“Guess who woke me up at three fifteen last night?”
I didn’t understand the significance of three fifteen for the longest time. But then I stumbled upon something eerie. According to people who say they know these things, the veil between this world and elsewhere is thinnest at… you guessed it, 3:15 a.m. The barriers were down. Something impenetrable was permeable. Lee had decided to show up.
I say Lee “haunted” me, past tense, but I think he might be back.
Recently, I was reading in bed when my glasses flew off my face and right across the bed.
Am I crazy? Don’t answer that! But I know it’s him. Recently, I was at home getting a treatment for my pain with an acupuncturist. She taught alternative medicine at Harvard, so she’s no quack—far from it.
We got to chatting, and out of nowhere she said, “Every time I walk into this room, I hear the phrase, ‘To thine own self be true.’ ”
I almost passed out. Before Lee died, he had tattooed “To thine own self be true” across his neck.
This is not something the acupuncturist could have known. There are no photographs of that tattoo anywhere. Hell, I hadn’t evenmentionedLee to her—why would I, when he’d been dead for nearly seventeen years by that point?
There was more.
“I can hear things,” she said. “There’s someone here, watching over you.”
“How do you know that I know this person?” I said.
“He’s giggling.” I remembered all the childish fun Lee brought to my life. “And I see a bird tattoo.”
That sealed it: Lee and I have the same bird tattoo.
So yes, Lee is back. He’s a genial, friendly presence, and still playful. I don’t mind. Sometimes I find myself saying out loud, “Come on, buddy. You’ve got other places to go, surely?”
But it doesn’t upset me. It’s fine if he wants to be here. He’s a very benign ghost. He was one of the nicest guys I ever knew. There were times he could be a dick—he was a man, after all—but it’s fine if he’s hanging out.
I have all the time in the world.
FOURTEEN
RIGHT ACTION FOR WOMEN
I’M CURSED.IT’S Afeeling I’ve had my entire life. Something good happens and then: boom. As I think you can tell by now, I am a big disavower of myself. I wonder how my life would have gone if that hadn’t been the case. I guess I’ll never know, but I like to think there’s an alternate me somewhere unburdened by this self-doubt.
I feel like I’m on the edge of a cliff, about to jump into something amazing, but I never quite fall—instead, I tend to get slimed, like I’m on Nickelodeon. I think this feeling, as with so many across the years, dates back to being thirteen and my friend saying, “You’re doing it.” What she said changed the trajectory of my entire life, of how I view myself and process what happens to me. I’m good enough, but I’m not great.
Always, that little voice in the back of my head jeers at me, saying, “It’s all going to come crashing down.” As soon as I feel myself accepting goodness, I find myself pushing it away. I can’t get too close to the good because when I get there, I’m going to bedisappointed. That’s how it feels. I’ve been nominated five times for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series: in 2008 and again in 2009 for my role as Samantha Newly inSamantha Who?,and three times for my role as Jen Harding inDead to Me.I’ve never won. I never expected to. I was complacent about the fact that I was always a bridesmaid. Fuck, though, I would have liked to win.
But this fits my soul perfectly. I have never thought I deserved anything good in any case, so not winning an Emmy is just how it is and how I expect life to go. The question of intention has, in recent years, come to haunt me. Because the universe doesn’t know your intention—it only knows where yourattentionis. And where has my attention always been? The negative. Have I brought all this on myself?? Have I created all of this? Have I been walking around expecting the worst all the time, only to be proven right over and over again because the universe answered my energy?
There were many times when I was getting dressed by myself and caught a glimpse of my body in the mirror, and invariably I’d hear myself complain out loud: “God, your boobs are getting saggy. I hate them.” And then I’d catch myself and say, “Don’t say that. Don’t say that. Don’t say that.” But it was too late.
I was so afraid for so many years that I would have something wrong with me: my legs, my back, anything that meant I had to stop performing, stop moving. And now here I am, forced to sit still.
BeforeDead to Me, Samantha Who?was my favorite job I’d ever had. I loved being with everyone on that show. But it was hard work. I was in almost every scene, which meant I sometimes worked twenty hours a day.
The most fun nights that we ever had on that set were Fraturdays, when Fridays turned into Saturdays and on we worked. At some point during those nights, you’d see everyone from stage managers to talent carrying coffee cups, only there wasn’t coffee in the cup, if you get my drift.
One week, Melissa McCarthy, Jennifer Esposito, and I were in a car being towed. We were supposed to be kind of loopy in the scene, but we barely had to act. Our sound guy, Steve Morantz, kept rolling during a turnaround, and somewhere there is footage of the three of us laughing our asses off like crazy people. I’m sure we looked like total loonies, three women stuck in a car cackling long after “Cut” was called. (We were drunk. This was not a regular occurrence, you understand, but Fraturdays could be very tough to get through.) But who doesn’t want to laugh until their stomach hurts with Melissa and Jennifer? It’s one of the best memories of my life.
Melissa is uncommonly funny. Her role onSamantha Who?sometimes felt thankless because it was small. Sometimes I’d say, “Come on, guys, give her something. You don’t even know what a gem you have.” One day she invited us all to see her in the Groundlings. I’ve never seen anything like it since. The audience was laughing so hard that sound stopped coming out of our mouths. We almost wanted it to stop so we could just catch our breath. I felt like I was going to have an aneurysm.
I remember saying to her, “When the world gets to see what you’re capable of, it’s over.”
Cut to her shitting in a sink inBridesmaids—“This sink’s a goner!”—and getting an Oscar nomination for it. Told you so.
