Prairie Tale: A Memoir

by Melissa Gilbert

  I was absolutely terrified. I wanted to shut the blinds and lock the doors. If she was willing to go that far, what was to keep her from hurting one of our children or killing me?

  I grabbed Bruce and said, “It’s her.”

  “What?”

  He knew exactly who I was talking about.

  “Look at the address,” I said.

  I called my security expert and friend Gavin de Becker, who immediately went to work on the case. His people delivered flowers to her and saw she had a large antenna on her roof, which we surmised allowed her to tap into our cordless phones and pluck my conversations as they traveled through the air. According to the authorities, there wasn’t anything we could do legally. Those radio waves were public domain. But we brought pressure on her in our own way until she moved out of the area.

  Talk about your blessing in disguise. The crazy lady ended up doing Bruce and me a favor by forcing us to confront problems in our marriage before they grew too big to handle. We immediately started intensive couples counseling. In our first session, a three-hour marathon, we decided unequivocally that we were going to stay married, which, in our eyes, made our marriage the primary patient, and we moved on from there.

  The biggest move was the work I did on myself in therapy to try to figure out what was going on with me. I was stuck in a pattern. I was always somebody’s girl. After my father passed away, it was Michael Landon, then Rob, then Alan, then Bo, and then Bruce. I was like the little bird in the children’s book Are You My Mother? Except my story was titled “Are You My Father?” I cozied up to a new daddy-substitute anytime I felt alone.

  I was also desperately trying to prove myself to be lovable. My need to be loved and cherished was driving me to go out of my way to show people how “special” I was. I was the first to arrive during a crisis and the last to leave. If an acquaintance wanted to go toy shopping for their kid, I would get them a personal shopper at FAO Schwarz. I overextended myself for virtual strangers and at a cost to myself and my family: Love me, love me, love me…aren’t I lovable…I’ll do whatever it takes.

  To top it all off, Bruce and I had only been married ten months when we faced a life-and-death situation with our son, and we came out of it relating to each other in a much different, more distant manner, not an uncommon thing after couples go through a traumatic event. We loved each other, but we didn’t communicate. As a result, we misfired in a major way.

  But I worked damn hard to turn that around. I wouldn’t realize until later, after I got sober the last time, that much of my behavior was subconsciously influenced by efforts to fill a deep, psychic hole that went straight to the core of my being.

  Unlike my kids, who had been handed to me as soon as possible after birth, who were immediately welcomed into this world by my voice and my loving face, I arrived quite differently: I didn’t belong to anyone when I was born. For the first twenty-four hours of my life, I didn’t have a name. Strangers passed me back and forth. As silly and clichéd as it sounds, I carried around the idea that my own mother, for whatever reasons, didn’t want me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t torment me. If your own mother doesn’t want you, who is going to want you?

  Drinking took me away from these and other troubling thoughts. It was the calm from the daily storm inside my head.

  My inner alarm clock rang at five on the dot, and I poured myself a glass of wine or a martini as I prepared dinner. By eight, I had the kids in bed and could sit down with Bruce in front of the TV to watch a movie. But my brain would still be racing from the groceries I needed, to what episode Bruce was working on, to his schedule the next week, to wondering what my parents had been arguing about that one time I heard them yelling thirty years earlier. I still needed that fourth glass of wine to quiet the racket and let me zone out in Bruce’s arms.

  In early fall of ’97, we went to Dublin on a six-week shoot for Her Own Rules, a movie based on Barbara Taylor Bradford’s melodramatic saga about a writer who returns to her native England to search for her roots after having been adopted as a child and raised in America. Like many of my movies, it touched a raw nerve. But the story was so over the top it was easy to ignore.

  I was able to turn the trip into a family vacation. We rented a cute home in Sandymount and had a happy time. Bruce and I were extremely close throughout that shoot. There was definitely healing going on in our marriage. To this day, he would say he didn’t notice anything inappropriate about my alcohol intake. But in hindsight, two or three Guinnesses, half a bottle of wine, and a couple of whiskeys over the course of an evening, that’s a lot, right?

  And it was every day. At the end of October, I was in Utah, shooting an episode of Touched by an Angel. Bruce and I took Michael trick-or-treating. Michael dressed up as a cowboy, Bruce went as Eddie Bauer (he wore jeans and an Eddie Bauer sweatshirt), and I dressed up as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. After I put Mike to bed, Bruce stayed with him and I went down to the bar with my friend Amanda, who at the time was the director’s personal assistant/muse. I ended the night by getting ripped and singing backup with an amazing southern blues band on an overly emotive rendition of the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post.”

  I couldn’t see where I was headed. But it definitely wasn’t Kansas.

  Soon after Utah, I wound up in Austin for the movie The Soul Collector, a great project with Bruce Greenwood and an entire cast that fell madly in love with each other. Everyone was a foodie, and between scenes, we planned our next meals. I grew especially close with actress Christina (Tina) Carlisi, who played my best friend in the movie. She was sort of an Italian version of me, without the drinking.

  She and her husband, Jay, were gearing up to adopt a baby boy after having gone through the ups and downs of fertility treatments. All of us were thrilled when the birth mother went into labor. Then, at the last minute, she changed her mind and decided not to give up her baby. Tina and Jay were devastated. Not long after, they were notified of another adoption. They called me from Arizona, where the mother was in labor, and two days later they left with a beautiful baby boy.

  I hung on every word as she described the birth mother handing her son, Will, to her and saying, “This is your son.” Everyone was crying, she said, as was I while listening to her recall the experience of one mother letting go of her child and another taking hold. In fact, that may have been the catalyst that would later allow me to heal a bit and reconsider my own birth mother’s decision to give me away. Maybe she had wanted me to have a better life than she could have provided.

  Until then, I had no doubt that I was a good mother. My life wasn’t perfect or traditional, but motherhood was my top priority and I worked my ass off to give my own two kids the best life possible. But then something happened that put a major crack in my self-confidence. Bo called to tell me that he was moving back to Texas, and then he said the words that hit me like a sledgehammer: Dakota wanted to go with him.

  My immediate instinct was to say, “No effing way you’re taking my kid to Texas. Are you out of your mind?” But I held off and asked him to give me time to have a conversation with Dakota and talk to the rest of the family. I sat down with Dakota, and he assured me that he did indeed want to go. I went into my therapist’s office weeping, wanting to know what was wrong with me that my kid wanted to move to Texas.

  “It’s not what’s wrong with you,” she said. “It’s what’s wrong with his father that your kid feels he has to go to Texas to take care of him.”

  We talked through my options, all of which were going to hurt no matter what I did. Did I want him hating me for the rest of his life because I said no? Or did I want him hating me for a smaller part of his life because I said yes? I knew not to discuss it with my mother, who would have immediately read me the most devastating passages from Sophie’s Choice. I talked it over with Bruce, who pointed out Dakota would be back for long weekends, holidays, and the summer, so it was just a different way of dividing up the visitation schedule we had already worked o
ut.

  By the time Bo actually moved, I had come to terms with letting Dakota go. I was fine as I took him to the airport and put him on a plane. I got about two miles up the freeway before I fell apart. Agonizingly sad, primal screams came out of me, and I pulled off to the side of the road and just wailed. As far as I was concerned, I was no better than my birth mother. I had just given my kid away.

  I was convinced I had made the biggest mistake of my life. It sent me reeling into a depression that I had little time for. A small bright spot was when Bruce and I finally sold his Hidden Hills place and moved into my dream home: my own manor house with majestic views on Mulholland Highway in Calabasas. But then my grandfather’s health took a turn.

  Sometime earlier, Papa Harry had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. At eighty-four, he had refused the surgery his doctor had recommended, preferring not to endure the side effects. He made his wishes clear at a family dinner when he said, “When it’s my time, I just want to go. No heroics.”

  Papa Harry knew his audience. All the women at the table immediately berated him for even hinting at such a time when he would be nearing his final breaths. You have to fight, they bleated. You can’t ever give up. Blah-blah-blah-blah. Papa Harry shook his head; they didn’t understand. But I saw no problem. I believed any adult who wasn’t responsible for parenting a child had the right to end his life whenever he felt he’d reached the end.

  “You call it. I’m there,” I said to him. “Whatever you need, one way or another, it’s up to you.”

  He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “That’s why you’re the jewel in the crown, kid.”

  I felt like more of a juggler than a jewel. I oversaw work on our new house. Then I gave Bo ninety thousand dollars after he called and said he wanted to give Dakota a better place to live than his apartment but didn’t have the cash for a down payment. I also helped my mother, who was handling my grandfather’s decline in her own way. While my mother tried to feed him tuna noodle casserole, banana pudding, and other fattening foods as if they were the cure for cancer, he had no appetite for anything except spending precious time with his family.

  In the midst of all the turmoil, I had to go to Seattle for the movie Switched at Birth, but I flew back every weekend to be with my Papa Harry. One time when I had Mike with me, the two of us climbed into bed with him and snuggled up on either side. He would turn to me and kiss my forehead, and then he would turn and stroke Mike’s cheek. He did that over and over again. No words had to be spoken.

  After that visit I went back to Seattle to shoot another week. Bruce called me late that Friday afternoon. When I picked up, he asked me if I was at the hotel. I said I wasn’t and he said for me to call him when I got there. I knew what had happened and there was no way I was going to wait. I was shaking uncontrollably and I begged him to tell me. I said, “Papa Harry’s gone, isn’t he?”

  “No,” said Bruce.

  “Well, what is it?!” I begged.

  Bruce told me that a few minutes earlier, my dear fifteen-year-old beagle, Sidney, had been running across the backyard and just fell over. He was gone. My firstborn pup. Sidney Bidney Kidney Bean. The Bean. Mr. Beanly.

  I was completely unprepared for that. I was devastated but finished the day’s work, then flew home the next day to see my family and visit Papa Harry.

  In his final days, Papa Harry lost the ability to speak and grew frustrated by it. My mother encouraged him to relax; he’d already said everything that needed to be said. Soon thereafter he slipped into a coma. I went back to Seattle for the last week of shooting. About two hours after I arrived, my mom called and said, “He’s gone.”

  I stared out the window into the nighttime sky and thought about Papa Harry. He passed true to form, on his own terms, with grace, dignity, and style. His ending was peaceful and serene, an end I wish for everyone.

  At work the next morning, I thanked everyone for their concern and condolences and insisted I was fine. I wasn’t. Between scenes, I hid in my trailer and cried. As soon as I was needed on the set, I dried my eyes and put on my game face. I didn’t have to be told the show must go on. That was second nature to me. I could stuff away colds, broken bones, and even the death of my beloved grandfather.

  Or so I thought. After two days of setting aside my grief, I was on the set and in fact in midsentence, speaking with my director and costars, when suddenly I started to hyperventilate. Then my hands began to shake and my fingertips tingled. The set medic came running over.

  I had just experienced my first anxiety attack. I still get them, but much less frequently. They happen when I stuff away anger or pain.

  I wrapped the film and came home the day before Papa Harry’s funeral. Bruce was away on a trip he takes every year with his guy friends, herding cattle in Wyoming. To his credit, he wanted to come home but I told him to stay. So the night before the funeral, my friend Cordelia slept over and then helped me prepare for the service.

  My Papa Harry’s service was a remarkable celebration of his life. It was closer to a roast or a variety show than a funeral. Uncle Miltie spoke. So did Uncle Jan (Murray), Sid (Caesar), and one of my favorites, Red Buttons. Garry Marshall told great stories about Papa Harry. Sara and I delivered eulogies on behalf of my mother and my aunt Stephanie.

  I sat there with my boys, Sam, Lee, Dakota, and Michael, and grieved with my family for the first time in my life. Dakota carried Papa Harry’s ashes to his place of interment. It was fantastic and sad and healing. It was what grief should be, and it really made me miss my dad.

  Later that night, I was reminded of a story about my grandfather and Jerry Lewis, who amused themselves by making crank phone calls back in the sixties. One day they were looking through the newspaper classifieds for people they could prank when they saw an ad that said “Parakeet Found.” They called the number and told the man who answered that they had lost their parakeet and believed he had theirs.

  “Is it yellow?” they asked.

  “Yes,” the man said.

  “With an orange beak?” my grandfather asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s him!” Papa Harry and Jerry Lewis yelled into the phone. “That’s him! You got him!”

  “When you say Marvin, does he chirp?” my grandfather asked.

  They heard the man talk to the bird. “Marvin! Marvin!” Sure enough, the bird made noises back.

  “He chirped when I called him Marvin,” the man reported.

  “That’s our bird!” Papa Harry and Jerry Lewis said. “God bless you for finding him.”

  “Do you want to come get him?” the man said.

  “No, no, no, that’s not necessary,” they explained. “Just take him to the window, point him toward Highland Avenue, and tell him to fly to Orange.”

  “Really?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” they said. “He has a wonderful sense of direction.”

  There was a pause. Then the man got back on the phone.

  “Okay, I did it,” he said. “He’s gone.”

  And so it was with Papa Harry. As far as I was concerned, he went to the window and flew toward Orange or wherever his next stop was, having made this life much better with his entertaining chirps.

  twenty-seven

  ALL KINDS OF CRAZY

  I continued to suffer anxiety attacks after Papa Harry’s death. They were like emotional earthquakes. Without warning, something would shift inside me and then the ground would shake with a fury that made it seem like life was about to end. They didn’t happen often, but they struck frequently enough to keep me on edge.

  I didn’t know what was going on. All kinds of crazy that had built up inside me over the years started to bubble out. My head was full of conversations. I heard discussions from my childhood. I replayed fights I’d had with Bo years earlier. I went over the checklist I had created a few days earlier for the fiftieth birthday party I was planning for Bruce. The chatter never stopped.

  I relied on alcohol to get me through th
e thicket of noise and anxiety. I drank through the making of A Vision of Murder: The Story of Donielle in Vancouver. I drank even more in Toronto when I worked on the movie Sanctuary. I tried to be strict about my drinking, though. My alcohol consumption did not invade my day before 5:00 p.m. But then it was like troops storming the beaches of Normandy. By the end of a typical night, I would have gone through two bottles of wine myself.

  Bruce had no idea how much I consumed. At home, I had my secret system down to a science. I would pour a glass of wine, take a few sips, and as it would get lower in my glass, I would sneak back into the kitchen and fill it to the same level so it looked like I was barely drinking. Sometimes I would hide an open bottle of wine in other rooms so I could refill without going back to the kitchen.

  One night our friend Archie was over for dinner. A former marine and Gulf War veteran, Archie had worked as Bruce’s double on House of Secrets in New Orleans, and we had stayed close. He was like one of our kids. Neither Bruce nor Archie drank that night, but I had my glass of wine, which I secretly topped off throughout the evening until something happened. It was like a switch flipped; I don’t even remember. From what I have since been told or put together, I put Michael to bed and joined Bruce and Archie in the family room. I sat down on the dog bed in the middle of the floor, began talking to them, and then fell asleep. “Fell asleep”—that was denial talking. I passed out facedown in the dog bed.

  Bruce couldn’t wake me up so I could say good-bye when Archie got ready to leave. He made an excuse about me being tired; he may have believed it, too. Then he tried to take me to bed. Apparently I went off on him for waking me up and struggled as he helped me up the stairs. Anger came out of me like steam from a vent on a street, noxious and foul—and I had no clue. To this day, I have no recollection of that night.