High On Arrival (24 page)

“Just one!” she’d beg.

I said to Shane, “Okay, you know how this works, right? You come home from school, clean up, and go to auditions. You’re home by five, then you have dinner, do your homework, and go to bed. I was on the set eight hours a day when I was fourteen. That’s what your days are like if you’re a working actor.” Shane usually came home from school, rode his bike, ran around, chased the cat, got dirty.

He said, “You mean I can’t play when I get home from school?”

I said, “Not on days you have auditions. Not if you have a gig. Acting is a job. It’s work.”

Shane said, “Oh, forget it.” He jumped on his bike and went down the block to the library. I smiled and watched as he rode away. I wanted him to have a childhood. I wanted him to look back and say, “I had a blast as a kid.”

In fifth grade Shane started at Highland Hall, the same Waldorf school that I had attended and loved. I had hitchhiked to school, often on acid, with a ready supply of signed excuses from my father. My son was dropped off and picked up right outside the school entrance by his mother, then brought home and served dinner.

When I left Highland Hall I went to high school in an office in the
One Day at a Time
studio. I never experienced all those great feelings of companionship—the camaraderie of high school, college—so I don’t miss them. But I saw them through Shane.

• • •

Every morning I stood at the kitchen counter, packing his lunch, the light in the kitchen reminding me of another season passing, another year of school for him, a child growing in time. I helped him with his homework, knew the names of his friends, and chatted with their mothers on campus and at school events. Shane was my little person. My primary purpose on this planet was to be there for him. I had lost that ability for a while, but it came naturally to me now.

As a parent you try to keep your child safe. It’s a gargantuan responsibility. With my new role as a parent, I couldn’t help but reflect on my father. Time and distance usually lessen anger and resentment toward others, but now, looking at my life with a mother’s perspective, from a sober, family-oriented angle, I was shocked at the kind of parent Dad was. What was he thinking?
What could he have been thinking?
I knew firsthand that drugs destroy parenting instincts, but—for me—those instincts and the desire to be a good parent were what gave me the strength to kick drugs. My father actively, enthusiastically guided me down his treacherous path. Why? Maybe for my father to be a parent, he himself would have had to grow up. It was impossible for him to impose rules on us because he refused to do it for himself. You can’t draw lines and set limits if you believe in hedonism. Hedonism is infinity.

Once I was sober, I put distance between myself and Dad. At first, I had tried to save Dad from himself. I was a convert to sobriety, and I wanted to proselytize. I said, “How can you not see that this is killing you?”

Dad wouldn’t hear it. He said, “Get down off your high horse and leave me alone. I’m fine. I’m not like you. I’m an old hand at this. Don’t expect me to change.” Dad was not an old dog you could teach new tricks. He was a stubborn hound. Eventually I gave up.

Dad and I were now living on different planes of existence, and it was hard, if not impossible, to make the transition from the unhealthily intense bond we had had to a warm, loving, meet-you-for-brunch relationship. I didn’t want to sever ties with him completely. I still needed him in my life. Nor did I see myself as a victim of incest. I held my father responsible, but I also had my part in what went on between us, and I never believed that Dad deliberately set out to hurt me. He was in his own reality, and I was vulnerable. But one thing I knew for sure was that I was never going to put myself in that position again, not with Dad, not with anybody. Sobriety was my protection. He was never going to touch me again. And he never did.

So I still saw Dad frequently. There were family weekends in Palm Springs. Chynna’s wedding. And I never stopped loving him. He was my father. I loved him very much. But I had changed.

26

When I first moved to L.A. to rekindle my acting career, I stayed in my mother’s condo, in my childhood bedroom. Over the past few years Shane and I had been making regular visits to see my mother and Chuck. Chuck was like a grandfather to Shane, playing on the floor with him, and those visits were a happy time for all of us.

The Northridge earthquake struck on January 17, 1994, and I was in the exact place I’d been twenty-three years earlier, for the last big earthquake. This one was even worse—the whole world was shaking apart—and when I emerged from my room I saw that the floor was covered with broken china and glass. I went to the laundry room to get the broom and found the door blocked by an enormous metal tool cabinet that had fallen. I found adrenaline-fueled superhuman strength to lift it, and felt that I’d been put there to help my mother and Chuck pick up the pieces.

They had to move out of the apartment for a year, and during that time it became clear that Chuck had Alzheimer’s. Chuck was the sweetest man. He loved Shane like a grandson. But now he started behaving unpredictably. He lined up all of his shoes as if they were about to march out the front door. He threw away the fake Christmas tree that my mother had used every Christmas for ten years. He’d say, “What do you mean, Chuck? My name is Richard!” There were tales of him leaving the house and walking for hours. He had walked all the way from Tarzana to the Van Nuys airport, about seven miles. The cops would pick him up, check his ID, and say, “Mr. January, we’re going to bring you home.” One day we were sitting in the living room and he was making a funny clicking sound he liked to make. Out of nowhere he looked at me and said, “I should probably just walk out in front of a bus because I’m losing everything and I know I’m losing it.” Then he went back to making his funny sound.

Poor Chuck. My mom kept him home, but the stress of his decline took its toll on her. I was in New York making a low-budget indie film and staying with my friend Grainger when my mother started calling at all hours of the night to tell me that I was a little bitch, a horrible daughter, and that she was going to disown me. When I came back to L.A., she’d call and ask me to bring her some vodka, and when I refused, she told me I didn’t love her anymore. She’d roll up to the door three sheets to the wind, drunk and mean in front of her grandson. I understood—I knew my mother, and I knew that she wasn’t a horrible woman. She couldn’t face the pain of her life, and it was driving her to destroy herself. She was an alcoholic. I understood, but it was hurtful. Eventually I had to stop answering the phone.

The only benefit to the Alzheimer’s was that most of the time Chuck forgot to drink. He forgot he was an alcoholic. But he still had his moments. Just as I was packing my bags to go on the road for the musical
Grease
, I got a call from the hospital saying my mother and Chuck had both been admitted. Apparently, on a routine trip to the grocery store, a drunk Chuck backed into my mother with the car. When I got the news, I zoomed to the ER to see if my mother was okay. She was getting stitches in her arm and I smelled the booze on her breath. I said, “Mom? Have you been drinking?”

She said, “No!” Then, “Why—can you smell it?”

Chuck died right before Christmas of 1998. I was worried about what would happen to my mother. But mere days after his funeral, on December 27, 1998, my boyfriend D. and I walked into my mother’s condo. I’ll never forget that moment. My mother asked if we were going to a meeting for recovered addicts. We said that we were. She said she wanted to come. At that meeting, she fell in love with sobriety. This was a woman in her sixties. She had
lived
to drink. It was a miracle to watch her change. But all those years of booze had taken their toll. Now Mom’s sober, but she’s a bit toasty. She’ll call on my birthday and say, “Honey, my little snowflake, I just called to wish you a Happy New Year.”

Not long after Chuck died and my mom got sober, I was acting in an episode of
Chicago Hope
when a script for a show called
So Weird
came to me. The name of the main character was so close to my own that it jumped out at me. It was Molly Phillips. She was a rock star and a mother whose teenage daughter had paranormal encounters. I couldn’t imagine a better part. I’d been out of the business for so long, but during that time I had acquired two legal, legitimate skills—the ability to sing and knowing how to be a mom. Now I had a chance to bring both to TV.

When I found out that I landed the part, it dawned on me almost immediately that I was famous for being a daughter, and now I was going to be a mom. I was famous for being a druggie, and now I was working for Disney. I was determined to make the rest of my experience on
So Weird
similarly black and white.

We were shooting the pilot in Vancouver. I got up early to make sure I made it to the plane on time, but as I was opening the cat food, I gouged my finger with the can opener. My flight was in two hours and my finger was sushi. I thought, Okay, I can be the fuckup who misses the plane, or I can try to bandage my finger and make the plane. I wrapped my throbbing finger in several paper towels and used rubber bands to hold them in place.

A few hours later I disembarked, went through immigration in Vancouver with my still painful finger held high, waited in line for my work permit, then went straight to a doctor and got six stitches. In the photo shoots we did that afternoon, I held my wounded paw behind my back. Whatever happened on this show, I was not going to be the problem child.

I loved that job. The show was so well written. The cast was lovely and felt like a family. Molly Phillips’s tour bus even had my real initials emblazoned on it. What more could I want? I found a beautiful apartment near Stanley Park in Vancouver and made a real home for myself, but every Friday I flew home to spend the weekend with Shane. I did that for all three seasons of the show. It was stressful, but I couldn’t imagine not seeing my boy.

I had blown my chance to redeem myself on
One Day at a Time,
but by being a model actor on
So Weird
I felt like I was cleaning up my mess, little by little.

While I was working on
So Weird
, Owen’s daughter was born. Luckily, I was in town, so I was able to come straight to the hospital to meet one-day-old Zoe. There I found Owen in bed holding the baby. She was flanked by her husband, Jack, and Jack’s brother, Fritz. They all looked stricken—frozen in the same wonder and fear that I must have had on my face in the first days of Shane’s life. Zoe was crying, and Owen was patting her back tentatively. Owen said, “She won’t stop.”

I said, “Give me that baby.” I put Zoe on my shoulder, let her feel my heartbeat, and burped her. She calmed immediately.

Soon after Zoe was born, Owen told me she had something for me. She came over to my house and put a big box down on my floor. “Can you keep these for me?” she asked. Owen explained that her in-laws, who were observant Jews, had laid down the law. They wanted their granddaughter, and any future grandchildren for that matter, raised strictly Jewish, which meant no Christmas tree. No Christmas tree meant no ornaments. I looked in the box. In it were all of Owen’s Christmas decorations, some of which had belonged to her mother, Cass, who died when Owen was seven. There was a black Santa, a Wonder Woman wearing a Christmas hat, a black baby grand piano, ornate Victorian ornaments that Cass had collected, and ornaments that Owen had made when she was little. I knew how much they meant to her, and I knew that asking me to keep them meant she was as certain as I was that we would always be friends. She would be welcome to bring her children over to decorate the tree with me anytime. Owen and I will be part of each other’s lives when we are old.

Three years later, when Owen’s son, Noah, was born, she called me when she went into labor. Her close friend Carnie Wilson and I arrived at the hospital right after the birth. Owen and I laughed about how different the vibe in the room was with Noah. Now that she was having her second child, everyone was a lot more relaxed. I said to her, “I’m so glad you’re having a boy, because boys are for their moms. Just wait. This is going to be the biggest love affair of your life. The first time he puts his arms around your neck and says ‘I love you Mommy’ you’re going to melt, and you will keep on melting.”

The next year, still working on
So Weird,
I skipped one of my precious weekends with Shane to celebrate Valerie’s fortieth birthday. She planned a girls’ weekend in Vegas. There were moms from her son’s school and other friends from her life. It was a great weekend of amazing meals and massages and pedicures. Her birthday dinner was on a balcony of the Bellagio. There were about twenty of us at dinner. There were moving toasts for Val, saying what a wonderful mother and friend she was. I held up my glass of water, and I was happy for her. But as I looked out at the dancing fountains, I felt a part of the group and apart from it at the same time. After all these years, it was still hard for me to have a true, steady sense of self. My father was a crazy hippie. My mother was an aristocratic eastern seaboard socialite drunk. For all of my childhood I’d been bounced between those worlds. At
One Day at a Time
, I was a hardworking young actor, and a partying rock ’n’ roll chick at night. Then came the drugs, obscuring my transformation into an adult. There is a part of me that will always be a chameleon, shifting to try to fit into a world where I don’t really feel like I belong. This was Val’s big night. She was an old, dear friend, but I felt strangely lonely. Everyone seemed so wholesome and so complete. I had a dream job. I had a wonderful family. But for all I had outwardly achieved, I didn’t have the same level of peace that these women seemed to; I was still quietly enduring the un-healed internal wounds of my past. And I didn’t see any hope of that changing. I thought of that past—the pain, the anger, the issues that led to the drugs, and the addiction itself—as the monster. That monster was still inside me. It hadn’t gone anywhere. The monster was sleeping.