My First Five Husbands (13 page)

O
ne night, a pair of important agents—husband and wife—who had just seen
Before Breakfast
came backstage and said they were terribly impressed with my performance. I took my pictures and résumés to their office on Sunset Strip the next day, and they said they wanted to see how I looked on camera and had arranged for me to judge a dance contest on an afternoon show. No lines, just walking around looking at the contestants. So a few days later, I put on my prettiest bib and tucker and went walking around looking at the couples dancing, feeling somewhat foolish. The show was live, so I didn’t get to see it, but Mother, who’d brought Mark out for a short visit, said I looked pretty, of course. Days went by. I didn’t hear a word from the agents. They were never there when I called.
Finally,
they called me back to their office, and Mother, Mark, and I drove into Hollywood.

A receptionist in the outer office told me to have a seat, then got very, very busy.

I sat.

The wife was at the next desk, head down, also very, very busy. She finally glanced up and said, “My husband will see you in his office.”

I went in.

He also kept his head down—very, very busy. Finally, he looked up and said, “You don’t come across on camera. You’re not photogenic. You have no future in television. Here are your pictures and résumés. Thank you for coming in.”

Stunned and heartbroken, I stumbled down the stairs and got into the car in tears.

“Oh, Eddi-Rue. Honey, don’t feel bad,” Mother struggled to console me. “Remember, every kick’s a boost!”

That made me laugh. In fact, I used that quote in my acceptance speech when I won the Emmy in 1987. (Memo to Mr. and Mrs. No Future in Television: Fall in a hole.)

After Mother and Mark returned to Oklahoma, I was thrilled to hear that my cousin Sue and her family were moving to L.A. and would be glad to share a house with Mark and me! Well,
hallelujah!
I went to Oklahoma and fetched Mark back on the train, along with his little kitten, Grice, and we all moved into a large house in Glendale, which was…well, Glendale. Blandsville. But heck, it was half an hour from the Playhouse, with a fenced yard where the kids could play. Sue took care of the kids while I was at the Playhouse, and I spent hours on the patio and in the sandbox with Mark. Once again, everything was happy, happy, happy…uh-oh.

In February, Mark started crying and didn’t stop all day. He couldn’t talk enough to tell me what was wrong, and Sue had no idea. Frightened, I called Mother, who said to check his throat. I checked. White bumps. She said it was strep throat. I missed rehearsal and classes so I could be with him and swab his throat with medicine for a few days. It was miserable for poor Mark and scared me silly.

We were rehearsing the William Inge play
Bus Stop,
in which I played Cherie, the Kansas City chanteuse (“at the Blue Dragon nightclub, down by the stockyards”) abducted by love-struck rodeo daredevil Bo (played by Troy Sanders, with Bill McKinney as his gentle sidekick, Virgil). A snowstorm has forced the bus to stop at a café along the way to Topeka. Of course, Bo turns out to be a dear and Cherie falls in love with him. During the long night, she stands on a chair and sings “That Old Black Magic” quite badly. I loved my tacky costume—an abbreviated, black, sequined getup with black fishnet stockings, my long hair piled on top of my head with a flower over one ear. It is a delicious role in a delicious play. And something happened during one particular performance that was pure bliss. For a few seconds—perhaps fifteen or twenty—I found Rue gone and only Cherie there. I was completely inside her. Actors pray for an experience like that.

Just after we opened, I was at a restaurant Playhouse students frequented when someone stopped by my table and said, “Oh, Rue, I met your ex-husband, Tom Lloyd, the other day.”

The proverbial ton of bricks fell on my head.

“But…he used to be Tom Bish,” I said. “Are you sure it was my ex-husband?”

“Yes, that’s what he said. He’s living in Hollywood. You want his number?”

Well, one would think that I already had this guy’s number, but the moment I heard his name, my head was spinning with that old virus. I went unsteadily to a pay phone, and needless to say, he was surprised to hear my voice. We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since that day at the hospital when he’d given what was apparently the best acting performance of his life.

“I was wondering…,” I said, my heart in my throat. “Would you like to meet Mark?”

“Sure, babe,” he said as casually as if I’d offered him a bag of peanuts.

That Saturday, I picked him up at his Hollywood apartment. Out he sailed, dressed in dazzling white.

“Hi, lady.” He slid me a sideways smile. “I didn’t think you’d ever speak to me again.”

Deep breath, Rue. Deep breath…

I drove him to Glendale to meet his seventeen-month-old son.

“Mark, this is Tom. Your daddy.”

We took Mark to the zoo and had a lovely time together.
Breathe, Rue, breathe…

“Would you like to stay and see the closing performance of the play?” I asked, and he said, “Oh, yeah, baby. Cool.”

“You were great,” he said to me after the performance. “Hey, it’s late, and you’re tired. Why don’t I stay over, and you can take me home tomorrow?”

“Okay,” I said. That made sense.
Just keep breathing
. “Mark can sleep with me on the sofa. You can take his bed.”

We had a glass of wine and talked, he going on about trying to get his career started but needing an agent, me telling him wonderful things about our son.

“My mother never forgave me for leaving you until the day she died,” he said.

After another glass of wine, he fell into bed, instantly asleep. I lay awake for hours, acutely aware of him there in the dark. God almighty—who
could
breathe? In the morning, after breakfast, we played with Mark on the patio, like any little family out in the California sunshine.

“Thanks, babe. Mark’s a great kid,” Tom said when I dropped him off in Hollywood.

When I returned to Glendale, Mark started crying for “Daddy.” I told him Tom would visit him again, but he kept crying for “Daddy” off and on all day until he fell asleep. I called Tom repeatedly over that week and left messages, but got no reply. Then I got an idea.

“Hi, Tom,” I told his answering machine. “My agents are interested in seeing you.”

He called back lightning fast. “Hey, babe. So when can I meet them?”

“You know, they
were
interested,” I said tightly, “but the time has passed.”

And I hung up. He never called back. Mark stopped crying for him. And twenty-eight years later, so did I.

T
he third-year class started rehearsing
A Streetcar Named Desire,
with me as Blanche DuBois—a plum role I had always wanted to tackle.

So where’s that other shoe…isn’t it about to drop? Oh, yes. Here it comes.

“We aren’t happy in Glendale,” Sue announced. “We’re moving back to the Midwest.”

Well, dadblast the fladderapp! Determined to keep Mark this time, I hit the Glendale papers and found an ad: “Single mother with child to complete household of three mothers with children.” I’d have an upstairs bedroom and we’d all pay a lady to watch the children. With no alternative, I moved in, but I was shocked to learn that the kids were not allowed in the house during the day! They stayed in the backyard. All day. Bad enough for the five older children, but Mark was only eighteen months old! A toddler not allowed in the house? All bets off!

“This does not work for me,” I told them. “I’ll be out in a day or two.”

I scoured the papers again, increasingly desperate. No apartments I could afford. No nanny I could—or would—hire. Then I got a letter from Norman. He was coming out for a three-day leave. I found a tiny trailer house (ooh-la-la). Two trips with the station wagon and I had us moved in. After Tom’s latest rejection, Sue’s sudden departure, those three cold Glendale bitches, I was all but beaten down. Norm arrived the next day, and being with this cheerful, devoted guy was like coming up for air. We decided to give our marriage a second try. It about killed me to drop out of
Streetcar,
but I did it. Good-bye Blanche DuBois, hello U-Haul. Norm helped me load the rented trailer, then flew back to base.

“We’re going to see Norman!” I told Mark as we set out for Denver the next morning.

I figured we could make the trip in two days. It was warm in Los Angeles, so I wore shorts. I popped Mark into his port-o-crib in the backseat with his kitten, Grice, singing, “We’re off to see the wizard!” We careened along the highway, dragging the weaving trailer with my station wagon. Mark enjoyed the whole thing mightily, but late the first day, a patrolman pulled me over.

“You sure you know how to handle the trailer, miss?”

“It’s my first time,” I told him demurely.

“Well, take it slow.”

He gave me a few more pointers—and didn’t ticket me, bless his heart. We checked into a motel in Arizona, sneaking Grice in. Early the next morning, we set out again. I was still in shorts, but I put a little sweater on Mark and he cuddled down in his crib with blankets. The steep Rockies now loomed ahead of us. We struggled slowly up Wolf’s Head Pass, reached the snowy top, and started the sharply winding descent. It began snowing as we struggled down the treacherous pass, my heart pounding all the way, and by the time we reached Denver at dusk, it was colder than a witch’s…nose. I was half frozen (the half in shorts) and woozy from fatigue, but grateful to be there in one piece. After dinner, I got Mark settled and fell groggily into bed. Norman began to make love to me. I was really too tired, and I wasn’t protected. For some reason, I expected him to pull out before coming to climax.

He didn’t.

“Oh, my God, Norm,” I blurted out, “we’ve just gotten me pregnant!”

I had no doubt whatsoever. And God help us, I was right.

CHAPTER NINE

T
he female characters in film noir are of two types: the dutiful, chaste, and devoted good girl, or the gorgeous but dangerous dame, who lures men to rack and ruin. The twisting story lines are full of morally ambiguous choices and tragic consequences. Terse dialogue is growled over foreboding background music. The sets are mean streets slick with rain, abandoned warehouses, seedy rooms with neon lights flashing beyond the battered window blinds. Soap opera is like Film Noir Lite, with plots involving lost loves, amnesia, sexual peccadilloes, babies born out of wedlock, double-crossings. Pure-hearted heroines are duped by scoundrels, and vamps stir up romance-based conflicts. I created the soap in my own opera by being dumb as a damn booby and careless as a well-meaning twit.

I tried hard to be a good wife to Norm and a devoted mother for twenty-month-old Mark, cooking, cleaning, washing, and keeping an eye on Mark from the kitchen as he played outdoors. Norm’s mother sent Mark a memory game, and the two of them played it every night, laying out the picture cards facedown in a grid on the living room floor. The trick was to turn up two cards that matched, so you had to remember where you’d put down the first one when you turned up its mate. I still have that game, timeworn but intact. Mark was as good as I was, Norm even better. But Norm was staggeringly brilliant, a walking encyclopedia, a gifted writer and artist. He sang and played guitar. Watching him with Mark, I felt such appreciation and joy. If all had been well, I would have eagerly had his baby. But Norm and I were never really husband and wife. No matter how hard I tried to feel that kind of love for him, it just wasn’t there.

We were like that matching game. If you turn up a card and it doesn’t match—well, damn it, it doesn’t match! I quickly realized it had been wholly unrealistic for me to turn Norm up again, thinking we’d be better suited this time. And having a baby come along just then was unthinkable carelessness. Norm, who was emotionally repressed in the best of circumstances, wouldn’t discuss it. We bantered about music, culture, and art for hours but didn’t have heart-to-heart talks about our feelings or our future. Being a natural slob, adhering to Army regulations was a terrible strain on him, and the route our marriage had traveled thus far added to his tension-filled life. He tried to quit smoking but was always patting one foot or tapping his fingers, and finally he just exploded one night, shouting at me, the veins bulging on his forehead.

“To hell with it,” he said after the eruption. “I’m smoking.”

God knows, we tried to make this marriage work, with our meager emotional resources, but we were both terribly unhappy and scared with this unwanted pregnancy to cope with. I was terrified I’d end up on my own with two babies and didn’t feel remotely capable of handling that. Abortion was illegal at that time, but as our desperation grew, I called a girl I’d met at the Playhouse—we’ll call her Toula—who had confided in me that she’d had several abortions.

“I can take you to the doctor in Tijuana,” she said. “It’ll cost five hundred in cash.”

Dear God! Tijuana? Horrible. Unthinkable. Even if we could come up with the money, I would be risking my life! But in those days, there was no place, no way for me to get a safe abortion. I was past two months pregnant, gripped by morning sickness. Time was of the essence. Then I got a call from a Hollywood agent who’d seen me at the Pasadena Playhouse.

“I’ve got an independent film you’d be ideal for,” she told me.

Principal photography was to start in a week. In Hollywood. A three-hour drive from Tijuana. I called Toula. Her Tijuana doctor said he couldn’t possibly fit me in for another month.

“But I’ll be over three months along by then!” But he wouldn’t take me any sooner.

“I’ll get the money,” Norm said grimly.

I
took Mark and Grice to Ardmore on my way to L.A., where I moved in with Toula and her roommate, two gorgeously dangerous dames living in a flat in Westwood Village.

The movie’s producer, Paul Lewis, introduced me to writer/director John Patrick Hayes, a big, handsome Irish guy from New York City. His short film
The Kiss
had been nominated for an Oscar the year before. John loved my reading of the role—an aspiring actress earning money as a stripper. It was a dark story, full of drama, titled
Walk the Angry Beach
. There would be no pay. It was non-union, being financed on a shoestring. I had to provide my own costumes, including one for the striptease sequence. With Rit dye and trimmings, I concocted a bikini brief and bra getup with dangling beads that swung furiously as I gyrated. Humiliated at having to strip for a living, the aspiring actress dances more and more frantically and rips off her bra. (Calm down, the camera was behind me, and my breasts were covered with duct tape.) We see in close-up that tears are streaming down her face. John cleared the crew out, all but the cameraman and sound crew and a couple of grips. I had to cry twice in that film. All I had to do was think about Mark, far away in Ardmore, and the tears flowed.

Workdays sometimes went on for eighteen or even a full twenty-four hours. Someone asked John if we ever fell asleep on our feet, and he replied, “No, but we do faint a lot.” Actually, the cameraman did fall asleep once, with his eye against the eyepiece of the camera. After two grueling weeks, we shot a long tracking shot of me walking along Santa Monica Beach in a skimpy turquoise bikini and full-body makeup. I was three months pregnant and horribly insecure, but John was happy with the scene. The next day, however, we learned that the film had come out black. John was using “short ends”—cheap film strips he bought from a guy named Fouat Said. We had to shoot the whole bikini scene over again, and this time it was a cold, miserable day in Santa Monica. As I stood shivering on the clammy sand, I looked up to a bridge over the beach and there stood Norman. He came down and presented me with five hundred dollars he’d borrowed from friends.

“Grice was diagnosed with rabies,” he told me. “We had to put him to sleep.”

“Oh, my God!” I cried. “What about Mark?”

“He has to have rabies shots to be safe. In his stomach. Twice a day for two weeks.”

“Oh, God, my poor baby,” I anguished. “And that poor little kitten. Mark loved him so.”

Norm returned to Denver, and I had three desperately needed days off before shooting the major love scene. Toula gave a party one of those evenings, and while she was serving drinks, she called over her shoulder, “Rue, be a dear and turn on the oven.”

Opening the oven door, I struck a match. Before I could blink, I was blown back several feet against the wall. That vapid little idiot had turned on the gas without lighting it! My face and hands were scorched, my eyebrows almost gone, my lashes sparse and spiky. In shock and searing pain, I waited two hours in the ER while the medics dealt with a little boy who had fallen through a glass door. They treated my first-and second-degree burns, trimmed away the loose skin, and sent me home with painkillers and ointment—and an intimate love scene to shoot in three days. A sexy scene in which my character gets tipsy, dances with the leading man, and ends up in a clench with him on the sofa.

Shooting the scene took most of the night. We covered my peeling red face with makeup, and John arranged to shoot me from angles that masked the damage. When it was over, I told John, “I need a few days off to attend to personal business.”

Then Toula, her roommate, and I drove down to Tijuana.

“You’re past three months,” the doctor said. “You’ll need two procedures. One tonight. Then come back tomorrow morning.”

As he muzzled my face with the anesthetic mask, a whole new dimension of panic separated me from everything I knew. I felt myself shooting far away from earth, spinning out into the cosmos, farther and farther into unending blackness. After what seemed an eternity, the doctor woke me and I trudged in incredible pain back to the hotel to lie down. Toula and her roommate went out on the town, and I lay on the bed next to an open window overlooking downtown Tijuana. Outside, a lone, loud trumpet played the same song over and over: “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

Even in my tossing agony, I appreciated the irony.

The next morning, I returned for another horrifying trip into outer space, then we drove back to Westwood, where I rested for a day and tried to set the whole nightmare aside.

I have deeply regretted having that abortion. But at the time, I felt I had no choice. Occasionally, I add up the years, figuring how old he or she would be. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself. It’s the one true tragedy in my life. I still mourn that lost child.

Norman’s child.

W
ith only a few more scenes to shoot, I found myself a one-room place in Hollywood. John Hayes and I had been growing increasingly warm under the collar for each other. He was easygoing, blond, blue-eyed, funny, and talented both as a writer and director. I think he liked that I was such a trouper. I went to his apartment to discuss upcoming scenes after work one night, and we talked for hours about the movie, my role, our backgrounds and aspirations. As he saw me to the door, I said, “You know, John, I didn’t really come over tonight to talk about work.”

He smiled and said, “Why did you come over?”

I said, “To see you.”

He closed the door. And opened the door on a serious involvement that would last four years. We had a bit of an engineering problem to overcome. John was six-four and built accordingly, and I’m a petite five-four, but with patience and goodwill—and we had both in abundance—with love, in fact, our spark of desire set off truckloads of Roman candles. We did something I’d never done before. It’s a little embarrassing to relate, but…we sucked each other’s toes. And it was damn sexy. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

One night, after making love, John got up to leave and panic welled up in me, and for only the second time in my life, I found the courage to confess the dusk panic I’d felt for years.

“Why are you scared?” he asked.

“Because,” I told him, “I just need to know that you’re here.”

And he asked a very insightful question: “Do you need to know I’m here, or do you need
me
to know that
you’re
here?”

I realized at once that he was right. That really was my problem and always had been. My father passing me on the porch, Bill Bennett dumping me for being a “dreamer,” Tom abandoning me for whatever reason—as if my existence hinged on their wanting me.

“I’ll be with you tomorrow, Rue,” John told me. “Good night, sweet face.”

And somehow it was all right. I wasn’t scared. A small miracle.

In November, John was offered a job directing a kids’ movie in Tulsa. He cast me in the small role of the mother. No pay, but he could get me fifty bucks a week as script supervisor if I learned to work a stopwatch and make proper script girl notes. We would finish the movie in mid-December, and—joy to the world!—I could spend Christmas with Mark in Ardmore!