Chapter 17
Natasha and Barry in Ojai, California, 2010.
The following January 2009, I found myself on a flight to New York City. My agent had called the day before to ask if I would be interested in auditioning for a play called New Year’s Eve. The only thing was I had to be available to leave right away for NYC. I immediately said yes. I had no other obligations, so I threw some things in a bag and got on a plane. This would be my first time auditioning for a live theater production, and although I knew that getting the part was a long shot, I felt it was worth a try. My mother had been scheduled to appear in the play Anastasia right before she died. She had been so worried that her voice wasn’t strong enough for live theater—that she wouldn’t be able to project to the back of the house. But she had decided to face her fear and accept the challenge. Now I was being given that same chance.
The part I was going up for was a woman named Samantha, a soap opera star who has a close but complicated relationship with her mother, Isabel, also a famous actress, to be played by Marlo Thomas. To say that the story resonated with me would be an understatement. The play had another connection to my mother: it was by Arthur Laurents, who had written the books for the stage versions of West Side Story and Gypsy.
“You know,” my godfather Mart had reminded me before I left for my audition, “Arthur did not want your mother to play Maria in West Side Story or Gypsy Rose Lee in Gypsy.” From all accounts, it seemed that Arthur Laurents was one of the few humans in the whole wide world who did not adore my mother. Would he be unkind to me? I was curious.
As I ran my lines on the plane heading east, I realized that despite the short turnaround, I felt quietly confident. For the past couple of years, I’d been studying again with Larry Moss. After I first returned to his classes, Larry hadn’t seen me in fifteen years, not since I was an unsure twenty-two-year-old with a childlike voice that didn’t project beyond the front row. What would he make of me now? Right away, Larry chose a scene for me from Harold Pinter’s A Night Out, in which I had to play a Cockney prostitute. Whoa! I thought. I have to do a Cockney accent! How am I going to sound convincing? To my surprise, the scene went pretty well.
“Natasha!” Larry boomed when I finished. “I just saw a real actress up there onstage!”
Really? I thought. Larry told me he saw the skillful character choices I had made, how much stronger my voice had gotten since he had seen me a decade ago. But he also told me how much I still needed to grow.
Even though I was in my late thirties, we had started off with ingenue roles. Once I had done a few of those, Larry decided it was time to tackle the more mature women found in David Hare’s Skylight and Conor McPherson’s Shining City. I performed scenes from David Mamet’s Boston Marriage, Edward Albee’s The Death of Bessie Smith, John Guare’s Landscape of the Body, and the movie A Single Man. I had worked on Irish and Southern accents. I’d played a courtesan, a nurse, a young mother with a newborn, a London schoolteacher. The disappointment of my divorce and being childless, my long-term worries about Courtney, my grief about my mother—I was able to channel all these feelings into my performances. Instead of accessing different parts of myself, as I had done in my early films, I learned to explore characters who were nothing like me.
Larry had also helped me work on the way I walked. All my years of trying to be invisible, taking tiny soft steps so that I would not bring attention to myself, meant that I floated across the stage rather than walked with purpose. He told me to take off my shoes and socks so I could walk around the stage and feel the ground beneath my feet. He instructed me to buy five-pound ankle weights so that when I walked, I walked with gravity. Slowly, my awareness began to shift from the top of my “thinking” head down through my “kishkes,” as Larry would say, and to the soles of my feet. I needed to take responsibility for who I was, what I wanted, how I expressed myself.
One day Larry told me, “Natasha, you’re going to be like Ruth Gordon. The best is yet to come.”
Now I was on a plane heading to New York to audition for a live theater production. The thrill of performing live in Larry’s classes was exhilarating, but those were just scenes in front of fellow students. If I got the part in an honest-to-goodness play for a paying audience, that would be very different. My character would be in practically every scene. Could I pull it off?
In New York, I stepped purposefully into the audition room and met the director of the play, David Saint, and Arthur, who was tiny and smiley, nothing like the grouch Mart had warned me about. The room was quiet, focused. I noticed Arthur’s mouth beginning to form into a slight smile in the middle of my performance. I wore my favorite brown knee-high leather boots over dark jeans and a blue-and-black button-down oxford shirt. Not only did they like my audition, but also my outfit made such an impact that they asked me to wear it in the play. I got the part! My elation was undercut by a terrifying reality: I actually have to do the play. What did it feel like to perform onstage before four hundred strangers six nights a week plus matinees on Saturday and Sunday? I had no idea. I went to see Larry to get his help. He said, “You don’t need me, you know this character, you’ve done the work.”
Every morning I rode the subway with Arthur, who lived close to the apartment where I was staying in Manhattan. The play was being staged at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey, so at Penn Station we were picked up in a van that drove all of us across the river. (Marlo, grand and lovely, usually came separately in her personal car.) As we got to know each other, Arthur and I struck up an unlikely but fond friendship. He gave me insight into my character, Samantha, and became a trusted confidant. He had no interest in talking about my mother or revisiting the past. He only cared about me in his current play. Even with the George Street Playhouse being a relatively small theater, Arthur told me that my voice was reaching the back row. I was so pleased that I didn’t have to be miked. For the next eight weeks, I knew exactly where I had to be and what I had to do every day.
When the run was over, returning to the uncertainty of my life in Los Angeles was daunting, but I felt stronger than at any point in my life since my mom died. And thanks to the months I had spent by myself at the beach house, I no longer feared being alone.
Not long after I returned to LA, I was sitting in a chair at my hair salon when I noticed a handsome guy walk in. Lea, my hairstylist, introduced him as Barry Watson. We struck up a polite conversation. He told me he was temporarily staying in Marina del Rey with his two small sons while he was waiting to move into a new house in Venice. He was easy and fun to talk to. Tall with crinkling hazel eyes. Were we flirting? I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. I learned he was an actor. I was raised by a handsome actor and had been attracted to handsome actors in the past. I told myself I didn’t want to start dating another one. A couple of days later, I ran into Barry at a coffee shop.
“Hey!” I said. “Remember me?”
He did. We chatted. I learned he had played Matt Camden in the TV series 7th Heaven (no, I hadn’t watched it). This time I felt sure we were flirting, but he left that day without asking for my number.
A few weeks later Lea asked if she could give Barry my contact info, and I said yes. I knew we’d been flirting! It took another few weeks before Barry actually reached out to me. It was a Saturday night around ten o’clock and I was getting ready for bed when his text came in. “Hey, Natasha,” he wrote. “It’s Barry Watson. This may be kinda weird, but I wonder if you would want to go out and get a cup of coffee?”
The text conveyed a vulnerability that I found endearing, but I didn’t let myself rush to any conclusions. I had become much more circumspect since my divorce. I was no princess. My castle had been crushed, and Prince Charming existed only in fairy tales. I realized now that there was more to a relationship than chemistry. I didn’t trust myself to pick the right guy anymore.
I was so tired of pretending, so exhausted from showing only the parts of myself I deemed acceptable to others, that by the time I arrived at the restaurant Capo for our first date, I was early and unapologetically myself. Barry arrived wearing dark jeans and a gray oxford. He smiled easily, comfortable in his own skin. He sat right next to me and told me I looked pretty. I felt pretty in his steady gaze. We bonded over reading the menu—we both love good food and wine.
I learned that Barry had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age twenty-eight. He recovered from that, then, at thirty, he’d met the woman who became the mother of his two sons. We talked about the breakdown of our relationships, which had been devastating for both of us. When we exited into the late-summer night, neither one of us was ready for our date to end, so we crossed the street to a bar and kept on talking. Just before closing time, when we stood up to finally leave, Barry kissed me, sweetly and knowingly.
The morning after our first date, I woke up to a text from Barry: “Good morning, sunshine.”
We started seeing one another. It turned out that we were both looking for the same kind of life. Like me, he didn’t want to go to Hollywood parties; he wanted to stay home. He was committed to his kids; he loved going hiking, cooking. Barry can be shy and watchful, yet he is the most open and honest person I have ever known.
As we grew closer, we slowly integrated me into the lives of his two young sons, Oliver and Felix. At first the boys thought of me as their friend, a kind of grown-up playmate. Like my mom, I had always felt comfortable around kids and babies, so I would come to Barry’s house and play hide-and-seek, build Legos, take the boys on walks to the neighborhood treehouse, and read them stories. Oliver called me “Batasha,” which was funny and sweet. One day he looked right at me and asked, “Batasha, don’t you ever need to go home to your own parents?”
“Oliver,” Barry said, “Natasha is a grown-up like Daddy.”
Oliver looked confused. “You are? I thought my dad brought you here to play with me and Felix.”
I told him that, although I loved playing with him, I was also a good friend of his dad’s. Sensing his hesitation, I asked, “Are you ready for me to go home, Oliver?” Barry had his setup with his boys and I had my space.
He thought about it for a second, then replied with a nod and a decisive “Yeah.”
Barry and I were falling in love and wanted to be together all the time, but we were sensitive to the boys, so we stayed “just friends” in front of them for the first year. One October day, on a drive home from the pumpkin patch, Oliver asked me directly if I was his dad’s girlfriend. I paused for a moment. Barry took the lead, answering “yes.” Oliver said he thought it was “kinda weird,” but he guessed it was “probably okay.” We had jumped the first hurdle smoothly enough.
Once Oliver realized I was the girlfriend, we had some tough moments.
“You can sleep in my bed,” he told me once. “I’m going to sleep in my dad’s bed!”
I had to be patient and strong because I knew Barry had his hands full with his boys; he didn’t have time for my every concern and worry.
We agreed to stay living separately for the time being.
“Being a stepmother can be amazing,” Julia said when I told her about Barry, Oliver, and Felix. “But most of the time, you will feel like the least important person in the room.” I was surprised to hear her say this, because Julia is the most magical person, loved and adored by all, especially her stepchildren. But the truth is, no matter how much love and respect there is, a stepparent is always one step removed from a real parent. You are not a friend, you are not a babysitter, and yet you are not a parent. It’s a complicated and humbling position. My compassion for Jill grew during this time, as I saw the world from a stepmother’s perspective—a whole new experience for me.
Another hurdle was my deep desire to have a child of my own. From the time I was a little girl, I had always known I wanted children. My mom had always wanted to have children, too, it was just a natural thread in her life and in mine. I turned thirty-nine the same year I met Barry. All of a sudden, forty was on the horizon. I had spent my thirties throwing baby showers for all my girlfriends, being with them at the hospital as they were having their babies, buying baby clothes for their tiny sons and daughters. I wondered when it was going to be my turn. Barry is three and a half years younger than me and already had two children. He knew that I really wanted to be a mom, but he also knew that he had his hands full with Oliver and Felix, so a baby wasn’t exactly the first item on his wish list.
I didn’t know what would happen. I was trying to be sensitive to his situation while also balancing it with my needs—and Barry was doing the same. After D.V. and I broke up, I froze embryos. (A good friend offered to donate sperm without any other involvement.) This helped me feel secure in the knowledge that, when the time was right for me, I could become a mother, with or without a man.
Barry and I had been seeing one another for a little over a year and a half and I was a few days shy of my forty-first birthday when I realized I might be pregnant. I had Amanda on the phone when I took the home pregnancy test. Together, we held our breath for the designated three minutes. “Oh my God, lady!” I screamed when I saw that tell-tale pink plus sign. “Oh my God, lady!” she echoed. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.” She told me to take one more test before bed that night and a third one when I woke up the next morning. “If all three tests are plus pink, then you can tell Barry.” They were.
I waited until he dropped the boys off at school on a rainy Monday morning. Barry stood in the garage smoking one of the last cigarettes he would ever smoke when I told him I was pregnant, the words edging their way cautiously out of my mouth. He slid down to the ground and sat there for a minute or two. He took a long puff of his cigarette, sizing up our newly colliding worlds. Though he was clearly in shock, he pulled me close and hugged me for a long time.
When I got back to my apartment, the rain had stopped, the sun was shining, and there right in front of me, just like in the movies, was a double rainbow. Baptized by the rain, solidified by the three pink plus sticks, I was practically walking on air. I had a tiny seed of an embryo growing inside of me. I was in love with a good and decent man.
But I knew this was a big step for him, and for us, and so a few days later, I sat him down and said: “Barry, I am completely okay if you do not want to participate in my life with our baby. I understand this was not something that we planned. But I am going to have this baby. You can take some time to decide to what extent you want to be involved.”
I asked him not to call me until he knew what he wanted to do. Because I was in my forties, I decided to have a chorionic villus sampling test to make sure the pregnancy was viable. Amanda took me to my appointment. Just before they were about to begin the procedure, Amanda whispered in my ear, “Barry is in the waiting room. He’s going to take you home.” I closed my eyes and exhaled. This just might work out.
I was back at the hair salon where I first met Barry when the doctor called to tell me that my baby was a healthy little girl. I received this information silently, reverently, soft tears forming in my eyes. A baby girl.
I walked in the door of Barry’s Venice bungalow and clued him in on two important facts. “We are having a healthy baby girl, and we are naming her Clover.”
Years ago I had dreamed about being pregnant and calling my baby Clover. Around the same time, a friend gave me a book on Zen Buddhism called The Mind of Clover. In it, the author explains that clover enriches the earth and helps the environment as it grows and that our minds can be as nurturing as clover. I loved every word of the book, bringing it with me everywhere I went. Also, I knew how much my mother’s film Inside Daisy Clover meant to her. My mom fought to make it; she asked the producers to cast her friend Robert Redford and my godmother Ruth Gordon in it. Even our dog Penny was in the film. The movie tells the story of a young woman who wants to be an actress and singer in Hollywood. She and her mother have a complicated relationship. My mother had lived Daisy Clover’s life and come out the other side. When Daisy blows up her house at the end of the movie, making the choice to live, she walks out onto the beach in Malibu. A passerby asks her what is going on and she exclaims, “Someone just declared war!” That’s how I thought of my mom—triumphant, courageous, a survivor.
Above all, I wanted to name my daughter Clover because I felt so lucky. Lucky to have found Barry. Lucky to have my two dads. Lucky to have gotten pregnant at forty-one. My friends said I was “forty-wonderful” and that was so true. I had an easy early pregnancy and loved every minute of it. I ate everything and more. I felt sexy and happy and grown-up. Barry waited until I was really showing to tell the boys. He was afraid they might be upset, but instead, they were excited, with Oliver immediately asking us to name the baby Olive. Although Barry and I were still living separately, we started to talk about moving in together. Both my dads were over the moon. They knew how long I had waited to be a mom and they adored Barry.
It had been almost thirty years since my mom’s death, and I was finally about to become a mother.