It's Always Something (5 page)

We were back in Los Angeles by Christmas. I had my hair permed and my eyelashes dyed black. I’d come back to find my screenwriting partner was married and pregnant and working on the staff of a situation comedy. Our screenplay had to be shelved for a while . . . so I busied myself reading scripts and writing little vignettes about my life as a housewife. We were redoing our living room and bathroom in Los Angeles and I was inextricably involved with painters, plumbers, tilers and interior decorators. I also started the world’s most expensive course in French in reaction to our wedding ceremony. I still think every sentence I learned cost about ten dollars per word, but I enjoyed playing the lesson tapes in the car and repeating whatever Pierre and Marie said. I also liked the idea of going to school and having coffee and a cigarette in the lounge. Gene and I rang in 1986 with smoked salmon and old movies on TV.

Then on a Sunday, maybe the first Sunday of 1986, Gene and I were in the car on our way to play tennis at a friend’s house. Suddenly, my eyelids got very heavy. It was as though I was hypnotized into this deep sleep. I had slept well the night before and I wasn’t sick, but a feeling of uncontrollable tiredness came over me . . . like a fog rolling in over my brain that I couldn’t escape. I was listless the rest of the day and slept that night and into the next day in that same relentless fog. It was a new element added to my on-and-off flu symptoms. It scared me.

I made an appointment to see my internist immediately. He gave me a total physical. I had all my blood work done and chest X-rays and an electrocardiogram—the whole deal. There was nothing wrong with me. The internist ran a test for something called Epstein-Barr virus. The blood test showed that I had elevated antibodies for Epstein-Barr virus. Every other level of my blood was fine. The internist said he didn’t really believe there was such a thing as Epstein-Barr virus, that it was the new fad illness—a catchall disease—like hypoglycemia in the sixties. If it did exist, there was no cure for it. It wasn’t life-threatening—it would eventually go away. He thought my symptoms might just be from depression.

This internist had been my doctor for a few years and had listened to various complaints. He knew about my endless baby-quest. I was never a hypochondriac, but I was capable of getting very neurotic over any health disturbance. I hated to be sick and I had an imagination that could turn a stomachache into the plague. After all, endless neurotic babbling about things was often the basis of my comedy, but it also showed up in my doctor’s office. I had crowned myself “the Queen of Neurosis.” I worried too much. I felt guilty too often. I “what-iffed” every situation. I found my own behavior irritating and endearing at the same time. The internist patted me on the back and told me to stop worrying. “Just relax . . . it’ll burn itself out.”

In the next couple of weeks I ran a low-grade fever. I called up the internist and said, “I’m running a fever.”

He asked, “How high?”

“Not much—very low—ninety-nine, a hundred.”

He said, “It’s nothing to worry about. Take aspirin or Tylenol to treat the fever—it can happen in this Epstein-Barr virus.”

I hung up, but I kept thinking about how he said he didn’t really think there was such a thing as Epstein-Barr virus.

So the “weird life” continued. I would be fine maybe for ten days and then seemingly around my menstrual cycle I would go into this severe fatigue and run a low-grade fever, then I would be okay again. I tried to get as much done as possible when I felt well because I knew the fatigue was going to come again. Then just when it started to develop a pattern, it would totally surprise me. For example, I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed for two or three days. Gene would have to cancel social engagements or go alone.

I started to become depressed about living with the uncertainty of my health. My appetite remained good and my internist said there was nothing to worry about. He became more convinced that depression was the culprit. I wondered which came first, the illness or the depression. There were enough things to be depressed about—trying to have a baby, the miscarriages, career uncertainties, the prospect of turning forty. On the other hand, I had a wonderful husband, two beautiful homes, had just completed a movie, and was writing and enjoying life in California. The scale of good and bad didn’t seem out of balance, or any more tipped than it had ever been.

In March Gene returned to Connecticut in preparation for a month’s trip to London where he would do the sound mix on
Haunted Honeymoon.
My plans were to go to London with Gene. We had already booked a suite in a small hotel in our old neighborhood. We were both looking forward to it. Our friend Grace, who is the caretaker of our Connecticut home, agreed to look after Sparkle for the month. Grace is originally from the Midwest, a divorced grandmother who lives with her sister and brother-in-law about a half-mile down the road, or, as she’d say, “down the pike.” I consider her a member of the family, and I knew Sparkle would be fine with her.

I came to Connecticut a few days later than Gene because I was offered a screen test for a movie. I had never had to do a screen test before, but there were quite a few actresses under consideration. I liked the movie, but the deal fell apart, and the screen test never happened. When I joined Gene, I was upset and disappointed. I felt my career had slipped out of my control. I had been a big television star, but my movie career hadn’t gone well enough for me to call the shots.

The day before our flight, the fog rolled in again, and I fell into a heavy fatigue. I couldn’t get out of bed. Maybe it
was
depression—the career disappointment. Gene took the flight to London alone. All I could do was kiss him goodbye and say I’d join him in a week when I felt better. That week in April 1986, terrorism was on the news every night. I was scared to fly anyway, but this only made it worse. Just the same, I packed my bags and was determined to go. The night before my trip, my travel agent called and said my flight was canceled. I don’t remember why but there was so much going on at the airports those days. Perhaps there weren’t enough people on that flight to make the trip. Americans stopped flying to Europe. There was fear at all the airports and intense security. Gene and I spoke on the phone every day. We talked about how the whole world felt on edge. The same day my flight was canceled they found the lady in London’s Heathrow Airport taking explosives onto an El Al flight. Gene suddenly said, “I don’t want you to come. It’s too dangerous. I’d worry too much.”

My bags remained packed for the next three weeks. Every day I thought I might go. I was glued to the television set, waiting for the next thing to happen. And then it happened—
Chernobyl.
The fear of going abroad increased. There was a nuclear cloud over Europe and my husband was there. America waited to see which way the winds would blow. I stayed home.

During that month of April, I started having weird pelvic cramping. I went to see a gynecologist in Connecticut. He ran a series of blood tests that showed absolutely nothing wrong and he said what I had was mittelschmerz, meaning that during the time of ovulation I could sometimes get severe cramping. He said that many women have even gone to the hospital and had surgery thinking it was something serious, but it was just what he called mittelschmerz. So there I was with this painful reminder that I was ovulating and Gene and I were apart. Now I had Epstein-Barr virus and mittelschmerz: fitting diseases for the Queen of Neurosis. A girlfriend of mine from L.A. told me about a young woman in Washington, D.C., who had greatly helped another friend with health problems through vitamins and nutrition. I called the nutritionist and within a week I was taking megadoses of vitamin C and about forty other pills a day with promises of renewed health and fertility.

Gene returned, and Sparkle and I and fifteen pounds of vitamins went to the south of France for our vacation. It had become an annual trip—to go back to the place where we got married, to spend Gene’s birthday there and to have this wonderful vacation life. Despite all of the scares of traveling and anti-American feelings around the world, I knew that I was going to make this trip. I had been away from Gene for so long that I was definitely going to make this trip to France and have a grand time. I went bravely, oddly enough when no other Americans were going to Europe. There I was, the Queen of Neurosis, jumping on a plane, next to my husband, with my dog, calm, easygoing, taking off, landing, marching through customs. Only occasionally did I wonder which passenger had a gun in his bag, or whether we would be blown out of the side of the plane.

We arrived in Paris, ate omelettes for dinner at a little bistro and spent the night. The next morning we flew to the south of France. The three weeks that we spent there were wonderful. The weather was beautiful. I felt relatively good. I knew I still had this virus but I learned to accept the terms of it. I took a tennis lesson every morning, then I read or rested quietly by the pool. By lunch-time I would feel a little dizzy and by the afternoon I would have to take a nap—maybe an hour or an hour and a half. Then I would get up, play some more tennis and have dinner. In the evening I would run a low-grade fever. I knew it wouldn’t turn into anything, and we never broke any plans or missed anything. I took my vitamins faithfully every day and ate fresh and healthy food. I went on for three weeks this way and I started to be filled with hope. I remember being in the bathtub one evening before dinner and I said to Gene, “I don’t ever want to leave here—it’s the first time in so many months that I’ve felt well and happy.” Of course, to stay at a hotel and not to have to make the bed or cook or shop for groceries—just to relax—certainly helps any illness. It was a glorious vacation.

We spent one evening in Paris before flying back to America. I remember it was very hot, record temperatures for that time of year. The city felt close and steamy and even Sparkle couldn’t stop panting in the heat. We ate our dinner at a favorite bistro on the Right Bank near the Louvre. After dinner I got a severe attack of stomach cramps. I’d eaten hardly anything because it was so humid, and there wasn’t any air conditioning in the restaurant. My stomach felt bloated and hard. When Gene and I left the bistro, I could barely walk in the streets. There we were in beautiful Paris, with its glorious architecture and romantic avenues, and I was doubled over on the curb waiting for Gene to get a cab. I thought it was nerves because I would soon be flying home, returning home to responsibility. In a few months,
Haunted Honeymoon
was to open and preview screenings hadn’t produced much response. There was a screening in Los Angeles, after which nobody called us. With movies you always heard the good news right away. The bad news drifts in slowly. No doubt that was creating a certain amount of stress in me, wondering what had happened at this screening. I’m sure I was thinking that the honeymoon was over and reality was waiting back at home.

When we arrived back in Connecticut, the fog rolled in, this time like a sleeping sickness. I had to spend three days in bed. The stomach cramps continued. There was beginning to be too much wrong with me. On June 28, two weeks after we had come home from France, I turned forty. It’s a turning point in anyone’s life, but I felt perhaps my life was just beginning. I opened my eyes wide in the bathroom mirror. Without my contacts I have to stand with my nose pressed against the mirror to see. I checked my skin for wrinkles and thought the years didn’t look too bad on me. For the first time in months I felt good—actually I felt great, and that alone filled me with hope . . . for the future, for my career, for having a family.
After all,
I thought to myself,
my mother didn’t have me until she was forty-one. I’m just a late bloomer.
I thought I had to learn to manage stress better, and to be less neurotic, but everything was possible. I still could have it all.

The phone rang. It was Graciela Daniele, the choreographer who had worked with Dom DeLuise and me on the “Ballin’ the Jack” dance number in
Haunted Honeymoon.
She wished me a happy birthday, but said the real reason she had called was that she was thinking about me a lot. She said, “Gilda, you should be dancing. You should be working on things for the stage, the theater. It’s what the stage needs right now, a woman like you.”

My ears were burning with her confidence in me.

“You’re forty years old, and if you don’t start doing things now there may not be time. If you want I’ll come to you, or you come to New York. You can pick the music of your choice, and we can work on a dance together.”

I thought it was wonderful that Graciela was calling me right at that moment. I had wanted to take baby steps toward getting my solo career going again. She thrilled me with the prospect of dancing. I decided right then and there I would make the commitment to go to New York once a week every week and work with her in a studio. I said I already knew the song I wanted to dance to—a song Gene and I loved called “Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?” It was from the early seventies. I used to listen to it on the radio in the first car I ever drove. Hurricane Smith was the artist, and he sang it with such a happy confidence. I wanted to feel that way. Graciela and I made a definite date to meet in New York the following week.

For the rest of my birthday I insisted on playing miniature golf—something I hadn’t done since my years of growing up in Detroit. Going on dates and playing miniature golf was very popular in the sixties. I never went on that many dates so I figured on my fortieth birthday I was out with the handsomest guy in the world and that was where I wanted to go—miniature golfing. We went with our neighbors—two couples who live a block away. The course didn’t exactly have the windmills and the painted houses and the triple-banked turns I remembered but there was a miniature waterfall, and the girls appropriately lost. Gene gave me a birthday gift. It was a beautiful antique watch fob that had been made into a necklace. The chain was platinum, with little Oriental pearls. It was so beautiful. The card he wrote said, “This is not as loud as your mouth but it’s as delicate as your soul, love, your husband.”