Where Mercy Is Shown, Mercy Is Given (2010) (8 page)

The thought of Tucker being hooked on drugs upset me more than I can ever put into words. I should have stepped in to intervene, but I didn’t. In the meantime, Beth had even threatened to call Tucker’s parole officer to tell him he was using drugs and using a prosthetic penis to pass his urine tests, because she knew he was in too deep to get off the drugs himself. I had been getting Tucker out of bad situations for years, but this time it felt like a betrayal to rat out my own kid. Since Tucker was on parole, an infraction like this would surely send him back to jail, something I didn’t want to be responsible for, so I chose to do nothing. After losing Barbara Katie to drugs, I swore that I’d never allow another one of my children to make the same mistake. Everything inside me knew what I had to do so I wouldn’t lose Tucker too, but still, for too long, I chose to do nothing.

When I finally decided to call Tucker to tell him how I felt, I really believed he would understand that what I was saying was for his own good. Like any hands-on parent, I wanted to help Tucker get away from the girlfriend I was convinced was adding to his problems.

That now infamous conversation lasted a solid twenty-five minutes, not the eight minutes or so that were leaked to the media. The call
started off calm and cool, but the more I pleaded with him to leave the girl, the harder he pushed back, until I finally lost my temper. I became so pissed off that I couldn’t get it through his thick head that I believed everything I was suggesting was for his own good. Tucker kept trying to convince me that since we never allowed his girlfriend into the house, we never spent the time to get to know her like he had. But we did know her, well enough to know we had to keep someone we were certain was out to hurt our family out of our home. No way, that would never happen. Not in my house! That’s when I began saying things about Monique I now regret.

“I’m not taking the chance on some motherf**ker. I don’t care if she’s a Mexican, a whore, whatever…it’s not because she’s black. It’s because we use the word n***er sometimes here. I’m not going to take a chance ever in life for losing everything I’ve worked for thirty years because some f**king n***er heard us say n***er and turned us in to the
Enquirer
magazine. Our career is over. I’m not taking that chance at all, never in life. Never. Never.”

Beth was standing in the courtyard outside our bedroom telling me to be quiet. She kept saying I needed to stop talking and hang up the phone, but I didn’t. Nope. I kept right on talking. When I look at those words in print, it hurts my heart to think they ever came out of my mouth. It’s obvious that I wasn’t talking about the color of Monique’s skin so much as the character, or lack thereof, that this young woman embodied, this young woman who had all but taken over my son’s life. None of my sons had Anglo-Saxon wives or girlfriends, so my concern for Tucker had nothing to do with race.

I spent years studying and learning from Tony Robbins, who taught me that if a person doesn’t understand what you’re saying, you have to continue to change your approach until the person does. So I begged Tucker to leave Monique in every way I could, giving him all the reasons why I felt the way I did and why I thought she was bad news. I’d initially gotten on the phone to explain to Tucker why he couldn’t bring her around my house, to tell him that she was trouble. But the more I tried to make my point, the less I thought I was getting through to him. Stupidly, I kept hoping I would somehow get through to his
stubborn Chapman ass. Tucker didn’t have much to say as I talked. One of the only things I remember him saying was “If Baby Lyssa was dating a black guy, you wouldn’t be acting this way.”

“If Lyssa was dating a n***er, we would all say f*ck you…and you know that. If Lyssa brought a black guy home ya da da…it’s not that they’re black, it’s none of that. It’s that we use the word n***er. We don’t mean you fucking scum n***er without a soul. We don’t mean that shit. But America would think we mean that. And we’re not taking a chance on losing everything we got over a racial slur because our son goes with a girl like that. I can’t do that, Tucker. You can’t expect Gary, Bonnie, Cecily, all them young kids to because ‘I’m in love for seven months’—fuck that! So I’ll help you get another job, but you cannot work here unless you break up with her and she’s out of your life. I can’t handle that shit. I got ’em in the parking lot trying to record us. I got that girl saying she’s gonna wear a recorder…”

Looking back, I realize that, deep down, I instinctively knew this was going to end up in print somewhere. I was trying to protect everything I held near and dear—my family, my career, and most of all, my son. The son I’d delivered into this world with my bare hands. When his mother went into labor, she let out such a loud scream I thought she was dying. She passed out cold after her water broke. I picked her up, carried her into the bedroom, and did what I could to make sure she and the baby were safe. Thankfully, my mother didn’t live far from our house. I called her to say I needed help getting my wife to the hospital. By the time Mom got to me, Lyssa was already giving birth. I could see the baby’s head in between her legs. Even though I didn’t know why I needed it, I told Mom to get me some hot water. I remembered watching episodes of
Gunsmoke
as a kid and hearing people yell for hot water and towels when a woman went into labor, so I did too. Mom came running into the bedroom with hot water and a towel.

I reached between Lyssa’s legs and began to pull gently on the baby’s head. She was screaming while I yelled, “Push, push!” I pulled until one little shoulder popped through and then the other. Within seconds I was holding Tucker in my arms. But something was wrong.
He wasn’t breathing. He wasn’t crying, and now I noticed he was completely blue.

“He’s dead,” I said to Mom as tears streamed down my cheeks.

I put his little body to the side while I pulled on the umbilical cord. When the placenta came out, I thought it was another dead baby. I was absolutely beside myself with grief.

“Good job, Dad,” a voice said from behind me. It was a paramedic who had arrived and then taken a large scissor and cut the cord.

Tucker began to cry. I never felt so proud in my life. I had brought this little baby into the world, and I felt a bond from the very moment I held him in my arms. I named him Tucker D. Chapman. His initials were the same as the Texas Department of Corrections. I looked into my son’s eyes and thought,
This is the son that I’ll be a good guy for.
I hadn’t been a model citizen up until that point. But something about Tucker made me want to live an honest, honorable life.

I have a soft spot for all of my children, but the three I had with Big Lyssa have always had a special little piece of me because of my shame and guilt about the divorce. I spent years feeling responsible because they didn’t have a mother who was around. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for any of my kids, but those three in particular were impossible for me to say no to.

One Christmas, when he was just a little boy, Tucker begged me for a “My Buddy” doll. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to buy it for him. Money was tight and the doll was really expensive. Even so, I didn’t want to disappoint my son, so I spent all of Christmas Eve that year bounty hunting so I could earn enough money to buy the doll. I sat on the guy I was chasing for hours, just waiting for the right moment to get him. The cops wanted him as much as I did, but if they got him first, I wouldn’t make a dime, which meant I wouldn’t be able to bring home the doll for Tucker.

The cops drove by me from time to time over the course of the day and asked, “Are you going to get him?”

“I’ll get him.” I said. And then one of the cops said to me, “Why? Is he your buddy?”

I knew right then the Lord was going to let me catch this guy so I could get Tucker his My Buddy doll just in time to open it on Christmas Day. Sure enough, I caught my jump. I sang the jingle from the doll commercial all the way to the jail. The poor bastard probably thought I was nuts. By the time I handed him over, I barely had enough time to make it to the store before they closed for the holiday. When I got there, there was only one doll left. I took the box off the shelf as fast as I could so no one else would swoop in. I couldn’t wait to give My Buddy to Tucker and see the look on his face knowing that his old man had come through.

I had a lot of great times with Tucker over the years. When he got out of prison, I knew he was feeling a little left out of the mix because he wasn’t on our show. One of the last episodes we shot before going on break for the season was when Duane Lee, Leland, and I taught Tucker how to drive. We set up bright orange pylons in an empty parking lot so he could take serpentine turns through them. We put that boy through all sorts of torturous drills, but it was all in the name of family fun, brotherly bonding, and togetherness. When we finished, Duane Lee and Tucker were walking away, when I heard Duane Lee say, “Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

“How about I drive
you
home?” Tucker asked.

“No way! I’m not letting you drive my car.”

We all laughed, but it was a really touching moment between my boys I’ll never forget. It was probably the last good time we all had together.

I hung up the phone after going off on Tucker, somehow knowing that I would pay for losing my cool. I hoped and prayed he wasn’t going to be my Judas, the one to sell me out, but deep down, I knew that he was capable of it. I wanted to believe it was because of what the drugs he was hooked on had done to him, and that he wasn’t acting out of pure malice. That’s an awful feeling for a father to have about his son.

Family is everything to me. I will defend my children to the bitter end against anyone or anything that I deem dangerous or harmful. I
spent the rest of the day secretly fearing that I would now be in a position where I would have to defend myself against a member of my own family. I knew the bomb would eventually drop. I just didn’t know when.

From that day forward, I became enemy numero uno to my son. Tucker had it in for me. He was angry about our conversation and harbored a lot of resentment toward me for demanding he dump his girlfriend. According to sources, he recorded the call in March 2007 but didn’t make the deal with the
National Enquirer
until May, and didn’t turn over the tapes until October.

By the time Tucker finally did turn over the tapes, his anger toward the entire family had grown out of control. It was like a time bomb waiting to explode. He’d spent years believing he was mistreated. He didn’t get a lot of love from his mom, and as much as I wanted to be there for him, I was something of an absentee dad because I was always working. When he was growing up, I used to hug and kiss him all the time, but when he became a teenager, like a lot of kids that age, he didn’t like me to do that anymore. I guess he thought it was embarrassing to have his dad smother him. I think Monique was the first woman in his life who loved him and showed him affection like that. I don’t know if she became a mother figure to him, but she sure had a hold on him like his mother. Most people gravitate toward partners who are like their mom or dad because there’s a comfort in that, especially when that type of love was absent while they were growing up. After four years in prison, Tucker was so starved for love and affection. I should have known exactly how he felt because I also felt that way when I got out.

It’s not a secret there’s no love lost between his mother and me. I blame her for the way she was with our three children, and she’s angry with me for moving on with my life. In truth, I bear a great deal of responsibility for the way things turned out for Tucker because I played a role in many of the difficult events in his life. The strained relationship between his mother and me hurt all of our kids. If we had communicated better and learned to work with each other instead of
against each other, perhaps Barbara Katie would be alive today, Baby Lyssa wouldn’t have been raped, and Tucker wouldn’t have gone to jail. I carry a tremendous amount of guilt for not having the courage to be a more strict dad and a more demanding ex-husband. The anger my ex-wife harbors toward me was funneled through to our children. She filled their heads with all sorts of stories that simply weren’t true so she would be able to have a hold on them and turn each of those kids against me. Once I got Baby Lyssa back, she no longer wanted to hear her mother’s rhetoric or propaganda. She could see how much better off her life was living with Beth and me. Barbara Katie played both sides until the day she died, so I never had the chance to turn things around for her before it was too late. Tucker was out of his mother’s grip for four years while he was incarcerated, but it didn’t take long after his release for her to sink her hooks back into him and begin to turn him against me. While I was doing everything I could to help Tucker adjust to life on the outside, his mother coddled him, preyed on his insecurities, and pushed our child to do something I am sure he now regrets.

Apparently, the
National Enquirer
sent the contracts for payment to Tucker’s mother in Alaska so she could negotiate the deal on Tucker’s behalf. He signed the documents but refused to turn over the tapes for several months. For whatever reason, he kept backing out of making that final destructive move that might sink my battleship for good.

Beth actually caught Tucker talking to the
National Enquirer
in June. She warned him that he better not be running his mouth off about the family or there would be hell to pay. My oldest son, Christopher, had already sold a story to the
Enquirer
that same month saying I beat him as a kid, which sent us all over the edge. Tucker could see that the tabloids were a real threat to us and an extremely sore subject with the network. He had found my Achilles’ heel and planned to use it against me.

When I called Tucker that fateful day, I was still trying to reason with him. Of course, I know there’s no reasoning with an addict. I wasn’t giving him the kind of help he was so clearly crying out for, which I regret with all my heart.