There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me (37 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I knew how difficult it was with your mother. I was afraid you would leave me.”

I was really not sure what he wanted me to do with this information. None of this was about giving or getting forgiveness, so I was unclear as to the tactic involved in suddenly disclosing such information. What was I supposed to do? He was already forgiven because I had never known about it, and he attested to quitting cold turkey before our marriage. He added that he was entirely clean and had been so for quite some time. He had managed to evade the USTA and pull some kind of a Lance Armstrong so he was able to stop and get drug tested and come out clear without the embarrassment.

I really couldn’t have cared less about how it all affected his game or his reputation. I was trying to go back and remember the mood swings and chart the outbursts.

I feared our life together was not based in absolute truth. But it had felt that way early on, before the drugs. He had had his core confidants and his secrets, and then he had us as something different. I was relieved he was not gay and very relieved he had not fathered any kids I did not know about, but I questioned a lot. I also did not really care that he had had an addiction. Who cared if he had had an addiction? Many people have addictions, and he seemed to have gotten his
life together by this point. He swore he quit before we were married but I don’t think his book (the ironically titled
Open
) supports these details.

The way I remember it, I said I needed to think. He pleaded with me and said he would finally go to therapy and even resume couples therapy. We had gone briefly before getting married and were both so scared to be wed that we sought out this help.

I told him that we should both take a moment to collect our thoughts and suggested we talk in a week. I was going to have that hiatus and I would go to New York City, where I could go to therapy and get perspective. I called David and told him everything. He was going to be back east as well.

I called my mother to tell her that I was coming to New York instead of going on the boat trip. I did not have the energy to tell her that we were having problems. I was afraid of her response. I needed to have my own uninfluenced perspective.

I remember calling Andre during the next week and saying that we could not just throw away five years without somehow trying. I said we should try to get help and see what needed to be repaired. I’m sure I wasn’t being completely honest with myself about wanting it to work, but I knew I would feel terrible to walk away after he said he would get therapy and he pleaded with me to try. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t making a mistake. David had planted that seed and I needed to give it my best try in order to know.

“Why bother?” Andre said, interrupting me. “I don’t see the need to delay the inevitable.”

Was this what my mom had done to my dad?

Part of me was shocked and hurt that he didn’t want to try, and part of me felt he was the more truthful of the two of us. I never discussed any of this with my mother. By this point I did not feel like I could go to her to get healthy advice regarding my relationships. I felt
like my stomach had just been violently punched. I got so sad and knew I could never go back.

I went back to work and tried not to think about it and just be happy with the life we had had.

•   •   •

One night before a Monday table read I went out with some friends. I returned home to many messages from David’s mother. I had gotten used to getting these calls and then helping locate him somewhere in Los Angeles. David had had a few slips since we met and had periodically gone on a tear or two. Because of my history and our closeness, as well as my connections to the world of security and addiction, I was very familiar with situations like this and I usually became involved. I would enlist Gavin, and David always ended up showing up some place. In every case I would be up all night sick with worry, and then he would eventually show up and be fine (or not so fine) but alive.

Tonight was the first time I did not jump on board the rescue mission. I knew I would see him the next day. We had had an event we were supposed to be going to, but because of my pending divorce, I did not feel like going out in public. The night before, David called and had suggested I join him and his soon-to-be fiancée. I had been helping David decide what type of engagement ring to get for his girlfriend.

I explained that I was not in the mood because of the recent developments in my marriage and that I did not wish to be a third wheel. I was sure his girlfriend would have preferred to be his date alone. I begged him instead to come over to my house that night for dessert, but he said his girlfriend was asleep because she had an early call the next day. I told him to stop by on the way home. That was the last I ever spoke to him.

David hung himself in a Las Vegas motel sometime between when I last spoke to him and when I awoke the next day.

•   •   •

The next morning when the show’s producers told me the news, something in me shut down, and I was never the same after that. I called my mom and sobbed to her. All she could do was say she was praying for him. My life was over as I knew it. I was ripped into two and no longer cared about Andre or my mother or the dog or my show or my career or any of it. I did not want to waste my time on anybody or anything I did not want in my life. I was finished being anywhere I did not want to be.

Nobody knew about the divorce (which took eight days to execute and nine minutes to file and be finished) just yet, and Andre and I went to the memorial as a couple. I was the only one not included in the memorial. His ex-girlfriend and his current girlfriend and his best male friend all had a part to play. I was not a party to any of it. I actually understood how I didn’t fit in, but felt desperately sad in any case. I sat next to Andre, who generously paid for all the floral arrangements, and felt like I wasn’t even there.

My one consolation would come later at David’s family’s get-together. His dad said that his life changed when he met me and he was happy for the first time in a long while.

“He looked at you like his sister.”

•   •   •

Not long after David died, my stepsister, Diana, called me and told me that Dad had been diagnosed with stage-four prostate cancer. He would end up dying within two years of that phone call.

As if this wasn’t enough, I had also been informed that I had had an irregular pap result and had a cervical dysplasia that was precancerous. I would have to have most of my cervix removed if
I was to survive. I recalled a hurtful comment that Andre blurted out in anger: “Be thankful we never had kids because I would not have made this easy for you.” He was referring to the divorce and the fact that if we had had children, there would have been a much bigger fight. But what if I had missed the opportunity to have children at all?

Too many things were hitting all at once and I wondered if this level of fear and sadness I was experiencing was enough to make a person just cease to exist. It was like my mother had written: “Does one start to slip from life this way, then suddenly it’s over?” I had hit a real low, and for the first time in my life, my mother had not been the catalyst.

Chapter Fifteen

Toots

I
did not want to continue on with
Suddenly Susan
. Without David it was a different show. The studio tried to revamp it to make it feel fresh. But the problem was that it hadn’t been that broken and didn’t need to be drastically fixed. It was never as good as it could be because of the focus of the writing, but people loved it and it could have endured if the cast had remained.

We did a farewell tribute to David in which my character goes all over the city trying to find his character, Todd. Along the way I learn how he impacted various people’s lives and what a unique person he was. It was a fitting and beautiful tribute, but it did not bring David back. I would have done the show forever if David had been alive. But for various reasons the show was cancelled, and although I strongly missed doing a sitcom, I wasn’t sorry. I was relieved to be away from everything that continuously reminded me of David.

I called Andre after I got the word that our divorce had all been filed and done with. I was driving in the Jeep that had been a gift from him and I called to ask, “So do I just take off my ring?”

“I guess so.”

“OK, then.”

I went to a bar where a friend from college was waitressing and I drank whatever they served me. I played with my thin platinum band in the booth and was very sad but felt like I was simply where I was. I called my mother to tell her it was over and she commented on it being fast. I could tell it was more important to be rid of Perry than it was sad for me to actually be divorced. Somehow I never thought I’d be. I had seen myself alone, even with a child, or married. But never divorced.

I could not admit it, but I was actually already falling in love with the guy I’d met when I was walking my pit bull. We had stayed in touch from working out with David in the Warner Bros. gym. He had eventually met the girlfriend with whom I was trying to set him up. Thankfully, they had not hit it off. I had kept him at a safe distance but believe subconsciously I’d wanted him close by. Nobody had yet known I was getting a divorce, and I needed time. I was dealing with too much with losing David, actually being divorced, and with my dad’s diagnosis that I feared any relationship. Chris stayed around but had his own very busy life. He finally said that it was pretty clear he wanted to be more than friends but would rather be my friend than not have me in his life at all. But I had to tell him whether it would ever be possible. I told him yes but asked for his patience.

He did not pressure me but after a respectful amount of time finally said, “I’ll wait, but I won’t wait forever.”

I leaned on him for support regarding my diagnosis and my dad’s. I finally admitted that we were dating and I was falling in love. Andre had moved on, too, with my blessing. I helped Andre get dressed for his first date with Steffi Graf. He called me from a hotel room where she waiting in the lobby. I was happy to oblige.

•   •   •

I told Mom I had met someone and I had wanted her to meet him. He was Irish and from New York and was a writer. I was planning to go
to New York City to have my surgery to hopefully clear up the dysplasia and rid me of probable cervical precancer.

Mom was supposed to take me to the hospital the morning of, but I could tell she was not going to be able to make it. She was still drinking, and even though she probably could have rallied, I didn’t want to be around her. I couldn’t deal with her drinking and with going under the knife at the same time. This seemed to be a pattern. But she was always around to attend to me when I was sick. Maybe surgery and death terrified her. Justifying again, am I?

I suddenly broke up with Chris a week before the operation out of fear that I had not given myself a real chance to be free. I thought that the feelings I had for him had to be false rebound emotions. But I called him every day during this breakup.

He finally said, “You know you broke up with me, right? Technically you can’t call me every day if we are broken up.”

“Oh, yeah, right. . . . Well, bye, then, I guess.”

I admit I made one last call before the impending surgery. I was actually scared and just wanted to hear his voice.

I called his cell and he sounded different so I asked where he was. He was in Vermont visiting his writing partner for a few days. I told him I just wanted to call him before my surgery and he asked if anybody was going to take me to the hospital. I said no, which was true, but my mom was going to pick me up. He volunteered to drive in to take me and meet my mom. It seemed like a lot, but I said yes before I could change my mind.

He came in to take me to the hospital and he met my mom for the first time. I went under and the two of them went for a walk and a bite to eat at some diner. While on the walk, Mom handed Chris an envelope and asked him to keep it safe for her. She needed to mail it and would do so after the meal. It was a hot summer day and Chris kept the envelope in his breast pocket for hours. After the meal, she took it back from him. He asked her what it was and she replied that it was
her dog’s stool sample—her Maltese had had diarrhea. She thought it was hysterical. He knew instantly what he was getting himself into.

The operation ended up being much more invasive than they had anticipated. They practically had to remove my entire cervix. I recovered in Vermont with Chris and his friends, and I finally admitted once and for all that he was my boyfriend.

Mom seemed to like Chris. His parents were from New York and were from the same era and background. Chris’s family consisted mainly of firemen, cops, and nurses. They were the kind of people Mom had known growing up and always felt akin to.

On a trip to Ireland over the millennium a year after we started dating Chris gave me a promise ring. I nearly passed out when he showed me the box while we were overlooking Dingle Bay on the last sunset of 1999. He saw the look of terror and pressure on my face and quickly said it was only a promise ring. I had no desire to even think about getting married again.