So gradually, these other people appeared. Most were nineteen or twenty and didn’t have jobs. Those who did worked part time as waiters or movie ushers. But they all owned new cars and nice clothes and seemed utterly unconcerned about money—mine or theirs. They had apartments but preferred hanging out at my place. But they never commented on the size of the place, the furniture, or asked how much it cost or how I paid for it. They didn’t care. For them, money was something people simply had. They were trust-fund kids.
It was the most blessed relief to sit around all night (well, all night, all day, all the next night—we didn’t have a lot to do) with people who didn’t give a flying one that I had more money than any kid my age should or that I was on TV. Actually, we didn’t care about much. We became the Condo of Lost Souls. We had a schedule of sorts: Twilight Zone reruns started at eleven a.m., Al—ed Hitchcock Presents was later, pizza was ordered in between. We were on a first-name basis with the manager of every pizza place in Hollywood and began inviting them to parties. We also made a lot of Jell-O, those big, solid Knox Blox. We didn’t eat all of it; some of it was for throwing. If we decided that a particular TV personality was annoying, we would throw blocks of Jell-O at the screen. We even had a color-coding system signifying which shade of Jell-O was appropriate for which celebrity.
My new friends stayed at my apartment on and off, in droves. The record was eight at once: one person sleeping with me in my bed, two people in the spare bedroom, three on the pullout sofa, one on the floor in the living room next to them, and one on the balcony. (The one on the balcony was not there by choice; he had annoyed us and was in exile.) Some came to my house to get sane, others to go crazy.
At first, I rejoiced in my newfound free time. I was giddy with the idea that I had nowhere to be. I could sleep, I could party, I could do whatever I damn pleased because I had no daily grind, no set to report to, no lines to memorize. My life was like a never-ending vacation. But then, all of a sudden, one day about a year after I left Little House, my past hit me like a ton of bricks. I had time to think, and all of the issues that I had willfully avoided came flooding over me in a tidal wave of fear, dread, and anxiety. Little House had been such a great escape for seven years; I had been blissfully distracted. I had had no time to think about what my brother had done to me, or even to allow those feelings to bubble close to the surface.
But now I had plenty of time to think about it. I hit a period around age twenty when I had not a single job on the horizon. I was auditioning for all kinds of nonsense, but it seemed that every part I read for required me to play a cheerleader, someone naked, someone dead, or a ghastly combination of all three. Yet not even these bleak prospects came to fruition. I was suddenly confronted full force with my old demons. The feelings not only bubbled up, they drowned me. I had trouble sleeping at night: my heart raced for no reason, I broke out in a mysterious rash, and I often felt so anxious I thought I might pass out from the stress.
I had blocked out my emotions for so long, I’d assumed they had gone away. But when you’re abused, the pain doesn’t just “go away.” It sinks down under the surface, invisible to casual observers. You might even convince your best friends that you’re okay, but the pain is still there, growing like a seething tumor. Abuse lives on in the very cells of your body, carved into the neural pathways of your brain. Your friends can’t see the scars, but they are present every minute of every day.
Now I found myself in a very dark place, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. But I was depressed and scared. I felt like I wanted to die. I was throwing up all the time. It wasn’t bulimia; I knew I wasn’t fat, and I wasn’t putting my finger down my throat. If anything, at 102 pounds, I was emaciated. When I heard on the news that Karen Carpenter had died from anorexia, I was taken aback to hear that she had outweighed me by six pounds. I knew I had to do something.
I was a little skittish about going to a doctor, so I went to one of the few physicians who I knew for sure wasn’t nuts—my gynecologist. Being a Hollywood doctor, she did have an immediate prepared response. As soon as I said I was unhappy, had trouble sleeping, and was feeling anxious all the time, she chirped brightly, “I can get you some Valium!” I realized that a bottle of pills was probably what most of her patients really wanted. But it was just what I was trying to avoid, and I told her so.
“Yes, I’m sure you could. And I’m sure I could take them. Lots and lots and lots of them, every day for the rest of my life. Which is exactly the road I am trying not to go down.”
“Ohhh,” she said, understanding perfectly, “you actually want to do something about your problems!
“In that case,” she continued, “take this number. She’s a therapist, her office is upstairs from me. She’s great.” I did. And she was.
I had heard about how people spent years in therapy and never got around to telling the therapist what was really going on in their lives. I always thought that was a strange thing to do, especially at those prices. I couldn’t imagine shelling out a couple of hundred dollars to sit around for an hour and lie to a total stranger. Maybe I’m just cheap, but it seemed like a waste.
So I walked in for my first appointment, sat down, and said, “Hi. My-name-is-Alison-my-father’s-gay-and-I-was-sexually-molested-as-a-child. Can you do anything for me?” She stared at me for a minute and said, “Can you come in three times a week?”
“That bad?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
With the trust fund and the residuals, I had the money. I certainly had the time for intensive therapy, and unlike some people, I really did have the inclination. I was only too happy to go in three days a week and spill my guts psychologically. I was spilling them physically several times a day anyway, so what the hell did I have to lose?
And the treatment worked. I didn’t miraculously get better overnight, but even within days of just talking about what was bothering me, I stopped throwing up. My therapist asked me to promise not to kill myself, which wasn’t a difficult promise for me to make. I didn’t want to actually kill myself. I just wanted to stop feeling like I should.
She said that many people don’t start dealing with the things I was talking about until they’re in their forties. To show up all by myself at twenty—without being sent or hospitalized—was an accomplishment on its own. She didn’t insist that I talk to my parents, but suggested, since I was so young, and they did live just down the street, that maybe asking about “the gay thing” and seeing how much they knew about the sexual abuse would be useful in my therapy.
I didn’t like the idea at first, but suddenly, the issue came up in a context my parents could grasp: an audition. I was asked to try out for a movie about a girl who was sexually abused as a child. The script was terrible, and the film never did get made. But my parents thought it was a meaty role and insisted that I audition for it. I didn’t want to—and I told them why.
I talked to my mom first. She came over to my condo, no doubt thinking it was just some sort of stage fright, or lack of confidence, fully prepared to give me a pep talk on why I would be great in this film and had nothing to worry about. I explained I didn’t want to get up and perform this scenario on screen because I already had experienced it in real life. I told her what Stefan had done. I reminded her that I had repeatedly begged not to be left alone with him.
She was silent for a few seconds. Then she said simply, “Oh, shit.”
Well, I gotta give credit where credit is due: at least my mother believed me. In fact, she was suitably appalled and upset. I had for years questioned whether, at worst, she knew what was going on and condoned it, or suspected and actively chose to ignore it, or, at best, really was in the dark. But when I heard and saw her reaction that day, I knew she’d been clueless. Nobody is that good an actress; she was in shock. She assured me I could simply forget about this entire audition nonsense at once and that she would tell my father immediately. Since we were on the subject, I ha
d to ask, “Oh, by the way, he is gay, right?”
She explained that indeed he was, but it was all on the up and up, as far as she was concerned. He’d never lied about it, and she didn’t mind. I told her that the endless denials on this subject had been rather confusing, to say the least, and she said she was sorry about that, but they had been told back in the old days that they shouldn’t tell the kids. They thought they were doing me a favor.
My therapist was pleased with my conversation with my parents and saw it as progress, but she wasn’t done. She wanted me to now confront Stefan. It was the ’80s, and everyone was so full of “forgiveness” and “healing” and “reconciliation,” it had become a downright fashion statement. I didn’t think we were exactly going to “kiss and make up,” but I didn’t like the idea that my brother could do all those horrible things to me every day for years and expect me just to forget about it and let him get away with it. Did he really think his behavior was acceptable? Had he blocked it all out? My curiosity overrode my fear, and I decided there was only one way to find out. I had to talk to him.
Stefan was sober now, or so he said. Well, he was changed. He had recently fallen—or jumped, or was thrown?—out of a third-story window and woken up in the hospital in traction with metal pins in his body. That would definitely kill anyone’s buzz. He was clearly no longer doing the mountains of drugs he had been doing in his teen years and early twenties, so I figured maybe there was hope. To break the ice, my mother talked to him first so he knew what was coming. I didn’t initiate the conversation in person. With his long history of physical violence toward anyone who even so much as contradicted him, I wasn’t taking that chance. Over the years, he’d beaten most of his girlfriends black and blue, and he wasn’t above fighting his own mother—he’d even caused her to break her arm once by shoving her during an altercation. So I played it safe and called him on the phone.
At first, I thought I had gotten lucky. I expected denial, loss of memory, threats, yelling. I wasn’t getting any of that. Stefan remembered the abuse, all right, and he admitted to everything. He said he was “very sick,” and he blamed the drugs and alcohol. He even said he understood if I never wanted anything to do with him.
Just when I thought I had witnessed a miracle of reconciliation, that he understood how much he had hurt me, would never do anything like this to anyone again, and maybe even felt bad about his behavior, he had to go and keep talking. He didn’t say he was sorry. He said: “Sexually molesting you was the greatest sexual experience of my life, and everything else has been downhill from there.”
Really, that’s what he said. He was dead, cold sober. As totally aghast as I was at this statement, I had the presence of mind to reply: “Wow. You really need to get out more.”
On that note, I ended the conversation. I had had enough.
I felt some relief, though. At least no one had denied what had happened to me—not even Stefan. But there was denial of another kind. My parents thought I should put it all behind me. We should go back to “the way things were.” They didn’t seem to realize that the good old days never existed; my childhood was a living hell. Besides, once you’ve announced that your entire relationship with your brother was a lie, that he beat and raped you for years, it’s a little hard to go back to playing “happy family.” It’s like trying to put toothpaste back in the tube.
The day I confronted my brother was just one of the many moments in my post Little House life when I questioned my wisdom in leaving the show. I missed it terribly; I missed my “family,” the people I had grown up with, who had always been such an integral part of my existence. I didn’t miss that awful wig, but I missed Gladys putting it on in the morning. I can’t say I missed the sweltering heat of Simi, but I missed the ritual of going to the set. I didn’t miss getting into those stifling costumes and under-garments, but I missed being Nellie in all her glory.
No, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life on Little House, but my leaving had been so sudden, it felt incomplete. There had been no official good-bye. One day, it was January, and I was taking off on our annual hiatus; the next day, poof! There had been no wrap party, no hugs, no kisses, no sobbing cast and crew members saying they’d miss me.
The story felt unfinished, too: Mrs. Oleson held up a letter from Nellie stating that she and Percival were now in New York. That was it. After all those years of campy drama, and that’s how the writers ended it. They hadn’t even pushed me down a cliff in a wheelchair or dumped me in a leech-infested lake. It was simply not enough—considering the seven long years of blood, sweat, and tears (on camera and off) I had given to this show. I needed some kind of closure.
Well, it took Michael a year, but he gave it to me. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from my father saying that my agent, Lew Sherrill, had just called him in a state of joyous disbelief. They wanted me back on the prairie. Michael had an idea for a show in which Nellie returns to face off with her rival, her newly adopted sister, Nancy. Lew had been so disgusted with the previous year’s negotiations, that when the call came, he snorted and harrumphed in disdain and boldly asked for a ridiculous amount of money. He though the network would never meet it. It was four times their top offer for an episode the year before.
Then the producers said, “Okay.”
“What? How in the hell…?” Lew sputtered.
The producers didn’t specify why they had such a sudden change of heart, but we knew. The network’s biggest concern was the bottom line. They were not thinking about the characters or the plotline. They were simply going to the store with a grocery list and a budget. I meant no more to them than a head of lettuce or a can of soup. But now, Michael had given one of his “decrees.” He had decided that the episode needed Nellie, and he barked, “Get her!” When Michael gave a decree, he didn’t care what it cost. He didn’t take no for an answer.
So, miraculously, I was back on the show—but just for this one episode. And it was at a rate of pay I could not have ever dreamed of. I was going to get to see all my friends again, to say good-bye, to have the hugs and tears and ending I thought Nellie deserved. My poor Percival (Steve) didn’t get to join me, though, which would have made it all the more wonderful—I guess the producers didn’t want to cut two paychecks. Still, “The Return of Nellie” was a very satisfying episode for everyone. Nellie comes back for a visit and meets her hideous new adopted sister, Nancy. Nancy flies into a jealous rage and runs away from home. In the tradition of Laura Ingalls and all the other girls who run away on the prairie, she runs all the way to the mountains and gets lost in the forest. Mr. Oleson and Nellie have to go out and find her.
I got to go up to Sonora, California, and shoot the outdoor scenes. I loved going there as a child, running through the woods, fishing for trout, and so on. Of course, this time I was twenty years old, and instead of being chaperoned by Auntie Marion, I brought my crazy boyfriend of the minute, who proceeded to get drunk with the crew and make a total fool of himself. Then again, how many of the crew could remember that the next morning?
I also got to work with my “replacement,” Allison Balson, who played the psychotic Nancy. Now, let me set the record straight: we were not rivals in real life. I get complaints from die-hard Nellie fans all the time: “We hated the new Nellie!” “She’s not as good as you!” and my favorite, “You are the only true Nellie!” As if this was some sort of religious cult, and this little girl and I were fighting over the role of Messiah. I think this is all perfectly ridiculous. I loved how Allison Balson played Nancy.
She got the role at age eleven, the same age I was when I first played Nellie, but she had the advantage of growing up watching the show and watching me. A conscientious young actress, she worked hard to avoid anything resembling an imitation. She became determined to create her own brand of bitch. She had done her research and decided not to make Nancy the proud, imperious type. Instead, she played Nancy as a deeply disturbed, miserable little wretch. While Nellie believed everyone loved he
r (or should, if they had any taste), Nancy was a ball of hysterical neurosis, prone to cries of “you hate me, you hate me, you ALL HATE ME!” I thought she was fantastic. My favorite scene with Allison was the one in which Nancy and Nellie shared a bed. Little Nancy snored, and I put a stop to this by holding her nose and nearly suffocating her. It was proof that, no matter how nice Nellie got after she got married, she still had some bitchiness left in her.
But clearly, Allison the Second won over me in one respect: she got my hair. I was cheerfully informed upon my return that I couldn’t have my old wig back. It was now firmly planted on the head of my successor. I had literally passed the crown! So I was given a new wig, a whole new hairdo, one that was apparently the height of fashion for wealthy New York shopkeepers’ wives in the early 1880s. Unfortunately, this meant a gigantic “Gibson Girl” blond pouf on top of my head, making me look as if I were wearing an exploded container of Jiffy Pop as a hat. I still get questions from fans who ask, between sobs of laughter, “What the hell was THAT?!”
But what really surprised me was what happened in the scenes with the rest of the cast. Melissa, Katherine MacGregor, Richard Bull, and Jonathan Gilbert, my little baby-bro Willie, who was now a grown-up, handsome man, even choked up for real to see me. Many of the scenes felt like real life, not like acting at all. When Nellie is at the hotel with practically the whole cast, and everyone is carrying on about how much they missed her, no one was pretending. It turns out everyone did miss me, and I missed them. There were a lot of new people now: Pamela Roylance and Stan Ivar (who played Sarah and John Carter, the new inhabitants of the Ingalls house) and all the new children. It was as if a whole new generation of freckle-faced child actors had come to replace us.
Melissa was the happiest, of course; she had her partner in crime back. At one point, she pulled me aside and whispered, “Things are really tense here without you.” She explained that until I left, she and the others didn’t realize the function I unknowingly performed on the set. I was not just comic relief in the series; I was the comic relief in real life. I remember that I made people laugh and enjoyed doing it, but Melissa said it was more than that.
Confessions of a Prairie Bitch Page 20