True Stories from an Unreliable Eyewitness

by Christine Lahti

  Sometimes, yes. One time in particular the lines blurred precariously.

  On location in Toronto, my coactor and I had several physically intimate scenes together. One of them involved me throwing him down on the bed, jumping on top of him, and ripping off his clothes. This guy was charming, good-looking, and extremely professional. But after we’d wrapped one night, we went out to dinner and the touching didn’t stop. We kissed without any cameras rolling. That scared the shit out of me. Not only was that unprofessional, but I had never been unfaithful to my husband in the twenty years of our marriage.

  What I adored about this guy was that by all accounts, he appeared to adore me. Or his character did. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Either way, he put me high on a pedestal, and the view from up there was fan-fucking-tastic.

  The truth is, being on a film set is like swimming in a pool of adoration. You have hair, makeup, and wardrobe people constantly preening over you, ADs who will fetch you anything your heart desires. A bottle of water? Sure! Cold or room temp? With or without a straw? Oatmeal made with water or whole, 2 percent, skim, or almond milk? There are countless crew people who sing your praises after virtually every scene, even if you sucked. Makeup artists will tell you how ravishingly beautiful the lighting is for your close-up, even though they’re lying through their teeth. It’s heaven on earth, if it’s attention you crave.

  At that time in my marriage, I was feeling a bit taken for granted. Tommy and I weren’t prioritizing each other; both of us were working constantly and not spending much time together. But before we got married, we had made a pact that if either of us ever had an inclination to have an affair, we would first try taking the unfulfilled need back to each other. So I did.

  I said a quick good night to my hot-to-trot costar. As soon as I got back home, I knew I had to confess my near affair with my husband. But I felt nervous. Even though he had never been the jealous, possessive type, of course the news would be hurtful. But first I had to figure out what exactly I was missing in my relationship with him.

  “So, Tommy, all we did was kiss once, but I was very attracted to him and I’m not sure why. I feel terrible and like I cheated on you, and I’m really, really sorry.”

  There was a pause. Then he said softly, “Yeah, so am I.” He looked away from me.

  “Well, what I think I need and am not getting enough of from you is . . . um . . . well, I wish you adored me more, or at least actively appreciated me more.”

  Tommy said he thought he understood. We didn’t speak much the rest of that day or night. He spent a lot of time in front of the TV, watching football. Our normal easy humor evaporated.

  Then the next morning he brought me breakfast in bed and rubbed my feet. There was much unsolicited affection throughout the day. He showered me with compliments, and most of them sounded sincere. I think he even washed my car.

  All this lavish attention lasted a good solid . . . week. We both ended up feeling silly, like we’d been playing parts in a bad romcom. But fortunately, by that point it had dawned on me that I didn’t really need adulation from my husband. I could save that need for award shows, for fawning hosts of talk shows, or for the next time I worked on a film set.

  So here’s what I wish they’d taught me and my fellow actors in my fantasy love scene class: Sex scenes are going to be uncomfortable, so you need to speak up if there’s a boundary issue. Keep it sexy; forcibly doing anything never is. Always carry Binaca, and stay awake. Most importantly, no matter how lucky we are to get to do them sometimes, or how exciting they can be, leave them on the set.

  I almost jeopardized my marriage because I confused being adored with being loved. That’s like confusing Reddi-wip with homemade whipped cream. Or the “Eiffel Tower” in Las Vegas with the real one in Paris.

  It’s still nice when once in a while Tommy brings me flowers or kisses my skin as if it’s a rose petal. But in the real world, a little of that goes a very long way.

  13

  Brave

  We weren’t even supposed to be in Los Angeles. I’d never wanted to live in that disaster-prone, culturally bereft mini-mall of a city. Whenever I visited, I wanted someone to put a dimmer on the relentless desert sun. I longed to get out and walk somewhere, but there was nowhere to walk to. My husband and I planned to live in LA for just a couple of years to explore film and TV options, but there was no fucking way we were giving up our New Yorker status to be Los Angelenos. Our lack of commitment was made obvious by the various houses we rented with our young children.

  Several years later, the offers for the work we came for made it prudent to settle down on the left coast. We bought a home in Santa Monica. At least we would be close to the beach, where we could breathe something other than smog as thick as pea soup.

  Once we had officially moved to LA, I began to fantasize about all of the apocalyptic scenarios that could befall us in that dismal part of the country: mudslides, fires, tsunamis, and earthquakes. To soothe my fears, I convinced myself that if a catastrophe were ever to strike me or my family, I’d become a mother lion, suddenly capable of lifting multiple cars to save my kids, and even my husband—who in my fantasy had slept through the whole damn thing. It bears repeating how clueless and comatose my husband is when asleep. I’d have to search our house for any aberrant sounds, armed now with the Maasai walking stick we’d recently brought back from our African safari . . . used to ward off lions.

  At the time, my acting roles were for mostly brave, formidable characters: lawyers, doctors, CIA operatives, and kick-ass roles like Annie in Running on Empty, Sylvie in Housekeeping, and Hazel in Swing Shift. Occasionally I got to play more insecure, vulnerable people, but for a while I was being typecast as the fierce female. I mean, people got typecast for a reason, right? I knew better than to identify too closely with my parts, but I started to believe that the strengths of these characters were my own. After playing a doctor for years on Chicago Hope, I actually had the impulse to volunteer when a stewardess called for a doctor’s assistance on an airplane.

  As we settled into our new home, I made sure we had extra flashlights, batteries, and water for possible emergencies. I felt confident I’d rally, just like all my characters would, in any kind of natural disaster.

  Six months later, during the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake of 1994, I got the opportunity to see what I was really made of.

  I had been lying soundly asleep alone in our bedroom upstairs when, at 4:30:55 a.m., I was awoken from a dream about being in a massive quake by what felt like a train hitting our house. The shaking of the bed jolted me to the floor. I instinctively found the nearest doorjamb while the room rocked and rolled like ocean waves in a storm. Who knew that floorboards and walls could bend like that?

  “nooooo! noooooooo! noooooooooooooo!!” I howled at the top of my lungs, as if screaming could stop the tectonic plates from shifting. I wasn’t certain at whom or what I was yelling. The noise around me was deafening—glasses and bottles shattering, pictures and mirrors crashing to the floor, the chimney crumbling, car alarms blaring.

  Tommy had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs in the den between the twins’ room and Wilson’s room. I’d never been in a major earthquake before, so I had no evidence that it was ever going to stop. More trains kept slamming into our house. The floor was heaving up and down, lurching and then suddenly dropping. It didn’t occur to me to try to make it to the stairs and down to where my children lay sleeping. I only managed to take the one step to our bathroom doorway, whereupon I hung on to the doorframe for dear life. I was frozen, positive not only that my entire family was already flattened downstairs but that I was a goner, too, all in a matter of seconds. So what did I do? I did not, as Dylan Thomas wrote, “go gently into that good night”; I raged and raged and raged against the dying of the light!

  I can get emotional taking out the garbage, so that should give an idea of the decibel level of my hysteria at the fear that our home was about to collapse on top of us lik
e a house of cards. I couldn’t even pretend to be brave. While I screamed like an overly caffeinated banshee, my husband, in a matter of one minute, had grabbed our sound-asleep two-year-olds, Emma and Joe, laid them in their carriers, and put them under the dining room table. When the quaking finally stopped, I tore downstairs, not sure what I would find. I nearly ran into Tommy heading to Wilson’s room, whose door had slammed shut during the quake. We threw it open and found our seven-year-old in his Power Rangers PJs, looking scared but unhurt. We held each other and cried as we ran back to our toddlers who had slept through the whole thing.

  The aftershocks continued for several hours afterward, during which we squeezed each other’s hands and covered our heads. During a moment of calm, I explained to Tommy how grateful I was that he could get to our babies, because given how violently it had been shaking upstairs, there was no way I could have made it downstairs. But in truth, my self-image was the thing most shaken up.

  None of this aligned well with the picture I’d cultivated of myself. I learned early on that perfection was the surest path to lovability, a side effect of trying to win my dad’s approval my whole life. I saved the only letter he wrote me, sent after the night I took him to the Academy Awards, when I was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. In it, he wrote, “Words can’t describe the happiness your mother and I felt.” I’m surprised I didn’t frame it, nail it to my wall, and surround it with candles.

  As a result, it became difficult for me to admit to even the smallest mistakes or to cop to any form of weakness. (I did spend 99 percent of my childhood saying, “I didn’t do it!”) But the pressure to appear strong and fearless came from me. “No more asking Daddy,” as Gloria Steinem said. For so long I felt I needed to be an independent warrior at all costs. Certainly the characters I was portraying would never have behaved like cowards in an earthquake.

  I felt secretly ashamed of my behavior for months. I’d learned what “stuff” I was made of and it disappointed me profoundly. I even did research to try to defend my inaction. I found that the upper stories of a house did sway much more forcefully than the ground levels in an earthquake, the same way that the tops of palm trees bend more dramatically than their trunks in a strong wind. I tried to justify my behavior to friends by citing this evidence as we shared our earthquake stories.

  “I stayed in bed and lay on top of my wife to protect her,” said one.

  “I gathered up the kids, the dogs, and the cat and took them all outside,” proclaimed another.

  “Well, I tried to go down to help, but I was stuck upstairs, which was shaking much more than where Tommy was. See, that’s why he could maneuver around so much easier,” I said repeatedly. Pathetically.

  Finally, I couldn’t contain the shame anymore. I didn’t know what scared me more, the actual earthquake or being found out for being a chickenshit. So, long after our chimney had been repaired, and all the broken glasses replaced and safely tucked into locked cabinets, I sat down with Tommy at our small kitchen table. Our pictures now hung secured by earthquake-proof putty, yet I found myself still trembling as I broached the subject of my behavior during the quake.

  Barely able to make eye contact, I said, “So I lied to you, Tommy. While you were busy protecting our children, I was actually upstairs paralyzed with fear. I probably could have navigated down those steps if I’d tried, but I couldn’t move, not because of the shaking but because I was a scared-shitless weenie.” I started to cry. “I’m so sorry that I let you and the kids down.”

  Laughing, he hugged me close and simply said, “Oh, sweetheart, I love you.” As he held me, and I revealed my terror, I was taken aback. It was the bravest, most kick-ass I’d felt in a very long time. Maybe I could leave the car lifting to my characters after all.

  14

  Dear Pregnant Women of a Certain Age . . .

  First of all, I hate the phrase “of a certain age.” You never hear men say they’re “of a certain age.” It’s absurd. Like women should be too ashamed to ever admit they’re over forty? That’s like being ashamed to admit you have a cavity or a cold. Should we say “I’m a woman with a certain tooth disorder”? or “I’m a woman with a certain virus”? Aging happens to everyone. If we’ve survived this long, we should be proud of it.

  Anyway, like you, I waited a long time to start a family. Much too selfish and career-obsessed, I couldn’t think about anyone or anything else. Perhaps, like me, when you were younger, you weren’t even sure you wanted kids. I didn’t have my first baby until I was thirty-eight. Then I had a twin set at forty-two.

  Well, I feel I should caution you about a few things. I hope you’re sitting down. Oh, duh, you’re carrying a shitload of extra weight, your ankles have become “kankles,” and your acid reflux is so bad it’s making your back ache—of course you’re sitting down.

  By the way, these warnings aren’t limited to just you old geezers. All expectant mothers should take heed. But the truths I’m about to share will hit harder if you’re older because you are more set in your ways. You’ve grown more accustomed to doing the things that make your life worth living.

  So I don’t know about you, but I love to sing and dance. Ever since I was a child, singing and dancing have been my raisons d’être. During my three-year-old tap-dance recitals, my determined tongue always stuck out, pressed against the corner of my mouth for increased focus. At ten I sang along to South Pacific in my basement to an audience of neighborhood suckers who paid ten cents a ticket. As the worn, scratched LP played, I burst into “I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair!” with unbridled gusto. As a teenager, after I was supposed to be asleep, I’d put on my 45 rpm single of “Poetry in Motion” or “Run Around Sue” on low volume and practice my jitterbug alone in the dark.

  As a cocktail waitress in a large tent in northern Michigan for many summers, I danced while belting out overly sincere versions of “Big Spender” between serving weak Rob Roys and White Russians. When I moved to New York City as a young adult, I adored dancing at Studio 54 and Limelight with my girlfriends and gay boyfriends. I let my body spin around inside the music and get lost in it. We would dance until dawn, leaving the clubs sweaty, dizzy, happy wrecks.

  My point is that if you also love to sing and dance, you need to know that once you become a parent, you will never get to do those things again.

  You may sing lullabies when they’re young. Mine loved “Hush, Little Baby,” especially when I’d make up all my own silly verses. My cover of “Baby Mine” from Dumbo was also a big hit. I even got away with waltzing around the room with them wrapped in my arms while singing “When I Married Mr. Bill” from Carousel. This will exhilarate them, as if you had the pipes of Audra McDonald and the moves of Ginger Rogers.

  But they are setting you up. Because the second they get old enough to be embarrassed, you will not, under any circumstances, get to do either without their permission. And I swear to you they will never give it.

  “You can sing if I sing,” my younger son would sometimes promise, his sweet, rosy face flushed with earnestness. God, you want so desperately to believe him. You pray on a daily basis that he won’t renege. But you will find out that he was lying through his retainer-covered teeth. Because even when you’ve waited patiently for your big moment and dared to sing along with him to his ridiculous song choice, “Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog,” you will hear “Mom! Stop! That’s disgusting!”

  Until the little control freaks go off to college, you will be in a song-and-dance straitjacket. And by then, if you are like me, it will be too late to start up again; your knees will be arthritic, and inexplicably your voice will have descended into a gravelly baritone, and your vibrato will have slowed down to a pitchy wobble.

  You will also realize soon enough that you cannot make any sounds in public, especially within two blocks of their school. I know you’re thinking, But I have to be able to talk, don’t I? Fine, just speak only when spoken to, and do it very, very softly. But be forewarned that if you ever
get too boisterous, you will have to pay big bucks for their therapy later on.

  If you’re similar to me and have a naturally outgoing personality, you are in deep shit. Because you are who you are by now, and it won’t be easy transforming yourself into a soft-spoken, barely breathing mouse. At home, if they have friends over, to be safe, it would be best to just stay in your room with the door closed.

  Then there’s the whole laughter ruse. I’m aware that my laugh can be over-the-top, often obnoxiously rowdy. But I cherish laughing as much as breathing. Who doesn’t? It is one of the most universally therapeutic, spontaneous pleasures of life. When they’re little, they will make it seem like you are free to let it rip. The bigger, the better. You can play “mommy-monster,” chasing them around the dining table, screaming like a banshee. You get to tickle-torture them endlessly, both of you rolling around the floor, convulsed in hysterics.

  But again, this is a cynical con job. Seemingly overnight, this God-given right will be rescinded. You will have to learn to think good and hard before you find anything funny again.

  I’m sorry if you think this all sounds like Purgatory. Just wait until you hear this next restriction. Take a deep breath. Okay, ready? There will be no more skipping. I know. You’re probably thinking, Skipping? Who goes out for a skip? I did. It was my gait of choice. I had skipping skills, lifting my knees high, then leaping into the air. It was the closest I could get to flying. Even though as an adult I wasn’t supposed to do it, I used to pride myself on the fact that, at least in this one single, solitary arena, I didn’t give a shit what others thought of me.

  When my children were young, we would skip together, hand in hand, soaring high with great abandon, giggling all the way. But the no-skipping rule became part of the Acceptable Parental Behavior Handbook. After they leave home for college, you can try to skip again. But because by then you’ll really be an old fart, no matter how hard you try not to, you will pee a little in your pants as you do your first hop. (As a side note, this will also happen while jumping on a trampoline, though not just a little.)