Diary Friday

This entry is from September, 1994, a rather tumultuous time in my life. I was about to head out of town (I was living in Chicago at the time) – I had gotten cast in a show at a theatre in Ithaca, New York, and so I was in rehearsal for that in Chicago, and getting ready to leave for a month and a half. Additionally, in August of 1994 an important love affair of mine ended. And I was an absolute wreck about it. But at the same time, thrilled that I had gotten this great part and this great out-of-town opportunity.

In the middle of all of this, my sister Jean and a couple of friends swung through town on a cross-country journey and stayed with me. I was living with my friend Mitchell.

I wanted to post this today because it describes so perfectly my sister Jean. My dear sister Jean.

September 14, 1994

Poor Jean. Comes to town for 3 days and I’m in this state. She’s so wonderful, though. She’s an O’Malley to the core.

I always go back to that image/memory of the 4 of us standing in a huddle at Mummy Gina’s wake, and for some boneheaded reason, we were talking about TV movies. (I mean, the wake went on for 2 days, it had many different phases). I ended up describing to them the TV movie I saw with Beau Bridges about the baby down the well. And I told them about the rescue worker saying to another rescue worker, “I can’t wait to see her”… which even NOW brings tears to my eyes – but anyway, I just LOVE my family, and my brothers and sisters so much, when I remember this, picture this – I could not even get the story out. I barely formed the words “I can’t wait to see her”, because I started WEEPING and all three of my siblings began to weep as well. I’ll never forget it. Brendan was shaking with sobs. God, I love him. I just love all of us. Our emotions are so huge, they are RIGHT THERE. No wonder why so many of us are actors. Of course, we were just raw, because of the death of Mummy Gina, but the tears came out about this damn TV movie. Remembering me, Bren, Siobhan and Jean crying about a TV movie at Mummy Gina’s wake makes me very glad that I was born into this family.

So. We are all okay. We all have big-bad-wolf emotions.

Jean expects to go to the deep level, to talk about real stuff. She can’t do small talk. Even small talk with Jean feels deep. She’s one of those people.

Jean is leaving today. Next stop – Minneapolis. Then down through the Dakotas. I remember being utterly entranced by North Dakota. It was the strangest place, so beautiful. It looked uninhabited: grey skies going forever, fields of heavy-headed sunflowers, hawks, rain, truck stops, hay balls …

Then on to Boulder. Utah. I loved Utah, too. In the way that you would love Mars. Totally foreign place, totally weird, bizarre … a red landscape, prehistoric-looking.

Then up to Seattle, and then all down the west coast till San Diego. I’m so psyched for her. I would love to get up into Washington state.

I got home from rehearsal early last night, 10:30 or so … and they all, Mitchell included, were just hanging out, drinking beer (wine for Mitchell), playing music. They had spent the day wandering around, went to the Art Institute, the zoo, walked everywhere.

Mitchell put on Big River, and Mitchell, Jean and I sat on the couch, and sang every single word, we sang every single word of every single song throughout the entire show. The three of us are obsessed. We know every character voice, every part, every trill, and when we sing along, all 3 of us, we can’t help but do all these things. What was particularly scary was all of us doing this SIMULTANEOUSLY. Jean and I are identical in our singing impulses. We choose the same harmony lines consistently. It was scary. There were times when the three of us, all alone in our insanity, would start laughing HYSTERICALLY at our own behavior.

The other two sat out on the stoop and we were laughing about how we basically chased them out of the living room. Like – I wouldn’t want to have been in that living room if I wasn’t one of the three of us. we were totally amused by ourselves, but I am sure we were also very annoying. Such a riot.

I just look at Jean’s face and start laughing. She is such a special human being. Very Betsy-ish. With Betsy’s wisdom and understanding of things.

Jean, with a towel-turban, beer in her hand, boxer shorts, curled up on the couch, singing at the top of her lungs, singing “Looka here, Huck, do you wanta go to heeeeeee-aven….” in this shrieking false soprano, singing with utter conviction and sincerity.

And then the next morning – I am so glad we did this. We got up early and went out for coffee together, before they all left. It was like in Rhode Island when the two of us got up at 7 in the morning, got Bess Eaton coffees, and went to Matunuck beach. It’s my favorite memory of this last time in RI. We walked the beach, which was totally empty. It was foggy. We didn’t swim. We walked in the surf. Sometimes we talked, sometimes we didn’t. I was on a mission to find a piece of beach glass to send to *****. And I just couldn’t find one. It was so important to me. I brought him a little blue glass bottle instead, corked, and I filled it up with sand from Narragansett.

Anyways – Jean and I sat on the edge of the dunes, drinking coffee, watching the crashing surf, misty, a lone person walking by us, and we talked for a couple of hours. About everything.

It was magical.

And last night Jean had said to me, “Wake me up before you go to work. We’ll get coffee.”

When I woke up this morning, it was quarter past six. People were crashed, all over my living room. It was so early. I had a moment of hesitation, like: “Oh – she won’t want to wake up – I’ll just let her sleep – and leave her a note of good-bye.” But then I nudged her awake. She was alert immediately. And within 10 minutes, we were off in search of coffee. I am so glad we did that. We got in a good hour of talk before I had to leave.

We strolled up and down Southport, looking for an open coffee shop. (“Kaffee Haus!!”) We sat at Starbucks. We talked about her life, what she wants in her life, what she is looking for. We drank espresso. We talked about *****.

I told her about our last phone conversation, and what led up to it, and when I told her that he had said, “Am I ever gonna see you again?” – she looked at me, and she had this huge Jean smile on her face – but it was really more of a sympathetic wince than a smile – a very Jean-ish reaction – and her eyes filled up with tears.

I said, “I know, Jean, I know.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I know. It’s like the cleats.” [Ed: This is a private thing between Jean and I – very hard to explain – but saying “it’s like the cleats” is the equivalent of saying, “My God, the vulnerability and beauty of humanity … it’s so tragic and yet also so beautiful…” Referencing the “cleats” is a shorthand.]

Jean is one of those special and kind of tortured people who hurts for the world, who takes it all on as her own very personal pain. Not only was she feeling my pain, but when I told her about him saying “Am I ever going to see you again?” – she was feeling his pain. It was like her own heart was broken. She can feel what I feel, see what I see.

What can I say – Jean was the person who felt sorry for Darth Vader because no one liked him, and he knew it.

Therein lies the essence of Jean.