Prairie Tale: A Memoir

by Melissa Gilbert

  At the time, Hollywood was indulgent and decadent, a nonstop bacchanal where everyone was doing everything and everyone all at once. But AIDS changed that sense of wanton freedom and promiscuity. It reshaped the geography of our lives. Some needed more time before they realized this. For me, it was almost immediate. But then I was never one who went on the prowl for casual sex to fill empty hours. Despite my few flings, my search was for a genuine relationship, a love that would last.

  It was at this time I left the William Morris Agency and signed with Michael Black at ICM. Ordinarily, when an actor signs with a new agency, there’s a meeting in the conference room where agents from all the various departments say that you are brilliant, explain that your previous agents have done everything wrong, and promise to do everything different.

  Uncle Ray tried something different by hosting a cocktail party at his apartment. But it was the same old thing, different location. I stood next to my mother and made small talk with the guys from the different departments, like the film guy who introduced himself and said he’d be sending scripts, and the theatrical guy who wondered if I had ever pictured myself doing Broadway, and the TV people who wanted to know how I felt about sitcoms, and so on.

  It was just a lot of yada yada yada and listening to how fantastic I was, all of which put me on the verge of exploding from boredom and bullshit. My mother scolded me for rolling my eyes. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be out with my friends, and I was trying to think of an excuse to leave when the door opened and in walked the best-looking man I had ever seen in my life.

  Rob was handsome. Michael Landon was good-looking. My father was a good-looking man, too. But this guy was phenomenal. At first glance, he struck me as a more chiseled and more handsome, blue-eyed version of the Doors’ lead singer, Jim Morrison. He wore a suit, as all the agents did, but I also noticed a braided rope bracelet around his wrist that revealed something more.

  I didn’t know what more that could be, but it didn’t stop me from feeling like his arrival had changed the entire room. He turned to say something to an agent he knew and about forty-five degrees into that turn he saw me. Our eyes locked and I swear it was as if time stopped and the entire room disappeared so that it was just the two of us there. I pulled myself away from his gaze long enough to lean close to my mother and say, “I’m in deep shit.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Look,” I said.

  She turned and gasped.

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  “I know. Have you ever in your life?”

  “Never,” she said.

  “Neither have I. What do I do?”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  I didn’t have time to figure out anything. He walked straight across the room, shook my hand, and introduced himself. I’m pretty sure I heard him say his name was Alan Greenspan. He could’ve said Jack the Ripper. I was done. Gone. We chatted briefly, then visited with people around the room for a few minutes, until we met each other again on the other side of the room.

  “I’m really bored,” I said. “How about you?”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of silly, isn’t it?” he said. “Where are you going after this?”

  “No plans,” I said.

  “I’m going to meet friends at the Hard Rock,” he said. “Want to come?”

  “Can we leave right now?” I said.

  I found out more about him over burgers that night. Born in up-state New York, Alan had studied business and played football at the University of San Diego, and now he was rising through the film and TV ranks at the agency. We saw each other again the following weekend when he invited me to watch him play in the Hollywood Softball League at Balboa Park. Then he came back to my house for lunch and a relationship blossomed. It happened that easily. I would pinch myself whenever I thought about Alan. Not only was he breathtakingly handsome, he was also a kind, warm, generous, funny, easygoing guy. I’d lucked out.

  Then this lovely new romance was interrupted by inquiries from the tabloids; they wanted to know my reaction to Rob’s new girlfriend, Princess Stephanie of Monaco. Assuming that I must be heartbroken there was another princess in my love story, they asked if I was okay.

  Rob and Stephanie had spent ten days together early that September in Paris, apparently falling instantly and madly in love, which shouldn’t have shocked anyone since they were virtual look-alikes. He had also recently told Joan Rivers, then subbing for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, that Stephanie was his fantasy woman. Stephanie had then reciprocated through the press.

  I instructed my publicist to say I had no comment, but truth be told, I could not have cared less. I was falling madly in love with Alan, who was not a shameless creature. I was bothered, though, when Katie called me one day after Rob’s royal romance had hit high gear, with tabloids reporting that he and Stephanie had exchanged rings and were already planning to wed (not true). She wanted to throw a party for Rob and Stephanie, and she asked, “Is that okay with you?”

  That was the beginning of a distance between us. I was pissed. Here was my best friend, a girl I let myself trust, and she was suddenly as swept up by the whole stardom thing as anyone else. In retrospect, I don’t think our friendship would have taken such a hit if I’d said, “Dude, are you crazy? That’s the most hurtful thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  But I wasn’t mature enough to tell her how I felt. Instead, I said, “Do whatever you want.” Of course, I didn’t want her to do anything. My damage.

  In the meantime, I made the movie Blood Vows: Story of a Mafia Wife and then agreed to a small role in the movie of the week, Penalty Phase, after its director, Tony Richardson, called and asked if I’d sign on to play opposite Peter Strauss. Like Blood Vows, it was another step in the direction of more adult roles. I agreed and flew to Oregon.

  The producers put me in a beautiful little Victorian home out in the country, and my day-to-day routine was pretty relaxing because I didn’t have to work every day. The downside of that was I had too much time on my hands, and I got bored and lonely. Alan came up to see me, but he couldn’t stay long, and almost as soon as he arrived, I got upset at the prospect he would have to leave. Okay, I didn’t merely get upset. I worked myself into a state, as I was capable of doing back then.

  On the day he was scheduled to fly back to L.A., we went out to lunch. As we ate, I thought, If I can get really sick, I bet he’d stay with me. An hour later, I complained of an excruciating pain in my stomach. Within an hour of that, I was in the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital, being wheeled into emergency surgery for a severe bout of appendicitis. My white-cell count was through the roof.

  It was all very dramatic and scary. As I went under, the anesthesiologist warned that I would feel pressure on my throat. I was able to ask why and hear him explain it was a nurse pressing on my throat to make sure I didn’t choke on my own vomit, since I’d recently eaten a cheeseburger. The next thing I knew I was waking up, my appendix was gone, and Alan was at my side, saying he’d stay an extra day. It was a large price to pay for a small victory.

  After a few days in the hospital, I returned to work just in time for my big seduction scene with Peter. He stepped out of the shower to find me waiting for him wearing nothing but panties—and an enormous bandage across my stomach. Not only didn’t I feel sexy, I was scared to death to stand there with my boobies exposed to Peter and my panty-wearing butt facing the camera. To get through it, I drew smiley faces on my bandage. They caught Peter off guard, and that tiny distraction took the edge off for me.

  A few nights later, like an idiot, I went out with a couple people from the crew, stayed out way too late, drank way too much, and within forty-eight hours I was sicker than I’d been when I first went into the hospital. Unable to sit up for more than a few minutes at a time, I managed to finish my last scene, and then I flew home. Somehow I survived the plane ride and got to my house. I remember Rob coming over and the next thing I knew I was being driven
straight to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

  Delirious from fever due to a rampant case of strep that had invaded my entire body, I barely recognized Rob, who was very gallant in coming to my rescue even though he was still seeing Stephanie. Once he knew I was okay, he went back to his other princess. Then Alan took care of me.

  Two months later, he took me to Tahiti for a proper rest. It was fall, and I thought we had been deposited in paradise. We had a hut on the beach. We woke up at sunrise, went to bed at sunset, and in between we ate, snorkeled, made love, napped, rode horses, drank, and made love again. It was a perfect place to decompress, a perfect place to be in love with a truly wonderful guy.

  Around the holidays, Rob called me from a Porsche dealer and said he needed my help. I had read the Princess Stephanie thing had imploded, as it inevitably was going to do, and he was back in L.A.

  “You need my help?” I asked.

  “I’m buying a 928 and I’m scared shitless to sign the paperwork,” he said. “You have to help me.”

  “First of all, I haven’t spoken to you in how long?” I said. “And why do I have to help you? Why can’t you do this?”

  “I’m begging you,” he said. “Please, Melissa? I’ve never bought anything like this in my life.”

  I understood; this was considerably different than the Mustang he had purchased when we were first together. But his request was also completely absurd—so absurd that I sped over to the Porsche dealer and sat with him as he signed the papers. Afterward, Rob said he needed to talk to me. I knew what he wanted, what he was going to say, and I didn’t want to have that discussion. But he pleaded with me to change my mind and eventually broke me down.

  We met up again later that day. I spent the few hours in between preparing my responses to all the apologies and entreaties I knew he was going to make. But it turned out Rob had more than forgiveness on his mind. He knew he’d been an asshole and admitted to breaking my heart far too many times. But he had, he explained, just been through the most insane experience of his life (“I’m sure you read about it,” he said sheepishly; I said I had). Then, looking like a man who’d just walked back into his life after being given up for dead in a far-off land, he said, “I’m back! I’m here. I’m me!”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “I’m not going to live without you,” he said. “I swear to God, this time it’s different.”

  “Really? What makes it different this time?”

  “Because this time”—suddenly he dropped to one knee—“I want you to marry me.”

  He caught me totally off guard, and I froze. “You what?” I asked.

  “I am formally asking for your hand in marriage,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

  I was at a complete loss. I stammered things like “Well, hold on now” and “I have to take care of a few things before I can give you an answer.” I was totally thrown! I thought about Alan. I flashed on his family, whom I’d met on a recent trip to New York. I made a lot of strange sounds. I grunted and moaned. I did everything but say yes or no.

  Finally, I said, “Rob, it’s just too much. Go away. Give me some time and I will give you an answer.”

  So he roared off in his new Porsche and I collapsed on my bed and twisted myself into a knot, a position I stayed in quite uncomfortably for the next few days. I felt like I was in a dream. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I didn’t believe Rob had actually proposed. Nor could I understand why. I even called him and said, “I’m going to ask you this again: are you seriously proposing marriage?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I mean marriage,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Within a year of asking me, you’re prepared to be married to me, because I’m not going to be engaged for decades and decades.”

  “Right.”

  “You’re prepared for this?”

  “Put any conditions on it you want.”

  “You mean this?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Do you have an answer?”

  “Honestly, I still can’t wrap my brain around this,” I said. “You have to give me more time.”

  I really didn’t know what the hell to do. In the meantime, I had a special man in my life who was calling me throughout this quandary and asking me to dinner and movies, asking me to hang out with him as we had been doing, and asking me if he could bring me soup or just sit with me when I told him that I’d been lying low because I wasn’t feeling well.

  Each time I found myself inching toward calling Rob with an answer, a voice in my head screamed at me, Don’t do it. You already have a wonderful guy. He’s sweet. He’s caring. He adores you. You’re going to break his heart and then you’re going to be sorry.

  The last thing in the world I wanted was to break someone else’s heart, especially Alan’s. I knew too well the misery of heartbreak. The thought of possibly doing so was almost more than I could bear. I didn’t eat or sleep. I talked to my cats. I asked my dog for advice. I looked heavenward for a sign from my dad. I also talked to my mother, repeatedly asking her the same question each time: What should I do?

  She finally threw up her hands and said, “It’s up to you. Who’s going to make you the happiest?”

  She was right. I had to quit torturing myself and make a decision. I got out a piece of paper, titled it “The Pros & Cons of Marrying Rob Lowe,” and made a list.

  seventeen

  WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

  After a great deal of soul-searching, the choice was clear. I had invested real time and effort into my relationship with Rob and if he was telling the truth, I was in. I knew we were young, but I also knew he was the man with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. He was the one I wanted all along.

  Before I gave Rob my decision, though, I needed to break the news to Alan. I wanted to be as grown-up and considerate as possible. E-mail and text messages didn’t exist back then; I wouldn’t have delivered the news in such a cold manner, anyway. I wasn’t going to do it over the phone or by letter, either. Alan deserved better. He deserved to hear me explain in person why I was making this extremely painful decision.

  I went to his apartment, praying it would go all right. Unlike Rob, who I’d seen cry and scream (hey, he’s an actor, there’s histrionics and drama), Alan was very even-keeled and reserved. He wore his emotions as neatly and carefully as his necktie. I wanted to vomit, but I felt like I had a grip on my feelings as I told him that I had been forced to make a difficult decision after Rob had suddenly come back.

  Alan’s face was like stone, but I saw his eyes begin to melt as he uttered a scared and hesitant “Yes?”

  “Back into my life,” I continued.

  “Yes?” he said.

  Before I could get into the details, Alan began to cry. He realized what was happening. I felt like Alexis Carrington, just a colossal bitch. I wanted to run home, crawl into bed, and instruct my mom to tell Alan I was breaking up with him, tell Rob I would marry him, and then set up the wedding so all I had to do was show up. I didn’t want to be a grown-up having this conversation, which quickly turned heartbreakingly sad and teary.

  “What are you going to do?” Alan asked.

  I told him, and he started to cry even harder. Then he pulled himself together and said he didn’t know what to tell me other than he hoped I would be incredibly happy. That made me cry hardest of all. I spent the night—both of us wanted one last night together—but leaving the next morning was torture. I had to drag myself away from this wonderful guy, and then I chastised myself the whole way home. I knew I was behaving like an utter moron.

  At home, my answering machine was full of messages from Rob. Unable to reach me, he wanted to know where I was. I called him back. He wanted to know if I’d made a decision yet. He said he was losing his mind. I told him that I loved him very much and had a decision, but I needed a couple more days before I saw him. When we finally got together, I was blunt about my reservations. I threw all the
clichés at him, including the one about leopards not being able to change their spots.

  “But I’m convinced people can change,” I said. “And maybe you are willing to change. Maybe this is a turning point for us. Maybe the fact that you have to cough up some dough to put a shiny rock on my finger will add to the fact that we have this commitment. I don’t now. But I’m not going to walk away from six years of my life, and I want to give this a chance, so…yes, I will marry you!”

  After breaking the good news to our families, our biggest challenge was picking out a ring without seeing our engagement splashed across the tabloids. We snuck into a Beverly Hills jewelry store one day without attracting the attention of any paparazzi. I’d always loved jewelry, but I had no idea what the good stuff cost. The price tags shocked us. Not that I saw any rings I liked; all of them were too big or too gaudy or both, and too expensive. They ranged in price from twenty thousand to two hundred thousand dollars. Ridiculous! But like most women, I was able to summon a reserve of stamina and stay with the hunt until I found the perfect ring for me, a dainty sparkler with eleven baguettes and five marquise diamonds, all under a carat, shaped like a crown and set in white gold. I showed it to Rob and tried it on.

  “This is the one,” I said.

  “It is?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know how much it’s going to be,” he said.

  “Well, ask, stupid.”

  “You’re sure you really like it?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Based on what I’ve seen,” he winced, “this is gonna hurt.”