Confessions of a Prairie Bitch (14 page)

I thought there must be something Melissa Sue liked to do. I was excited when I saw that she had taken up backgammon and thought this might be my opportunity to finally break through her impenetrable shell. I didn’t know how to play at all, but I thought,
Even better! Not only is it a game she likes, but she can show off how good she is by teaching me to play it.
I marched up to her and expressed interest in the game. She looked bored. I said I didn’t know how to play and asked if it was difficult. She looked at me in utter disgust and said, “No, it figures you wouldn’t know how. You’ve always been a tad backwards.”

I was surprised by such an open display of hostility. It had seemed an unspoken agreement that to keep peace on the set, all hatreds were to be expressed in a more covert, Victorian manner. Just coming right out and insulting people to their face seemed unusual, even for her. I decided to go with the possibility, however unlikely, that this was an attempt at humor. Who knows what this girl thought was a joke? Maybe “backwards” was just her way of saying “dizzy” or “silly.” I laughed nervously. “A tad backwards? Oh, I like that! Yeah, I’d say I’m sort of ‘backwards’!”

She wasn’t laughing. “No,” she continued coldly, “actually, I’d say you’re a lot backwards. In fact, you’re quite stupid.” Ah. So apparently she
didn’t
feel like teaching me to play backgammon. And as I didn’t feel like finding out what she was going to say next, I got the hell out of there.

Everyone assumed Missy’s attitude had something to do with her mother, but we never knew for sure. I never even heard her raise her voice to Missy, but there just seemed to be something odd about their relationship. Some people weren’t subtle about saying so, like Katherine MacGregor, who was never subtle about anything. One morning in makeup, Katherine was explaining how after years of therapy, she had realized that she hated her mother. Her mother had been extremely cruel to her, it turns out, and she had tried to pretend for years that it didn’t bother her. She had felt great relief when she admitted she couldn’t stand the woman. Melissa Sue walked in right in the middle of this, just as Katherine was saying, “And that’s how I realized I hated my mother!”

Missy was horrified. She actually spoke up: “You can’t do that. You can’t hate your mother.”

Katherine turned on her, like a dog smelling fear. “Yes, you can. Lots of people hate their mothers! No, it’s not supposed to be that way, but sometimes mothers are horrible and hate their own children. And some people hate their mothers!”

“But you
can’t
hate your own mother!” Missy protested.

“And just who told you THAT?” Katherine sneered ominously.

“My…my mother,” the poor girl stammered.

“A-HA!” roared Katherine, pointing an accusing finger at her, like Mrs. Oleson cornering a shoplifter in the Mercantile. She had clearly hit a nerve. The poor girl turned and ran out of the makeup trailer. Auntie Marion would have never allowed me to do anything that mean.

To add to the Missy mystery, there was the legendary “one good day.” It was during the first season, when Melissa Gilbert was having a birthday party. She invited me and a group of girls to go to Magic Mountain. Miraculously, she had invited Melissa Sue Anderson. It was early on in the evolution of our relationships, so perhaps she was still holding out hope.

Being one of the first parties with cast members I had been invited to, my father insisted I dress up. This meant a “dressy casual” print skirt and espadrilles. All the other girls arrived in overalls and sneakers. I was now officially a total dork. But to their credit, no one held it against me. We were driven out to Magic Mountain by Harold Abeleze, Melissa’s lawyer stepdad. (Her parents divorced when she was young.) He was remarkably calm and patient for a man stuck driving a car full of twelve-and thirteen-year-old screaming girls for hours.

I have never been one for roller coasters, especially anything that goes upside down, so I spent most of the afternoon holding everyone’s purses and sweaters as they went on the serious, hard-core rides. (Yes, my dork rating was through the roof at this point.) I had a good time, though, as we ate junk food and shrieked and gossiped and had a perfectly normal teenage-girl day. And to my and Melissa Gilbert’s utter amazement, Melissa Sue was…happy. Really, genuinely, not-faking-it, smiling, laughing, and tossing her hair happy, all day long. We even sang songs in the car on the way back. (Poor Harold.)

Then her mother came to pick her up. It was like a dark cloud passed in front of the sun. She became quiet again, and her facial expression returned to its normal bored stare. Over the years, I saw her put on a show of smiling for people—no matter how hard she was scowling, she always threw on the smile whenever Michael showed up—but I will always remember that one time when she actually seemed…relaxed.

CHAPTER TEN

MELISSA AND ME…OR “TO PEE OR NOT TO PEE”

NELLIE:
Half the time, you don’t even SMELL like a girl! You’re either sweaty, or you stink of fish!

LAURA:
Well…I sweat a lot, and I fish a lot!

I
f you haven’t been up to beautiful Sonora, California, or seen the majestic Stanislaus River, I will tell you, it’s breathtaking. The river is also freezing cold and has incredibly strong currents. People drown in it regularly. So, of course, the producers decided in Season 2 that it would be a good idea to stick me and Melissa in this river and see if we lived long enough to finish the show. (And you thought the British invented
Survivor
?) The episode was called “The Campout” and involved the Olesons and the Ingallses going off into the woods on an ill-fated camping spree, resulting in Nellie’s near drowning.

Now, the producers were not without mercy. First off, both Melissa and I were given wet suits to wear under our costumes. This not only provided an element of flotation but also kept the cold water from direct contact with our bodies. A lot of the people who fell into the river without wet suits or vests found that their chest muscles tended to seize up in the cold, making it even more difficult to breathe and/or swim, causing them to die quickly. In addition to being spared that, we had numerous safety measures in place. In the scene where we are floating downstream, clinging to what appears to be a clump of driftwood and old bushes, we are actually holding on to a large, black inflated inner tube covered in driftwood and old bushes (hard to sink).

Unfortunately, we were not tied to this craft in any way. It was our responsibility to hold on. Besides, there was that bit at the end of the episode where we had to abandon our clump and swim to shore (very dicey). At one point, William Claxton, who was directing this episode, briefly considered a sequence where we would have gone over some medium-size falls with the raft. (Well, not Melissa and me—professional stuntwomen pretending to be us.) Mercifully, someone suggested they first try a shot with dummies. On the first bump, the heads were torn from the bodies on impact. The rest was obliterated shortly thereafter. Needless to say, that sequence was removed from the script.

As it was, all we had to do was not be stupid enough to let go of the raft, and when we reached the one safe part of the river where we could realistically paddle to shore, we’d just have to remember not to stop paddling at any point, and we’d pretty much be okay. As we were preparing to shoot the scene, William Claxton explained the situation: “All right, all you have to do is go from here to over there. It’s not that far, or that deep. If for some reason the current catches you, you slip, or you lose your footing or whatever, don’t panic. Ron and a bunch of the guys are down there in the bushes, and they’ll catch you.”

Our attention was directed to a group of smiling grips in black wet suits, hiding in the shrubbery, looking like a Navy SEAL unit. “Now, should the guys be unable to catch you for some reason, you’re too far out in the water, or the current’s too strong, a few feet down from them we have a rope strung across the river. Grab it and hang on; we’ll come pull you out. If you miss that rope, there’s another rope about fifteen feet down. Grab that.”

Melissa and I still felt a bit skittish. “Um, what if we miss the second rope?” I inquired.

“Well, honey, after that, we pick up your bodies in the next town,” explained the stunt coordinator. He wasn’t exactly kidding. About twenty yards after that last rope was that waterfall they tried the dummies out on.

Now, although Melissa and I both knew that our brave crew loved us and would gladly drown themselves to the last man trying to save us, we also realized that many big, strong professional rafters had indeed died in this river, so it might not be up to them. We knew that, as usual, our survival depended on remembering those valuable four little words from our stunt team: “Just don’t fuck up.”

So, on the first take, when our little pile of shrubbery beached on the rocks, and it was time to make a break for it to shore, did we ever. It wasn’t far, but all I could think of, much like when you’re climbing a ladder, and your mind keeps saying, “Don’t look down!” was “DO NOT look downstream!” When my foot touched bottom without slipping, I breathed a sigh of relief and toppled forward onto the sand.

Of course, we found this sort of thing dreadfully exciting. What really bugged us was the cold. Well, that and the other issue. You see, Melissa and I were standing patiently, hip deep in water, waiting for the director and crew to set the shot and whatnot. Waiting and waiting and waiting…When Melissa said, “God, do I have to pee!”

“Me, too, now that you mention it.”

So off we trundled to AD Maury Dexter to tell him it was time for us to use the ladies’ room. “Now, girls, there’s a slight problem here,” Maury pointed out. “The bathrooms are all the way up the hill. If you go to the bathroom now, we have to put you in the car, drive you up the hill,
take off
the costumes, take off the wet suits, and have you go pee. Then you’ll have to put on the wet suits” (the now soggy and hard to put back on wet suits), “put the costumes back on” (ditto; actually, double ditto), “and we’ll have to drive you back down the hill. Do you have any idea how long this is all going to take?”

We groaned. We knew this would be a huge hassle, and we remembered what a pain these stupid suits were to put on that morning back when they were all nice and dry and full of talcum powder. We could only imagine what a total pain in the ass it would be to try to repeat the procedure soaking wet. “Look, it’s only an hour and a half till lunch. Why don’t you girls just hang on, and you’ll be done with this shot by then, okay?” We sighed and trudged off back to the river.

Time passed. And passed. Slowly. Water rushed by. Rushing, rushing, rushing. Splashing, trickling, sloshing. And the cold. We were standing waist high in freezing water; I realized I could no longer feel my feet. My lips had begun to go slightly blue, when I turned to look at Melissa. She was smiling. A little too much. Not a nice, natural smile, but an evil, satisfied, smirking smile of, shall we say, discovery. And her eyes were just a little too wide.

“Oh, God no, tell me you
didn’t
!” I said.

“Do it. It’ll keep you warm,” she replied.

“Oh, yuck, that is sooo gross, Melissa!”

“No, listen, I’m telling you! Do it! Just a little at a time. It warms up the whole suit. Besides, it’s still only twelve-thirty. You’re not seriously going to hold out for another hour?”

She had a good point. Well, two good points, actually. I was freezing, and I really had to go. So with all the strength it took to overcome fourteen years of toilet training, I peed in my pants. God, she was right. I did feel better. I no longer felt like my kidneys were going to burst, and the wet suit heated up like, well, like someone had just taken a big hot piss in it, frankly, but there you are. It was better than freezing. And who would know? We were more than waist deep
in a river,
for God’s sake. It wasn’t like anyone was gonna hear the trickling.

So there the future president of the Screen Actors Guild and I stood for the next hour or so, happily pissing away in our wet suits (just a little at a time, we learned: the trick is to make it last). But it wasn’t like no one ever found out. After all, the wardrobe women had to pick up the suits and costumes from our dressing rooms. I don’t know exactly who screamed at whom, and I can only imagine what epithets were used, but all I know is, we were never denied bathroom privileges again.

Being with Melissa was never dull—which is why we loved spending time together away from
Little House.
You would think we’d have been sick of each other at the end of a long work week, but no, we made a habit of having slumber parties at each other’s homes. Of course, sometimes we were the only guests. We didn’t care. It was just an excuse to stay up all night and hang out together.

We had different living arrangements and families with totally different lifestyles and levels of wealth. Melissa’s father, Paul Gilbert, was a successful actor, and her family already had money before she was on
Little House,
so they lived in a big house in Encino with a guest house and maids. My family lived in a two-bedroom apartment in West Hollywood, where my father ran his management office out of the dining room. We didn’t have a guest house or a maid. We had a pullout sofa in the living room and my dad running around with a vacuum.

It was sort of like the “Town Party, Country Party” episode of the show, except Melissa lived in the Mercantile with all the dolls and the fancy furniture, and I was the one with the trundle bed and the creek (except, in my case, the creek we went to play in was Santa Monica Boulevard). Despite our differences in status, Melissa loved coming over to sleep at my place as much as, if not more than, I liked going to her house.

At my house, a big treat was going to the supermarket and buying all sorts of cake mixes and frostings to then make into elaborately decorated cakes. Of course, our idea of “elaborate” was a bit closer to “chaos,” resulting in huge, sloppy purple-and-green things covered in silver and gold sprinkles. We didn’t care, as long as chocolate was involved. We bought tons of stuff: soda, Twinkies, candy, cupcakes, and things like Screaming Yellow Zonkers. I later found out that part of the treat for Melissa was that in her world, she didn’t go to the store. Groceries just sort of appeared at her house, bought by the help or delivered. Her house was way up in the hills and not in walking distance of a local store. She’d never been allowed to stroll out the front door and say, “Hey, I’m picking up a few things, I’ll be back later.”

And she wasn’t allowed to have sugar. At all. No candy, no gum, no cookies, no cupcakes, no soda, none of it. It was all expressly forbidden by her mother, a minor detail that Melissa conveniently neglected to mention to me or my parents or anyone else for about fifteen years. Essentially she came to my house for the sugar and total lack of supervision. Who could blame her? She was like a dog off the leash.

One of the best parts of going to the store was freaking out people who recognized us. What on earth would Laura Ingalls and Nellie Oleson be doing in the local supermarket, but more importantly, what the hell were they doing
together
? Fans of the show really believed us to be mortal enemies. Melissa once had a woman come up to her and warn her that I was in the store. People were frightened for her safety and tried to protect her from me. We thought this the height of hilarity and went to as many stores as we could to see how often we could re-create this experience.

One time, I took her to the 7-Eleven for Slurpees (we loved to see who could get a brain freeze faster), and we decided to buy these interesting little cakes called BabaRums. They were based on the real dessert baba au rhum, which has lots of real rum in it. But since they looked like Twinkies, and the checkout person had no issue selling them to kids, we assumed they didn’t have any real alcohol in them.

We assumed wrong. After we quickly scarfed down three or four, the rum kicked in. “Oh my God, I’m drunk!” whispered Melissa.

I realized that indeed she reeked of alcohol. These little cakes had been absolutely soaked in booze. We then decided that this was screamingly funny and ran back into the store and bought as many as we could carry out. Good call, as about a week later, someone noticed a bunch of eight-year-olds getting hammered at the school lunch table, and it soon hit the papers. BabaRums were revealed to be about forty proof and promptly taken off the market.

Years later, after Melissa recovered from a battle with alcoholism, she tried to pin it on me. “See? It’s all your fault!” she joked. “You’re the one who turned me onto BabaRums at the 7-Eleven!”

For Melissa, being with me was being free. She never mentioned to me or my parents the part about what TV shows she wasn’t supposed to be watching or if there was something called a “bedtime” she was supposed to adhere to, or any nonsense like that. As a result, a typical weekend at my place always included staying up to watch
Saturday Night Live.
This was when the show was still new, fresh, politically oriented, and actually funny. These were the days of Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, and John Belushi. We had a blast, eating huge piles of junk food washed down with punch and soda and watching not only
SNL
but all the late-night totally uncut movies shown on that new fabulous invention, cable TV.

And, of course, there was the thrill of danger. Real danger? No, not much. But to her, my neighborhood was really “slumming it.” The first time she came to the front door of my apartment way back during our first year of the show (she and her whole family came to take me Christmas shopping), she stood in the doorway and actually said, no exaggeration: “Hurry up and let’s get out of here, before we get stabbed!” The apartment was in West Hollywood at Hayworth and Fountain, not exactly a dangerous neighborhood. I found this hysterical and tried to imagine what she would do in South Central.

A couple of years later, in 1976, my family moved just down the street and wound up in the same apartment building as Gene LeBell, the famous wrestler and stuntman, whose mother owned the Olympic Auditorium. He made the news when he and a friend were arrested on suspicion of the murder of a business associate (though he was later acquitted of the charges). Everyone in the building was questioned by the FBI, and the atmosphere around the pool was rather awkward when he returned out on bail. Melissa absolutely begged to come over when he was released, and as soon as her mother dropped her off, she whispered with excited glee, “Which one’s the murderer?”

Going to her house was very different, yet we managed to get up to a surprising amount of juvenile delinquency just the same. The place was huge. To me, it was like a hotel, with long halls with several rooms on each side. And there was that guest house, with a living room, a bedroom, its own bathroom, and a small kitchen. My entire family would have considered it reasonable living quarters. It was at one time the maid’s quarters, then the pool house, and finally Melissa’s first apartment when she turned eighteen. It made for great slumber parties, as it could accommodate huge numbers of girls, and, being separate from the house, you could make lots of noise without annoying Melissa’s mom (which was something you really, really didn’t want to do).