Life Is Not a Stage (24 page)

One remarkable example is how I carried inside of me such guilt that I didn’t say goodbye to my father or get to see him again before he died. After all, the second-to-last time we met, I had told him that I’d rather see him dead than in the drunken state I had found him. Over the many decades since his death, I had never had a dream about him. I don’t know what induction or suggestion John had given me in the process, but there was my father on a train. He had his ever-present hat on. I asked him, “Daddy, are you okay?”

“Yeah, Gal, I’m fine. I’m just fine. I’m okay.”

“I’m so glad,” I yelled back and waved goodbye to him as the train pulled away. I’ve rarely dreamed about him since, but it was palpable how the emotional burden lifted with that experience.

I had another dream about a little baby. It was sitting all by itself on a curb along a roadside. A short time later, I had another; this time the baby had a little bonnet and dress on and was trying to stand up on her own two feet. Another showed her standing and growing. I realized that I was that small child. The dreams were like watching old home movies that had been locked away in a vault of fear. With the therapist’s guidance and support, it was now safe to go back into those devastating feelings of rejection and abandonment. Part of the process was to write out the description of the dream and discuss it at the next session. Reading it out loud to John, I sobbed for that little girl.

The dream work, along with a number of other tools I acquired through hypnotherapy, made it possible to live in a much more honest way. From that grew the confidence to change. I started going to classes at the institute to deepen my understanding about hypnotherapy and the finer nuances of human behavior. Right from the start, it made it much easier to deal with difficult people. Take this one passive-aggressive producer with whom I was working on a major project. He felt that my piano player had done something that wasn’t right and wanted to fire him.

I told John, “If he fires Tim, I can’t bear the thought of breaking in a new piano player. I have to tell him he can’t do that.”

“No, no, no,” John countered. He suggested another strategy.

Staying very calm, I told the producer, “It will be a real hardship for me if you do that, but I can understand your feelings. If you feel you have to do that, I guess I’ll have to deal with it. It will be difficult for me, but I respect your feelings.”

“He’s going and that’s that,” the producer replied. But of course, he never acted on that, and the piano player stayed. With all the passive-aggressive people in my life, I would walk around on eggshells wondering when and if they were going to explode. But if you stand up to them and say in a kind or sometimes forceful way to stop it, they become pussycats. It’s like what’s really behind their anger is this tiny little compliant monster inside of them that isn’t so scary and mean after all.

Here’s one other strange insight that came from these sessions. One of the things I regularly did in nightclubs was go out into the audience and sing and sit in a gentleman’s lap. The audience would get a big kick out of it. When choosing my victim, I would automatically exclude someone with crossed arms and crossed leg body language. John told me, “No, that’s the guy you go to. Try it. You’ll see.” Sure enough, he was right. Those guys were so much more thrilled than my seemingly more open-looking victims. It was very curious.

Ira went for a while, but to a different hypnotherapist. I think he benefited from it, but it was during this time period that I decided to leave. In fact, it was during a therapy session with Ira that I explained to him why I thought it was best to separate.

Hypnotherapy did a lot more than put a stop to my stage fright and fear of flying. It helped unmask the big lies I had been living. If you’re lying to yourself, consciously or unconsciously, you’re not going to change behavior, both yours and that of the people around you. John always said, “You can’t cure anything with a lie!” Understand that lies are not always malevolent or malicious. Sometimes you have to create a fiction in your life to protect yourself from things that had terrified you. But in the long run, if you don’t take care of it, those lies will catch up with you and will exact their due one way or another. I did not want to be one of those sick people crippled in their souls and progressively having pieces of their dying bodies cut away.

Working with John, I was unmasking those lies like peeling away one layer of the onion skin at a time. This work was not for the faint of heart. The journey within one’s self is the most terrifying of all. It takes tremendous courage. There was no longer any denial or rationalizing belief system to counter the hard truth that I had hung in there for so many years with all those lies and self-protecting illusions. That life of quiet but seething desperation would no longer be tolerated. Finally I had a way to unearth the unresolved grief I had buried. I realized how the fear of flying and the stage fright were symptoms of how I had narrowed down and constricted my existence. With my confidence restored, it was easier to say yes to life again. Finally, there was absolutely no turning back.

CHAPTER 20

D-Day

I
t was the big no-no. You don’t fall in love with your therapist. And your therapist isn’t supposed to fall in love with you. That’s what conventional wisdom says. And most of the time, conventional wisdom wins—but not in this case. The more time John and I spent together, the deeper our connection grew.

It certainly was not “love at first sight” on my end. On first impression, John was not the most attractive man in the world just to look at him. Neither did I find his hairpiece to be so appealing. But he did have the most beautiful and penetrating blue-gray eyes. So much for the value of appearances…After separating from Ira, I went out on a few dates, but more than anything else, they convinced me by contrast how my feelings for John had grown into something more serious. And that feeling was mutual.

“You can’t imagine what a wonderful feeling it is to take off my running shoes,” he told me shortly after we became an item. John had a few marriages and tons of relationships in his past, in stark contrast to my life. But he and I shared a strong attribute: Neither of us had truly known what a healthy relationship was like. He had been more prone to be in that category of people who just ran from one affair to the next, taking the course of least resistance. So many of us have the mentality:
Do you want to get married?
Yeah, sure. If it doesn’t work out, that’s okay—just move on to the next
. With all my faults and failings, one thing you can say about me is that I have never been one to take that path.

For the first time, I was open to somebody loving me, and equally, someone whom I could love back. It wasn’t the old program of
trying
to get somebody to love me, like forcing blood from a rock. John did love me, and it changed him and me in many profound ways. But it was only the starting point of greater things to come.

A number of people around me were none too happy about this new relationship in my life. Some took the side of the conventional wisdom as earlier stated. Others simply couldn’t believe that I could actually make a change and take such a plunge after so many years. Others just “didn’t get it” (or didn’t want to get it) after meeting John and seeing us together. It had been a daunting time given my history to get up the courage and take my chances. You put so much energy into learning, growing, and trying to solve your major issues. Then, suddenly, you’ve manifested this major change. You are faced with decision time to stand pat or risk it all. You put it out there with absolutely no guarantee that anything else is going to work out.

You would like to have the support and encouragement of your friends and loved ones at such a fork in the road, but that would have been too easy. Some tried to talk me out of it. Others, many of whom also loved Ira, encouraged me to move forward.

One of the things that oddly enough encouraged me to make the decision about leaving Ira was a magazine article I had read. It was written by a woman who was almost in the same situation as I was. She had children and a husband, and she wasn’t happy. She just felt she needed to move on while she still had some time to experiment and enjoy life and find out who she was. She made the decision to leave, but she paid a price for it. She was judged fairly harshly, but she said it was the best thing she ever did. Her story resonated with me.

Dr. Giorgi was probably the biggest thorn in my side about this. She read me the riot act, replete with her lively Bronx inflection. She did not mince her words, adamantly telling me how I was a fool to leave Ira. It turned into a knock-down, drag-out fight.

I barked at her, “You don’t practice the Hippocratic oath—you practice the
hypocritic
oath!” Afterwards, she barked back at me with a note: “Dearie, you must be hurting very badly to say something like that to me.”

I countered, “You must be hurting very badly to talk to me like that!” We got through it, and not much longer after that, John and she grew very close. She had broken her hip and was hospitalized and very uncomfortable because she was in pain and couldn’t go to the bathroom. John and I visited her, and he hypnotized her to help with her pain and constipation. Before he was even finished with the session, she got up to go to the bathroom.

People who first met John would always remark, “He’s so quiet.” Some might have regarded him as standoffish because he was so comfortable at gatherings, just sitting and watching and observing. He didn’t feel the need to be the life of the party or to fill up the silent space with the noise from his own voice. To those people, I always said, “Just ask him a question.” When people would go over and talk to him, I’d just sit back and watch because the same thing would always happen. Once they started to engage him and he began to talk, they simply would not let him go. He had such tremendous confidence, and he knew how to listen (after all, that’s what he did for a living). It was a contagious combination.

Finally, I had the courage, trust, and confidence in myself that I could have a different (and happier) life. And I had fallen in love. So it was time to sit with Ira and discuss what we were going to do about formally ending our marriage. We got together at Scandia. The restaurant was an ideal neutral ground and semiprivate, with the kind of ambiance and design that made it a home away from home for the high-profile Hollywood types who frequented it. It was almost eerie how easy and comfortable the conversation went. I had spent nearly a whole lifetime dreading the idea of ever having to confront the D-word, and here it was, virtually painless. When the lawyers got involved a short time later, it got a little more complicated, but not much.

Ira and I truly loved each other. I think he wanted me to be happy. And I deeply prayed for his happiness, which I’m happy to say he found with his wife Carol.

It was all very smooth and amicable. I moved out of the house, and Ira continued to live in it for a couple of years before we decided it was time to sell. Our children were all grown up and on their own. Whatever furniture we didn’t need or the kids didn’t want, we gave away. Similarly, our financial holdings had been split down the middle. Ira had always been extremely careful with money, so it was an extra pleasant surprise that he had managed to salt away more of my earnings than I thought. Toward the waning days of our marriage, Ira had ironically finally moved out to Los Angeles and became manager of the Shubert Theatre in Century City. By the time we sold the house, he was in a new relationship with Carol. He bought a lovely place in Century Hill on land that was once the back lot of 20th Century–Fox Studios.

The children were not horribly surprised by the outcome. But that didn’t make it any easier for them. Their parents had been together for many years, and I don’t think they ever witnessed an argument or fight. In some ways, they might have been partially relieved, although I don’t want to speak for them. Each needed to try to make sense of it. I took each one aside separately to talk about it. They all told me how sad they were about it. I told them that I was sad too. To Ira’s and my relief, the children never really took sides. I think it helped that neither Ira nor I was filled with animosity or blame. Things were more uncomfortable after the separation when the children came to visit me in the house where I had moved. It was hard to acclimate to the fact that their mother had a new home and, consequently, a new life. Seeing my children’s difficulty was painful to me, and it was the only time when it felt challenging to stay the course and stick with my decision. There were weak moments when it would have been easy to fall back on old ways.

But this situation was a case in point why John had come into my life. He pushed me to mature. It was truly the first time in my life that I had the backing and support, and finally the courage, to be who I was—and be more of who I was. He challenged me to confront my fears, always pushing me forward. He loved what I did and not only understood my need for self-expression but encouraged me to go further. On one occasion I had an invitation to give a speech. I told John, “I can’t do that.”

“Of course you can.”

So I wrote the draft on the airplane ride to the site. It wasn’t as hard as I had thought. The talk was very well received.

He said that any healthy relationship always has to be about mutual ascent, the act of always lifting each other up. It’s not about being one-up like “you’re down, and I’m up,” or vice versa. For the almost twenty years we spent together, we made that reciprocity work on a daily basis. Whenever he gave a speech or taught a class (which was always standing room only), I never missed it. He always went with me everywhere when I worked, too. Being left-brained, he loved all the mechanics and details behind the scenes. He even learned how to work the lights for my show. He watched how it was done and said, “I could do that.” And he did it well!

My friends thought I was totally crazy when I told them that I was going to live with John on his sixty-foot motor yacht in Marina del Rey. Before, I would have agreed with them and said forget it. But suddenly my attitude was, “Why not? I’ll try that.” It was important to him because that boat was his home. He loved the sea. That’s where he had chosen to live, and I wanted to support that. The decision turned out to be great, and before long we upgraded to a bigger boat and later a still larger one. We loved taking it out for excursions up and down the coast to Santa Barbara, Newport, and San Diego. Our favorite destination of all was to drop anchor on the ocean-facing side of Catalina Island.

In case you’re wondering about the very practical issue of closet space for women, it can be problematic on a boat. Keeping my office/apartment solved that quandary. More important, what about privacy? Aren’t you a little bit too much in each other’s faces? That was another misconception. Yes, it is intimate, but there’s always a place to be alone on a boat if you need quiet time (especially when we upgraded to bigger boats!). You can go up on the deck or find a space in the cabin rooms below.

Making this move to live dockside was another case of opening up and experiencing something completely new and exciting. Where I might have been rigid and all but closed to entertaining the possibility of living that kind of life, I let go and thoroughly enjoyed the process of sharing with John to make that experience comfortable and cozy. In truth, it wasn’t so different than living in a triplex in New York City. I truly loved it. It was one huge example of that welcome relief I felt. With John I could finally let go, freed of feeling forced to take charge of all the details like I had for all those years.

Living on the boat, and almost everything we did together, worked so well because we had a process that kept us together. Chemistry may bring you together in the beginning, but process keeps you together. We always found a level of enjoyment no matter what we were doing. It never felt like caretaking, doing something you really weren’t interested in out of obligation and hating every minute of it. For example, John liked boxing just like my father, but it wasn’t what you would consider my prevailing interest beforehand. However, I watched every fight with him. I knew every fighter and probably ended up more passionate than he was. Likewise, John didn’t attend plays or master chorale concerts much before he met me, but he grew to enjoy them just as much as I did. That’s why I loved the film
The Fighter
about Micky Ward’s life. I watched every one of his fights with John. David O. Russell did such a great job directing that movie.

It wasn’t that we didn’t have our disagreements from time to time. Unlike my first marriage, where I avoided conflict and kept my mouth shut many times when I shouldn’t have, I got the courage to be tough when the situation called for it. Before, I could get a little pushed around by agents and other people I worked with. One day I got very upset with John, and right in the middle of it all he started laughing. “Well, I might have taught you how to be tough, but I didn’t mean that you should be that way with me.”

After we had lived together for three years, we got married. I was doing a big show in Las Vegas, and we decided on the spot to formalize things. In my heart, I intuitively knew that the amount of time I had left with John would be limited. He had heart problems already by the time we met, and for that reason I was determined not to waste a second. It turned out in the end that we had nearly twenty wonderful years together. In all probability, I gave him more years than he might have had, just by being there as someone who really cared. “Let’s try this,” I would suggest. “Maybe if you ate differently.” I hired a trainer. He had already had his first bypass surgery. The trainer got him on the treadmill. One day he said, “That’s it. I have only so many steps in life. I don’t want to waste them on a treadmill.” I couldn’t argue with that.

My whole attitude about death and impermanence had certainly shifted to a much healthier place, a combination of my inner work and the experience of the passing of two of my dearest friends. The comedienne Totie Fields taught me a lot about courage. She was truly one of the funniest people in the world, and we worked together a lot and became very close. When she went out onstage, she always came out in grand style, wearing the best clothing and her hair done up perfectly. She was very overweight and diabetic, but she wanted cosmetic surgery to lose weight to be in shape for her daughter’s wedding. I told her not to do it. Lose weight first, get healthy, and then consider it, I suggested. She was that kind of bullheaded but adorable person who would eat my dessert and say it was okay as long as it wasn’t hers. Finally, she found a plastic surgeon in Connecticut who agreed to operate on her, and with predictable results. She went into vascular shock and almost died on the operating table. She was transferred to another hospital and somehow fell out of bed and injured her leg. It had to be amputated.