Amanda was angry at me for shooting coke and lying about it, but I would lie to her again and she would sell me coke again. People see what they want to see and believe what they need to believe. Lies often succeed when people want to be lied to. Did Dad and the rest of the band know what was going on with me? We played a cruise ship in the Caribbean, and I was shooting up the whole time. In order to hide my track marks I never wore short sleeves or a bathing suit. I had one shirt with three-quarter sleeves that I put on because it was the closest thing to short sleeves that I could pull off, but I couldn’t lift my arms too high in the air for fear that the shirt would slide up my arm and reveal my damaged veins. I’d wave hello with my elbows pinned to my sides. Anyone in the world of users knows what long sleeves mean. So did Dad and the band know that I was pregnant and using? How could they not?
What went on in my apartment when I came home from Vegas still amazes me. I sat on the john with my big belly and shot up again and again. My calico cat, Thursday, watched me. She sat at my feet, staring into my eyes and howling. I knew she was trying to say, “You’re killing the baby! You’re killing yourself!” I agreed. It went through my head time after time: I’m killing my baby but I can’t stop. I rationalized the problem the way any addict does, swearing to quit after the next shot, tomorrow, soon. Every shot came with a sour dose of shame, shame for my inability to control myself, shame for what I was doing to my unborn child. Twenty-three years later, it’s still hard to reconcile that behavior with who I am.
Who knows what the neighbors thought. They knew I lived there and that there was something shady going on in the apartment. I hadn’t slept for days, just shooting coke all day long, when there was a knock at the door. It was the building manager. (Oh, Schneider, where were you when I needed you for cheap laughs?) She knocked and knocked, and I got scared that she’d use a key to come in, so I yelled through the door, “Yes? Can I help you?”
“We’re doing an inspection tour of the building,” the woman said. I looked at the wreckage around me and thought fast.
“I’m sorry, it’s a really bad time. My friend who lived with me committed suicide.” Another lie.
“Is she in there?” the woman asked. Actually, given my circumstances, it was a reasonable question.
I said, “No, but everyone’s upset.”
“Is everyone in there?” the woman asked. Clearly, they thought I was insane, but what could I say?
“Yes,” I said, “Everyone’s in here and they’re all upset.”
Days and trouble added up. My car was an old Audi that kept overheating. Bernie—a friend who was living with me for a bit—borrowed it one day and it overheated. He parked it and I never saw it again. There were base pipes and torches on the table. Baking soda all over the kitchen and dishes that had really old food on them. I’d been reaching out to my mom for help. I didn’t tell her what was really going on, just that I needed help cleaning my apartment, but Mom was distracted. She had met a man. Charles January was a tech consultant at ABC. My mother and Lenny had been divorced for six or seven years, and when Chuck’s wife died he came to see my mother. He said, “Suzy, I’ve come a-courtin’.” My mom and Chuck married, and they were very happy together, although they both drank a fair amount. Still, Chuck was a loving stepfather to me. I’ll never forget a time when I was holed up at a drug dealer’s house on Mulholland and he came up and said, “Give me my daughter,” and brought me home. But this was the beginning of their courtship and Mom missed or didn’t want to hear or couldn’t grasp my desperation.
A month after the Vegas gig, my brother Jeffrey came to visit me at my apartment. I tried to clean up for him, but cleaning up when you’re on coke is a challenge. You start to give the dogs a bath, but you stop in the middle to clean the grout in the shower. You want to put on makeup, but in the middle of doing it you change your clothes three times, feed the cat, and start to alphabetize your music collection. Being on coke, I felt like something huge and monumental was about to occur. I was on the verge of a great discovery.
Feel like you’re on the verge of changing the world
You pick things up
You put things down
Feel like you’re on the verge of changing the world.
Find something no one else has ever found.
I would start something; make a mess; have a better idea; get distracted; look out the window for an hour; weed through a drawer looking for what, I don’t know; bug out; then crash.
I tried to convince my brother that I was fine, and I didn’t shoot up in front of him, but it was very obvious what was going on. After Jeffrey had been there an hour, I was jonesing for a shot. I said, “I’m just going into my room for a minute.” In my room the sheets were crusted with old food. I pushed them off the bed into a pile and sat down on the mattress. My only syringe was broken. In the middle of trying to fix it I passed out. When I failed to emerge, Jeffrey stuck his head in the room to tell me he was leaving. The needle was on the bed next to me. I woke with a start and yelled, “Wait! I’ll be out in a minute.” I didn’t want him to see the needle and spoon.
Jeffrey saw that my life was in shambles. He knows me, and he knew I wouldn’t live like that unless there was something horribly wrong. Plus I was pregnant. Given what happened next, I think he must have gone home that night and called my father.
The next morning I was over at a friend’s—a drug dealer, all my best friends were drug dealers—and my dad called. I don’t know how he got the number, but he did. He told my dealers, “Take my daughter to the airport. I’ll have a ticket waiting there for her. Put her on the plane. Don’t give her drugs. If you don’t do this the police will be at your door.” Dad’s unerring instinct for when I was near bottom had kicked in again. Dad wanted to rescue me and if I wanted to be saved by anyone, it was my father.
My girlfriend Taylor met me at my disgusting apartment to help me pack, but I couldn’t deal with the mess. Leaving Taylor in my apartment, I went down the hall to borrow my neighbor’s phone—mine had been disconnected—and call my father. Dad was in Albany, New York. I talked to him for a long time, trying to arrange my trip back east. I thought Taylor knew where I’d gone, but apparently she didn’t. When I came back to my apartment the door was locked. Taylor had left, I was locked out, and I was desperate for my next fix.
I had a shot waiting for me in the bathroom, pulling me toward it. With robotic compulsion, I climbed up the fire escape, just as I’d done when I was a teenager coming home from a night out in Tarzana. But now I was a six-months-pregnant shoeless cokehead. When I got to my floor, I realized that there were two feet of wall between the fire escape and the kitchen window. It was a louvered window with slats of glass. I stretched over the fire escape, reaching to pull out the slats one by one. Then I reached through, turned the latch, swung the window open, and crawled like Spiderwoman into my apartment and went straight for the shot.
Somehow I finally got myself to the airport for a red-eye east. The airline held the plane for me, the way they used to for high-profile passengers. I was wearing a hand-knit ensemble with nubbly gray leggings that were so long they bunched up around my ankles, black suede boots with skinny heels and snaps all the way up, a stop-sign red nubbly sweater that came to midthigh, and, wait for it … a six-foot-long scarf of the same nubbly material, but in royal blue. The scarf was wrapped around my neck a million times. To top it off I wore a black fisherman’s cap. I was thin as a rail with a huge belly. A pregnant cokehead, a desecrated Uncle Sam. All the other passengers stared at me as I walked down the aisle, as if I were the strangest thing they’d ever seen. Maybe I was.
The plane arrived at Albany airport very early the next morning. I made my way off the plane, stepped out of the gate, and—there was no one there to meet me in spite of the arrangements I’d made with Dad. I waited … and waited. Waiting for Dad again. I was so tired. I’d been up for days and now the drugs were all gone. I made a few calls. After four hours of trying to reach Dad
or anyone who might know where he was, I lay down on a bench and promptly fell asleep. I was pregnant, coming down, exhausted, and alone in upstate New York. But the nightmare was over.
21
When someone finally woke me up at the airport it wasn’t my father. It was Dad’s driver, who had instructions to take me to meet my father at a hospital in Glens Falls, New York. When I got to the hospital, my father wasn’t there. He was out of town with his girlfriend Marci. I just cried and said I wanted to go to bed.
Since they didn’t have a detox program, they put me in the psych ward of the hospital. I turned over my precious needle. As the cocaine cleared my system for the first time in ages, I felt melancholy descending on me. Coming down was the feeling that always made me want to go up again, made me crave more cocaine. And I also felt addicted to the needle, to the familiar ritual that meant a high was coming soon. I was sick from dehydration and malnutrition, throwing up and experiencing intense pains in my abdomen and back. I slept and wept and waited for Dad to come, because being alone just made it all worse. While I was in the hospital, Mick appeared on Saturday Night Live with Lone Justice. I tried to tell my fellow inmates in the psych ward that the rocker on-screen was my boyfriend, but they didn’t believe me. I guess I wouldn’t have believed me either. After I’d been there a while, Dad and Marci came with a bag of candy, soda, and chips. And a Kmart maternity outfit. ’Nuff said.
A nurse on the birthing floor of the hospital, Marie Capezutti, heard that there was a pregnant woman detoxing. She came down to my room, strapped a monitor around my belly, and told me the back pains I’d been having were Braxton Hicks contractions. I was so glad to have some attention, so relieved that the baby was okay. Marie had me moved up to the birthing ward, which was called the Snuggery. It was the antithesis of the squalor and depravity of the L.A. apartment I had fled.
When I met the head of the natal unit, Doug Provost, he looked at me and my track-marked arms and asked if I had considered adoption. I was appalled. How could he think that I didn’t want this baby? Of course, it certainly seemed as if I’d done everything in my power to kill it. I was twenty-seven years old, pregnant, and had shot coke until my sixth month. Now I just felt very tired. Tired of running, tired of using, tired of lying and scamming, tired of living. But my desire to keep the child and be the best mother I could be never wavered. They told me my child might be stillborn, born prematurely, or mentally ill.
My dad and I had a long talk about where I should go to give birth and take care of the newborn. Dad wouldn’t be around much—he was going on the road with the Mamas & the Papas—we’d dropped the “New” from our name. A woman named Laurie Beebe had been hired to fill in for me for the end of my pregnancy and the first couple months of the baby’s life. Nonetheless, Dad said, “I know I haven’t been there for you. But you’re about to give birth to my grandson. Take as much time off from the band as you need. You’re not going to lose your job. Stay here, near me.” His words made me feel safe. Bolton Landing, where Dad and his girlfriend were living, was a small town outside Glens Falls, New York. It was far and protected from the toxicity of L.A. I decided to stay.
The house Dad found for me was an old log cabin, with Lake George right outside the window. It was Christmastime, and the icy force that swept across Lake George rattled the windows and pushed under the doorjambs. In town I made friends quickly, as I always have. A local attorney named Rolf lent me an old truck to get around in. A guy named Andy taught me how to build a fire. I didn’t get high for the remainder of my pregnancy.
My friend Amanda came to visit. The first thing she did was pull out a bindle and say she found it on the floor in a public bathroom. I emptied it into the fireplace. I was so proud of myself.
Mick was on the road with Lone Justice. They had a huge new gig, opening for U2 on the Joshua Tree tour. I missed him terribly. When the band had a break for the holidays, Mick went to pack up my foul L.A. apartment. He was shocked at what he found. Now he knew that needles were involved—the place was a junkie hangout. Still, Mick carefully, respectfully salvaged my treasured possessions from the wreckage. He put it all into storage, ran out on the rent, and came east to me.
On Christmas Day we went to a friend of Dad’s for dinner. Halfway through the meal I started having contractions again. It was still too early for the baby to come. My dad drove us to the hospital. I lay in the backseat with my head on Mick’s lap. At the hospital the docs put me on something called Brethine to stop my contractions. I stayed the night to be monitored, and Mick stayed on a little foldout bed next to me. Then they let me go home again. After Christmas Mick went back on the road with Lone Justice. I was in and out of the hospital with contractions. I very much wanted my child but I was scared to death. Scared of becoming a mom, scared of the baby coming out sick or unhealthy, just plain scared.
On the first of February, my doctor decided I was far enough along to be taken off the Brethine. The next day I was with my new friend Lucy at a bar, which may not be the appropriate place for a woman in labor, but it was a step up from the example I had been given: my stepmother giving birth to Bijou on the living room couch. At three in the afternoon I sat on a bar stool, timing contractions on the bar clock. It began to snow. I called Marie, the nurse, who had become a good friend. She said to wait a few more hours, so I went home. Around nine that night I started getting nervous. The snow was coming down hard now. There wasn’t anyone around to take me to the hospital. What if I got stuck in the blizzard, gave birth alone in my car, and we both froze to death? I panicked, threw clothes in a bag and shoes on my feet, and jumped into Rolf’s truck. The back window of the truck was broken and snow filled the backseat as I drove the twenty-five miles down the dark country highway in labor, in a snowstorm, to the hospital.
My son, Shane Barakan, was born at Glens Falls Hospital at 2:42 a.m. on February 3, 1987. He was jumpy from all the cocaine. The hospital knew my recent past. They could have taken him away from me, but they didn’t. Instead, Marie taught me how to give him a bottle, how to burp him, and how to change his diapers. I took a class in infant CPR. I was so happy to be a mommy. I was so in love.
After a few days it became clear that I was going home to an empty house because Mick was stuck on the road for another eight days. Dr. Doug took pity on us and invited me and Shane to come live at his house until Mick got back. He moved me into his house with his wife and children.
The Provosts lived in a beautiful home in Glens Falls. They set me up in the guest room, and Shane slept beside me in a little bassinet that Doug’s wife, Judy, set up for him. Judy gave me baby clothes and furniture, everything I needed but hadn’t known or had the wherewithal to buy. I slept next to Shane with a hand on his precious shoulder. We stayed with the Provosts—such generous people—until Mick came home.
Mick was thirty-two years old. He had been a rock ’n’ roll guitar player all his life. He had those long black locks and usually wore skintight jeans and pointy boots. He was beautiful and he had a heart of gold, but he had told me, over and over again, that he had no idea how to be a father. When his plane landed in Albany, he came straight to the Provosts’ house to meet his son. I dressed Shane for his father in an awesome tie-dyed one-sie with long sleeves. The hood of his bassinet was facing away from the door. Mick came in, and as he walked toward the bassinet it was as if he expected to see Rosemary’s baby. But the minute he picked up Shane, his whole face changed. He was as in love as I was. Mick, that startled, scared rocker, was transformed into an amazing father.
Doug and Judy sent us away with a bottle of champagne, a changing table, a swing, and clothes for Shane. The three of us went home to our log cabin. No matter what I had done during my pregnancy, no matter how low I had fallen, there was this salvation: Shane, a perfect little baby boy, proof that I hadn’t destroyed everything. I loved him, we loved him, I wanted the best for him from the moment I laid eyes on him. I wanted to give him the love my parents had always given me, the care they h
adn’t, the safety, protection, and parenting I had only begun to understand how much I missed. I wanted all these things for him and had no idea how badly I was about to blow it.
22
Mick helped me set up the house for Shane. The cabin was idyllic. Along the front was a long, screened-in porch, looking out on a picturesque marina. February wasn’t porch weather—winter in the Adirondacks is long and brutal—but there was a big, cozy living room with a stone fireplace. We pushed the two sectional sofas together to create a fully enclosed king-size play-pen where we could snuggle with Shane.
Mick stopped doing drugs the moment Shane was born. “We’re parents now,” he told me. “We can’t keep living this way. We have this little life—it’s our responsibility.”
I said, “Yeah, oh, you’re absolutely right.” Then Mick had to go back out on the road. I drove him to the train station and cried my eyes out. With Mick on the road, I was lonely. Bolton Landing felt like Siberia. I tried really hard to stay clean, but not hard enough. In hindsight, I liked the idea of being clean, but I had no idea how to go about it. I didn’t know about recovery as most people think of it now—a process that includes self-examination, therapy, and support. I didn’t know I needed help. I thought that I just needed to stop taking drugs. Using willpower. And that I definitely didn’t have.
The town had two bars, and I couldn’t score anything good. My friend Lucy said she knew somewhere we could go for decent coke. It was hours away. I brought Shane, who slept soundly in the car as we drove through the night, getting lost on our desperate search. When we finally found the place, I went in carrying my sleeping infant in my arms. Do you take the baby into the crack house or do you leave him alone in the cold car? Even though I hadn’t read the parenting books, I was pretty sure they didn’t cover these decisions. The house was dark and creepy, with unsavory people lurking around. They were selling crack, and crack was not for me. It made me even more of a lunatic. We turned around and drove all the way back empty-handed. My innocent son had been to a crack house. It was yet another new low.
High On Arrival Page 18