by Jane Fonda
Ever so slowly, over the months, a membrane began to cover the heart wound, and I could tentatively begin to cross the abyss without falling in. In psychologist Marion Woodman’s Leaving My Father’s House I read: “When humans suffer they are vulnerable. Within this vulnerability lives the humility that allows flesh to soften into the sounds of the soul.” Maybe this was what was happening to me. I felt lighter, as if a space had been cleared around me allowing coincidences (God’s way of remaining anonymous) to manifest. Maybe these coincidences had been happening all along and I just hadn’t been open to them. Now it was as though I were being led to them.
For example, there was the way I came to find a therapist. While Tom and I were still living in Ocean Park, at the end of our little street a house was torn down and rebuilt. This was the house that Paula and her husband, Mark, moved into. Then one day about two weeks after Tom and I split up, I was bike riding along the beach with Julie Lafond, and as we passed Wadsworth she pointed to that very house and said, “The therapist who saved my marriage owns that house and has her office in the basement.”
Well, thought I, who was holding back from going into therapy because I worried I wouldn’t find “the right one,” This may be a sign: I’ve just been staying there with my best friend, I saw it being built, it’s on my old street, and the therapist who owns it saved my other friend’s marriage. I called up that very afternoon and made an appointment.
It was a fortuitous coincidence that led me to a female professional I would talk to once a week over the ensuing two years. She set me on a path of self-reflection and, after retiring, referred me to the therapist who would make a life-altering difference.
Then there was the psychic (hey, therapists, psychics—why not cover all bases?) who told me I would begin writing: “Writing and writing—and what you write will be important to women.” That’s when I began the journal writing that has helped with this book.
Over the following months, awash in what felt like miracles, surrounded by the love of my children and women friends, I could feel myself growing stronger. The sense of being led remained. The dark, empty space inside was beginning to fill with Spirit. I was entering my body, and I could feel a quickening.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
PHOENIX ON HOLD
For everything there is a season And a time for every matter under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die
—ECCLESIASTES 3:1–2
IT WASN’T TIME YET. The ashes were there, the Phoenix was beginning to rise, the Spirit was beginning to fill me. But my ego wasn’t strong enough yet to contain it. A large part of me still panicked at going forward without a man.
The day after my divorce was announced in the papers, the phone rang. Someone yelled, “Jane, there’s a Ted Turner on the phone for you.” Ted Turner? I’d met him once with Tom at a screening of a documentary about child abuse that his Turner Broadcasting System was going to run. He’s probably calling to offer me a job, I thought as I picked up the phone.
Suddenly a voice boomed through the phone so loudly that I had to hold the receiver away from my ear.
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?” I thought it was an odd way to start a phone conversation with a virtual stranger.
“Are you and Hayden really getting a divorce?”
“Yes.” I was still in the throes of depression and unable to speak above a whisper.
“Well then, would you like to go out with me?”
I was dumbstruck. Dating was the furthest thing from my mind. “To tell you the truth, I can’t even think about dating right now. I can hardly even speak. I think I’m having an emotional breakdown. Why don’t you call me back in three months?”
“Hey, I know just how you feel.” I could tell he was trying to modulate his voice to approximate compassion and that this was hard for him. “I just broke up with my mistress,” he went on. “I wrecked my whole family and my marriage two years ago to go and live with her, so now I’m having a hard time myself.”
It occurred to me that this was just about the most inappropriate thing a man could say to a woman who had just been dumped by her husband of sixteen years for his mistress. Didn’t it occur to him that it would be his wife I’d identify with, not him? This is one strange guy, I thought.
But what I said to him was, “Call back in three months, when I’m feeling better. Okay?” He said he would do that, and we hung up. Whatever would come of it, the call in and of itself made me feel better. So did calls from friends like Warren Beatty and Quincy Jones, who wanted to check in to see how I was doing.
“Chin up now, cuz,” Quincy said lovingly. (He’d recently had his genealogy traced by the Mormons and it showed that we were distant cousins.) “Don’t let yourself get too down now, cuz. This is your time to play, have fun.”
Ted called back almost three months to the day. I’d all but forgotten about his promise and was surprised and flattered that he had remembered. I realized I didn’t know enough about this man who would be my first date in seventeen years. I knew about CNN but had never watched it. I got my news from the papers and National Public Radio. Besides, this was pre–Tiananmen Square, pre–Gulf War days, and CNN was still referred to occasionally as “Chicken Noodle News.” Nor was I familiar with the world of sailing and the fact that he’d won the prestigious America’s Cup. So as time approached for the date, I hurried to find out everything I could.
It wasn’t encouraging. Someone gave me an article about his life that revealed he probably had a drinking problem. Not what I needed—again. A friend of one of his children whom I happened to know told me he liked only younger women and if he was interested in me, it would only be as a notch in his belt. Of course there were lots of positives as well: his environmentalism, his global vision, his work for peace. My brother, the sailor in the family, filled me in on that facet.
1984, with Vanessa.
(© Suzanne Tenner)
“Oh, sis, this is really exciting! He’s the real Captain America” (unlike the bro, I guess, who had had a different take on Captain America in Easy Rider). “Ted won the America’s Cup!” He couldn’t believe I didn’t know this and went on breathlessly to tell me the whole saga of the Bubba from the South who stormed into Newport, home of the blue-blazered bluebloods, wearing an old engineer’s cap; how at first nobody in the race took him seriously; and how he kicked their asses.
“You gotta understand—he’s a hero!” Peter’s voice gets high when he’s excited. It was contagious. But as I said to my kids right before the date, “Don’t worry, this is just a way to get my feet wet, practice how to do the dating thing again. This isn’t going anywhere. Trust me.”
Actually I had come down with a bad cold the day before the date but decided not to cancel on him, given how long he’d waited. When he called to get directions to my house, I told him I was sick and would have to make it an early evening. It didn’t seem to faze him. But I was nervous! I’d gathered the clan around me for support: Peter, Nathalie, Troy, Vanessa, Lulu, and my assistant, Debbie Karolewski.
I may not have been invested in this date “going anywhere,” but I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t be because he didn’t want it to. So I wore a very short black leather miniskirt, a tight black halter top, black hose, and spike black heels. A few studs and I could have passed for a dominatrix.
I remember being up in my room putting on last-minute touches when Ted arrived. I could hear when Peter opened the door and Ted burst through, his over-the-top voice booming out, “Hey, Montana! Gimme five!” Peter lives in Montana and, as I learned later, Ted had just bought a ranch there and was excited that they had this in common.
A few minutes later I came down the stairs and Ted swung around to watch me. “Wow,” he said in a husky voice, devouring me like so much eye candy with an unabashed lust so palpable that I could feel it on my skin. I also saw he was nervous, and I found that endearing. He shouted good-bye to my family (they seemed subdued, as in the wake of a torn
ado), ushered me quickly out the door, and helped me into a hired sedan with a driver he introduced by name (which impressed me).
“I have friends who are Communists,” he offered eagerly as soon as we were seated. He said it like a little boy bringing home good grades. “I’ve been to the Soviet Union several times because of the Goodwill Games. Gorbachev is my buddy and so is Castro. I’ve been to Cuba two times. We go hunting and fishing together.”
I had to laugh. I didn’t know if it was because he really thought I was a Communist and wanted to let me know that wouldn’t stand between us or if he thought it was something I’d find endearing. I did. It was the second time in a matter of minutes that the word endearing had come to mind—not what I had been expecting. Before we’d even gotten to the restaurant, he pulled another stunner:
“I don’t know much about you, see, so . . . ahhh . . . I got CNN to do a printout of your archives and I read through it. The stack was about a foot tall. So . . . ahhh . . . then I had them do a printout of my files and mine is about three feet tall.” Pause. “Mine’s bigger than yours! Pretty cute, huh?”
I was astonished—by his comparing our files, by his telling me about it, and by his favorable editorializing . . . Pretty cute, huh? All I could do was shake my head and laugh, telling him that I hadn’t known much about him, either, and had done my own, far less extensive research. He was bowling me over and my whole body was abuzz.
“I need a driver when I’m out here,” he explained, “ ’cause I don’t know my way around even though I actually owned a Hollywood studio . . . did you know I bought MGM?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I read that.”
“But I didn’t get to keep it for long. They ran me out of town in a barrel. I didn’t even get to use the casting couch. Kept the library, though. I own thirty-five percent of the greatest movie classics of all time, and I’m colorizing ’em. Young people these days don’t want to watch black-and-white movies. What’s your position on colorizing?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Scorsese’s against it. But, hey, women put on makeup and nobody gives a hoot. I think it’s gonna bring in a whole new audience.” During the brief pauses he seemed to hoover me up with his eyes. It was hard keeping my breathing steady.
I had made a reservation at a small dark Italian restaurant in a neighborhood where I knew we would not run into reporters. As soon as we were seated I apologized for not feeling well, reminding him that I would need to go home right after dinner, whereupon he excused himself, saying he had to use the john. I naturally assumed he was calling some Hollywood starlet to make a late date now that he knew he wouldn’t be scoring with me.
As soon as he returned to the table he launched into a long speech about how he had been raised by his father to be a male chauvinist pig (his words); how his father always told him that women were like a bus (“If you missed one, another would always come along”); how his father drank a lot, had lots of women, and would come in late at night, wake up his young son, and recount the details of his evening’s exploits.
“I just think you should know that . . . ahhh . . . well, from a feminist perspective you’d say I was a sexist because of how my father raised me. But my mistress, the one I just broke up with—”
“The blond pilot?” I interrupted, wanting to be sure we were on the same page mistresswise.
“Yeah, that one, J.J. She’s . . . ahh . . . a feminist and she’s helped me to see things differently. I was actually . . . ahhh . . . magn . . . ahhh . . . mong . . . ahhh . . . magnanimous with her.”
“Are you trying to say ‘monogamous’?” I asked, this time laughing for real. Oh my God! He can’t even get the word out of his mouth!
Then he gave me a recap of his credentials, always punctuating his sentences with a drawn-out “ahhh”: how he was an environmentalist, how he’d gotten his network to pay for and broadcast all of Jacques Cousteau’s documentaries and National Geographic’s and Audubon’s.
He told me that he had become an environmentalist growing up on his father’s plantations in the South; how he’d had a pretty unhappy childhood, always moving; how every time he’d come home from school his father would have bought a new place in a new state.
“So I never had many permanent friends and I sort of found solace in nature. I was always outside and I notice things other people don’t see. That’s because I pay attention, and besides, I’m a hunter. Hunters are real environmentalists—they’re the first ones to notice how things are changing. For instance, I noticed early on that there were fewer and fewer ducks migrating up and down the flyway every year. Are you against hunting?”
“No, but I’ve never done any.”
“Hmmm. Well, the real problem is too many people . . . too many damn people. We have to stop people from having so many kids. I have five myself, but that’s because I didn’t know better back then. Excuse me, I have to tighten my skates,” he said, getting up to go to the bathroom again. It was a journey he’d make four more times during the dinner. Could he be having difficulty getting a late date? “Tighten his skates”? Yeah, sure! What’d he take me for, a fool?
I’m certain I must have said something during the dinner. Surely he asked me questions about myself (besides if I was opposed to hunting), but I don’t recall anything coming from me, only what was coming at me in that boyish, irrepressible flood of information.
No sooner was he back at the table than with an involuntary sideways glance at my breasts, he asked, “Have you had . . .” and immediately stopped himself, flustered. “Never mind. It’s . . . ahhh, nothing,” he stammered, dropping his gaze to a neutral place on the tablecloth and arranging his face in an appropriate expression somewhere between contrition and gravity. I realized that he had been about to ask if I had breast implants (I chose not to satisfy his curiosity). What I didn’t realize was that I had just witnessed a historic moment, perhaps the only such: Ted Turner had actually decided not to say what was on his mind. Not knowing this, I couldn’t appreciate and be flattered by the Herculean effort at self-censorship it represented.
As he walked me to my door following dinner, he asked, “Can I hug you?” and when I nodded, he gave me a sweet, long hug. Then, as I opened the door, he said, “I’m smitten. . . . Ahh . . . listen, can I call you tomorrow?” I nodded and disappeared into the house. Smitten. So was I.
He called first thing in the morning. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?”
“No, I’m an early riser.”
“Hey, that’s terrific. Me too. That’s a good sign. Listen, I really like you. Do you think you can come spend a weekend at my ranch in Montana?”
“I really like you, too, Ted, and I’d like to get to know you better. But . . . I’m . . . well, to be honest, I’m not ready to have an affair. And I have to assume you’d expect us to sleep together if I went up there for the weekend. I’m still kind of shaky. So, no. I don’t think I should come.” There was a brief silence on the other end—a first.
“Well, okay.” He sounded like a Boy Scout. “We don’t have to sleep together. I have an extra guest room where you can stay. I . . . ahhh . . . promise I won’t touch you. Aw, come on. You’ll love it. Heck, your brother lives in Montana. It’s a great place.”
“I know, I’ve been there many times.”
“Well then, come on. We’ll drive around and I’ll show you all the critters. I’ve got elk and deer and eagles and . . .” He was relentless. Of course I caved.
“Okay. I’ll come. But I can’t until June, ’cause I’m going to the Cannes Film Festival with a film of mine and I’m real busy with promotions and stuff.”
“No kidding? Well . . . but that’s two weeks from now!”
“Yeah, that’s right, but that’s as good as I can do.” He reluctantly agreed, and we set a date for early June.
Flying to Ted’s Montana ranch, I had no idea what to expect. Would he fetch me in a chauffeured limousine? Would his be one of those marble-floo
red faux ranches with a huge staff? I needn’t have worried. He was driving a small Jeep, and the ranch, when we finally got there over an hour later, was a very modest log cabin. Ted, I would learn, is frugal when it comes to spending money on personal comforts.
During the drive I couldn’t help noticing that Ted was exceedingly agitated, and I asked him why. For you to understand why his answer appeared to me as a miraculous coincidence, I must give some backstory: Following in the footsteps of the Mel Gibson movies The Road Warrior and Mad Max had been other films that gave a dark, apocalyptic view of the future, and this had made me want to make a film that went against all these grim projections, one that showed what might happen if we avoided Armageddon and did things right. “People need to be able to envision what the world we’re working for will look like,” I had told my new producing partner, Lois Bonfiglio. I had actually begun researching it. So imagine my astonishment when in answer to my question about his agitation, Ted replied:
“I’m so excited about this idea I have. I’ve decided to launch a worldwide contest with a cash reward for the best story that gives a positive vision of the future. I’m going to call it the Turner Tomorrow Award.”
“I don’t believe this! I’ve had the same idea, Ted, only I’ve thought of doing it as a movie.” I knew I was in a psychically susceptible state, but this seemed amazing. (Two years later the Turner prize was awarded to the now cult classic Ishmael. But no movie ever ensued, from either of us. By then I’d retired from filmmaking.)
Bouncing over rugged dirt roads, thirty minutes after entering his property, we finally arrived at the small house where we’d be staying. As soon as he’d put my suitcase in the (basement) guest room, Ted asked me to watch a videotaped speech he’d made at a recent National Abortion Rights Action League dinner defending a woman’s right to reproductive choice.
