The Third Gilmore Girl - by Kelly Bishop
Published:
The Third Gilmore Girl - by Kelly Bishop
Read: 2025-04-22
Recommend: 8/10
The first chapter is a bit weak, but things pick up quickly in Chapter 2. Kelly reflects on her childhood and her relationships. It becomes clear that she focus on her work and she knows exactly what she wants: no kids, just work, work, and more work.
Notes
Here are some text that I highlighted in the book:
Mom grew up with the insecurity and embarrassment of being very poor, and the deep ache of knowing she’d been an unwanted, inconvenient accident. She never made an issue of it, or indulged in a lifelong drama-queen victim act about it. Instead, to spare us that same pain, she always made sure my brother and I never doubted for a moment that we were planned, we were wanted, and we were loved.
We had three soundtrack albums: Annie Get Your Gun, Oklahoma!, and South Pacific, and I knew every word of every song on every one of them. I’d act them out and whirl around the room to them and let them transport me out of my ordinary life to impossibly beautiful faraway places where I could be anyone I wanted.
This was years before I was old enough to know how children were created in the first place, but looking back, I’m pretty sure I’d already decided that I wasn’t interested in having them anyway. Whatever maternal instincts I was born with were exclusively limited to taking care of animals. Other than that, no thanks. I even hated playing with dolls, so much so that on the rare occasions when I’d get stuck playing dolls with the little girl up the street, in our made-up story, I insisted on being the father who always had to leave for work
His physical abuse of my brother. His obvious disinterest in me. She knew all three of us deserved much better, and we were never going to get it from him. She regretted that it took her almost two decades to face that, but eighteen years was better than never. Dad didn’t care enough to argue about it and moved out, and it was over. Obviously, on one hand, it was a dream come true. I couldn’t have been happier about the idea of having my father out of our lives once and for all. Which made it even more confusing when I found myself depressed and struggling with it. Maybe there had been some comfort in knowing what I could count on from the day I was born, even when what I could count on was less than perfect, and that familiar stability wasn’t there anymore. Maybe it was being so close to Mom that I could tell how hard she was trying to protect my brother and me from seeing how scared she was to find herself forty years old and alone. Or maybe I wasn’t ready to learn yet that, as the saying goes, “There’s nothing permanent except change.”
Proving that sometimes serendipity shows up in our lives disguised as the worst news you can possibly imagine.
On top of all the other repercussions of her divorce, she was feeling completely ostracized. She’d been a favorite for many years among the couples she and Dad socialized with, when she was a sweet, pretty little married woman. But the women in that group didn’t want her anywhere near their husbands when she became a sweet, pretty little available divorcée. The phone stopped ringing, the lunch and dinner invitations dried up, and there she was, unwanted again, through absolutely no fault of her own. Self-pity had never been a part of her repertoire, though, and she was an activist who never faced a problem she didn’t try her damnedest to solve; so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, when one day she simply announced, “I’ve got to get out of Denver.”
I was in awe of both of them, so finding myself dancing just a few feet away from them in class was both intimidating and such an honor.
Dad and I had seen each other only a couple of times in the years since he and Mom divorced. I think he called a total of twice, when he was coming to New York on business anyway, and I met him for lunch. Predictably, those lunches didn’t turn out to be poignant father-daughter reunions; they were more like two distant relatives awkwardly going through the motions. I knew I should have felt something when I heard the news that he was gone, but I didn’t. I felt nothing. Mom and Dad had both been victims of a rheumatic fever epidemic in Colorado Springs in the 1920s, which resulted in a heart murmur for her and an enlarged heart for him. He went on to become a heavy smoker and a heavy drinker who was overweight and had a lifelong aversion to any form of exercise. His condition had finally become severe enough that they elected to do a fairly new surgical procedure on him in which they were replacing his heart valve with a pig valve, and he died on the table.
A few minutes into the funeral service, I didn’t just begin to cry—I began to keen, to wail uncontrollably at the top of my lungs, from some part of me so deep I’m not sure I knew it existed. I was vaguely aware that people were staring at me, but this was too involuntary for me to stop it. Maybe it was every grievance, every fear, every hurt that had been building up in me since the day I was born, finally exploding. Maybe I was grieving for the father and the love I never had. I didn’t know. I still don’t. I just know that it shocked me and that I couldn’t wait for that funeral to be over.
He compassionately let me get it out of my system and then, with his arm around my shoulder, he said, “Here. This should help.” And he handed me a little white pill. Amphetamine. Speed. But in Las Vegas in the 1960s, we called them “pep pills.” He was right. It helped. It helped so much, in fact, that when I injured a tendon doing a jump split during a cancan number, I discovered that if I took two aspirin and a pep pill, the pain went away completely for two or three hours, and I started taking those pep pills every day.
Roy and I amicably ended things when we got back to New York. I’d been only nineteen when I moved in with him, and he was in his early twenties, and I don’t think he was any more ready than I was to settle into a permanent relationship. Freedom was still as important to me as ever, not to mention the fact that my parents hadn’t exactly made marriage look like a pathway to heaven on earth. So we lovingly wished each other well and went our separate ways.
I hadn’t lost my dream of being a show dancer, and I’d been auditioning for Broadway work for months, with the same pattern repeating itself over and over again: First audition, they couldn’t get enough of me. Called back for the second audition, same thing. When the time came after the second audition for them to start eliminating dancers, I’d invariably be eliminated, even though I knew I was at least as good as some of the dancers who got hired, if not better. It kept becoming more and more apparent that my American Ballet Theatre experience wasn’t an anomaly after all—if I didn’t have the right connections, I was likely to lose out to the dancers who did. Right or wrong, it really does turn out to be not what you know but who you know.
Coopie came right out and asked me if the married man and I were having an affair. I trusted her enough to confess that yes, we were, and to my surprise, she did not disapprove and give me a morality lecture, she was thrilled about it. She thought it was just wonderful and romantic, and she couldn’t blame either of us one bit for acting on “such an obvious mutual attraction.” It was a relief to confide that secret in someone I was sure would keep it to herself, and to not be judged for it. As so often happens in the world of show business, Coopie and I went on with our lives and our work when Golden Rainbow ended, but we stayed in touch occasionally, and I’ll always be grateful to her for being such a good, discreet friend.
Ironically, in a way, it was eventually the fact that I loved him so deeply that ended our affair. Right around the time I left Golden Rainbow, the reality finally sank in that if this man’s wife loved him nearly as much as I did, I was doing her a huge, incredibly unkind disservice. I had to say goodbye to him, and I did. It was painful for both of us—I think he was genuinely in love with me too, and it broke my heart to hurt him. But I guess no one ever said that doing the right thing would always feel good.
On the flip side of his better qualities, Peter was also a compulsive gambler, a thief, and a pathological liar. You name it, he bet on it, from poker and blackjack to sports and the ponies. It always amazed me that our friendly neighborhood loan sharks didn’t beat him up, but he was so charming, and such a good liar, that they let him get away with his empty promises to pay them back. After ten months or so together, we kind of mutually decided to get married. I don’t remember anything about the conversation except that there was no formal proposal, and there was certainly no point in bothering to shop for an engagement ring—he would have just pawned it or cashed it back in at the jewelry store. I knew all that before I married him, so what was I thinking? Well, stop me if you’ve heard this one, but I guess I thought I could fix him. I forgot to ask if he wanted to be fixed. And why would he? He was engaged to a dancer in a hit Broadway show, a woman who was making good money and had some cool possessions he could steal to help pay off his gambling debts.
I was actually touched that she took the time and the effort to fly in from out west for the wedding, not to endorse the marriage but to be supportive of me, and she was a perfect lady to me, to Peter, and to his family through the whole thing. Her wedding gift to me was a framed charcoal sketch she’d done of a sailboat, which I still have, and the emphatic, rhetorical reminder before she headed home, “Don’t ever worry about giving me grandchildren.”
Needless to say, I told him I’d love to, and for the first time in my life, I auditioned for a singing role, doing my best to channel my inner Elaine Stritch. I didn’t get the part, but it honestly felt like more of a win than a disappointment. I’d had the guts to try, they’d taken me seriously, and it meant the world to me and my confidence.
But I don’t do failure well, so I had to make the effort and go on that tour with Peter, or I’d spend the rest of my life with that “What if?” hanging over my head. I was still stubbornly clinging to the idea that gambling was a compulsion, not the addiction it is, and to my belief that, by treating him with enough kindness and respect and loyalty, I could inspire him to become the man I wanted him to be. Besides, to be brutally honest, our sex life was great. And then there was an underlying sympathy factor: like me, Peter had grown up with an awful father, a chronic philanderer who was as cruel and demeaning as my father was. Blaming his father was easier than blaming him… but then again, it wasn’t his father I was struggling to live with.
I planted a big, genuine smile on my face for the losing nominees’ televised split-screen moment so the world could see how happy I was for my best friend, and how undisappointed I was when her name was called instead of mine.
Yes, I’m talking about Kevin. Another ex-boyfriend on my dubious roster, and my date at the Tony Awards. I’d be tempted not to mention him at all, but let’s face it, some experiences in life leave wounds that heal, and some leave scars that never quite go away.
there was a huge difference between “going to be an actor” and “becoming an actor.” Kevin had no discernible talent that I knew of, and he didn’t have an agent. Maybe he was counting on the successful actors he glommed on to to throw him some bones in their movies.
I’d never felt any religious or spiritual guilt about abortions, and I never did understand the justification behind legislating them. I was very grateful that abortions were legal when my need for one came along in 1978, but to be perfectly honest, I’m sure I would have found an illegal way to terminate this pregnancy if it had come to that, since as far as I was concerned, it was my only responsible option.
Maybe I was content enough in that apartment to trick myself into thinking that letting Kevin come to live with me wouldn’t make that big a difference. It did, of course. It was exactly as strained and awkward as any fool could have predicted. I’d essentially thrown open my door, invited him in, and then resented him for being there. I’d completely lost interest in him, and I’m sure he was well aware of it. I owed it to him, and to myself, to tell him I didn’t love him anymore, if I ever really did, and end it as cleanly, honestly, and painlessly as possible. But because I couldn’t summon up the courage to do it, we went on living together for another year like two former lovers going through the motions, pretending not to have noticed that the party had ended a long time ago, even before the word “pregnancy” showed up uninvited.
And for the first time in my life, probably because I sensed he was worth it, I broke my timeworn pattern of leaping into a relationship with eyes closed, feet first, consequences be damned. Instead, I let things progress slowly, easily, and naturally. My therapist and I had had many sessions about my apparent inability to sustain a relationship for more than three years or so. It eventually became clear to me that when longevity isn’t one of your priorities when you first get involved, you don’t look for things like compatibility, stability, substance, financial responsibility, mutual respect, and admiration from your potential partner, and you’re more likely to look for, as the Garth Brooks song goes, “Mr. Right for Mr. Right Now.” Then along came Lee Leonard. He challenged me. He respected me. There was real depth to him. He was thoughtful and attentive. He was honest, and fun, and wicked smart, and hardworking, and solid as a rock. I still remember a moment when he was doing some utterly ordinary thing, maybe just walking across the living room, and I looked at him and the thought washed over me out of nowhere: This man will never bore me. That was the moment when I gave myself permission to break my tired, self-protective, dead-end habit of falling in lust with Mr. Right Now and genuinely fell in love for the first time in my life.
Losing my mom was the worst, most devastating thing that had ever happened to me. When I lost her, I didn’t just lose my mom. I lost my hero. My biggest fan. My fiercest protector and my wisest, most patient teacher, who taught me everything from my first ballet lessons to honesty, to not being defined by my circumstances, to always, always loving myself, because if I was special enough to be loved by her, I must be worth loving.
I’ve always been a big believer that part of my job as an actor is to learn my lines and make them work exactly as written, word for word, no improvising, especially on a script as perfect as this one, so I’d worked very hard on it, and on the character of Emily, to internalize her rather than simply “recite” her or “act” her.
It was a tough time. If you’ve ever lived with a loved one whose health is declining, you know the drill: You’d sell your soul to make them better, but that deal’s not on the table. Along with the doctors and caregivers, you’re doing absolutely everything you can do to help, but some part of you knows that, unless you’re suddenly given the power to work miracles, nothing you can do is really going to make much of a difference. When you find yourself feeling kind of trapped, you recognize that the only way out is for that person you love to your core to check out, and the thought of that is unbearable. You do your damnedest to keep your spirits up because you don’t want your loved one to worry about you, but privately, you’re constantly on edge and emotionally exhausted. And every time you give in to admitting to yourself how tense and depleted you are, you feel as if you have no right to complain, since, compared to your loved one, you’ve got nothing to complain about.
I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve been a smoker all my life. I know. What did I think was going to happen, right? Believe me, I’ve scolded myself a million times over the years, and been scolded by one doctor after another; and there’s not a smoker in this world who doesn’t know they’re doing a really wrong, really stupid, really self-destructive thing. No excuses, no sentence that starts with the word “but,” and as I limped through the entrance to the emergency room and got in line, I was pretty sure that all those decades of being addicted to nicotine had finally caught up with me.
I also think about other actresses around my age whose work I admire—particularly my favorite, Helen Mirren—and realize that I wouldn’t admire them one bit more if they looked younger. They may have had some tweaks here and there for all I know. That’s a little something I call “none of my business,” and it’s completely irrelevant to how much I respect them. I’ve always appreciated the European filmmakers who, for the most part, seem to consider their older actresses to be perfectly viable, wrinkles or no wrinkles, and respect them enough to let them age naturally. In the end, I’ve come to the conclusion that as long as I’m comfortable with myself, my work, and my life, I don’t feel compelled to apologize for the fact that this is how old I am, and this is what I look like.
I still recall how good that moment felt, a moment that wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed stuck in the sadness of that part of my life being behind me. Instead, I had the joy of realizing and embracing the fact that it was a part of my life, and I was able to “pass the torch” to that talented young chorus dancer with grace and not a hint of resentment that it was her turn now. I’d had my turn, and it wasn’t my torch to begin with. To this day, when I occasionally fall into that sadness trap, I think back on that night and that lesson: Don’t cry because you think your best days are gone. Smile because you had them in the first place.
And I would have been, if she hadn’t immediately added, “Good. I want you to talk him out of it. It’s not a good choice for him.” Not a chance. No way would I try to talk someone out of their dream, no matter what it is. Whatever it is, I believe you immerse yourself in it, work hard at it, express yourself through it, challenge yourself with it, give yourself every opportunity to fall in love with it, and explore the adventures that come with it. If it’s the right dream for you and it allows you to support yourself, so that you’re not pursuing your dream at someone else’s expense, it will probably last a lifetime. If it stops being enjoyable and fulfilling and you fall out of love with it—if it starts feeling like drudgery to the point where it becomes painful and depressing—there’s nothing wrong with saying, “Okay, what else do I want to do with my life?” and start pursuing that dream.
Writing this memoir hasn’t just inspired me to look back, it’s inspired me to look forward too, perpetually enriched and propelled by the reminder that, as author John Maxwell put it so well, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.” I’ve learned, that’s for sure. I haven’t always done it gracefully, or even willingly, but the fact that learning is still very high on my list of things I’m zealous about and refuse to quit gives me confidence that, personally and professionally, I’ve still got a long way to go.