Read My Lips (36 page)

Best of all, on that film I got a demonstration of how, when you’re not demanding love and attention, you can get it in spades.

I was still following Milton’s advice about being a cog in the wheel, and my new attitude had been working well. While on the set I was relaxed about costumes and makeup and call times. I would even just sit there when I wasn’t working, quietly observing. The results were remarkable.

One day Percy approached me.

“Are you all right? Have everything you need?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “I’m great.”

“Do you know how much I love having you in this picture?” he said.

“Well, that’s how much I love being in it,” I replied.

Love and support were coming to me—without me having to beg—in my work, from my kids, from my mother-in-law, from my friends. . . . Pretty cool, huh?

Then came my third surprise.

A
LTHOUGH
I
HAD LIVED MY ADOLESCENCE BEFORE
I
GOT MARRIED,
it turned out that Jonathan was living his afterward: he was having an affair.

When I first got wind of the marital interloper, I practically opened my own detective agency. No pants pocket was left unturned, no ticket stub unexamined. Back when I had had my affair with a married man—I was single, he was married—it never occurred to me what it would be like if the shoe were on the other foot. Now I knew: It was hellish. I was outraged, betrayed, devastated, humiliated. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Jonathan and I separated twice as a result. The first time I was busy, which was probably a good thing. I was doing back-to-back
plays, one in Boston and one in Edmonton, Canada. I had just finished a couple films and needed a theater fix as well as some distance from my damaged marriage.

First I did
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
at Hasty Pudding Theatricals in Boston. Larry Arrick was directing. At the outset he nearly changed his mind about using me as Martha, the troubled female lead. But I called and said, “I need to do this. I am doing this. I’m coming. Just get ready.”

Now, I didn’t know this guy from a hole in the wall, but I knew in my core that the play was just what I needed, for distraction and to keep up my chops. So off to Boston I went, with my little darlings in tow. Rejection was not an option.

Soon the twins and I settled in at the Mount Auburn House at Harvard, along with Vivianne and Bubby. I really enjoyed working with Larry: another director, another approach. The first time we sat down for a reading, he said, “This is not the Bible.” He was trying to tell us that Albee’s text wasn’t the most precious thing in the world. He took the idolatry out of that famous work, reminding us that it was “just” a really good play and that we should approach it like a really good play, instead of “My God!
Virginia Woolf
! A classic!”

Still, it was an honor when the playwright Edward Albee came out to see our production.

After that play Larry asked me to come to Edmonton, Alberta, for two months to do a two-character play called
Lay of the Land,
opposite the lovely Michael Hogan. The play was good, but I spent the entire first act talking to a chair. Now I wanted to work, but a chair? I was so desperate that I would have taken a walk-on role in an after-school special to keep from doing the play. But here I was, talking to an empty chair for an entire act.

After opening night Larry flew immediately to New York for another job. We were left with our stage manager, a very proper Englishman who said the same thing every night:

“And that is the close of the show. Matinee tomorrow at two.”

That was the extent of his feedback. No more, no less. We
weren’t told if we needed to pick up the pace or whether I wasn’t concentrating in the first act. Nothing. So every night after the show, Michael and I held a version of this conversation:

S
ALLY:
I didn’t feel so good in the second act.

M
ICHAEL:
No? I thought you were good.

S
ALLY:
Really?

M
ICHAEL:
Yeah.

S
ALLY:
Okay, let’s go have a drink.

And the next night, in reverse:

M
ICHAEL:
I didn’t feel so good in the second act.

S
ALLY:
No? I thought you were good.

M
ICHAEL:
Really?

S
ALLY:
Yeah.

M
ICHAEL:
Okay, let’s go have a drink.

We did eight shows a week. Thank God that, at end of those two months, Michael and I really liked each other. Neither of us knew another soul in Edmonton.

While we were in Edmonton I had the kids in preschool, where they studied Halloween in class for two months and played in the snow. When I didn’t have a matinee, I’d be home with them. Mondays we were dark, and though I was half-dead on those days off, I dragged along like a zombie behind them as they rode their bikes or whatever.

See? You
can
have it all.

Then Jonathan, the last person I wanted to see, showed up with some crushing news: Richard Martini, Luana’s partner, had told Jonathan that she only had a year to live. I refused to believe him. I finished out my run, then hurried home to face whatever awaited me there.

Luana had breast cancer. She had decided to reject traditional medical care in favor of holistic treatments. Both her mother and
her aunt had died of breast cancer, and she had seen what they had gone through. I would have loved to have screamed, “Luana, please go to a hospital!” But for the first time in my life I just shut up and supported her decision. She was determined to handle things in her own way.

Doctors warned her not to go to Mexico for an alternative treatment, but Luana didn’t listen. She came back crippled. It was so clear that no matter what anybody said, this was what she needed to do. If she was going to die, she was going to do it on her own terms, making her own choices.

From my earliest days as an actor, when we shared secrets in the closet of my first apartments, Luana had always been there for me. I’d call her up crying, and she’d say, “Do you need me? I’ll be right there.” Now I was grateful to have the chance to do something for her.

That Thanksgiving, when I was just sitting down to dinner with my fourteen guests, the phone rang. It was Luana.

“Sally,” she said weakly, “I need you to come clean the cat boxes.”

“I have a house full of people,” I told her.

“I need you to do this,” she insisted.

I was glad. It was a gift that Luana was asking me for such a simple thing. I had longed so much to help her, but how you can help someone so ill? You can’t ease the pain. You can’t dispel the fear. You can’t cure the illness. But this I could do.

So I left my guests to eat their turkey and dashed over to Mar del Vista, where Luana lived. When I arrived at her beautiful little Craftsman home, the cat boxes did, indeed, need changing badly, and I took care of it. I loved having that time with her. When she asked me if I could get her some water, I teased her gently.

“Well, okay,” I said, “but you know that means I’ll have to touch the glass.”

For as long as I can remember, Luana never liked anyone to touch food on her plate—it almost brought her to tears. I always assumed it came from her childhood in foster homes.

To the end of her days Luana was so well loved. By Richard Martini, with whom she had had such a wonderful relationship, by Jack Nicholson, by Morgan Ames, by Charles Grodin, by Jonathan and me. When I told Jennifer Jones about Lu, she jumped on board immediately, providing nurses for Luana so she could die at home. We all helped out as best we could.

One night something woke me up. I opened my eyes and saw Luana lying sideways right in front of me, with a beautiful smile on her face. I looked at the clock to make sure I was awake. When I looked back, she was gone.

I went back to sleep, and a few hours later the phone rang. It was Richard. Luana had died. I was so glad that she had come to say good-bye. She looked so peaceful.

J
ONATHAN AND
I
WERE SEPARATED IN EARLY
1994
WHEN
I went off to Paris to shoot
Prêt-à-Porter
with Bob Altman, a film about murder, mystery, and backstabbing during Paris fashion week. The usual suspects, Bubby, Vivianne, and the kids, came along with me. None of them had been to Paris, and I was excited to show it to them. We arrived in February, and Jack asked, “How come there are no trees in Pairs?” But soon spring had sprung.

On the first day of production I stopped by the offices, excited to see Bob. But when I caught my first glimpse of him, he had his back to me.
Oh my God,
I thought. He was so thin and frail. He looked like he was dying. He was having some health issues, he said, but he would take care of everything after we finished shooting.

Then, my first day on the set I was so nervous.
I just did Virginia Woolf
! I thought.
Why am I so insecure
? And I was with Bob, my favorite director of all time. But the cast of that film was stellar enough to intimidate anyone: Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Julia Roberts, Tim Robbins, Tracy Ullman, Stephen Rea, Kim Basinger, Linda Hunt, Rupert Everett, Richard Grant, Forest
Whitaker, Lili Taylor, Lauren Bacall—what a lineup. No wonder I was shaking in my boots, standing there on set.

Just then, who should arrive but Sophia Loren, flanked by a posse of press. It was Fashion Week in Paris, and we were supposed to be there watching the shows while Bob filmed us for the movie. Sophia walked up and grabbed my hand.

“Sally, you are my daughter,” she said. “Come with me.”

I didn’t know Sophia at all, but I loved her instantly. She walked me through the maze of photographers (who were really there to shoot her more than anyone). She proved to be as warm and generous and playful as she is stunning.

Once I got over my initial attack of nerves, I loved making that picture. The whole experience of being in Paris with my kids and working with all these fabulous talents—not to mention Bob and his darling wife, Kathryn—was invigorating. Bob’s pictures never had big budgets to pay actors, but we all wanted to work with him. He was that brilliant.

And what fun we had. Richard Grant babysat Jack and Hanna, building couch-cushion forts and letting them pretend to be dogs, drinking milk out of bowls on the floor. I had a beautiful suite with blue-and-white étoile curtains and a balcony overlooking the Champs-Élysées that was just high enough so I could see everyone without them seeing me. On my days off I’d walk the children in their double stroller across Paris to Miss Lennen’s bilingual school.

Kathryn Altman hosted dinners, serving fried chicken, chili, and potpies so we wouldn’t feel lonely away from home. On the weekends there might be thirty of us or ten, but those dinners were always interesting. Other nights, after shooting, a lot of us would duck into this quiet little restaurant we had nicknamed “the Val,” with red-checked tablecloths, and I’d sit down to a plate of sautéed spinach,
pommes frites,
and a glass of red wine. Perfection.

During the shoot Bob flew Lauren Bacall and me back from
Paris on the Concorde to take part in an event honoring him at New York’s Lincoln Center. Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Jack Lemmon, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Keith Carradine, and others all took the stage to talk about working with Bob and to give him a little good-natured ribbing. Keith Carradine opened the festivities and then I was next. I told a story about Bob and me after
M*A*S*H,
when he asked me to test for a film. Then he said he’d rather hang himself than do the film with me. There was a lot of laughter that night, but mostly I just enjoyed talking about Bob. When I went back to my seat, Jack Lemmon grabbed me and said, “No one will top you tonight.” I was riding high. Everyone had great stories, and when they showed clips of Bob’s films, it was evident why he was so revered, so loved.