by Sands Hall
“This honey,” Ball concluded, “is what Shakespeare gives us to work with, to utilize as we build the architecture of our characters. You’ll find, almost always, that the music of a character’s verse jangles when his emotions do. All right. Class dismissed.”
I stumbled out of that sunlit studio as if I’d swallowed the most magic of elixirs. It had to do with Shakespeare, absolutely; with theater, yes; language, yes; but above all, the class offered an astonishing new road, which enticed me then and entices me still: a close engagement with words. In 1970, when I arrived at UCI, in part because all my life I’d been told I was “dramatic,” certainly because of my brother, but mostly because of that astonishing hour with Bill Ball, I headed straight to the theater department.
but i was a chubby girl. Mom and I began to have nasty fights about my weight. One afternoon, she suggested that I try the diet drink Metrecal.
“You just drink one can for each meal,” she said, “and all necessary vitamins and minerals are included.”
She was making pozole for an English department party and had handed me a knife to cut up tripe, the stomach lining of a cow. I sawed away, unable to believe what I was hearing. My mother didn’t want us to eat sugar! She’d raised us on homemade yogurt. She believed in wheat germ and whole wheat bread!
“This is an important choice you can make about your whole life, right now,” she said.
“I’m me!” I said. “I’m me! I’m me!”
“Except this is not you,” Mother said.
I closed my eyes and discovered a rage so huge it filled my entire universe with red. I blinked, startled that “seeing red” was not just a phrase. I threw down the knife and ran up the stairs and slammed the door.
A few days later, cans of Metrecal, chocolate and vanilla, each containing three hundred calories, appeared in the refrigerator. More than once, after sipping one of those cans of goo, I realized, with horror, that I’d put myself over the daily caloric limit—and I hadn’t even had dinner yet. I’d give up for the day, telling myself I’d start over in the morning. I wore tent-like clothes and, when I wasn’t on campus, sat in my bedroom hunched over my guitar, writing sad songs.
And then the dean of the drama department, Clayton Garrison, selected Kiss Me, Kate for the spring production. To my utter surprise, he took a huge gamble and cast me as one of the leads: the spunky, flirty Lois.
It changed my life. For one thing, horrified by the idea of dancing and singing in front of an audience as a fat girl, for months I ate nothing but carrots and Juicy Fruit gum, farting all the while. As I shed pound after pound (thirty of them), filling the air with cheese, I seldom slept. I lived on adrenaline. Dad fretted that I was like his mother, by which he meant fanatical; as she was dying, she’d insisted on ingesting nothing but milk and lime juice. I took this as a warning to beware some obsessive part of my nature, and, indeed, once I started to lose weight, I only wanted to lose more. I threw myself into activities that would keep me from thinking about food. When I wasn’t in rehearsal or dance class or doing homework, I practiced voice, studied lines, reviewed choreography. And I began to understand that I could dance, that I could sing more than wavering folk songs.
However, in the Clan (or cult) of Hall, sophisticated people enjoy drama and opera; simple people like musicals. Other than the rock operas Tommy and Hair, the closest thing to a musical that ever rotated on our turntable was Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Even though the reviews of Kiss Me, Kate were stellar, and even though I was told that I was “made” for musical theater, I knew I wouldn’t pursue it. I’d be a serious actress, playing serious roles.
oak—more and more he was Oak—earned his B.A. from Irvine in just two years and headed to Boston University, where he pursued a master’s in fiction. Holding his example before me, I, too, chose to zip through Irvine. That astonishing hour with Bill Ball in mind, I applied to and was accepted into ACT’s Advanced Training Program. Two years later, after a marvelous summer playing, among other roles, Imogen in Cymbeline with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, I picked up my sister Tracy, now married and living in Colorado, and we headed across the country to attend our brother’s wedding: Oak was marrying a woman named Mary in her hometown in Massachusetts.
I was twenty-three and my car was packed; after the wedding, I was moving to New York. My brother was there; that’s where I’d go, too.
And so I moved into an apartment on Manhattan’s East Side (five-floor walkup, tub in the kitchen) for no other reason than it was near Oak and Mary’s (six-floor walkup, shared toilet down the hall). As I moved into Oak’s neighborhood, I also moved into the circle of theater artists who gathered in his living room and at all-you-can-drink Sunday brunches. Drinking seemed kind of essential. Sometimes there were even empty vodka bottles amid the crumpled beer cans in Mary and Oak’s trash. I was concerned but mostly dazzled. I wasn’t the only one who thought of them as a contemporary Scott and Zelda.
Now and again, however, I thought about the storm that had blasted in the afternoon of their Cape Cod wedding. A late summer nor’easter, it had blown our skirts and ties and hair sideways, sent ham sandwiches whirling. Raised as I was on the meaning of signs and portents, I wondered what it might mean, what the heavens had in store for them.
I could not have imagined.
wills and things
Several times I called the number Skip had given us when he’d signed up for that course, but the phone just rang. I worried what it meant that Scientology hadn’t helped him. I hoped he’d found something that had—then worried that I’d had that thought.
Sometimes, as I drove home from the Center, I imagined I’d just keep heading east, to Grand Junction, and accept Tracy’s invitation to stay with them. As I waited to find a good time to talk to Skye about this possibility—I wouldn’t be leaving or anything—I felt like a huge, glowing spirit, bending, like the angels in the carol, on hovering wing. It reminded me of what I’d read about suicidal people who’d finally decided on a day and time, how those around them commented on how happy they’d seemed, how content. “Just for a few months,” I practiced.
One night I arrived home to find a message on my machine. “Sands. This is your father. We have something to say to you. Call.”
By this time, I expected the curt tones that hovered over conversations with my parents, as if warmth or laughter might lead me to believe they approved of what I was doing. But the tone of his voice on the machine was not only cold, it was terrifying. I hadn’t talked to them in months, hadn’t seen them for almost a year. It was too late to call that night; I tossed and turned and in the morning drove to a pay phone. I wasn’t going to have that conversation at home, where Skye could hear the betrayal that showed up in my voice every time I talked to my parents, my in-spite-of-everything-beloved parents.
“Hello?” Mother’s cheery voice.
I imagined their San Francisco flat, where they spent fall, winter, and spring, with Dad commuting once a week to Irvine for his teaching duties. Summer found them back in Squaw Valley, preparing for and then running the Community of Writers. A perfect life.
“Hi, Mom!” I did my best to sound like the cheerful, successful young lady they’d once imagined I’d be. As if I had a perfect life, too.
“Sands!” So much love in her voice. “How’s my darling girl?”
My eyes filled with tears. The cars rushing by looked as if they were underwater.
“I’m fine. Really fine. Just—great.”
“Well, it’s a lovely day here in the City,” she said. “We’re about to have brunch with Leah and Jerry, and then we’ll go to the flea market. And how are things with you?”
I could not come up with a single specific to answer that question. They didn’t want to hear, and I didn’t want to tell them, about my mate, my work, my spiritual path. I certainly couldn’t tell them I was thinking of leaving. What if I didn’t make it h
appen?
“How’s it going with your plan to apply to graduate school?” Mom asked.
“I don’t think I’m a good enough writer,” I said.
“Of course you are! You’re your father’s daughter! Here, he wants to speak to you.”
A few inaudible muttered words. Standing in the phone booth, traffic whooshing by, I twisted the thick metal snake of the phone cord.
“Sands? Your father here.” His voice was stern. “I’ll be at Irvine for my Tuesday seminar. I’d like you to have lunch with me beforehand. I have something to say to you.”
“Okay.”
“The Beachcomber, in Newport. It’s on the water, remember. Noon.”
At the other end, the phone settled into its cradle, interrupting Mother’s “Don’t hang up without letting me say good—”
I held the cold plastic to my ear and listened to the dial tone.
that tuesday, i pulled into a parking space outside the Beachcomber. In the rearview mirror, my face looked pale and scared. I shook out my skirt, locked the car, pushed through the thick doors of the restaurant. Dad was waiting by the hostess station. He smiled when he saw me, but his eyes were unfriendly.
He ordered us glasses of wine. He raised his eyebrows when I said no thanks to one—I’d be on post that night—but didn’t address it, and neither did I. Even though I’d been working at the Center for almost a year, I’d yet to let my parents know how I was earning my small but steady salary.
The talk over our fish was as spiky as the bones we picked out of them. I waited for him to tell me what he had to say, but his face was shuttered. I launched topic after topic, trying to appear smart and witty and informed:
Skye and I joined this protest about the U.S. sending arms to the Contras . . . ?
Did you read McPhee’s essay in The New Yorker about orange trees . . . ?
Skye’s rented me a piano! It was quite a scene, getting it up the stairs . . . ?
He pushed his plate to one side. “Your brother’s no longer living with Tracy. Did you know that?”
I did know that. Tracy had called to tell me. It was among the things that allowed me to imagine I could stay with her. Their spare room would be open.
“He’s in Chicago now. Moved to be with that woman, Robin.”
That woman Robin had been taking care of him—he couldn’t take care of himself. She was supporting him. But I didn’t say anything.
Dad’s face twisted. He shook his head. “Both of you with your fucked-up lives.”
I looked down so he wouldn’t see the tears flare into my eyes. It struck me that “fuck” started and ended with the same letters as “flunk,” and had similar impact.
As the waitress set down the check, Dad said, “About this going back to school. Where are you thinking of applying?”
“Umm. The Iowa Workshop, I guess?”
“Of course Iowa. And Stanford. Do you have stories for your application? You need to get on that. Most deadlines are mid-December.” He swallowed the last of his wine. “Let’s go back to my office.”
I followed him along the beautifully named Jamboree Road, which at the time was still bounded on either side by open fields, and onto the Irvine campus. We parked and walked together without speaking to the building that housed the English department. While he checked his inbox I chatted with the department secretary, Betty, who remembered me from my own time at UCI fourteen years before. Then, our shoes squeaking on the shiny linoleum, I followed my father down the hallway to his office.
Even during the years I was on campus, I’d rarely visited him there. He wasn’t one for decorating. There were loaded bookshelves, a metal desk, wooden chairs. He motioned me into one of these and circled around to the other side of the desk. My feet reached the floor, but it felt as if they didn’t. I felt squished and bent.
He looked fierce. He didn’t sit.
He cleared his throat. “Do you plan to continue with your so-called religion?”
I want to leave, I couldn’t say. I intend to leave. I’m going to go stay with Tracy. But I knew how much lay between the intention and the action.
“Your mother and I have been talking. There is the question, you see, of wills and things.”
I blinked. Wills!
“In spite of all we’ve asked you to examine about the squandering of your talents, your education, your upbringing, your life, you continue to be involved with this cult.”
My mind churned. Wills! A will was a plot device in nineteenth-century novels. It had never occurred to me that my parents had a will. That was not something people like my parents did, did they? Think about the future in that monetary way? Wills were for Republicans. Surely not Democrats. In any case, was there any money to put into a will? Since the trip to Europe, Mom and Dad had been broke—it’s why Dad had taken the Irvine job. Also, wills meant you were thinking about dying. Were they thinking about dying?
“That religion of yours has got its claws into you, and it’s clear it’s not going to let go. So your mother and I have come to a decision.”
I pictured her in the room with us, her blue eyes steely.
“If you continue on with Scientology, you will not receive a cent of our money.”
I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. What money? I had never, once, thought about inheritance. It had never occurred to me.
“We’ve read what that church of yours does. Anything we give you, you’ll be forced to give to them. So. If you continue to be a Scientologist, we will write you out of our will. We can’t put it any more clearly than that.”
I said nothing.
“If in some way we cannot foresee you do somehow benefit from our money after we are gone, and you use it for that religion of yours, you may expect curses from beyond the grave.” His voice shook. “Do you understand?”
I did understand.
I sat there for a long minute, trying to formulate a joke about his hatred for a religion that actually supported the idea of being able to make things happen from “beyond the grave.” But I could say nothing.
We did not hug or even say goodbye. He busied himself with some papers on his desk.
Back down that long hallway I walked, shoes squeaking, everything blurred with the tears I didn’t want to spill out of my eyes. I waved at Betty but didn’t stop. I didn’t want her to know my father and I had had an altercation. I didn’t want her to have any idea I was a Scientologist, I didn’t want anyone to know I was a Scientologist. And wasn’t there something pretty wrong with that?
I managed to hold back the tears until I was in my car, and then I wailed all the way north on 5, talking to the rush-hour traffic around me as if it were my parents, or a jury I was trying to convince. “I think about leaving all the time!”
The brake lights of the car ahead of me flashed, flashed again. I caught my breath with an awful realization. “If I do leave, you’ll think it’s only because I want your money!”
As the traffic moved at a clip around a long curve, I spoke aloud, “Hey, there, Mom and Dad. So I’ve left Scientology?” I extended an open palm to the windshield. “Now, can I have some of your money?”
The car ahead braked again, fast and hard. I slammed on my own brakes to keep from crashing. All around, tires squealing, traffic came to a halt. “Flunk, flunk, flunk!” I cried, hitting the steering wheel. “How on earth can I leave now?”
you do know that guy’s a scientologist?
It would take decades to understand that when my brother fell off a bridge and so massively broke his crown, I not only lost him: I lost myself. I had shaped myself around his example—in some ways, against it—for so long that when he wrecked his way, I wrecked mine. While he drank, smoked, screwed, tried everything, I sat in my ivory tower, meditating, writing (often sad) love songs, and drinking herbal tea. Even so, it was his lead I was f
ollowing as he hacked his way through the forest, and I was grateful for that lantern glinting ahead amid the looming trees. So when he fell and damaged his brain, and I lost my brother, my leader, my model, I plunged into a vertigo that—so it seems now—spun me directly toward the Church.
The idea that Scientology might offer answers may have been planted the day I attended a seminar given by a famous acting teacher. By this time, winter 1976, my brother and friends had formed the League of Theatre Artists. Exploiting Manhattan’s passion for raw, original Off-Off-Off-Broadway theater, we were going about creating it in storefronts and basements: trucking props and set pieces around the streets and even subways of New York. In that group, often spearheading activities, was Kate Kelly, a red-haired, vivacious beauty. I envied Kate’s certainty about being an actor; with what sometimes seemed like conflicting interests and foci required by songwriting, theater, and writing, it was easy to worry that I was pursuing the wrong path. And Kate was always on the lookout for ways to better her craft; she studied with the legendary teacher Uta Hagen, and with Kate’s encouragement I auditioned for and was accepted into that class as well. She often invited me to join her for movement workshops or acting seminars.
One morning, she phoned with such an idea. “This teacher’s famous for finding acting problems,” she said. “We’re too late to sign up to perform a scene, but at least we can watch him work with others while they perform theirs.”
We met up outside a studio on the West Side and pretty much tiptoed into the space. A palpable, almost cathedral-like hush permeated the room. The acting area was an empty square created by rows of chairs. Into this square strode a thickset man who radiated charisma. He made jokes about being a New York Greek now living in Los Angeles, how glad he was to be back “where there is weather!”
Settling into a chair, he said, “First scene?”
Two actors moved into the space, took a moment to get situated, and began to speak. The teacher watched for just a few minutes before getting to his feet. “Why are you talking like that?” he said to the man.