Born with Teeth: A Memoir (26 page)

When Kolbe called “Cut!” I looked out into the near darkness from my vantage point on the bridge and regarded the row of faces before me. Paramount brass,
Star Trek
brass, UPN
brass, all there to keep the make-believe brass on the bridge in line. And if they weren’t exactly beaming with unmitigated joy, they appeared to be satisfied with my delivery of that most excellent Starfleet directive:
Engage!

As we prepared for the next scene, the long, intimidating line of executive personnel had, as they say, left the building.

Kevin Brockman was true to his word, and never did let go of my hand. When I wasn’t actually filming a scene on set, he’d be waiting for me, and I would be whisked to a distant part of the soundstage, where an altogether-different crew would be lying in wait, shrouded in black cloth, ready to video my initial reactions to having become the first female captain in the history of the Star Trek franchise. An unending stream of journalists and photographers came through the doors of Stages 8 and 9, and this lasted for many months. The interviews were well organized, Brockman was nothing if not completely efficient, but the unremitting pattern of work and press began to take its toll, and within the first three months of playing Captain Janeway, I lost close to fifteen pounds. No one commented on this weight loss, except perhaps Rick Kolbe, whose job it was to train a high-intensity lens on me, and who watched my every movement from the moment I arrived on set until we wrapped, some twelve to eighteen hours later. It was an unspoken rule on
Voyager
that no day should be shorter than twelve hours, and often, in those beginning months, I would leave home in pitch darkness only to return in pitch darkness. Alec later confessed to me that he would lie in bed and wait for the headlights of my car to illuminate his room, and only then would he fall asleep.

Life was at full gallop, and I had almost no time to myself. Hagan was constantly on my mind, but when I arrived home at midnight, anticipating a message on the answering machine,
there was none. This concerned me, but I assumed he was giving me my space, generously allowing me the time he knew it would take to adjust to this new and all-consuming way of life.

Three weeks into filming
Voyager,
a long white box was delivered to my home on a Saturday afternoon. I assumed it was a gift from either the studio, the network, or my agency. Carelessly, I pulled off the white ribbon and lifted the lid. Inside, an array of exquisite red roses. I caught my breath. Red roses could mean only one thing. My heart was racing as I plucked the card from the arrangement and opened it. “Dear Kate, Thank you for the best forty-nine days of my life. Love, Tim.”

Again and again, I read that card, trying to discern a deeper meaning, a meaning other than the one so clearly in evidence. What did he mean, “Thank you for the best forty-nine days of my life”? And here’s to the remaining seventy-three hundred? Surely, then, a phone call would follow, filled with the usual affectionate teasing, until Hagan would no longer be able to control himself and would say,
Well, did you get the damn roses or not?
A curious way of saying I love you, but I understood it. It was his way.

The phone call never came. For that unbearably long weekend, I made sure I was within earshot of a telephone, and when it rang I jumped and my heart soared. But it was a friend, just checking in, or an AD sending revisions, or Brockman with yet another press request. As the clock ticked inexorably to ten o’clock on Sunday night, I understood, at last, that the phone call would never come. That the roses were Hagan’s way of saying good-bye, that he had chosen to leave me because he thought that a life together was impossible. His daughters. My sons. And most important, though unstated, my career. He wouldn’t want to get in the way of my brilliant career.

After the first wave of insupportable sadness, another followed, and this one was more devastating than the first. It was
a wave of fury and unspeakable disappointment. Hagan was, after all, nothing but a coward. He didn’t have the guts to call me himself, to face the music, to end with dignity and courage what he knew would break my heart. And so he hid behind a box of roses and disappeared from my life.

On Monday morning, as the dawn broke over Paramount Studios and I made my way to Stage 8, it was impossible to check myself. I wept uncontrollably, barely escaping the watchful eyes of Mike DeMeritt, intrepid AD, as I slipped into my trailer and closed the door behind me. I was still weeping when there was a knock on the door.

“Yes?” I called, not wanting to see anyone, least of all an impatient AD.

“Kate, it’s Jeri Taylor, may I come in?”

I couldn’t very well say no to the executive producer of my show, so I hastily wiped my eyes and opened the door for her. She took one at me and immediately apologized.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you. Is something wrong?”

Then, to a woman I hardly knew, I poured out my heart. How quickly our emotions reveal themselves, and how cavalierly we share them! It didn’t take long before she’d heard the story of my romance with Tim Hagan, my conviction that this was the only man for me, and the forty-nine roses he had sent signifying the end.

To her credit, Jeri Taylor was empathetic and kind. I knew she had come on a professional errand, but she sat and listened to me as I staggered through the story of the forty-nine days that constituted my epic love affair. When I finished, she smiled as women do when there is nothing left to say, sadly and softly, and handed me a script.

“This might help a little. The next episode. I thought you might want to take a look. I think it’s particularly strong.”

We embraced quickly, I thanked Jeri for listening, and she
left. Within minutes, I was sitting in the hair trailer, and an hour later, I was on the bridge, issuing orders as if it were just another day in the bizarre and wonderful world of make-believe, as if my heart had not been broken into a million pieces, as if this were all possible to endure. Kolbe peered at me through the hard and clinical lens of the camera, then he shouted, “Cut! Print! Moving on!”

Grief moves through the system much as love does. It seeks expression. So I put my grief where it naturally belonged, in the company of an old and experienced wound. I gathered my feelings, shattered, scattered, and wild, and locked them in the same place where I kept my feelings about my daughter.

Weeks passed. The atmosphere on set became increasingly relaxed as my costars and I got to know one another.
Voyager
had taken on the crew of the Maquis, a terrorist group that had lost its ship in battle and now had no other option but to seek shelter on our starship. The leader of this group, Chakotay, was played by Robert Beltran. Strikingly good-looking, he was a curious combination of come hither and go away. He exuded an easy charm, but I often thought Robert was in a world of his own, dreaming of Shakespeare or women, anything but being lost in the Delta Quadrant. There was no question about his sex appeal, however, or his virility. Captain Janeway didn’t hesitate before promoting him to first officer on her ship, which was met with a raised eyebrow by Tim Russ, who seamlessly inhabited the role of Tuvok, our resident Vulcan and tactical officer. He had been sent to spy on the Maquis and kept his opinion about Chakotay and his crew to himself, particularly when B’Elanna Torres, played by Roxann Dawson, exploded in one of the temper tantrums so endemic to her race, the Klingon. The other half of her, the human half, was disciplined,
intelligent, and brave and soon became very important to Janeway, who quickly promoted Torres to chief engineer.

I was fond of my cast, and I was pretty sure it worked both ways, especially when long nights turned into mornings on the bridge, when we were all exhausted and slaphappy. It took next to nothing to send us into gales of uncontrollable laughter, and the boys knew exactly how to push my buttons. It was bad enough when Beltran, McNeill, and Wang stood in a chorus line, crooning oldies and high kicking in their skintight twenty-fourth-century uniforms. Sometimes, on a whim, Beltran would stand up and do his spot-on impersonation of Burt Lancaster. This often occurred only seconds before my close-up, which was, invariably, the last close-up of the shooting day. Production somehow understood that I would find a way to fix my face into a perfect mask of composure for that final ECU, despite being surrounded by a bunch of madmen. And if Ethan Phillips happened to be present, or if the doors to the turbo lift opened and Bob Picardo made a sudden, unexpected appearance, order could unravel within seconds, leaving me doubled over, gasping for breath, begging them to stop, which, of course, only whipped them into a lather of lunacy, because they were men and it was Friday and the camera was on me, the only female, and this was their biological imperative, to reduce me to tears of helpless, hysterical laughter.

One night, I noticed that Patrick Stewart had stopped by our set and was helping himself to a cup of coffee at craft service. Between takes, I strolled over and introduced myself, very curious indeed to meet my predecessor. We leaned against the table, coffee cups in hand, and I asked him how he had managed it so successfully for seven years. The demanding, sometimes grueling hours, the diabolically challenging technobabble, the lack of a private life, and the expectation that, as captain, we
were not only meant to set the tone on the set but to perform at a high level of professionalism while doing so. It went without saying that we were to leave our personal concerns at the stage door. Stewart looked around the soundstage, taking it in, then suddenly broke into a sly smile.

“If you show up and do the work to the best of your ability, and keep your eye on the sparrow, then I promise you that when the next seven years are up, you will be very proud of what you have accomplished. Very proud, indeed,” he said, and winked at me. “Now, hadn’t you better resume command before all hell breaks loose?”

The work did not let me down, and neither did the part. When Mulgrew suffered, Janeway picked her up. And when Janeway felt like giving up, Mulgrew slapped her into shape. I was put to good use in every way, and this saved me. Tim had hurt me, but that was his choice, not mine. For me, it was best to shake Patrick Stewart’s hand, down the last of my coffee, and bound onto the bridge. Where I belonged.

Paramount held a special screening for the premiere of
Star Trek: Voyager.
The lobby of the Paramount Theatre was crawling with press when I arrived with my sons in tow. I wanted Alec and Ian, now ten and eleven respectively, to understand this achievement and to celebrate it with me. I somehow thought it would shed light on why I was so often absent, why whole days drifted into late nights, why I wasn’t present to tuck them in and kiss them good night, to cheer them on at their soccer games, to applaud their accomplishments. In my naïveté as a mother and my egocentricity as an actress, I honestly thought that seeing me on the screen would make my children proud. If nothing else, I rationalized,
they would have to appreciate the effort involved, for surely the effort deserved to be acknowledged. Finally, I thought, my sons would see for themselves how hard I worked and, however grudgingly, would be forced to admit that their mother was a disciplined and passionate actress, someone clearly devoted to her craft.

No sooner had the lights dimmed than the nightmare began. Ian pulled the straw from his soft drink and, turning his head, put the paper covering protecting the straw into his mouth and started to chew. His brother followed suit and, before the opening credit sequence had ended, my sons were doing their level best to pelt the screen with spitballs. Mortified, I turned to Ian and whispered fiercely into his ear, “Stop that right now, Ian! What in God’s name are you doing? You’re embarrassing me! I am telling you to knock it off. Right now.” Incredibly, a small, devious smile of victory tugged at the corners of his mouth, while on my other side Alec prepared to load his straw and fire. “Alec, please don’t do what your brother is doing—you’re hurting my feelings. This is my
premiere!
Come on, darling, don’t humiliate me in front of all these people.” Mercifully, we were far enough from the screen to ensure that the spitballs fell short of their mark, but I’m sure that several of my colleagues were aware of my children’s outrageous behavior and, in an attempt to conceal their amazement, pretended to ignore what was going on. The night unfolded in agony, with my sons threatening mutiny at every turn, and their mother, the star, barely maintaining composure, surrounded on all sides by curious onlookers.

When, at last, the lights came up, I took my children by the their hands, which they tried unsuccessfully to pry loose, and dragged them out through a side exit, across the parking lot, and into the waiting limousine. Once we exited the Paramount gates, both boys erupted in glee. They shouted and screamed victoriously as the car moved slowly up Melrose Avenue, as if they had masterminded a brilliant coup d’état.

For a long time, I was unable to speak, I was so rigid with fury. My sons had undermined me in public and on purpose, but, most disturbingly, they were behaving as if they’d done something brave, something necessary. When at last they settled down, it was into a hard silence, each looking out his window with cold, indifferent eyes. They were not afraid of me, they were furious with me, and they had decided, secretly and perhaps even unwittingly, that this would be the perfect night to demonstrate their hatred of my work and everything it represented.

The boys went to bed, sullen and without apology, and I made my way to my sanctuary upstairs. On the deck outside my bedroom, I lay on a chaise under the cool January sky and lit a cigarette. I replayed the evening in my mind with a growing sense of desperation. Why would my children behave in such a manner? Was something wrong with them? Was I a derelict mother?

At midnight, I stole downstairs and went to look in on each of the boys in turn. Alec lay curled on his side, dead to the world. I looked at his hand as it lay open and vulnerable on the duvet and thought, He doesn’t hate my work, he hates that I am gone. He misses the security of my daily presence, and he hasn’t yet absorbed the full impact of the divorce. He blames me for going to work, even work that I love. Perhaps more than anything, he resents that I love it. I bent and kissed the freckle on his nose, kissed his little running elephants of eyebrows.

Ian was a different story, lying on top of his bed with nothing on but a pair of shorts. He lay quite still, his hands clasped over his chest, like an old man taking a Sunday siesta. I peered at him closely.

Lately, he’d been having nosebleeds, and this worried me, made me wonder if something serious might be causing them. When this happened, I’d prop Ian up to a sitting position and attempt to put a damp cloth to his nose, but invariably he’d push me roughly away as if I’d rudely interrupted his sleep.
“Jeez, Mom, let me sleep! It’s okay!” Now he lay quietly and looked so beautiful in repose it was hard to believe that he was capable of hurting me as deeply as he had. And yet, I had seen him take aim with my own eyes. It was deliberate, and menacing. He, too, was furious with me, but somehow it went even deeper than it did with Alec. He wanted me to pay a price for all of it: the divorce, the work, the celebrity. Everything.

I sat in the blue armchair in Ian’s bedroom and studied him. Who could blame him? The initial promise, the one that takes place at birth, had been one of unconditional love. He had internalized that as an infant and now, as an eleven-year-old, could not understand why the rules had changed so dramatically. Surely, if the mother deliberately upsets the apple cart, then that must mean that she has lost her love for the child.

Actresses. What a bunch of sad saps we are, I thought. Madly in love with the child. Madly in love with the craft. Trying desperately to forge an alliance between the two, and constantly failing. If I were a man, I said to myself, none of this would be in question. My children would respect me, my wife would honor me, and everyone would exalt the work. But turn the knife just slightly to the left, and what you have is a harried woman sneaking out before dawn, cracking the whip for sixteen hours on a soundstage, creeping back home under cover of night, forever explaining, forever apologizing, forever in conflict. Picasso wasn’t in conflict, you can bet your bottom dollar on that. He said,
Scram! I need to work,
and his mistresses and their spawn ran for the hills. Dickens wasn’t in conflict. He had ten children and wrote as many novels in almost as many years, because it was both understood and appreciated that he was gifted, famous, and rich. The male artist has always been respected.

For the actress, there is no resolution. Read the life of Eleanora Duse, read the life of Sarah Bernhardt. Conflict and toil, occasionally leavened by illicit romance. Duse, arguably the greatest
actress who ever lived, sent her only daughter to a convent so as not to expose her to the tawdry perils of life in the theater. Shortly after giving birth to an illegitimate son, Maurice, Bernhardt resumed her lucrative career as a courtesan. It wasn’t until she clawed her way back to her rightful place on the stage that she bought the famous “coffin” in which she was photographed, eyes closed. Maurice must have had mixed feelings about nap time.

I played Captain Janeway in an era that had not resolved the conflicts surrounding mothers and work. The major studios were still struggling to present their actresses as superwomen. No one wanted to hear about the difficulties of raising children. Not really. It was only acceptable to talk about rising above these difficulties and managing to do everything well, to contribute to the great myth: women are master multitaskers, who fly through space spouting technobabble at warp 9.9, who then beam themselves home in time for dinner, prepared by hand on a four-burner Viking stove, tuck their tired but happy children into their lavender-scented beds, learn ten pages of dialogue to perfection while soaking luxuriously in a bubble bath, and, finally, reluctantly, turning out the light because, by God, she still has energy to burn!

I sighed and got up from the chair. I dropped a light kiss on Ian’s brow and then, as an afterthought, gently stroked his hair. Such beautiful hair, such a beautiful boy. I turned out the hall light and looked in on Alec before I headed upstairs. The hand outstretched, relaxed, beckoning. I tiptoed to his bedside, knelt down, and kissed those fingertips, one by one. He didn’t stir. Then I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, where I would forgo a bath, run a toothbrush across my teeth, remove my fancy premiere makeup, force myself to study my pages for tomorrow’s work, set the alarm for a 3:45 a.m. wake-up, and switch off the lamp.

Multitasking, indeed.