Two of the first calls I made after Danny and I married were to the mothers of his sons. I was young enough to think I could waltz right in and make everything OK between the absentee father and his children. I didn’t appreciate the fact that broken families are rarely easily glued back together. One of Danny’s boys was in his late teens, and the other was only a few years younger. I insisted Danny get paid up on child support and alimony early in our marriage, too. Then I arranged for both boys to visit their father, whom they had seen maybe four or five times in their entire lives. For me that was unacceptable, not to mention incredibly sad for all concerned.
But by the time bonding with Daddy was over, I regretted ever having the idea of bringing his children to New York. Danny put them to work as soon as they arrived, as if they were his employees and not his flesh and blood. He was not the loving or warm father the boys, or I, yearned for them to have. I’m not sure if it was his sharecropping childhood or what, but Danny seemed ill-equipped to give his sons the love they needed. Maybe Danny hadn’t been shown that kind of love as a child. It is nearly impossible to give to someone else what you haven’t received yourself. But these were hard-core, real-life realities that I hadn’t learned yet.
Despite knowing what I did know about my husband’s history as a father, it wasn’t long before I had babies on the brain. It didn’t hurt that Iman had given birth to a baby girl earlier in the year. I had mostly lost touch with Iman after my marriage to Danny, though she and Spencer did make one visit to our apartment. Nevertheless, I was able to keep tabs on her seemingly blissful union to Spencer and the birth of their daughter through newspapers. She and Spencer still seemed so happy and solidly connected, both mentally and physically.
That’s what I wanted with Danny. That’s what I always wanted with all the men I loved. Perhaps a baby would give me that peace and contentment I was searching for so desperately and would be just the miracle we needed to make our marriage indestructible. No one could come between us if we had a bouncing bundle of joy, surely. We may have had a shaky start with our rather large age difference and Danny’s nonstop talking, but somewhere along the way I’d fallen in love with my balding, shorts-wearing-in-the-wintertime, middle-aged lover. I was pretty sure he’d fallen in love with me, too.
Or, at least, I prayed he had.
CHAPTER 13
The Other Shoe Drops
Infidelity is something no one should be forced to face during the course of a marriage. The fear of being cheated on can drive a woman batty pretty quickly, and cause her self-esteem to plummet, supermodel or not. I should know.
That’s not to say that Danny hadn’t given me fair warning of what might be coming my way, what with all his casual talk of threesomes and open marriages. But my mind just couldn’t fully comprehend the fact that when a man talks of open marriages and orgies, he’s really painting you a vivid picture of what your future together might be like.
Danny was a true product of the sixties, where there were few rules about how or where love could or couldn’t be expressed. This was a man who would open the front door of our lovely apartment buck naked. Then, he would carry on conversations with our guests as if this were normal behavior. I felt like I spent more time apologizing to visitors than I did actually visiting with them.
Still, I tried to ignore the signs that my husband had possibly taken his attitude of free love and open marriage a step too far by cheating on me. A few months into the marriage, though, Danny wasn’t making much of an effort to hide his behavior, and I wasn’t making much of an effort to hide my unhappiness.
After returning from a modeling trip abroad, I came home to find a mutual friend of ours, Charlene (a sister of one of Danny’s brother Eddie’s girlfriends), walking out of our master bathroom in a robe. I was already confused to see her come out of my personal bedroom, and then I realized that she was wearing my African silk bathrobe and my Rolex watch. I had bought it on a modeling trip overseas, and had gotten Danny one, too.
It’s one thing for a woman you don’t know to come into your house and sleep with your man, but it’s quite another when you actually know the hussy. What was really bad about the situation was that I’d always liked Charlene. Not anymore. I saw nothing but red, I was so angry. Without a moment’s thought, I headed to the kitchen to get the broom so that I could chase after her ass.
Let me stop right here and explain something very important. People often wonder why women go after other women in these situations and not the man. I chose to go after Charlene that day simply because I knew her, and she was in my damn house with my damn Rolex on, wearing my damn silk robe. She had something coming to her, and she got it.
I chose a broom and not a knife because Danny Sims was not worth doing one day of jail time for, but I was determined that Charlene would think damn twice before she brought herself back into my house or my bedroom. She must have seen the I’ve-just-snapped look flash across my face because she took a running start from the apartment before I could collect my weapon. I was not to be deterred, and caught that heffa downstairs, but she was a quick one and made a mad dash out of the building. I was right behind her though, swatting that broom at her until she suddenly turned into Flo Jo and sprinted down Fifth Avenue.
What a sight we must have been to the doorman, and anyone else just walking by that day! What a blessing there was no TMZ back then.
As I turned to go back inside, I looked up at my apartment and there was Danny, leaning out of the window laughing his behind off. In that moment I realized how absolutely bat-shit crazy my life had become.
My face had graced the cover of so many magazines, and here I was chasing another woman out of my bedroom and down the street with a broom! Could I sink any lower? Actually, yes, I could and I would.
I was in shock. I had to do something to save my marriage. So, in the days following, I reached out to a couple of Danny’s best friends to talk some sense into him. I had met them—an older Italian couple (with a daughter around my age)—several times with Danny, and they always seemed to offer him really solid advice, be it about business or life generally, and he would listen. They also seemed to have such a solid marriage, and the husband seemed so dedicated. Maybe Danny could take a few notes.
Immediately after my talk with Danny’s friends, I saw a change in him, but it wasn’t for the better. He wasn’t seeing other women anymore, but now he had turned sullen, despondent, and unpleasant to be around. Our friend Tripp even asked me if I understood what I’d done to Danny by going outside the marriage with our problems. It seems I hadn’t made life easier for myself—I had actually made it worse.
Now I really needed a friend.
My first husband, Billy, had warned me about Danny, and I’d refused to listen. Billy hadn’t been the best husband, but he had proven to be a wonderful and steadfast friend since our divorce. He would surely understand what I was going through and gladly offer me a shoulder to lean on.
Three years after our divorce, Billy was still the Billy I’d left. He was now living in a boardinghouse in Brooklyn (with a girlfriend who he moved out when I came for my first visit) where he shared a bathroom and shower with a host of other residents. Only now, with a new marriage to another man, could I finally understand and appreciate my first husband. Not everyone is on this earth to become the CEO of a major corporation, or to have millions of dollars in their bank accounts, or to live the high life. Some people are here to offer support and love to others. That was Billy. He didn’t need or want constant attention, or his name in the bright lights. I adored him for that, and I just wish I’d had the maturity to appreciate those traits while we were still together.
I guess those were the exact qualities that kept drawing me back to Billy again and again in the years after our marriage ended. I leaned on him heavily during the bad time in my marriage to Danny, though it really wasn’t fair to either one of us. I wasn’t even turned off by the fact that he lived in a boardinghouse or that I had to sleep in a
bunk bed with him.
Those were a blissful two weeks with Billy in his cramped boardinghouse. He wound up offering me much more than comfort, and before I knew it, Billy and I were sleeping together again and I didn’t do one thing to stop it. That trip down memory lane would lead to a host of uncomfortable conversations with my second husband just nine months down the road.
After those two weeks with Billy, I headed back home to Danny and realized quickly that I was pregnant. It wasn’t the best timing, given my recent weeks away from home, but Danny was overjoyed with my baby news and didn’t seem interested in connecting the dots.
I decided I would worry about the Billy factor later and joined Danny in his joy, but neither of us could bask in it for very long. A week after I found out I was expecting, the producers from the film of my dreams, Ashanti, called to say Beverly Todd hadn’t worked out, and they now wanted me for the lead role after all.
One week I’m chasing a woman down the street with a broom, the next week I’m running away from home into the arms of my first husband. A few weeks after that I find out I’m pregnant, and the following week I find out that I have a starring role in a movie with William Holden and Michael Caine.
Could I really manage a starring role in the movie now that I was pregnant? The film would require me to travel to several locations all over the world and also engage in some pretty physical activity during a few scenes. I would also need to take shots for malaria and yellow fever in order to travel to Africa. Was that even safe for me to do now? Danny thought I could get by, and I wanted the role desperately enough that I convinced myself that it would be all right. The shots I needed were only dangerous to the fetus after three months of pregnancy, and I wasn’t that far gone yet. In the end, Danny and I decided we wouldn’t tell the director or the producers about my condition. I wasn’t showing yet, and we didn’t want to give the producers an excuse to say that my pregnancy was a health risk not worth taking.
Within days, Danny and I were off to Israel and meeting with Michael Caine and William Holden over dinner and drinks, or in my case, Shirley Temples. I honestly felt like a little girl whose dearest wish had come true. But as with all dreams, reality sets in sooner or later.
Though the plot of the film centered around Michael Caine’s character racing to get his wife (me) back from the slave traders who’d kidnapped her, my character did not appear in all of the scenes. That turned out to be a blessing, given my condition.
By the time Danny and I arrived on location near the Dead Sea on the edge of the Judaean Desert, filming had already begun. I was so thrilled that I had finally landed such a life-changing role that I didn’t even flinch in the sweltering, 110-degree heat. It was still very early in my pregnancy, so I felt extremely well, and looked even better. I shone from the inside out, though I was sure people on the set could easily see the motherly changes in my skin and body. But no one picked up on any clues of my condition until I had a run-in with one ugly, stinking camel.
One scene in the film called for me to ride in a camel caravan to show how I was being transported across the desert in the slave convoy. The scene was slated to last for just a few minutes, and though I hated having to even go near that smelly animal, there was no choice—that was the shot. If I was going to be taken seriously as an actress, I needed to put in the real work, so I couldn’t balk at doing unpleasant things. I didn’t need any negative reports getting back to the powers that be. Besides, I figured being on the camel for only a few minutes wouldn’t be much of a problem for me or the baby as long as I was careful and took my time getting on and off the animal.
Unfortunately, I didn’t imagine that my camel would have a mind of his own and wouldn’t be cooperating in any way. As soon as I got on, the camel in front of me moved forward as instructed, but the one behind moved before it should have, forcing the camel I was on out of his comfort zone. Before I knew it, I had been thrown off and onto a bed of rocks.
Before I fully realized what was happening, I yelled out, “My baby!” My fall and my cry brought a collective gasp from the crew. My secret was out.
Within an instant of hitting the ground I could feel fluids leaking from my body, and I was in a panic. As the crew lifted me up from the rocks, I looked around for Danny, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found. Doctors showed up and examined me and told me that both the baby and I were OK, and that with a few days of rest, all would be well.
Danny, though, was missing in action for most of the day. When I did catch up with him a few hours later, he was in our room with a young African actress who would later gain fame in a Steven Spielberg movie. Though my darling husband swore up and down nothing was going on between the two of them, for some reason he had yelled, “It’s Beverly,” when I opened the door of our spacious hotel suite. I’m not that big a fool—I know a warning sign for someone to get dressed quickly when I hear one. (That same young African lady found her way to New York a few weeks after filming ended—someone with serious connections helped her get a passport and other documents with record speed. I would have respected Danny more if he had tried a little harder to hide his slick ways.)
To be honest, the day of the accident I was too consumed by my pain and too much in shock from my fall to think much about Danny’s dumb-ass ways. I put what I knew to be true about my husband out of my head and simply showed him how bruised my body was from my tumble. And then my dear husband made what I thought was one of his best suggestions since we had arrived on set—he told me to make a reservation for a massage at the hotel spa to relax and soothe the muscles of my sore body; he even suggested which masseur to choose. He was headed back to New York in any case, so I was going to be alone for the rest of the shoot.
So having said good-bye to Danny, I made my way down to the spa and was taken in immediately by the male therapist whom my husband had suggested. The therapist was a young man, no bigger than Jiminy Cricket (actually he shared a resemblance to Woody Allen), and I pointed out to him where I needed him to work his magic. I would have preferred a woman to work on me, but given how horrible I felt, Jiminy Cricket himself could have tiptoed on my back and that would have been pure bliss for me.
I disrobed and climbed up onto the table. While facedown, I heard “Jiminy” lock the door to the room and then instruct me to lie on my back. I was bruised both front and back, so I thought nothing of it until this very small man started massaging my breasts. I couldn’t believe this little hobbit asshole was actually nothing more than a molester. I jumped off the table, grabbed my robe, and stumbled to the front desk to lodge a complaint. One of the women behind the counter quickly whispered to me that others had filed similar complaints against the little twerp.
While I was still at the front desk, the little guy came walking up to me with a huge smirk on his face. Before I could stop myself, I hauled off and slapped the shit out of him and walked away without looking back.
Embarrassed—and not to mention beside myself after a day truly from hell—I headed to my room to call my husband, who by now was on his way back to New York. When I got him on the phone that night to recount the devastating details of my molestation, he began to laugh. My husband actually roared with laughter, as though I had shared with him a joke from Richard Pryor’s latest stand-up routine.
And with that, a lightbulb of sorts turned on in my head. That was probably one of the most profoundly revealing moments of my marriage. It was as if God himself were lifting me out of months of darkness and showing me just who the man I’d married really was, once and for all. I’ll always believe Danny sent me to that spa for that man to molest me, simply out of pure hatefulness. There was no other explanation. It had been a setup from the start, and I had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. I had no proof, but nothing else made sense.
I was sure the worst had to be over. Danny was gone, so I would have some peace, for a little while at least. I had no idea how wrong I was. The very next day the police showed up with questions and handcuffs—for me!<
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“Jiminy Cricket” had filed assault charges against me for slapping him, and now I was in the middle of my own nightmare. I was taken to a courthouse where I was forced to sit on a dirt floor for what seemed like hours. I was desperate to run off my mouth to the police, and let them know exactly who I was and who they were dealing with! Clearly they didn’t understand that I was an American, and a well-known one at that. But a voice inside my head told me to keep my mouth shut because I was in a world of trouble thousands of miles away from home, where I didn’t speak one word of the language.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Georges-Alain Vuille, the producer of the movie, arrived to post bail (five hundred thousand dollars). Georges was a nice guy—he had a Napoleon complex, but he was a nice guy—and wanted nothing more than to become a big-time Hollywood producer. I could tell by the look on his face that day that my arrest and all the buzz that surrounded it might seriously threaten to put this movie, and his career, in jeopardy. Filming had already been delayed a few weeks when they decided to replace Beverly Todd with me, and Georges could ill afford any more interruptions in the process without causing a considerable backup in the production. And the fact that the police had taken my passport after my arrest meant I wouldn’t be able to travel with the cast and crew to the other filming locations. This would ultimately lead to another significant delay for the film.
With all that in mind, Georges understandably asked me to refrain from discussing the incident with anyone and to just finish filming my scenes quietly. My goal was to do as he asked since I really did like Georges and I was so grateful for the incredible opportunity he had given me.
I swear I had every intention of doing what he’d asked, even after Michael Caine made jokes about my great right hook on my first day back on set. But all bets were off when a maid at the hotel suggested I got what I asked for by taking my clothes off in front of a man who wasn’t my husband.
The Face That Changed It All Page 15