Read My Lips (35 page)

“I’m sending someone right down there to be with you!” he said.

“Don’t you dare!” I answered. “I’m twenty-eight and I’m having an adventure!”

It’s important to think young.

When I woke up the next morning in my “suite,” I heard birds.
Ahh, birds.
I got up to open the balcony doors. There were birds alright—gigantic black ones diving down to dip into the dirty
brown water of the swimming pool to my left, then swooping up to circle the oil derricks straight in front of me.

At our next location some of cast members claimed, “Sally got the good room.”
The good room
? No water pressure—it took me a half-hour to rinse the shampoo out of my hair—and some mysterious rug sitting on my bed, hiding God knows what. But I had a great afternoon with fellow actor Norbert Weisser, goofing off on horseback in the middle of the desert in the broiling hot sun. I think that by the time we got back we were hallucinating from the heat.

Next stop: a tiny village, where I was thrilled to have a window in my room. Then finally, at our last stop, we stayed in a giant hotel that looked like something out of
The Shining.

While I was in Chile Jonathan hopped on a plane to come see me, which he normally didn’t like to do while he was working. A film he was producing,
Slipping into Darkness,
was shooting at the time. But he came anyway. When he arrived, I could tell by his behavior—and the fact that he came to see me at all—that he was worried I was having an affair.

I wasn’t.

We had a lovely visit, snuggling and talking and continuing our thrilling discussion about having a new baby. So when I got back to LA, we moved into adoption mode.

I
WENT TO LUNCH WITH A FRIEND OF MINE, COSTUME DESIGNER
Marilyn Vance, to share the news.

“We’re going to adopt a baby,” I said excitedly. Marilyn leaned right across the table, taking my hand in hers.

“Oh,” she said. “I wish you could have twins!”

“Yeah, right,” I said, laughing.
“You
have twins and call me later!”

After lunch we walked outside to wait for the valet to bring our cars around. Again, Marilyn took my hand and looked straight into my eyes.

“I’m serious about the twins,” she said.

“Don’t say that!” I told her. “I feel like they’re circling overhead and about to land!” And that’s exactly how it felt.

After talking to two adoption lawyers and not feeling right about them, I decided to call Burt Reynolds and his wife, Loni Anderson. I’d known Burt since I was a kid but hadn’t been in close contact. I did know, however, that he and Loni had adopted successfully. They agreed to make a referral, but days passed before I heard from anyone. In the meantime I decided to share my decision with my sister Diana.

“I wish you could have twins,” she said.

“Why is everyone telling me to have twins? I’m the oldest living mother-to-be!”

Then late afternoon on Sunday the phone rang. It was a woman named Mary Hinton, who Burt and Loni had referred to me. She had news: there was a baby available.

“It was supposed to go to another couple,” she told me, “but they’ve gotten pregnant.”

But here was the thing: if we wanted the baby, Jonathan and I had to accept right away. Mary gave me some background about the parents and began telling me what we would have to do to make things happen, but I had already said yes. Before getting off the phone, though, Mary said there was just one more thing I should know.

“It might be twins,” she said.

“Jonathan!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “Jonathan! Twins!”

Jonathan, thinking I had said “friends,” yelled back, “Great! We could use some.”

Not long afterward Jonathan, Claire, and I were in New York when the call came: the mother was indeed going to have twins. In the ultrasound image they had their backs to the camera, so it wasn’t clear yet what sex they were. But Jonathan and I were sure that they were two boys. “Jack and Joe,” were the names we’d picked out. But then one day I had had lunch at the Ivy and
afterward wandered into a small antique store. I was just browsing, thumbing through some cards on a rack, when one particular postcard caught my eye. It was vintage, a brown tintype card with the image of a boy and girl washing a dog on the beach.

I rushed home to Jonathan.

“We need a girl’s name,” I said. “It’s going to be a boy and a girl!”

And indeed, that’s precisely what those two little loves turned out to be. We found the girl’s name while looking for a baby nurse. I had called Tom Selleck, whom I didn’t really know at all, because I had heard that he and his wife, Jillie, had a nurse they loved. While Jillie was on the phone with me, I heard her call out to her daughter.

“Hanna!”

So there it was. About two months after Jonathan and I decided to adopt, I was the mother of twins: a little boy, Jack, and a little girl, Hanna. It felt like a miracle.

My dear Bud Cort later confessed to me that all of our friends thought I was crazy to adopt at my ripe old age of fifty-two. But so far in my life I’d never done what anyone thought was right or proper. Why start now? Thank God I listened to my inner voice. Happiness and joy arrived in the form of those two, eleven-day-old darlings. I don’t think I spoke a word to my children for the first three years of their lives—I sang everything to them.

And I wanted those babies all to myself. Jonathan’s stepmother, Bubby, came over the very day we brought Jack and Hanna home. I could hear her from clear across the street when she pulled up in her car.

“Where are my grandbabies?! Let me get a look at those babies!”

My first instinct?
Lock the door
!

Then I wised up and realized just how lucky I was. How blessed my children were to be loved by someone like Bubby, someone who could hang out all day in the playhouse, care for them, play
with them, and, when they were older, and teach them skills she treasured, like sewing. I was so grateful to have Bubby and my mother—fountains of support and unconditional love—at my disposal.

I was lucky too that Vivianne Carter, who had been my housekeeper since the days when I was married to Rick, was still with us. She was such a wonderful influence on everyone in her life. Vivianne went to church faithfully every Sunday. Each morning when she awoke, the first words out of her mouth were, “Thank you, God!” She cooked up big kettles of food, which she carted to downtown LA to feed the hungry. She was tall, beautiful, and loud—a proud black Texan, through and through—and my dear friend. Years later, when she got sick, she became just about as big as my finger. But she still had that spunk.

She called me from the hospital: “Sally,” she said, in her still-booming voice, “get down here right now before I die.”

And I did.

When I got to the hospital, she said, “Tell Jonathan to write me a letter!” And Jonathan did, but Vivianne died before she could read it. I was able to share it with her family at her memorial. In my home her picture and spirit still watch over us to this day.

Knowing that I would need help with the kids when I was on the road, I began looking for a backup nanny to help Vivianne. Along came Delmi, another tremendous blessing. In the beginning, when Delmi complained about my unpredictable and “snapping” personality, Vivianne would say, “Honey, tell me about it.” I had to laugh. Vivianne had been there, done that, and got the T-shirt with my picture on it.

Delmi was an inspiration in the way she raised her three boys without help, all the while working for my family, then eventually started her own cleaning business. She has made a real success of it. And she has been phenomenally generous and giving to our family. I can’t believe I got that lucky twice with the women who helped me take care of my home, of my children, of my life.

When the twins arrived, Claire was already twenty-five and living on her own. She absolutely
adored
Jack and Hanna. I’m sure that when the four of us were out and about, passersby thought she was the mother and I was the grandmother. I didn’t care. I knew who I was. This time around I was going to be Mother of the Year. Smooth as silk. Happy every moment. Never a cross word. Just sheer bliss.

I joined a “Mommy and Me” group with some neighborhood moms. I was in my fifties, and they were all in their thirties. I can hardly express how much it meant to me to have a group of women to share experiences with, other moms who were witnessing the same miracles that I was seeing. What a joy it was just to hang out in somebody’s yard and watch our kids grow up and play together. There was no rushing—just enjoying the children and each other’s company.

Jack and Hanna’s childhood was like a second one for me. At first I wanted to mother the kids totally on my own. I taught Jack and Hanna to swim. I made a bowling alley out of cardboard boxes. I crawled under the bushes again, just like when I was small, pretending with my children that we were in a jungle. I set up tents and sleeping bags in the backyard and invited all the kids’ friends over to play. I still had my good middle-class values—no cliché Hollywood mom here!

By the time the children were six, I had brought in pony rides, disc jockeys, and inflatable bouncy houses—I did everything to entertain them short of hiring Barnum and Bailey.

But like many of the other mothers in the group, I remained a working mom. In between acting gigs I was working on my music and singing a couple nights a week in a local club. My home office had a big bay window, so I could rehearse and watch the kids play in the backyard. The rule was that they could come in to interrupt me any time—and they did. My keyboardist would play “London Bridge,” and Jack and Hanna would take turns singing with the mic.

Though I am sure that was fun, I talked with Milton about how guilty I felt for continuing to work.

“Live your life,” he told me. “Make your appointments. If you love the kids, they’ll know it. The best thing you can do for them is to give them an example of how to live an independent life.”

A
FEW YEARS AFTER THE TWINS ARRIVED
J
ONATHAN AND
I
DID
Boris and Natasha
together, a film based on the
Rocky and Bull-winkle
TV show.

“Sally would be a great Natasha!” our friend, writer Charles Fradin, had said.

Thus began our underfunded saga, fueled by a lot of creative enthusiasm. I loved being around that.

Charlie was a darling guy who worked on the script with Brad Hall. Charles Martin Smith directed.
SCTV
alum Dave Thomas played Boris. Andrea Martin and John Candy—well, what can you say? All Canadian, all funny, all the time.

I actually had the chance to meet with the woman who had voiced Natasha for the original
Rocky and Bullwinkle
show. When I asked her what Natasha was about, she didn’t give me a lot to go on. All the woman said to me was “She loved Boris,” in that famous deep, guttural voice. It didn’t seem like much, but it was actually an important tip. When I saw the final product in the theater, I actually thought we did pretty good.

I then had the opportunity to work with the wonderful German director Percy Adlon on
Younger and Younger.
I’d been a fan of his since his Oscar-nominated film,
Baghdad Cafe.
Donald Sutherland, Lolita Davidovitch, Brendan Fraser, Julie Delpy, and Linda Hunt were all in the film, and Jack and Hanna were a big hit on the set.

The shoot was a dream. I got to dance with Donald Sutherland in our first movie together since
M*A*S*H*.
Julie, then about twenty-five years old, was lovely, and I’m so impressed with her
career now as she’s grown into a director. Linda Hunt remains one of my favorite people. And my little boy, Jack, played my grandson in one scene, in which he comes running toward me yelling, “Grandma! Grandma!” Talk about heaven.