Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (13 page)

Father and son—striking a striking pose. Nick was pushing four.

Melanie, Kathy, and I after trudging up Jane Fonda’s mountain

My dear friend, Michele Myer, the night of her all-star benefit, with Dweezil Zappa

Dee Dee and I got together and pounded the pavement in search of a three-bedroom palace in the heart of Hollywood. I didn’t even think of living anywhere else. No matter how decadent and sorry Tinseltown had become, I still envisioned cavalcades of movie stars draped in shimmering evening clothes parading arm in arm down Sunset Boulevard: John Barrymore in a constant profile, ravishing Hedy Lamaar waaa-aay before they caught her stealing laxatives in a Florida drugstore, Bette Davis looking snottily down on us mere mortals, swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks with a gold band stuck through his ear, Marilyn Monroe taking short, gasping, breathy breaths. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, hand in hand, forever pubescent. With any luck, you could be Donald Duck, hooray for HOLLYwood. . . .

After scanning a bunch of dumps, Dee Dee and I were wearing thin when we saw a tiny hand-scrawled
FOR RENT
sign hiding in a bunch of overgrown bushes, gently announcing the availability of a cool old wooden house on Vista Street. We wandered around the empty pad marveling at the redwood ceilings, thirties tiled kitchen, and overgrown, flowering passion fruit trees tangling up the backyard, determined to grab it for ourselves. It turned out the landlady, Mrs. Finagle, a knotted, ancient white-haired crone who spoke like she had a scabbard down her throat, lived right down the street. Dee Dee and I started in with the convincing and promising, but after patting on my slightly showing bubble-tummy several times, the old dame consented to rent us her pearl of a house. After showing us a long list of possible rental candidates she’d been compiling, Mrs. Finagle tore up the names as we signed the lease agreement. It happened so fast! Dee Dee and I reeled with joy. When she finally
asked about the bubble-tummy’s daddy, I told her my husband was in the music industry and waited for the usual reaction, but she didn’t seem to mind. She probably pictured a guy in a dapper suit behind a snooty desk, signing stacks of contracts for the Royal Philharmonic, but I promised to bring Michael over to meet her later that day, knowing that even with his long, tangled ringlets, he would charm the sagging girdle right off our new landlady. As we unstuck our thighs from the plastic-covered brocade couch to leave with our precious lease agreement, Mrs. Finagle proudly produced pictures of her great-grandchildren. She seemed more interested in my due date than checking bank info, qualifications, or credentials. The old gal loved babies, and we lucked out.

We introduced Dee Dee to Detective’s piano player, Tony Kaye, they became an instant item, and we all moved into the Vista house together. Luckily, Tony had a mechanical mind, which came in extremely handy, since Michael and I couldn’t do much more than screw in a lightbulb with all four hands. The house was a charmer but tottering into old age and often falling into disrepair, so Tony was constantly working on some nagging, drippy pipe or a blackened, hissing death-trap outlet. He actually enjoyed it. My dad had always cracked a well-deserved happy beer after tackling a clogged-up drain or a stubborn, non-sucking vacuum cleaner. I suppose completing a menial task must give a gal or a fella a swell feeling of accomplishment, but since I can’t even stand to wash a dish, I will probably forever be denied that humble thrill.

Michael and I had gotten rid of most of our moronic, modern claptrap after the brief stint in subtopia and the new (old) house had a wildly mixed-up decor. Dee Dee brought in a lot of her downhome farm furniture, I started recollecting bamboo and ordered a dumb console piano from Sears that looked like it floated off a Hallmark greeting card. I spent whole days in the baby’s room, and even though my daddy thought I was having a boy, instead of blue, I painted the room bright yellow with lime green trim, dragging out all my old Disney crapola to decorate the walls.
This
kid was going to adore Mickey and Minnie, Dumbo, Pluto and Snow White if I had to swaddle it in Disneyana. I went ape and ordered really expensive custom-made turquoise blinds with all Walt’s euphoric characters bouncing around on air. I wistfully posed in front of the shades with my bulging tummy exposed while Michael snapped shot after shot. I don’t know how he endured it.

After the first three months were up and I was allowed to stop
being paranoid, I spent hours in baby stores, getting drippy-eyed over all the tiny trappings and itty-bitty outfits, trying to imagine having my very own living, breathing baby doll. I got big and fat, even though I did yoga three times a week with Judy, the mom-lady who taught our Bradley birth classes, which were real different from Lamaze because there was none of that goofy panting involved. I found out how to do Kegel exercises to keep my vaginal entrance toned up, a practice I
still
find extremely beneficial and stimulating. Mainly I learned all about what was happening inside my body so I could visualize the whole experience and not be so afraid that I might opt for drugs to deaden the pain, thereby deadening the baby’s first moments of life. I was determined to do it without that awful saddle-block shot in the spine, even though Michael’s mother had told him that giving birth had been like taking her bottom lip and stretching it over the top of her head. Ouch. We got so chummy with Judy that she decided to film our birth experience to show her future Bradley classes. The expectant couples sat in a huddle watching various women squeeze slimy infants out on 8mm, their mouths stretched out into soundless wailing
o
s. I also invited Sparkie to take still photos, and of course, Michael would be with me in the birth room, which we went to visit in advance so we would know exactly what to expect. Except for all the baby-saving paraphernalia in the hall in case something went awry, it looked just like a regular room at Holiday Inn.

I’d been reading oodles of books on the subject, so I knew it would soon be time for the baby to start kicking. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be jiggled and jostled from within, and I was waiting impatiently for a tiny left hook or an uppercut to the solar plexus. Already it was difficult to eat a whole lot at one sitting because it felt like my stomach was being squished and mashed from every angle. My inner ear was constantly on guard and the weensiest gurgle stopped me cold, but when the little bugger decided to take the first whack at me, there was no mistaking the enchanting sensation for a gas jolt or a digestive blurp. It was a holy moment.

Michael and I were surrounded by sound, ensconced in our dreamy plush seats at the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard, deep into
The Last Waltz
, a divine documentary on the Band, when it happened: The baby kicked. I gasped, rapt with inside attention, waiting for it to happen again. I grabbed Michael’s hand, held it over the magic spot, and seconds later he got to feel the sweet little “hello” tap for himself. Tears sprang out of nowhere and dribbled down my
cheeks, and Michael’s eyes shimmered in the dark as he grabbed ahold of me tight, whispering, “The first kick . . . at the last waltz.” It was one of those rare, triumphant moments when you feel like a living, breathing hunk of ecstasy—a forevermoment. I wish we could bottle those drops of time, unpop the cork when we feel real low, and take a deep whiff of glory to remember what it feels like.

I sure wish I could say that those moments of luminous joy had satisfied Michael’s thirst for transcendence. Although thrilled by his impending fatherhood, my darling husband was still staying out through several dawns at a stretch whenever the demon bit him. He wasn’t one of those alcoholic drug addicts who imbibed nonstop; he was a “binger,” going on sprees and binges that lasted a few days, while I sat in the sweat box embroidering Tinker Bell on a tooth-fairy pillowcase, cursing his titled name. Still, my subconscious wouldn’t let me smell other women on him, even when Ciara and Chloe lingered in the steamy air. I was desperate to avoid a confrontation that might crunch my costume-jewelry concept of a happy marriage. So I relied on the silent treatment while his poor body tried to snap out of the bender, and he wallowed in apologies and self-recrimination. Nothing
nothing
, NOTHING had changed.

It was record-breaking, sweltering summer in L.A., and our gorgeous redwood bedroom might as well have been a sauna bath. Despite the fact that I was in nirvana about the soul swimming in my midsection, I was HOT! It was impossible to sleep, so I was barely dozing at 4
A.M
. the blistering morning I heard a commotion erupting in the kitchen. Warily opening the bedroom door, I saw only darkness, except for the eerie light coming from the refrigerator, and I saw Michael ripping out the shelves while bottles of ketchup and salad cream shattered and cans of Dr. Pepper rolled all over the floor. He was mumbling angrily, incoherently; it was totally surreal, and I was scared. Cautiously I approached him, trying to save our time-payment fridge from total extinction, but I could see in his pits-for-eyes that he didn’t know who I was. Rushing at me, he shook my shoulders back and forth like I was on one of those old-fashioned fat machines, then speaking in a foreign language, crashed into the bedroom and fell onto the bed, where he stayed for two whole days and nights. I didn’t even take his shoes off. When he resurfaced Michael asked what in the world had happened to the refrigerator. The man had no recollection of what had taken place.

One other time, at the end of another wild set of nights, I watched dumbfounded as he took a whole bunch of books out of the bookcase, stacked them against the wall and then put them right back in the bookcase. He did it five times. I found out a few years later that Michael had been in what is called a blackout. Did that mean he didn’t have to account for shaking his pregnant wife around like maracas? That it wasn’t his fault? He didn’t have to take the blame? Didn’t have to suffer crunching pangs of guilt? And if he didn’t even remember it, had it even happened? It was the only time he ever touched me in anger, and I couldn’t even rub it in.