I decided to marry her, perhaps believing that she would rely on me rather than alcohol to provide whatever it was she was looking for. I still believe that marrying Nerine at that time was the greatest sacrifice I could have made for her. I married against the advice of my family and friends, against my own good sense. But I thought it might be the only chance we had. That she would recognize how strongly I believed in her and would make a sacrifice of her own; she would risk giving up alcohol for me. She was my fantasy and I was going to heal her. During our wedding ceremony I read her a poem I’d written, pledging my love to her, and in return she said, “I pledge my sobriety to you.” We had a beautiful celebration in Pasadena with our family and friends. Leonard was my best man. “It’s wonderful that we’re all here tonight to celebrate the coming together of these two wonderful people,” he said, toasting us. “And Bill has asked me to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. He doesn’t want to let this opportunity go by without telling about his latest book, which is available in most of your local...”
Nerine and I danced the night away. I just didn’t want to let her go. She took down her hair that some Hollywood makeup person had done, scrubbed off the makeup that a Hollywood makeup artist had applied, and there she was in her natural beauty. She was sober, and to that point it was the happiest day of my life. Imagine being able to point to one day and know it was the happiest day of your life. It was truly amazing. And finally we put all the presents people had brought into our car and drove home. We climbed into bed and I was ecstatic. Ecstatic, that’s the only way to describe it.
I woke up about eight o’clock the next morning and she was drunk. Later we discovered that she had hidden bottles of vodka all over the house, in places we would have never dreamed of looking. There were small bottles at the bottom of the clothes hamper, in a small drawer hidden below my athletic socks. Places I would never imagine looking.
I tried to understand her addiction. If I said anything about it she would immediately become defensive, she’d respond by becoming furious with me. “I’m not drunk,” she’d say in a slurred voice. “What makes you think I’m drunk?”
“Because you’re slobbering.” “I’m not slobbering,” she’d insist, slobbering. She used all the clichéd phrases. I remember her telling me, “Alcohol is my only friend,” which I took as an accusation that I had let her down. Once, when she was drunk, she looked at me sadly and asked, “Why, Bill. Why?”
I thought she was saying, Why am I drinking? When she was sober the next day I asked her if she remembered asking that question. She didn’t. I asked her, “Why do you think you asked, why? It was a profound question, what do you think you meant by it?”
She sighed. “I was probably asking you why you didn’t understand why I drink.”
I tried so hard to talk to her. “You’re killing us,” I told her. “Why can’t you stop? I love you. What do you need? We’ve got love. We’ve got our home. We’ve got our future together. Why are you getting drunk?”
“I’m not drunk.”
The situation got steadily worse. We had to install an alcohol monitor in the car, a device that makes it impossible to start a car with alcohol on your breath, so she couldn’t drive drunk. We were terrified she was going to kill herself, or someone else.
Two or three months after our marriage I just couldn’t take it anymore. Finally I told her, “Nerine, I’m going to get a divorce.”
“You can’t use that word,” she said. “You should never use that word.”
“You promised me you would be sober and you haven’t stopped drinking. I’m starting divorce proceedings.” People who have not dealt with the addiction of someone they love deeply can’t really understand the compromises you make to love that person, the lies that you tell yourself, the insults that you have to accept. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to get through to her. We separated for a brief period during which she pleaded with me for another chance. This time, she swore, this time. I was facing decisions unlike anything I’d ever had to deal with in my life. Did I really believe in the healing powers of love or was that just something I said because it sounded good? Finally I told her, “You go to rehab and I’ll stop the divorce.”
She agreed. I thought we’d won. When she came home we spent a quiet evening together, talking hopefully about the future. She was committed to sobriety, she told me. The next morning I went to play tennis with some friends. “Come with me,” I said. “Everybody’d like to see you.” Instead she stayed home, and by that afternoon she was drunk.
Nerine was in rehab for thirty days three different times. I understand now that the concept that a person can change their life in thirty days of rehab is nonsensical. A person can’t change the driving forces in their life in a month. Perhaps it could be done in a year, but certainly it takes a minimum of six months to let your body heal.
Twice she almost drank herself to death. Once, when we rushed her to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, her blood-alcohol reading was 3.9—legally 0.08 is considered drunk. She couldn’t stand, she was as pale as death. Four days later I brought her home. “You almost died,” I said. And there was such an arrogant, quizzical smile on her face, similar to the expression I’d seen so many years earlier when she jumped off the platform on the bungee cord ride. It occurred to me at that moment she wanted to see how close she could come to death. I asked her, “Do you want to die?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I’m stopping.” Within a day she was drinking again.
The second time she was literally missing for three days. No one had any idea where she was. I was totally frantic. Finally someone called from a charity home in downtown Los Angeles, a flophouse really, telling me that “a woman who said she was Mrs. Shatner” was there. The people in that home welcomed her and saved her life.
I was so frustrated, so angry. We were so close to a wonderful life together but we just couldn’t get there. She was everything I had ever wanted; she was a princess, she had such majesty about her. And then to see her drunk, to see our life together being shattered. I would sit in our house and cry. I remember sitting in a chair one morning, my hands over my eyes, sobbing softly. She had been drunk the night before and I’d finally begun to understand that my dreams of our life together were never going to become reality. She came down the stairs and looked at me and asked, “Why are you crying?”
“Don’t you know?” “No.” She had no memory of the night before. I remembered every ugly detail, I remembered the impact and she remembered nothing. I just couldn’t solve the mystery of alcoholism, why our love wasn’t strong enough to overcome her need for alcohol.
Leonard and Susan were incredibly supportive. Leonard tried to help, he knew from his own experience what she was fighting, and he tried so hard. Leonard felt blessed that he had been able to stop drinking. We talked about his alcoholism, and he remembered being with Susan one night shortly after they were married and she asked him if he was happy. He was, he told her, he didn’t remember ever being happier. “Then why are you still drinking?” she asked.
That was the day he got serious about stopping. And Leonard has always been extremely proud of the fact that he never had another drink. So he knew what Nerine was going through and he got involved. It was one of the most noble acts of friendship I’d ever experienced, although I’m certain he would insist he did it for Nerine, not for me. He took her to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he spent time just talking to her, he offered advice and suggestions to me. Leonard told me once that she didn’t want to stop, she had no intention of quitting. And until she reached that point, there was little I could do.
The horror began when she went into rehab for the third time. As always, I was so hopeful that this time would be different. This time it would work, she’d stop drinking and we’d be happy forever after. About a week before she started we were at the horse farm in Lexington, Kentucky. It was a beautiful July night and we went
out for a moonlight motorcycle ride. I stopped and we just stood there, listening to the rustle of the wind. It was a beautiful, sensual moment. “What will it take to get you to stop?” I asked.
“If you’re with me twenty-four hours a day,” she said. “If you’re there, I won’t drink. That’ll stop me.”
“Then I’ll be with you twenty-four hours a day,” I promised.
She had been in rehab for only a few days when the director called. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You have to come and get Nerine. She’s drunk. We want her out of here now.”
I had finally understood that our marriage couldn’t work and I was helpless to do anything about it. Once again, we began talking about a divorce. This time I was serious about it, I thought. She was drinking every day and there was nothing I could do to stop her. Finally I called the director of the rehab facility and begged her to take Nerine back. She was very reluctant, but finally I convinced her. She said, reluctantly, “Okay, Bill. Get her sober for one day and we’ll take her back.”
One day is such a short period of time, but for Nerine it seemed impossibly long. One Monday morning I asked a friend of mine, a New York psychiatrist who had been working with addicts for years, to help me. She wanted to hold an intervention. “I’ll come out and you get some of her family and friends together and we’ll confront her.” Nerine’s family couldn’t help, they had their own issues. So I got some friends together. We were going to hold the intervention on Tuesday and after that she would go back into rehab. Hope is resilient.
After setting up the intervention I called the rehab center. “I’ll have her there tomorrow,” I said. Sober.
I had planned to visit my grandchildren in Orange County that afternoon. Nerine had been drunk the night before, but had been sober in the morning. There were two people to help at the house, so I knew she wouldn’t be there alone. I decided to go. As I was backing out of the driveway she stopped me. “Where you going?”
When I told her she asked to go with me. “I can’t,” I said. “Nerine, you’ve been drunk so many times in front of the kids that they’re fearful and I don’t want to go through that scene. I’ll be back in the evening.” Then I added, more from habit than anything else, “Please don’t drink.”
As I put the car back into reverse she said softly, “Please don’t leave me, Bill.”
“I’ll be back later,” I said and kept going. I spoke with her several times during the day. By eight-thirty that night I was in the car driving home. My daughter Melanie called me on my cell phone. “I can’t raise Nerine on her cell,” she said. “Can you call her on the land-line?” I tried calling the house several times, but there was no answer. When I got home about nine-thirty the house was quiet. We had three wonderful, loving Dobermans and they were attached to her—but they were in the kitchen. If she had been home they would have been with her. I called her name several times, walking around the house. When I got no response I just assumed she’d gone out. But I checked the garage and all the cars were there. I began to get a very strange feeling.
The phone rang. My first thought was that it was her, calling to tell me where she was, asking me to pick her up. It was her AA sponsor. “I don’t know where she is,” I told her. “I can’t find her.”
Her sponsor asked, “Have you checked the pool?”
A chill went down my back, but I quickly dismissed it. “No. The gate was closed and the dogs were downstairs.”
“Check it,” she insisted. I put her on hold and went outside. The pool area was dark, although part of it was dimly illuminated by lights from the second level. “Nerine?” There was no one around the pool. I looked into the pool, and in the darkness I saw a dark shape in the deep end. I wasn’t certain, it could have been a shadow—or it could have been...It had to be a shadow. It couldn’t be my wife. I took several steps backward to try to avoid the horror in front of me. I turned my back on the pool as I picked up the phone. This wasn’t possible. How could this be happening? “She’s in the pool.”
“Call nine-one-one.”
“Help me. Call nine-one-one.” I hung up on her and called the number I knew so very well. Nine-one-one. “Oh my God,” I said. “My poor wife is at the bottom of the pool.”
The dispatcher spoke evenly, just as I’d heard so many times on the show. “OK. Did you get her out of the pool yet, sir?”
“No. Not yet.” “I want you to take her out of the pool right now.”
I put down the phone and dived into the pool. I had enough breath for one deep dive. One of her arms was floating above her and I grabbed her by that arm and lifted her, pulling her toward the shallow end. As I did that I remember screaming, “What have you done! What have you done!” As I did that I looked up into the sky—and a helicopter was hovering over my house. I may have realized that it was a news copter, which had been monitoring the 911 calls.
I laid her down on the side of the pool. Her skin was blue. Her strawberry-blond hair was still curled. I remember every second. I put my finger in her throat to try to breathe life into her, and I heard a click. Later a policeman suggested that was her neck breaking, but it wasn’t. Something was caught in her throat. This was my nightmare. This was grotesquery. I couldn’t believe this was really happening.
Until that moment I had never truly experienced horror in my life. But this was horror. Oddly, I had never seen a dead body. I’d seen countless thousands of actors play dead, but death . . . She was dead. There was nothing I could do to save her. She was dead. The emergency responders arrived within minutes. I had to go down and open the gate for them, but I was confused, I didn’t want to leave her body alone. This time there would be no happy ending. My daughters came quickly. Reporters and news crews gathered outside the front gate. Everything was happening so quickly. I was in shock, in complete and absolute shock. This didn’t happen to me and the people I loved. This was the type of event I read about in the newspapers, it wasn’t about me.
My memory is that I spoke with the police that night. At least I think it was that night. “This is an accident,” the commanding officer told me. They had seen this scenario before. What appeared to have happened is that she had been drinking outside by the pool— they found a broken bottle—slipped and hit her head, and blacked out. An autopsy eventually found that her blood-alcohol level was 0.28, more than three times the amount considered intoxicated, as well as that there were traces of Valium in her system. But this officer did say to me, “I have to tell you, if there was any hint of foul play, you’re the first suspect.”
Maybe he didn’t actually use the word “suspect,” but that certainly was his inference. It sounded like dialogue from...from Hooker. It was absurd. Who could possibly think any such thing? “What are you talking about?” I said. “I mean, this is the woman I loved more than my life. I wouldn’t hurt her.”
I remember lying in bed that night. The police had left, the coroner had come, my children started taking turns staying with me. I remember my head pounding, I remember feeling that my head was moving in time with my heartbeat. The shock and the grief were overwhelming, and along with that came the knowledge and the fear that I was alone again.
Very early the next morning I walked down the long driveway to make a statement to the mob of reporters. Apparently they’d stayed there all night. I picked up the day’s newspaper that was left in the drive and I told them, “My beautiful wife is dead. Her laughter, her tears, and her joy will remain with me the rest of my life.”
After the O. J. Simpson debacle I suppose I should have known what was going to happen. I hadn’t, though. It was so clear what had happened that night; there didn’t seem any room for doubt or for questions. But that didn’t stop people or the media from asking those terrible questions. Did Shatner kill his wife? A day after I’d made my statement about loving her forever someone sent a note to the police, “Anybody who is innocent doesn’t stop and pick up a newspaper.”
It dawned on me then that people were watching me to see how
I acted. It was insane. Exactly how do you act when the woman you love has died and people are wondering if you had anything to do with her death? The fact that people could even think this way was stunning to me. Everybody reacts to horror in their own way. It’s one thing to have someone you love who has been sick or struggling die, but this? There’s no way of preparing for a cataclysmic event like this. The feelings I had were vaguely similar to the pain I’d experienced as a little boy, when I’d come home from school one day and found my dog lying in the street. My mother had left the door open and my dog had run outside and been killed by a car. I had completely forgotten that until once again I was experiencing that intense grief. I remember, I’d picked up my dog and carried him home. We had a brick stairway in front of the house and my father had covered the area under those stairs with latticework. There was a little opening so you could get underneath the stairs. I took my dog’s body and I opened the latticework and crawled in there. Sunlight streaming through the latticework formed rectangles that lit this hidden space. And I sat there holding the body of my dog and sobbing.
As a little boy I’d lost the thing I’d loved the most, and now it had happened again.
Within a few days of her death I learned that the National Enquirer was going to run a story asking, basically, “Did he or didn’t he kill her?” All the facts had not yet been made public, and as disgusting as it is, people were wondering what had happened that night. I wanted to get the true story out as quickly as possible. We called the Enquirer and offered them a deal. “Don’t run that story. Instead, we’ll give you the exclusive story of what happened that night.” In exchange they contributed $250,000 to what would eventually become the Nerine Shatner Foundation, which I intended to form to help addicted women. That was the only interview I did for months and I did it because they were going to run a tabloid story, so the fact that I was able to give this money to charity somehow made it seem sensible. Whether or not I would have done it given more time to think I don’t know. Some of her friends didn’t like me saying she was an alcoholic and have resented me ever since.
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