Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (26 page)

Epilogue:
Being Me

T
ake it from me: Surviving your mistakes, making peace with the past, acquiring some wisdom, and learning to like yourself really does make life better. Hey, wrinkles still appear, things sag, and you may need a few more trips to the colorist. But everything that matters, everything you’d consider a priority, improves. It really does. Still, there aren’t any guarantees that life will get any easier, as I sadly and maddeningly found out when the same problems with Kevin and my father persisted into the new year.

Early in 2007, Sandy, the woman my father and Kevin had chosen in court as the temporary trustee of the McCormick Family Trust, urged me to try to get conservatorship over my father. It was a sudden reversal of her position. Till that point, she had been irritatingly noncompliant on certain issues, including our agreement in mediation that he see us and that we go for counseling together. For some reason I still don’t know, she came to her senses.

After months of us complaining that we no longer knew where my father and Kevin lived and couldn’t even speak to my father, she recognized that Kevin exerted an undue and unhealthy influence over my father. She told us that she felt my father should be separated from Kevin as soon as possible. Well, obviously I agreed. But how were we supposed to accomplish this? After three years of fighting, I was at a loss for ideas. I remember asking Sandy how society could allow something like this to happen when everybody with a clear and sane mind knew what had been going on, including her!

Even more bewildering was how a man who was a loving father and an especially loving grandfather could so drastically change, virtually overnight. We took the fight back to court after Sandy’s alarming shift, but that didn’t help us understand the situation any better. It was like my father had been abducted by aliens. How did it happen? How was my brother able to take him, and our family, hostage? And why couldn’t we do anything about it? Why couldn’t the court system do something?

My frustration was such that I almost asked the renowned Dr. Phil for help. I met him when he interviewed me on
Larry King Live.
He was subbing for the CNN talk-show host. I ended up keeping it to myself. But unbeknownst to me, after that show aired, my brother Mike sent Dr. Phil an e-mail, explaining our problem and asking him for help. The show’s producers responded immediately, offering Dr. Phil’s services if we agreed to tell our story on his show.

I was livid when Mike told me what he’d done. I was shocked. So was my husband. No way was I going to do it. I didn’t want to air our family’s private matters on TV. It was embarrassing. But Mike argued that we’d tried all the legal options and none had worked. We were desperate. He said going on national TV might actually help our family as well as other people who were engaged in similar battles. We could draw attention to the problem of elder abuse.

The show’s producers called me at home numerous times. While debating the pros and cons (going on
Celebrity Fit Club
was one thing, but this was a different kind of nakedness and vulnerability), I wondered how I’d gotten so “lucky” to be the first celebrity in line with the chance to highlight elder abuse. Not that I didn’t have my choice of other fine options, including former child TV star, drug addict, and depressive.

Oh my God!

Despite all of my misgivings and fears, I agreed to let Dr. Phil get involved, and my brother Mike and I went on the show. I simply couldn’t ignore the possibility, however slim, that he might accomplish the miracle we wanted. Dr. Phil hired a private investigator, who tracked down my father and Kevin in nearby Westlake. Cameras captured me confronting both of them at an outdoor mall. Individually and together, my father and Kevin accused me of being a liar, a drug addict, a sociopath, and a criminal. They also called my brother Mike “abusive” and “demonic” and said they were going after him for elder abuse.

“Kevin makes wild accusations,” said Dr. Phil. “Maureen, he says you are crazy. What do you say?”

“No, I’m not.”

“He say’s you’re a psychopathic liar. What do you say?”

“No, I’m not.”

“He says he has proof you’re a criminal. What do you say?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

Dr. Phil went over the tapes. He complimented me for standing up for myself and asking the tough questions.

“From my observations, you are right to be concerned,” he said.

F
ollowing the confrontation at the mall, my father attempted to get a restraining order against me, claiming his “health and well-being are endangered by Maureen’s unbridled ability to accost ME at will.” The court rejected his petition. He tried again, and was turned down a second time. Ultimately we didn’t make any progress. The situation didn’t get any less worrisome; nor did our relationships improve.

If there was any benefit to the appearance, it was the outpouring of support I received via letter, e-mails, and people who stopped me on the street. They apologized for bothering me, but said they just had to tell someone about their own family crises and craziness. Like me, they had to constantly prove to themselves that they weren’t losing their mind. The number of people with similar stories left me dumbfounded—and strangely comforted.

Comforted?

I know that’s an odd thing to admit. But it was partly a realization and partly a confirmation that nobody’s life is perfect. Not the people who stopped me in the grocery store, not mine, and not Marcia Brady’s. I had the same realization I’d had many times over the past few years: how self-defeating I’d been to think my life could or should be perfect, to pretend it was, and to hide problems that could probably have been solved or maybe even avoided if I’d made an effort to find help.

I found kindred, sympathetic souls in Carnie Wilson and Bobby Brown, two of my costars on the CMT reality series
Gone Country.
I signed up for the reality series in mid-2007. It was hosted by Big and Rich’s John Rich, and the premise was simple: he’d help us write and perform our own country songs, and along the way we’d be put through the paces of country life. Since I’d fantasized about being a country singer since playing Barbara Mandrell, and had even made a well-received but little-heard country album in the nineties, the show was like a dream come true.

In addition to Carnie and Bobby, the
Gone Country
cast included Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider,
American Idol
’s Diana DeGarmo, Julio Iglesias Jr., and rapper Sisqó. All of us met for the first time on a bus that picked us up around Nashville and took us to an enormous log-cabin-style mansion that had once belonged to Barbara Mandrell. I’d never heard Dee’s hit “We’re Not Gonna Take It” or Sisqó’s “The Thong Song.” I felt out of it and old. But I ended up becoming best friends with Bobby.

I was scared of him when I first saw him get onto the bus. I even moved to the back to avoid him. We quickly became inseparable, though. We were two people who’d been through a lot of hard times. It was like we had an understanding without having to talk about it. No one would ever think Bobby Brown and Marcia Brady would end up best buddies, but our souls truly connected.

The same was true with Carnie. We traded horror stories about my old round-the-clock therapist Dr. Landy, who had treated her father, Beach Boy genius Brian Wilson, in the eighties and nineties. She told me her family had finally gotten Dr. Landy out of the picture in the nineties after suing for conservatorship. Once he was gone, their family came back together. That gave me hope.

I was impressed by everyone’s song. Mine was called “Being Me.” It was a pretty, plaintive ballad in the tradition of soul-baring, heartbreaking country songs. Writing it was like therapy. The words poured out of me, as if they’d been there for years, waiting for me to summon them.

At the finale, all of us rooted one another on. However, people remarked that there was something about my performance that was different from the others. I didn’t discuss it, but I knew what they meant. As I stood center stage at the Wild horse Saloon, I looked beyond (or maybe through) the sea of Nashville fans and off into the distance, where I swear to God I saw faces from my past, my family, and of course that one special person seeming to stare back at me, as I sang:

Wish my mom was here to see it

The woman I turned out to be

The long road to here ain’t been easy

But that’s the price I have to pay

For being me.

Lord knows, I’m not perfect

Cast your stones and I bleed

Lay down at night and I wonder

If it’s worth it

That’s the price I have to pay

For being me.

I’ve spent most of my fifty-one years hearing people tell me how I have touched their lives in some way. Many have a story, some want to share memories of their favorite
Brady
episodes, and now I hear people who watched me as a child saying their kids are watching me, too. Recently I met Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban on the red carpet at the Country Music Awards, and I was shocked when both of these superstars (and great people) seemed excited to meet me!

I never would’ve guessed they knew who I was. But our exchange was typical of so many I’ve had.

“Hi, I’m Maureen McCormick,” I said.

“We know you,” said Keith.

“You’re Marcia Brady,” added Nicole.

“Yes, I am!”

I’ll always be struck by how much a part of people’s lives Marcia is and always will be, and how, whether I like it or not, I’ll always be her, just as she’ll always be me. But now I’m not bothered by the connection. Nor do I feel in competition with her or like I want to disown that part of me. Yes, it’s still hard for me to go back and see myself as a Brady, but only because I remember the pain I was in and the depression that followed. I feel so different today.

Now I can embrace Marcia, and when people of all ages, walks of life, and ethnicities say they wanted to be me or date me when they were little, like Sisqó did on
Gone Country
when he asked, “Who didn’t have a crush on Marcia Brady?” I feel blessed to be that person.

It took most of my life, countless mistakes, and decades of pain and suffering to reach this point of equanimity and acceptance. Is everything perfect? No, not by any means. I wish I hadn’t caused my parents so much misery. I wish I hadn’t punished myself as severely as I did when I was younger. I wish I hadn’t fought as much with my husband. I wish I had confronted my problems and asked for help instead of taking flight from so many of them. I wish I could spend time with my father and not have my brother Kevin regard me as the enemy.

I also wish that I still wasn’t as hard on myself as I am sometimes. I wish that I was still a size three and 115 pounds. I still wish that I could land that special role, one that launches a comeback and makes all of Hollywood say, “She really is talented. What an actress!” Sometimes I wish my life was perfect, whatever that means.

But then I catch myself. I know better. I can honestly say I wouldn’t wish to change a thing if it meant trading the person I am at this very moment for someone else. I don’t profess to know the answer to the puzzle that is life, but I’m doing better at fitting the pieces together. I’m becoming the best me that I can be.

As I’ve felt better about myself, I’ve been able to share this with other people in ways that have continued to make me stronger, wiser, smarter, healthier, and ultimately happier about who I am and why I’m here. That’s what’s so sad about the way my father and Kevin have shut themselves off from the world and made enemies out of the people who love them. I wrote this book knowing my mother never wanted me to write a book. But one of the things that made it all right was her best friend, Harriet.

Harriet knew our family for more than fifty years and had witnessed the craziness with her own eyes. In March 2008, she died at age ninety-two. She didn’t have any family of her own. So when she got sick, my husband and I stepped in. We took care of her for the last six months of her life. I visited daily, brought her food, made sure she got to the doctor, and toward the end arranged for her care and sat with her. She always asked about this book, and when I had doubts she encouraged me to keep going.

One day I was filled with doubts and fears about sharing the stories that my mother, and then I, spent a lifetime trying to hide. Ever the daughter, I worried my mother would be upset with me. Harriet assuaged those concerns, saying that I was wrong, that my mother would, in fact, be proud. In her sweet, soft voice, she said, “You’re everything that she always wanted to be—and more.”

I
n April 2008, Michael and I went to Zambia, in eastern Africa, on behalf of Children International, a relief organization that goes to the world’s poorest villages and builds centers where children can go to school, eat nourishing meals, and receive medical care. Africa was the last place I ever imagined myself visiting, yet there I was, in this place that was unmistakably far, foreign, and in its own way magical.