Celebrity Detox

by Rosie O'Donnell

  I had a broken arm, and no mother, and still no toys. I went to school the next day, white cast in a sling, Magic Markers ready. I was reborn. I went from the horrific “kid with a dead mom” to the interesting “kid with a cast.” It was like a miracle. Eyes formerly filled with pity and sadness now brimmed with curiosity and intrigue.

  “Can I sign it? How do you take a bath? Will they saw it off?” These statements had replaced, “Think she’s a ghost following you around? Think maggots are eating her eyeballs right now? Think your dad’s gonna die and you’ll be an orphan?” It was intoxicating and it was addictive. I had proof of my pain, white and heavy, for all to see. Proof I was being cared for and tended to, that I was worth taking care of. Proof that I had some value, enough to be fixed. And I found I wasn’t sad anymore. I was distracted. I had a new pain to focus on, one that was easier to heal than the original. There were many benefits to having a cast. In the middle of the night, it was a weapon.

  I broke many bones after that first one, mostly by myself, in my bedroom, with a heavy wooden hanger or a small Mets baseball bat I got at bat day. My hands and fingers usually. No one knew. My secret.

  My shrink tells me that that was how I survived, how I learned to cope, as a child. It no longer serves me. Even now, just remembering it, just writing it down, makes it more real than I want it to be. Acquired long before I had a voice, I cannot shake it, this longing for someone to salve what cannot be seen.

  I never dream of her.

  I would like to see her, one last time. Some night, Mom.

  You know where I am.

  CHAPTER 13

  Two Faces

  After Barbara disavowed him on The View, Donald went screeching back to the media. “She lied . . . and now she has chosen to lie again.” I don’t think I watched it. I heard about it. I was spending the night with my kids. Sometimes, instead of telling them stories before bed, I’ll come up and sing them each a special song. Vivi loves this the best. Someone once asked me: which child is most like you? And I answered, Vivi.

  I saw Viv get born. I had not been there from the beginning with any of my others, and this is something special. I certainly don’t love her more than any of my others. I love them all fiercely and differently, and one of these differences is that I have known Viv since . . . since when? I inseminated Kelli. I was there at Vivi’s conception, side by side with Kel, or cooking dinner; at what moment did the sperm knock at the door of the choosy egg, and at what moment did the egg decide to invite him in for tea? I think I know. But I won’t tell.

  I saw Viv every step of the way. I saw her heartbeat first, a tiny light, a star from another galaxy, lonely looking. I saw her spine when she was still an embryo, interlocking bones ridging a floating wraith. I noted day 36, when the last of the teeth came in, day 42, when all five fingers were formed; day 240, when she made her blood-speckled entrance, carved from Kelli’s stomach under a huge surgical sun. I was the first to hold her, to smell her, to sing her a little song. That song entered her, a transfusion of me to her, and she took it into her marrow. Vivi is a performer, a joker, a character, a comedienne. I sing to her, she to me. Already she loves to belt out Broadway tunes. That night, after The View, I was getting ready to put my kids to bed, and Viv was dancing for me on the living room couches, leaping from couch to couch, turning in the air, taking a sweeping proud bow while I clapped and clapped, for Viv. Vivienne. Means life. L’chaim. To life.

  I was oddly happy, despite the wreckage of the day. Because, as horrible as the fight between Barbara and me had been, it also pulled us together, forced the flesh in a relationship that had been comprised mostly of air. I saw her. She saw me. We got past the reflections, into the core of the common ache. And the world is that much less lonely when the ache is shared.

  I put my kids to bed. I read. Sunrise. Sunset. Next thing I knew, the following afternoon, or two, I got a call from my brother Eddie, who is helping to run my business. My publicist, Cindi Berger, was with him, and they were in the car, racing to my house, an emergency, hold tight, prepare yourself, something bad had happened. They couldn’t finish their explanation. The line went dead, dropped the way cell phones sometimes do, which is why I hate them. Hate them! Because there I was, standing in the middle of my kitchen on a late afternoon in the darkest, dirtiest part of the year when the last of the snow is stained, and the grime sticks to your skin. Something terrible had happened. I paced back and forth. I picked up the phone, punched the keypad, bleep bleep bleep. Fuck. Punched again. Bleep bleep bleep. No one else was home with me, no one to say, “Slow down, it’s okay,” and so my mind ran away. “One of my kids,” I thought, and could not finish the sentence. One of my kids.

  I am funny, very funny, right? But that humor comes from fear. Not fear of Trump, not fear of failure. My fear is of loss. It’s the stuck-in-your-gut nameless fear that comes from the curse of the frontal lobes: our knowledge of death. When you are a mother, the death you so much fear is no longer your own.

  Every year, Kelli and I take a dreaded vacation. Here’s the problem. I hate vacations. To vacate. To go empty. That’s what that means.

  Last time we went to Mexico. I was trying to finish a book when one of the staff members approached us on the beach. “Phone,” he said. I looked over at Kel. It had happened, no doubt. A crisis of epic proportion. My children. A child. What?

  Kel got up and walked into the hotel lobby, avoiding my eyes. I interpreted this to mean she had to look away from me, because she was scared too. I absolutely knew it. Our life as we have lived it was ending.

  It took her about eleven minutes to come back to the reading spot. I knew this because I did Mississippi to sixty eleven times. I do not wear a watch.

  Now Kel was walking toward me very slowly. She didn’t want to alarm me; it was obvious. She was trying to put the sentences together in a way I would be able to hear. I would scream, pound my chest, and try to drown myself in the sea as soon as she gave me the news. No eye contact yet, this was worse than I expected. She stared at the ground and came around her chair, wiping the sand off the towel. “Stalling,” I thought. “She must be stalling.” She wouldn’t even look at me!

  Now, my heart was about to explode. I deserved this, whatever it was. The moment stretched to an eternity. Kel sat down, closed her eyes.

  “What?” I screamed at her.

  “What what?” she said calmly.

  “The phone,” I grunted through gritted teeth.

  “The plane is at ten,” she said, “instead of nine.”

  Then she picked up her Oprah Book Club novel and resumed reading.

  I watched her. She sat totally unaware of all I had just been through. She read, my Kelli, my happy, non-neurotic partner. Thank God for her. She does not think that by some miracle of fate we were once again spared, but only for a moment. She thinks we are basically safe. I think so long as we have children we will always be living on the ledge.

  At last they arrived, Eddie and Cindi, breathless, red-faced, and rushed. “What what?” I screamed at them as they burst in through my front door. Cindi whipped a newspaper out of her briefcase, shook it open, spread it on the counter, then stepped back solemnly for me to see. What could it be?

  I stepped forward, bent over the counter to read. It was an open letter to me, written by Trump and republished in the paper. All the usual stuff . . . maniacal . . . foolish . . . self-destructive. It pretty much nailed Barbara in terms of times and places, what she supposedly said here and there, what she supposedly said dining at Le Cirque. I looked away from the paper, toward Cindi and my brother. “Don’t ever, ever do this to me again,” I said. “It’s Donald fucking Trump! Who gives a shit? Cindi, don’t tell me you have to come all the way to my house with my brother, unless it is something real! Don’t do it! Because I panicked!”

  I went into my study. The others followed me, Cindi and Eddie and now Kelli too, who had come home. I blocked them out of my mind. Mentally, I was alone in my study.

>   Cindi kept saying things like “Barbara’s so upset. Barbara is waiting, she’s worried, she doesn’t know how we will continue on with the show, after what happened today, now this, now that, chitchat . . .” I wasn’t listening. I sat down at my desk. I opened my e-mail.

  “Dear Barbara Walters,” I wrote. “I forgive you and I hope you forgive me. I LOVE U. Rosie”

  I sent it and in what seemed like just a few seconds later, her response arrived back. “I’m crying and thank you and I love you.”

  I went in the next day. I saw her. I was in my dressing room and she knocked. She closed the door after her, a soft click. “Rosie,” she said, “before I read that letter in the paper, I never knew how it felt for you.”

  “Oh God, the letter,” I said. “I don’t care about Donald Trump, Barbara. I don’t care what he says. I don’t care anything about him. What I care is this: that you did not defend me. And I have been a good, loyal daughter to you. And I want you to be a good mother to me. Don’t let the bad man hurt me.” I felt something sore in my throat. I tried to swallow. “It reminds me too much of my childhood,” I said.

  “Let me bring in Bill Geddie,” Barbara said. I smiled inside myself then. I understood Barbara well now. When I first began this job, I might have interpreted her desire to bring her producer into a private talk as a sign of her crassness, her deafness in the interpersonal realm. And to some degree that interpretation might be right. But there’s more. Love, loss, fear, vulnerability, connection, these are too hard for her to hold. She is not indifferent to these things, just unskilled and, oddly enough, too raw. Barbara Walters, arguably the most poised person on this planet, all rough-edged and unfinished inside.

  “No,” I said. I tried to say it gently. “Please. Listen, this is not about anything but you and me. And I’m sorry if I scared you yesterday. I’m sorry that I yelled at you like that . . . And I didn’t mean to,” I said.

  And then we stopped saying anything at all. We stood there, two quiet women, in a dressing room, behind us racks and racks of garments, on the counter a flung-open makeup case, ovals of rouge, big mop brushes beige with powder designed to hide the real foundation of the face. We stood, two women, separated by time and class and circumstance, but linked by things we could neither classify nor price but that were as real as sound, or light, or song.

  Chapter 14

  The Fame Game

  Anna Nicole Smith died. I commented about her on air and three hours later my publicist called and told me she was dead. “Oh dear God,” I said. Her death affected me in many ways. Anna Nicole Smith was the embodiment of celebrity-hood at its worst. Say that word—celebrity. That word should be banished from the dictionary. It is misleading, gives the impression that there is such a thing as a single, stand-alone person who is a celebrity. But a celebrity is not a person; it is a phenomenon, a mixture of one human being and the culture that views her. A celebrity cannot exist without her audience.

  This is why I hold the audience responsible in part for Anna Nicole Smith’s death. Fame is what killed that girl, and not only did America watch her demise, America abetted it, by either saying nothing or, worse, tuning in. There is something deeply wrong with a country that feeds off the drunken descent of a person who, two days after a C-section, wound still open and bloody, swims in the sea while the cameramen watch. Why did no one say, “Stop!” Why did no one say, “Good God, you could go septic?” Part of the fear is that what happened to her could happen to me.

  Celebrity-hood is not a real place. There are no parties there. Celebrity-hood is an intersection that occurs in the air somewhere between the viewer and the viewed. And everyone knows that intersections are where most automobile accidents happen; they are dangerous dicey places of near misses, sudden swerves, and sirens. If you approach the intersection with nothing on your side except speed, as Anna Nicole did, you are a likely candidate for a crash. I try to remember this. To live well in this intersection, you must have some real skill, an ability to carry you through.

  I am a comedienne. My talent is linked to laughter. My core desire is to connect with people in the raw realness of their lives. I always remember this, that my work is about connection, and timing; about story, revelation, and comfort. So long as I remember what I am basically about, I cannot be hurt in the intersection. Once I forget this, though, and lean on sheer speed as my asset, I know I will go down, while you, my friend, just watch.

  The View was a roller-coaster ride the likes of which I had never experienced before. For one year I moved into a house that was already occupied by its owners, that had the stamp of their style everywhere. Their style was not, and still is not, mine. I like plain soft cotton, just washed denim, big faded flowers on schlumpy couches. I like textiles with some history, beautiful mosaics, furniture that has the wear from a hundred hands.

  I tried to change the style—after all, it was my house now too—but I didn’t want to be insulting, even as I could not bear the plastic wrap covering their couches. And while some people maintain that all taste, all styles, are equally valid, I am not such a relentless relativist. The fact is, plastic wrap covering your couch is ugly, and if millions of others are going to have to see it, it becomes uglier still. My year at The View was about, in part, trying to build a better house without insulting the current carpenters, who have real skills but bad tools.

  The IFB is a case in point. Joy and Elisabeth didn’t give it up when Barbara went away for Christmas vacation, and, while I was disappointed, I was learning to accept that people change only when they are ready. I was learning that part of art is working with what you have, not chucking it out for better, brighter material. What would Streisand have done? Having found herself in a situation such as mine, unable to leave or to totally take charge, she would have worked with what was in front of her, tuned and tuned, tweaked and tipped, until her touch transformed.

  A few weeks after the Barbara blowout, Trump having retreated into his crate and quiet now, sleeping with a blanket thrown over the wire box and kibble by his snoring side, a few weeks later, close to Valentine’s Day now, we were going to do a craft segment, “six quick gifts you can make in six minutes,” kind of thing. I was going to show how to make these gifts and had it all planned out, my Mod Podge, my red folk-art paint, step one, step two, here’s how. The segment before mine was with John Stamos and Anita Baker. Everything was going fine, and we were all relaxed. The fighting between me and Barbara had made things worse in the short term but better overall, like a boil that’s burst, it hurt like hell and then emptied.

  So we were all relaxed, me and Joy and Elisabeth and Barbara, joking around with John Stamos. Elisabeth was doing what they call the close, which is the good-bye. She had her IFB in. And then, instead of finishing up the good-bye according to the teleprompter words, Elisabeth suddenly, and for the first time, swerved. She said to John, “Hey, why don’t you stick around and make some crafts with Rosie?” I rolled my eyes, and John said, “What?”

  “It’ll be fun,” Elisabeth said. “Stick around. We’ll all have fun.”

  “Okay,” John said, at first a little unsure but then, “Okay, I’ll stay!”

  I didn’t want him to stay, because we had only six minutes to show the audience how to do six crafts. It was all planned out, and an added guest would not help move things along.

  I was mad because I’d thought someone up there in the booth had whispered directives into her IFB, directives that had, indeed, screwed up my segment, which was awkward and ill executed because I suddenly had to accommodate a person who scrambled the clear steps I’d planned to describe. But that was not a big deal, not at all, especially if Elisabeth had acted on her own behest. In fact, the big deal was that she had acted on her own behest, scripted Elisabeth suddenly breaking free from the IFB! So what if my craft segment got screwed up? That was a small price to pay if it allowed Elisabeth to break rank.

  I didn’t have a chance to talk to her after the show. I was rushing home to get m
y kids from school. I don’t know what triggered the feeling. I drove under a bridge where there were pigeons packed in the rafters. Pigeons spook me, and I find it odd that in another context they’re doves. I love doves but I dislike pigeons. How could they be the same bird? How can one animal have two names, two types, two meanings? Then again, how can one person have two faces? Now that’s a good question. And I was asking this question, dreaming of doves, driving to get my kids.

  And all of a sudden, a shadow came over me. It was as though I’d been in warm water and the current went cold. Bam. A bad feeling, a flipped switch. I hate that. Moods and premonitions. I had the sense that Elisabeth was worried. It was as though I could feel her fear, but it was all imagined. Then again, when she had said to Stamos, “stick around and we’ll do crafts,” I think I saw, in retrospect, a sort of surprise in her eyes, as though she were startled by her own spontaneity. And anyone who has ever struggled in the least bit with any unbidden act, or sudden sadness, or mood-out-of-nowhere knows, it can be frightening, your own mind. Your own capacities. Who knows what will come out of you, unbidden? Who knows how endless your griefs might be? Who knows if the force of your own love might eliminate you? Who knows what words are inside?

  Later on, that night, when the house was quiet, I opened up my computer. “Elisabeth,” I wrote. “What you did was really okay, a fine thing.” I paused, my hands hovering over the keys. I knew Elisabeth used to play softball, and I knew in softball one of the best strategies is to try and steal home. “Remember this.” I wrote. “I want you to always steal home. Most people r not brave enough. U r . I want you to take the reins. We r a team, all of us. I trust ur instinct—listen to urself—and when u know u can, steal home.”