No Lifeguard on Duty

by Janice Dickinson

  SAVANNAH GIVING ME A FACE.

  I will be a better parent than my parents ever were, I promised myself, over and over. Of course, that wouldn’t be too hard. A rabid dog would have been a better parent than my father. But I really meant it. I really truly wanted to be a good mother. After all, there’s something miraculous about kids, all kids. There’s such fragility there. Such hope. Such dependence. One day I watched Savannah go off to kindergarten with her little lunch box: She looked like a tiny businesswoman going off to her tiny job.

  Nathan spent half his time at his father’s house, the other half with me. He was angry about the divorce, and I couldn’t blame him. I told him I was sorry we’d made such a mess of things, but that that didn’t change how we felt about him, and that we both loved him so much we wanted to share him for the rest of our lives. He listened, but he was still angry. He could get angry about a cloudy day, a ripped shirt, soggy fries. I was patient with him, most of the time. But I lost it occasionally, and whenever I raised my voice and saw how much it frightened him, I was filled with remorse and self-loathing. I will never again scream at him, I told myself. Never ever. But of course I broke the promise now and then, and felt worse about it every time.

  Guilt, the way it wears you down. I let him play Game-boy for hours and hours, and he spent way too much time on the computer, and I never made him eat his veggies. Pasta and cheeseburgers were all he ever wanted. I would have made him pheasant under glass if I thought he might eat it, but I didn’t know how. I wasn’t much of a cook, to be honest. Another shortcoming. Great! I guess I wasn’t much good as a mother, after all. Maybe I wasn’t much good, period.

  That pithy little maxim my father had drummed into my head came pounding back like a migraine: You’ll never amount to anything.

  Once again I felt the presence of the lurking demon. I didn’t know what to do about it. He isn’t real, I assured myself. It’s just your imagination. I could feel myself slipping into the abyss. I was terrified. I felt more alone than I’d ever felt in my life. I reached for my Filofax, desperate for help, and went through each name in my address book. There must have been four hundred of them—my close, personal friends. But by the time I got to the Zs I decided I couldn’t call a single one. What would I tell them? Well, like, you know, there’s this fucking demon in my closet. He has a face like a goddamn gargoyle. And he follows me everywhere I go. And what could they do? Arrange another intervention? Lock me up in a nuthouse?

  WITH THE GALLANT TONY PECK, JULY 2000.

  Then I began to rationalize my crazy thinking. I couldn’t tell them what was going on because they didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t want to listen to my heavy shit. Life was all about surface. My friends liked me—if at all—because I was Crazy Janice. I was a good time.

  But the truth ran deeper. I was afraid of the bogeyman because no one had ever been there to help me face him, to hold my hand and tell me everything was going to be all right. There was no lifeguard on duty. Never had been.

  My phone rang. I was almost afraid to answer it.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Want to grab a bite to eat?” It was my friend Tony Peck, Gregory’s son and Cheryl Tiegs’s ex-husband. He swung by to get me and we drove through Beverly Hills to dinner. I put the demon out of my mind, relegating him to the backseat. The streets were ablaze with Christmas decorations. The night was clear and crisp.

  “What a beautiful night,” I said, but to my ears I sounded like a moron. I thought I was going out of my mind.

  Over dinner I smiled and laughed and gossiped and went on and on about my two wonderful kids. I guess I went on about them a little too long, though, because suddenly I noticed that Tony had lost interest. He wasn’t even looking at me. He was looking at something across the room. Curious, I turned to look for myself. It was a beautiful woman. A girl, really. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. I looked back at Tony. I was shattered. But the pain gave way, instantly, to anger.

  “What?” he said. Now he was paying attention.

  Okay, motherfucker. Fine. I know. I’m a long way from the girl I was twenty-odd years ago. In those days, I was the cliché. I would walk into a room and things would flat-out change. In those days, I did my best to act like beauty was a horrible burden, a crashing bore—but of course in those days I could afford to behave like that. In those days beauty worked for me. It worked for me in spades. Beauty opened all the doors; it got me things I didn’t even know I wanted, and things I certainly didn’t deserve. And now? What now? Who was I now? A pleasant diversion? Or was I even that much? After all, in this town, a town full of beautiful women, well—maybe I wasn’t all that pleasant or all that diverting.

  “So, Tony,” I said, barely able to contain myself. “Have I lost my looks?”

  “What?”

  “No, no. Please. Be honest with me. I can take it.”

  “Jesus, Janice—”

  “Fuck this,” I snapped. I got to my feet and stormed out. Poor, innocent Tony. He followed me out to the street, wondering what he’d done wrong. The valet went off to fetch Tony’s car, and Tony kept apologizing—God knows why!—and still I ignored him. When we reached my house I got out and slammed the door and went inside without so much as a good-bye. Then I fell apart.

  What the hell was happening to me? I looked at myself in the mirror. Was it over? No, goddamn it! Heads still turned when I walked into a room; men still wanted me. Or did they? I needed to be wanted. I couldn’t go on without being wanted. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that little bitch at the restaurant. I used to be that woman, I thought. I used to be the one who turned heads.

  Now…Christ…I was becoming invisible.

  I went to look in on Savannah. She was fast asleep. She looked like a little angel. I could see so much of my former self in her little face. She was…she was almost seven years old. And it hit me like a car wreck: That was almost the same age I’d been when the rat bastard had done what he’d done. A loud, involuntary whelp of pain burst loose from deep inside me. Savannah stirred and turned on her side, but didn’t wake. I hurried out of her room, shaking with rage and terror.

  Twenty milligrams of Ambien put me out for the night, and I slept the sleep of the dead. Sweet, dreamless sleep. At seven A.M. Savannah burst into my room and crawled under the covers next to me.

  “Is it almost Christmas yet?” she asked, snuggling close.

  “Almost,” I said.

  “I can’t wait,” she said.

  “What do you want from Santa Claus?” I asked her.

  “A daddy,” she said.

  “Well, you know, honey, that’s a tough one,” I said. “But I’ll ask.”

  “You keep saying you’re going to tell me who my father is,” she went on. “I really really really want to know.”

  I could feel my throat swelling with emotion. “Like I said, Sav, I’ll see what I can do.”

  The whole morning, as I got her ready for school, I tried to keep it together: smiling like a lunatic, humming as I buttered her toast, laughing out of context.

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “What could possibly be wrong?”

  I drove her to school, got her settled in, got back in my car, and cranked up the music and went home. I pulled into the driveway, singing away at the top of my voice—squawking—and walked into my empty house and literally fell to the kitchen floor in tears. But I wasn’t just crying; this went well beyond crying. These were loud, keening howls. I was experiencing pain like I’d never experienced it before. I couldn’t stop. I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. I counted to ten. I counted to ten again. I told myself I would stop crying the next time I counted to ten, but I couldn’t manage it. I struggled to my feet, crossed the kitchen, and reached into the back of the cupboard for my bottle. As I poured myself a stiff drink, I looked at the kitchen clock. It wasn’t even nine A.M.

  I got back in my car and drove to West Hollywood, scored
a couple of grams of coke, and raced home. The phone was ringing as I walked inside and I reached for it without thinking. It was Tony Peck.

  “Leave me alone,” I said, and hung up.

  He kept calling. I grabbed my bottle of vodka and my coke, then went up to my room and did a couple of lines and drank the vodka straight from the bottle. The phone kept ringing. I tried to disconnect it, but I couldn’t figure it out, so I yanked the wires right out of the wall. I had another snort, another hit of booze. I could hear the phone ringing downstairs. I didn’t want to hear the phone, or any other goddamn thing. So I locked myself in the walk-in closet, and sat there among my designer dresses and designer shoes and designer fucking underwear and got drunk and buzzed and weepy. I was trying not to think. I was tired of thinking. Thinking had never done a goddamn thing for me. But I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop thinking about Savannah, and about what she needed in her life, and about what I had needed at her age and seemed, apparently, to need still. A kid needs love, goddamn it. It’s that fucking simple. Why can’t I even get that right?

  I don’t know how much time passed. It was pitch dark in the closet. The cocaine was gone. The vodka bottle was almost empty. I was thinking about crawling into my bedroom and calling the corner store and asking them to deliver a couple of quarts, when suddenly the closet door burst open and I saw the fucking monster standing there, silhouetted against the frame. Oh my God, I thought. He’s here! He’s come for me!

  But it wasn’t the monster. It was Tony Peck.

  “Jesus Christ, Janice,” he said. “What are you doing to yourself?” He picked me up, as if I were a child, and carried me into the bathroom. He stripped me and sat me in the tub and turned on the shower, then went downstairs to make a gallon of strong coffee.

  Two hours later we were in his car, pulling up to a little café on Sunset Boulevard. It was across the street from the Chateau Marmont, where my friend John Belushi had died. We went into the café, which had been cleared of tables, and sat near the back, on stiff, metal folding chairs that had been laid out in neat rows. A middle-aged woman was telling her sad story to several dozen attentive listeners. It was a pretty compelling story. Marriage, drinking, divorce, remarriage, more drinking, another divorce, some whoring around, still more drinking…

  I signed up. They gave me some twelve-step literature. They paired me up with a young woman who looked like she’d lived too hard for too long. I promised to call if I felt like having a drink. Tony dropped me at home. I poured myself a stiff drink, to brace myself for what was coming, then did what I’d been instructed to do: dumped every last ounce of alcohol in the house.

  That first night was hell—and it was only the beginning. I went to see my doctor the next morning. He gave me a little Valium and warned me not to overdo it. I took some Valium: I felt like washing it down with a drink. So I called my female “buddy”; kept calling; called at all hours of the day and night. I called Tony Peck. I called numbers at random and tried to engage strangers in conversation. (I felt so fucking alone—and so fucking scared.) I went over to see my neighbor and asked for a drink, and he was kind enough to say no—even when I started screaming at him like a crazy woman.

  And then, good God—it got better. I woke up one morning and I had this strange feeling that today was going to be easier. And it was. Don’t get me wrong—it was no walk in the park. But I managed. Without falling apart.

  “I think I’m finding my way back,” I told Tony.

  “Good,” he said. “I knew you would.”

  I went off to shoot Sharon Stone. “You seem different, Janice,” she said as I fiddled with my camera. We had met before—a lifetime ago, when she was a nobody and had come to pose for Mike Reinhardt; then later, on the set of The Specialist, along with my not-so-good old buddy Sly.

  “Different bad or different good?” I asked.

  “Different good,” she said.

  I felt like hugging her, but I didn’t. I just took my pictures and packed up my gear and headed home.

  Christmas came and went. I made it through without a drink, and Savannah made it through without a daddy. She got other presents—too many, of course, because I felt so guilty—and she seemed to like most of them.

  BICEPS BY YOU-KNOW-WHO. HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, 1994.

  Early in January we went to the mall to return the ones she didn’t want. We were coming off the escalator when I saw Michael Birnbaum moving toward us. My heart leapt into my throat. We hadn’t seen each other in close to seven years. He froze. I froze.

  “Hello, Michael,” I said.

  “Hello,” he said. He looked down at Savannah—anything to avoid meeting my eyes—and smiled at her. “And who might you be?” he asked.

  “Savannah,” she said.

  “Savannah,” he repeated. “What a beautiful name.”

  He looked back up at me. Like everyone else in the world, he’d read the tabloids during my very public breakup with Stallone, so he knew that Savannah was the child in question—the child who didn’t belong to Sly. I wondered if he’d ever wondered whether she was his, but then I realized he had no reason to wonder. The papers had made me look like a total slut. I’d had one very bad week, certainly—three men in three days; not my finest hour—but, contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t fuck everything that moved.

  Jesus. The way Michael was looking at me. I wanted to grab him by the lapels and pin him to the wall and say, “You dumb bastard! She’s your daughter! Look at her, goddamn it! The same coloring, the same long limbs, the same cheekbones! A blind person can see the resemblance!”

  And that’s exactly what I did—in my mind. Another exciting Hollywood fantasy sequence: passersby stopping to stare. Savannah sobbing. Michael taking her in his arms and blubbering like a baby.

  But I decided not to make a scene.

  “It was nice to see you after all these years,” Michael said.

  “It was nice to see you, too,” I said, calm as can be.

  “Call me sometime,” he said. “I’m listed.” Then he looked down at Savannah. “Nice to meet you, Savannah.”

  “Can we go now?” Savannah said, and Michael laughed that nice laugh of his and went on his way.

  I had a drink when I got home. Just a little one, from the small bottle of vodka I picked up at the corner store. It tasted fucking great. But I only had one. And then another little one before bed. Just a teeny weeny one.

  The next day I didn’t have a drink at all. But I knew where the bottle was. My twelve-step buddy called, wanting to know why she hadn’t heard from me. “Not hearing from me is supposed to be a good thing, right?” I said. She laughed and told me she was there if I needed her. Tony Peck called. We chatted a bit. He said I sounded different. “Different good or different bad?” I asked.

  “Not good or bad,” he said. “Just different.” But I could tell he was concerned.

  I had a little tiny drink the next day. Just one—honest. And two very tiny drinks the day after that. Then I began to lose count. I went to the corner store for more booze. I went so often that the clerks were reaching for the bottle before I reached the counter. I started hiding bottles everywhere. I felt like I was starring in my own version of Days of Wine and Roses. I got very drunk one night and found myself having an imaginary conversation with Jack Lemmon, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in that amazing movie. “I’m proud of you, Jack,” I slurred. “You came out of it all right.”

  And Jack got a dirty little gleam in his eye and said, “You’re a good-looking girl, Janice.”

  And I said, “I’ll drink to that!” And I did.

  Savannah walked into the room in the middle of one of these little fantasies. “Who’re you talking to, Mom?” she asked.

  “Nobody,” I said, slurring. “I had the TV on.”

  “Why are you talking funny?”

  “Funny? Who’s talking funny? The only talking we’re going to do around here is serious talking. So I’m going to ask you again
, seriously, are you sure you don’t want to go to Disneyland for your birthday? We can take five of your best friends.”

  “No,” she said. “I told you. I want to go to The Time Machine.” The Time Machine was some arcade-type place on Ventura Boulevard. We’d been there often, just to pass the time, and Savannah loved it. But I wanted to give her something special.

  “How about the zoo?” I asked. “Or the Santa Monica Pier? We can have it at the carousel at the Pier. You can bring your whole class.”

  “No,” she said. “I want to go to The Time Machine.”

  The next day, after I packed her off to school, I popped two Advil, washed them down with cognac, and dug up Michael Birnbaum’s listed number and called him.

  “Hi, Michael,” I said. “It’s me.”

  “Wow,” he said.

  “You asked me to call.”

  “So I did,” he said.

  “How would you like to go to your daughter’s seventh birthday party? It’s a couple of weeks from now. We’re having it at The Time Machine, on Ventura Boulevard. It should be fun.” He didn’t say anything. “Michael?” Still nothing, but I could hear him breathing on the other end. “Michael?”

  “What did you just say?” he asked. He couldn’t disguise the shock in his voice. He sounded depleted. He sounded, in fact, like he’d been punched in the gut.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I began to cry. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how to tell you. Simon tried to take Nathan away from me. I didn’t want to go through that again. I don’t want to lose my daughter.”

  “That little girl—the little girl at the mall last month? She’s mine?” Michael was still in shock.

  “I guess I could have found a better way of breaking it to you. I’m sorry. I just—what was I going to say? Will you come to her birthday? Please?”

  “Give me your number,” he said. “I need a few minutes.”

  I gave him my number and he hung up without saying good-bye. I waited for him to call back. He didn’t call back. I had another drink. The phone rang. I thought it was Michael, but it was Tony Peck.