Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [89]
Phil and I were married quietly at my parents’ house in May of 1980, with just our families present. The night before, I wrote Gloria a letter. I was worried that when she heard the news, she would feel abandoned, as I had felt when all my friends got married many years before. We had both been single for such a long time, and we’d reveled in it. A lot of young girls had written me, saying that when their mothers nagged them about settling down, they’d use me as an example.
A happy coalition (from left), Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Gloria and Pat Carbine, all of us cofounders of the Ms. Foundation.
With matching cigars: the men in my life.
“Marlo Thomas isn’t married, and she’s not crazy.”
I think Gloria and I felt we always had each other to point to, as well. It was a bond between us. And now I was breaking it. But she was happy for me, and when Phil and I returned from our honeymoon, she and Bella threw me a bridal shower. They made little posters with every disparaging comment I’d ever made about marriage and hung them around the room. What a shock it was to see them all together like that. No wonder I never wanted to marry.
But I don’t think anyone was more surprised that I was getting married than my mother. She kept asking Phil at our wedding, “How did you get her to do this?” Dad was simply happy that I had found this lovely man and that I was finally settling down. He celebrated in the Lebanese tradition by taking his handy old shotgun outside and firing it three times into the sky. Of course, the neighbors called the police, but it was good to know that the years had not lessened “Orson’s” sense of the dramatic.
WHEN PHIL AND I were on the plane to Greece for our honeymoon, he left his seat to go to the bathroom. The woman sitting across from us noticed my wedding band.
“You’re Marlo Thomas, aren’t you?” she said. “Did you get married?”
This was the first person outside of our families to know about our wedding. I blushed, in my new bride role.
“Yes,” I said shyly. “We were married yesterday.”
“Why?” she said. “I am so disappointed. Why would you get married?”
I was stunned. Oh my God, I thought, what have I done? Women like this have been looking to me to set an example of independence. And now I’ve let them all down.
But then Phil returned to his seat. And I got over it.
Chapter 43
The Joke on Me
My mother was right. The joke was on me. Me, who had carefully built a life around being on my own. Miss Independence.
When I was doing my TV series, I had used my first money to buy myself a beautiful, big house on Angelo Drive in the hills above the Beverly Hills Hotel and, without the use of a wedding registry, had picked matching china, crystal and a silver pattern. Take that, traitorous girlfriends!
And now here I was in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago, moving in with a man who was raising four boys, ages 12 to 16—Michael, Kevin, Danny and Jimmy. His daughter, Mary Rose, lived with her mom in New Mexico. It would have been nice to have had one more female under our roof. I’d never seen so many jockstraps in my life. Or wet towels. It was like living in a frat house.
But they were sweet, and they had done some organizing. They had all put their names on their underwear. It was the first time, however, that I had been with a man who had “Dad” written on his jockeys.
But I adjusted fast. I took to hiding bottles of Coca-Cola under the bed. With four boys and assorted pals, it was them or me.
I went into Jimmy’s room, where his socks stood up by themselves, and there were discarded pizza boxes under his bed. I told Phil about it.
“Try not to think about it,” he said.
It was all I thought about. I’d fall asleep with images of maggots dancing in my head. I had been raised by a drill sergeant kind of mother. “A place for everything and everything