Both of Us (21 page)

My second act of bravery was to occur when I got home from the doctor’s office. Tatum showed up because she’d heard the death knell. I wasn’t expecting much by way of sympathy, but I sure wasn’t ready for what I got. She verbally stripped me bare, recounting the highlights of my failed life and then, before slamming the door on her way out, she said, “Well, at least my mother died with dignity.” I worry that if that episode in our lives comes up on the reality show, I won’t be able to manage it. But then nothing should surprise me. I didn’t get a call on my fiftieth birthday either.

While one of my children was sticking in the knife that
spring, another was twisting it. Griffin was back in jail. He had been up to his old tricks: more high-speed car chases, more guns, more violence. Only this time when the cops had him cornered, he attempted suicide by police. I didn’t believe it at first until several months later when I saw it in a letter he wrote me from prison. He was in solitary twenty-three hours a day for thirty-six weeks. His words still haunt me: “I begged the officer to shoot but he didn’t.” Cancer patients often say their illness makes them feel helpless. I can assure you that nothing makes you feel as helpless as your adult children sabotaging their own futures. When they’re little, you can exert discipline, protect them. Then they hit an age when despite how desperately you want to save them from themselves, you can’t. I asked Farrah once, “If we had never separated, do you think Redmond would still have gotten into trouble?”

She didn’t answer. Maybe because she knew the answer was yes.

By the time Leslie and I broke up in 2001, Farrah and I had been driving back and forth to visit Redmond at various facilities for several years, a ritual we would sadly have to keep repeating and that I continue to this day. Some of the places where Redmond was staying were located in isolated areas where there were more tumbleweeds than streetlights. I’d do whatever I could to keep our spirits up. I’d take her to a local movie theater, or we’d find rustic restaurants and cafés. We’d try to see the humor in our bizarre circumstance. And
believe me, we encountered our fair share of bizarre. Some of these camps asked parents to participate in group therapy sessions that often included weird rituals led by wacko facilitators. These activities were meant to strip us of our defense mechanisms. It never worked on me. I remember one so-called group leader who insisted that a couple pick another member of the group, lift the person off the floor, and swing him or her around so he or she could experience “flying.” I’m not embellishing. Remember that famous scene from
Titanic
in which Leonardo DiCaprio holds Kate Winslet as she leans forward on the bow of the ship and tells her she’s flying? That’s what we had to do except there was no wind, no boat, no ocean, and no James Cameron, just green linoleum and gray walls. One time Farrah and I were attending another group encounter and the facilitator, who was a double for Nurse Ratched from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
, told Farrah she had to take off her sunglasses. Farrah was sporting a nasty sty in her right eye that day. The woman was insistent, even going so far as to try to remove the glasses from Farrah’s face. I thought Farrah was going to take the woman down. Instead she smiled demurely and said: “Touch my Maui Jims and your hand will come back without fingers.” The facilitator retreated. I glimpsed Farrah winking at me behind those glasses. It was the tiny triumphs that kept us going. The big ones were much fewer and farther between.

I’d like to believe that it wasn’t the leukemia that brought
Farrah and me back together. Farrah had begun to mellow. Gone was the frustrated, angry woman. Replacing her was this patient person who seemed comfortable inside her own skin. Maybe we both had grown up. Still, reconciliation didn’t happen quickly. It would take time for us to trust each other again, something Mia and Frank could never do. This might be a good time to lighten things up a bit and tell you that story.

The year, 1965. The place, 20th Century Fox Studios. Mia and I are on lunch break from
Peyton Place
. We’re walking to the commissary. We pass the set of
Von Ryan’s Express
, a movie about escaped prisoners of war in which Sinatra is starring. Fencing designed to imitate barbed wire surrounds the set. The effect is so realistic, it’s as if we’re standing in front of a POW camp. The cast is milling about. Mia asks me to point out which of the actors is Sinatra. “I can’t spot him,” I say. Suddenly a gate at the other end of the set opens and a golf cart piled with six guys in army fatigues pulls out. “Look at the driver,” I whisper to her. “That’s Sinatra.” I watch her face. I can almost hear the lyrics to “I’ve Got a Crush on You” playing in her head. A couple days later back on the set of
Peyton Place
, Mia pulls me aside. “I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Frank Sinatra yesterday,” she says. I asked her how she found the time. Our production schedule had been grueling the day before. “They were shooting interiors on the next stage and I just walked over and introduced myself,” she answers. I was even more perplexed.
“You met Frank Sinatra in a hospital gown?”
Peyton Place
was shooting hospital scenes that week. “No, I put on a robe and slippers first.”

She was nineteen years old. He was forty-eight. They wed two years later. I was married to Patrick’s mother, Leigh Taylor-Young, at the time. We enjoyed many evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Sinatra. They were wonderful to us. Frank liked having his friends around and what a cast of pals they were: fellow rat packers Dean Martin; Joey Bishop; Sammy Davis, Jr.; childhood friend Jilly Rizzo, known as much for his ties to Mulberry Street as for his eponymous eaterie; comedian Shecky Greene; actor Brad Dexter. And what you have to understand is that these men were old school, Frank especially. Not always the easiest environment for a serious-minded young bride with a Hollywood pedigree. Mia’s father, John Farrow, was a respected Australian-born film director and her mother was famed Irish-born actress Maureen O’Sullivan.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved Frank. He could be a gentleman. But he had an uncontrollable jealous streak. One night Leigh and I were driving down Sunset Boulevard on my motorcycle. We’d just had a lovely dinner with Jacqueline Bisset and her partner of many years, Michael Sarrazin. He was a wonderful actor. Anyway, Leigh and I are on the bike when suddenly someone whooshes past us in a Dual Ghia. This is an expensive Italian sports car and there weren’t too many of them on the road. I knew that Frank had one.
There’s a red light ahead of us and I see the Ghia come to a screeching halt behind another car. I drive up alongside the Ghia, and Leigh and I glance to our right. Sure enough, it’s Frank at the wheel, and sitting next to him in the passenger side is Mia. They don’t see us. Mia’s hands are clasped tightly on her lap and she’s sitting there rigid. She looks terrified. It’s a long red. Frank can’t wait. He wheels out from behind the other driver, nearly sideswiping him, and runs the light.

The next afternoon, Leigh and I are expected at their home for Sunday brunch. When we arrive, there are large pieces of furniture all over the front yard: an armoire, a dresser, a hand-carved desk, custom cabinets, even a piano. It looks as if an absentminded auctioneer started to set up for an estate sale, said “Aw, the hell with it,” and left. I ask myself,
At only five foot nine and a hundred and forty-five pounds, could Frank possibly have dragged all this furniture out of the house by himself?
The adrenaline must have been really flowing. But I heard he didn’t like the way the owner of the antique shop looked at his wife when she purchased that furniture. And Frank was a very possessive man.

Though Mia and Frank’s marriage survived only a few years, their friendship would endure a lifetime. He loved her and she loved him, but he couldn’t own her. She was her own girl then, and an exquisite woman now. I still hear from Mia from time to time. After Farrah died, she sent me a beautiful letter that only someone of her depth and grace
could have written. Leigh had replaced Mia on
Peyton Place
in 1966. We were married the next year in Hawaii. Leigh was pregnant with Patrick and chose to leave our prime-time soap, which wasn’t making good use of her considerable talent. Patrick is now a well-regarded sportscaster in LA. We speak frequently. I salute him and bow to Leigh, who has been as good a mother as she was an actress.

T
hinking about Frank Sinatra is a painful reminder of my own jealous streak. Back in 2001 when I found out I had leukemia and Farrah rushed to my side, there was a part of me that was still smarting from her affair with James Orr. I wish I could say I was man enough to let it go, but I wasn’t. It would take being told I might die of cancer for me to finally move past it. And I thought
Farrah
was stubborn. All these years I let her infidelity eat away at me, and though we never did speak of it after my diagnosis, I forgave her in my heart because reconciling meant more to me than holding on to something that was over and done with. While I was writing Chapter Six of this book, I asked Farrah’s archivist to see if he could find any of the call sheets from
Man of the House
because I wanted to try to confirm as best as I could the exact production dates. He couldn’t find her calendar. What he did find was more important: Redmond’s summer reading list from that year:
Treasure Island
,
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
,
The Secret Garden
. It’s full of notes in Farrah’s handwriting on his progress with each
book. Redmond spent his summer break in 1994 on location with Farrah. He was with her the entire time. I don’t know why I didn’t remember that. And when she begged me to believe her that nothing had happened with Orr, why didn’t I realize then that Farrah would never have had an affair with her son present.

All that agony for nothing. She was telling the truth.

What a revelation: our second chance wasn’t just because I got sick. It wasn’t even only for Redmond. Though a heavy new burden is handed to me—the knowledge that the woman I loved died thinking I believed she had been unfaithful—another is lifted.

A
s 2001 churns forward and the specter of my mortality recedes into the wormhole of memory, Farrah and I slowly find our way back to that comfortable place we thought could never be recaptured. She moves part-time into the beach house and occupies the bedroom across from mine. As fate often dictates, I had just added a third bedroom upstairs, never imagining it would become Farrah’s room.

When you love somebody, you cherish their signature quirks. One for me was Farrah’s sleeping habits. Once when she was about ten, her family—her mother, father, and sister—was going to a drive-in. She got in the car first and fell asleep. They drove to the drive-in and saw two movies while she slept. When they got home and parked in the
driveway, she wakes up and says, “Well, I guess we’re not going.” And those qualities stayed with her. When she’d take a nap, there’d be this tiny indentation on one side and the rest of the bed would be untouched. You wouldn’t even have to remake it afterward, just smooth over one side of the covers. She could sleep anywhere, airplanes or cars; the moment her head touched the pillow, she’d be out just like a little girl.

During our estrangement, I had forgotten some of these appealing aspects of Farrah’s personality. Perhaps it was my way of coping with our having lost each other: I wouldn’t let myself remember anything endearing because it hurt too much. Once Farrah reenters my life in 2001, all the delightful qualities of hers that I’d been blocking come flooding back. Farrah had a whimsical side that could be infuriating one moment, and enchanting the next. For instance, she loved to wiggle her way into my physical exams. Once, when we were at my oncologist’s office and he was examining me, Farrah, ever so sweetly and with this coquettish smile, lifts up her arm and says in her best Texas drawl, “Doctor, this wouldn’t happen to be a little old lymph node would it?” You could almost hear the batting of her eyelashes. And of course, he’s soon attending to the spot on her arm while I’m sitting there with my shirt off, waiting for him to check
my
lymph nodes. The same thing happened years before when Farrah was in her ninth month of pregnancy with Redmond. I had a chicken-eye corn between my toes. Farrah is there and the doctor and I are discussing whether it’s best to
treat it topically with ointments or get it surgically removed. Suddenly Farrah is kicking off her shoes, and then hoisting her leg onto the examining table (no easy feat at nine months along), saying, “Doctor, would you take a look at these nasty old warts on my foot?” Within minutes he’s abandoned me and is removing them for her. Both she and I believed it was the foot doctor who brought on her labor because only hours later her water broke. Back then, these sorts of things made me chuckle.

And in 2001 I was relieved to know that Farrah still had that connection to me, that it had never died; it was just asleep for a while the same way she had been that night at the drive-in movie. Now we were both awake and our love had deepened. Farrah had forgiven me for Leslie. She had finally come to understand why I had gone.

While I’m recuperating, Farrah’s still busy preparing for her art exhibit. She had recently sold the house on Antelo and moved into a spacious condo in an exclusive building on Wilshire Boulevard, which also doubled as her studio. In addition to her art projects, she’s starring in episodes of
Spin City
. She played a judge and she was delightful in the part. Her comic timing was spot on. Interestingly enough, during this time Farrah had found some old episodes of
Good Sports
on video and we watched them together. “You know, that show wasn’t half bad,” she said. “We were better together than we thought.” I smiled: we always were.

I’ve been so immersed in reminiscing that it just
occurred to me: 2001 was the year of 9/11. Farrah was filming in LA and tending Redmond. I was in Istanbul with Freddie and Corina Fields. We had been in Greece when Freddie got an invitation to visit Turkey from a woman he thought might finance a movie. I was doubtful but having read Eric Ambler’s
A Coffin for Dimitrios
, I wanted to see Istanbul. The first night, I was having a drink at the bar. This lovely young American woman on holiday starts chatting with me. It was a sweet conversation between two tourists, but by the second glass of wine, she began hinting at something more, and having just gotten back on the mend with Farrah, the last thing I wanted was a Mediterranean fling. So I politely excused myself. The next morning I’m in the hotel restaurant reading the breakfast menu and she’s sitting with her luggage at the table next to me. She asks me to join her, which I do. Not the smartest thing, I know, but she was a nice woman, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, and I felt bad about the night before. We order breakfast and she tells me she’s flying to New York in a few hours for an important job interview. “But I could push it back and fly tomorrow instead,” she suggests. “Then we could spend the day together.” I gently tell her no, that she needs to make it to her interview as scheduled, and I need to stop talking to pretty girls. She kept trying to change my mind. “Come on, I’ve never done anything spontaneous like this before and I may never get the chance to again,” she said. We finished
breakfast and I helped her with her bags and watched her get into a cab for the airport.