And then they shot this one scene … yep … yep … oh boy … your mom was supposed to dangle off the side of a cliff … and then, well, basically … I don’t know … have some kind of vision … or hallucination … and then let herself drop into the sea … I guess it was an action movie! Enna-way … she was terrified to begin with, she was pretty high up … I mean your mom is a stage actress, not a stunt person … and then something happened with the rope … I don’t know exactly what … some dummheit … her body kept slamming against the rock … it was really windy … nobody could hear her yelling for help … everyone else was down on the beach setting up the shot … it really was a ways down … Your mom told me she started to pray! Please God, please God, please God … that sort of thing … and telling you how much she loved you, how sorry she was … those kinds of last words … I mean, she was petrified. And then the director shouted up to her: Fall ! So she did … expecting to drop into the water, as planned, but somehow … maybe because of the wind or the … who knows … she fell, splat! Right onto the beach, onto rocks, onto a pile of seaweed … she passed out for a minute or two … there was blood on her face, in her eyes … I mean, she was okay … everyone came running … hooooooooo … Anyway, she survived, but the director put his head in your mom’s lap on the way home from shooting that scene … Oh and he cried and cried, he said he was so sorry for almost killing her … he cried like a baby in her lap …
After that the director wanted her to take her clothes off for a scene but she didn’t want to … and he was angry … He said everyone would leave the set except him and the camera guy and … she should take her clothes off … it was just a body … it was art … didn’t she understand art? Didn’t she understand cinema? Was she such a philistine that she didn’t understand cinema? And he complained to the others about her … And then she would be left alone in this lighthouse in the middle of nowhere for long, long stretches of time … She asked one of the crew if he could get her some books, she needed books … but the guy just stared at her. He didn’t understand what she was saying …
So … well … there was another guy working on the film who saw all this happening … how freaked out your mom was … and he brought her food … she was still so hungry … she continued giving most of her food to the dogs … They talked a lot, this guy and your mom … and she liked him! He kind of looked out for her. But … well … then what happened, happened between them. These things happen! She and this fellow formed … a bond. The director knew that he couldn’t get mad at this guy because he was the best at his job … the director needed this guy and … well, he needed your mom, too … it was far into the shoot and he couldn’t re-shoot the whole thing with another woman … So he had to accept … well, everything.
And then she was supposed to die for good! She had to drown … they had an underwater camera … there was a riptide and … oh, you name it … she felt like she was really drowning … again, she prayed and imagined you … for an atheist she sure did pray a lot on that set … and then … eventually her so-called dead body was hauled back to the shore and her movie lover … I think he was supposed to be a pirate … held her body … the director showed him how to kiss her … they’d put a board on her chest and then draped it with seaweed and rocks so you couldn’t see her breathe … yeah … she died! And then she came back to life. She fought her way back to life. Not in the movie, but in life!
When she came back to us … it took her all those months to understand what had happened to her. At first, she was embarrassed. I mean, more than embarrassed … She really believed that having the affair … which was nothing … it was a symptom … she believed it had destroyed her family, especially you … the person she loves most in the world. The guilt, the culpability, was eating her up. It was at that point where one of two things were going to happen. She would disappear right before our eyes. Or she would begin to rebuild. So … she started to rebuild! She fought her way back to life. It would take a while but … there you are! Here we are. Plain and simple.
But it didn’t happen overnight … Your mom tried to fix her relationship with your dad. She loved him, definitely, and she felt so awful … so awful … He would cry … that killed her … and again she felt it was all her fault … He didn’t really believe in her depression, or in her taking anti-depressants … he was so hurt and angry … She told him about the affair … and he drank even more than usual. He was turning yellow. His eyeballs were yellow. She checked herself into a psych ward at one point because she felt she was losing her mind, and she couldn’t … she couldn’t stop thinking of herself as a monster, as someone who had destroyed what she loved the most … Your dad called her a monster, a terrible mother … and then he’d apologize, but he’d say it again, and he’d apologize again … she was trying hard, she was really trying hard … She hadn’t fully understood what had happened to her … the fear, the terror, the shame … She was rebuilding … slowly, slowly … and then she found out she was pregnant!