Dear Host and Hostess,
I had only two days in Maine, and once I arrived, I realized that I’d like to take some time by myself, exploring the towns along the coast. I’m writing a book, and I think travelling to old familiar places might jog my memory and help fill in the blank spaces of my past. Thank you for sharing your beautiful home with me. You are exceptional hosts, and I am so grateful you asked me here. Until our next dinner in Manhattan, where as soon as we’re finished eating I can return to the comfort of my own apartment, I remain, in gratitude,
Andrea
I will never send it.
And now it’s time for my delicious free continental breakfast. I walk into the dining room and am greeted by the sombre, mannish innkeeper.
First I ask her politely if I can have a late checkout, just thirty minutes more so I can leave at 11:30 instead of at 11:00.
With a feigned smile she replies, “No. We have to do the sheets.”
I continue cheerfully, “Would there be any way my sheets could be collected thirty minutes later?”
Still smiling insincerely, she replies, “No.”
I then ask if she knows of a hair salon that’s open that morning.
“There’s Capella’s, a ten-minute drive, but they might be closed.”
“Oh,” I say pleasantly, “do you think you could call and find out for me, especially since you know the people?”
“No,” she says, “I’m leaving right after breakfast. But you could phone later.”
The final exchange goes like this:
Mannish innkeeper: We are serving a mushroom quiche and a blueberry cobbler this morning. Please let me know if you have any allergies.
Me: The quiche sounds wonderful. But are there onions in it? Mannish innkeeper: Yes.
Me: Oh, I can’t eat onions. Would you be able to make one without onions for me?
Mannish innkeeper: By allergies, I mean gluten-free, or lactose intolerant, or diabetic, but not something you don’t like. There’s a difference between allergies and food you don’t like.
Me, through clenched teeth: Oh, I see, well, thank you for your help, mannish innkeeper. I’ll have the quiche, pick out the onions, eat rapidly, return to my room, pack between phone calls to hair salons, shower, and check out, so that I can be back on the road in thirty minutes.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Part Four
Parapharyngeal Abscess
For whatever reason, and I’m sure only the Lord above knows why, out of the blue I got a terrible strep infection that abscessed deep inside my parotid gland and then deeper inside my jaw, behind my ear. On June 15, 2012, three days before I was scheduled to perform my one-woman show Final Days, Everything Must Go! in the new cabaret space at the legendary club Studio 54, I was rushed to the hospital with a high fever and excruciating pain. I stayed in the hospital for five days as tests were run. The doctors finally determined that I had a parapharyngeal abscess in my neck and needed an operation. In my hospital bed as I awaited surgery, and dreamily sedated with Valium and Percocet, God’s candy, I wrote the following email:
My darling male friends, and Deb,
I am going to attempt to bring you all up to date.
It is 7:40 a.m., day five at the hospital. I’m in my cubicle. Anne Frank’s room was bigger. But at least I don’t have to share it with an entire Jewish family.
I am supposed to have surgery today, or as they euphemistically call it, a procedure. The most handsome Israeli doctor, the head, no pun intended, of the Head and Neck Surgery Department at the hospital, just left my room. If I weren’t so hard of hearing, I would have been soothed by his soft-spoken manner. Immediately I felt confident when he started to speak. First of all, he sat on a chair in front of me and looked into my eyes, which none of the attendant physicians had done. They always enter en masse, like they’re in a Seth Rogen film, and stand around my bed, then one person speaks and the rest just stare. But this doctor sat like we were having cocktails, and though he had twenty-eight surgeries scheduled for the day, I felt like I was his only patient. I love an Israeli man. Sexy. Swarthy and good in combat. He explained that the kind of infection I have and where it is in my mouth is rare and very serious. He asked me if I had been in a foreign country in the last year where I might have contracted TB. I said no, and then thought maybe the Playbill cruise Broadway on the High Seas was the culprit. Maybe as I was performing Prickley in Corfu, a Greek bug flew in my mouth. Whatever the cause, the result is crazy pain that has gone on now for twelve days. The infection is deep inside my mouth/head, and so they have to give me general anesthetic, not a local, which would be so much easier to recover from.
I am on a waitlist for surgery. Or in show-biz terms, a shortlist. Think of it this way: they have asked for my availability. So I don’t know when the surgery will be scheduled, but I do know I can’t eat or drink anything until they do it. I can’t have coffee, and so my head is pounding from the lack of caffeine. They brought me a sponge on a stick and dipped it in water, and I use that to swab my mouth. That’s what’s on the menu for today.
When they do the surgery, they will make an incision in my neck. They will then work their way to the infection, drain the abscess, put in a plastic tube, leave it there for two days, and do a biopsy on the tissue, sending it to a laboratory to find out if a tumour is the cause of the infection. I will then stay in the hospital for three or four more days as I heal, and then they will close the incision. That’s if everything goes well.
I know this is more information than any of you, my actor friends, should know, even an actor who has played a doctor on television. But I wanted to give you sweet people in my life the whole picture. Of course, this is only part of the picture.
I had an MRI yesterday. They put a blindfold over my eyes, stuck my head in a tight-fitting helmet, then moved my entire body into a machine that looked like a tunnel, and for forty-five minutes, and I’m not exaggerating, my head became a construction site of loud incessant jackhammers and drills pounding in my ears. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for the years of meditation technique I learned at the Golden Door, I don’t think I would have survived it. I kept breathing calmly, counting, thinking of my sons and, occasionally, why the hell I couldn’t get an audition for the role of Miss Hannigan in Annie. Waterboarding would have more pleasurable.
When I finally was taken off the table, I said to the technician that the procedure was torture, and he replied, “I’ll tell you what torture is: having dinner with my son.”
There’s a lovely elderly toothless lady named Miss Cooper, who brings me my food. I don’t want to be mean because I know the entire nation of Africa would call this five-star dining, but honestly, it is swill. Maybe that’s a good thing, since I can’t chew, so why be tempted? I was thinking also that it’s a blessing that I’m not dating because I would not be able to service any fella’s penis right now. The only thing my mouth can open wide enough to blow is a toothpick.
As many of you know, who might have purchased tickets for my New York debut at 54 Below, I had to cancel. I am still laughing, not an open-jawed laugh but an internal one, at Scott Wittman’s remark. When I was crying and telling him how bad and embarrassed I felt about cancelling, he said, “Oh, for God’s sake, it’s cabaret, one step above a flea circus.” I love you, Scotty, for that. And Nicky, our darling friend in a wheelchair, offered to help. He called and said whatever I needed; he could be there in a little over two hours.
My dear BFF, my angel, Deb Monk, has been by my side from the moment I entered the hospital. Last night when I got the results of the MRI, I was distraught and scared and crying. Deb, in the most compassionate manner, held my hand and whispered, “I’m cancelling everything tomorrow to be with you.” Snapping out of my distress, I said competitively, “What the hell do you have planned for tomorrow?” She then showed me her calendar, and sure enough, she is going to cancel her walk.
And Sean Hayes, my darling, thank you for your heartwar
ming email:
I’m abscessed with your infection. Abscessed. I can’t stop researching it.
I so want to be there when they cut that fucker open and watch all that shit come out of you. There’d be nothing more satisfying. It’s like you have a constipated boil in your jaw. Love it. All right, joke’s over. Get better already. We love you.
Seth and James have texted me every second, and I adore the updates on their busy lives and hate that I’m not decorating their apartment and picking single socks off the floor. The thought of buying chairs and carpet and wiping out their saving accounts is keeping me going.
Nathan, thank you, my sweet angel, for the call, the cookies, and the personal appearance in my hospital quarters. All the nurses recognized you, and because of that I got more melted ice cream at lunch.
Okay, now this is sounding like some acceptance speech.
Fuck all of that.
Just know, Sean, Scotty, Nicky, Victor, Scott, Marc, Nathan, Seth, and Deb, I love you. Thank you for being the best crew I have ever worked with.
Wait.
Thank you for being my friends.
Later that day, after sending out the email, I received a slew of responses from my friends. I won’t reprint all of them, but Marc Shaiman’s in particular was priceless:
You may have got a terrible infection, but you also got your new act. Where the hell were you when Catch Me If You Can needed a punch-up?
Well, I hope to God you are at least going to make use of the time under and have them do a little cleanup work. Hopefully not by the Israeli doctor, for he might read the instructions you write out for him backwards and end up lowering your face and tits.
My surgery, which took four hours, was scheduled for the following day. As I was about to be wheeled into the operating room, my oldest son, Jack, appeared. He had flown on the red-eye from Los Angeles to be with me.
“Hi Mom, it’s Jack,” he whispered. “Everything’s gonna be all right. I’m here now. I love you.” He held my hand. “I’ll see you when you get out.”
The pain in my jaw was so intense by then, I couldn’t speak. I wanted to yell, “Hey, nurses, doctors, patients, this is my son Jack. He is a music editor and just finished a big movie and isn’t he handsome?” Instead, I squeezed his hand as tears ran down my swollen cheeks. Jack’s smiling face was the first I saw when I got out of surgery. Jack stayed with me in New York for two weeks after I left the hospital, and made me laugh continually by pointing out that I looked like Mrs. Cartman on South Park because one side of my face was paralyzed and only the right side of my lip curled up.
After a six-week recovery period, I could move every part of my face again. Seven weeks later, I was starring in a Hallmark Movie of the Week, and eight weeks after that, I was training on a trapeze. I’m happy to report that the surgery was a success. I’m completely healed. The four-inch incision on my neck has faded and now looks like an eyebrow in a Hirschfeld drawing. When I smile, I no longer look like a character in an animated cartoon. My life-threatening infection is a thing of the past. I don’t talk about it anymore. Not because I’m not grateful to my doctors and friends and family for their concern, expertise, love, and devotion. And not because it doesn’t make a dramatically harrowing story.
I just can’t pronounce “parapharyngeal.”
Emergency
“Damn,” said the emergency room nurse. “Your vein exploded.”
She gathered up her needles, tape, and vials and stormed out of my curtained-off cubicle in the emergency room at the hospital where I had just been admitted. I followed her out to the nursing station, where she was asking a male nurse if he knew how to draw blood.
“Umm, excuse me,” I said, “that sounds bad.” An exploded vein. What will happen to me now? Will the rest of me explode?
Angrily she responded, “It will hurt for a few days, and you’ll have a black-and-blue mark and bruising on most of your arm.”
I waited for even a suggestion of an apology. None came. She commanded me back into the cubicle, and to sit and not move as she pulled out another set of pain-inflicting tools. She took hold of my arm, with its now ballooning vein. I tried another mode of communication, the “I hope you recognize me and will treat me more kindly ’cause I’m an actress and I’m shooting a TV series, so it would be great if you would be gentle and maybe use a needle that you use for children, ‘cause I don’t want to have bruises on camera.” No acknowledgement. Nothing.
“That’s what I am using,” she snapped back. “Now sit and stop clenching your fist.” She stuck the needle in the front of my hand this time and wistfully smiled.
“Damn,” she said, “you have beautiful veins.” Even that was my fault. I had disappointed her. I had allowed my beautiful veins to be exploded. She finished drawing blood and left the cubicle. I then overheard her joking loudly with three other nurses in the hallway. “So anyway, he touched me and then he stuck his tongue down my throat.” Gales of boisterous laughter in the hallowed halls of emergency. “I didn’t even know him. But hell, he was cute, and I was hammered, so I stuck my tongue right back down his.”
By now both injection sites on my arm were turning purple. Soon I would look like the Elephant Man. “I’m a human being, Nurse Ratched,” I wanted to yell, “not an animal.” But instead I asked tentatively through the curtain, “When will the doctor be by?”
She yelled back, “I don’t know. He’s busy.”
I had driven myself to the emergency room at 7 a.m. that morning. At 2 a.m. I had woken with sharp pains and a tightening in my chest. I paced around my home for five hours, all the while moaning and scared. When I finally went back to bed, I was convinced I smelled toast and was having a heart attack, so I drove myself to the hospital. And there I sat for the next five hours. X-rays of my heart, EKGs, blood samples, and a CT scan of my lungs showed nothing irregular. And yet I couldn’t breathe. And the pain was not subsiding. As I waited for a diagnosis, Nurse Ratched popped her head back into the cubicle.
“Hey, one of my co-workers said they recognized you from that Greek movie. Were you in it? The aunt? ‘What do you mean you don’t like meat, I’ll make you some lamb?’ Is that you?”
“Yes,” I replied weakly as I held on to my arm, “that’s me.”
“Hey, Bob,” she shouted, “it is her.”
Three other nurses were now standing in my room, staring and laughing.
“You were funny.”
“Are you still acting?” one of the nurses asked. “I don’t see you in anything anymore.”
I held up my arm, which now looked like the offspring of a Goodyear blimp and an eggplant.
“Yes, I’m still acting, and will the swelling go down?” I asked.
“Probably. If it doesn’t, see a doctor.”
“Hey, what was Nia Vardalos like? My father’s friend knows someone who knows her.”
“She was lovely,” I said. “Sorry, I don’t mean to change the subject, but I’m not having a stroke, am I?”
Before they could answer, the doctor appeared with my chart. “Ms. Martin. Now I know who you are. I’ve been racking my brain to figure it out. SCTV?”
“That’s correct, doctor.”
“I haven’t seen you in anything lately. Are you retired?”
“Yes,” I said, lying, determined to put an end to the career interrogation and get to the important matters at hand, like my death.
“Doctor, are my symptoms serious? Do you think it’s my heart?”
“No, all the tests came back negative. You had a bad case of indigestion. Gastroesophageal reflux. But you were smart to come to emergency. The symptoms are often confused. You’re fine to go. By the way, Catherine O’Hara and my wife went to high school together. She’s so talented. She’s always working.”
The next day, back on the set of my TV series, my swollen arm and bruises were camouflaged under makeup and a long-sleeved shirt. When the crew and cast asked me if I was okay, I told them I had been diagnosed with �
��indigestion.” Believe me, I would rather have used the more glamorous and exotic term “gastroesophageal reflux,” but who the hell can pronounce that name either. Oh, to be twelve years old again, with the mumps.
Multi-Tasking
I am in a double banger right now. That’s show-biz talk for a trailer/Winnebago that acts as a dressing room for actors while they are shooting on location. Each banger, divided by a wall, houses one actor. Double banger, two actors. Triple banger, three actors.
A banger is a cozy little cubicle (on wheels) with windows and comes complete with microwave, refrigerator, sink, small couch attached to the wall, toilet that you flush by pushing a pedal, plastic-encased shower, and table with a large mirror and makeup lights surrounding it. It’s not a bad place to spend an hour, but hair-pullingly claustrophobic if you’re forced to stay in it any longer. It’s a little roomier than the hole in which Saddam Hussein was found, but only slightly.
Years ago, I shared a double banger with another actress. After she ate anything, she desperately tried to work off the calories by jogging in place in her banger, simultaneously shaking mine. Bangers have thin walls. You don’t want to confide anything to anyone while you’re in your banger, let alone have sex.
That’s another experience I had in a banger while shooting a low-budget made-for-television movie in the ’80s. I shared a double banger with an actress who was dating a big movie star. He was married to someone else. That didn’t stop them from having clandestine lunchtime sex in her banger, twice a week. The banger would vibrate, and I would be forced to eavesdrop on their explicit sexual encounters. It was like listening to an episode of Homeland. Banging in a banger. One step up from banging in a car. Two steps up from banging in an airplane washroom.
Lady Parts Page 14
