Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (18 page)

No one noticed—or cared. The dinner turned into a party that went way past the time any of us anticipated, which was fun until three-quarters of the way through the night Michael and I remembered there was still one more momentous event left to the evening. It was our wedding night. We were finally going to consummate our relationship. With that realization, I knew we’d turned the corner, that all the preparations, anxiety, and tears had been worth it, and the rest of the night was about the two of us.

Or it would’ve been if I hadn’t blabbed about my nervous excitement to Barry and Eve, who got the entire
Brady
crew to follow us back to the Hotel Bel-Air, where they decamped in our honeymoon suite and, thanks to several bottles of champagne, stayed…and stayed…and stayed…None of them wanted to leave. We would have felt the same way if not for something else on our minds. Eventually I said that I wanted to slip into something more comfortable and far too revealing for any of them to see, which got a laugh and our first moment alone.

As memorable as the rest of that night was, Michael topped it the following day when he read me something he had written while I slept. He said that he’d read someplace that marriage was like two tributaries merging and, after some turbulence, forming a single great river. “That’s us, you and I,” he said, adding that we hadn’t quite gotten to the river part yet, but he looked forward to the adventure. And he was sure it would be an adventure.

Indeed, “our whole relationship to this point is kind of a blur, except for the exact second when our eyes locked,” he continued. “That instant will forever remain like a tattoo in my memory, recallable at will. You’re a once-in-a-lifetime person. An impish confluence of celebrity and innocence that danced into my life, upsetting the applecart I’d created for myself, answering questions I never asked, pulling and pushing until I thought I might go crazy.

“But crazy in a good way. I just kept adjusting and readjusting until that day I came to a decision because there was really no choice. I got down on my knees, prayed to God that He wouldn’t abandon me, and then prayed to God that you, like me, would also say, ‘I do.’ And it will be forever.”

Part
Three

For Better and For Worse

A
fter the wedding, Michael and I were exhausted. One day, as we walked into Westwood, I joked that we were holding hands to keep each other from falling down. Although neither of us would’ve objected to a relaxing honeymoon in Hawaii we spent the next week helping at the Special Winter Olympics in Park City, Utah.

Inspired by my brother, I’d participated for years in both the summer and winter Special Olympics. As Michael realized, it was exhausting to run around on the slopes all day, assisting special kids and adults and visiting with their families. But it was worth every ache and pain.

Most of the special Olympians recognized me as Marcia. Some of them got very excited when they saw me and called out, “Marcia Brady.” Those were the few occasions when I didn’t try to distance myself from my TV character. Through Denny, I knew how hard it was to reach people with special needs. So I understood and appreciated the connection being Marcia helped me make with them.

I also loved seeing the joy in their parents’ eyes when the kids recognized me and came out of their shells, expressing genuine excitement, affection, and love.

Unfortunately, the producers and casting directors with whom I met in my professional life also recognized me as Marcia, minus the love and affection. Despite the varied work I’d done since
The Brady Bunch
, they still saw me as Marcia, a grown-up version. As a result, I couldn’t get work. It was the longest drought of my career. It frustrated me to no end because I didn’t know what to do. No matter what, I couldn’t be anyone else.

Michael’s career also slowed down, but he was still feeling his oats and buoyant compared to me. One day he suggested taking advantage of some of the money we’d saved by moving temporarily to New York.

“Why don’t we give it a try?” he said.

I wasn’t against it, but I wanted to understand why.

“Just to try the acting life there,” he said. “Change the scenery, change the type of work, and maybe change perceptions.”

“Change is good,” I said.

We went for nearly a month and got a room for $65 a night in a bed and breakfast. It was actually a four-story brownstone on the West Side, and the room we had redefined small. We were on top of each other whether we were laying down or standing up. Only one of us could get dressed at a time. Despite the inconvenience, the city was full of excitement and things to do. We had a great time sightseeing, going to theater, and living the New York actor’s life, as we’d intended.

None of my auditions worked out, but Michael got numerous bites. Right before we were scheduled to return to Los Angeles, he was asked to read for the daytime soap
All My Children.
We didn’t have a place to stay, so I flew home while he looked around for another room.

There was a hotel across the street from the brownstone, except rooms were $250 a night and up, way too steep for us. But Michael really liked the place, as well as the convenience. He struck up a quick friendship with someone at the front desk, who took pity on him, or simply liked him, and let him have a room for the same rate we’d paid at the bed-and-breakfast. It was a great room, too, with a view of Central Park. Just an incredible deal.

One day, as Michael tested again for the part—the choice, he found out, was between him and two other guys—I was out doing errands and ran into a guy I knew from an acting class I’d attended years earlier. As we caught up, I mentioned it was ironic to see him after so long since he’d once had a role on
All My Children
and now Michael was in New York with a seemingly good shot of getting cast on the same show.

We laughed. However, it turned out that neither Michael nor the other two actors got the part. The guy I ran into ended up getting rehired. Did he make calls as a result of the tip I’d given him? Was there funny business behind the scenes? I don’t know, but it left a bitter taste. I’d sensed that Michael was going to get the job, we were going to move to New York, and life was going to be different. As I told Michael, I was ready for that kind of change.

Instead Michael returned to Los Angeles, disappointed but not defeated—not until we got home and played the message on our answer machine. We walked into the condo and saw the light blinking. We had one message. It was from Chris Viores. He managed both of us. “I hope both of you are sitting down,” he said. Then there was a pause. I turned to Michael and smiled, figuring there was good news about one of the auditions we’d gone on in New York or something else. “Seriously,” he continued. “Because this is not good news. Mo, your agents let you go, and Mike, you lost your agent, too. Guys, I’m really, really sorry. We’ll have to regroup and start over.”

I
wasn’t able to regroup. I was lost, confused, and emotionally unstable. My bulimia flared up again, as it did when I couldn’t get a grip. Between throwing up and swimming, I looked healthy and good. My skin was clear, my body was still in shape, and my hair was the same blond mane I had brushed so assiduously as a teenager on the
Brady
set. Internally, it was another story. Without work, my sense of self was in free fall, and it took everything else with it.

Life was an up-and-down cycle again, my moods seemingly determined by forces as varied as the weather, the moon, the sound of a door slamming, or a plate being set on the table too hard. Each day was random and unpredictable. I had no idea what was going to set me off. I had no patience. I expended so much energy keeping myself together that the littlest things caused me to lose it.

Michael and I were always on top of each other. My small condo didn’t leave us much space for ourselves. We had one bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. At least he got to enjoy a change of scenery after getting a part-time job selling office equipment, an activity at which he enjoyed success and received positive feedback. There was no escape for me. I was Marcia Brady’s hostage, one half of a love-hate relationship with myself. I was trapped by my past, something I desperately wanted to break free from—and yet break free to what? And become whom?

Many years earlier, I had hired two guys to decorate my condo. They’d turned it into an ultrachic bachelorette pad done entirely in pink. Michael sometimes referred to it as the Pink Palace. I used the term, too, but in a negative sense, as it was anything but a palace. As my mood faded to black, I began to abhor the constant sight of pinks. Colors radiate emotion, and the pink was unrelenting. I was never in that mood. I remember sitting in the living room on one of bleakest of days. I was perched on my pink sofa, looking at myself in the wall-size mirror and feeling like a piece of something or other that had landed in a vat of cotton candy.

What was I doing there?

What was I doing, period?

I melted into a deep, unstoppable cry. Sometimes I cried for an entire day without letup. At that time, I felt like I had a big empty hole inside me, and I cried whenever I thought about it.

In some ways there is no hell greater than a once-popular child star in her thirties trying to figure out a direction in life and recapture the sense of purpose that was so intense and clear years earlier. How could so many people come up to me in stores and on the sidewalk and say they loved me, say they’d always loved me, when I had no such feelings for myself? Why didn’t the right people in Hollywood love me?

I cried myself to sleep most nights. I remember lots of anger and deep-down sadness. I was terribly depressed. I think part of it was everything I’d been through, part was genetics, and part was the years of drug use and abuse. I should have gotten treatment. I didn’t.

One day I fell into a bad place. I compared it to being caught in the same kind of riptide that had pulled Michael out to sea four years earlier in Hawaii. I stewed in silence all day at home. After Michael got home from work, I got worse. Something about his presence pushed me in even deeper. Suddenly I went from silence to rage. I swung at Michael, needing to lash out. It was ugly. At the peak of our fighting, I stripped off my clothes as if shedding my skin, walked onto the balcony, and screamed that I was going to jump.

In that state, I desperately wanted relief, and I saw it down below on the pavement. Did I want to kill myself? No, not really. Would I have done it? Yes, most definitely. I was out of my mind. However, Michael grabbed ahold of me and hauled me inside. Although I struggled and fought, he used his considerable strength to wrestle me into submission. He was literally my rescuer. Thank God he didn’t let go for the longest time.

L
ooking back, I should’ve sought professional treatment immediately after what was such an obvious and desperate cry for help, but Michael and I accepted such volatility as part of our relationship. Then, in early 1987, I landed a part in the movie
Return to Horror High,
the story of a movie crew that makes a documentary about a high school once beset by a serial killer—and guess what happens? Yes, members of the movie crew begin to disappear.

On the plus side, it was work. I played a police officer with a ghoulish fascination for blood. On the negative side, I knew it was a B movie and it made me feel as if I might as well stop dreaming of ever getting parts that would earn me respect. Michael encouraged me to have fun. I wish I’d had a better attitude. Only now can I look back and appreciate that I was in a George Clooney movie—it was one of his earliest films—and wish I could try it again.

Michael and I entered another rough period where we fought often and hard. I should clarify: I fought often and hard. Several times I provoked and pushed him to the point where he spent the night elsewhere until I cooled off. He would have been justified if he’d walked out for good, but he didn’t. I know that he wondered what he had gotten himself into. He’d asked himself that question before we got married, and he was still asking it four years later.

Why did he stay?

Much later I actually asked him, and Michael said that he’d made a life-long commitment and decided he was going to work at it until it’s unworkable. He thought child stardom had arrested my development, and in many ways he was right. He also sensed that I might be suffering from a sort of chemical imbalance or some kind of mental illness related to depression.

It was not in my nature to be a cruel or mean person. My moods seemed to take me captive, and the swings from high to low were extreme and beyond my control. Thank goodness Michael never lost sight of the person he saw when he fell in love with me. Because I frequently lost track of that person and when that happened I also lost track of what I thought of as normal.

In early spring 1988, we celebrated Passover at a friend’s Seder dinner. It was a large gathering, with upwards of 70 people. About a week earlier, I found out that I was pregnant, and I wanted to tell Michael in a special way. We hadn’t been trying, but a baby was always in the picture and so I was bursting with excitement. I wanted to be a mother in the worst way, and I knew he would be an exceptional father.

I decided to break the news to Michael at the Seder dinner. I don’t know why I felt like I needed that kind of group cheer, but I did. I thought everyone would help us celebrate, and I thought it would be wonderful for Michael. Needless to say, it wasn’t. As dessert was brought out, I gave Michael a bouquet of helium-filled balloons that said “Congratulations! You’re a Dad!” and said, “I’m pregnant.”

Michael didn’t know what hit him. His expression changed from disbelief to shock to anger and finally to confusion and hurt. He muttered something along the lines of, “Why are you telling me like this?”

At home, he tried to figure out why I had surprised him like that in front of all those people with such personal news. I felt like he grilled me unfairly and went into attack mode. It wasn’t pretty, and we stayed mad for several days.

About two weeks later, I suffered a miscarriage. It was my eighth week and there was no real reason for the miscarriage other than the pregnancy didn’t take but I chose to believe that God was punishing me for every stupid thing I’d done. Devastated, I couldn’t get out of bed or stop crying.

T
his time it was my mother who came to my rescue. She stayed by my bed and confided that she’d miscarried her first pregnancy, something I didn’t know, and, though she didn’t directly mention her syphilis she described the emptiness she felt after losing the baby, her worries that God was punishing her, and her fears that she might never be able to have a child.

I related, and opened up about my own similar feelings. All of a sudden we were talking, I mean really talking, as women, as mother and daughter. In that bleak moment, it was as if we were reaching out for each other.

“You’ll try again,” she said.

The advice wasn’t new or earth shattering, but coming from my mother, it made an impact. She also shared some thoughts about making the unfairness of life beside the point, rather than
the
point, something that resonated in me for the way it poignantly related to both of us.

I began to realize that life, despite moments of happiness and joy, is really about discovering priorities and dealing with unforeseen vagaries, differences, obstacles, inconveniences, and imperfections. I remembered
Saturday Night Live
’s late, great Gilda Radner as Rosanne Roseannadanna saying “It’s always something. If it’s not one thing, it’s something else.”

Nevertheless, from those talks I had with my mother, I got the sense that something good was going to result from all these tears.