Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke (41 page)

Mack has been a regular on
The Facts of Life
for the past few seasons, and as pleased as I am that they want him in every episode possible because he’s such a draw, I do have qualms about his being in a series. There is always the danger of bad acting habits and sitcom tricks developing; they’re very easy for anyone, even an adult, to fall into. And because of the hours he has to work, not only do we have scheduling problems as a family, he’s spending most of his time with adults, and that’s not as balanced a situation as I’d like it to be.

On the other hand, because Sean and Mack and I have so much in common now, the conversations we have over the dinner table are stimulating and fun. I’m so proud of the work they’ve done, I really wish parents didn’t have to hide just how proud they are in order to be socially acceptable. To go into a theater in Westwood when Sean was in Goonies, to sit down in a seat and look at a forty-foot screen with that kid on it—I don’t know that I will ever find words to describe how that felt. It was a validation of everything I’d been through, everything that was important to me. Even though his father and I were separated by that time, we held hands in that movie and we both cried. We cried with pride, and with love.

When it comes to relating my own past to their careers, however, I find that very little applies. One of the things I’ve discovered in general about raising kids is that they really don’t give a damn if you walked five miles to school. They want to deal with what’s happening now. Sometimes my experience can be helpful. I can remember, for instance, how left out I felt when everyone else got to party after a wrap and I had to get back in the pumpkin. So I try to arrange some alternative fun instead of just saying, “Get in the car, you don’t drink vodka anyway.”

Because of my experience, however, I have laid down strict rules in certain areas. For instance, there is no such
thing as these kids getting home from school and then being dragged to three or four auditions that afternoon. Although we’re all ambitious, we’re not that ambitious. I don’t want the boys getting involved in the seamy competitiveness that takes place when you look at a kid who happens to be your size and you hate him already. And I don’t want them dealing with rejection on a daily basis. I don’t believe in telling people not to take that stuff personally. When I’ve auditioned and failed to get the part, of course I’ve taken it as a personal rejection, because they were rejecting me. What else could they have been rejecting—the chair I was sitting in?

The other area in which I’m a real tough cookie is money. All expenses that would normally be taken out of a kid’s salary, things like clothing and professional photographs, are paid for, at my insistence, by John and me. It’s probably overkill on my part, but I feel strongly about this issue because I was so used by the Rosses. Even though Sean and Mack are acting because they want to, even though they’re enjoying themselves, they’re also having to give up a certain amount of kid time, and I believe there’s a premium on that. And I know the day will come when they’re going to say, “I could have done this, I could have done that,” so at the very least I want all the money they earn to be at their disposal someday.

Finally, my sons know that until they reach their majority, their parents are the ones in power. They are aware that their situation is under constant reevaluation and that one day their father or I could say, “We’ve been looking at this, and we really feel it’s time for you to stay in high school and play with the other guys.”

They know that whatever they get out of acting, and it is considerable, it’s not worth the expense of their essential selves. Their parents are really taskmasters when it comes to that. If I feel they’re becoming distorted emotionally or spiritually, getting an elevated opinion of themselves, I’m very tough with them, nearly cruel sometimes. I try to cut away the fat and leave them intact. I remind them that there were moments when I thought I was hot stuff, too, but now I’m scrubbing the floor. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that’s who I am and they’re stuck with me.

When it comes to raising Sean and Mack outside of their acting careers, I deal in more obvious limits and fewer thoughtless indulgences than I did with David and Alan and Tom. On the one hand, the lines of communication are very open—we have great laughs, they know everything there is to know about me. However, Sean and Mack don’t have the same freedom to run off to the local hangouts. I have been through kids who’ve had substance problems, and I do not intend to go through any more. If I have any regrets about my first three sons vis-à-vis my second two, it’s that I wish David and Al and Tom could have learned one tenth as much from me as I did from trying to raise them—and failing. I don’t mean that they’re failures, but that I didn’t do it the way I would have liked. I really went to school on them, and that’s been invaluable in raising Sean and Mack, and in raising me.

One phrase we use a lot around our house was so abused by the Rosses, I thought I would withhold it until the penalty of death was imminent, and that’s “I love you.” Sometimes we use it to say, “I feel vulnerable,” sometimes, “Hey, I’m reassuring you,” but never is it used in that completely thoughtless, transparent Hollywood way the Rosses had. I’ve decided that from the moment we walk out the door until we come back home our sensibilities are so assaulted by the world at large that we have to soak up (and not in a panicked way) as much love as we can get, simply to arm ourselves. It’s like going to the gas station for a refill. We humans need to hear “I love you,” and we need to hear it as often as we can.

W
orking on
It Takes Two
wasn’t like work at all. Never did I dream that I would fall into a situation that satisfying, and never did I dream that it could end so quickly and mysteriously. But those strong, positive feelings had a crucial side effect. During the show’s run, in 1982, I had a serious manic attack, and it’s only because I felt in such a positive, healthful, safe atmosphere that I didn’t cover up again, but had the courage to face the consequences.

The show came together very quickly. I’d met with Paul Witt, Tony Thomas, and Susan Harris to discuss an earlier series, and we’d made a lasting good impression on each other. I had excellent relations with ABC, partially because their top programming executive, Lou Ehrlict, had a son who played baseball with my kids and John was their coach. And both Richard Crenna and I were represented by the same agency. So when the idea for a comedy about a high-powered chief of surgery married to an equally high-powered legal type came up, it took just a twenty-minute meeting before Ehrlict said to one of his henchmen, “Well, what are we all hanging around for? We’re going with this, aren’t we?” And that was it.

What I loved about
It Takes Two
was that not only was
there a sophistication and intelligence to the characters and the situations we dealt with, but the show also dared to be a little old-fashioned. These folks were not insulting each other all the time, their love for each other and their children was apparent. The show was able to be nice without being saccharine. Even though my part had some problems, the bottom line was I woke up every morning, remembered where I was going, and grinned.

A total of twenty-two episodes of
It Takes Two
were filmed, and although we weren’t off the charts, our ratings were very healthy; even Cheers was invariably behind us. We were seemingly the fair-haired children of the network, and we thought we had a hit. Every once in a while we’d be lying in bed rehearsing and Crenna, whom I adored working with, and I would turn to each other and say with a giggle, “We could be doing this for ten years.” I would have been very, very happy to stay there, it felt that good.

Why the show was pulled after those twenty-two shows is something I’ve never gotten a satisfactory explanation for. What I believe happened is that ABC, panicked and committed to too many new shows, gave Witt-Thomas-Harris an impossible choice. They could have either another season of Benson, which would give that show five years, enough for very profitable syndication, or they could have a second year of
It Takes Two
. Not surprisingly, we became the sacrificial lamb. That was the year I was voted a People’s Choice Award as the most popular television actress for my work in
It Takes Two
. How do you decide not to stick with something so well liked one more time?

The manic attack I had during the series was touched off not by anything emotional but by an injection. I have suffered on and off from nodes on my vocal chords, and occasionally, when I’m smoking too much and working too hard, I will get laryngitis. We had a show that night, and I needed a quick cure. I went to a doctor who was recommended by someone at the studio, an extremely reputable man who didn’t know my history. He wasn’t the type who doled out cortisone left and right, but the “show must go on” stuff was being heavily laid on. I was insisting, “In two hours, I have
to talk, and I have to talk well.” So he gave me a shot, and I did talk well, but since cortisone and manic-depression don’t go together at all, the injection instantly kicked off an episode.

Insomnia hit that night. By morning I began having severe diarrhea as well as an overwhelming feeling of nervousness and edginess. Had to go to work, couldn’t get out of the bathroom. I finally pulled myself together, but I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t drink, and I had that old familiar feeling of my motor running but not going in any particular direction.

These symptoms continued for about a week. By then I’d lost a good deal of weight, I was completely dehydrated, and if I wasn’t hallucinating, I was certainly paranoid and having extremely volatile encounters with John. Physically I was in such a weakened condition that even navigating was rough, so the show was giving me a ride to the studio. One day I was trying to read through the script but I kept rushing to the bathroom to be sick. Finally, I passed out there and was taken home. Dr. Harold Arlen, our psychiatrist, was called. He came to see me and it was agreed that if I felt well enough, I’d see him in his office the next day.

When I walked into Arlen’s office, I was very shaky. He said, “Now, I don’t want you to be frightened by what I’m about to say to you. I suspected this before, but because it’s such a delicate thing to pinpoint, and because it’s something you really don’t want to be wrong about, I wanted to be as sure as I could. I think you are manic-depressive.”

From that moment on, I wasn’t frightened at all. It was such a relief, almost like a miracle, really, for someone to give what I’d gone through a name and a treatment, and I am ever in Dr. Arlen’s debt for having the skill and insight to diagnose me. The odd thing is, when I was a kid and had those panic attacks, usually related to dying, I used to pray for a pill. I’d say to myself, “There must be a pill. There’s a pill for everything. There must be a pill for this.” It turns out that there was.

The best way to describe what goes on during manic episodes is to talk about the mood swings, from very high euphoria to very low depression. In the manic phase, you’re wired, you’re edgy, your speech pattern changes. You talk
very quickly, almost as if you’re on speed, and one of the reasons I was often accused of being on drugs is because the behavior is similar to drug-induced activity. And when you’re in the real pit of the depression, you can look zonked out, as if you’re on Quaaludes.

Insomnia is a manic trait, as is spending a lot of money. Someone entering a phase will suddenly go on a wildly irrational shopping spree, buying things they not only don’t need or want but will never use. We’re not talking about spending too much money at the department store; we’re talking about buying five or six cars in a week or, in my case, flying all over the country in private planes to places I didn’t want to be with someone I didn’t want to be with. Yet even though it’s the disease that’s creating these situations, there’s a certain amount of responsibility I still insist on taking for the way I acted in them.

The treatment for manic-depression is a carefully regulated, twice-a-day dose of a chemical already present in the body, Lithium. New tests are run periodically to make sure the level of treatment is safe, because everything from climate to stress to how you’re eating can affect the dose. This is not a drug that makes you high or alters your mood; if you’ve got daily irritations—your children aren’t listening and the dog is eating the rug—you don’t take Lithium and feel better. All Lithium does is help correct an imbalance that’s already present in your body’s biological systems. Most people who have this condition are born with it, but it can remain dormant, in some cases forever. Different things can trigger it, and by the time I was twenty-four, I’d experienced every trauma on the list, including the separation of my parents and feeling abandoned first by my father and then by my mother.

There are, however, people who are definitely diagnosed as manic and who, for whatever reason, choose not to take their Lithium. Some people are talked out of it by nutritionists who feel there is a natural way to deal with the problem, some people get tired of the pill-taking routine, some people resist the whole notion. Eventually, however, and it could be as long as a year or so later, all of a sudden there’s a manic attack or a depression, and they’re right back to square one.

For myself, I would rather accept this as a condition I have, recognize the tremendous positive change in me, and say to myself, “This is it. For the rest of my life I take a pill in the morning and a pill at night.” Some creative people are especially resistant to Lithium; they believe that creativity is born of nutsiness and if you’re insane, you’re a genius. In fact, I’ve found that my creativity has been enhanced by the treatment, that the comfort I now feel with myself allows me to take much bigger risks than I ever would have before. The down side of the drug is so small compared to the release of my power over myself, why mess around?

The difference Lithium has made in my life starts with the absolute basics: being able to get up in the morning and not be afraid, not having the very first thought in my head when I wake and the very last thought before I go to sleep be of death. I have a sense of self-control in every area of my life—control of eating habits, control of sleeping habits, control of money-spending—that I never experienced until after Lithium therapy began. Even basic organization, something as simple as listing ten things and doing them, used to be impossible for me because I couldn’t organize my thoughts.