I wish I could say it was the end, but as is too often the case, it was not. Despite what happened in that motel—not to mention that my mother and the rest of the family were horrified at what they’d seen—we stayed together. The fact that I couldn’t flee gives me endless compassion for women who can’t find a way to escape.
The day after, he called.
“I have no money and no food,” he said. “And I need some way to get back to L.A.” No apology. According to him, that night had been my fault. I had almost ruined his camera film by turning the light on. I was the one to blame, hence I had to pay for it. I had done this to him, and I owed him a flight and a hotel and everything else in between. His luggage had finally showed up, so I sent it over with some cash.
I got him out of there. At least then I knew my family would be safe.
Eventually, he took a bus to Chicago and somehow got back to L.A., back to my house.
Saturday, December 26, 1992
I cannot feel the freedom
Let me touch him—love him
But the chain around my neck is tight.
Tug tug at my soul
Make me love you.
But can’t I love him
He who will not whip me
But feed me flowers
And bathe in wine
And rub my temples
But I get the beating
A lighter to my eye
Blood. Yet I cannot stop!!!
In the early nineties, I made a movie calledAcross the Moonin between call times forMarried… In it I play the girlfriend of an incarcerated guy, played by Peter Berg. The film was shot in L.A., as well as in and around Palmdale on the edge of the Mojave Desert. By now, the relationship had me so broken that physically I was wasting away—during the month it took to makeAcross the Moon,I went from a size 4 to a size 0, maybe less. I kept it all from the world.
One day he came to the cabin with my friend Bill. The fighting commenced yet again. We ended up in the basement arguing violently. Bill called his sister from upstairs, and she later said she could hear me screaming even though I was nowhere near the phone.
“Bill!” she said. “You gotta go help her.”
“But he’ll kill me,” Bill said.
At one point, I ended up on the ground, and my head slammed into the floor. The fall left me with a skull that was so swollen that when I went to work, the hairstylist onMarried…had to make myhair bigger so it wouldn’t show when we were filming. I told the stylist what had happened but kept it from everyone else—professional, professional, professional.
I couldn’t believe I’d been through all of this yet again. I hate even recounting it. I want to shake that twenty-two-year-old, wake her up. But that’s too easy to say now—she was bound by a situation from which she couldn’t escape.
I have to forgive her. I do forgive her.
I would wake up every morning with my stomach on fire from all the stress I was going through. On a break from shooting, I headed home to L.A. from the desert, only to find him stinking drunk. The next day as I was leaving to go back to set, we got into yet another terrible fight, so bad that I just lost control of my body entirely and fell halfway down the stairs on my way out to my car. Seeing the state I was in, he offered to drive me the two hours back to Palmdale. But on the freeway, he kept driving toward the center divider, like he was going to kill us.
I know now that he wanted to see the fear in my face; it seemed to placate him every time. But how much longer could this go on?
A few nights later he called to tell me that he’d met someone.
It felt like a tiny chink of light in the darkness. Now I didn’t have to decide. Now I didn’t need anyone to save me. Now I could finally escape.
