We didn’t kiss at the end of our first date, but that only stoked the yearning we had to be together again. After dinner again a few nights later, we were parked in his yellow Datsun pickup truck, talking, and as if on cue, both of us were unable to withstand the urge any longer. Already close, we leaned in and finally kissed in a way that left no doubt we shared the same thoughts. It was the most romantic kiss in the whole world, and it went on and on and on.
We were engaged about thirty days later.
Yes, it was quick and passionate—but those four weeks were also fraught with difficulties. Michael tried to establish a sense of intimacy beyond immediate attraction by telling stories and sharing his beliefs, but I repeatedly frustrated him by shutting him down. I didn’t want to reveal anything more about myself. It was, as he often said, like waiting out a storm.
Michael was just so present all the time that it was new and unnerving, exciting and frightening, and, well, different. To one degree or another, drugs had always been part of the equation with every other guy with whom I’d been serious, so emotions were either masked or mixed up. Not with Michael, who barely drank. In addition, he made it clear that he didn’t want to sleep with a woman until he was married. I was shocked at first, but then I warmed to the idea and remembered my similar pledge from years ago.
Besides knowing that in my heart I’d always believed I wouldn’t go to bed with the man I planned to marry until after the wedding, I was comforted knowing our burgeoning relationship wasn’t based on Michael getting in my pants. On the other hand, it scared me to death. Despite my protestations, I ended up exposing way more of myself than I would have by taking off my clothes. Both of us did.
One day we had a terrible argument. It was week two of our relationship, and we were engaged in a marathon, all-day conversation about love, forgiveness, compassion, and understanding. All sorts of personal revelations punctuated the discussions. At one point, Michael brought up his previous girlfriend, an actress with her share of personal issues who liked him far more than he ever liked her. But he was trying to make a point about how he still cared for her in a certain way, “a platonic way,” he said.
All I heard was that he still had feelings for this woman, and I flipped out. No amount of explanation helped. He couldn’t reach me. He thought he was going to lose me. I feared I might not get him back.
A few days later, the buzzer rang on the security intercom in my condo. It was Michael, calling up from the lobby. He said he was in the neighborhood and thought he’d stop by. It was so old-fashioned, so warm and friendly, so Michael, and so not me. I wasn’t used to people dropping by unexpectedly. I didn’t like being surprised. I grew up in a home where people didn’t come over. The house was always a mess. My brother Denny was unpredictable. My mother lived in a perpetual state of fear of being “found out.” If someone knocked on the door, people freaked.
And that’s the way I reacted when I heard Michael’s voice from downstairs. But I also had another reason. Following our fight, I’d relapsed, and at the time the buzzer sounded, I was doing coke. I said I wasn’t able to see him; something along the lines of “sorry, I’m very busy right now.” The tone of my voice was different, distant, and one he hadn’t heard before.
“No problem,” said Michael. “Sorry for not calling first. I just thought—”
“I’m just doing laundry and stuff and I’m not ready for anyone,” I interrupted.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll come by another time.”
I felt like I had narrowly escaped a horrible situation. An instant later, I realized the truth, that I might have created one. I panicked. Something he said hit me. Sorry for not calling first. There was something about the sound of his voice that unnerved me. I panicked. Who tells the person they love and want to spend the rest of their life with that they’re busy?
I had a feeling that if I let Michael walk away, he was going to walk straight out of my life and I would never see him again.
Did I want him to see me, though? I was stoned out of my mind. I had been up for a couple of days. Finally I said to myself, “Maureen, just let him in. This is the man you’re going to marry. Let him see all the ugliness. Let him see the truth.”
I clicked on the intercom.
“Michael?”
There was no answer. I tried again.
“Michael?”
All this had taken place in less than a minute. Now he wasn’t there. With tears streaming down my face, I dashed downstairs. After not seeing Michael at the phone opposite the security desk, I looked across the lobby. He was stepping out the front door. It hadn’t yet closed. I caught up to him a step or two later. He was startled to see me. I grabbed him as if I didn’t want to ever let him go and began to apologize.
“I didn’t mean to turn you away,” I said. “I want you to be here. I’m glad that you came by. You can always come by. You don’t have to call. It’s just that—”
I started to sob and couldn’t get the words out. Michael pulled me tightly against him, as if to give me some of his strength.
“Sometimes I’m just crazy,” I said. “Sometimes I’m nuts. I don’t understand why I say the things that I do. But I’m really glad you’re here. I think it may actually be perfect timing. I have something to tell you.”
I took Michael upstairs and told him everything, including my fears about syphilis and going insane. He was amazing. He took me in his arms, pulled me close, and let me feel his strength. He said that he was glad that I’d let him back into my apartment; he wanted to know all of me.
I was glad, too. I also knew that I’d lose Michael if I ever got high again. And if I lost this man whom I loved more than anything else in the world, this man who gave me peace and a sense that things were okay, I’d lose something else he gave me—the chance for me to love myself enough so that I didn’t have to get high again.
Two weeks later, he came over to my place, got down on one knee, and asked if I would marry him. He handed me a Troll doll from a collection he’d started when he was a child. This was his favorite one, Pookie. I started to laugh. Then I saw a gorgeous diamond engagement ring on Pookie’s arm. It fit me perfectly. Michael also gave me a silver heart locket that had belonged to a great aunt of his. Inside was a letter that was the most beautiful thing ever written to me.
Michael explained that he probably would have walked away from our relationship two weeks earlier if I hadn’t come for him, but thanks to what he felt was a divine sense of destiny in us being together, he was able to see “a genuine, wonderful person, with a beautiful heart, who nonetheless had a huge battle going on inside of her,” and he felt like he couldn’t abandon me in the middle of such a fight. Nor would he abandon me ever. Whether I realized it, he said, I made his life better and brighter.
After we celebrated, Michael insisted on asking my parents for their permission to take my hand in marriage. Of course I had told my parents about him. My father had also come to the church to meet Michael. But this was different. We drove to their house in Westlake Village. I warned him about the mess and everything else he might encounter upon meeting my family. He wasn’t concerned.
However, I was dying as we sat down with my parents in the living room. I hadn’t explained why we wanted to speak to them, but they didn’t have to wait long as Michael got right to the point. He said he was in love with me and had already proposed, but he wanted their permission—their blessing, as he put it—to marry me.
My parents were stunned. I saw their mouths drop open. They recovered, though, and my father mostly asked Michael numerous questions about his background, his family, his career as an actor, and his plans for supporting me and any children we might have. For my father, who was always a softer touch than my mother, it was a pretty severe grilling, which Michael withstood with a poise, character, and politeness that made me proud.
We discussed our plans to marry that summer. My parents advised us to slow down, get to know each other better, and let time be our first test.
“No, we’re getting married six months from now,” I said. “I wish it was even sooner. I’d get married tomorrow if I could.”
Michael put his arm around me in support.
“Well, we’ll see,” said my mother, who’d barely spoken till then; her terse comment only served to underscore her skepticism.
Michael understood that she was merely raising a cautionary flag. He expected it. Just not so severe. My mother really gave him the cold shoulder that day—and for a long time afterward. It was because she had concerns about my well-being. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Michael. No, he was straighter than her Iowa upbringing. Her issue was with me.
Although she never verbalized it, I was the one she didn’t trust. She also wanted to make sure Michael was up to the challenge of taking care of me.
“You’ve got a lot of proving to do,” she told him before we left.
That got under his skin.
Afterward, in the car, he said her remark had offended him. He didn’t feel like he had to prove anything. He knew who he was. He knew that he wasn’t after me for money, fame, or any reason other than the right one. He loved me.
“If your mother doesn’t like it, that’s her problem.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” I said. “I think she’s afraid that she can’t trust me. She probably doesn’t believe that I’ll ever be straight or get my act together.”
“Maybe when you believe in yourself,” he said, “she’ll believe in us.”
Easier said than done. I didn’t know how to believe in myself, and the insecurity this created in me triggered an overwhelming sense of anxiety. I wanted everything to work out so badly, and I wanted it instantly. I ignored the fact that life is a process. I ignored it because I couldn’t deal with the uncertainty. And so it was like the floodgates opened, and I found myself flailing around in a pool of uncertainty, anger, and fear that things wouldn’t work out.
I reacted by lashing out at Michael. I turned the first four months of 1983 into a living hell. Although I desperately wanted to get married in June, I pressured Michael about money. I wanted him to tell me how he planned to support me when his income from acting and bartending didn’t add up to what I thought I needed. How did he think we were going to have a family?
I demanded answers, and when he wasn’t able to give me specifics, I got angry at him. Angry and then angrier…
He realized my fears had to do with trust. I didn’t trust myself. How could I trust him? God only knows where he got his patience and ability to forgive. Or where he got his ability to see the goodness in me, which he swore to me was there even when I cried that I couldn’t see it. To relieve the pressure, I turned to an old vice: throwing up after meals. I made numerous secret trips to the bathroom. It made me feel more in control.
In the spring, following a six-month interruption, Shout for Joy started production again, and we returned to Oahu. The change of scenery and the tropical air were the perfect tonic for our troubles. We were put up in separate houses—all the guys in one, all the girls in another—and Michael and I weren’t able to spend much time with each other since we didn’t have any scenes together.
Things quickly fell back into place. We shared some nice moments at night after work and managed several romantic walks on the beach.
One afternoon I was on my way to meet Michael. He had a couple hours off and we wanted to take a stroll. I was walking down the beach, heading to the spot where we’d arranged to meet, when I came across a beautiful piece of driftwood. I saw there was a piece of paper stuck into a hole. Curious, I pulled it out and to my amazement found a touching romantic story written on it. Talk about fate! It gave me chills. I ran down the beach to find Michael and show him.
Naturally, he was waiting for me, acting all innocent. When I showed him the paper and began gushing about the story, he grinned. He’d written it earlier that day and planted it on the beach, knowing I’d find it.
“And if I didn’t?” I asked.
“I knew you would,” he said, That kind of self-confidence got Michael into trouble a few days later when he went surfing early in the morning. The conditions were too dangerous on Oahu’s legendary North Shore for experts, let alone for actors portraying surfers. An offshore storm had turned the waves into monsters. But Michael, who’d been trying to learn to surf for the movie, wanted to develop proficiency beyond the norm, and so he was all about practicing as much as possible.
He and a couple of production assistants paddled out into the huge breakers. They planned on taking their time and picking manageable waves. In a matter of seconds, though, they found themselves in the wrong place and had to commit to a wave that was way beyond their ability. They wiped out, got slammed into a coral reef, and then got caught in a riptide that took them far out into the ocean.
Somehow all three of them managed to hang on to their boards, though they ended up far away from one another. Michael later told me that he’d never felt as humble and insignificant as he had when he was being sucked out to sea.
In the meantime, back on shore, Bob Pierce was looking for him. He wanted to work on a scene they were shooting that afternoon. He arrived at the girls’ house, thinking he might find Michael and me together. I was drinking coffee and studying my lines when he came into the kitchen and asked if I knew Michael’s whereabouts.
“He went surfing with Joe and Lucy,” I said.
“What!” Bob exclaimed. “Have you looked outside? Have you seen the waves? Nobody goes out on a day like this. There’s a major storm headed here.”
Minutes later, the entire cast and crew had run to the beach and located Michael and the other two surfers. One of the crew guys had a pair of binoculars, and all of us took turns looking at them. Two lifeguards arrived on the scene, but refused to go in the water, saying it would be suicidal. The Coast Guard figured they’d have to send for a helicopter, which they eventually did. I ran up and down the beach, feeling sick that I was so helpless.
After about two hours, Joe managed to make it to shore, followed by Lucy, who was taken to the hospital with severe lacerations from the coral. Michael needed another sixty minutes before he managed to get himself to safety. He said it was only after he resigned himself to whatever God had in store for him that he felt a sense of inner calm and renewed strength in his arms, enough to catch a wave that took him out of the riptide and up the coastline. Then he caught another one that brought him toward the shore.
We watched from the sand, cheering him on, shouting encouragement, and crying tears of hope. Finally, mashed and bruised, and also utterly drained after nearly four hours in the ocean, he emerged from his ordeal. I was in the water, waiting for him when he got to a place where it was only knee-deep. We hugged for a long time. It was my turn to share some of my strength.
At that moment there was no question in my mind that both of us were survivors.