A Complicated Marriage (33 page)

Overall, I was disappointed with my histrionics, which harkened back to the way I had felt about my boyfriend during the last two years of high school—and we hadn't even had sex. As for the starter sex, it was exciting, but there was no screaming, full-out passion. I was far too nervous and self-conscious. The all-seeing artist painted a small portrait of me during those months. In my hair, he had added a small blue bow, an acknowledgment of my “innocence.” The picture was destroyed in a fire, but our friendship would survive.

Early on in analysis, I had discovered that I could want something. Now I knew that I wanted to have it all: to be a wife, a mother, an actress, a lover . . . And that this was the start of what would be a long learning curve. Opportunity was all around me. Whatever theater group or production, there was sex—sometimes a real connection, more often a
run-of-the-play deal. Always with no secrets, no lies between Clem and me. It would have been nice if it had been that simple. Sometimes all that free love was fun. Sometimes it didn't feel so free. And often I wished I was twenty-one again and had only one thought: to be married and be Clem's one and only.

I continued to be adrift in ambivalence. On the one hand I felt hesitant, guilty, about intimacy with another man. And on the other hand I talked myself into believing that the intimacy was linked to love, love being the justifying magnet. I was ashamed to think like such a Virgin Bride product of the fifties and my mother's programming. All that “Men only want one thing,” and “Never let a man touch you down there—you'll get pregnant.” Now I was answering,
But, Ma, what do women want
? and,
Look, Ma, I've got the Pill
.

However I spun it, the reality was that I had somersaulted from the intimacy of love with Clem to the intimacy of casual sex. And if my doubts surfaced, and they often did, I had my analyst to remind me, “No one person can ever be all things to anyone else.” I would nod obediently, even as my thoughts mutinied:
But Clem is my husband, part of me; we live life as one, no matter what you yammer on about
. The analyst would go, lovers would come and go, but, despite my seemingly confident, freewheeling ways, my ambivalence lingered.

I would come to accept that for an open marriage to work at all, it would need to be mutual. To my surprise I found that, with the exception of his first dalliance in California, which had blindsided me, I had never felt “betrayed” by Clem. Without the secrets and lies, the suspicions, the sneaking around, the
Aha! I caught you
!, the word simply didn't apply. And without that deal-breaking word, I would be okay, and so would the marriage. As for my ambivalence and guilt, my acceptance told me it was time to let them go, and I did.

However, there was one instance where I found I had limits. Clem's affairs at the time, like mine, were sporadic and fleeting, and I paid them little mind. However, in the mid-sixties, he began a fraught relationship with a woman in Boston that zigzagged for over two years. Difficult for me because of Clem's angst and drama, which, in the name of openness, spilled out onto me, and because I found her to be a “nasty piece of
work”—as my mother might have said—who darted crafty, smug looks at me when our paths would cross. I learned that the openness in an open marriage can go too far.

After a while, to my horror, Clem began to regale me with vivid accounts of the intimate details and progress of the affair. Once again, after much slamming of doors and my yelling at him to shut the hell up, he finally got the point and I set ground rules. Namely: There are some things better kept to yourself; if you need a confidant, go to an analyst; and keep the bitch at a distance. Sheepishly, he agreed on all points, including that she was a bitch.

Fortunately, my own work and fun provided a balance, which would be enhanced when in 1966 I fell for Jimmy, a fellow actor, and started my own two-year relationship. Clem had balance, too. The art world was at full tilt and Clem with it, writing, lecturing, much in demand. So much to do, we both seemed to be always rushing off somewhere.

For me, there was all that, but at the same time I was doing what mothers do, what wives do: I kept the machinery running; took care of Sarah, her social life, her school life—in 1966 she started nursery school at Manhattan Country School; kept the refrigerator stocked with salami and chopped liver, the ice trays filled, the liquor cabinet full; and did the laundry and sock darning in between. And Clem and I still shared a bed—king-size—and still had sex. And the art world didn't stop just because I had stepped back from it. I still joined in during the gatherings at home or going places with Clem. Just not all the time. It was now a matter of choice, that million-dollar panacea that all analysts prescribed.

As for Sy, I was still seeing him twice a week, and would continue until 1968, when I figured I could steer my own ship. How blithe that sounds. It was, in fact, a wrenching split that had been precipitated by my long-term attachment to Jimmy which Sy viewed as just another excursion into “codependence,” a propensity he hoped he had “cured” me of. But there would be no negotiation. I was far too happy. So, not with his blessing, I left. It was messy: Sy sounding like an angry papa; me masking my trepidation with cocksure bravado. I was sorry about that final session. It was the only bad mark I would ever give him.

And there was always the balance of the theater. In 1967 a new director
came on the scene, Albert Takazauckas, and I got a chance to mix it up with a lot of first-class material, such as
A Midsummer Night's Dream
, as a Victorian Helena with a Gibson Girl updo romping through the forest of Riverside Church. Finally something more kid-friendly, and Sarah Dora saw her first play. And there was
Under Milk Wood
, with a chance for me to learn a few chords on a guitar and sing for an audience for the first time—a ditty, only so-so, but it rekindled a passion that had been squelched when I was twelve. I had begged for singing lessons, but my mother had said no, that it was silly to think I would ever be a singer. Poor Ma, she never could just spit it out that we couldn't afford lessons. But, as with acting, passions have a way of resurfacing.

While still at HB, I started studying with Graham Bernard, privately and with a group. Twice a week, for years, I experienced the joy of releasing the fullness of my voice for the first time. Some people could scream. I had rarely been able to. But I could sing. And for many years I did, with groups, with teachers, wherever I might be.

If I ever had a niche, it was Chekhov. I rarely auditioned for a Chekhov part I didn't get, especially if it was for Yelena in
Uncle Vanya
or Masha in
Three Sisters
, each of which I played twice. The drifting, vaporing, fires-burning-deep women who always felt on the fringes of life were comfort food for me. Having never figured out what I was supposed to do in the role of Clem's wife, Yelena's line “As for me, I am just a secondary character” said it all. I would deliver it with a touch of bravado, because Yelena wasn't a secondary character at all, and by then I was learning that I wasn't either, to Clem or to myself.

While in Bill Hickey's class at HB, I added another forte when he pegged me as a comedienne who could do anything Ina Claire could do. I'd never heard of her, but for months I played sophisticated “comedy of manners” scenes. They were fun and easy, but I yearned for the smolder. I think Bill just enjoyed seeing the old material from the thirties that few in the mostly hippie-dippie class could, or were willing to, attempt.

Then came a rare moment. Bill was asked to direct a comedy for Broadway called
The 101-Year-Old Woman
. To rehearse it, he cast students and friends. I was to play the title role, of all inanities. Judd Hirsch was in it; he was wonderful. I was predictably dreadful. Bill was in a show
at the time, so rehearsals would start around 11:00 PM at his apartment on Gramercy Park, and sometimes it would be dawn when Judd would drive some of us home. The play did make it to Broadway—of course not with me, but with Zohra Lampert. It lasted a night, and that was that. But Bill felt he owed me, and one day said, “I've got a present for you.” The present was Scott Glenn and a steamy scene from Inge's
A Loss of Roses
that ended with a passionate embrace. Happily, Scott and I rehearsed like mad for weeks. Soon after, I felt I had gotten all I could get from HB. I guess Scott agreed. As he moved on to Hollywood fame, the time had come for me to move on up, uptown to Lee Strasberg's Wednesday classes in the Carnegie Hall studio building.

A smallish space, with windows along the side and the ubiquitous platform at the far end. In the center of the front row was the one comfortable chair, Lee Strasberg's throne. Behind him, every seat was filled; there must have been almost a hundred of us, or so it seemed. Until I figured out the drill, I sat toward the back, among the hunky louts who flocked to those classes. The other generic group were the frails: wilting, pale, young women who wept, onstage and off, more fluently than they spoke. Lee's attention hovered over these two groups. It didn't take me long to realize I fit into neither, which probably wouldn't serve me well.

There was a dominatrix monitor who signed you up to do the basic sensory exercises—taste, smell, heat, cold, touch—in a prescribed progression. There would be a group of actors seated across the stage, each working on whatever exercise they had worked up to. To advance from one to the next meant passing through Lee's needle eye of approval. Other exercises, such as taking on the attributes of an animal or singing a song one extended syllable at a time, or the more advanced exercises, such as “private moments” or “affective memory,” were usually done alone. The exercises culminated in improvisation and scene work.

During all the work, whether exercises or scenes, Lee would keep up a steady stream of criticism directed at this one or that, probing, demanding a reality that he didn't see, sometimes softly, sometimes heavy as a fist, usually the fist. He would walk up and down the platform, in and around the chairs, lifting an arm here, a leg there, testing for complete relaxation, which was at the heart of all the work. During scenes, Lee's
procedure was the same; he would critique and walk in and out of the scenes at will. Always, tears signaled breakthroughs, as long as they didn't stop the flow of the work. Authentic, real, were his criteria, and not just in regard to inner experience—he had to be able to see it.

I could smell the damn orange until I salivated, but it was never enough for him. If I moved, it wasn't real. If I didn't, he couldn't see what I was sensing. Lose-lose. I became resistant, angry. He pigeonholed me as an uptight girl determined to keep her vulnerability under a slab and he never changed his original take. For my part, I found him off-putting from the moment I introduced myself. Small, a thin mouth, he seemed to be all head, probably because of his eyes, unblinking, sharp as knives, chillingly cold. He could summon a surface charm, but I never bought it. The result: a massive chip on my shoulder that made it impossible for me to yield. Mutual misfits.

Nonetheless, I stayed for almost two years and kept signing up for the work, as slow as my progress was. Because I was receiving self-satisfaction and approbation from the plays I was doing, the experience was marginally sustainable. But the real draw was, the sessions were compelling. At HB I had explored the nuts and bolts of my so-called “emotional and physical instrument” and had absorbed the basic tools I needed to work on scenes and characters. But in Lee's room the air was emotionally charged; he was a loose cannon. With the others, I squirmed and agonized through the gamut of my sensory life. As much as I instinctively balked at Lee's tactics, in my head I acknowledged that his Method, via Stanislavski, worked. After all, it had broken through the prancing and prating of most actors prior to the forties. I wanted to please him, I wanted to defy him. A father to all—to some a good father, to many a tyrant. The only aspect of Lee I enjoyed was when he turned raconteur and wove stories of great performances, from Duse to Bernhardt to Arthur Rubinstein to Laurette Taylor.

I shared his excitement. I wanted to tell him—as if I ever would or could—about election night in 1956, after Clem and I had left a party at the fancy townhouse of the Tom Hesses. As Eisenhower rolled over on Stevenson, we strolled the deserted Upper East Side streets. Lured by the lights of the Versailles, we headed in for a drink. The club was nearly
empty, a piano thrumming aimlessly. Then, no fanfare, on a dark stage, in a small pool of light, a woman began to sing. She didn't move. A white face, black hair, clothes, everything black except for the fire. I couldn't breathe, a chill went through me, I moved inside her voice, her pain, her passion. As tremulous as a leaf, as mighty as a pillar of steel, Edith Piaf seared herself into my memory. Such a brief moment, such a diminutive woman, yet she was one of those rare creatures who could transport. I, who wasn't in awe of much, was in awe of that.

Being around Strasberg, I often thought about star power. How could I not, with the auras of Brando, Newman, Clift, Dean still in the air? There was a quality that allowed a rare few, by virtue of their very presence, to own the spotlight while others fell into shadow. Reflecting on my experience with Piaf, I wondered if it was their innate gift of transparency that allowed us to see into them and project ourselves onto them. It couldn't be taught.

And right there in Lee's classroom was another harbinger of the past, Anna Sten. Not that she was a Duse or a Piaf, but she had been touched with a smidgeon of that elusive stardust. She had been a brief candle in the Hollywood firmament of the 1930s, after being imported from Sweden by Samuel Goldwyn and dubbed the New Garbo. She fizzled, but thirty years later, every Wednesday in the Carnegie Building, she glittered again as she sat on the right hand of God in the center of the front row, with her tiny, porcelain perfection, sausaged into tight bright colors, breasts thrusting up and out, skirts shorter than mini, towering stilettos strapped onto teensy feet. Buffed and polished and made up to the nth degree, a cloud of platinum topped her off as she fondled her beribboned toy poodle. A Technicolor baby doll amid the rest of us, dressed down in the manner of the day, I because it felt safer in the city I traveled alone in night and day.