A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  Despite our having been together more than a decade by this point, David clearly still possessed a jealous streak. He had a habit of calling me to check on my whereabouts all the time. It was a running joke in Malibu. When I went to get my legs waxed at the Malibu salon Faces & Legs by Vicki, we’d inevitably hear a knock on the door.

  Vicki looked at me, a knowing smile on her face.

  “It’s got to be David,” she said.

  And, yes, it was David. He’d just wanted to make sure I was where I’d said I was going to be. Suspicious by nature, he couldn’t help but check up on me. Of course, there was never anything unseemly for him to discover. I was always where I’d said I was going to be. I was always doing what I was supposed to be doing. I loved the man. No matter our problems, I was in love with David. I was able to understand his complex nature as well as anyone, and I believed in his intrinsic goodness, as I still do to this day—even after all we’ve been through.

  One day, in the summer of 2004, I made a run to Costco, and I happened to be driving through the Los Angeles suburb of Westlake. As I drove along, I was struck by what a sweet little community it was, and I craned my neck to check out one of the adorable stores I’d just passed. As had become my habit, I wanted to check in with David, to let him know I’d left Costco and was on my way home, so I called him from my car.

  He wasn’t answering, so I left a message: “I just left Costco, and I’m in Westlake,” I said. “I may stop into this store on the way home because this is such a cute little community.” I sort of babbled on about Westlake and how charming I thought it was. Little did I realize then the significance Westlake would have in my life and the future of my marriage.

  Despite David’s obsessiveness when it came to my whereabouts, he continued to feel wholly justified in checking in and out of our marriage whenever there was tension between us.

  One night, there was a big function we’d RSVP’d to and were supposed to attend together. As the day of the gala dawned, I was extremely conflicted and uncertain about what to do because David was not living at home at the moment. I didn’t know where he was, and we weren’t communicating. Either I’d go alone, or I’d risk being rude to the hosts. I knew that, whatever I decided, I wasn’t going to call David and ask him if he was still planning to be there.

  After much internal debate, I got dressed and went out to the party. I still remember what I wore because I felt so sad and strange about being there without David, and about where we had ended up in our marriage. Everything felt deeply unsettled. Is he just acting out again, or is this disappearance the final time, meaning he’s going away for good? He’d never skipped an event like this before.

  I was seated next to iconic TV producer Larry David, and I did my best to appear upbeat and make small talk with him. And then I looked across the giant ballroom, where this elaborate affair was being held, and I saw David sitting at another table on the other side of the room. He was present, but we hadn’t been seated together, which was perplexing to me as we had been invited and RSVP’d together. Looking across the crowded room, with dozens of people in between us, my heart broke at the sight of my distant husband, who suddenly felt like a stranger to me.

  Over the next few hours, David never came over to where I was sitting, and I never went over to his table, either. If I’d had too much personal pride to call him, I certainly wasn’t going to cave now. We never spoke at all that night, and mind you, we were still married. We were not separated. We had not even had a particularly bad fight. As far as I knew, he was just gone for a spell, and he’d be back again sometime soon. I went home alone that night, feeling confused and bereft. He was away for several more days, and then he called me as if nothing had happened.

  “Well, did you have fun at the party?” he asked.

  “Well, are you coming home?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there,” he said.

  David did return to our home in the next few days, but so many unexplained disappearances, so many absences had eroded the foundation of our marriage. It was becoming clearer that the reasons for staying with David and tolerating his behavior were beginning to dissipate. With my sons launching into their adult lives, I didn’t have to protect them anymore or worry about how my marriage, or lack of one, might impact them. I began to think about myself and my own happiness in a way I hadn’t felt able to do before.

  By this point in my life the strength of my resolve and emotional intelligence had increased dramatically from when I was with Elvis, or even with Bruce. I was a more seasoned, learned person, and while I hadn’t become jaded enough to stop believing in the possibilities of love and life, I was becoming much more realistic and emotionally mature. I was coming into my own, and I liked how it gave me strength.

  On another occasion that same year, my good friend Esther was having a big beautiful fiftieth birthday party and David had gone MIA in the days leading up to her soiree. As with other events, we had told her that we would be attending, and I wasn’t sure how to approach the situation. I ultimately decided to go alone because we’d said we’d be there. After what had occurred at the previous event, I didn’t know if David was going to show up or not, so I didn’t cancel for him. He’s a grown man, I thought. He can make his apologies for himself if he chooses not to attend.

  Unlike the last time, I hadn’t fretted about being on my own this time. For years I’d been scared about being on my own at events like these—after nearly two decades of having David’s company and being at the social heart of every party, being on my own had felt uncomfortable, and left me feeling vulnerable. But after the experience of seeing him across the room at the previous party, I determined that I needed to embrace this solitude and the freedom it afforded me. I was on my own, but able to walk in with supreme confidence, knowing I was surrounded by caring friends.

  When I walked in, I actually felt completely comfortable, maybe even empowered. With a high-wattage smile on my face I was determined to be there without telegraphing my private dramas to the room. When Esther asked about David, I simply responded, “He’s MIA, missing in action,” I said, being sure to keep smiling.

  By this point in my relationship with David, my closest friends knew that David’s pattern was to be MIA, and so she laughed at my joke, gave me an encouraging squeeze, and did her best to make sure I had a wonderful time that night. David didn’t even make an appearance, which I considered very rude, but I went ahead and stayed at the party, even though it meant sitting by myself for some of the festivities.

  While the new strength I was finding to be inherent in myself was born of sometimes painful circumstances, it felt good to exhibit my personal power. I became more and more comfortable asserting myself on my own terms. I am perfectly capable of getting in my car and going to an event alone, I thought. I am not going to cower. I am not going to cover for him anymore by claiming he’s working when I have no idea where he is.

  By the middle of 2004 my relationship with David had become so contentious that he’d not only left home once again, but he’d actually written up a list of fifteen demands that I needed to meet in order for him to return to the house and me. These included everything from, yes, the rule that nobody would ever sit in his kitchen chair, to no one should ever park in his space in our oversized motor court, to the decree that his word was the final word, and the demand that I sign a postnuptial agreement.

  I could laugh at his need to be the king in his house, but there was no way I was going to sign a postnup. I’d had no problem walking away from my first marriage with a modest settlement and no alimony or child support, but this was different. David and I had been together for eighteen years at this point. I’d been working the whole time. And we’d built our profiles and careers together.

  Overall, I found the list to be highly insulting. If I had signed it, I would have had no power in my life, and that feeling was all too familiar to me. It would have been like I’d reverted to when I was a twenty-two-year-old beauty queen and E
lvis dictated my day-to-day reality. I had fought too hard and grown too much to go backward.

  I told him where he could put the list, and I think David could tell how serious I was, and how close to the breaking point, because instead of exploding at me in return, as he usually did, he was subdued. At this point, he’d been MIA for nearly two weeks, but his tone was reconciliatory.

  “Let’s meet on Sunday,” he said. “Let’s sit down and see if we can work things out.”

  Well, the night before we were due to meet, I had a strange feeling and decided to call a girlfriend of mine around midnight. We hadn’t talked for at least six months, and I knew it was late to be calling her, but I felt such a strong urge to do so that I couldn’t ignore it.

  “Oh my God, Linda, I’m so glad you called me,” she said. “Are you sitting down? I’ve been waiting for you to call me.”

  “Why am I calling you?” I asked. “Something just told me to call you.”

  “Do you want to know who David’s girlfriend is?” she asked.

  “David has a girlfriend?” I said, genuinely shocked.

  She went on to tell me that David had been having an affair for the past six months with a single mother from Westlake with two sons, whom he’d met at an event he’d attended without me. He’d been seated at a table with some friends from Westlake, and they’d introduced him to her. They’d been an item ever since, and many in our circle knew about it. My friend hadn’t wanted to be the one to call and tell me the bad news, and so she’d been hoping I would call her with my suspicions. And now I had called, and I knew everything.

  I looked at our phone records. I found a single number that David had called many, many times, from both his cell phone and our home phone, for the past six months. So now I knew the girl’s name. I knew her phone number. I knew their history. The fact that she was from Westlake made me sad when I thought back to how I’d been so charmed by the area I’d even commented on it to David, having no idea that he’d been engaged in an affair with her there at the time. Well, I had all the information I needed now, and I was determined to take charge of the conversation when I sat down with David.

  In the morning, David called me.

  “Are you ready to have that meeting?” he asked.

  “Yes, I am, absolutely,” I said. “It has changed a little, though. I have something I want to talk to you about.”

  He came home, and we went into his studio. As soon as we were settled, I spoke.

  “David, do you want to tell me about her, or should I tell you?” I said, using his mistress’s full name.

  He went ashy, his eyes big, and he remained silent, a rare occurrence for him.

  “This meeting is about your affair,” I said. “Would you like to tell me, or should I tell you what I know?”

  “That’s a nonevent,” he said.

  “Really? It doesn’t sound like a nonevent. It sounds like you have been having an affair while I have been struggling to make this marriage work.”

  “No, no, I haven’t even kissed her.”

  “Really?” I said. “Okay, I have phone records here. I have her phone number. I know you’ve been calling her. I haven’t figured it all out yet. This is all preliminary, but I know you have been having a relationship.”

  “No, it is just a friendship,” he said. “I just needed somebody to talk to, and I haven’t even kissed her. It’s not a big deal. I’ve just talked to her on the phone a few times in the last month or two.”

  “Really?” I said. “I checked the phone records, and they say you’ve been talking to her for six months.”

  “Those are wrong,” he said.

  Now I was incensed. He’d been caught, and he was really going to lie to my face?

  “Oh, really, the phone records lie, but you don’t?” I asked.

  He continued to make excuses. I’d had enough.

  “Okay, if I go up to the house and call her, she’ll concur that friendship is all it is?”

  “Oh, absolutely, it’s a nonevent,” he said. “This is about you and me. It’s not about somebody else. I want to work things out. I’m still in love with you. I want us to be together.”

  I still loved David, too, and there was meaning for me in his words. And yet this news wasn’t over for me. He didn’t think I’d do it, but I went up to the house, and I called her. Let’s refer to her as Jezebel to protect the guilty. “May I speak to Jezebel please?” I politely asked.

  “Who is this?” replied the voice at the other end of the line.

  “This is Linda Thompson,” I said. “I’m David Foster’s wife.”

  There was a charged silence.

  “Why are you calling me?” she asked.

  “I’m not calling to judge you or to interrogate you. Honestly, I’m calling you woman to woman for your edification and for mine. I wanted to let you know that my husband is telling me that he’s still in love with me, and he would like to work things out. He is asserting that his relationship with you—I know it has been going on for a while, I have seen his phone records—as he puts it, is a nonevent. He says he hasn’t even kissed you.” I had conjured up my best Grace Kelly demeanor to confront her with dignity. I’m sure my graciousness threw her off.

  She laughed a little nervously.

  “Well, that is not exactly true,” she said. “We have definitely kissed, and it has been more romantic than that, but we are just friends. He just needed someone to talk to, and so I have been there for him.”

  “I assumed as much,” I said. “Listen, I’m not judging or condemning you. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, too. This is a mistake, clearly, that you have made. My advice to you, woman to woman, would be take care of your two sons. I know that you have two sons. Concentrate on them, and get on with your life, because David is trying to work things out here, and I would appreciate if you would respect that.”

  “David’s friends told me that you are the nicest person in the world,” she said.

  “No, I’m not that nice,” I said. “I just believe in honesty and transparency, so I wanted to reach out to you to clear the air for both of us.”

  After my call with her, David and I had a long and painful discussion, with him reassuring me over and over she meant nothing to him. I said, “I need you to call her in front of me and tell her that it’s done, if you really want to be with me.”

  He did as I asked, which was a step in the right direction, but I knew that wasn’t going to repair the damage. If we were going to stay together, we had to rebuild not only our marriage, but also my ability to trust him. After finding out about this one affair, it had made every other disappearance in our nearly two decades together suspect.

  I’ve read and heard about every possible act of retribution, when an affair is involved, from shredding the offender’s clothes, to torching a car, to cutting off the offending penis. Let me just say David got off light. I didn’t punish him with any overt act of rage. But I didn’t let him forget any too soon how he had damaged our marriage.

  We decided to return to therapy in order to receive some support to begin healing. In the early sessions, we discussed David’s affair, and I learned that of course there had been sexual activity. It took all my restraint not to call Jezebel back, but I was not going to reduce myself to that.

  Therapy can be very helpful, but as I’ve found, most of the answers you discover in therapy are ones you already have inside yourself. And so the therapist really becomes more like a sounding board as you’re excavating your personal truth, from the inside out. And by this point in my life and in my relationship with David, I knew the truth.

  During one session with our therapist, David said something really hurtful to me. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but as the old adage says, “You may forget what someone says, but you never forget how it made you feel.”

  I expressed my hurt, and instead of acknowledging my feelings, the therapist tried to ameliorate the situation.

  “Well, Linda, what Davi
d meant was—”

  “You know what?” I said. “I’ve known David for nearly twenty years. You’ve known him for what? Twenty minutes in the scheme of things. You just met him, so with all due respect, I’ve got this, and I don’t need you to tell me what he meant. I know what he meant.”

  I was done with our joint therapy. We had a few more sessions after that, but my heart wasn’t really in it, and I wasn’t feeling much more optimistic about our relationship in general. But I still loved David, and I believed that he still loved me. And if he said he wanted to continue to work on our marriage, I wasn’t going to be the one to give up. So I dug in, attempting to forgive and to rebuild while trying to remain strong yet hopeful. I even got a good lyric out of my pain with a song I wrote with him called “Go On and Cry,” recorded by American Idol’s Diana Degarmo. At least there was that positive. But broken trust in a relationship is like a broken china plate. You can glue it back together, but the cracks will always be evident, and it will never have the same integrity or strength it once had before it was broken.

  “Go On and Cry”

  What goes around

  Comes back around

  Seems that’s just the way

  Heartache falls

  I learned to live without you by my side

  But I prayed for the day that you’d call

  So why don’t you lie down beside me

  Open your heart

  And confide in me

  Go on and cry

  Here’s my shoulder

  Why don’t you try

  To imagine that I’d even care

  Go on and cry

  On my cold shoulder

  You left me so sad

  And you hurt me so bad

  It’s your turn to

  Cry cry cry

  Over me

  You say you made

  A big mistake

  When you threw away

  The love I gave

  I always knew you’d come around again

  Looking for the love we made