Danielle Steel: Heartbeat

And in those early days of the show he was constantly torn, endlessly pulled, always wanting to be with his family and yet keep an eye on the show, to make sure it was on the right track and they hadn't brought in the wrong writer or director. He viewed everyone with suspicion, and he maintained complete control. They understood nothing about his show …his baby. And he'd pace the set like a nervous mother hen, going crazy inside over what might happen. He continued to write random episodes, to haunt the show much of the time, and kibitz from the sidelines. And at the end of the first year, there was no point pretending that Bill Thigpen was ever going back to Broadway. He was stuck, trapped, madly in love with television and the show of his own making. He even stopped making excuses to his off-off-Broadway friends, and admitted openly that he loved what he was doing. There was no way he was going anywhere, he explained to Leslie late one night, after he'd written for hours, developing new plots, new characters, new philosophies for the coming season.

He couldn't abandon his characters, his actors, and the intricacies of the plot and its avalanche of tragedies, traumas, and problems. He loved it. The show was shot live five times a week, and even when he had no real reason to be on the set, he ate, drank, loved, breathed, and slept it. There were daily writers who kept the show going day by day, but Bill was always watching over their shoulders. And he knew what he was doing. Everyone in the business agreed. He was good. He was better than good. He was terrific. He had an instinctive sense for what worked, what didn't, what people cared about, the characters they would love, the ones they would enjoy hating.

And by the time his second son, Tommy, was born two years later, A Life Worth Living had won two critics' awards and an Emmy. It was after the show's first Emmy that the network suggested they move the show to California. It made more sense creatively, production arrangements would be easier out there, and they felt that the show “belonged” in California. To Bill, it was good news, but to Leslie, his wife, it wasn't. She was going back to work, not just as a kid in the chorus on Broadway. After watching Bill obsess about his show for the past two and a half years, she had had it. While he had been writing night and day about incest, teenage pregnancy, and suburban extramarital affairs, she had gone back to classes in her original discipline, and now she wanted to teach ballet at Juilliard.

“You're what?” He stared at her in amazement one Sunday morning over breakfast. Everything had been going so well for them, he was making money hand over fist, the kids were terrific, and as far as he knew, everything was just rolling along perfectly. Until that morning.

“I can't, Bill. I'm not going.” She looked up at him quietly, her big brown eyes as gentle and childlike as when he'd met her with her dance bag in her hand outside a theater when she was twenty. She was from upstate New York, and she had always been decent and kind and unpretentious, a gentle soul with expressive eyes and a shy but genuine sense of humor. They used to laugh a lot in the early days, and talk late into the night in the dismal, freezing-cold apartments they rented, until the beautiful and very expensive loft he had just bought for them in SoHo. He had even put an exercise bar in for her, so she could do her ballet warm-ups and exercises without going to a studio. And now suddenly she was telling him it was all over.

“But why? What are you saying, Les? You don't want to leave New York?” He looked mystified as her eyes filled with tears and she shook her head, turning away from him for an instant, and then she looked back into his eyes and what he saw there made his heart ache. It was anger, disappointment, defeat, and suddenly for the first time he saw what he should have seen months before, and he wondered in terror if she still loved him. “What is it? What happened?” How could he have missed it? he asked himself. How could he have been so stupid?

“I don't know …you've changed …”And then she shook her head again, the long dark hair sailing around her like the dark wings of a fallen angel. “No …that's not fair … we both have. …” She took a deep breath and tried to explain it to him. She owed him that much after five years of marriage and two children. “We've changed places, I think. I used to want to be a big star on Broadway, the dancer who made good and became a star, and all you wanted to do was write plays with 'integrity,' and 'guts,' and 'meaning.' And all of a sudden you started writing. …” She hesitated with a small sad smile. “You started writing more commercial stuff, and it became an obsession. All you've thought about for the last three years is the show …will Sheila marry Jake? …did Larry really try to kill his mother? … is Henry gay … is Martha? …will Martha leave her husband for another woman? …whose baby is Hilary in truth? …will Mary run away from home? …and when she does will she go back to drugs? Is Helen illegitimate? Will she marry John?” Leslie stood up and started to pace the room as she reeled off the familiar names. “The truth is, they're driving me crazy. I don't want to hear about them anymore. I don't want to live with them anymore. I want to go back to something simple and healthy and normal, the discipline of dancing, the excitement of teaching. I want a normal, quiet life, without all that make-believe bullshit.” She looked at him unhappily, and he wanted to cry. He had been a fool. While he had been playing with his imaginary friends, he was losing the people he really loved, and he hadn't even known it. And yet, he couldn't promise her he'd give it up, sell his control of the show and go back to the plays he'd had to beg to get put on. How could he do that now? And he loved the show. It made him feel good and happy and accomplished and strong …and now Leslie was leaving. It was ironic. The show was a huge success, and so was he, and she was longing for their days of starvation.

“I'm sorry.” He tried to force himself to stay calm and reason with her. “I know I've been wrapped up in the show for the last three years, but I felt I needed to control it. If I let it get completely out of my hands, if I let someone else do it, they could have cheapened it, they could have turned it into one of those ridiculous, trite, maudlin soaps that make your skin crawl. I couldn't let them do that. And the show does have integrity. Whether you admit it or not, Les, that's what people have responded to. But that doesn't mean I have to sit on top of it forever. I think in California things will be very different …more professional …more in control. I should be able to get away from it more often.” He only wrote occasional segments now. But he still controlled it.

Leslie only shook her head with a look of disbelief. She knew him better. It had been the same when he was writing his early plays. He worked for two months straight without taking a break, barely eating or sleeping or thinking of anything else, but that had been only for two months and in those days she still thought it was charming. It no longer was. She was sick to death of it, sick of the intensity and the obsessiveness, and his mania for perfection. She knew that he loved her and the boys, but not the way she wanted him to. She wanted a husband who went to work at nine o'clock, and came home at six, ready to talk to her, to play with the kids, to help her cook dinner and take her to a movie. Not someone who worked straight through the night and then rushed out of the house exhausted and wild eyed at ten a.m. with an armload of memos and edicts and script changes to deliver by rehearsal at ten-thirty. It was too much, too exhausting, too draining, and after three years she'd had it. She was burnt-out, and if she ever heard the words A Life Worth Living again, or the names of the characters he was constantly adding and subtracting, she knew she would have hysterics.