Baby Steps by Elisabeth Rohm Page B

didn’t know. I was terrified and excited and overwhelmed, but I kept it together, even when they rolled out a cake, even when they brought out a drawing of Sam, Fred, Dick Wolf, and me. I held it together until Sam gave a toast.
    He held up his glass of champagne, the room grew quiet, and this is what he said:
     I’ve never met anybody as determined about happy endings as Elisabeth Röhm. When Elisabeth arrived, it was getting to be a pretty workaday world around here. A lot of people had come and gone already, and I for one, after so many years of shows and movies and getting close and saying good-bye, had developed a pretty thick skin. This show is tough, tough hours, I’m proud that it’s tough minded about tough things, and show business is tough. It’s so full of rejection and leaving. But Lis would not have it . . . She insisted on energy and laughter as often as possible. Like one person with a blow torch going to work on an iceberg, it didn’t look like she had a chance, but she did it. She insisted that there be ‘up’ in every day. She wasn’t one for dogged perseverance, except about melting things. She brought kindness with her . . . she added fun and friendship to all of our work, and it worked, at least on me. . . . I raise my glass to thank her for her fresh spirit, her optimism, for her wanting the best, and not the least for the extraordinary grace in her leaving . . . She’s made this a happy ending, too.
    That’s when I lost it.
    That speech stuck with me for a long time because I didn’t always see myself that way. I didn’t know where I was going and I was scared. But to Sam Waterston, I was an optimist—perhaps a hopeless romantic, but a dogged dissolver of darkness and an eternal believer in the happy ending. I loved him dearly for thinking of me like this. I decided I would think of myself like that: a woman on an eternal quest for a happy ending.
    I realized on that last day that I had gotten exactly what I came for. I learned how to love others by working in an ensemble cast. I learned the power of teamwork. I learned that a family isn’t just about blood. Family is bigger. It was my first inkling that I could define family as something larger, and that there are many versions of love. That lesson would serve me well very soon, when I would learn that my bodywas already failing me by launching me into early menopause and wrecking my fertility. All I knew was that I was ready for whatever was going to happen next. Living under the law had finally helped me get back to that place where I was ready for freedom.
    It was time to face the disorder that would characterize the next chapter of my life.

CHAPTER FIVE
ORDER

    Whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking.
I consider chaos a gift.
    â€”Septima Poinsette Clark
    Â 
    I ’d never seen such an opulent waiting room. Tasteful lighting, gilded marble countertops, all gold and cream. I didn’t like it here. This doctor’s office, on Rodeo Drive, was obviously for high rollers. It oozed money. All the major stars came here, or so I’d heard, but we weren’t there to be impressed, and we certainly weren’t there to see and be seen. We were there to investigate why, after almost two years without birth control, we weren’t pregnant.
    I looked at Ron. He looked as uncomfortable as I felt, but we were going to do this, no matter what. I’d given a blood sample a week before, and now it was time to hear the verdict. I took his hand and squeezed. Ron had come with me to both appointments, and I realized that of all the men I’d loved, Ron was the one who would always show up. He could have said he had to work at his store today, but he came with me instead.
    As we sat there in the doctor’s office, Ron and I barely spoke, each consumed by our thoughts. I’m not sure what he was thinking, but I know what I was thinking. I was