My Extraordinary Ordinary Life (42 page)

When Bill spoke it was funny and heartfelt. I was reminded how important he has been in my life, and how far back we go. He talked about meeting me when he was a young set designer, and then acting with me on
Big Love
(although for some reason he never mentioned Twerp). Then it was David Lynch’s turn. “You owe me, Sis,” he said with a smile as I gave him a hug. David never attends ceremonies if he can help it. He rarely leaves his property up in the Hollywood Hills, where he works on his art, music, and film projects day and night, and his uniform never varies: khaki pants and white shirt, buttoned at the neck. Today he was wearing a stylish suit and looked very handsome and polished as he stepped to the podium.

This, with his permission, is the speech, delivered in the clipped, nasal twang that one writer described as sounding like Jimmy Stewart on acid:

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is a real honor and pleasure for me to speak about Sissy Spacek. This is perfect. Sissy is a star. Stars are mostly in space, and Sissy has the word ‘space’ in her name.

“I’ve known Sissy for a long time. Her husband, Jack Fisk, is my best friend since high school. On the set of
The Straight Story
, a film that I directed, Sissy played Alvin’s daughter, Rose. Her performance is so beautiful and tender. Jack was production designer on this film as well. One night, Jack called just as we were finishing the day’s shooting. He was a half-hour drive away, just finishing a set for the following day. He wanted to know if I would drive over to see the set right away. Sissy wanted to go over to be with Jack, so I took her, and we drove together through the night on small, two-lane highways—all dark, passing miles of cornfields. It started to rain.

“Now, a lot of the following story Sissy and I can’t talk about. The United States government has told us not to. But this part I can say: I thought it was a bolt of lightning, a tremendous white light, and suddenly Sissy and I were inside a giant alien spaceship. Thousands of aliens were around us. The commander floated up in the air and told us a spectacular story. He told us that in many, many galaxies in our universe, on so many planets, Sissy Spacek is revered. All know of her films, and even her songs, and all the beings love the fact that Sissy works both with the studios and the independents. He even told us that from now on he’s calling his ship a ‘Spacek ship.’

“The commander told us that this day had long ago been predicted: Sissy getting her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He told us that this very day, millions of beings around the universe will celebrate Sissy getting her star. The commander asked that I thank all those who made this honor possible, and to thank Hollywood for being Hollywood. And for creating the Hollywood Walk of Fame. After Sissy signed hundreds of autographs for the aliens in the spaceship, like a snap of the fingers Sissy and I were back on Earth, standing in front of Jack and his finished set.

“He jumped and said, ‘How did you get here so fast?’

“Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the beings here on Earth that can’t be here today, and beings in galaxies across the universe, please join me in congratulating, for her great work, for this honor of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the great Sissy Spacek!”

I was laughing so hard I could barely read the short speech I had prepared. I told the story of my first time in Hollywood, when I was pulled over by the police after hitching a ride with a van filled with hippies, and the cops pulled guns on us. Okay, maybe I changed a few minor details, but at least I didn’t spill the beans about the space aliens, like David did. But what I really wanted to say was how amazing it was for me to come up in films with the likes of David Lynch and Bill Paxton, and how lucky Jack and I were to have them all to ourselves in the beginning, before we had to share their talent and bad jokes with the rest of the world.

Jack and I bought a place near the ocean, so our family could have a home base in LA. It’s only a coincidence that our living room overlooks the football field at the local high school. Sometimes I lie in bed and hear the sound of a marching band practicing in the stadium. It reminds me of my childhood home, where we could sit in our backyard and hear the band and the roar of the crowd at Quitman High on game nights. The sound folds over me, like the waves out on the Pacific, and rocks me back to that time and place in Texas, the source of everything that I am.

After a long hiatus, Terry Malick came back to filmmaking with a surge of creative energy. Jack has worked with him on each of his films, including
The Tree of Life.
To me, it’s a masterpiece. Schuyler and I watched
The Tree of Life
together in a big theater in Westwood. I knew the film was very personal for Terry, and it was shot outside of Austin, in a town reminiscent of his childhood home. What I wasn’t prepared to see were scenes from my own childhood, growing up in Texas in the 1950s, which has become a part of the language and history that Jack and Terry and I share. Jack had crafted a world for Terry’s film so familiar and haunting that I watched in awe, struggling to control my emotions. There was the DDT truck, spraying clouds of fog for the children to dance in. There were the trails where my brothers and I used to run, the neighbors’ house that I slipped inside of to explore, and the brother that I had lost. By the end of the film, when the family is reunited in what might be heaven, I was moved beyond words. Schuyler was probably starting to wonder if I’d lost my mind. I don’t know how it would have been for me if I had seen it when I was younger. Maybe I wouldn’t have been as moved. But that film, a collaboration of two of the most important people in my life, spoke to me on a level so deep and powerful that I wept. I saw the world with fresh, new eyes, and I was grateful.

Not long ago I was on location, and I was sitting beside a young actress in the makeup trailer. I asked her what she was interested in, what kinds of things she wanted to do.

“Oh, I want to fly a jet plane,” she said. “I want to skydive! And helicopter ski! And take a boat down the Amazon!” Her eyes lit up as she talked about all the things she wanted to experience. Then she turned to me and said, “And what do you want to do?”

I thought for a moment and smiled. “I just want to go home,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do or any place I wanted to be more than home. Where I can walk around the yard, sweeping leaves off the slate paths to my heart’s content. Where I can spend all day in my pajamas puttering around the house, or curled up in my favorite chair in the family room next to the big stone fireplace. The walls are papered deep red, hung with Madison’s paintings and lined with our favorite books. The furniture is comfortable and inviting. Our house is made to be lived in; we use every inch of it and don’t mind the signs of wear and tear. There’s a deep dent in the floor next to the hearth, a memento from one Christmas when the girls were given geodes—hollow stones lined with crystals—which they cracked open with a hammer on the heart-pine boards. It’s part of the story of this house, where a family has left its mark, and where it continues to grow and evolve.

Jack and I love to watch the sun come up over the pond while we drink our morning coffee. It’s these simple routines we miss most when we’re working away from home. But we’re grateful we have this place to come back to, a place to hold the treasures we’ve collected over the years. I like to keep my favorites out where I can see them: a piece of polished driftwood shaped like the head of a duck; a gray river stone cut through with a thin streak of quartz; a miniature dresser filled with drawings and letters from our girls, notes to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, and from some of the great actors I’ve admired: Lillian Gish, Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon, Meryl Streep. In the entry hall there’s a tall cabinet with glass doors filled to bursting with reminders of who we are and where we come from. This is where I keep the gifts that Jack left for me to find on the set of
Badlands
: the three-legged horse and rider, the butterfly door knocker, the horned toad, all stacked on the crowded shelves along with old family portraits, my parents’ wedding cake topper, and clay pottery the girls made in grade school. Sometimes I find myself wandering from room to room, just taking in all these things that I love.

Our girls come home for birthdays and holidays or whenever they just need a breath of fresh air. Schuyler fills the farm with musicians who camp out in the guest cottages and play music in the living room, working out songs on the piano and on some of the same guitars I played during my early years in New York. Madison, like her dad, always has art projects under way—building, welding, painting, and creating in every corner of the farm. Both girls bring their friends and pets, and the house buzzes with energy. Our home is a living, breathing thing, and it keeps us busy and on our toes (if only to avoid tripping over the extra dogs).

Both Schuyler and Madison plan to move back to the farm one day, to raise their own families. Each has already picked out the spot where she wants to live. It makes me happy to imagine that kind of continuum: our grandchildren walking down the same farm roads our parents did, our lives growing new layers, like the rings of a tree that tell the story of each passing season.

Like my father and grandparents and the long line of Moravian farmers before them, I love to plant things and watch them grow. The maple trees that we put in when the girls were babies now tower over the cottage where Gerri lived. For years we’ve grown vegetables in raised beds, but lately it’s flowers that delight me. The perennials I planted in the serpentine garden outside the dining room have matured like old friends. I planted irises around the pond with the spade my father gave me. And this spring there will be hundreds of new Moonstone peonies and tulips around the house.

Our farm is in the shadow of the Southwest Mountains, one of the oldest mountain ranges in America, where we ride along the same trails that Thomas Jefferson had traveled, and rest in the shade of the same majestic trees. One of them is a massive oak so old I can only imagine all it has seen. When I run my hand along its rough bark, I think of how deep its roots have grown to keep it standing through all the windstorms and heavy snows it’s endured over the years. I feel rooted like that tree in this soil.

In summer, I wear my biggest hat and walk beneath stately linden trees that line our road, sent by boat from Europe a hundred years ago so ladies in their buggies would have shade on their way to and from the train station. Soon the leaves will turn deep auburn and gold, and winter will come again and sing its lonesome song. I’ll bundle up against the cold and go to ground, like the fox that makes his home here. Then before I know it, spring will come and blooms will peek through thawing earth and new green will grace the hills. And it will start all over again.

I’ve walked and jogged thousands of miles up and down this road, and I never seem to tire of it. Most days, the dogs and Nigel, the cat that thinks he’s a dog, follow me on my walks with sticks and bones, chasing one another around, happy for the daily ritual. I see something new every day—a piece of fool’s gold glinting in the gravel, a blue damselfly skimming across the pond, a perfect heart-shaped leaf. I count my blessings.

…
Acknowledgments
…

Thanks to my husband, Jack Flsk, for helping me through every stage of this book. Our life together proves the old adage: Always marry your best friend.

Thanks to Schuyler for filling my life with music, and for her grace, her sparkle, and her wonderful cooking.

Thanks to Madison, for her creative mind and tender heart, and for taking us on an amazing trip through Texas.

To my brother, Ed Spacek, who inherited all of our parents’ best qualities, thank you for helping me remember clearly and for being such a wonderful brother.

To Mary Fisk, the hub of the wheel, thank you for keeping things running smoothly.

Thanks to Maryanne Vollers, for turning this book into an adventure. Your talent is inspiring and your work ethic exhausting. Thanks for keeping me on the straight and narrow. I am lucky to have worked with such a dear friend.

To Courtney Kivowitz, Steve Tellez, and Jim Stein, for steering a steady ship.

Thanks to the folks at Hyperion: Elisabeth Dyssegaard, Kerri Kolen, Kiki Koroshetz, Samantha O’Brien, Leslie Wells, and Sarah Landis.

And thanks to Weiman Seid for absolutely everything. I don’t know what I would do without you.

Thanks to these friends and relatives for sharing their memories and filling in the holes in my own:

Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Bill Paxton, Brian De Palma, Pat Torn Alexander, Janit Baldwin, Kathy Holliday Browne, Rose Byrd, Jack Carone, Susan Merritt Cummings, Sean Daniel, David Fender, Jane McKnight Fender, Dan Johnson, Mary Kalergis, Michel Kicq, Sue Kramer, Kenny Laguna, Meryl Laguna, Alberta Mahanes, Stephanie Mansfield, Ulna McWhorter, Hugh Motley, Winkie Motley, Cindy Owen, Andy Pearce, Clint Perkins, Monica Podell, Ed Pressman, Sr. Elizabeth Rieb-schlaeger, Aggie Rives, Barclay Rives, Jane Robinson, Alice Passman Schwartz, Judy Simpson, Stephen Spacek, Arlette Spilman, EJ Strmiska, Leah Rae Strmiska, Dr. Beverly Waddleton, Jan Spacek York, and the staffs of the Quitman Public Library and the Wood County courthouse.

For their love and support on the home front: Diane Bloom, Nanette Derkac, Sarah DuPont, Colleen Gibbons, Julann Griffin, Mary Kalergis, Aggie Rives.

Thanks to my friend Helen Bartlett for “planting the seed” for this book and for the wonderful notes when I finally got it written. And to my friend Lynne Brubaker, who dropped everything to produce the fabulous cover photograph.

Thanks to Bill Campbell and Jamie Meyer for helping with the photo inserts, and to Gene Bright, Lynne Brubaker, Joseph Burchfield, Aldo Filiberto, Sue Kramer, Barbara Colley Locke, Jean Pagliuso, Monica Podell, Douglas Randall, the Riker Brothers, the Spacek Family Reunion, and Pamela Wise.