The Thanksgiving after my mom died, my father drove to New York to spend the holiday with Hunter, Jen, Ted, and me in New York. That was the first time we were all together for any holiday in over twenty years.
That spark I saw in my father in Myrtle Beach was now a glowing ember.
I’d lost my mom, but I saw the possibility of getting my father back in the wake of my mother’s death. The man who loved to plant marigolds, and barbecue burgers, and make tomato sandwiches. Oh, how I had missed him.
Hunter hosted the meal at his lake house, not far from mine, and gave a toast: “I’m so happy that we’re all together. And, Dad, we are all so happy that you’re here.” He was choking back tears.
My dad sat there, smiling. I could tell that he, too, wanted to make up for lost time. That trip was one of many reconnections that he made that fall. He went to North Carolina to see his sister Linda and his Uncle Ken, Paw Paw’s brother, for the first time in decades. He also came to the opening night of The Bridges of Madison County, a brand-new musical that Hunter was in, which was the first time he ever saw his son on Broadway. That Christmas, Hunter called to say that Dad sent a holiday card addressed to both Hunter and Jen—the first ever. They had been together twenty years. He also made a four-day road trip in his little red Saturn to visit me in Los Angeles, his shih tzus, Mitzi and Maggie, riding shotgun. By then, Ted had sold his bachelor pad and moved in with me, and I was so excited about having my dad see my house and meet my friends that I decided to host a dinner party the night he arrived. Ted’s mom, Jessica, came with her husband, Jay, as did my friend Megan and her husband, Adam. I made spaghetti and meatballs and realized, just as everyone was arriving, that there wasn’t enough food for everyone.
It didn’t matter. In the middle of dinner, my dad excused himself to go upstairs, claiming that he was worn out. But then he came back downstairs almost immediately, and announced, “I think I need to go to the hospital.”
He was pale and trembling, and I thought he was having a heart attack. I tried to stay calm, but I felt the panic coursing through my body. I sprinted out the door to go get my car, which was parked down at the bottom of a hill to make room in the carport for our guests. I kept thinking as I ran, This cannot be happening. Not him. Not now.
Ted ushered my dad to the car, and Megan sat in the back seat with my father, who was now shaking uncontrollably. She started playing the alphabet game to calm him down. She’d say a letter and ask him to say a word that started with that letter. A: apples. B: basketball C: chocolate chip cookies.
We finally got him to the ER and learned that the shaking was due to dangerously high blood pressure. They gave him medication, but that experience was a precursor to the triple bypass he would have two years later. We drove back to the house, exhausted and relieved. The whole experience rattled me: Ted and I had started to think about having children, and that meant I was reimagining what my family could look like. Ted had lost his dad the year before I met him, and I had just lost my mom. The thought of losing my dad as well was too much.
The stressful start to his visit didn’t diminish our time together. We went to Stephanie and David’s, where he got to play with the twins—the “miracle babies” Stephanie had conceived via IVF the year before—and I saw the glimmer of the granddad he would become. We also went bowling at Pinz on Ventura, and to see The Wolf of Wall Street, which Ted had worked on (an incredibly racy movie to watch sandwiched between your father and fiancé, FYI!), followed by dinner at Musso and Frank. We even took him to Disneyland with Adam and Megan, and then got In-N-Out Burger on the way home. We packed it in!
After my dad left, Ted and I went on a short trip to Hawaii. His mother looked after Linus and Charlie, Ted’s Labrador-chow mix, while we were gone. When we picked the dogs up, we noticed Linus was panting, so we took him to the vet. Eventually we learned, after many more visits and tests, that he had pulmonary fibrosis—and that there was no cure.
I was still shaky from my dad’s incident at the ER, and this news reignited all of those panicky feelings. Linus had been my constant. He got me through the most painful periods of my life. He was always by my side—until then. He started to isolate himself, away from me, Ted, and Charlie. We’d be in the kitchen or living room, and I’d find him curled up on the bed alone. I could tell he was in pain. He was my responsibility, and I felt like I was letting him down. We did everything we could to prolong his life, but on February 22, Ted texted me to say, “I think Linus has had his last good day.” The doctor had warned us that he would decline quickly.
We were in Manhattan by then, as I was shooting the pilot of Younger. As soon as I got home from the set, Ted and I took Linus to the Animal Medical Center in Midtown. The fibrosis had gotten so bad that he was gasping for air. It was too much to see this sweet bundle working so hard. We decided to put him down that same evening. Ted and I were both in the room. Linus gave me one final kiss on the nose before the vet gave him the injection. As I watched his little body go limp, I felt like my heart had been ripped in two. I immediately regretted the decision. All the love and pain I’d felt about losing my mother was finally unleashed—I cried harder over Linus than I had when my mother died.
I understand why: dogs love you unconditionally. There are no strings. No baggage. There’s just love. He taught me how to care for something other than myself, and he became the receptacle for all the grief I felt. Ted and I both believed that he knew he could go because I had found Ted. The night Linus died, Ted was curled up on the couch crying.
“God damn it,” he said. “Linus made me love him!”
Linus had that effect on people.
Losing my mother, followed by losing Linus, made me realize that I had some serious healing to do. I had only just begun to see the light my mother had inside of her shortly before she died. I had seen that flicker in my father—and panicked when I thought I might lose him too. And I had met Ted and seen the possibility of building a new family with him. There was so much to process.
The summer before my mother died, I did a one-night-only concert of the musical Violet as part of City Center’s Encores! Off-Center series. Michael Rafter was the one who introduced the show to me—his ex-wife Jeanine Tesori had composed the music for it pre-Millie. It was her first musical and so magnificent.
Violet is about a young woman from North Carolina traveling by bus to see a preacher in Tennessee. She has a deep scar that slashes across her face, starting at her eyebrow, running along the bridge of her nose, and continuing down her cheek. We learn through the course of the musical that her father accidentally struck her with an ax blade when she was young. The scar has defined Violet. It is who she thinks she is, how she thinks the world sees her. She believes that the preacher will remove her scar, and so heal her. That he has the power to make her not only be beautiful but also feel beautiful.
The evening was so well-received that the Roundabout Theatre Company decided to mount the production on Broadway with me as Violet.
When I look back at the roles I’ve played, I’m astonished at how they’ve tracked with my own evolution. I was Millie, that wide-eyed optimist. And I still make jokes about playing Fiona, the ogre princess, during such a painful period of my life. Reno was about finding my own inner core and strength. Violet was about forgiveness and accepting one’s self, scars and all.
I realized, in preparing for this role, that there are scars you see and scars you don’t. Some heal and others remain big open wounds. Some you forget about and some you wear like a mark of victory, or of shame. Violet’s scar was obvious; mine was not.
I was so struck by the parallels between these four characters that I made a series of sketches. None of them had facial features—no eyes or mouths. You could tell Millie by her bobbed hair and Reno by her platinum coif, while Fiona wore a crown and Violet had a jagged scar running across her face. I hung the four portraits in my dressing room. Millie, Fiona, and Reno were reminders of where I had been—Violet was where I was headed. In the play, Violet goes on a journey to be healed. I was on a similar journey.
We began rehearsals in February 2014. Leigh Silverman was the director. She knew that I had just lost my mom and that I was still in a lot of pain processing that relationship. Leigh somehow understood that the shiny, people-pleasing veneer that had been my armor for so many years was now unavailable to me. My mother’s death unmoored me. And in that break, there was an opening. Something profound was happening. It was almost as if someone had taken down the blackout shades within me, and the light pouring in was both stunning and blinding. I was scared, and compelled to move toward it. Leigh pushed me to go there, to trust myself and not be afraid of the feeling that might arise as I approached it. Playing this scarred woman in search of something to make sense of her pain gave me a path toward my own healing. Along the way, I was forced to access parts of myself that I hadn’t before: the broken, the ugly, the angry, the unseen.
Violet was an unbelievable gift. In every single performance, I excavated another layer of the pain and sadness and darkness I had been holding inside for thirty-eight years. I mourned my mom. Not only her death but the loss of a mother I didn’t have for so many years.
I forgave her.
I accepted her.
That was my journey. My father had his own. He came to the opening night of Violet—it was his first time seeing me on Broadway since Millie. When he came backstage afterward, his eyes were still misty. “That last song really got me,” he said.
It’s called “Bring Me to Light.”
Not long after, he told me that he had put up a profile on Match.com and had gone on a couple of dates. He also decided to get his teeth fixed. He hadn’t been to the dentist in probably fifteen years, and many of his teeth were badly broken off and stained from so many years of coffee and cigarettes. As a result, he mumbled when he talked and never smiled, in an attempt to hide his teeth.
When he said he wanted to have them done in time for my wedding, I took that as a sign. He was also thinking about selling the house. My father was reinventing himself and reclaiming his life.
I understood—because I was doing the same.
Ted and I got married October 25, 2014, outside in the garden at the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito. I wanted a small wedding—Ted and I made sure we had enjoyed at least one dinner with every guest who was invited. That was more important to me than my dress or shoes.
Ted’s mom and brother walked him down the aisle. Megan walked with our four-legged flower girl Mabel, the sweet pup we adopted after Linus died. And then I followed between my brother and dad. We lined the aisle with pots of yellow roses—my mom’s favorite flower, and mine, too. They are now planted in our garden in Los Angeles. And we had lots of photos taken! They’re all over our house, on display. In all of them, we are smiling big toothy smiles—including my sweet dad.