Both of Us Page 14

  Here’s an excerpt:

  The Star, November 25, 1997

  Wacky Farrah Fawcett is at it again … The Playboy pinup stunned onlookers when they saw her drive up to her ex-lover Ryan O’Neal’s gym in a new Jaguar—only to sit in the front seat fiddling with her hair and touching up her makeup in the rearview mirror for more than an hour! “Finally a guy and a girl, they looked like they might be trainers, came out and walked up to the car and started talking to her,” says a witness. Farrah went into the Pro-Gym, in Brentwood, Calif., came out, went back in, and came out wearing a white tank top.

  “She was looking around a lot. I don’t know what she was looking for. She was wiping her nose a lot. Then she crossed the street, looking back and forth, and picking her nose the whole time.” Fawcett raised eyebrows last June by acting very spaced out on the Letterman show, and rumors of drug use and emotional problems after her break from O’Neal have plagued her.

  We were supposed to meet about something to do with Redmond’s education. It was one of the few times that she showed up on time and I was seriously late. It was disconcerting. She’d thought I’d been in an accident. And who was this so-called witness from the Star? Why is it these witnesses never have names?

  I was surprised by the cruel attack on her from the press and by the fact that they’d left me alone. It probably indicated a shift in our relative status. For the first time, the tabloids started saying that it wasn’t Ryan who was crazy, it was Farrah. I had always been the aberrant one. Now the press had turned around and made her the loon, and she didn’t deserve it. Without each other, we had both become unmoored, but I had found a safe harbor with Leslie, whereas Farrah was at the mercy of the cold wind. She was with other men now, and she’d only had a couple of men in her life. She didn’t have experience and she made serious mistakes, the worst of which was getting involved with James Orr again. By 1998, he’ll ask her to marry him. She’ll refuse. So he’ll beat her brutally, for which he will later be convicted and sentenced.

  Other lowlights from 1997:

  Tatum has become a certified junkie, and her poor troubled mother dies of lung cancer.

  It wasn’t a very good year.

  Just as I began working on this book, I appeared on Oprah to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Love Story. The highlight was spending some time with my costar, the always-exquisite Ali MacGraw. I’d almost forgotten how wise and kind and generous she is. After the taping, we talked of Farrah, and I soon discovered that in some ways she understood the woman I’d spent thirty years with better than I did. So many people still retain this image of Farrah Fawcett as the ingenue pinup girl in a red bathing suit, and she was that, but as Ali reminisced, and I paraphrase here, “When they talk about people having the soul of an artist, that’s usually an exaggeration but it was true with Farrah. Everything about her was genuine.” But I knew there were doubts inside her too, serious doubts that our breakup would magnify. I’ve lately thought about why Farrah was able to retain her popular appeal over the decades while mine skidded south—reasons other than displays of my limping imitation of a parent. Girls and women could embrace her look and her style while not becoming jealous or threatened as they were by, say, Marilyn Monroe. Farrah was the embodiment of the all-American beauty. That boys and men responded to her sexually is a given, but they also sensed she’d make a great sister. My audience was primarily women. Male moviegoers don’t much care for good-looking, careless young men. And neither my appearance nor my character improved over time. I was as cute to women as my friend Bill Holden at twenty but not as handsome and responsible at thirty or as distinguished and successful at fifty. That’s a reason why I was vulnerable to Leslie: she adored me and I needed the affirmation.

  Turns out I also still needed Farrah. Despite my deepening relationship with Leslie, I couldn’t detach from Farrah, nor could she from me. I remember an occasion during this period when I accepted an invitation to Alana Stewart’s house, knowing Farrah would be there. Alana Stewart, ex-wife of George Hamilton and Rod Stewart, was one of Farrah’s closest friends and this was an impromptu dinner party. A few of the other people Alana was able to round up at the last minute were both her exes, George sporting his usual tan and Rod sporting his new wife. Also on hand were Jeff Goldblum, who always wanted to play Trivial Pursuit; Cheryl Tiegs, who looks as good in person as she does on the cover of Vogue; Michelle Phillips, without John or Mackenzie; Jackie Collins, whose conversation is as witty and entertaining as her juicy novels; and Suzanne Somers, who spent the evening talking with Dominick Dunne and producer Suzanne de Passe. As usual, I didn’t take Leslie. Too much history with this crowd, and she never felt comfortable being around people who were a part of my life with Farrah. That night Farrah was in good spirits. I had to remind myself that we weren’t a couple anymore. By the end of the evening, we were aching for a few moments alone together so we got into her car, drove a block, and parked. We talked for almost two hours, laughing and reminiscing. I kissed her goodnight—more than once. She was a beautiful kisser, her mouth tasted like vanilla mint. On the way back to get my car, we held hands. I resisted the urge to whistle.

  As I drove home to the beach and Leslie, I felt both exhilarated and guilty, like a teenager out past curfew, but that was the magic of Farrah and me: at our best we were like newlyweds, and at our worst, petulant children. As I arrive at my driveway, Leslie is leaving. I park on the street and get out of my car. Her car’s not moving. I see her lay her head down on the steering wheel, and she’s crying, waiting for me. I would learn later that someone at the party had called her. I was never sure who, but I have my suspicions.

  Though I’m able to coax Leslie back into the house and smooth things over that first time, eventually she will come to accept that a future with Ryan O’Neal is unlikely. Farrah was my future and my past. It was always the present that gave us so much trouble. Our love, though tired and taut, was still alive beneath the rubble of our disillusionment, reaching, pulling, pushing, connecting. Our dance was far from over, but at the time, I was so busy trying to keep everyone happy that I didn’t recognize it. And while Farrah and I continued to feel our way through this floating mélange, our thirteen-year-old would come of age in a world of uncertainty.

  Farrah and I would have other nights like this, when the need for each other would eclipse our pride, and we’d find ourselves in irresistible situations. Another night, Leslie was out of town and Farrah was supposed to join me for dinner with mutual friends of ours, Freddie and Corina Fields. We waited and waited for Farrah until we were all so hungry we ordered dinner without her and hours later went home, thinking she was a no-show. I was turning out the lights when Corina called and said that Farrah was on her way over. “She did end up going to the restaurant and when no one was there, she came straight here,” she continued. “She wanted to know if you were mad at her.”

  “What did you tell her?” I asked.

  “I told her, yes, but to go over to your house right now. She’ll be there any moment and you be nice to her! You make her stay over.”

  I took Corina’s advice. Farrah was still captivating. She was wearing this little black lace bra that was so sexy I insisted she not remove it. I forgave her for being late.

  Farrah and I shared joint custody of Redmond. He was being shuttled back and forth between Farrah’s place and my house on the beach and always preferred the beach, which irked Farrah. But it was easier for Redmond to stay with me during the week, near school, and visit his mom on weekends. At the time, he was attending a public middle school in Malibu. He’d gone to a private elementary school, hated it, and begged us to let him transfer to a “regular” school with “normal kids,” and so we gave in. The transfer was a mistake because it coincided with the time the California public school system dropped from best in the country to almost the worst. Our joint custody arrangement was fraught, and I only now appreciate how hard it was on him. Redmond loved Farrah and me equally, and whenever he sensed frict
ion between us, he’d act as the referee. I’d make some offhand critical comment about Farrah, and he’d immediately respond with “Mom didn’t mean it that way.” And Farrah told me that he did the same thing whenever she offered a rude opinion of me. For a while it worked because he was such an effective goodwill ambassador. But it was far too much to expect that a boy his age could mediate the conflicting interests of two adults, and we were foolhardy to allow him to try. By the time we realized how unfair it was to Redmond, that there were moments when he must have felt as if he were being forced to choose sides, he had already turned away from both of us to a beacon of consolation, his big brother Griffin. By now Griffin was in his early thirties, and was living with me in Malibu. He was teaching Redmond how to play the drums. They formed a band. I had a room downstairs soundproofed for them, thinking, Isn’t it nice? Griffin has taken an interest in his little brother and the two boys are bonding. But it wasn’t nice. Griffin was a drug addict and the worst possible role model to put in front of Redmond. According to the New York Times, we now know that most people who become addicted are wired differently from those who do not. Drug addicts seem to have blunted reward systems in the brain, and for them everyday pleasures don’t come close to the powerful effects of drugs. However, and for me this is a giant, even people who aren’t wired for addiction can become dependent on drugs if they are constantly exposed to them. That summer, between seventh and eighth grade, when Redmond was at his most vulnerable, he was introduced to marijuana. And if anyone could be the poster child for the argument that pot use is dangerous because it leads to harder drugs, it’s Redmond.

  I knew Griffin was trouble, but I thought that if I let him be there for Redmond, he might feel needed, valued, important. I wanted to save Griffin, but in the end I lost them both. By the time Redmond turned fourteen six months later, he was already getting into trouble with the law, and would be placed in a series of thirteen different juvenile and rehab facilities over the next seven years, all for various drug possession charges.

  Farrah and I tried everything: psychiatrists, family counseling, interventions, special schools, and I finally kicked Griffin out of the house. Nothing helped. We watched our son descend into addiction, and we were unable to stop his fall. Like countless other families caught in the same cycle, our situation devolved to the point where we had no choice but to trust in the system and hope that the juvenile court judges and the rehabilitation facilities to which they remanded our child would help him, because we sure couldn’t. We believed that these recognized institutions could cure our son. We put our faith in the system. Unfortunately, the very facilities meant to heal kids like Redmond can also accelerate their dependence on drugs.

  The nightmare from which we couldn’t awake began the following summer, of 1999, before Redmond should have begun his freshman year of high school. He was mixing with the wrong crowd. They were caught smoking pot in the woods by forest rangers. Though he was only issued a citation for a misdemeanor, by now he had a juvenile record—no major crimes, just small teen shenanigans—but the court recognized he was on a downward spiral and mandated that he spend six months in rehab. The judge told Farrah and me that Casa by the Sea was a superior treatment center for teens, and showed us this encouraging video footage of kids in group therapy sitting outside under a beautiful blue sky. Because it seemed too perfect to be possible, I had a bad feeling about the place from the start. But we put our faith in the judge, who, I’ll say in her defense, was genuinely concerned for Redmond’s welfare and did what she thought was best. I assume she couldn’t have known the horrors of this facility. It was on the Mexican border, and when Farrah and I would go down there to visit Redmond, he would tell us disturbing stories about how they were treating the juveniles confined there, of whom our son was the youngest. Once, when he refused to apologize for something he insisted wasn’t his fault, he was forced to lie on his stomach for thirty-six hours and was only allowed to get up to piss. He told us several stories like this and I believed him. I could see it in his eyes. Farrah thought he was exaggerating his dire straits so that we’d petition the court for his early release.

  We’d visit him at Casa by the Sea regularly. Sometimes I’d pick up Farrah from the Wilshire condo, where she was living; other times we’d drive in separate cars. I saw how the place was damaging him. His face appeared sunken, as if his soul were being slowly siphoned away. Farrah wanted him to remain there. She felt we’d been too lenient with him, that what he needed was tough love, structure, discipline. His letters told a different story. There were dozens of them, each one more heartbreaking than the next. These are a small sampling:

  October 9, 1999

  DEAR DAD,

  I got to level three. But now I looked up at the point sheet and I’m short a point again. It’s only one point dad, honest. It makes me so upset because if my facilitator’s going to drop me back to level two just because of one single point, then I have to wait more time until they let me have a phone call or be able to walk outside, and other things you only get on level three. And on level two I have to fast. They’re so strict. Dad please, maybe if you talk to her tomorrow, my facilitator I mean, Bianca. She’s getting to know me and I hope she didn’t take away my level three. It’s only one point. Please you have to talk to her. Tell her that I need to be on level three. Dad please. That’s it for now.

  I love you dad more than you know.

  FOREVER,

  REDMOND O’NEAL

  P.S. I’m in pain. Please write back.

  The system at Casa by the Sea was based on points for privileges. He was just a boy and they were denying him food and sunlight. Hardened criminals were treated more humanely. And I know there’s much he didn’t tell me about what he went through there.

  June 4, 2000

  DEAR DAD,

  I’m back on a really low level again and they won’t let me see you or mom. I’m in solitary now. So I’ve been picturing you and mom in my eyes focusing on you guys and just being home with all of you. It will take time but I’m only one level away from seeing you and mom, just one more seminar and about five- hundred more points and I shall see you once again. I miss you guys and love you dad more than you’ll ever know.

  FOREVER,

  REDMOND O’NEAL

  P.S. I want to come home. Please write back. I have goals and I’ll work harder. Please I promise.

  Even after Redmond was permitted to come home, Farrah insisted he stay there longer, that it was for his own good. Eventually, after being locked up for eighteen months at Casa by the Sea, in December of 2000, what would have been the end of the first semester of his sophomore year of high school, I brought our son home. He was not the same person. Casa by the Sea opened a need inside him and Farrah and I would spend the next decade trying to prevent it from consuming his future. It would push his mother and me apart; it would also be the link that kept us connected. I’ve recently researched teen drug abuse recidivism, and was impressed by a sad article in Time. It’s from July 2010. Here’s an excerpt:

  Living the Dream: Does Teen Drug Rehab Cure Addiction or Create It?

  Increasingly, substance-abuse experts are finding that teen drug treatment may indeed be doing more harm than good. The exposure can be especially dangerous for impressionable youngsters. “I’ve known kids who have gone into inpatient treatment and met other users. After treatment, they meet up with them and explore new drugs and become more seriously involved in drug use,” says Tom Dishion, director of research at the Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon.

  It’s as if they were writing about Redmond. At eighteen, just a few years after Casa by the Sea, under another court order and on the heels of having been remanded to several other facilities in between, Redmond will enter the Betty Ford Center. Farrah and I were optimistic. This was the Betty Ford Center, for God’s sake. We knew its record of success. In our case, our child would go in a pot smoker and occasional pill popper, and come out a heroin addict. He met a gir
l there who got him hooked on the stuff. The point I’m trying to make is that Farrah and I, like so many other parents in the same impossible situation, wanted desperately to believe in the merits of the system. It’s contradictory that what starts out as your greatest fear, the sentencing of your child, ends up being your last hope. When you have failed, you pray the experts have some magic to work. That doesn’t mean we as parents are absolved of culpability. It’s our job to protect our children and prepare them for the difficulties of adulthood. Redmond always knew that his mom and dad would never deliberately hurt him. But the system would, over and over again. Eventually the New York Times would do an exposé on Casa by the Sea, and the Mexican government would shut it down along with three other similar facilities. “See, our son was telling the truth,” I wrote Farrah in a note one day that I attached to the article and mailed to her. We never spoke of it again.

  For years I blamed Farrah and would quietly seethe every time I thought about how my boy had been trapped in that god-awful place. I was so angry at her, thought she was just being stubborn. At the time, her sculptures were beginning to attract attention in the art world, and part of me thought she had convinced herself it was best for Redmond to stay there because it gave her more time to work in her studio. Now I realize that wasn’t why she was so determined not to bring him home. Neither one of us was sure we could handle him, and she knew he’d want to stay at the beach with me. She was afraid for him, of that entire scene, a lifestyle that, in retrospect, I realize may not have been good for any of us. She knew that the permissive teen environment in Malibu was exactly what Redmond didn’t need. He’d run amok with kids his age whose parents were overly indulgent. I think it’s why Farrah, as much as she always loved the beach itself, resisted the culture of Malibu.