I woke up to see two policemen staring down at me. The blood-colored dress was shredded; there was blood on the walls and on the bedsheets. Would I like to explain to them exactly what had happened here? Then I heard the old familiar words: We’re going to have to take you down to the station. I learned later that soon after Scott left me there, his attorney had called the hotel to pledge that we’d pay for all damages, immediately. Then the hotel called the Burbank Police Department.
When I got to the police station, I discovered that the police had summoned Scott and the children as well. That just made me angry—why drag the kids into this? My hour of drug sleep had barely dulled the rampage I was on, and instead of answering the cops’ questions, being properly ashamed, and doing whatever it’d take to get myself out of there, I started mouthing off at them. For one thing, let’s talk about those ugly polyester pants and sports coats that passed for cop civilian wear. “How am I supposed to take you seriously when you’re dressed like this?” I asked. “Is this casual Friday? Or maybe you’re not really professional detectives. I don’t have to answer any questions if you’re not professional detectives.”
They put me at a table in a little conference room with Noah and Lucy so that they could question Scott separately. Scott had brought his attorney along. In retrospect, I might’ve done the same, but it made me even angrier. I tried to focus on my babies, but my insides were rocketing around like I’d swallowed bullets.
“Mommy, what happened to your dress?” Lucy asked. There was something very small and quiet in her voice. Noah just stared at me.
“I never liked this dress,” I told her. “Now I won’t have to wear it anymore.” The cops brought the kids burgers and fries, as well as coloring books.
I knew decisions were being made about me in the other room, but no one was consulting me, and I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Someone came and took away my children—they left the station with their daddy and his lawyer. “We hope you’re going to calm down now, Mrs. Weiland,” I was told. “We’ve settled up here for the time being. We’ll take you back to the hotel to retrieve your car, then we strongly advise you to go home and sleep it off.”
When I drove into our driveway at the Ozzie and Harriet house, there was no evidence of anyone being home. Sure enough, the house was empty. Scott had taken the kids to his manager’s house and headed for LAX for a prescheduled trip to Chicago. I finally got him on the phone. “How can you leave me now?” I asked. “Something’s clearly wrong here, I can’t fix what’s wrong—and you’re leaving town—why?”
“I have to finish my solo album,” he said flatly.
“Please come home,” I pleaded. “I need you.”
“I can’t,” he said. It was as though I could hear him backing away from me.
“If you don’t come home right now,” I shouted, “I’m going to set fire to every single piece of clothing in your closet.”
“Go to bed, Mary,” he said. “The kids are with my manager; they’ll be okay there. Calm down. We’ll talk later.” And he clicked off his phone. I called and called, and he never picked up. The idea of my children being taken from me made me insane.
I headed back inside and straight for Scott’s closet. I grabbed every expensive designer piece of clothing he owned—Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Armani. Suits, jackets, vests, shirts, sweaters. I knew which items he truly loved, and I knew almost to the nickel what he’d paid for them. Load by load, I dragged them all out onto the driveway.
I had the spark lighter in my hand when I called Scott one more time. Straight to voice mail. Then I called Christine Kushner. “I’m standing in my driveway with all of Scott’s clothes,” I told her. “He’s on a plane. I can’t believe he left me all fucked up like this. I can’t get my head to work, and he left me. I’m gonna set fire to all of this shit!”
“No, Mary!” she said. “Come on, you know better. Setting fires is not a good form of conflict resolution. Hang on, I’m coming over. Dave’s gonna bring me over. Don’t do anything. Hold on, I’m on my way.”
I paid some attention to her words—I went into the garage for a fire extinguisher, just in case. Then I came back outside and lit everything up.
The bonfire was huge and very pretty. Everything went up in smoke quickly, except the shoe leather; the Guccis took the longest. The news reports said I’d torched ten thousand dollars’ worth of Scott’s clothes, which was wrong by a factor of eight. He was somewhat insulted at their estimate. “Eighty thousand dollars, Mary,” he said later. “Eighty thousand.”
Christine and Dave Kushner came around the corner just as the flames were dying down. She was eight months’ pregnant at the time—going to a crazy lady’s fire was not her husband’s idea of what she should be doing today. But Christine is a Jersey girl: She does not back down for anybody, and she’d come to rescue me. I was squirting everything with the fire extinguisher, turning the smoldering ashes into a damp pile of smelly mud. “Calm down,” Christine said. “Come on, calm down.”
“Don’t you get it? I CAN’T calm down. If I could calm down, I’d calm down!”
My bonfire had gotten the attention of the neighborhood; one by one, neighbors came out into their yards, and people driving by in their cars slowed down to spectate. No doubt somebody had called the police. Frantically, we scrambled to clean up the mess. Christine brought pots of water from the house; we got the gooey debris into the trash can, then hosed down the driveway. I was rushing around like I was on speed, and my mind was still racing—Scott was on that damn plane. Wasn’t he going to be surprised when he heard the news!
I was in the house when Scott’s assistant drove up with the kids—I have no idea whose idea it was to bring them back at exactly that moment. According to Christine, they got out of the car big-eyed and scared, and she and Dave tried to talk them into coming into the house. They’d had a god-awful day. Dave hurriedly took them into the house, into Noah’s room.
I don’t remember doing this, but Christine tells me I jumped into my car and drove away; minutes later, the cops pulled up.
“Why are the policemen here?” Noah asked.
“Because Mommy got mad and burned all of Daddy’s clothes, that’s why,” Scott’s assistant helpfully informed them. Idiot.
While I was driving around, Christine was frantically calling me, telling me to come home, that the cops were there, and they were poking through the mess. I turned around and drove back to the house.
When I got out of the car, I was reminded by the looks on everyone’s faces that I was still wearing the shredded red dress I’d been wearing at the station house earlier that day. “Mrs. Weiland,” said one officer, “we’ve had just about enough of you for one day.”
“No, really?” I said. “Well, guess what. I’ve had just about enough of you, too.”
They explained that it was against the law to set fires in a driveway. “It’s my driveway,” I said, “and those are my private possessions!”
Christine was doing her Jersey Hammer thing on my behalf, explaining that she and I had everything under control now. “Everything’s okay now,” she promised.
“And anyway, there’s no fire anymore,” I said, “just a lot of wet crap in a trash can. I just don’t see what the problem is.”
“Do you want us to arrest you?”
“Want you to arrest me? What kind of idiot do you think I am? Sure, what the hell, arrest me.” The expression on Christine’s face told me I’d just crossed the line. But I was still in the look-at-me-now-I-can-fly stage.
They slapped the cuffs on me—literally, slapped them on. I still have a little scar on my right wrist. A few days later, I looked at it and thought, Well, there goes the hand-modeling career. “You can’t arrest her,” Christine pleaded. “She’s sick, there’s something wrong with her.”
“She said she wants to be arrested.”
Christine called my mother—she and Mark now lived in Texas—and Mom told her that
my sister Julie and her now-husband Ian were in Los Angeles. Dave and Christine stayed with the kids until Julie got there, and then went home, as scared as I was.
At the police station, I was bouncing off the walls of the cell. I couldn’t sit still, I kept walking in circles, I couldn’t stop moving. A voice came on the intercom: “Mrs. Weiland, please sit down.” I can’t, I can’t. It was three o’clock in the morning. Who could I call at three o’clock in the morning?
A woman at the jail told me that there was a bail bondsman across the street—did I have any money? Did I have any property? Because if I didn’t have a previous criminal record, I could probably bail myself out. Sure enough, the bail guys said they’d cover $50,000 bail if I could produce a nonrefundable deposit of $5,000. I could, I said, but everything was in my wallet—could somebody drive me home? They were a full-service setup; in half an hour, I was home, the bail bondsman had my credit card information, and I was walking around in circles in the house as the sun came up, wondering what the hell had happened.
Scott got home the next morning. The news headlines were loud and ugly: “Burn Baby Burn.” “Bipolar Made Me Do It.” “This Is How Betty Broderick Began.” “Scott Weiland and Wife’s Bonfire Blowout.” Child Protective Services arrived to investigate the status and safety of our kids. My head was still speedy and muddled, but I had the presence of mind to change my clothes. We scheduled a meeting in the CPS offices for later that afternoon, where I was going to be expected to explain why they shouldn’t believe I was an unfit mother.
Scott tried to explain that I’d been ill, that he suspected I’d had a bipolar episode but had not yet been treated for it, that I had no previous record of doing anything like this, and that the children were not at risk. This didn’t appease CPS—they were in our lives now, and they were going to stay there while we dealt, item by item, with a list of requirements. More therapy for me; couples therapy for me and Scott; therapy for the kids; and a thorough psychiatric exam for me, ideally inpatient. In other words, I was going to the psych ward. And the sooner it all happened, the sooner I would be back home with my children.
Scott explained to them that he had been in touch with a psychiatrist he knew, a Dr. Timothy Pylko, and with his help, they were finding me a good place to stay and get treatment. He promised me it would be a day, maybe only two—they’d get me on the right meds, we’d figure this out, it would all be all right. CPS agreed to the plan, and we left.
Scott drove me to Las Encinas, trying to soothe me. There’d be little cottages, he said. They’d be nice to me, he said. Admission was purely voluntary, he said. “This is up to you, Mary. You need to do the right thing. You need to get well for the kids. Don’t you want to get well?” Couldn’t I please just get well at home? Did I have to go into an institution and be locked up? We sat in the parking lot and talked, and I cried for two hours; in the end, I would not get out of the car. I wouldn’t even unfasten my seat belt. Some staff members came out to assure me that everything would be okay, but I put my hands over my ears and wailed. Locked up, locked up, locked up. Alone. Paralyzed with fear, I could feel my eyes bugging out of my head.
“Mary, I’ve got to go to band rehearsal,” Scott said. “I’ve got to go, and you’ve got to stay. If you don’t do it on your own, CPS can force you, and the place they’ll send you won’t be like this.” We went back and forth for hours—and then, inexplicably, we drove off to a dive bar and proceeded to drink. And drink.
It was close to midnight when I finally signed myself in. I was full of alcohol, but still pacing and wired. We got the paperwork filled out, I agreed I’d stay for three days, and then Scott got up to leave. “Where are you going?” I yelled. “You can’t leave me.”
“I’m just going out for a cigarette,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”
Once out of earshot, he told the staff that under no circumstances should I be allowed to check myself out. They told him that since I’d checked myself in, they couldn’t go on his word alone, and had no authority to keep me there against my will. “She’s suicidal,” he told them.
That changed my status. I was now officially in lockdown, in a room off a long corridor, with the famous hospital overhead lighting, and I was to be taken somewhere else—four guys were coming to get me. I panicked. I spotted a pay phone just on the other side of the room.
I picked up the phone and called 911. “Help me, please. I’m being held here against my will. My husband’s had me locked up, and I can’t get out. Please, you can hear that I’m okay, right? I mean, this is a perfectly normal conversation, right?”
The operator said, “I’m sorry, miss, I can’t help you. I see on caller ID that you’re in a psychiatric ward. And we can’t assist anyone in a psychiatric ward.” I clung to the telephone long after she hung up.
“Mrs. Weiland, we have to go now,” said my attendants. “If you don’t come on your own, we’re going to have to carry you, and then we’re going to have to strap you down.”
I’d run out of options. “Okay, I’ll walk.”
They walked me into a building that was completely fenced in. The roof even had a fence around it—no jumpers from there. There was coded security at the door; they had to buzz in. Only moments before, they’d offered me a tranquilizer shot, and I’d refused it because I didn’t want to be doped up and drooling in a mental hospital. Now I was in an institutional room with bars on the windows and beginning to rethink the decision not to have the shot. I was in the loony bin.
You know the way an animal looks when it’s cornered—a mouse cornered by a cat, a little dog bullied by a big dog? Their eyes widen, their shoulders come up around their heads, and they freeze their bodies so tight that every muscle twitches in protest? That was me. I share a birthday with Salvador Dalí, and my clock was beginning to melt.
After the gate and door were locked behind me, I sat on the couch in the main room and tried to pull myself together. I think the nurse took pity on me after I told her what happened, so she let me use the pay phone to call my mom. It was five in the morning when she picked up. Thank God she’s a light sleeper. Through my tears, I told her how scared I was and that I needed her to get me out. “Mom, they put me in a cage.”
I gave her the main office phone number, and she told me she would figure something out. Waiting to hear from her again felt like an eternity. I called her back about twenty minutes later, and she broke the bad news—I was stuck there until the next doctors’ shift began at nine A.M.
I could no longer handle the goings-on in the main room. A man who kept unbandaging and examining his bleeding foot and an old guy wearing a hospital gown with his ass out and a catheter dangling at his knees was just too much. I went into my room and sat on the bed. I was so run down, nothing would’ve made me happier than sleep. But I was afraid that if I slept I would lose control of the situation. Which is kind of funny, because how much control can you have when you’re locked in a cage and you’re not holding the key?
At nine the next morning, the troops arrived: my dad, my brother, my aunt. And a psychiatrist I’d never seen before. Not Dr. Pylko. “I want Dr. Pylko,” I said. “Scott said I would have Dr. Pylko.” I thought about digging in, but it became clear to me that this doctor was the one who would get me out of there.
With my family around me, we finally talked him into releasing the seventy-two-hour hold, which he did only on the condition that I take a sedative and someone stay with me at home until I could see Pylko. My dad said he’d do it and that there would be no time I was alone or unmonitored.
Thankfully, we’d gone outside to sit at a picnic table while the doctor looked at my chart. I looked at the fence surrounding me and above me and felt like I’d been admitted to a bird atrium. For liability reasons alone, it was a major struggle to inch my way out the door. Finally, I was released into the custody of my family, who promised to keep me settled and make sure I showed up for my appointment with Dr. Pylko. We crammed into the front seat of my dad’s truck an
d started the thirty-minute drive back home.
I’m sure Dad and Johnny were wondering whether or not they’d made the right choice, springing me from the funny farm. I’d like to know who coined the term funny farm. True, you are treated like an animal, so I get the farm bit—but where’s the funny?
When we got home, we all fell on the couch. Now that I no longer had to play normal, my head dropped the flag and I started racing again. What anyone said or did at that point, I have no memory of. My sister Julie and her now-husband Ian came back to the house to help out. The sedative slowed down my body, but it had no effect on my mind at all. I tried sleeping but got nowhere, so I just laid in my room staring at the wall. My dad, brother, and aunt left after it was obvious that Julie and Ian had it covered, and I wasn’t going to go bananas again.
When Scott finally came in, I surfaced. “You had me locked up,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “And you had me locked up once, too. You knew it was for the best that time, and so was this. You need to give in to the medication now, Mary—I’ll stay with you. Tomorrow, we’ll go see Pylko.”
I was as far down into a black hole as I’d ever gone. As I finally fell into something like sleep, I wondered if anybody existed who could truly dig me out.
On April Fools’ Day 2001, Scott went with me to my first appointment with Dr. Pylko. I couldn’t see myself from the outside. I wasn’t able to sit still, I needed Scott’s hand to hold me down, and I was scared. I didn’t want to go anywhere without him. I needed him to explain to the doctor how I was acting, why I was acting like that what was wrong with me. I couldn’t remember half of what I’d done (I couldn’t believe half of what I heard), and I could not make any connection between my body and my mind. It seemed as though each part of me was making its own decision about what it wanted to do without asking my permission.
Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness Page 22