Late, Late at Night

by Springfield, Rick

  I finally grow some balls and shake my old business manager, leaving him scot-free for all the financial destruction he has caused through ignorance and mismanagement. Jim Pankow (from the band Chicago) and I have been friends for a while, and he recommends his business manager to me. I finally get with someone who knows what he’s doing with his client’s money. This new accountant has serious questions about how my finances have been managed in the past, and he instigates a lawsuit on my behalf against my old business manager before I put a stop to it. It’s not in me to take money as restitution for damage done. Success is the best revenge, I hear myself say. It makes me pause. Did I just say that? It’s a positive sign that maybe what I’m going through with Stein is doing some good. I translate this to mean that somewhere inside me I haven’t given up: there is still a flicker of life, a beam of hope.

  Then the sun bursts through the clouds for a brief moment and Joshua Charles Springthorpe (Little Mr. Center of the Universe II) enters our world on the 21st of March, 1989. It is the only bright event in our terrible year. I hurt and feel shamed that we’re bringing our new son home to a temporary shelter. It seems like we have no roots. My words, screamed in frustration as a child at my mother when we were told that we’d be moving again, come back to haunt me: “When I have kids, I’m never, ever moving!”

  “Sure you’re not,” says Mr. D.

  And gushing money from the severed artery of my trashed career, I slowly bleed away most of my first fortune.

  So where do you think I run in my pitiable state? Straight into the arms of a friggin’ wannabe actress. I’ve started attending another acting class to try to get that life going, and it’s there that I meet her. She’s pretty and blond, but the real reason that I’m attracted to her is because when the class goes out as a group to eat, she turns guys’ heads. I’m feeling worthless and emasculated by having failed my family and myself, so what better way to get some integrity back than to fuck this girl that so many men seem to find hot? Makes sense to me. And Mr. Darkness thinks it’s a stellar idea. No longer content with shooting myself just in the foot with my dick, I am now attempting to strafe everything I love and want in my life too.

  Of course Barbara knows something is going on, and when she confronts me I tell her the truth. Here she is, a sweet and sincere girl who is feeling dumpy and unattractive having just given birth to our second son, and I’m parading this young babe around like I’m a hotshot. It is a testament to B’s soul that she only throws a carton of milk at me. It’s the lowest point in my life. In a song on Rock of Life called “World Start Turning,” I wrote the line: “I made a promise to myself I’ll never get that low again.” But it seems I just have. I’ve traded all that is true and pure in my world for a quick fix.

  I break the affair off and beg Barbara not to leave me. I watch her sitting quietly, feeding our baby Joshua, an air of deep sadness around her. She looks like a little kid in a too-big chair. She is again the eighteen-year-old innocent I first fell in love with, and my heart breaks for what I’ve done to her. She could take half of what money is left and run. But something holds her—and me—to this marriage. It’s not fear of what’s out there or fear of starting a new life with someone else. It’s not fear at all. What holds us together is what we both know in our souls: that despite our troubles, we are right for each other. We stay together by choice. Letting go is not an option either of us will choose, but in holding on, we know we have work to do to make things right. Clearly I’m the one with the real labor ahead. I must change. I am forever grateful for B’s big heart and her willingness to stick with me when I have put her through so much.

  We go into couples therapy with Stein’s wife, Lottie, who is also a Jungian therapist. Even though B is fundamentally committed to our marriage and to working through this, I could lose her. I work hard to undo the damage I have so recklessly caused.

  It’s a long road back from where I’ve led us, and for a while we can’t even get close to a place of true reconciliation. Barbara has justifiable recriminations and I have nothing to offer in my defense. And so it goes until we begin bridging the gap and finding our way to make this the relationship we both want. I resolve to honestly face my shit and not to opt for bedding a pretty stranger every time I need to prop up my ego or assuage my depression. I’m finally feeling up to this challenge, thanks to the small but steady progress I’ve made with Lottie’s husband.

  Dammit, spoke too soon. Mr. D. isn’t done with me yet—but at least his attack is on another front.

  I hit forty years of age, and in the music business, where everyone is in a more or less permanent state of arrested development, I start to feel old and useless. Ugly again, like I used to. The Darkness suggests a little elective surgery. “Yeah, a face-lift. That’d fix you right up, pal. And don’t worry about your earlier episode under the knife, these American doctors are grrrrreat!” With trepidation I make an appointment and go to see a plastic surgeon. Looking at my sad and tired mug, he says with confidence, “I can make you look years younger.” The fact that I could also end up looking like a stretched-lizard-faced freak isn’t mentioned. I’m feeling nervous as the surgery day approaches. I have this horrible feeling I might die under the anesthesia. I can’t shake this feeling of death, so on the morning of the surgery I call the doctor and cancel it. I hang up the phone and it rings immediately. I answer and a voice tells me that Joe Gottfried, my amiable old manager, has just died of a heart attack while driving his beloved BMW. I knew someone would die today—I just thought it would be me. I’d always intended to apologize to Joe for the unceremonious way I dropped him when my life started to unravel. He was a good man who loved me and who I treated unfairly in the end. If this is my chance to say something, then: Joe, I’m truly sorry. You were there for me when no one else was. Dammit, I seem to spend my life apologizing for shit I’ve done—this time too late.

  In another case of excellent timing, The Oprah Show calls—that’s a good thing, right?—to ask if I’d like to participate in a segment they’re doing called One-Hit Wonders. That’s a bad thing, right? Well, yes, it is. It’s especially bad considering the frame of mind I am currently in. The Oprah contact is still talking, but I can’t make out what she’s saying for the blood pounding in my ears. For the first time in my life, I am angry at the fact that I wrote “Jessie’s Fucking Girl.” Mr. D. has set me up. (“Hey, Sport, Oprah’s calling!”) only to sucker punch me (“They think you’re a one-hit wonder. Hahahahaha”). I don’t remember how I get off the call, but I retain enough pride to decline the invitation.

  Later, I toy with the idea of sending them an e-mail with the titles of my seventeen Top-40 friggin’ hits poetically woven through the missive in a cleverly wry and ironic way, underlining the fact that I am a waaay bigger star than they think I am. But I don’t. Instead, I take it in the gut and accept it as further proof that I am a lost soul and a total loser. My Darkness speaks to me again as I fall asleep that night: “Hell of a legacy, bro. After twenty-five years in the biz: a one-hit-motherfucking wonder. Nice.”

  So for as low as I feel, and as much deeper as Mr. D. would like to take me, I am clear about one thing: I must work on my life with B. If I lose her, it doesn’t really matter what else happens to me.

  Back in the warmth of Robert Stein’s office, I open up and tell him everything I’ve been up to.

  There is no judgment here, and I’m thankful for that. Still, I must face what I’ve done and where this has all led me and dragged my family along to. I tell him I wish there was some piece of me that could be removed surgically so I’d be free of the Darkness, the sexual shit, and my massive lack of self-approval. He nods in agreement. “Yes, we’d all like that,” is all he says. Sometimes I think I’m making real strides in healing all this, and other times I feel like I’m pissing my life away just sitting here talking to this stranger who knows me better than any person ever will, not making any appreciable progress at all. All the crap I hate about myself, all the garbage
that I never asked for, that I feel I’ve been saddled with against my will, that I was born into or predestined to face or whatever the fuck it all is, will be with me until I die, and this therapy and pursuit of a spiritual path are the ways I learn to recognize and own my burdens, my demons, and not let them ruin or destroy my life.

  And that life goes on.

  Liam, our elder son, is in a private school that caters to future doctors and lawyers. Even at this early age, he is obviously an arty kid, and this school is a bad fit. The powers that be at his school also have their collective heads up their asses and, full of self-righteous attitude; they call all the time about Liam’s disruptive behavior and the wild stories he makes up. One week we get a bunch of phone messages from concerned school parents saying things like, “Oh my God, we just heard. We’re so sorry. Barbara, if you need anything, just call us.” We find out that Liam had gone to school the day after watching an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer has a heart attack and told everyone that I had a heart attack.

  The school calls again to ask if there are any “challenges” or “issues” at home, as Liam seems to be “acting out.” I hang up the phone before I puke from “buzzword” sickness, although in fairness to them, Liam is obviously feeling the tension between B and me. But the school isn’t working for our son, so we move him to a local one closer to home that’s run by moms and doesn’t have the Harvard-or-bust mentality. Barbara and I continue going to couples therapy together, and I continue to see Stein by myself.

  And life goes on.

  We start to notice that Ronnie is sleeping more and more and eating less and less. I take him to the animal hospital so they can run some tests and maybe find out what the problem is. They put him in a small cage, and he looks at me sadly, head lowered, eyes showing half-moon whites. I don’t know why he looks so melancholy. I kiss him and tell him I’ll see him tomorrow. I do, but not in the way I thought I would. On a bright July morning full of promise the following day, I get a call from the hospital. The voice at the other end tells me he’s very sorry, they tried to save him, but Ronnie is dead. I go numb.

  I drive to the hospital and a nurse leads me into a small, nondescript room off the main hallway. There, in the same wire cage where I bid him good night the evening before, absolutely sure that I would see him again, lies my boy, on his side with his tongue poking out a little way like he’s blowing a raspberry. I kneel down, open the cage door, and put my hand on his side—he’s still warm. His eyes aren’t looking for me anymore. He’s gone. I try to feel his spirit near me, around … anywhere. Although I’m still consistently reading about it and searching for it, most things spiritual seem beyond my grasp. So I’m on my own contending with this. The only one who knows how it feels to lose him is Barbara, and I’ve done my best to alienate her.

  I need to know, so I ask … “How was his death?” The doctor tells me it was a little stressful for Ronnie. His lungs filled up with fluid and he couldn’t breathe, so they put a tube down his throat trying to vent some of it. He died like that. I take his body to the Pet Park I pass every time I drive into town, and I have him cremated, before I’ve even begun to absorb his loss. They give me a cedar box with his ashes in it. I am in a fog as I take them back to Barbara at home. And as I drive through the canyon, the Darkness wickedly insinuates that I abandoned Ronnie.

  “You did that to your boy Elvis too, remember?” he whispers. And yes, I do.

  Then the landlord calls and says he wants his house back. We have to pack up and move again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  OF HAWKS AND THE ISLAND OF

  THE LONG WHITE CLOUD

  MALIBU TO NEW ZEALAND

  1989

  Our new rent-a-house in the Point Dume area of Malibu has a large open fireplace in the living room with a heavy oak-beam mantel. It is on this mantel that I place the cedar chest of Ronnie’s ashes. It looks too small to contain the mighty life force I knew as my dog. I tell my- self it doesn’t. It’s just the ashes of his corporeal shell. But where is that life force? I light candles around the box and place flowers there, too. I am making an altar of sorts, but there is no spiritual connection, as hard as I try to manufacture one. I can’t feel where he has gone, my furry boy.

  I hear a strange sound in the back of the fireplace. I pause … and hear it again. I finish lighting the candles, grab a flashlight, and rake the narrow beam, yellow as chicken fat, across the sooty black back of the chimney. I see movement in the dark of the flue and jump back in surprise. Heart pounding, I move in and shine the light directly on the source of the motion. A pair of large, bright, forward-facing, predatory eyes peer out of the gloom in back of the fireplace. I look closer and see a flurry of striped, exotic feathers. It’s a young hawk trapped in the ashes of the flue, directly behind where I’ve placed Ronnie’s ashes. I suddenly feel like I’m inside a dream. I’ve just been reading about the Native American belief that birds are signs of the spirit, because they fly so close to heaven. Probably because the spirit is likened to an animal, it’s one of the few images that has registered with me.

  My hands are shaking as I dial the number for the area animal control. It’s Sunday, so I’m not expecting to get anyone, but a voice answers and tells me that there’s a field officer in the Malibu area right now rescuing a seal. He’ll be over in thirty minutes. He’s there in twenty. He arrives, reaches into the flue and, after a struggle, withdraws his gloved hand from the darkness of the fireplace. Perched wild-eyed and panting open-beaked on his arm is a magnificent red-shouldered hawk. I ask him how long he thinks it’s been trapped there. “About two days,” he answers. It’s the exact length of time since Ronnie left this earth. We take the hawk outside and release him. As I watch the young raptor circle the house and then wheel off into the bright summer sky, I feel a giant weight lift from my chest as Ronnie’s spirit soars with this bird. He is okay. I feel it in my soul. It figures that a sign from my boy would lead me back to the spiritual path I fell from when my dad died. Unexpectedly, Ronnie’s death has punched a pinhole of light in the cinder-cone blackness that surrounds me.

  In that moment, I commit again to a belief in God and the path of the spirit. Light shines on the Darkness and he scurries away like a rat in a sewer. I begin to understand that God doesn’t come when you’re looking the hardest, but when your need is the greatest.

  I’ve always wanted a tattoo, but I’ve never been able to settle on anything that would be okay to wear on my skin for the rest of my life. Now I know, so I go to the only tattoo parlor I can think of. When I first moved to the U.S., in 1972, I stayed at the old Hyatt House on Sunset Boulevard for a night. Looking out the window that first morning in Los Angeles, I saw a sign over the store opposite, with a red heart and the words “Sunset Tattoo” wrapped around it. It is there that I go. And I walk out after three hours of pain, wearing across my right shoulder the symbol of a reawakening in me: a red-shouldered hawk. It is the coat-of-arms of my acceptance of God/a greater power/something unfathomable but more than me. And along with all the dogs of the world, hawks now become my totem animal spirit.

  I feel a change coming. I should be going down the tubes because of the loss of Ronnie, but I’m actually feeling a little stronger. Ronnie’s parting gift has spurred my recommitment to a connection to faith. My beautiful sons fill my days, and I’m there every step of the way with them. Together we mourn Ronnie, our hairy brother, and they watch as their dad cries. I think of myself at their age, watching my own father crying for his lost mum.

  I am writing again, but once more it’s unfocused. I complete a short instrumental suite for Ronnie that no one will ever hear and I try to move my head into a “writing space.” I have a lot to write about, but I’m confused about the direction the music should take. This time my writer’s block has more to do with the fact that I’m feeling unfashionable and distant from the current music scene. Rap is big now, and songs, as I knew them, seem to be disappearing. Tim Pierce and I get together with writer/pr
oducer Bob Marlette and experiment musically with a new direction my writing has taken. Over the next few months we write and record songs that I would never have come up with on my own. They are very groove oriented, with drum loops and quirky guitars.

  I decide to release it in Europe as a band concept album, so the three of us briefly form Sahara Snow for the purpose of releasing the record overseas. Fans from the U.S. buy it as an import, but it doesn’t really do much. The musical climate has storm clouds overhead for us musicians raised on rock, and radio doesn’t know where it’s going. I return to acting again and film a couple of Movies of the Week for TV but nothing worth mentioning. Wow, is this 1978 again, for Chrissakes?!

  We muddle along.

  Then I get a call from my acting agent. He’s really my touring agent, but I’m not touring, so he’s my acting agent right now. There’s a TV series ready to go and they’re looking for me. They want me to play an ex-cop (how original) who now owns a surf shop (okay, that’s kind of original) and all he wants to do is surf (now that’s original), but his little brother wants to be a private detective and keeps getting my character involved in karate-kicking, girl-chasing, bad-guy’s-ass-whupping, naked-chests-on-the-beach and girls-in-skimpy-bikinis-type action. The original title for the show is (cringe) Surf and Protect.

  In one of life’s weird sidesteps, I was originally up for the David Hasselhoff part in Baywatch, but I thought the script was so lame that I wasn’t interested. Now that Baywatch is a huge hit, they want me for the new Baywatch. I know these shows are just excuses to parade hot girls around in their bikinis. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, by the way. I’m all for a show that parades hot girls around in their bikinis now and then; I just didn’t think I’d be part of the team. But they offer a lot of money. So I take the gig, and they say that we’re going to shoot the first season in Australia. Okay, cool. No, wait … Australia is too expensive. New Zealand’s cheaper; we’re going to New Zealand instead. When I grow up and have kids, I’m never moving, remember? Well, guess what? “Kids, we’re moving to New Zealand.” And as my old mum had done so many years before, I try to add a little history and perspective to the new destination for them. “Hey, did you guys know that the Maori name for New Zealand is ‘Aotearoa,’ which means ‘Long White Cloud’?” They don’t really care and ask if they can bring their video games.