I did not tell my mother I was dating my boss, and when I took the inspirational quotes off the walls, she just assumed I’d finished some script or other I’d been working on. She’d recently developed mouth sores from chemo, which were painful and made it difficult to eat. Andrea, the oncological nurse, told her that rinsing her mouth with saltwater might help, so every thirty minutes, around the clock, my mother shuffled off to Barrow Street’s little bathroom to rinse out her mouth. It did not help, but my mother never gave up hope. My new secret romance was having a blissful, druglike effect on me and took the edge off of those long nights. It was a scary kind of drug—like heroin. A crash was inevitable.
My mother had an escape of her own that buoyed her spirits and helped take her mind off her illness: the building of her dream house. She had grown up poor on the outskirts of Beverly Hills and spent her childhood looking with longing at the mansions just a few streets north but far out of reach. She’d vowed that one day she would live in a house like that. At the height of their marriage, my parents had bought a large modern house that brought her closer to her dream. Upon their divorce, they sold it, making a good profit. My mother took her share of the money, bought a piece of land on a hill in the most inexpensive part of Southampton (north of the highway, deep in the woods), and set about building the biggest, grandest house on the street. She planted a velvety lawn and enclosed it with a white picket fence to match the picture she’d been carrying in her head since she was a little girl. Construction of the house had been completed right before her ovarian cancer diagnosis. Now she was consumed by choosing the countertops, cabinets, moldings, sinks.
Since my mother did not sleep, she welcomed the sun and was up and about by seven. She’d deliberate over the design options for her house and was in the habit of talking to me as though I were awake, whatever the hour. She’d drop four squares of tile onto the comforter, all slightly different shades of beige: “Which do you like for the master bathroom? The one with the trim?” She treated each tile, each swatch of fabric, with a tender love. Nothing gave her greater joy than stumbling upon the right doorknob or light fixture. The house was more than the realization of a lifelong dream—it filled an emotional abyss that had its roots in childhood deprivation. In the dead of night, my mother talked about her house in amazement. “It’s everything I ever hoped for. It seems too good to be true.” The tears would flow. “Maybe it is too good to be true. Maybe God thinks I don’t deserve it and that’s why he gave me cancer.”
I hugged her and insisted, “Mom, no. God would never want to punish you.” My words provided no comfort.
From the moment I met Adrian at a West Village café for our first proper date, I found myself in the throes of a passionate affair. He made me feel intensely alive—a vivid contrast to the nights spent wading in the topic of death.
Adrian wanted to be up-front at work and tell everyone we were dating, but I did not. I knew the fallout for me would be severe, and I held out hope that it could be avoided by keeping the relationship a secret. That was unbearably naive. We were in a room together, with six other people, for up to fourteen hours a day. Poker was not my game. Later, a coworker painted a picture of how I appeared to others in the writers’ room: “You were like that cartoon of Snow White. Every time Adrian spoke, the music swelled and little bluebirds appeared around your head.”
While I was busy swooning, resentments about our relationship were brewing. Ominous signs about Adrian also began to crop up. A friend of a friend who knew him from Los Angeles passed on the information that he’d had several affairs before he’d separated from his wife, calling him a “sleazy cheater.”
When my mother was away in Southampton, I spent every night with him. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know why I was doing it. Every morning I’d tell myself this was the day I would put an end to it, and every day I would fail. I called my old therapist Dr. Mark Epstein, made an appointment, and told him that I was in trouble.
Before Mark had a chance to help, the first bomb hit. It was November: the point in the season when each writer’s option was up for renewal. The scandal unfolded just as I’d feared. A studio executive in California made a call to the creators of our show—someone had reported our relationship. Because Adrian was my direct boss, the studio was afraid of potential lawsuits.
My agent, Jeff Wise, was also my dear friend. He’d taken a chance on me when I was nothing more than an unemployed actress who’d typed up a few measly spec scripts. Before I’d earned him a cent, Jeff and his wife would have me over for dinner, and I’d often babysit for their infant son. Jeff and I were close. I’d normally tell him everything that was going on in my life. This time, he’d been informed of my behavior by the studio executive. He was disappointed and livid.
“You’re a great writer, Jessica—you’ve got everything going for you. How could you compromise your career this way? And why didn’t you tell me immediately so I could begin damage control?”
I was guilty and ashamed and had no answer. Remarkably, Adrian and I were not fired, and once we were out of the closet, people at work acted—at least outwardly—nonchalant about the situation. Our relationship continued.
The second bomb exploded just before Christmas. Adrian always maintained that his divorce was imminent, even though his wife was unhappy about it. He painted her as unstable and hysterical. He’d moved out of the family house and into his own apartment in Los Angeles eight months before he’d taken this job in New York. At first, whenever he was in California for a weekend visiting his kids, he called me at the end of the night from his apartment. Lately, he’d taken to calling me during the day; at night his phone would be shut off. I suspected he was with his wife. He denied it.
I was strung out like a junkie. Adrian and I were writing a movie together outside of work, and our creative partnership was an additional barbiturate. He’d begun talking about us moving to Venice, California, when the show ended; we’d live together, write films, and have a kid. The kid was my stipulation; even in my trance, I was firm in my desire to have children. My best friends had met him by now and were horrified. I assured them and Mark Epstein that I knew this was not a man I’d grow old with—inevitably he’d cheat on me, chuck me aside for the next woman—but I thought he could be faithful for about a decade, and I felt so alive with him. I used the analogy of Sean Penn. I posed the question to my girlfriends: What would you do if Sean Penn focused all of his intense, sexy, unstable energy on you, declared his love for you, wanted to live together in a shack by the sea? You’d know the chances of rocking on a porch swing with him at eighty were nil, but could you pass up the ride? They gawked at me like I was certifiable. Mark Epstein suggested I double up on my therapy sessions. My friends swarmed behind my back, planning an intervention, but they would never get the chance.
One afternoon at work, Adrian took a call from his wife and spontaneously told her about our relationship. She was extremely upset. It came out that my suspicions had been founded—Adrian had been sleeping with her in Los Angeles while he and I had been involved. “All of that’s in the past now,” Adrian offered, trying to assuage me. “We’re finally free to move on with our lives.”
I went to the bathroom and threw up. Suddenly, I related to this woman. I felt terrible for her. She was my age. She was a mother with four children. We were talking about a man who would never be good for anyone. You’d think I would have summoned my strength and left him, told him to go back to his wife, his children, his responsibilities. That I did not do.
That night, Adrian and I went to a restaurant on Tenth Avenue. He was giddy with freedom. His characteristic lack of empathy was on rare display. His coldness toward his wife was scary, sadistic. I was shell-shocked. He told me he felt like it was our wedding night. I flatly reminded him that he’d lied to me. Cheated on me. He apologized but replied that getting out of a marriage was always messy.
Our Christmas break was upon us, and Adrian was going to Los Angeles for two weeks to see his children. He begged me to come with him. My mother was scheduled for surgery, which meant I would be staying in New York. I told him in no uncertain terms that I would not stand for abuse. We would wipe the slate clean with the understanding that he had no room for error. If he lied to me or betrayed me, it would be over.
In therapy, I described how I’d laid down the law with Adrian. Mark listened in silence. When I was through, he took a beat, then asked if I thought I was creating turmoil in my personal life to distract myself from what was going on with my mother. It was my turn to be silent. I had no answer. After a while, Mark said matter-of-factly: “Your mother is going to die from cancer, Jessica. There is nothing you can do but bear witness.”
Early the next morning, Adrian took a cab to JFK to catch a JetBlue flight to Long Beach, while my dad’s driver picked up my mother, my sister, and me to take us to the hospital. My dad was already in the passenger seat, and my parents’ two elderly black Labs were also packed into the car. The driver drove the dogs around Manhattan all day, every day, in a black Hummer. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon he’d take the dogs running in the park; the rest of the time they lounged on the backseat as the car circled city blocks. Ostensibly, my father had a driver to pick up clients, but all human passengers had to perch on the edge of the seat while the dogs spread out like royalty. “I used to have a Lincoln Town Car,” my father would tell his befuddled clients, with his customary bravado. “but with two big dogs, I decided I needed a Hummer.” Though my parents were divorced, they remained close.
My mother’s operation was for a hernia. Her extensive stomach surgery had been just over a year ago, and we were told it was not uncommon for a hernia to occur after that kind of internal disruption. Apparently, this operation would be simple. It was what they might discover once they opened her up that was frightening.
My mom was dressed in a gray velvet sweat suit, with a gray cashmere blanket over her shoulders. Her hair was now all silvery gray, with brown remnants at the very ends. Her face was as beautiful as ever, though it had aged dramatically over the past year. She was animated and childlike in the car. She had packed a bag and said she’d included two sets of matching nighties and silk robes—one pale pink, and one lavender. “I like to be pretty till the last minute.”
My sister’s boyfriend, Bruce, met us at the front doors of the hospital with two dozen fat yellow roses for my mom. She glowed at the sight of him and the roses. It was six a.m. and Bruce had driven all the way in from Southampton, where he lived, to wish her well.
My dad, Danielle, and I sat with Mom in the tiny dressing room before surgery. She made Danielle grab a handful of the thin cotton hospital gowns so she could choose the one she liked. She explained her selection process to us as she rooted through the gowns. “Some of them are gargantuous; some of them have rips, see? I like the ones with the smaller pattern, like this. They’re more feminine.”
My mother held the blue gauzy surgery cap in her hand until the nurse called her name. Unlike the last surgery, when she was wheeled on a gurney, this time she walked down the long hall to her operating room. She turned around, cap on her head, and waved good-bye to us. She was crying. So were Danielle and I. My dad sat on a plastic chair and read the paper. Whenever my mother was in the hospital, my father would be there, but his emotions were tightly bottled.
After several hours, the surgeon came out and said the operation had been a success. They took a wash to test for cancer, but he could not see any tumors with the naked eye. We were elated.
Adrian called in the afternoon to see how the operation went, and we said we’d speak that evening. My mom was brought up from recovery to her private room. She had a fever. Danielle and I took turns placing cool washcloths on her head, neck, and chest and fed her ice chips. The hours went by; Adrian did not call. Danielle and I were up all night tending to our mother, and when it was past midnight in Los Angeles I understood what was going on. I had told my friends I thought Adrian could be faithful for ten years. In reality, he could not last one night.
By the morning, my mother’s fever had broken and mine had begun. I was burning up and I had a sore throat. They sent me home from the hospital so that I would not get my mother sick. Adrian called dozens of times over the next few days, but I did not pick up and would not pick up for the next two weeks. Though my self-esteem was tattered, I had enough left to end things. I fired off an e-mail: “We’re through. Stay away from me.” The following day I had a 102-degree fever and strep throat. I was too weak to hail a taxi, so the driver, the dogs, and my dad picked me up. My dad took me to my doctor’s appointment like he had when I was a little girl. By the time the Christmas break was over and we returned to work, Adrian was back together with his wife.
There were two and a half months left in the television season. After a week of icy silence, Adrian redeclared his feelings for me and continued to bat me around like a trapped mouse for the remaining days. With the help of Mark Epstein, I made it to March without ever seeing Adrian outside of work. When the job ended, I changed all of my phone numbers. I never spoke to him again.