Both of Us Page 10

  She was scared to death.

  We’d have arguments about how to set boundaries for Redmond: bedtime; food; respecting adults; and most vital, why rules must be obeyed. I’d defend myself by saying that I’d raised three children, that I was the experienced parent, not her. And that’s exactly what worried her. Griffin must have been a specter haunting her peace of mind, and if she was too tough on Redmond sometimes, if her voice did go shrill when she saw him doing something he shouldn’t, it was because she wanted to protect her son from a fate like his brother’s. The problem was that the stricter she was with Redmond, the less influence she had over him. A therapist could have figured this out, but Farrah and I never consulted one. My only experience with a counselor had been with Tatum when she was a teen. It was such a disaster that it soured me on the entire profession. And Farrah was a private person, reluctant to reveal herself to any stranger.

  Our clashes over Redmond escalate and our fighting takes a revelatory turn. It’s not so much that’s it’s getting more severe as it is stripping us psychologically naked, removing all pretense from our relationship. We’re discovering that those same two people who once brought out the best in each other also have a frightening capacity for bringing out the worst. I remember one afternoon when we’re in the car. I said something to set her off and she starts yelling at me, which I detest, so I simply ignore her. Next thing I know, her foot is in my face and she’s pushing it into my cheek as I’m driving up Benedict Canyon, all because I wouldn’t buckle under to her demands for disciplining our son. I was no Mahatma Gandhi either. Once, she locked herself in the bathroom and I punched my fist through the door. A piece of wood hit her in the face, cutting her above the eye. I broke a knuckle. So picture the two of us, she’s bleeding and I’ve got an ice pack on my hand. We’re both apologizing and trying not to cry. I should have recognized that none of this was normal, but after what I’d gone through with Joanna Moore, it seemed almost tame.

  It was now fall, and we were swatting away disappointments like picnickers harassed by mosquitoes: Tatum gives birth to a daughter but says nothing; Good Sports gets canceled; Griffin is arrested again. And the elementary school we want for Redmond rejects our application. Aaron Spelling is on the board of trustees.

  We start taking it out on each other.

  And then the incident.

  Farrah and I are in my room. We’re quietly quarreling. It devolves into a shouting match. Suddenly our six-year-old son is standing in the doorway in his Winnie-the-Pooh pajamas, staring at us. He’s holding a butcher knife. He must have climbed onto a chair and pulled the knife out of the rack on the kitchen counter. He points the tip of the blade at his chest. “I’m gonna stab myself if you don’t stop it!”

  That ended the argument.

  For the next hour we sat with our little boy on either side of his bed, soothing him. We told happy funny stories and when he finally began to laugh, Farrah and I embraced, assuring him that we loved each other and he was safe.

  We should have run to a family therapist’s office the very next day.

  Instead I’d run to Vancouver.

  Neither Farrah nor I ever acknowledged that this behavior should not have been acceptable in our family. One of us should have been the grown-up. Instead, we were two single-minded people who gave in to our baser impulses, making excuses for each other when we felt forgiving, and baiting each other when we didn’t. Our moral compass had become submerged in a sea of ego and confusion, and our sweet little boy would bear the brunt of the corrosion. He would become increasingly recalcitrant and distracted: he’d open a drawer and forget to close it; he’d lose everything, from his catcher’s mitt to his favorite pen. At school he wouldn’t make friends. Afternoons when I picked him up, I’d either find him sitting by himself or running aimlessly around the playground.

  There’s an old expression: “When you’re young, the days fly and the years drag; when you’re older, the days drag and the years fly.” It’s true of relationships too. And oh how the days dragged for both Farrah and me during this period! Vancouver becomes a welcome escape. It’s now 1992. I’m on location shooting the made-for-TV movie The Man Upstairs with Katharine Hepburn. It’s about the unlikely friendship that blossoms between a lonely, elderly woman and the escaped convict whom she discovers hiding in her attic. The script was developed for Katharine, and my old buddy Burt Reynolds is executive producing. Originally he was going to star in it too, but scheduling conflicts force him to assign the role to someone else, and I’m grateful he chooses me. Working with Katharine Hepburn is akin to being knighted by the queen. On set, she has a benevolent regality that puts you at ease while making you want to stand up a little bit straighter. I’d heard a lot about Katharine Hepburn when I was growing up in Hollywood, but I’d never met her. I discover she’s not the reclusive eccentric now depicted by the press. Though protective of her privacy, she’s intelligent and witty, with an endearing practical side. Unlike some movie stars who fight the aging process one plastic surgeon at a time, Katharine Hepburn’s beauty is preserved in the sanctuary of her dignity, untouched and untouchable.

  Farrah and Redmond come for a few days. The recent time apart proves a blessing as the tensions prior to my departure have quelled, and both Farrah and I strive to keep things polite and casual. For some women, diamonds are forever. For Farrah, it’s Mexican food. I’ve made arrangements with the hotel chef to serve all her favorite south-of–the-border dishes. There’s a buffet waiting in the room when she arrives. Redmond is delighted and Farrah is touched.

  One of the highlights of their visit is Redmond’s foray into the world of special effects. The Man Upstairs is a Christmas movie. If you rent it, pay attention to the scene in which Katharine and I walk outside when it’s snowing. Notice how real it looks. Redmond was expertly tossing that fake snow down on us.

  I also remember introducing Katharine to Farrah. It’s like a meeting of the goddesses. Farrah is quiet and deferential. Though she’d been in the presence of other greats, Katharine Hepburn made you catch your breath. She invites Farrah and me to her house for tea. She sends her driver of forty years to fetch us. Her housekeeper, a lovely lady who looks to be further along in years than Katharine, greets us at the door. This is Katharine Hepburn’s entourage, two sweet ancients whom she clearly cares about and who are devoted to her in turn. Katharine is a gracious host and an engaging conversationalist. In the car on the way back, Farrah puts her head on my shoulder and drifts off to sleep. I can feel the warmth of her breath on my neck, as I did on that long ago drive from Disney Ranch, and it makes me yearn to regain the ease of those early years together. Then I think of Katharine Hepburn and that moment when she stared into the distance and began talking to Farrah and me about Spencer Tracy, and those strong shoulders slumped ever so slightly. She still missed him, as I miss Farrah today. They never married either.

  Years later, Farrah would tell me that after she saw my reverence for Katharine, she understood why I watched classic movies and had such respect not just for the actors in the studio system, but for the craft itself, the directors, and the cinematographers, and that she was proud to have the same profession as Miss Hepburn, as she insisted on addressing Katharine. It comforts me to know that Farrah never regretted becoming an actress, because there were periods in our life when I worried she wished she had never left Texas. By the time 1992 rolled to a close, I’d be worried again.

  And it’s Griffin who rings the bell for the next round. It’s December and I’ve just arrived at the courthouse for his sentencing. I want to offer my moral support. Remember I told you he was arrested again? It was for firing shots at his ex-girlfriend’s unoccupied car. Moral support? That’s like putting spit on an amputation, but I had to keep trying with Griffin. I’m not sure whether it was love or guilt that compelled me to keep giving him another chance, but he was my son, and back then I could no more turn my back on him than my dad, Blackie, could have turned his on me. I won’t always feel that way
. If you’re wondering what happened to the wife from the wedding I paid for in Vegas, they had a child, then a scandalous divorce. I find out that right before I arrive at the courthouse, my ex-wife Joanna, who had just been there to wish her son luck, rolled her car over four times on the freeway. While the judge was handing down Griffin’s sentence, his mother was being cut out of the wreckage. She had two fingers severed and had to undergo emergency surgery. She was fortunate to be alive. But that woman had been cheating death since I’d known her. When we were first married, I came home one night to find her passed out in a bathtub with an open bottle of barbiturates and a tumbler of wine on the side of the tub. It took me more than an hour to wake her. Joanna was the worst decision I ever made, but I bear her no ill will. I was a kid when we got hitched and back then no one understood much about addiction. Her accident shakes me. It could just as easily have been Griffin. I remember thinking at the time that Tatum may have been a challenge, but thank God she wasn’t throwing away her life like her mother and her brother were.

  When I get home that night, I wear my anxiety like a vest, expecting Farrah to gently remove it and make me presentable again. But she’s dealing with her own demons. Another headache, another spotty period, another dark mood. Everything annoys her. There’s too much traffic on the PCH. The fog isn’t burning off until noon. Anything I suggest to cheer her she rejects, convinced it will just make matters worse. I offer a sentimental journey to the Pierre Hotel in New York. I even book the same room we had in the early days when I was introducing Farrah to the city. It’s where we became a couple and began to think of ourselves as a unit, inseparable, joined together not only as lovers but as partners. We’d made a pact. And we believed in it back then. The Pierre’s neighborhood, Fifth Avenue at Sixty-first Street, the storied Plaza Hotel across the way, and the fountain where Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald once danced are still eternal New York. Maybe we can, as the jazzman once said, get our mojo back. Good memories remain, enough to soften the bad ones. Andy Warhol’s gone six years now and Studio 54 was shuttered a couple of summers ago, but Central Park is just across the street and the stores on Madison Avenue begin a block east. We’ll sneak back to the attic if it hasn’t been converted to apartments. There may be a cherub left, one more for luck. She says the last thing she wants to do is get on an airplane. I go upstairs and reluctantly call our hotel in New York. I can hear the Pierre manager’s disappointment. “I’m sorry too,” I say. “More than you know.” As the weeks turn to months, we struggle to find our footing. It’s as if Farrah and I are entwined in a dance with no choreography.

  I’m sitting here reading through my journal entries for 1993. Professionally, I don’t see much. There’s a singsong quality to these pages. I go to the gym; I coach Redmond’s Little League team; he misses a pop-up; he catches a pop-up; he does his homework; he doesn’t do his homework; he mouths off; he’s good as gold; Davey Dog needs biscuits; I pay my taxes; I lament my knees. Then … wait a minute, this can’t be right.

  JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 3, 1993

  A sweetheart of a day except for poor FF and her weekly migraine.

  When did she start getting migraines every week?

  JOURNAL ENTRY, MARCH 30, 1993

  Hard to get going this morning. Poor Farrah, who can hardly move from this terrible flu, just lies in her bed. I wish I could help her take it. This is the third time this month.

  JOURNAL ENTRY, APRIL 19, 1993

  Farrah’s sick again. Her mom’s here cooking dinner. I’ve been taking on more and more with Redmond. Farrah needs the break.

  I don’t remember Farrah’s being so sick that we needed her mom to stay and help.

  JOURNAL ENTRY, APRIL 27, 1993

  When I came back from my run, Farrah was gone. I go to the gym as usual and pick up my son from school. Then it’s homework and play-offs. As for his mom, she’s sick again and already in bed. I bathe him and help him brush his teeth, then tuck him in.

  I must have been in another world. It was right there staring at me and I kept on going about my daily routines as if everything was copacetic. Now it’s coming back to me. Pauline and Jimbo had come for the holidays, as they did most years. But Farrah was poorly and so Pauline decided to stay on and help out. And I remember now how much she missed Jimbo. She never would have stayed that long unless she was concerned for her daughter. But did I ever ask her why she was worried about Farrah? Did I ask her whether I should be just as worried? All those years I resented my mother-in-law’s intrusion in our lives when I should have been working with her to help the girl we both loved so desperately. Pauline, if you can hear me, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

  And then the journal entries stop. Maybe the rest of that year is somewhere here at the beach house and I haven’t found it yet. Or maybe things got so much worse that I couldn’t write about them anymore. I’m not sure. I remember that year in bits and pieces. Don’t believe what the New Age gurus tell you. Enlightenment doesn’t stomp in; it comes on tiptoes.

  All I remember next is the earthquake …

  The earthquake of 1994 that splintered West LA felt like the ground was speaking in tongues, telling all of us who lived and worked there that maybe the jig was up, that the greed and hubris, the atavistic culture—that wellspring for innumerable movies, television shows, mediocre books, and submediocre plays that had come to define much of Southern California in its glory years—were over. The earth roared and swallowed people’s homes, their businesses, their golf courses, their closets full of shoes. It was as if God were telling us off. The quake struck LA at 4:30 a.m. on January 17. It may have been a natural disaster, but it would become a preternatural metaphor for what was happening to Farrah and me.

  Seismic shifting.

  Tremors beneath the surface.

  A cracking foundation.

  It’s something out of a movie. I wake up to a bookcase crashing onto the bed. The third volume of the 1960 Britannica struck me square on the forehead. Redmond is in his room at the other end of the hall. Farrah’s away at a New Age retreat. It’s pitch-black. I hear a deep low rumbling and the rattle of lamps and knickknacks shaking on the tabletops and the thud of boxes tumbling off the shelves in Farrah’s massive walk-in closet. I grab the flashlight I keep in the bed stand and make my way to Redmond. I’m stepping through broken glass. There are pictures of Farrah strewn across the floor. The frames have broken. I see Redmond standing in the corner with his hand on his heart. “Burglar, burglar!” he cries. He doesn’t realize it’s me. “No, Redmond, it’s Dad.” I tell him there’s been an earthquake. “Are there going to be aftershaves?” he asks.

  Together we gingerly make our way down the hall. The house is collapsing around us. Paintings that hung on the walls appear as if they’re flinging themselves out of harm’s way, just as someone might jump out of a window in a burning building. Everything is moving. When we get to the living room, that’s when we see it, the fissure that starts at the front entryway and goes through the kitchen, out the back door, through the alley, and into our neighbor’s tennis court. I point the flashlight down, and Redmond and I follow it like the yellow brick road to hell. It’s wide enough that you could fall through the crack and when you look into it, there’s no bottom, no Emerald City. As I’m snapping Polaroids, an aftershock hits that knocks Redmond and me off our feet. We head for the car. Wilt Chamberlain lives next door and I watch as the enormous leaded windows that frame the entire front of his home explode onto his lawn. Then I see his large silhouette pulling open the gates to his driveway because the electricity is out. Everything’s out. He slides into his car and revs the engine. He wants to flee. But there’s a leaking gas line. He’s about to drive over it. I frantically wave my hands, shouting that it’s too dangerous. I tell him to turn off his engine, which he does, and Redmond and I push him safely to the other side of the street. He drives off without a word.

  Redmond and I wait for the “aftershaves” to pass. (Don’t worry, Davey Dog was safe and sound at
the beach house with friends.) By daybreak, we’re on the road to San Diego to pick up Farrah, who’s been caught up in the spiritual growth movement, which in 1994 was rampaging. She’s a seeker. She’s bought into a lingo that preaches everyone has a destiny and a purpose and it’s possible to find it. I’m skeptical.

  Driving through the epicenter, the scene unfolding before us resembles some prehistoric apocalypse. When we arrive at Deepak Chopra’s retreat where Farrah has spent the week, she can’t understand why we’ve come. I try to tell her that the house on Antelo is destroyed, but she doesn’t quite believe me. I show her the Polaroids. “It doesn’t look that bad to me,” she says. But when Redmond and I finish describing what we’d just witnessed, Farrah is convinced.

  Farrah’s beloved house on Antelo is red tagged, declared unlivable. The street had collapsed and the house had slipped off its moorings, half of it sliding to the hillside below. It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to set the wounded structure on new pilings and bring the building up to code. The insurance company officially cites the cause of destruction as a “prehistoric landslide,” which somehow isn’t covered under her policy. Farrah is devastated. That house on Antelo was more to Farrah than mere brick and mortar. It represented her survival of an unhappy marriage; her rebirth as an independent woman; her safe place; her proof that no man got the best of her—not Lee Majors, not me at my best or at my worst—proof that she was her own master. When the house crumbled, it was as if her independence, her strength and resolve, even her resiliency, crumbled with it. As neighbors combed through the wreckage of what were once their homes, Farrah was sifting through the wreckage inside her self, her spirit as severed as the pilings.