Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve (20 page)

As for their sexual relationship: “It’s not what it used to be,” she conceded, “but it’s still nice, just being close in the same bed. It’s the hardest time, though, because it reminds me of what we had. I can be so strong and have this willpower all day where I say, ‘It’s fine, I’m fine.’ And I block out the need. But when you do open yourself up to wanting that affection, you’re so vulner- able. It’s so lovely—you forget how lovely it can be. And then it’s so painful, so bittersweet.”

Chris was not unaware of Dana’s pain. She was, after all, still a young woman—just thirty-four at the time of Chris’s accident. “You didn’t sign on for this,” he often told her.

Unbowed, Dana worked hard at creating those intimate husband-and-wife moments throughout the day. “You’ve got to remember that it was all up to her,” one of their longtime nurses said. “She was always touching him, stroking him, kissing him, leaning on his shoulder. And the wonder of it was that it was al- ways genuine affection—it never seemed phony or forced.”

Among other things, Dana often shampooed Chris’s hair be- cause, she explained, “it’s a sexy, intimate thing.” Chris agreed. As he was leaned back over the sink, Dana would sing to Chris as she poured shampoo over his hair and then slowly worked the lather in with her manicured nails. Then she cupped her hand

over his forehead and rinsed his hair with warm water. “Ahhh,” he would sigh. “You’ve really earned your tip this time.”

One of Dana’s favorite places to be with Chris was aboard an airplane, where he could now ride sitting up in a regular seat. She would sit on the arm of the chair and put his arm around her. That way, she explained, “we would be able to talk face-to-face. I always loved that. It was like old times.”

The need for close physical contact was not limited to Dana and Chris. The fact that he could not so much as touch Will was devastating for Chris. “With Will, that’s where Chris and I both feel the saddest and, at the same time, most grateful,” Dana ex- plained. “Chris wants to be out playing basketball with him, giv- ing him hugs.” So Dana often put Will on Chris’s lap and placed Chris’s motionless arm around the boy. “It’s surprisingly com- forting; I know because I’ve done it myself.”

Still, she conceded, “there’s always going to be a sense of loss about what our life was. We’ve had to adjust all our dreams, but I have no regrets. We lead a very different life. But a good life. Everyone has a cross to bear.”

April 1996 was filled with promise for both Chris and Dana. The first day of the month, Chris signed on to do the voice of King Arthur in the Warner Bros. animated feature
The Quest for Camelot.
A week later, HBO offered Chris the opportunity to di- rect
In the Gloaming,
a drama about a young man dying of AIDS who tries in his final days to reconcile with his parents.

None of these meant as much to Chris as the letter Dana wrote him to mark the occasion of their fourth anniversary on April 11. Her voice cracked several times as she read it aloud to him.

“My darling Toph,” she began. “This path we are on is unpre-

dictable, mysterious, profoundly challenging, and, yes, even ful- filling.” She went on to say she had “no regrets,” that the challenges they faced only proved to Dana how deeply she loved him, and that she was grateful they would “follow this path together . . . With all my heart and soul I love you.”

When she finished, Dana looked up to see tears rolling down Chris’s cheeks. “I love you so much,” he told her as she threw her arms over his shoulders. “Now, can you get me a Kleenex? God, I can’t even do that . . .”

What Christopher
could
do, with Dana as his confidante and tireless ally, was daunting. In 1996, the couple established the Christopher Reeve Foundation to raise money for the Ameri- can Paralysis Association. Reeve would prove so successful at rais- ing both cash—more than $750,000 in the first year alone—and public awareness that in 1999 the two organizations would merge to become the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation. In May 1996, Chris traveled to Capitol Hill to make a direct ap- peal for research funds. Before lobbying Congress, however, he and Dana dropped in on their friends in the White House, where the Reeves convinced President Clinton to add $10 million to the Na-

tional Institute of Health’s research budget.

Chris’s complicated medical condition began to catch up with him by the time he arrived on the Hill. Every three weeks his tracheotomy tube had to be replaced so that tissue would not grow over it—a painful procedure for Chris, since he had never lost his ability to feel above his shoulders and upper chest. Un- fortunately, he had undergone a trach replacement just prior to leaving for Washington.

For the first few days after having a new trach put in, the

slightest jostling of the trach could cause him to lose his voice completely. His speech was fine when he met with the Clintons, but by the time he sat down in front of a panel of sympathetic senators to make the case for more research funding, Chris be- gan to panic.

Dana placed her hand on his shoulder and told him not to worry—that if there was a problem, everyone would understand. But Chris was convinced that “all these senators were sitting there, right in my face, ready for me to say something pithy and impressive. And I felt the moment had come, and I’m bombing.” Since no one was really aware that at this point Chris was ca- pable of speaking clearly and fluidly, his difficulty with the trach went unnoticed. Chris’s appearance made headlines across the country, but he later remembered how he “went off into a cor-

ner and beat myself up about having blown my big moment.”

To further the cause—and to cover health care expenses not paid for by insurance (“I work or I die”)—Chris hit the lecture circuit. Over the years he would crisscross the country and even travel abroad, speaking at scores of symposiums, meetings, din- ners, fund-raisers, and rallies each year. For those, he was paid be- tween $50,000 and $60,000 each—a fee that would eventually rise to over $100,000.

If he could not be there in person, Chris would often video- tape a message to be played at the event. Dana was usually on hand to offer suggestions, making sure that his hair was combed, the lighting right, and—most important—that his spirits were up. “Dana would always give him a kiss on the cheek or whisper a few words in his ear,” said a crew member. “She giggled a lot, and you could tell that connection they had really kept him going.”

On their home turf, Chris and Dana joined forces with Chris’s doctors to battle his insurance company when they re- fused to pay for his nursing care. According to Chris, “they said my wife can just stay home and do it.” When all else failed, he called the insurance company directly. “Listen,” he told a vice president, “think about how unfair it is to expect my wife to stay home twenty-four hours a day.” Finally, the insurer caved in.

Now that he was getting the round-the-clock nursing care re- quired (one night the ventilator failed twice), Dana was free to resume her career. She had landed a small part in NBC’s hugely popular
Law & Order
in 1990, and after playing a reporter in HBO’s
Lifestories: Families in Crisis
series in February 1996, she returned to the
Law & Order
set in the role of an ill-fated wife later that year.

Dana would go on to appear in other episodes of
Law & Or- der,
and when
L&O
executive producer Dick Wolf created a new series for CBS called
Feds,
he offered Dana a plum role—Meg Shelby, the sexy Republican bond trader who falls in love with the show’s FBI agent protagonist. “Meg seems to be everything he’s looking for in a woman,” Dana said of her character, “but there’s a real coldness to her that is not initially obvious.” As for so obviously being cast against type, Dana cracked to her fellow actors, “I
love
it. There are times when you just wanna be a lit- tle bad, you know?”

As she eased back into the working world, Dana realized she would have to make some adjustments in terms of the kinds of projects she pursued. Before Chris’s accident, for example, she had appeared in several TV commercials, including a long-running spot for Tide detergent. But now that she was the well-known

spouse of a high-profile public advocate, she did not want to ap- pear to be actually endorsing a product using the Reeve name. By way of a compromise, she began doing voice-overs.

Owning up to a little blatant nepotism, Chris also hired Dana to sing the haunting theme for
In the Gloaming.
He hired four- year-old Will, as well, to play the main character as a small child in one brief scene. These were two of the few easy choices he would be faced with during the making of the HBO film. Risk- ing the possibility that HBO might withdraw the offer altogether, Chris agreed to direct the movie only if the script was completely rewritten. This was followed by the inevitable casting wars; Chris wanted and ultimately got Glenn Close, Robert Sean Leonard, David Strathairn, Bridget Fonda, and Whoopi Goldberg.

On the set, Chris stationed himself in front of a video monitor and, using a microphone and headset, directed each scene from there. He was so riveted by his actors that when Dana leaned over and kissed him, he only paused long enough to say, “Oh, hi!”

Dana, despite the demands of being a mother and a working actress, was a near-constant presence during the making of
In the Gloaming.
“Just to see him working again,” she told one of the cast members, “is so wonderful. All the headaches and arguments and technical problems—he’s in heaven!” When it aired in early 1997, Chris was stunned by the overwhelming praise from the critics. Dana, not so much. “They think you’re a great director?” she joked. “Tell me something I didn’t know.”

In the Gloaming
went on to be nominated for five Emmys and won four Cable Ace awards. Yet Chris was most touched by the congratulatory calls and visits from such fellow filmmakers as

Steven Spielberg, Herb Ross, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, and Francis Ford Coppola. “They were welcoming me into the fra- ternity of directors,” he said. “I’m starting a new chapter in my life, and you have no idea how much that means.”

Even as they made their joint transition back to their chosen profession, Chris and Dana continued their husband-and-wife crusade on behalf of the disabled. In July, to prove to himself as well as the rest of the world that even a quadriplegic could find a way to participate in sports, Chris returned to the high seas.

Before he agreed to compete in the Wall Street Challenge Cup regatta for the disabled off Newport, Rhode Island, Chris was warned that the risks were substantial. Any sort of bump could result in spasming or worse, even a bruise could lead to a life- threatening infection, and of course there was always the issue of a malfunctioning ventilator.

Dana had lived through all of Chris’s medical emergencies, and worried aloud about the possible dangers of sailing in his con- dition. But once she was assured that every precaution would be taken, Dana urged Chris to “go for it.” She later explained that she felt sailing aboard their yacht the
Sea Angel
“was something that we both loved and that he missed terribly. Just seeing his eyes light up when he talks about getting back out on the water . . .” As he waited on the dock to be lifted onboard the America’s Cup sloop
Northern Lights,
Chris could scarcely contain himself. “I am like an excited schoolboy,” he said. “I can’t wait to get on

the waves again!”

The logistics were, as always, daunting. Despite the fact that Hurricane Bertha was churning up seas at it bore down on the

coast, Chris and his wheelchair were hoisted aboard the
North- ern Lights
using a specially designed boom as Dana watched nerv- ously. The process took forty minutes, and once Chris was on deck, Dana rushed up to give him a hug. Then Chris’s wheel- chair was tightly secured to the deck next to the boat’s captain. Two of the three events planned for the day were canceled as the waves reached twelve feet, but Chris was able to compete in one ninety-minute race. With a sweater-clad Dana perched at his side, shivering in the cold as he gave orders to the
Northern Lights
’ captain, Chris came in second against five other world-class sail- ing vessels captained by disabled sailors. The next day, he returned to the high seas, this time for a leisurely sail aboard another sloop,

the
Condor,
with Dana and Will.

Dana was thrilled at what the experience had done for Chris’s state of mind. “They didn’t usually let people see it,” said one of Chris’s aides, “but there were plenty of times where he got very down, very depressed and moody. Dana worried a lot about that.” Occasionally, Dana alluded publicly to Chris’s dark moments. “There are times,” she said, “when he gets so upset, blaming him- self for all that has happened. I tell him that of course it was just an accident that could have happened to anybody, but in the end

he’s the one who has to deal with those feelings.”

At the same time, Dana was quick to point out that Chris never succumbed to despair. “Chris has courage people don’t even know about,” she said to writer Ileane Rudolph. “Daily physical and emotional struggles abound. His bravery affects me in a profound way. He is still a passionate partner and a loving, involved father, even under the worst circumstances.”

For her part, Dana never lost her own wry sense of humor. At a movie premiere, her old friend, the playwright Donald Mar- gulies, spotted an elegantly dressed Dana standing next to Chris’s wheelchair. She was feeding him crudité from a plate.

“Dana, how
are
you?” Margulies asked.

“OK,” Dana replied with a shrug, “
considering
.. .”

Chris, who met with scientists to keep abreast of the latest ad- vances in spinal cord research, was especially hopeful that sum- mer of 1996. “Awareness of spinal-cord injury is at an all-time high,” he said in a
TIME
magazine cover story headlined, simply, “SUPER MAN.” “People now understand that something that was thought incurable can be cured. The politicians are motivated, the scientists are motivated,” he told writer Roger Rosenblatt. “Now the question is how to keep the momentum going.”