You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-Nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood, Love, Loss (23 page)

This just led to more tension, more resentment, more pressure on the marriage.

As my husband, he should’ve understood. But as my manager he was furious. And I was angry that he was furious. At one time the manager-husband lines had been blurred. Now the lines weren’t blurred; they’d been erased and husband Ramon had disappeared. All that remained was manager Ramon. I didn’t want to be married to my manager. I wanted my husband back.

But where was he? He’d become so angry, so distant, so hard to reach.

I wanted this movie. I loved the idea of starring in a big-budget
action-adventure with lots of explosions and chases. I flew myself out to Hollywood for a meeting with
Eraser
’s producer and director. I had no idea that it was considered a big deal to fly out for a meeting on your dime. I didn’t travel in showbiz circles. I just wanted this part and the producer and director didn’t want to consider me. So I just booked a flight to change their mind. It made perfect sense to me.
I want the role. Here’s the obstacle. Let me fix it.

I met with the director and producer. Then I flew home to Chappaqua. A few days later, they flew me back to screen-test with Arnold. I knew I had to go in and kick ass. I had to prove I could act.

I met Arnold and he instantly put me at ease.

HOW I MADE THE TERMINATOR CRY

In 2010 Maria Shriver asked me to sing at
Arnold Schwarzenegger
’s holiday party at a Sacramento gala dinner shortly before he finished his term as governor of California. I wanted to do a parody of
The Sound of Music
song “So Long, Farewell.” (So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, adieu—I think it’s time to make
Eraser 2
.) But I also wanted to do another, more touching number. I called Maria and asked for her suggestions. The event was a week before Christmas and she told me that “Silent Night” was Arnold’s very favorite song. Then a friend suggested, “Why don’t you sing it in German?” Bingo! I had the song written phonetically on cards. As I was singing it, I looked over and Arnold’s eyes were watering up. He couldn’t believe I was singing it in German. Afterward, Maria said to me, “I’ve been married to him for more than twenty years and I can’t make him cry.”

“You know, you’re a lot like me,” he said. “People discounted us based on the way we looked. I was Mr. Universe. You were Miss America. But here we are—because of our strengths and courage. We showed them what we were made of.”

The screen test went well. Kopelson asked me to lose ten pounds and I did. They gave me the part and then reworked the ending so we could distance ourselves from
The Bodyguard
, which had just been a huge hit. The movie, starring Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner, was about a black woman in distress and the white man who saves her. The studio was worried that if they hired me—a black woman and a singer—
Eraser
would look like another copycat movie (even though the part hadn’t been written specifically for a black woman or a singer). So instead of falling in love, like Whitney and Kevin do, Arnold and I have a platonic relationship in the movie.

The film started shooting in New York in August 1995 and wrapped in Los Angeles in April 1996—nearly twice as long as we had expected. Working with Arnold was always an adventure. He was always in charge. He was forever saying, “Very nice.” It was his catchphrase after a job well-done. People paid attention each time he arrived on set and he was always a complete gentleman.

At his fiftieth birthday party, Gina Gershon and I sang “Happy Birthday,” Marilyn Monroe–style (and we presented him with a rocking chair).

During the filming, my children were in school in Chappaqua, so I was constantly on planes going back and forth. Ramon was busy working with Babyface, so he was constantly on the road, too. I flew back nearly every weekend. All the money I made went to pay for my plane tickets. I’d get off the red-eye and go back to being Mom—driving the kids to gymnastics, karate, and birthday parties, or suiting them up in their Rollerblades, helmets, and wrist guards.

My parents pitched in. Our nanny, Kathi, helped, too. I wasn’t going to let distance deter me from being there for my kids and my normal “non-Hollywood” life in the suburbs.

CHAPTER

18

I
was at school in between classes when Vanessa called with news I hadn’t expected—she and Ramon were getting divorced.

She spoke in between sobs. “Could you come over?”

“Of course,” I said.

I left school right away and headed to her place.

By the time I got there, Vanessa had calmed down. She was on the phone, talking to her business people while sorting through papers. She was figuring out what she needed to do to proceed with a divorce. She was dealing with it, not collapsing on her bed in tears. That’s how we’re similar. We don’t wallow in self-pity.

Despite my early reservations, I had thought Ramon and Vanessa were a good couple. They both loved their family. Ramon had turned out to be an excellent father who always was involved in his children’s lives. I don’t know what their marriage was really like. Does anyone other than the couple involved really know why a marriage
doesn’t work? I think Vanessa spent a lot of years putting up a good front, but she had been unhappy for some time.

It sounds cliché, but they had really just grown apart. It was a struggle because they were both so completely involved in Vanessa’s career. It ate up all their time and attention, and the marriage became a neglected child. Perhaps if they had seen this and had hired someone else to be Vanessa’s manager, they’d still be together.

There had been tension between them and they were arguing a lot. I know that was something that really bothered Vanessa—a home filled with stress. She had been raised in a very calm household and she wanted that for her children. Even though the kids were very young, they knew something was wrong. Vanessa and Ramon knew it was better to get divorced than to subject their children to their problems.

Vanessa and Ramon handled it well. They wanted what was best for the children. They put their differences aside so that the kids would have two parents showing up for their sports games and dance recitals. Even though they were no longer together as a married couple, their decision to remain committed to each other as parents is commendable. Some people don’t even realize they’re divorced.

Ramon and me on the beach—our life in the L.A. sun

PART FOUR

TODAY
AND EVERYDAY

CHAPTER

19

I try not to offer Vanessa advice unless asked. Then I will freely give my honest opinion with constructive suggestions. Otherwise, I listen and support. I act as a sounding board when Vanessa is trying to work through a situation. And usually she resolves it on her own.

—HELEN WILLIAMS

W
ow, you look fabulous,” friends would tell me. “What’s your secret?”

“Misery.” I’m skinniest when I’m miserable. I can’t eat because my stomach is in knots, and I lose twenty pounds in two weeks. Breakups and deaths do wonders for my body—but who wants to lose weight that way? After Ramon and I separated, it was a relief. I had spent a long time being sad, angry, and full of resentment. Secretly, I was also terrified—I’d never been without a man in my adult life. Actually, ever since I was sixteen, I was in a relationship. I was thirty-three years old and single for the first time ever.

I never imagined that I’d be divorced. It just wasn’t something I considered a possibility. When I said my vows at the altar at St. Francis Xavier, I meant them. I took “till death do you part” very
seriously. My parents had set a gold standard that I assumed I’d follow. I wanted what they had—the stability, the friendship, and the deep, mutual love and respect. But the tension between Ramon and me became something we could no longer live with. Marriage counseling, confession, even a new location to start over didn’t solve our issues.

Did I blame Ramon? Of course I did, at first. I had felt so abandoned. I felt he had checked out of our marriage a long time ago. We lived parallel lives. But time has made me reconsider. Now I can say I blame
us
. Maybe we didn’t work hard enough on our marriage. Maybe I spent so much time on my career and my children that I neglected him. Maybe he liked being my hero, my rescuer, and then when my career finally took off, our roles changed. I had transformed over the years—I was no longer the twentysomething girl who was afraid to speak her mind and who counted on Ramon for all the answers. I was a confident woman who didn’t want to take all of Ramon’s advice, who didn’t follow all of his suggestions. I think he felt betrayed by the new me. I had come into my own and this somehow rendered him less important—at least in his eyes.

I had become much more forthright in my feelings and opinions. I’ve discovered that many women marry men for their potential and pray they live up to the expectations, whereas men marry women hoping they’ll never change and have issues when they do transform and grow. Let’s hope I’ve learned to accept what I have and live in the present and be grateful.

I was lucky that my parents lived so close to me. They’d pick up the children from school, drive them to their sports and dance lessons, help with their homework, read to them, and teach them piano. Mom was always looking for fun activities to keep the kids’ minds off the divorce. Whenever there were concerts, fall festivals, or plays, Mom would pack the kids in the car and go. Dad was really big on tradition and consistency—he took the kids to local parades,
Easter egg hunts, and to see Fourth of July fireworks. Every year he’d drive them to a farm upstate where they’d cut down our Christmas tree and then stop at Grandma’s, a restaurant and pie shop in Yorktown, on the way back home, a Christmas tree strapped on top of the car.

Whenever I’ve faced a huge obstacle or passage in my life, I’ve never felt alone. I’ve always been surrounded by love and family. In my life, it really does take a village.

My dad hated divorce. It was hard for Dad to accept that my marriage had ended. He was a big proponent of keeping marriages together. He believed that there was no problem that couldn’t be worked out if you had patience and commitment. When I first told him I was getting divorced, he’d said to me, “Don’t make any rash decisions.” He had counseled other family members through rocky times in their marriages, and Dad thought he could help Ramon and me.

Mom would always stick up for me and say, “Oh, Milton, can’t you see she’s done? She’s had enough.”

The divorce was hard on all the kids, but especially Melanie, the oldest, who was nine. She was angry and confused. Sometimes she’d lash out at me; other times it was at Ramon. She’d burst into tears and retreat to her room.

But Ramon and I had made a pact to put the children first. We had to get past our resentments and establish some sort of friendship. We didn’t have any bitter feuds over property or custody. (I got the house, with all its debt from the renovations.) We both wanted to be there for all the major milestones in our children’s lives—birthday parties, dance recitals, sporting events, First Communions, graduations. And we definitely didn’t want to be the parents of the stressed-out kids who had to worry that their mom and dad would kill each other if they were in the same room. We continued to attend mass together on Sundays at Saint John and Saint Mary, our
parish church (we still do when the kids are all home). Ramon and I wanted to set an example for the children. We were together so much that some of the kids’ friends didn’t even realize we were divorced.

Ramon moved nearby and we split custody during the week. I had Monday and Tuesday; Ramon had Wednesday and Thursday. Then we switched off every other weekend. We made it work. Ramon always lived only five minutes away. The only real inconvenience was that the kids would leave books, clothes, or favorite stuffed animals at one home, when they wanted them at the other home. We were constantly driving back and forth to retrieve forgotten items.

It was tough on all of us. Divorce is the most painful experience, especially when there are kids involved. But I felt that Ramon really stepped up and became an even better, more involved father as a result of being divorced. I have seen so many friends who go through wicked divorces and the kids wind up being the pawns in the parents’ head games. Kids suffer enough during a divorce—it’s just not fair to put them in the middle of their parents’ issues. The only time it would get weird and uncomfortable was when we had “others.” At the girls’ first dance recital after our split, Ramon showed up with a new girlfriend on his arm. The whispers started: “Who’s that?” But “Team V” was there to support me. Women want to protect and unite. I guess that’s what friends are for.

I never knew how quiet a house could be until the kids weren’t with me. It took a long time for me to adjust to the silence. My first Christmas alone really crushed me. I’m such a big lover of traditions, especially at the holidays. I love having the family all together.