High On Arrival (14 page)

14

When I came back to
One Day at a Time
after my honeymoon, I didn’t show my castmates photos of Hawaii, and they didn’t congratulate me. The fire, which had been all over the news, overwhelmed the rest—and none of them were exactly enthusiastic about Jeff anyway. I’d married him so quickly, and those who met him saw only his obnoxious side. They expressed their sympathy about the fire, and I thanked them, but I was distant. I was traumatized; the impermanence of everything weighed heavily on me. I’d put a statue of St. Francis of Assisi in the front courtyard of the house to protect my cat, and if even St. Francis couldn’t protect poor Brains, then I couldn’t count on anyone to protect me. I should have felt safe in the arms of people who knew and loved me. Instead, my drug use escalated, as if the fire were still burning, destroying whatever lay in its path.

The house in the hills became a major drug hangout. The scene was reminiscent of my father’s mansions growing up. The digs weren’t so luxurious, but I had a great deal of money, and Jeff and I spent it on shitloads of drugs. Perhaps not surprisingly, it turns out that free-flowing drugs attract a pretty nasty crowd. There were always ten or more people partying in our house, but whereas my dad’s friends had been stoned and mellow, our friends were freebasing like crazy. Half-strangers crawled around on the floor, smoking bits of the carpet, picking stray rice kernels out of corners, hoping they might be crumbs of base.

I was still friendly with Linda Ronstadt, who was now dating Governor Jerry Brown. They dropped by once. I was in the upstairs living room with a bunch of the usual suspects. There was an open stairway, and as people came up the stairs their heads would appear in the room over a ledge. As I sat there in the living room I saw Jerry’s head pop up above the short wall like a little gopher. He looked around, saw the scene, and his head retreated right back down the stairs.

We often flew to my dear father-in-law’s drug clinic in Florida to stock up on pills. On one of these occasions Jeff and I were photographed outside our hotel. The photo was published in the
Enquirer,
and it was less than flattering. I looked like Keith Richards on a bad day. So burnt out—gaunt and weird— I didn’t even look like a girl. Size zero was loose on me. I didn’t like the photo or the bad press that followed it, but what was I supposed to do—change? That wasn’t an option.

I still thought I was having fun. In the beginning, in spite of the drugs, Jeff and I behaved like a couple of kids in love. But the money and the drugs started to affect Jeff. He had been struggling financially. When we got married, he suddenly had access to an unending supply of cash. Jeff just spent and spent and spent. There was often a three-foot line of cocaine running down the mirrored wet bar. We hemorrhaged money on drugs, travel, hotels, cars, and musical equipment. I paid for everything. Pat McQueeney and her daughter Kathleen, who were managing my affairs, told me that the outflow was too high and I was going to go broke. They kept telling us to stop spending, but I didn’t pay attention.

Jeff also started to be more possessive. At first he’d just ask, “Where are you going?” and I’d say, “I’m going to buy bras— why? Do you want to come with me?” The questions grew more intense, but the change was gradual and I didn’t notice right away.

Jeff dreamed of being a rock ’n’ roll producer, so we started a band. I was the lead singer. But I still had my job at
One Day at a Time,
which was just starting its fifth season. So I worked on the show from ten to five every day, then went into the recording studio with Jeff and the band from evening till dawn. The schedule fueled my habit. I was so tired during the day that I had to do coke to stay up, then so tired at night that I’d do even more. I felt like a wind-up doll.

Patricia Fass Palmer, a producer on the show, saw me weaving and bouncing down the hall. Alan Rafkin, the director, said I was “wonderfully easy, but when [I] was under the influence and talking to a wall … it wasn’t registering.”

I couldn’t go on like this. Jack Elinson and Dick Bensfield, the executive producers of
One Day at a Time,
called me into their office for a meeting. It sounded like I was being called into the principal’s office—though I never had been, not even in the days when I showed up at junior high on acid. I sat down in the office across from Dick’s desk and they cut to the chase. They said, “You’re looking tired. We’re going to give you a sabbatical. Take some time for yourself. Put on a little weight. Get well. Come back in three weeks.” Things were different then. They didn’t say “We know you’re taking drugs” and send me to rehab as they might now. Rehab wasn’t in the news every day. I was a pioneer celebrity kid drug addict, and nobody knew what to do with me. They didn’t know, and I didn’t know.

I felt bad, just as I’d always felt bad when I disappointed Aunt Rosie by staying out late. So during the time off I cleaned up my act—stayed away from coke, got my teeth cleaned and my hair cut and colored, and bought some new clothes. Three weeks later I came back: “Ta-da!” They said, “Oh, you look great,” and the show went on.

In October 1979 I came back to
One Day at a Time
and found out that while Julie and I were gone from the show, we’d fallen in love. I was introduced to Michael Lembeck, who would play Julie’s husband. Michael was so handsome, so funny, so sexy. A perfect husband for Julie. I loved him immediately, and loved his wife too. I didn’t socialize regularly with anybody from the show, but Michael and Barbara had me over for dinner a couple of times. My character and I were married months apart, but Julie the rebel cleaned up for her big day. She wore a white lacy wedding dress with a high neck, a brooch, and a hat. I had worn red satin tennis shoes. And that was just the most obvious difference. By now my life was so far removed from Julie’s that any parallels in our lives were lost on me.

I came back to the show with renewed energy. I didn’t want to disappoint anybody. But weeks later, without thinking of it as a lapse or a failure, I was back to using again. Val says she saw me on the monitor, standing on the set, nodding off, unable to keep my eyes open. She stood there thinking,
Please, somebody help her.
Even my cousin Nancy, who had partied with me plenty, said, “Everyone wanted the best for her. But she was so sure that what she was doing was right. She was an independent, grown-up person.” I didn’t think I had a problem. I certainly didn’t think of myself as an addict. I just continued to live the way I wanted to live, regardless of what anyone else wanted me to do. Same as I had done with Aunt Rosie.

It was the beginning of 1980. I was twenty and about to face one fucker of a year. It began with my grandmother. Dini was very sick. She’d had a stroke and was in the hospital, dying. My father and Gen were off the map—soon after my wedding party on the
Wild Goose
they’d fled to the East Coast with Tam. Nobody knew exactly where they were and Michelle and Rosie, who had temporary legal custody, had reported them to the LAPD, who turned the case over to the FBI. It was a messy, painful situation and it is Tam’s story, not mine. But when I went to see Dini, I asked Aunt Rosie, “Have you called Dad?” She said, “To hell with him. He doesn’t care. He won’t show up.” Rosie, Michelle, my mother—they were all mad at Dad and Gen for leaving with Tam and for what had happened between Dad and me in Florida. These women—strong, loving women who made a practice of forgiving my father—were angry at last. They had been wronged many times in many ways, but now they saw his children being wronged and they couldn’t accept it. It was unforgivable. I said, “She’s his mother! You think he’s fucked up now—just wait until his mother dies without us telling him.”

Aunt Rosie said, “We don’t want him here. Don’t you dare tell him.” It amazed and infuriated me that people could let this personal stuff get in the way of a mother and a son. I wasn’t a parent yet, but I knew what my father meant to Dini. She was born on a reservation in Oklahoma. She saw the world in plain terms. It didn’t matter how fucked up her son was, he was her life. I understood that my family had lost respect for my father. He deserved that. But nothing could justify depriving him and his mother of their last good-bye.

The decision to contact Dad was thorny enough, but finding him was nearly impossible. Once again I went into overdrive, dialing every number I knew and saying, “His mother’s dying. You have to help me find him.” Finally, before I had to call Mick Jagger again, I found Dad in New York. I said, “Look, Dad, Dini’s in the hospital and I think you should come.” Dad and I were both drug fiends, but at this point he was broke and I had money to burn. I bought him and Genevieve first-class plane tickets and met them at the airport in a stretch limo.

I don’t know how long it had been since my father and his mother had seen each other, but when I picked him up at the airport, Dad was a mess. My father grew up with a father who was a mean drunk. My grandfather spent days, nights, years drinking bottle after bottle of Four Roses bourbon in the locked cellar while his wife, my grandmother Dini, carried the weight of the family on her shoulders. As damaged as my father was, his mother had been his salvation. My family was against me bringing him to the hospital, but a man as tortured and complicated and fucked up as my dad was—this moment was deeply important to him. I couldn’t let it go by. We went straight from the airport to Dini’s bedside.

When we arrived, Dini wasn’t conscious. Dad, kneeling at her side, was still almost as tall as I was. He said, “Mom, Mom.”

When my father spoke, my grandmother came to. She opened her eyes and said, “My boy, Johnny, my boy,” then let her lids fall again. It was clear to me that this woman had been waiting to see her son. Gen was being a drama queen, as always. She said, “Oh, Dini, Dini!”

Dad looked at her and said, “Shut the fuck up, Gen. Get out of here.” Gen left the room and Dad put his head down next to his mother and stroked her hand. He stayed with her that way for a good long while. It was a tender scene. How could anyone be angry enough to deprive these two of that moment? I could never be that angry.

Dini died shortly after we left the room. It was January 20, 1980.

About a month later Alan Horn, the head of the production company, called me and Pat McQueeney into his office. I didn’t know what the meeting was about—maybe to renegotiate my contract or to say “Good job, kid.” I knew that ratings had skyrocketed since my return from suspension.

Alan fired me.

I was shocked. This may be equally shocking to those I worked with, but I didn’t know I was creating a problem. I knew I was doing drugs. I knew I was late every single day. But I was under the impression that my performance wasn’t suffering.

If I’d been older and wiser, maybe I’d have gotten the message when Alan Rafkin had custom coffee cups made for everyone. Mine showed me running and had excuses written all over it:
The traffic was bad; My alarm didn’t go off; I got lost.
(He tactfully excluded
I used gonorrhea eyedrops
and
I had a miscarriage
.) I should have seen the writing on the cup—I had run out of excuses.

I always found energy for the show. I always got it up for my performance before the studio audience, but that wasn’t enough. My exhaustion showed at rehearsals and between takes. I wasn’t a positive presence. And my drug use had taken a toll on my appearance. I was painfully thin and my skin was terrible—acne exacerbated by malnutrition. It was increasingly difficult for them to shoot me. Skinny wasn’t joke material for Schneider anymore. For as long as I can remember, little old ladies have come up to me on the street and said, “I’m praying for you, dear. I’ve been praying for you since you were a little girl.” People who used to watch the show tell me they tuned in to see how fucked up I was, how skinny I could get. They saw that I was disappearing, body and soul.

On
True Hollywood Story
, Alan Rafkin recalled what happened from his perspective: “I had been told that the next time she came in unable to perform I was to call and they would send her to a doctor for a drug test and proceed from there. On March 3, 1980, she came in clinging to a wall. She sat in the makeup chair making no sense. She failed the drug test. Within hours she was fired.”

I was the last to know how fucked up I was. Clearly there was a time when things got out of control and it was obvious to everyone but me. I don’t remember being mean or rude, but I do remember being defensive, saying, “I’m fine. What are you guys talking about? Everything’s okay.” I’m sure I was out of it, apologetic, defensive, making excuses, justifying. The show, all its employees, the ratings, the money it earned—it all relied on me, and I was the thin and thinner embodiment of unreliability. There was a lot at stake, and I was a loose cannon. But I don’t think stabilizing the show was the only reason they fired me. Everyone knew I was in trouble. Firing me was their attempt to help me.

I felt like my family was kicking me out of the house for dropping a fork. Obviously what I was doing was much more destructive and unprofessional than dropping a fork, but that’s as close as I can come to how it felt—the people I loved were giving up on me way before I’d given up on myself. Nonetheless, I treated the firing as if it was something as trivial as losing my phone book. I loved the idea of being on the show, but it had fallen into my lap. So much had been handed to me that for all I knew, life would go on like that. Everything would be okay. I had no idea how many bridges I had burned and no idea what I had lost. The show had been the most stable, constant part of my life for six years that began when I was still an eager teenager full of energy and promise. Now I was a different person, and though I didn’t know it yet, I had squandered my best opportunity.