The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (16 page)

About an hour later my friends and I, all girls, came flying into the Daisy. I’d left my car parked in Kathy Gallagher’s parking lot because I was too buzzed to drive. I get buzzed on half of a drink, so whenever I drink ANYTHING I don’t drive.

The Daisy was hopping, filled with famous actors, sports figures, blonde clones, and the usual clubbers. Mimi and I sat at a table with a few girls, the tennis pro Spencer Segura, and some other rich guy whose family owned everything Doheny. Doheny Drive, Estates, and Mansion. Ned was a real rich guy—a real rich, drunk guy.

I couldn’t see Parker and his blonde Barbie anywhere, but I was getting a lot of attention, as someone, not me I swear, brought up
Star Trek
and that every ingenue in town wanted that role. This chitchat boosted my ego and confidence even more.

Then it began: the blonde waitress saying, “Round of drinks from Mr. Stevenson,” as she lay a silver tray of tequila shots on the table. I was honestly, at this point, so full of booze that I became confused as to whether it was me Parker was interested in or one of the four hot girls sitting at the table with me, including my hottest, best friend, Mimi Rogers. Another round came, then another. I was filled with curiosity real, fake, and chemically-induced. I excused myself from the table, walked to Mr. Stevenson’s table, politely thanked him, took his hand, and said, “I want to talk to you.” I walked him to the dance floor and we began to dance. It was some awful ’80s tune. Then out of the blue I just grabbed him and shoved my tongue down his throat. It was a terrific icebreaker, and I thought it was a good way to find out if it was me he was interested in.

Then I did something I’ve never done before or since. His date came up to Parker and said, “We’re leaving.” I didn’t even let Parker speak. I said, “That’s cool, ’cause Parker’s leaving, too—with me.”

What??!! Seriously???

I’d never been that brazen. I was the girl who sat around aloof, beaming men with my bedroom eyes, then looking away.

I know by today’s “let’s all get drunk and fuck everybody” standards this seems tame, but to me, it was monumental! All Lombard and Gable! Now I was doing what REAL actresses do!

Parker didn’t protest. He apparently thought I was the cat’s meow. Actually, I think he thought he was going to have a three-way with Mimi and me.

When we got to the parking lot of the Daisy he said, “Where’s your car?” I’d honestly forgotten, and so had Mimi. But then I remembered that it was at Kathy Gallagher’s.

He said, “Why don’t you guys come to my place for a drink?” Yes! Because I really need
more
alcohol . . .

We walked into swank Shoreham Towers, behind swank Spago, Wolfgang Puck’s first swank LA restaurant. Parker’s penthouse was straight-up
9
¹
/
₂
Weeks
, all gray flannel, Le Corbusier chairs, gray on gray on gray—on gray.

This Kansas girl had never seen nothin’ like this.

When Mimi excused herself to the restroom, Parker said, “I’d like you to stay. I’ll have a cab take Mimi home. I’ll take you to your car tomorrow.”

What?! I may be an actress, but I’m no LA ho. I don’t do one night stands, Daddio . . . well at least not since that guy with the toddler dick
, I thought. “I’m so sorry, I just can’t, I have to be at Paramount at eight tomorrow morning.”

How freakin’ fun was that to say?! I was born for this movie star lingo.

I kissed him good night. He said, “Can I have your number?”

“Sure,” and I gave it to him. Mimi was sober by the time the cab drove us back to Kathy Gallagher’s to get my car, and I was soberish, too.

The parking lot was locked! I started to panic. Mimi said, “Just take a cab in the morning,” which was now four hours away. That gave me two hours to sleep and two hours to get showered and changed. Cabs in LA, by the way, are expensive. Not like the $10 fares in NYC. So I woke up at 6:00 a.m. and in true Hollywood fashion, called Paramount studios and asked them to “send a car for me.” Those were the good ole days, my friends, no questions asked. They sent a car for me.

Parker and I began dating immediately, not exclusively but frequently. He had some mud wrestler and an Italian contessa on the side, and I had a famous actor and an ex-boyfriend on the side.

After six months of dating, I THOUGHT we were exclusive. Apparently half of us weren’t, so I almost broke up with Parker. It shattered me and led to an insanely long grudge. Probably THE most important lesson I’ve learned about men is that if they cheat on you, you either work it out and forgive them—I mean TRULY forgive them—or you end it. I stayed midway, in a split decision. “I love you, I forgive you, not really, but I’ll try to, not very hard, and we’ll move on, no fucking way, I’ll make you suffer for a very long time.” And for a very long time I did. I never fully trusted him, and I gave him plenty of reason to stop trusting me.

Still, Parker and I eloped in 1983 to Neil and Leba Sedaka’s house in Westport, Connecticut. I was midway through shooting a TV series and we had a few weeks off for Christmas. I’d been married before, and we didn’t have time for a proper wedding with both sides of our families flying to wherever. So we decided to elope to Connecticut, then drive to Philadelphia to be with his family for Christmas.

We got married on the morning of December 23, 1983, and our justice of the peace was a woman who read Kahlil Gibran. Leba Sedaka had made the house into a fantasyland. There was a crystal-adorned Christmas tree, and the setting looked like
Dr. Zhivago
meets Currier & Ives.

As we were about to get married, the snow turned to rain, and Neil Sedaka stood before us and sang “Laughter in the Rain.” His audience was just me, Parker, Leba, the justice of the peace, and Kahlil Gibran. An hour after we married I called my dad. He was happy for us; he loved Parker.

Parker and I were polar opposites. I’m rowdy and impatient. He’s conservative and “lovely.” I use that word in quotes because Parker used to use it a lot to describe things, “It’s lovely.” I’m a Kansas girl, and I’d never heard a man say the word “lovely,” but I found it refreshing, artistic, and “lovely.”

We first moved into a Richard Meier–type white-on-white-on-white modern house. It was a sexy house, and it looked like it was built for adult brats. We fit the bill.

Our relationship was interesting: we were close but not close. We were always friendly and respectful, but we were not each other’s confidants. I don’t recall us discussing the deeper aspects of life. Both of us were always busy working, and my career was on a full-fledged roll. I bounced from movies to miniseries to movies to
Cheers
. Parker and I had our share of ups and downs, but mostly it felt safe and consistent. People like me can do with a little conservatism in their lives. If you hooked people like me up with other people like me it could end in a free-for-all.

Parker had gone to Princeton, and he was a preppy guy. He had been in a singing group there, the Tigertones. Everything about him was fancy, and his family hailed from blue-blood Philadelphia. They were on the Social Register, a far cry from my midwestern roots. There once was a photo of Parker and me in Las Vegas from when we were dating. He was wearing a suit, and I was in a red dress with a neckline that plunged to my navel. Within 24 hours he received a phone call from his mother. “Who IS this GIRL?!” Parker liked my shocking wild ways, and I was enamored by his East Coast Ivy League intelligence. We were definitely the odd couple, but it somehow worked.

Parker is hard to read, and he keeps it all close to the vest. If you suspect something is bothering him, you have to draw it out of him like a splinter from a foot. And when he does talk, he won’t reveal much. It was never easy to decipher the truth with him. Not about big, secretive, bad things, just the kinds of things people bitch about to each other on a daily basis. “Man, that idiot at work pissed me off!” was the kind of thing I would share. Parker would pace or sit on the porch and smoke cigars and ponder life, which looked painful to me. I wished he would just run out to the middle of the yard and scream now and then, for his sake.

Over the course of our 14-year marriage we gave each other unique gifts. I gave him a red Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer for Christmas when I had precisely $67,000 in my bank account. The Ferrari cost $65,000, leaving me $2,000 to pay bills. Parker started buying me pets while we were dating. The first animal he surprised me with was Cinderella, a giant brown English lop-eared rabbit. Throughout the years we were married, my dad referred to Parker as a saint for putting up with my menagerie of creatures. Funny—Parker bought me most of them, including my first pair of ring-tailed lemurs, Ricky and Lucy. And one Christmas morning, when I headed down the staircase of our beautiful Encino bungalow, I was met by a tiny gray miniature horse standing in the entryway, which I named Buckwheat.

During the
Cheers
years, a lot of cash was rolling in. I was doing 24 episodes a year, then movies in my hiatus. That left two months every summer to go somewhere. We bought a 22-bedroom “cottage” on the coast of Maine. It was perfect! With all that work going on during the year, it was hard to make time for family and friends, especially if they didn’t live in LA. Maine was the perfect place to congregate. We had upwards of 30 people as our guests at one time, and the place was spectacular. There was a deepwater mooring dock and a clay tennis court surrounded by Essex Green Victorian lattice. There was shuffle-board, a pool hall, croquet, a swimming pool, a children’s garden. It was magnificent. While Parker took interest in boats and more boats, I spent my days arranging flowers and planning meals for our guests. It sounds so perfectly Americana. So Martha Stewarty. I dressed the part wearing Laura Ashley dresses and big brimmed sun hats. Parker took me aside once and said, “You do know I didn’t marry an East Coast girl on purpose, right?” But it was SO exciting to be who I wasn’t. I’d never been exposed to these kinds of people, with their pink shirts and those pale yellow pants with whales on them. I’d never experienced cocktail parties where people still actually drank martinis and ate Ritz Crackers with cheese spread and olives on them. True, I have a bad habit of becoming a chameleon when I’m with a man. I tend to get all caught up in HIS lifestyle. With Bob I became a little hippie. With Jake, cowboy chic. With Parker, naughty coed mixed with Gibson Girl. But I’m an ACTRESS, for crying out loud!! What good is life without drama and costumes!!?

In 1992 we adopted our first child—William True Parker. We called him True.

In 1994 we welcomed our daughter, Lillie Price Parker. The “Price” part was the surname of his mother’s side of the family, and I was mad for his grandmother Granny Price. She was delicate and strong at once—just like our Lillie seemed.

In 1996 I took the kids to Italy. I was restless, again. It seemed I could only withstand a 14-year stint before I would experience the heebie-jeebies of marriage. But at least I’d done better than the first time I was married; that time I’d only lasted four years.

When I was married to Parker, life seemed to go along smoothly. Then BAM!! I’d meet some handsome temptation, and I was off the rails for a few months. Then I’d sort it all out and go at the marriage again for another four years. And so it went. Until the last time.

I never cheated on Parker but I called my marriage quits in 1997. The way I handled it was not ideal by any means, and I can say the same for him. It got a little nasty. We were both jerks. I’ve since tried to make up the damage I caused. Just because I didn’t want to be married to him any longer didn’t mean I stopped loving him. The picture of our life that I painted intentionally has the gray side omitted. Hell, we never got that dark to begin with. And it’s a good policy to never speak unkindly of your children’s other parent. I know divorced couples can end up despising each other during or after a divorce, and they can also end up being friends and laying down their arms. It’s now been 15 years since Parker and I divorced, and I’m sure we’ve both learned a lot about ourselves. What I learned, FINALLY, from my life with Parker is to knock off flirting with men while I’m attached and to stop dramatizing being the victim of an unfaithful mate. We ALL make mistakes. NONE of us is perfect. And forgiveness and understanding are key. I’m not my father. I believe that marriages can be reconciled if infidelity has transpired. But I am like my father in realizing that infidelity is calculated and premeditated. Dicks don’t magically fall into vaginas. There is an evolution.

Since my breakup with Parker, I’m proud to say I’ve achieved the ability to be in a relationship without flirting with other men and without having one bag packed and my foot out the door.

And my greatest dream, for our kids’ sake, is that some year down the road we can have a big old-fashioned Christmas together. All of us.

MAGGIE

Oh, I’m more determined than you think. I’ll win alright.

BRICK POLLITT

Win what? What is, uh, the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof?

MAGGIE

Just stayin’ on it, I guess. As long as she can.

—TENNESSEE WILLIAMS,
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

The Art of Art

I
COULDN’T GET a meeting with the late, great theater director José Quintero for the life of me. My then-agent couldn’t even get me in the door. José was casting Tennessee Williams’s
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
and I was hell-bent on playing the lead role of Maggie, even though I’d never acted in the theater. The play was to be performed at the renowned Mark Taper Forum in LA. The role of Maggie was coveted by every 25- to 35-year-old actress in the world.

José Quintero was born on October 15, 1924, in Panama City, Panama, and he directed his first play in 1949. He was a founder of the Off Broadway theater Circle in the Square, where he directed regularly from 1950, establishing the house as a major center for serious theater. He was best known for his productions of 20th-century plays, especially those of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill. José was virtually responsible for the success of many Eugene O’Neill plays that had flopped in their first Broadway productions. Among them were
The Iceman Cometh
,
A Touch of the Poet
, and
A Moon for the Misbegotten
, and all of them starred the acclaimed actor Jason Robards Jr.