Читать книгу Burnt Toast - Teri Hatcher - Страница 7

Knowing what you want and not admitting it to yourself can be tough, especially if you’re a chicken like me. But it’s even harder to find your authentic path when you have to contend with the pressures of family, friends, and strangers. People laugh at you, undermine your beliefs, or kindly and sincerely want something completely different for you, and it makes following your own path that much harder.

We don’t start out so responsive to external forces. When I was a kid, I remember riding my bike home from seventh grade summer school one afternoon. It was a purple banana-seat one-speed that Santa was overdue to replace, and it had one of those little plastic baskets with a flower on it buckled to the handlebars. I hopped off and rolled my bike into our atrium – a sort of indoor/outdoor garden connected to the house. I put down the kickstand and heard my mom yell from the kitchen, “Teri, are you home?” I said, “Yeah…and you’re going to kill me.” She replied, “The only reason I’d kill you is if you brought home a live animal.” So basically I should be long dead by now, because that’s exactly what I had done, and have done many times since. Outside school I’d been suckered into adopting a kitten from a wild litter. It was orange and little and so cute…and, it turned out, the meanest fucking cat ever. I always suspected that I was the reason for my parents’ chronic fighting, but that day there was no doubt. I was definitely the source. Neither of them wanted a cat; that much was clear. But my mom felt compelled to see my side and take pity on my nurturing instincts, so she defended me against my dad. I guess she eventually prevailed, because I kept the cat.

When we’re kids, our instincts are raw and untempered by all the pros and cons and second-guessing that take over our adult lives. But we suffer the consequences. I kept the cat. Kitty was her name. (Screamingly original right?) Kitty the Terror, the biting mean wild cat that I had to keep and care for all of her very, very long life. So I got my wish, but I felt the weight of my parents’ arguing and the burden of my responsibility. And that’s how our simple, childish decisionmaking evolves to a layered complexity. That cute kitten was more than she seemed. She was (for so many years) a living thing that stimulated conflict, required care, and inspired fear in the souls of the neighborhood dogs.

Predicting consequences is part of growing up. But overpredicting and overplanning can become paralyzing. You get to the point where you forget what you want. Outside influences muddy the waters further. If the outside voices are louder than the internal voices, you have to learn to tune them out.

When I was first promoting Lois & Clark, I went to New York for a press junket. It was the first time I’d ever been such a significant part of promoting a show. My girlfriend, Dana, and I flew the red eye to “the Big Apple” (just letting you in on the genuine cornball level of excitement I had going at the time). My first stop on the publicity tour was the notoriously raunchy Howard Stern show. (Can you believe that? Well, I guess it was a fitting way to get my media cherry popped.) Since it started taping live at 6 A.M., they flew us from JFK airport to Manhattan in a helicopter. Okay, wow. That’s just a big serious wow. I’m definitely not the first one to say, “Hey, let’s go see everything from way up there in the sky!” I’m afraid of helicopters. They seem as fragile as insects – as if they might crash at any time, swatted from existence by some giant hand. But I did have to be on air at a certain time, and it did sound like a grand entrance for a girl who only months before was driving a Ford Probe with no air-conditioning and real old-fashioned roll-down-handle windows, so I said yes to the copter. It was a September morning, and the sun was just rising. It was so clear and breathtaking that I asked the pilot to do a circle around the Statue of Liberty – and he actually did it. Can you believe that? This has nothing to do with the point of this chapter, but I had to tell you about it because it’s en route to my point. See, when an unexpected, magical moment happens, you’ve got to take it in, right down to the bottom of your soul. Because that’s what life is about, getting to live it. So we flew around her, that tall, tall symbol of freedom, of hope, of America, and I thought about how lucky I was to be there, to share it with my friend, and to not have had to walk up the ten thousand stairs to get the same view I was seeing now. (Okay, it’s really only three hundred and fifty-four stairs, but at six in the morning it might as well be a mile.)

I got to Stern on time, and I think I held my own. Then Dana and I headed to the hotel to take a short break before the next set of talk shows. Talk shows are an interesting thing. I think it’s a big mistake to approach them thinking people actually want to hear you talk. No one wants to hear you “talk.” They want to be entertained. I’ve always loved the challenge and adrenaline that I get from trying to toss that comedic ball back and forth with some incredibly talented host. Anyway, we dropped our bags in the room, but it just seemed ridiculous to try to take a nap. So we went out walking and found ourselves in Central Park with hot-out-of-the-oven H&H bagels and some coffee. Then I did Live with Regis and Kathie Lee and Late Show with David Letterman. When it was all over we went to celebrate at Petrossian.

Petrossian is a one-of-a-kind Russian caviar restaurant housed in a landmark deco building in midtown. We were celebrating, so we were ready for caviar, champagne, and vodka – a level of woo-hoo-hoo that sort of reminds me of that limo ride I never took, only now I was actually doing it. So we sat down and the waiter came over with menus. Did you ever see that movie Arthur with Dudley Moore (one of my favorite movies)? Anyway, our waiter was the spitting image of Arthur’s valet, Sir John Gielgud. (If you haven’t seen Arthur, well, maybe you need to put this book down and go rent it to really be able to appreciate the humor of this story. But if you are miles from a video store, he’s an older British man, with a dry, slow, even wit, and a deadpan expression masking loads of superior judgmental attitude.)

So we were marveling over all the caviar options and their prices. Whew, wow, them there fish eggs is expensive. But you only live once, so we chose a decent champagne to start, followed by an ounce of Beluga and martinis. Well, unbenownst to me, fancy caviar is served with as much pomp and ceremony as wine. So when the time came, Sir Gielgud presented the caviar and then lifted this utensil with a silver handle and a round, flat end like a mother-of-pearl lollipop, and handed it to me. Puzzled, I looked at him and said, “What’s this?” With the aforementioned attitude and accent he said, “It’s a palette.” That didn’t really clarify anything for me. Seeing my still dumbstruck face, he added, “It’s for tasting the caviar.” Well, why didn’t he say so?

I scooped up a little caviar into the palette (that I now know is made of shell because silver can ruin the flavor of the caviar – as if raw fish egg flavor can be made worse than it is, anyway). I tried it and said, “Uh, yes, that’s good. That’ll be fine.” Sir Gielgud paused for effect, then said, “I’m so relieved.” Remember the accent, which compounded the sarcasm: “I’m so re-leeeeeeeved.”

Then as he was pouring our champagne, I asked, “Do you think we can get some of those chopped onions and egg and capers for the caviar?” Now I’ve always known I was fairly simple, but at that moment I knew how white trash I really was, because he just stared blankly. Then as he lifted the champagne away and screwed it down into the ice bucket, he turned back and sneered, “It’s your caviar. You can do what you want with it.”

Gielgud was right. All the fanciness and rules and cultivated expectations of this world are ours to consider, accept, or reject. You really can do what you want with your life. You are presented with this choice all the time – to cave to what others want or think, or to know what you want and not be afraid to go there.

Gielgud didn’t know it, but his lesson was a key one for me. One of the hardest work experiences I ever went through was the night after the Los Angeles reviews of my performance as Sally Bowles in Cabaret. I had been chosen by Rob Marshall and directed by him for four weeks before opening the show. It was an amazing Tony Award-winning show, with a great cast and a part that I was right for and loved. Sure, it was a risk to go from Lois, a moderately successful TV role, to the lead in a musical. I remember Rob telling me, “No one wants you to be good in this, but believe me, you are.” Well, not according to the LA Times critic. I swore I wouldn’t read the review, but when I heard the paper hit the door outside my rented room at 6 A.M., I just couldn’t help it. The review was harsh, and I cried all day long, as I’ve been known to do.

I was backstage that night, only moments before my first entrance, thinking, I can’t do this. I’m humiliated. I can’t do it. Then of course I did it. I got through it, barely, and very emotionally – probably a little too much so, but, hey, that pain had to go somewhere. I had plenty of people tell me that the critic was a jerk and otherwise try to make me feel better. Then one person gave me an idea that I kept up through my entire seven-month run (which ended – I can’t resist saying in case that critic sees this – with an Obie nomination for best actress). I wrote “fuck ‘em” on my toes. F-u-c-k on one foot and e-m on the other. (I left the extra toes blank.) It was hidden under my tights and shoes. Sometimes I would write it in lipstick on my dressing room mirror – that was before my daughter could read. But I think the best part of it was when it was my little secret. No one saw it and I didn’t show it off, but I knew it was there and it reminded me that what mattered was what I thought, the sincerity of my work and effort, and the support of the people around me. I couldn’t let anyone take this experience away from me.

But f-u-c-k-e-m isn’t written on my toes anymore, and I don’t always remember to have that attitude. Not long ago I went to a birthday party at a restaurant. Miss Gorgeous (who’s not just my hair and makeup guy, but a very close friend) was supposed to meet me there, but I got there first, alone. I came in, looked around the restaurant, and didn’t see the birthday boy – just a few random strangers milling about. The birthday party was MIA. There I was. Girl. Alone. In bar. It was like being an insecure teenager again. I was too shy to explore. I slipped into a booth, dialed Miss Gorgeous (who was en route) and said, “Will you please stay on the phone with me until you get here, because I can’t find the party and I don’t know anyone here and I’m a big loser.” He said, “Here’s what you do. Go buy a drink, and sip it as if nothing could be more satisfying than to be drinking that drink right now.” Easy for him to say. I kept him on the phone until we lost our connection, then I headed to the ladies’ room for refuge. But on my way I caught a glimpse of the garden behind the restaurant. The hopping, festive, birthday party garden. Oh. So there it was.

The party was big and intimate, if it’s possible to be both at once. Those are actually my favorite kinds of parties. There were about fifty people there, all of whom seemed to know each other except me, and there was a great live band backing people up for karaoke. One girl kept asking me if I was going to sing. I think she was assigned to this task, and after I declined she proceeded to work the room, accumulating a long list of takers. But throughout the night she kept coming up to me trying to sign me up, sort of like that whale did with the boat, but without the stinky barnacles. I kept dodging the question by talking about how great the crab dip was, but the truth was that I did want to sing, particularly when I saw that “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ “ was one of the songs you could request. I love that song, and I love singing in general. But that Cabaret review was still haunting me. I felt too self-conscious, too worried that I’d make a fool of myself. It should have been an effortlessly fun thing to do, especially in front of strangers (and Miss Gorgeous, who had arrived at last). Who cares what they think? But it was like the cliff-jump all over again. I was afraid. Too bad that biker wasn’t invited – maybe he could have given me some more encouragement. Three hours later I was still trying to get my courage up when another girl went up and sang – yes – “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.” I was bummed. I’d missed my chance – I’d feel stupid repeating a song that they’d already played. (I suppose I could have sung “These boots are still made for walkin’ “ but it just wouldn’t have been the same.) It’s a defeatist way to live your life – knowing you want to do something but letting your fear of what others will think if you don’t do it perfectly stand in your way.

The party wasn’t a total bust. If I wasn’t going to sing, at least I’d take a stab at dancing. Miss Gorgeous is an amazing dancer, and I’m pretty good too. (Remember that Solid Gold Dancer thing from high school?) The hard part is getting my guts up to dance in public. When we first got out there I wasn’t dancing freely. Dancing openly releases so many feelings: passion, laughter, sensuality, and the purest level of good clean fun. You’d think that pleasure combo would be enough to get me to dance. But, just like with the singing, I worry too much about what people are going to think. What am I afraid of? Why do I even care? But worry often dominates, and throughout the evening I had to conquer it. Being with Miss Gorgeous definitely helped.

Ultimately I let myself relax, danced for hours, and had a great time. It must’ve been obvious, because the next day Miss Gorgeous emailed me to say, “It was good to see you loosen up.” I’d half succeeded. I’d danced the night away. But I would have liked to sing. I knew that the only thing in my way had been me.

Months later I mentioned the party to Miss Gorgeous, and before I said anything about it, he said, “I wish I’d sung something.” It shocked me. Miss Gorgeous is so not that guy. Not the least bit shy and self-conscious – maybe you’d guessed that by the nickname I’ve given him. And so I started to wonder: How many of us at that party were too shy to sing? How many people at that party, and other parties, and in churches and at birthday parties and in our own private showers across the world are silencing ourselves, getting in our own way, missing out on fun that’s practically handed to us on an hors d’oeuvre tray? And what would the world be like if those voices emerged, in a great cacophony of devil-may-care joy? Can’t we teach the world to sing in perfect harmony? Okay, I’m getting a little age-of-Aquarius. But seriously, can’t we do something to support each other? Can’t we make the world a softer, more welcoming place?

I think about this a lot. How we should be gentle to each other, even when we’re strangers. While I was working on Lois & Clark, I lived in Sunland, a horse community in the northeastern valley of LA that gave me the down-home rooted feeling I was looking for to counteract the glamour and stress of Hollywood. I lived there for eight years. I was living alone, sometimes working seventeen hours a day, and that’s no exaggeration. I’d come home in the pitch-dark of night, collapse on my bed, and leave early in the morning. And so it came to be that sometimes I’d leave my trash cans out. Yes, I confess. I was one of those intolerable, disrespectful, thoughtless neighbors – the trash can leaver-outer. No! Not that!

At the end of one long, exhausting day, I arrived home to receive a nasty letter from a neighbor, ranting about how she had to look at my trash cans all day long, and how I had no courtesy and how could I be so rude? I guess I got her point, but I couldn’t help wanting to write her back to say, “Maybe you should find a better way to spend your time than smoking cigarettes and staring out your window at my trash cans all day long.” I know, I know, it brings down the neighborhood. But how about this – the next time you have a neighbor who leaves their trash cans out too long for your taste, what if you just assume that they are spent, busy, depressed, and in need of help, and take your lazy ass over there and move them back. Yeah, I’m a little defensive about the trash cans. I try hard to move peacefully through the world, and I’m sensitive to that kind of judgment from a stranger. If we could all spend a little time thinking people might need a little help, instead of assuming they’re selfish slobs, we might live in a nicer world.

Your world is what you make of it. It’s a collection of steps, one in front of the next, that form a path from your childhood to your present. Sometimes you’re led against your will. Sometimes you want to stop but have to keep going. Along the way you may think you know who you are and what you want. Some elements of that may stay the same forever, and others may change every year. Regardless, you have to take ownership of your destiny and be honest about what you want, even if it’s hard to admit. Even if the people around you don’t think you’re making the right decision.

I didn’t go to my dream college – my top choices were Juilliard, a music school, or Carnegie-Mellon, an engineering school – because my father told me he’d only pay if I studied electrical engineering. (If Juilliard has an electrical engineering program, I doubt it’s very good.) My dad grew up during the Depression. All he knew was the security of work. Being an artist wouldn’t guarantee me anything. My mom, who also came from a poor Depression background, had the same fears. That’s why she always felt like she had to have a job. They wanted our family to feel safe. This is a mentality they were taught, and it didn’t always reflect our actual circumstances. Because the truth is that there are no guarantees in life. You don’t know where happiness is going to come from. I think my dad kind of gets this now. He offered to pay for me to take singing lessons – now! – as a late and sweet endorsement of the choices I’ve made. If only I’d taken him up on it maybe I wouldn’t have been too shy to sing karaoke.

I stuck with acting in spite of the pressures from my family. But then, when Lois & Clark finished up, it was time for me to make another decision that was all my own. Since I was sixteen, I’d wanted to be a mother more than anything else. Psychiatrists would probably say that teenagers who want kids are trying to fix something in their lives – to have someone who loves you unconditionally and who you can control. Fine, maybe there was something true in that for me at that time. (Luckily, I didn’t drop out of high school to have kids.) But one thought that had stayed with me ever since my teen years was that I didn’t want to be a working mother. My mother had worked throughout my childhood. Once when she dropped me off at school, she told me that if she didn’t get going she was going to be fired. My face got very serious and I let her go right away. It wasn’t until days later that she realized I didn’t know what it meant to be fired. I thought that if she were late to work the people at her office would set her on fire. Her work was that evil and horrifying to me. Right or wrong, having a working mom didn’t work for me. I didn’t like it. I was lonely. I constantly begged for siblings. And I vowed that I would give my kids a different childhood.

The working mom vs. stay-at-home mom decision. I’m cautious when I talk about this because I love and appreciate women, and I don’t ever want to sit in judgment. There is no right answer in this debate. It’s a struggle for all of us, and we have to make our own decisions. So much is asked of us – to work, to parent, to look a certain way, to act a certain way. I never judge a woman’s choices because I actually don’t think there is any easy, right way to be a woman in our society. You’re not building either a career or a family. You’re building a life. How it adds up, what feels right, is something only you can decide.

Becoming a mother changed my life. Previously my acting career and my marriage had been the tent poles of my life. But when Emerson Rose was born she became, at once and forever, the center of my world. I was responsible for this small, perfect being. It was up to me to protect her from danger, to introduce her to joy, and to give her the tools to build a life that will make her happy.

People in Hollywood probably thought I was making a mistake by letting my career stall in order to raise my daughter. They either thought I was finished – I was out of the game – or that it was, at most, a quick year off. (Which, of course, it wasn’t.) I could have succumbed to the pressures around me, telling me I was risking my career. I still wouldn’t have changed how I spent my time, but I certainly could have let myself feel torn between what people said and what I knew was right for me. But I made a choice. I ignored my agent. I didn’t pay attention to the decreasing number of party lists I was on, how quickly the phone stopped ringing with job opportunities, or how the free stuff that celebrities always get stopped arriving in the mail. I didn’t want to go back to that insecure hell of being an actress. Especially not now that I was a mom. I had to do what felt right to me.

Suddenly the influences of outside people fell away. I looked deeper than the opinions and reactions of my friends, family, and colleagues. A relative didn’t like the name we’d chosen. Other people told me I should cut my daughter’s hair. She liked to eat pats of butter, plain. People said I shouldn’t, but I let her do it. I had a strong sense of how I wanted to parent, and I wasn’t about to let anyone else tell me how to do it. When outside voices conflict with your heart, all you can do is try to find some temporary, tightrope-walking balance that almost works for you more than half of the time, maybe, and know that you’re doing the best you can. Being a mother was a real shortcut to realizing that I could make decisions without worrying or caring what others thought.

As a new mom, I felt surges of warmth from the world. If the baby was screaming in the grocery store, people let me cut in line. (Okay, maybe they did that ‘cause they were trying to get rid of us.) You know how little stores claim not to have bathrooms, but you know the employees must go to the bathroom somewhere? Well, now that I was a mother every store let me use their secret bathroom. At the airport, people who’d normally be pushing past me heedlessly stopped to help with the stroller. But being kind to strangers shouldn’t be reserved for a mother with a baby. Too often we’re that trash can-hating neighbor in Sunland. I took a flight on Virgin Atlantic and noticed that there was a sign on the counter that said, IT’S NOT ACCEPTABLE TO ABUSE THE STAFF OF VIRGIN ATLANTIC BECAUSE YOUR PLANE IS LATE. I said to the guy behind the counter, “That is so sad. They have to have a sign that says you can’t abuse people!” Since when does freaking out at an airline employee change your flight status? You’re already having a bad day. Why would you make it so that someone else has to have a crappy day too? Imagine what that guy tells his partner about you when he goes home. Seriously, people. Ease up on the airline employees! Life is hard enough.

The Christmas right after Emerson was born, I decided to make a big Christmas dinner, goose and all, for my friends and family. Emerson was only three months old; I hadn’t slept in weeks. Clearly I was out of my mind to think this was a good idea. A perfectionist always, I wanted everything to be seasonal and festive. So on Christmas Eve, amidst the daze of night feedings, burping, and diaper changing, I drove to Bed Bath & Beyond to get maroon tablecloths and matching napkins. I was so out of it that I’m lucky I didn’t get nabbed for an MUI (Mother Under the Influence). Nonetheless, I made it there and started wandering the aisles, haplessly searching for what I thought would be obvious items to stock for Christmas. But no, it was not so easy to find the tablecloths among the Santa Claus salt-and-pepper shakers, Marilyn Monroe tree ornaments, and reindeer-themed pleather bodysuits. (Okay, that’s an exaggeration.)

I was making my way through those superwide, luxurious aisles when I heard a voice behind me say, “Well, excuuuuuse me!” I turned around to see a woman who was clearly annoyed that I’d crossed in front of her. Apparently, in my oblivion, I’d broken her shopping right-of-way code. I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.” She scowled at me and walked away. Now maybe this was one of those “let it go” moments, but I couldn’t. I pride myself on being fair and conscious of others’ feelings, and in my heart I was nowhere close to thinking I’d been rude to this woman. So, after a few minutes of stewing, and against my better judgment, I walked back up to her. I was really trying to hold back my tears, but of course I broke into sobs as I explained that I didn’t even see her, and that I was a new mom, and that maybe she should just give people a little break because you never know what they might be going through. To which her lovely, generous response was, “I guess you are the big fucking bitch I keep reading about in the tabloids.”

What a lovely way to start Christmas. I think about her, and try to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was alone on Christmas; maybe the only thing that made her feel good was being able to put down someone who seemed happier than she (and she would have to have been really bad off for an uncontrollably sobbing woman to be the happier one). In moments like this, I try to be forgiving. When someone cuts me off on the highway, instead of letting road rage take over, I tell myself that I have no idea what’s going on in that other driver’s world. Maybe her mother is sick. Maybe she just got fired. Maybe she’s an airline employee who was brutalized by delayed travelers all day long. I imagine that we have more in common than not. I cut her some slack the way I hope others would cut me some slack on a bad day. We all suffer enough on our own. If we try to ease the suffering of those around us, who knows how the karmic echoes will lighten our loads?

We went to New York for New Year’s a couple of days later. I was walking down Ninth Avenue when I saw a woman drop a full bag of groceries. It was a gray, cloudy day, and the street was full of people hurrying their separate ways, dull and unanimated. Several oranges rolled out of the woman’s fallen bag; the only bright spots of color on the street. Nobody stopped to help her collect her groceries. They just walked past, oblivious. Then something happened. The clouds broke, and a double rainbow appeared. A double rainbow! In New York City! That’s two more rainbows than you ever see in New York. They arched perfectly across the sky, right over the Chrysler Building. There was a collective gasp on the street. People pointed and smiled. Some ran into stores to buy disposable cameras. We all watched until the sky clouded over again, then went on our ways. But then the second miracle happened. The whole way down Ninth Avenue strangers stopped each other to say, “Did you see the rainbow?” and “You can still see it over on Seventh Avenue!” A twin rainbow. That’s what it took to get people to notice each other, to bring them together.

Sure, you’re probably thinking, Well, that was once in a lifetime. After all, New York ain’t Hawaii. Still, rare as rainbows may be, it seemed so simple, so easy to instantaneously transform people from cold, unconcerned strangers who wouldn’t help a woman chase down her oranges to members of a friendly, warm community. We’re all right there, on the threshold of caring about each other, of coming together, of relishing the funny, pretty things that appear in our world. You’re on that threshold with everything that happens in your life. Doing your hair. Going to the grocery store. Having a meeting. Making dinner for your family. Going on a date. Robbing a bank. (Actually, if you’re a bank robber, I’m not sure any of this applies to you. Put down the book and turn yourself in.) You can find friendly faces. You can live in the moment. You can opt to be in a world that makes you smile. (Cheesy, but you know what I mean?) You can be the person who doesn’t help pick up the oranges, or you can shift just slightly and turn into the person who stands in awed appreciation of all the colors in the spectrum.

I suppose you’re wondering what happened to the lady with the spilled groceries? Did the rainbow awaken everyone to her plight? Come on. We’re talking about New York City. What do you think happened? She picked them up and went on her way. But maybe at least the rainbow made her forget to be angry at the grocery store for not double-bagging her purchases. She was – as we all are – part of a community. We could all see the rainbow together.

Motherhood brought me a new sense of knowing what I wanted, and after that trip to New York, I started wanting to leave LA. I wanted to move to a place where I didn’t have to be in a car all the time. To live in a real neighborhood in a great city. So we drove across the country and moved to New York City. I know what you’re thinking – What? You should have picked Minneapolis. All I knew was that I wanted to make a new home and a new life with a baby. I thought New York was the answer. Little did I know that it would be the place where I hit rock bottom.