“Well, what do you want from me?” I fired back.
That made him angry. “There is one thing in life I want to be, Jessica,” he told me. “A good man. A good father. I can’t help it that I fell in love with someone seven years younger than me. I just can’t.”
“I just want to make you happy.”
“Being with you makes me happy,” he said. “I loved us. I don’t have that right now, and it’s something I’m trying to deal with.”
I was certain that one way he was dealing with it was seeing a lot of women, an accusation he said he refused to dignify with a response. I started hanging out with Dan, but that quickly fizzled even though he helped my dancing and onstage confidence tremendously. I think my dad even preferred me dating Nick to Dan. I would tell myself I had no right to be jealous if Nick had a life of his own, and for the rest of that summer—as I toured with Destiny’s Child on the TRL tour, and then began my own Dreamchaser solo tour—we would go through times of calling and not calling each other. I would congratulate myself when I didn’t call him, and then he would call from some stop in Asia, and the cycle would begin again.
I knew Nick was excited about the Michael Jackson tribute concert he was doing at Madison Square Garden on September 10. It was the last night of a three-day tribute to Michael’s thirty years in show business. Nick performed “Man in the Mirror” with 98, Usher, and Luther Vandross, and I knew how much that meant to him. I thought he would call me after, and I told myself not to be jealous that he was invited to do this major event while I sat alone at home nearly three thousand miles away in Los Angeles.
I fell asleep waiting for the call, and when the phone did ring, it was early in the morning. It was Nick, and there was a fear and a rush in his voice I’d never heard. He told me to turn on the news. Planes had hit the World Trade Center, and the towers had already collapsed. I just couldn’t make any sense of the violence. I couldn’t imagine how many people were killed.
“I only want to be with you,” he said.
“Come home to me,” I said. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose him. I knew in that instant I wanted to marry him.
All planes were grounded, so the band was trying to hire a van to get them out of the city. Again and again, I told Nick I loved him, and when I hung up the phone, I got down on my knees next to my bed. It felt indecent that God had put this love in my life, and I had the audacity to take it for granted when so many people had just lost those they loved the most.
WHEN NICK AND I GOT BACK TOGETHER, IT WAS SIMPLY UNDERSTOOD that we would marry. We kept it our secret, because my father was already angry that Nick was back in my life. In October, Dad’s mother, my Nanny, got very sick. She had been fighting breast cancer, and now it had gone into her lymph nodes. She had been a nurse, and she knew her hour was near. She wanted to go on her terms, and a wonderful hospice team came to her home.
Nick came with me to see her one last time, and he was my rock. My father couldn’t bear to go into her room, but Nick came in with me. She was beautiful, so sick but still radiating the grace she brought to the demands of being a pastor’s wife. I realized that everything that was good in my life, I had because of her. Nanny had paid to press my first album. She was the reason I had a career at all and the reason I met Nick.
I smoothed her hair back as I told her I was there. She squeezed my hand.
“Nick is here, too, Nanny,” I whispered. “I want you to know we’re back together. I’m gonna marry him, Nanny. Just like you wanted.” She squeezed my hand again. “We’re going to have a beautiful wedding,” I said, “and you’ll always be with me. You’ll be right there.”
She had asked to have my version of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” the last song off my second album, on repeat as she passed. As she took her last breath, surrounded by love and her family, my voice filled the room, saying, “His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.” It’s a celebration of faith and gratitude that no matter how insignificant we may feel, God is looking out for us.
At her funeral at First Baptist Church of Leander, Nick was a pallbearer and helped to carry her home. I will always be grateful to him for that. She was reunited in heaven with my late grandfather, to whom she had been married for forty-one years. I wanted that forever love for Nick and me, too.
In the airport, the television screens showed scenes of the war in Afghanistan, which had started a couple of weeks before. There was all this talk about anthrax attacks, airstrikes, and questions about when the U.S. would be deploying more troops. They said “troops,” but I knew they were real men and women, many of them probably scared.
I asked God to help me figure out a way to be of use. And then He showed me.
10
Flight Suits and Wedding Gowns
November 2001
My husband, Eric, has a joke he likes to say: “Ask Jessica to sing about Jesus or America, and she’ll be there. Super Bowl, backyard cookout, whatever you got, she’s coming to sing ‘God Bless America.’ ” And he’s right. Growing up in Texas, I sang that song over and over. From Memorial Day parades to Veteran’s Day pancake breakfasts—I was your girl. When I sang it at the East Room of the White House, I finally found out I had been flubbing the lyrics all those years. I was there to kick off the USO holiday tour for troops fighting in Afghanistan. It was the first time they let celebrities in after 9/11, because, well, they were busy. It was surreal to hear President Bush speak, thanking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his service, the transportation secretary for keeping the airlines safe. And then he added, “I want to thank Rob Schneider and Jessica Simpson as well.”
They asked me to sing “God Bless America,” and I gave it my all. President Bush was in the front row, right next to Laura, and I watched him quietly sing along, his mouth moving along with mine. Something went wrong after we got to the mountains, though. I said, “to the rivers,” just like I always did, and, well, he knew it was “the prairies.” I was so embarrassed that I apologized to him and Mrs. Bush after.
“I swear all this time I thought it was rivers!” I said.
“That’s okay, Jessica,” he said. “God blessed the rivers, too.”
Two weeks later, my father and I got on a military cargo transport plane to start the USO tour with six Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, Schneider, and a country singer named Neal McCoy. Every seat on the plane had a little card that read “C-17 Globemaster III: Airlifter of Choice,” which cracked me up. “We know you have a choice when you pick a military airlift,” I told my dad. “And we appreciate your business.” He was so excited to play war and reminded me again he had been too young to go to Vietnam. He had made all this possible, reaching out to the USO as soon as I expressed an interest in helping support service members in any way I could.
Soon we were at Camp Eagle, a U.S. military base near Tuzla in Bosnia. The Tuzla airstrip was in constant use, sending planes to bomb the Taliban. As I talked to the service members there, I learned that before Camp Eagle had mostly been a peacekeeping mission to keep the Bosnian War from being reignited. They talked about having to be careful of landmines left behind.
“I’m staying put with you guys then,” I said. I was mortified that before I came there, I had never even heard of Bosnia, and certainly didn’t know that American troops were there. When I’d reached out to the USO to volunteer to perform for service members, I’d had a vision of these sorts of big brothers and sisters in the military coming in to save the day. I was gonna put on this big show for them, high-octane with lots of red, white, and blue peekaboo clothes that I felt I had to wear for them. I even had a bikini top made from parachute material to go with army pants. But when I met actual service members, I wasn’t prepared for them to be so young. They were all my age or even younger.
I did “God Bless America” as my last song at each stop, a capella, and Bosnia is where things changed. It was right at that first “stand beside her and guide her.” These men and women started to si
ng along with me, and I noticed they were just bawling their eyes out, so of course I did, too, and I knew that this was more than a song. It was a prayer. They just wanted to be with the people they loved, in the prairies, the mountains, and, yes, the rivers. I was so privileged to share in that moment. I have done a lot of singing at bases and aircraft carriers since, and every time I do “God Bless America,” I ask everyone to sing along. “I don’t care if you think you can’t sing,” I say. “I want to hear you.”
After the Thanksgiving USO tour, I went to Afghanistan for a weeklong Christmas tour on the frontline. Between the two tours, I still had to do two radio-show concerts—the Jingle Jam in Kansas and the Jingle Ball in San Jose—and they felt surreal. The people attending those shows were the same age as the service members I’d entertained.
It might sound silly, but I was afraid I was going to die in Afghanistan, because the military made it clear to me that they could not guarantee my safety. I think I hugged Nick a thousand times before I left Andrews Air Force Base, and he kept telling me I was going to be perfectly fine because I was going to have the world’s strongest military to keep me safe. I told him the hiding spot where I had placed a pile of my journals in case something happens to me.
“Don’t read ’em unless I’m dead, okay?” I said.
He looked at me like I was crazy, but he hugged me harder.
On that tour, we had to land on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Now, I am not one of those cool girls who goes on a roller coaster and throws up her hands. I scrunch my eyes tight, white-knuckling whatever—or whoever—I can hold on to. You think an aircraft carrier just parks, but they are always moving, so the pilot must land the plane on the deck just right and then has a matter of seconds to bring the plane to a stop. There are wires that catch you, and you feel like you’re going to get whiplash. But it’s worth the tough landing because aircraft carriers always have the best audiences. The Roosevelt had been deployed in the North Arabian Sea since early October and had a crew of about 5,500 people. It felt like every one of them was at the concert. By then I understood it wasn’t about a pretty girl in a bikini. I could just be me with them. Put on a Santa suit to get laughs and sang Christmas songs. I tried to meet as many troops as possible, and a lot of men and women would give me challenge coins or take patches off for me to keep. I still have them all.
When I got home, I could tell Nick was proud of me. “Promise you’ll do one with me, babe,” I said. He swore he would, and he kept his word.
AT THE START OF 2002, I KNEW NICK WAS GOING TO PROPOSE. SO DID MY dad. He talked to each of us separately, constantly urging us to wait. He was convinced that Nick didn’t understand commitment, which I didn’t think was fair. “Marriage is about hanging in there,” he said.
I know he accused Nick of making me dependent on him for everything, which is the pot calling up the kettle to have a long talk about being black. My mom loved Nick, but right or wrong, my parents had spent my life making me think that I couldn’t do anything without them. At twenty-one years old, I was still very much a child. I didn’t know how to write a check, but, somehow, I was paying for everything. I knew that I was making money, but I didn’t think of myself as the family breadwinner. I just thought my money was their money. Honestly, what I knew for sure was that it stopped my family from having as many fights, so I felt lucky that I could be the one to help keep the peace.
I was already on to my next album, determined to make it mine this time. I constantly tried to write my own songs, with recurring themes of freedom and taking flight. I didn’t want to have to work to find myself in the songs, I just wanted them to come direct from my heart. When I worried what Tommy would think, I would murmur Colossians 3:23 to remind myself why I wanted to make music in the first place. “Whatever you do, work at with all your heart, as for the Lord and not for men.” I had been called to do this.
That year, the NFL invited me to perform at the halftime show at the February 9 Pro Bowl game in Honolulu. The Pro Bowl brings the best of the best in football together, and Nick tagged along because it was a dream for him to be on the sidelines seeing all the all-stars up close. He was acting weird during the game, and I thought he was just star-struck by athletes.
The next day he told me he’d chartered a sailboat for a six o’clock sunset cruise on the Pacific. That whole day he drove me crazy, asking me the same questions over again because he was distracted, shaking even. When we were finally on the water, I leaned back in his arms, mainly to stay warm. I was chilly, even in my gray Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day hoodie sweatshirt and the USS Detroit ball cap a sailor had given me. The captain gave me a blanket to cover me, but Nick was shivering, too.
“Do you need more of this blanket?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Nick.”
“What?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, sounding hurt. “I’m just happy to be with you is all.”
“Great,” I yelled. The boat was rocking so much, and when water splashed in, I couldn’t help but scream for fear of getting wet and even colder. Nick kept turning back to look west, checking the sun as it dipped to the horizon. And then something clicked in him.
“Jessica,” he said, “you mean so much to me.” I wish I could remember exactly what he said because I know it was beautiful. I was too busy trying to figure out why he was being so sappy.
Finally, he pulled out a little box, opening it to a reveal a ring with a pear-shaped diamond. “Will you marry me?” he asked.
“Yes!” I yelled. On some instinct, we asked the captain to take our camera to capture the moment on video. “I’m engaged!” I said. “Right here in Hawaii.”
“Nick,” I said. “If I’d known you were gonna propose, I’d have dressed up.”
“You’re perfect,” he said.
I believed him. We kissed, and I leaned further back into him as the boat continued to sail through the rough waters. But I was happy.
WE DECIDED ON AN OCTOBER WEDDING, THROWING OURSELVES INTO wedding planning. I was that girl, and Nick wanted to come to every meeting with our planner, Mindy Weiss, to keep the budget in check. I didn’t think about cost, and I just wanted the whole thing to be epic.
This obviously scared Nick, who was coming into the marriage with much more money than me. As we got closer to the wedding, he casually mentioned that maybe we should talk about getting a prenup. Part of the tabloid mythology of our marriage is that my dad played hardball and refused. No, this was an intimate discussion between a man and his soon-to-be wife. Which is to say that I exploded.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “For when you want to get a divorce?”
“No, of course not,” he said.
“You’re already thinking about how you’re going to leave me?”
“My advisers say it’s for the best.”
“Well, then marry them,” I said, and stormed off.
He dropped it. To his credit, he respected my feelings and probably got a lot of flak about it from his “advisers.” They had no inkling that I was going to leave our marriage with much more earnings than him, and, more important, we knew our marriage would never end. We were in this for forever, and a deal’s a deal.
My father was awful through the whole engagement. There’s just no nice way to put it. He continually told me I was making a mistake and told Nick to his face that I was too young to get married. It was another thing for my parents to fight over, since my mom always took Nick’s side when he would criticize me over some new thing. What you have to understand about my mom is that she is a tough crowd. My dad is a people pleaser, but people have to work to impress her. To this day, I think a lot of what I do is to win her approval. Her backing up whatever cutting thing Nick said to me gave it more weight and gave him license to do it more.
But trust me, I was no angel. I had upped my dosage of diet pills and was eating even less to be super-th
in for the wedding. Speedy and hungry, I was easy to set off. Nick and I developed a reliable cycle: he would criticize me for something small, and I would blow it up to make it about something larger in our relationship or the pressure I was under in my career. He would feel attacked and raise his voice, then I would say, “Screw you,” and pout like a child. Nick would then resolve the issue by being the grown-up in the room. Rinse, repeat. I know now that I have an addictive personality, so I am especially prone to falling into patterns. Thank you, therapy.
But gosh I loved him. I could not wait to marry him. I’d always dreamed of getting married in a little white chapel in Texas, and I found it in the hill country on the west side of Austin. It was gorgeously simple, with white limestone walls and dark oak beams inside. When I walked in and I felt His grace, I knew this was where my wedding was supposed to happen.
We kept it small, inviting three hundred people to an afternoon ceremony on October 26. The week before, it rained like Noah was gonna show up, and each day I checked the forecast to see if we would get a reprieve so I could still have my reception outside. It didn’t look like it was going to happen.
My father was a raincloud all on his own. At the rehearsal dinner the night before, my father acted as if the next day was his execution. It was so out of character for him, because my dad was all about appearances and acting like everything was, in his favorite phrase, “hunky dory.” Through the dinner and all the toasts, he moped and kept shaking his head, right in front of Nick’s family. My mother confronted him about being so horrible, so then they got into it in front of everyone. Welcome to the Simpson Family Traveling Show, Lachey folk.
I didn’t want to see Nick the morning of the wedding, so I gave him his present that night. I’d torn a November 1997 page from my journal and had it framed for him with a picture of us. At seventeen, I wrote a letter “To My Future Husband,” telling him that I was waiting for him. “I wish upon the heavens and all the stars for a light to guide me to where you are.” Nick got choked up—he was sentimental, and I loved that about him. He didn’t share my faith, but he understood that I really did dream of him.
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