My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life

by Adam Nimoy

  Dad told me that one night after rehearsal, he went to a bar for a quick drink when two hot numbers sidled up to him.

  “Your place or ours?” one of them asked.

  “Thanks,” Dad said, “but I have to go home and learn my lines.”

  The next day, when he told this to Preminger, the director blurted, “For all ze lines you learned, you shuud have fuct!”

  I really loved that play. They were so good together, Dad and Bibi. Despite the tough subject matter, you could just tell that they really enjoyed playing the parts. I hoped that one day I could play at my work the way that they did at theirs.

  Afterward, Dad took me around to meet her. We were standing at her dressing room door when he introduced me. At close range she was overwhelming. Petite and pretty in her camel hair skirt and creamy white blouse, with her sweet smile and her Swedish accent. And then suddenly, Liv came to mind. Bibi immediately reminded me of Swedish actress Liv Ullmann. I had recently seen a movie trailer of Liv in The Emigrants, and now I couldn’t get Liv out of my mind but I made a conscious decision not to mention her name.

  I remember a lot about that night. Some things from the past I can remember very well. Sometimes it’s a blessing, other times it’s a curse. This memory is a blessing, definitely a blessing, as we stood outside her dressing room. She was so attentive and glad to meet me and she never stopped giving me her sweet Swedish smile. I remember her gorgeous eyes and her charisma and the door to her dressing room and how a single overhead lightbulb lit up that musty backstage hallway at the Anta Theatre. I like to hold on to that memory of Bibi because to this day, I still feel the glow of her smile.

  It was decided that we would share a taxi uptown. Bibi had to collect her things while Dad and I went outside to get the cab.

  When we walked out into the night, I remember it being cold and wet. I think it was November. November in New York felt so good and different from what I was used to in Southern California. I told Dad that Bibi was beautiful and that I couldn’t stop thinking about how much she reminded me of Liv Ullmann.

  “It’s a good thing you didn’t mention Liv Ullmann. I think there’s some serious rivalry between the two of them. They’ve both worked extensively with Bergman.”

  The next thing I knew, the three of us were in the backseat of a cab driving through midtown Manhattan. Bibi was squeezed in between us and I felt safe and warm sitting next to her in the shadows of that cab. She didn’t waste any time as she turned her attention to me.

  “Do you like older women?”

  I think I was seventeen. Bibi Andersson was pressed against me as she seduced me with her Swedish accent. She was confident and natural as if this was typical European small talk. I was dumbstruck—I had no idea what to say.

  But Dad knew. He knew what was going on. He knew what to say.

  “Adam’s had some experience with older women.” He was as cool about it as she was.

  She turned to me with surprise.

  “Is this troo?”

  I finally found some words.

  “Yes . . . I do enjoy the company of . . . beautiful, older, Swedish women . . . especially . . . if they’ve worked extensively . . . with Bergman.”

  BAR MITZVAH TIME!

  IT’S THE MORNING of Jonah’s Bar Mitzvah and I arrive at the house early and whip up some eggs and toast and make everyone eat so that our blood-sugar levels will last through the service. Then we race out the door to get to the temple in time for pictures. For some reason, Jonah goes to grab the plastic ziplock bag full of yarmulkes, or skullcaps, that I always kept in a cabinet in the dining room. I bet there are a lot of Jewish homes with a bag full of yarmulkes. You end up collecting these things through the years because you forget to take them off at the temple and you don’t want to throw them away, so you keep them in a plastic ziplock bag and use them for Shabbat or Passover. But there are yarmulkes at the temple so it seemed a little odd that Jonah thought to grab the ziplock bag, a bag he has never otherwise paid any attention to. As I’m driving, he’s sitting in the back going through the bag, and he pulls out a purple-colored yarmulke that he says he wants to wear. He looks at the underside and it reads, “Alan Nimoy’s Bar Mitzvah, July 28, 1969.” It jolts me to hear him reading Alan’s name. Alan was my first cousin, my father’s brother’s second son, who was a month older than me. Alan had cystic fibrosis, a digestive and lung disorder, and he died just after his seventeenth birthday in 1973.

  “Dad, were you close to Alan?” Maddy asks.

  “Alan was to me what Spencer is to Jonah.” Spencer is my sister’s second son, and he’s very close with Jonah. And my kids seem to understand that more than thirty years ago, I lost somebody who was like a brother to me. Alan was a skinny Jewish boy, just like me; he was a good student, just like me; and he intended to go to law school, just like me. For years, I would go out to New Jersey to visit him for the summer. We told each other everything. Sometimes, when I’d look at Alan, it felt like I was looking at a sick version of myself.

  * * *

  Nancy and I sit with Maddy on the bimah, the platform where the rabbi and cantor sit. We’re really enjoying the whole ceremony, showing our friends and family that nothing between us is going to spoil the moment. And even though some members of my extended family aren’t speaking to others, I really don’t care.

  Thanks in large part to his Hebrew tutor and my constant push on Jonah to practice, he makes his way through all the prayers very beautifully. He looks like a little cherub with all that long hair and those baby-fat cheeks. When he finishes the chanting, he wipes some imaginary sweat off his forehead with a wrist sweatband I didn’t even know he had brought with him.

  I make my speech to Jonah from memory: about the day I took him to Guitar Center and how lucky I was to have him in my band and how he replied he was lucky to have me in his band; about that day in the parking lot when Jonah sang the “God version” of Bowie’s “Changes” and how that qualified him as a “marinated chicken”; about how it’s fun driving Jonah to school because he’s like a pop-culture sponge, he’s always spouting off funny dialogue from some Jim Carrey movie—although that past week there was some strange dialogue coming out of his mouth because with the passing of the pope, Jonah and some of his friends thought it would be a good idea to commemorate the event by renting The Exorcist.

  To Nancy’s credit, she suggested that in the thank-you part of Jonah’s speech, he should acknowledge my aunt Sybil and uncle Mel, Alan’s parents, and mention the yarmulke. When the thank-you’s came, he lifted the yarmulke above his head and said with a sweet, somber voice, “Aunt Sybil and Uncle Mel, I want to thank you for coming to my Bar Mitzvah and I want you to know that the yarmulke I’m wearing today is from Alan’s Bar Mitzvah.”

  Up on the bimah, looking out at the congregation, I can see my uncle Mel and cousins Steve and Paul looking expressionless, like they didn’t hear a word of it. Then again, these guys are Nimoys: They aren’t ones to express a whole lot of emotion. But when I look over at my aunt Sybil and cousin Judy, they have tears flowing. And now Nancy’s crying. Actually, she’s been crying through the whole thing and has already gone through my entire packet of Kleenex. And in that moment, I start thinking, Did we do a mitzvah, a good deed, by having Jonah mention Alan? Or did we just make a huge mistake? And now there is so much emotion rising in my chest that if I weren’t a Nimoy male, I might start crying too. I look up at the etched-glass windows behind the ark that houses the Torah scrolls. The light is shining through and it’s as if I can feel the hand of God rushing through my chest.

  I can feel everything now, and sometimes, it’s overwhelming.

  * * *

  The nighttime reception is being held at the Hard Rock Cafe. I put together a kick-ass video of Jonah’s life filled with cool music and it just rocks as it plays on all the TV screens. The food is terrific, and we have a great DJ who has the kids doing the usual group activities. Throughout the evening, Jonah and various band incarnatio
ns take the stage and play rock ’n’ roll. He plays his new Gibson SG that I let him buy with some of his early Bar Mitzvah money. Justin backs Jonah up on bass. It’s mostly AC/DC night, and Jonah’s Angus Young imitation is flawless, including the one-handed guitar riffs. Maddy gets up and sings. In between songs, the crowd in front of the stage chants, “Jonah, Jonah, Jonah . . .”

  THE THERAPY POLICE

  IT’S WEEKS LATER and the afterglow from the Bar Mitzvah is starting to fade. Nancy and I decide to meet at her therapist’s office to talk about what’s next. Actually, Hannah started out as our therapist, as she was the first marriage counselor we went to see before we moved on to Carol and then Patricia. Nancy stayed on individually with Hannah, which was fine with me.

  I start the session by explaining what’s become obvious over the last year and a half: The marriage is over and it’s time to move on. Hannah says she understands and doesn’t try to convince me otherwise, which is a huge relief. In fact, she says she and Nancy have been preparing for this for some time. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s a sad ending to a relationship that had begun with so much promise.

  * * *

  We met at our ten-year high school reunion. I knew her at University High but we didn’t hang out together. I was bored until she walked in the room. She was cool and funny and pretty. I started introducing her around as my wife. She didn’t flinch. We were married eleven months later. She used to hold me in our bed at night and whisper, “How did we find each other? How did we get so lucky?”

  We tried for years to get pregnant. As soon as we decided to take a break from the fertility drugs and the inseminations, Maddy was conceived the old-fashioned way. Jonah arrived as a happy accident almost exactly two years after Maddy. After the kids were born, when they became the focus of so much attention, I wasn’t hearing how lucky we were to find each other anymore. And the issues that came between us grew and grew and the couples therapy failed and failed and failed.

  * * *

  So, after eighteen and a half years of marriage, it’s finally over. And here we are, back in Hannah’s office so many years after we began, discussing how to end it.

  We talk with Hannah about how to tell the kids and we decide on the following: We both still love you, no one’s to blame, we both take responsibility, we can still do some family activities together, this is the best thing to do at this point in our lives. And that’s it. There’s no drama in Hannah’s office, and we have a united front—except that when we get back to the house and sit down with the kids, it doesn’t quite go down that way.

  Somewhere between Hannah’s office and the house where the kids were waiting, someone decided not to follow the script. And while Nancy’s yelling and the kids are crying and the dogs are barking, I remind her that this is not what we rehearsed in her therapist’s office.

  “I don’t care! I changed my mind! Call the Therapy Police!”

  The halls are hell. The halls are hell. Don’t just do something, sit there. Sit there. Sit there. Feelings are not facts. Facts. Facts.

  And so, while the kids cry and Nancy yells and the dogs bark, I head for the door.

  Jonah follows me out. We stand on the porch while he hits me and cries and says he never wants to see me again. When he finally calms down, I tell him I want to take him to the skate park because I want him to work off some steam. It doesn’t take much to convince him and he goes inside to get his board and his helmet and his pads. While I wait, Maddy comes out sobbing and I promise to call her later when she and Nancy have calmed down.

  Jonah’s quiet during the car ride to the skate park. Then he turns to me and says that even though he’s not doing what Maddy did in terms of the screaming and yelling, he’s still very mad about the whole thing. I tell him I completely understand.

  When we get there, I park and sit in the car as he gets out and digs into the trunk for his stuff. Then he walks up to my window.

  “Look at my new tips, Dad.” He’s showing me the tips on his skateboard.

  “You bought some new tips?”

  “No, my friend Dion bought them for me. He said I was nice to him and he wanted to buy them for me.”

  I watch him skate as I sit in my car and call the Therapy Police. I leave a message for Hannah about what happened and she calls me back within minutes. She’s very supportive and reiterates much of what she said in the meeting: that Nancy checked out of the marriage years ago and has recently been working on completely letting go so that she can move on with her life. I talk to Hannah while I watch Jonah and give him the thumbs-up when he does a little trick. He waves back and smiles and I’m starting to feel better.

  Hannah tells me she has a call in to Nancy but that Nancy’s not calling back. Not too hard to see why. The Therapy Police are after her.

  MY NEW NOT-SO-BRILLIANT CAREER: FILM SCHOOL

  A FILM EDITOR friend of mine told me to call Stan, the director of a film school in Burbank, and talk to him about a job. The public school subbing has been good for me and I’ve learned some interesting things along the way. But sometimes there’s nothing more to subbing than taking attendance and watching videos and I just don’t know how many more times I can watch Osmosis Jones. I do know a helluva lot about directing, with more than forty-five one-hour single-camera dramas behind me. So I called Stan and he told me to come in and we’d talk. He also asked me if I’d be willing to give a three-hour lecture to a filmmaking class about what it’s like to direct television.

  “Do you think you have three hours of material?”

  “Are you kidding? Stan, I could talk for three days.”

  I’m sitting talking to Stan at his desk and it’s pretty clear to me that I’m going to like this guy. Stan is tall, well over six feet, which is pretty tall for an administrator. He walks me over to the filmmaking class and asks Linda, the instructor, to sit in on my lecture so that she can evaluate where I might best fit in at the school. I get the distinct feeling she’s also there to evaluate me. There are about a dozen students in the class, mostly college age. And for three hours I talk to them about directing episodic television from the very first day of preproduction until the very last day of editing.

  Throughout the lecture, I interject little asides about my own experience. I tell the class that when you’ve finished directing and editing an episode, you’ll want to have done such a good job that the producers want you back to direct another episode. And sometimes, you’ve had a miserable experience on a particular show but you don’t let anyone know this. And on your last day there, when you’re, like, in Vancouver, because you’ve been shooting the show up there and you’re about to be taken back to the airport and your bags are in the van and you’re in the production office saying good-bye to everyone, one of the producers might come up to you and say, “It was great working with you. I’ve got a call in to your agent to book you for another episode.” And while he’s saying this to you, you just smile and nod your head and tell your mouth to say the following: “Thanks, that would be great. I’m glad you’re happy with the episode. I had a lot of fun and really look forward to coming back.”

  But, in fact, this is what’s going through your mind:

  “Working on this show has been one of the biggest fucking nightmares of my entire life and you’re one of the biggest fucking assholes I have ever met and I can’t wait to get on that fucking plane so that I never have to see your fucking face ever again!”

  (Although, as it turned out, sometimes what Adam was thinking actually came out of Adam’s mouth, helping to precipitate the end to an incredibly wonderful, miserable television directing career. But I don’t mention this to the class.)

  Anyway, Linda laughs and cries for three hours. I mean, literally, it’s like I planted her to react to my material. After the class, she tells Stan I could teach almost anything: the actors, the producers, the directors. Stan sets me up to start with an acting class that meets the following evening.

  I am so looking forward to teachin
g that class and all those talented young people and I can’t wait to share my craft with them as well as some of my experiences. And I work my ass off putting together a class curriculum. I’m so excited when I’m driving out there for that first evening class. And as I walk down the hallway leading to the classroom, I think about all those beautiful, talented people who are just waiting to hang on my every word. I’m actually thinking to myself that maybe I’ll be coaching the next James Dean or Natalie Wood.

  And when I step into the class, there are exactly three people sitting there.

  And English is their second language.

  GUEST SPEAKER

  JUSTIN CALLS TO ask if I want to be the guest speaker at the Tuesday night meeting at Edison Avenue. It’s the first time I’ve been asked to speak at a meeting and my knee-jerk reaction is to say no. I’ve managed to share at the Monday night and Thursday night meetings, but getting up and speaking for an extended period requires a whole lot more in the revelation department. I think about it before I say anything, and I know Chris Kelton and Mitchell, my current sponsor, would want me to do it, so I say yes. Justin says I shouldn’t worry, the format for speaking at these meetings is usually the same as outlined in the AA Big Book: first you talk about what it was like when you were drinking and using, then what happened to get you to stop and what it’s like now. Then, in true Justin fashion, he tells me, “You’ll probably get laid. And if I stay close to you after the meeting, chicks will see that we’re tight and I’ll probably get laid too.”

  The meeting is held in this community room with the usual oppressive overhead fluorescents. There are maybe forty people there. Two hot blondes arrive. They’re dressed in black skirts and jackets like they’ve just come from their hip office jobs at the studio or the agency.