Thursday, December 31, 1998
INT. BUNGALOW KITCHEN - NIGHT

New Year's Eve. Frankie came over with a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates, and we're going to watch the ball drop at nine o'clock our time, like two old ladies who know perfectly well it's midnight in New York.

Nick says a year from tonight all the computers are going to think it's 1900. I said good, I'll finally be young.

A year ago I didn't know how to double-click. This year I had a hip taken out and a new one put in, I learned to walk twice, and I wrote down things I hadn't said out loud since the seventies. Some of you wrote back, which I didn't expect. A woman in Ohio who kept script on industrial films in the fifties wrote to tell me about her own coffee cups. A young man in Texas who's in film school wanted to know what a lined script is. (I'll tell you, dear. Another day.)

Resolution for 1999: the front steps, every day, by myself, without the rail. And to think about what Suzanne said. Not decide. Think.

Sunday, December 13, 1998
FROM THE SCRIPT BINDER, No. 6: THE CHAIR
INT. ST. ANSELM'S - HOSPITAL CORRIDOR SET - DAY (1991)

I've put off writing this one.

St. Anselm's was a hospital drama, 1987 to 1993, and it was my last show. We were a good crew. Bernie had retired from sound by then, and some days he'd come down to the stage with sandwiches and sit with the grips and tell lies about the westerns.

In March of 1991, in our fourth season, Bernie died in his sleep. His heart. He was sixty-six. I'm not going to write about that week. I'll only say that when I came back to work two weeks later, I walked onto the stage, and next to the camera, where my folding stool always sat, there was a real director's chair, wood and canvas, with IRENE stenciled on the back. The grips had made it. Nobody said a word about it. The first assistant director just called, "Back to one, everybody," like any other morning, and I sat down in my chair and opened my binder and did my job. That was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.

I still have the chair. It's in the garage. I sit in it sometimes to shell peas.

Thursday, November 26, 1998 — Thanksgiving
INT. SUZANNE'S HOUSE, WOODLAND HILLS - KITCHEN - NIGHT

Thanksgiving at Suzanne's. Martin carved. Nick filmed Martin carving and narrated it like a nature program. Hannah made place cards and put me at the head of the table, which was very sweet and also a little like a funeral.

After pie, Suzanne and I did the dishes. She washed; I dried sitting on a kitchen stool, which is allowed. And she said, very casually, the way her father used to ask if I'd seen his reading glasses, "You know, the den could be yours. For good. If you wanted."

I said I have a house. She said she knows. I said I've lived in it thirty years. She said she knows. I said, the lemon tree. She said, "Mom. I know." Then we dried dishes for a while without talking.

I'm not going to write any more about it, because I don't know what I think. I know what I'm supposed to think. That isn't the same thing.

Sunday, November 8, 1998
INT. BUNGALOW LIVING ROOM - DAY

Home! Back in my own house since Tuesday, with a cane, a raised toilet seat and my dignity, roughly in that order. Suzanne has me on a schedule of telephone calls, nine in the morning and six at night. If I miss one she threatens to send Martin.

I did the front steps on Thursday. All five. Beth stood at the bottom and I went down one at a time, "up with the good, down with the bad," like she taught me: the good leg leads going up, the new one leads coming down. At the bottom she gave me a high five. I haven't had a high five since 1986.

John Glenn came back from space yesterday. He is seventy-seven years old and he went around and around the world for nine days, and I cheered for him from the recliner, where I had just spent five minutes trying to put on my own socks.

Sunday, October 25, 1998
INT. SUZANNE'S HOUSE, WOODLAND HILLS - DEN - DAY

This entry is being typed by Nick, who types faster than I talk, which nobody has ever done before. (Nick here: it's true.) (Irene again: don't interrupt.)

The surgery went fine. The hip is metal and plastic now, and the surgeon says it will outlast me, which I thought was a strange thing to say to a woman lying down.

I was in the hospital four days, and now I'm at Suzanne's for a few weeks, in the den, which Martin cleared out for me. Martin is an accountant and works out of the den. He has moved his desk into the garage next to the water heater and says he doesn't mind. He minds. He's a good man and he minds, and both of those things are true.

My walker has tennis balls on its back feet so it glides. Hannah decorated it with curling ribbon. A physical therapist named Beth comes three times a week and makes me walk to the mailbox and back, which is forty-one steps. I counted. She's a lovely girl with the soul of a drill sergeant. I also have a grabber on a stick for picking things up off the floor. I use it to steal the TV remote from Martin.

(Nick: she really does.)

Monday, October 12, 1998
INT. BUNGALOW BEDROOM - NIGHT

Surgery is tomorrow at 7:30. They want me there at 5:30, which is a call time, so at least that part is familiar.

My bag is packed. Suzanne is sleeping in the guest room. I cleaned the whole house today like company was coming, which Suzanne says is crazy and I say is "in case." She knows what in case means. She didn't argue.

I spent thirty-two years around cameras and I was never once the one in front of them. Tomorrow I'm the scene. Somebody else gets to keep track of me for a change. I hope she pays attention.

Bernie's picture is on the nightstand, the one from the Precinct Nine wrap party in 1979, with his tie off and a paper hat on. I said goodnight to him. I do that. I'm not going to apologize for it.

Saturday, September 12, 1998
FROM THE SCRIPT BINDER, No. 5: WET
INT. THE WILDER WOMEN - WINERY FOYER SET - NIGHT (1983)

Titanic came out on tape, and Hannah watched it at my house twice this week on my big set with a box of tissues. I watched the wardrobe. That's the curse. You can't turn it off.

The Wilder Women was a nighttime serial, 1981 to 1986, about three sisters who owned a vineyard and hated each other in beautiful lighting. In one episode the middle sister came in out of a thunderstorm to tell the other two she knew about the will. We shot her entrance on a Tuesday, with the rain machine going outside the door, and the rest of the scene, eleven pages of shouting, on Thursday, because of the schedule.

My notes from Tuesday said: Hair wet, not dripping. Left shoulder of blouse darker than right. One curl stuck to forehead, left side, shaped like a question mark. Mascara intact. (Frankie swore it was waterproof. Frankie was right.)

Thursday morning we rebuilt her. Frankie with a spray bottle, the hairdresser with a comb, and me standing there with my binder like a detective: "Wetter. No, less. The curl goes the other way." It took forty minutes. When the episode aired you could not tell where Tuesday stopped and Thursday started. Nobody ever knew. That's the job. If you do it right, nobody ever knows.

Sunday, August 16, 1998
INT. BUNGALOW DEN - NIGHT

New color. When a television script gets rewritten, the changed pages come out on colored paper, so everybody on the set knows which version they're holding. The first draft is white. The first revision is blue. Then pink, yellow, green, goldenrod, buff, salmon and cherry. I held a cherry revision in my hands exactly twice in thirty-two years. Both times somebody cried, and once it was the writer.

Nick showed me how to change the color of the page, so from now on, when my life gets revised, the pages will change color. Welcome to the blue pages.

Revision number one: on Thursday I went to a class at the hospital for people getting new hips and knees. Eleven of us on folding chairs. The youngest was a mailman of fifty-eight. The oldest was a woman of eighty-three who told the nurse she was only doing it to get back on the tennis court. We learned the rules for afterward: don't bend the new hip past ninety degrees, don't cross your legs, don't turn your foot in. Every chair in my house was built to break all three.

Suzanne says I'm recovering at her house in Woodland Hills, where there are no steps and the chairs are high. I said I'd think about it. She said, "Mom, it wasn't a question." I raised her to talk like that. I have only myself to blame.