Cybill Disobedience Part 10

Comedy writers talk about "schmuck bait": it's when a joke is set up to convince the audience that the actor is playing it straight so the punch line is an even bigger surprise. During my illness, Roark's presence was schmuck bait. He gave me a few months to get better, but once I had physically recovered and he received his last paycheck he bolted. Had he stayed, I would have found out eventually that his love and support were just for show, but he made a preemptive strike. I thought I understood how relationships worked out--I had my list, didn't I? But I was wrong. All I know is how not to do it.

"Howard Roark" lives with his mother now. I know this because he sold at least one story about our time together to a tabloid, trying to embarra.s.s me with intimate revelations and falsely claiming I owe him money. In the therapist's office, he declared that he was leaving because I hadn't read a particular book. Nine months later there would be a more complete list of grievances in the paper, including the complaint that I was selfish in bed. When I saw his most recent narrative detailing my fantasy about s.e.x with two women, I tried to warn my ex-husband, who was on vacation with Ariel and Zack, to stay away from newsstands and supermarket checkout lines. Who knew that a Pizza Hut in Kentucky would sell such periodicals? My twelve-year-old son called saying, "I've seen the article and it's really gross." Long pause. "Mom, a threesome?"

The possession of celebrity looks so desirable from the outside that observers tend to discount the attendant problems, but it's hard to underestimate the celebrity's life can become a marketable commodity. I'd made that bargain with the devil: if I can only become rich and famous for doing what I love to do, I'll accept the trade--off, whatever it may be. I thought I'd be able to a.s.similate the invasion of privacy, the opportunism, the cruel gossip (which is never the truth: I'm both better and worse than what the public believes). It does pain me to know that so many people accept the National Enquirer National Enquirer as gospel, just as my grandmother did. (Moma would call my mother anytime there was a story about me, and no matter how outrageous the claims, she'd say, "I can't believe Siboney would do that." When told it was hooey, she'd say, "Oh, I don't think they'd print it if it wasn't true.") as gospel, just as my grandmother did. (Moma would call my mother anytime there was a story about me, and no matter how outrageous the claims, she'd say, "I can't believe Siboney would do that." When told it was hooey, she'd say, "Oh, I don't think they'd print it if it wasn't true.") When someone leaves, his ghosts cling to every corner of the house. On the wall outside my bathroom, we had recently measured and marked in Sharpie black ink the heights of the whole family with me just above Roark at the top of the chart. Noticing this memento mori after he left, I grabbed a red Sharpie off the nightstand to scribble it out, which only made matters worse. When I went away for the holidays, I asked my a.s.sistant to hire the best painter in the state of California and erase every trace of Roark's name.

Chapter Twelve.

"WE'LL MAKE THIS A COMEDY YET..."

ONE OF MY FAVORITE SONGS BY MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER relates a universal sentiment, "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug." Having been squished my fair share, it's time to take stock. If relationships, either personal or professional, keep ending the same way, you'd better examine your own culpability. ("Nothing is more terrible to a new truth than an old error," said Goethe.) After ten years of therapy, four hours a week, I have deconstructed my behavior in every conceivable way, scrutinizing motivation, concerns, the possibility of an unconscious agenda--an excruciating process. Let's see what I bring to the barbecue. relates a universal sentiment, "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug." Having been squished my fair share, it's time to take stock. If relationships, either personal or professional, keep ending the same way, you'd better examine your own culpability. ("Nothing is more terrible to a new truth than an old error," said Goethe.) After ten years of therapy, four hours a week, I have deconstructed my behavior in every conceivable way, scrutinizing motivation, concerns, the possibility of an unconscious agenda--an excruciating process. Let's see what I bring to the barbecue.

I know this: in a company town, I have never been a company girl. I am too blunt and forthright. I will make noise and take chances. All my life I've been diving off cliffs with wings that I had no a.s.surance would keep me aloft, and I've crashed any number of times. I have adapted behaviors that are maladroit, flippant, or unedited. I've sabotaged other people's marriages, mortgages, promises, diets. I've been ignored or dismissed because of the way I look, and when I think I'm not being heard, my anxiety level rises like the mercury in a thermometer. Growing up, I learned a set of people skills that favored presenting a problem in a flattering light or couching it rather than resolving it, and it's worked both for and against me. I was trained in the southern way of flirting, valued solely for its promise of s.e.xual favor without obligation to deliver. I have definitely taken it to another, more public and more blatantly s.e.xual level. It was, after all, the subtle erotic threat on the cover of Glamour Glamour that Peter Bogdanovich had recognized, and risque or ribald innuendo has always been part of my persona and humor, as it was for Mae West. Perhaps the men I worked with so swimmingly at the beginning came to resent a "mere" s.e.xual being having and using power. Perhaps there was some more complex combination of boredom and burnout, cultural or regional misunderstanding, and the kind of s.e.xual politics that makes many men revert to the default position of implied male superiority. that Peter Bogdanovich had recognized, and risque or ribald innuendo has always been part of my persona and humor, as it was for Mae West. Perhaps the men I worked with so swimmingly at the beginning came to resent a "mere" s.e.xual being having and using power. Perhaps there was some more complex combination of boredom and burnout, cultural or regional misunderstanding, and the kind of s.e.xual politics that makes many men revert to the default position of implied male superiority.

I come from chicken farmers who made it to the country club, and I always felt a kind of numbing despair that my mother was limited to the social imperatives of that set, where the only achievement that counted for a woman was being a homemaker. I've come to understand the inevitable repercussions for the daughter of such a woman. If a mother's life feels uneventful, despite her pleasure in and support of a child's success, she may resent seeing a daughter achieve beyond anything she felt she had the right to expect for herself. But outright envy is unacceptable, so she over-identifies with that daughter, imagining that you and she are one and the same, expecting you to live out her dream. You will inevitably fail to live it exactly as she would have wanted.

Buddhists believe that narcissism is a stage on the way to enlightenment. It's appropriate for a child, who should feel like the center of the universe. Ideally, a mother should hold a mirror up to her child, saying, in effect, "Here you are." My mother couldn't do that for me because her mother hadn't done it for her. The image my mother reflected back to me in the mirror was herself, and I never saw me--the good, the bad, and the ugly. That's a setup for misery, disappointment, and self-doubt. I'm not sure I know how to have a relationship. I'm not sure I know how to maintain friendships. But I do know how to mirror my children back to them.

My mother's compet.i.tive edge went away with Howard Roark. When you find a new trust and understanding with a parent, it's like an unexpected gift. I've always wanted to be closer to my brother and older sister--we have that irrevocable common ground of childhood--but our life experiences have taken us in such different directions. There's an emotional gulf that we haven't been able to navigate in adulthood; money and fame seem to impede the strengthening of these fragile relationships. Ancient rivalries and jealousies are resurrected, played out on a different stage. To my sister, a big-hearted country girl, I may always be the "perfect" blonde child plopped down in the middle of her family, inviting odious comparisons. To my brother, a talented filmmaker, I have been both appreciated and resented as a conduit to business opportunities. Each of us has a litany of grievances, which someday I hope to ameliorate.

My grandmother spent the final years of her life confined to a nursing home and heavily sedated. I avoided visiting her because she didn't recognize me and couldn't even acknowledge my presence. But she hung on despite all medical prognostications, and one day I was struck with the thought: Is it possible that she's waiting to die until I come back to say good-bye Is it possible that she's waiting to die until I come back to say good-bye? Sometimes when you ask such a question, you're really answering it. When I went back to Memphis that Christmas, I told my mother I'd like to spend some time alone with Moma, but I didn't tell her what I was going to say--I didn't know myself. Holding my grandmother's hand, I spoke to her.

"I wish you could have protected me more," I said, "from the discomfort I felt around Da-Dee, from my parents' drinking, from the message that women were little more than adornment. But I know you did the best you could. And it's okay, because you've given me so much." She died a week later, on New Year's Day. I hadn't seen many people in coffins, but my grandmother looked so beautiful that I approached the undertaker (who looked young enough that he might outlive me) and said, "When I go, will you do me?" Moma had prepared an un-eulogy called "No Sad Tears for Me" that she asked to be read at the funeral. "I have done these things," it said. "I have held a daughter's hand, I have seen the earth from the sky, I have eaten new white corn on summer evenings, I have heard music that sweetened my heart, I have loved a man and was loved in return...." It only made us all cry more. I just hope it wasn't plagiarized.

IN THAILAND, THERE ARE TEMPLE DRAWING OF exquisite young men and women embracing, right next to figures in the exact same position as skeletons--an acute reminder of the ephemeral nature of love and beauty. Outside of my family, I became accustomed to gestures of warmth from people who were responding to my appearance, knowing that the gestures could be as transitory as the gift of beauty. The greatest leap of faith I ever had to make was trusting that love or friendship was predicated on something other than my looks. Beauty tends to be isolating, and people have no qualms about using you because surely you've used that beauty to get where you are. In an annoying shampoo commercial, a vacant young woman intones, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." There's no way not to be hated. That's why the evil Queen wanted Snow White dead. Now, whenever people refer to me as "glamorous," I suspect that they're setting me up to tear me down. They needn't have compa.s.sion for someone who's glamorous because she's had it easier. And in some ways, no doubt, I have. exquisite young men and women embracing, right next to figures in the exact same position as skeletons--an acute reminder of the ephemeral nature of love and beauty. Outside of my family, I became accustomed to gestures of warmth from people who were responding to my appearance, knowing that the gestures could be as transitory as the gift of beauty. The greatest leap of faith I ever had to make was trusting that love or friendship was predicated on something other than my looks. Beauty tends to be isolating, and people have no qualms about using you because surely you've used that beauty to get where you are. In an annoying shampoo commercial, a vacant young woman intones, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful." There's no way not to be hated. That's why the evil Queen wanted Snow White dead. Now, whenever people refer to me as "glamorous," I suspect that they're setting me up to tear me down. They needn't have compa.s.sion for someone who's glamorous because she's had it easier. And in some ways, no doubt, I have.

THERE ARE ALL KINDS OF EXCUSES FOR SPITE AND intolerance, and no one is holding any telethons for fifty-year-old blue-eyed blondes. Last year in the intolerance, and no one is holding any telethons for fifty-year-old blue-eyed blondes. Last year in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, a publication distributed free at markets, there was a letter to an advice columnist from a man making demeaning, stereotypical comments about Jewish women. ("Gentile women, by and large, are just happy to be with you. Jewish women have to win.") Ill.u.s.trating the column was a photograph of me with a caption reading "A prime example of a non-Jewish woman?" Just because in 1972 I played the archetypal shiksa in The Heartbreak Kid The Heartbreak Kid who steals holdinge Jewish husband from his wife does not give the publication the right to use my image to represent everything Jewish women are not. This is a terrible thing to do to my son and daughter, who will have their bar- and bat-mitzvah next year. who steals holdinge Jewish husband from his wife does not give the publication the right to use my image to represent everything Jewish women are not. This is a terrible thing to do to my son and daughter, who will have their bar- and bat-mitzvah next year.

Perhaps I have karmic dues to pay for my partic.i.p.ation in the cult of emaciated buffness. I had the serendipity of modeling during a temporary interlude between Twiggy and Kate Moss, when it was actually okay for women to look as if we ate and enjoyed life. I was never emaciated myself, but I did play a role in the tyranny over women about body image, and little has changed in the cultural perception of the idealized female form. When will it ever be okay not to be Barbie? When will we love our female bodies, in all their different sizes and shapes? If we can't do it when we're young, we'll have a h.e.l.l of a time doing it when we're older. And dare I resist the lure of cosmetic surgery?

This is what fifty looks like, so far not surgically corrected (but never say never). Ancient artifact that I am, my pictures are still on the makeup counter at the drugstore, so I know the response to my lamentations may be: shut up, Cybill Shepherd. But I still have to confront the bathroom mirror--no retouching, no flattering lighting. As an aging beauty in America, I have an interesting perspective. I'm ready for my Sh.e.l.ley Winters parts now, and I have less vanity than you can imagine. My kids beg, "Before you pick us up, could you please comb the back of your hair?"

I've chosen to work in a field that has brought me success and money, much of it by allowing strangers to know the most intimate things about me and by having every private moment examined with the precision of gemstone cutting. Demi Moore was castigated for employing three nannies on a movie set to care for her three children. n.o.body asked about Bruce Willis' whereabouts or the boundaries of his responsibility. The list of what's required to be considered a good enough father is about pinky length, but the list for a good enough mother is the interstate. There are times when I don't do a scene as well as I could because I've been up all night with a sick child, and there are times when I miss one of my kids' basketball games because I have to be on the set. Interviewers have always asked me, "How do you do it all?" The truth is, I only appear appear to be doing it all. Every day I fail, but I've developed the ability to improvise. I have to force time to be relative; I have to make five minutes count for five hours. Those b.a.l.l.s that I seem to be juggling so effortlessly are, in fact, dropping all around me. What the public sees are moments of perfection, all the b.a.l.l.s in the air, frozen for that instant, like in a still photograph. to be doing it all. Every day I fail, but I've developed the ability to improvise. I have to force time to be relative; I have to make five minutes count for five hours. Those b.a.l.l.s that I seem to be juggling so effortlessly are, in fact, dropping all around me. What the public sees are moments of perfection, all the b.a.l.l.s in the air, frozen for that instant, like in a still photograph.

As a teenager, I was one of the lucky ones. I never had the need to end an unwanted pregnancy because my family doctor provided me with birth control. I had a freedom that many women still don't have today. I'm going to keep speaking out for those girls who weren't so lucky, for my daughters and for other women--if not from the Oval Office, then from a multiplex or website or orangecrate podium near you. Watch me.

NOT LONG AGO I READ FOR A PART WITH A YOUNG director who asked me, "How does it feel to have been in three great American movies?" (The part went to... to be announced.) Yes, that's me in director who asked me, "How does it feel to have been in three great American movies?" (The part went to... to be announced.) Yes, that's me in The Last Picture Show, The Heartbreak Kid, The Last Picture Show, The Heartbreak Kid, and and Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver. But we are more than the sum of our work, and we're not only as good as the last thing we did. But we are more than the sum of our work, and we're not only as good as the last thing we did.

I was thinking of these things on a trip to Graceland last year, almost thirty years since my last visit. Weeping behind my sungla.s.ses, I stood at Elvis' grave in the meditation garden that was his pride and joy. At the time he took me there, I did not understand the symbolism in the lotus flower design of his beautiful stained-gla.s.sg to dows. I know that the unfolding petals of the lotus blooming in the mud suggest the expansion of the soul through suffering and adversity. Elvis was on to something but that enlightenment couldn't save him. I wish he were still alive because I think we would be friends now. One of the realms on the Buddhist wheel of life is that of "hungry ghosts" where beings are tormented by unfulfilled longing and are never satisfied. I think I got stuck in that realm and tried to resolve my anger and pain with men, taking pleasure as if it had no consequence.

With a girlfriend along as moral support, I decided to check out the plot I'd reserved for myself at Memorial Garden Park, on a wide verdant heath near Moma and Da-Dee. (Actually, I bought four plots, not knowing who might want to accompany me to the great beyond,) The very thought of eternal life made us hungry so we sat in the cemetery parking lot, stuffing our faces with fried cat-fish and hush puppies from Captain D's takeout before venturing into the mortuary office, where it took some time to find me.

"How do you spell your name?" the mortician kept asking, eventually recognizing this as a photo op and requesting that I pose in front of a display of headstones.

"What are all those?" I asked, looking at the slabs of marble, the various tints and typefaces.

"Those are your choices," he said cheerfully. "Would you like to make some decisions as long as you're here?" He was enthusiastic about a newly available option: the dearly departed's face in bas-relief on the marker. "We can go look at Charlie Rich," he offered and drove us over to the plot. Poor old Charlie looked exactly like Leslie Nielsen, so I declined.

My friend was mortified, considering it weird and macabre to be hanging out at a graveyard on this clement spring day, discussing whether or not I should be embalmed before being cremated--prettified with a final "hair-and-makeup" for the few moments in the coffin before I turn to ash. But I feel peaceful in this place where my aunt Ruby took me to play when I was a little girl. And I am comforted to imagine that someone in the twenty-first century will remember a big, bra.s.sy blonde who tried to use humor as the Krazy Glue for life's necessary reparations, a stranger who will stand with a smile at my final resting place, reading a tombstone that says, "We'll make this a comedy yet...."

Acknowledgments.

FROM CYBILL.

I OWE THIS BOOK, AND MUCH MORE, TO THE CREATIVE juices, tender asylum, and occasional galvanizing cattle prod of many people: to my editor, David Hirshey, who never gave up hope that this undertaking was worthwhile; to Roger Director, who first suggested to David, "Cybill Shepherd-now juices, tender asylum, and occasional galvanizing cattle prod of many people: to my editor, David Hirshey, who never gave up hope that this undertaking was worthwhile; to Roger Director, who first suggested to David, "Cybill Shepherd-now that's that's a story"; to Jesse Gerstein, for endless overtime patience; the gang at HarperCollins, for going the extra mile; to Peter Bogdanovich, Herma Bogdanovich, Frances Bruno, James Ca.s.s Rogers, Stella Adler, Larry McMurtry, and Orson Welles, for incalculable mentoring; to Glenn Gordon Caron, Jay Daniel, Chuck Lorre, Howard Gould, Bob Myer, Marcy Ca.r.s.ey, Tom Werner, Caryn Mandabach, Bruce Willis, and Christine Baranski, for all the great work we did together; to Jane Howard, Toni Gmuer, Linda Mathes, Martha Maiden, Dr. Ernest Bates, Linda Wallem, Joan Zajac, and James Vierra, for their support; to Henry Lange, Heidi Schaeffer, Wendy Morris, Donald Steele, Walter Teller, and Judy Hofflund, for professional lifelines; to Sid Selvidge and Elizabeth Belz, for Memphis grounding; to Myrtle Boone, for her wisdom, inspiration, mothering and really good fried catfish; to my children, Clementine Shepherd-Ford, Molly Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim, and Cyrus Zachariah Shepherd-Oppenheim, for enduring with good humor the inevitable, unsolicited limelight that comes wto Daviaving me as a mom; to Jason Martin, for his brilliant a.s.sistance; to Stephen Fell, for helping this book get to E-land; to Aimee Lee Ball, for helping me put into words what was in my heart and giving it gravitas. And to my mother and brother William, all love. a story"; to Jesse Gerstein, for endless overtime patience; the gang at HarperCollins, for going the extra mile; to Peter Bogdanovich, Herma Bogdanovich, Frances Bruno, James Ca.s.s Rogers, Stella Adler, Larry McMurtry, and Orson Welles, for incalculable mentoring; to Glenn Gordon Caron, Jay Daniel, Chuck Lorre, Howard Gould, Bob Myer, Marcy Ca.r.s.ey, Tom Werner, Caryn Mandabach, Bruce Willis, and Christine Baranski, for all the great work we did together; to Jane Howard, Toni Gmuer, Linda Mathes, Martha Maiden, Dr. Ernest Bates, Linda Wallem, Joan Zajac, and James Vierra, for their support; to Henry Lange, Heidi Schaeffer, Wendy Morris, Donald Steele, Walter Teller, and Judy Hofflund, for professional lifelines; to Sid Selvidge and Elizabeth Belz, for Memphis grounding; to Myrtle Boone, for her wisdom, inspiration, mothering and really good fried catfish; to my children, Clementine Shepherd-Ford, Molly Ariel Shepherd-Oppenheim, and Cyrus Zachariah Shepherd-Oppenheim, for enduring with good humor the inevitable, unsolicited limelight that comes wto Daviaving me as a mom; to Jason Martin, for his brilliant a.s.sistance; to Stephen Fell, for helping this book get to E-land; to Aimee Lee Ball, for helping me put into words what was in my heart and giving it gravitas. And to my mother and brother William, all love.