Jeannie Out Of The Bottle (28 page)

Heroin became both his master and his mistress. His wife couldn’t take it anymore and, understandably, left him, though she didn’t stop caring about him.

One night, just after her separation from him, I received a call from Matthew. He sounded half dead and managed to moan, “Please help me, Mom, I’m sick, I’m really sick.”

Dolores and I, and Michael’s wife, Beverly, swung into action. Together we raced to Matthew’s apartment in Venice, which I’d rented for him in the hope that he would create a new and healthier life for himself there.

By the time we got to the apartment, Matthew was unconscious, clearly having overdosed. Terrified out of our wits, the three of us carried him out to the car and rushed him to the hospital. I was worried to death about him, but I was also as mad as hell. I’d been paying the rent at the apartment, but it was filthy. There were no sheets on the bed, and cartons of old food were moldering on the floor. He was hooked on heroin again, and there was nothing on God’s earth that I could do about it.

When he was twenty-nine, Matthew was diagnosed with clinical depression and given medication, but that didn’t help him. He still couldn’t keep a job and couldn’t stay in school, and he was still hopelessly hooked on heroin.

In 1999, however, he took part in a documentary about me, in which he talked about me in loving terms and at the same time chose to go public with his drug addiction. It was deeply moving, but no guarantee that he’d banished drugs from his life forever.

In 2000, though, hope flared again when he got clean and became engaged to a wonderful girl, Leanna Green. He and Leanna moved into an apartment in Covina together, and my son’s life seemed to be back on track again. To be honest, “again” didn’t really enter into it, because since the age of ten the only track Matthew had been on was one utterly dominated by drugs.

Recently he had been devoting himself to bodybuilding. He was six foot four and he’d bulked up to 280 pounds, determined to win the Mr. Muscle competition in Los Angeles that July. Better still, he had a small part as an inmate in an upcoming prison thriller, Con Games. He was so proud that he had gotten the job based on his own talent and that he had never told anybody who his parents were.

He and I were closer than ever, and he visited me and Jon several times a week. One day he told me, “Life is great, Mom. I can’t believe I spent so many years not being awake to how green the trees are.”

Initially I was almost afraid to allow myself to experience even a modicum of joy and optimism about Matthew’s future. Realizing that my feelings wouldn’t influence the outcome of his struggle with drugs, either positively or negatively, I decided to throw caution to the wind and flung myself into preparations for my son’s wedding. I even caught myself thinking of names for my grandchildren.

The call came at 3:00 AM on June 26, 2001. For the past fourteen years, whenever my telephone rang, I had consistently feared the worst: news that Matthew was injured or dead. During that time I lived on a precipice of fear, just waiting for the inevitable to happen, yet always escaping the final drop.

But on the morning of June 26, all my worst fears came true. Matthew was dead.

I heard the news from Michael’s cousin. Although Matthew always carried a note in his pocket with my name and phone number on it, the police didn’t want to call me directly and tell me what had happened. I later found out that the authorities always call a close relative to break the news of a child’s death to that child’s parent.

He’d been found at nine the previous evening, his body slumped over the steering wheel of his truck at a Chevron gas station in Monrovia, near the 210 freeway. He was alone, and there was no evidence of trauma or foul play.

The press reported that twenty-five paramedics were called to the scene. It didn’t matter how many there were; it was too late. Beside Matthew’s body, they found a syringe as well as vials of anabolic steroids; he’d been injecting himself to bulk up for the bodybuilding contest. Blood tests revealed that he had shot up with a dose of unusually pure heroin, which had proved too much for his heart.

Matthew was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park. He was just thirty-five years old.

Sometimes I come across a photograph of myself at Matthew’s funeral, looking drawn, thin, and tired beyond belief. When I was a child and then a teenager and upset about something, my mother would always say, “Remember, Barbara, no one has died! That’s the only thing that’s important. No one has died. Put it into perspective.”

Now Matthew—young, vital, and loving—had died, and that was the only thing that was important. I wanted to die myself, but I remembered what Matthew had once said about me on a TV show: My mother is one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. Once upon a time, maybe, but not now, not now that he had gone. But I remembered what he’d said, and I knew it would be disrespectful to Matthew if I couldn’t be strong.

In the days, weeks, months, and years since the funeral, I have put one foot in front of the other and carried on as best as I could. In the intervening years, I’ve often been asked how anyone can cope with losing a child, and the answer is that you don’t. You can’t. There’s no way. You don’t know how you will live through it, how you can survive. But you just do. There’s no other choice.

I can still laugh, I can still go to parties, I can still have fun, but there’s a part of me that is missing and always will be. Matthew is never out of my mind, and the pain of losing him and of missing him doesn’t get less. Not on his birthday, not on Christmas, not on my birthday. Never. But he’s always with me. I talk to him constantly, and I will miss him forever.

SINCE MATTHEW’S DEATH, I’ve gone public about his battle with drugs during an hour-long live interview with Larry King, and I also gave an interview to Good Morning America during which I—who never cry in public—broke down in floods of tears on camera, in front of a nationwide audience of millions.

But no matter how severe the pain of reliving Matthew’s death and his struggle against drugs, it is worth it to me if, through my openness, I am able to help just one parent spot in their child the early signs of drug addiction that I failed to recognize in Matthew.

As I write this, nine years have passed since his death, and I still think of him every day and dream of him every night. I am so blessed that through it all Jon was always by my side.

Today, happily, my career continues to keep me busy in a varieity of new and challenging roles. I still think of I Dream of Jeannie with great affection, and greatly appreciate the opportunities it has brought me through the years. The show has proved very popular over the years, and luckily, some of that popularity has rubbed off on me. I became a spokesperson for L’eggs panty hose, and appeared in commercials for Old Navy, TV Land, and Guarantee Trust Life Insurance. Great fun was a commercial for the RX 300 Lexus in which I’m wearing my I Dream of Jeannie harem costume and sitting in the back of the car. All fun, and nicely lucrative for me; I was happy to do them.

I was invited to the Aladdin Resort and Casino in Las Vegas to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of I Dream of Jeannie and to unveil the latest Barbie doll: an exact replica of Jeannie. Dressed in a pink harem outfit, complete with a pink veil, the Jeannie Barbie doll comes with crossed arms, and looks as if she is about to blink at any second.

A glitzy I Dream of Jeannie slot machine featuring a logo of me as Jeannie, dressed in her trademark harem pants and skimpy top, was launched in casinos throughout America. In a cute technical trick, the machine played a tape of my voice purring at players, “Oh, that’s wonderful, Master,” or “Yes, Master! Yes! Yes!” when they won, or “Back in the bottle! Try again” when they lost.

One day my dear friend and hairdresser Zak Taylor and I were at Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal in Atlantic City when I must have been inspired by the spirit of Jeannie’s evil twin sister. We were walking through the casino when I heard my voice say, “Yes, Master,” and saw a young man playing the I Dream of Jeannie slot machine. I crept up behind him and, just as he was about to pull the handle, whispered, “May I help you, Master? I will do that for you, Master!” He almost fell off his stool, and Zak and I nearly died laughing. But we ended up paying a price for having been so mischievous, as crowds of people immediately gathered around me and I ended up spending the rest of the evening signing autographs.

There are still Jeannie machines in casinos all over America. There are Jeannie board games. There’s even a Jeannie porn film! Who would have imagined that when the series first came out? The show and I were supposed to be so innocent—the censors actually banned me from revealing my belly button on TV!

I’ve been fortunate to have many memorable moments in my career: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a round-the-world USO tour with Bob Hope during the first Gulf War (Bob referred to the tour as the “Persian Gulp”). I was most honored to be invited by President George W. Bush to be mistress of ceremonies at a White House Christmas tree lighting ceremony, which took place outside in front of an audience of six thousand people, and to be invited to have dinner at the White House afterward.

It was snowing heavily when I arrived at the White House, and all the seats had to be wiped clean for the audience. As a dyed-in-the-wool California girl, I thought the event would have to be canceled. But parents arrived with their eager-faced children, and the ceremony went on as planned. President and Mrs. Bush arrived to watch and stayed in their box for the entire event. I sang several Christmas carols, ending with the perennial favorite “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Then Santa, played by country-and-western singer Roy Clark, made his entrance onstage.

I introduced him to the audience, then left the stage and headed for the dressing room. Before I got very far, the director rushed up to me.

“Barbara! Go back onstage again! Santa has lost his pants! Get out there and pull them up for him,” he said.

“Forget it,” I said. “There’s no way I’m going to touch Santa’s pants!”

I peeked through the curtains just in time to see Santa finish his song with his pants right down below his knees. I went back onstage again and thanked him for being on the show, but all the time I kept my eyes fixed firmly on his face!

In 2006, Larry and I reunited in a stage production of A. R. Gurney’s wonderful two-person play Love Letters. Romantic, nostalgic, sentimental, a bittersweet commentary on the passing of time and the changing face of love through the decades, the play was the perfect vehicle for us. As always, working with Larry was a delight.

There is excited talk at Sony these days about a big-screen feature film of I Dream of Jeannie, with stars like Cameron Diaz, Jessica Simpson, Alicia Silverstone, and even Gwyneth Paltrow being considered to play Jeannie. My dear friend Sid Ganis, a producer who recently completed two terms as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has been shepherding the project for quite a while now, and has never lost faith in the property. When it’s made, I’d like to be around to see it. Sidney Sheldon always said that one day he wanted to see me play Jeannie’s mother. Perhaps, perhaps not. All I know is that I intend to be working until I’m ninety.

Jon and I continue to live in our Beverly Hills home, along with our Labradoodle, Djinn Djinn, named after the dog in I Dream of Jeannie.

The wonderful thing about my business and about my life is that I never know what’s around the corner. I’m very lucky to like what I do and to be able to work at it so happily and for so long. I’ve always considered my career to be a great joy and a great gift. I love it, and long may it continue.

I want to especially thank my fans, writer Wendy Leigh, my agent, Dan Strone, and the truly wonderful and talented team brought together for my memoir by my publisher, Tina Constable, and my terrific and mentoring editor, Sydny Miner, with her assistant editor, Anna Thompson.

Without the love, encouragement, and wisdom of all of you, I would never have had the courage to get out of the bottle.

With love and appreciation,

Barbara