors will use anything to get the job done.
It was a heady period for me. I was feeling good about myself: I was in the program, responsible for myself and making a very good living. I've always been attracted to jobs that challenged me, grabbed me where I lived, and another movie came up, Bump in the Night, that fit right into that category. We shot in Pittsburgh, and I played a boozy, once-famous New York reporter named Martha "Red" Tierney. When her eight-year-old son is kidnapped by a pedophile (played by Christopher Reeve), she is forced to quit drinking because she needs to be clearheaded enough to track him down, which of course she does.
Like so many times before, the universe sent me a movie that struck an important chord then playing in my own life. It often seemed to work that way. Kate's Secret demanded I look at my self-esteem and self-image arena; in Kissing Place I got to tap into the almost psychotic craziness I was feeling in my home at that time; and Burning Bridges resonated with the lies and deceptions of my dysfunctional relationships and reliance on alcohol.
Ironically, playing an out-and-out alcoholic in Bump in the Night worked for me, too. We were shooting in Pittsburgh. My character, Red, was struggling with trying not to drink. At one point she's ready to cave and finds herself sitting in a mirrored dive bar with a highball in front of her. I sat on my stool at the bar as they adjusted lights and took still photos when it suddenly dawned on me, Oh! I'm six months sober today! I hadn't really planned on staying in the program; I just didn't take a drink one day at a time and, hey, I'd put six months together! To celebrate, I called my sponsor and then walked across the street during my lunch hour and I bought a $1,500 Omega watch as a gift from myself to me. I've had that watch for twenty years.
It is especially important that I go to meetings when I'm out of town and away from my support system. That night, I went to a meeting at a large church some distance away. There were many doors off a main hall and I had no idea which one led to my meeting. An older church woman was bustling toward me and I could have asked her assistance but I didn't want to betray my reason for being there; I still didn't want anyone to know. I stood with my ear cupped to each door until I found the one I wanted, then slipped in.
Here's another irony: I remember many instances when I had no problem regaling people with wild stories of drinking escapades and dumb stunts I'd pulled. That was just telling things I'd done. But if someone knew I was sober, I thought that meant they'd know who I was. All my life I'd been reticent and had a terrible fear of being known, and at that time I had no willingness to change that.
Back in Los Angeles, I'd met some new people in the program, one of whom was Carla; she was terrific. She'd invited me to lunch after a meeting with her and a group of women at their usual gathering spot. The waiter greeted them warmly and they introduced him to me in passing and then, as he was taking their orders, they started discussing the meeting. Any bonehead hearing them would know without question that they were recovering alcoholics and they'd already introduced me as one of them and I thought I was going to expire on the spot because now the waiter kneeew. What would he think of meeeeee? It's sad and fatiguing to think back on the degree of self-centeredness I suffered. Being a recognizable person only exacerbated my anxiety and self-focus, rendering me panicky and secretive in situations that were totally benign and friendly. It took many, many years for this to change.
Before I was cast in Bump in the Night, I'd been deep in divorce activity and it picked up again after the movie was over. I just resumed a life of legal combat. I had selected a woman lawyer over a guy who'd been recommended to me as a barracuda because I didn't think I could stand dealing with another arrogant, pushy, aggressive, dismissive male. David's phalanx of lawyers took my deposition several times and each was a harrowing experience. I remember his lawyers as sneering weasels, dripping with sarcasm and innuendo. They did it so well that it must have been old hat to them, but I would occasionally have to excuse myself, go to the bathroom, and kneel on the cold tiles to cry a pray
er to stay present, not crumble, not take it personally, although it was all excruciatingly personal. I recall no particulars of what was said in the depositions, but I do remember what I wore.
I'd found all the depositions so threatening that the only way to deal with them was to wear what felt like armor; I dressed in a very masculine style. I wore blazers and slacks with casual buttoned shirts and wing-tip oxfords. Honestly, I never thought, I'll dress like a man, I just did it; I was angry. I was seething with anger but felt very vulnerable, and somehow I'd decided that jackets and wing tips would protect me. And I'd cut my hair short, as many women do when they've ended a relationship, even buzzed it up the back a little. I'm sure, in retrospect, this deserves some probing as to what degree this foreshadowed my ultimate coming out, but I can promise you, I was just trying to disguise myself as cold, unflappable, indomitable as I deemed most men to be.
One day in early 1991, a terrific TV director named Dick Lowry and a writer named Joe Cacaci asked me to meet with them. They'd bought the rights to make a film based on a series of newspaper articles about Betty Broderick, a forty-two-year-old La Jolla socialite who a few years earlier had murdered her ex-husband, Dan Broderick, and his young wife, Linda, shooting them to death as they slept.
Betty's motive--that after supporting Dan through medical school and law school and assuming full responsibility for raising their four children, she'd been cast aside for a newer, younger model--turned her into an unconventional figure of empowerment for casually discarded women everywhere. The title was A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story. Dick and Joe wanted me to come on board. I didn't hesitate for a minute. I was in.
I had no trouble understanding the story of a woman done wrong, feeling I was one myself. I was now in my second year of sobriety and really getting in touch with my anger toward David and the life I'd been living. I identified with Betty's point of view. I too felt resentful, unappreciated, targeted, passed over.
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