Call Me Debbie: True Confessions of a Down-to-Earth Diva (27 page)

After such a challenging spring, I had a triumph in June. Four years after my Little Black Dress saga, I returned to London’s Royal Opera House to sing Ariadne, the role I had been removed from. Life is funny that way, isn’t it? I would have loved to take Steinway with me but wasn’t allowed because the U.K. had a six-month quarantine for cats and dogs at that time to prevent the spread of rabies. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton once rented a 200-foot floating kennel (read: yacht) to house their four pooches for two months while Burton was filming near London, to get around the regulation.

I took Peter with me instead, and this time, 125 pounds lighter, you can be sure I fit the dress. To promote the run, Albert and I
made a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek video that we sent out to the press and posted on YouTube. In the video, the infamous black dress shows up at my Manhattan apartment like a film noir–ish character (ringing a doorbell that chimes like the “Ride of the Valkyries”) and asks me, in a British accent, for another chance, like a lover begging for forgiveness. We called it “The Return of the Little Black Dress.”

When I got to London for rehearsals, it took the artistic administrator, Peter Katona, a few days before he popped into my dressing room to say hello. Unlike the dress he didn’t come groveling, but he was contrite.

“I have a file in my desk drawer several inches thick, full of letters,” he told me. “They’re from patrons and opera fans, angry about what happened. I framed one and put it up on my office wall.”

It was as close to an apology as I was going to get, so it would have to do.

While in London, I also sang at a charity event at St. James’s Palace hosted by the Prince of Wales. He was late in arriving because it was Royal Ascot time and he’d been to the horse races that day, so we delayed the performance until he and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, could get there. I wore a gorgeous aqua gown and sang “Dich, teure Halle,” Elisabeth’s aria from
Tannhäuser
in which she greets a magnificent hall where a singing contest is about to take place. So appropriate for St. James’s Palace, I thought. And then I threw in a few of my favorite show tunes and saw the prince tap his foot in the front row. Behind him sat a star-studded group: Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave, and Joan Rivers, to name a few. After the performance, Prince Charles came up onstage to shake my hand and pose for photos, which thrilled Peter to no end. He was much handsomer in person and very charming, but my eyes couldn’t help but drift from his face to the throat of his wife and the spectacular, blinding, necklace she was wearing.

I was out of my league when it came to riches and baubles. At the black-tie dinner later that evening, I sat next to a very tanned
Greek yacht designer who was designing a boat for director Steven Spielberg. He looked like Ari Onassis, and his wife who was sitting across from me, upstaged even Camilla with the biggest, most sparkling canary diamond necklace I’d ever seen.

“That’s a beautiful necklace on your wife,” I said. I pushed away flashbacks of Mitch, ripping my own humble diamond from my neck.

“Yes,” the tanned, Greek yacht designer said, nodding emphatically. “It’s so difficult to find good jewelry these days, don’t you agree?”

“Oh, yes . . . yes,” I said, clutching the modest Macy’s knock-off I wore at my own throat.

The flowers and table settings were gorgeous—each place card calligraphically handwritten. And leave it to the British tradition of service to have succeeded in serving two hundred guests an appetizer that included a perfectly poached egg. How in the world do you time that?

After dinner, I mingled a bit and talked to Natasha Richardson, who was beautiful and warm. (Nine months later, I’d be stunned to hear the news of her death following a tumble during a skiing lesson.) All of a sudden, the room went silent and everyone stood up and began leaving the room in waves.

“Time for us to go,” Natasha whispered, grabbing her purse and signaling Liam. Sure enough, two palace pages were making their way from one end of the room to the other, telling people to leave. The prince was leaving, and that meant we had to as well.

As Peter and I went down the stairs to leave, we bumped into Joan Rivers. I was a big fan of hers and told her so.

“And we have something in common,” I added. “I have a Yorkie, too. Isn’t it a shame we couldn’t bring them to London because of the quarantine?”

“Thank you for reminding me . . .
you bitch
!” she said, very loudly. I stood on the staircase with my mouth open. I guess even
St. James’s Palace wasn’t too sacred a place for Joan’s jabs. I hope the angels have a sense of humor.

Despite being sworn at by a big star, it was a dazzling, sparkling night, and
Ariadne
had been a success. So I should have been happy, right? But I wasn’t. The newspapers praised my comeback performance and my pretty face and figure. But when I looked in the bathroom mirror after we returned to our hotel suite that night, all I saw was the sad, bloated face of another addiction that had replaced the old one.

That night, I woke up at four a.m. in a panic. Peter was sleeping peacefully, and I shook him awake.

“I’m so afraid, Peter.” I clung to him.

“Of what?”

“I don’t know, I can’t define it. Aren’t you ever afraid?”

“No,” he said, with a yawn. “I don’t have anything to be afraid of. My Lord tells me not to be fearful.”

That kind of blind faith makes life so much easier, and I wish to God I had it.

BACK HOME IN
New York, everyone at the Met was getting ready for Plácido’s fortieth anniversary with the company. General Manager Peter Gelb, who took over for Joe Volpe two years earlier, was planning a black-tie soirée to happen right on the Met’s stage. Mr. Gelb also had a funny, sexy idea to kick-start the evening, and it involved me.

His plan was for José Carreras, the other third of the Three Tenors, to begin the night with an adoring speech about Plácido and our late friend, Luciano Pavarotti. But, as Carreras told the guests with a wink, perhaps it was time to pass the baton over to new talent and new tenors.

That was the cue for the black curtain on the stage to part, and as the orchestra played the opening bars of Puccini’s “Nessun dorma” from
Turandot
, my fellow powerhouse singers Susan Graham, Pat
Racette, and I appeared dressed up as the Tenors in tuxedos and tails. The party guests went wild. Our tuxedos had strings in back that were intricately rigged so that our costumes would “break away” with a tug. As the aria rose to a crescendo, someone above us pulled a few strings and yanked the suits off our bodies to reveal us wearing sparkly, skintight
Dreamgirls
gowns—me in turquoise, Susan in red, and Pat in blue. Everyone cheered!

Plácido sat a few feet from us, clapping and laughing . . . as we then went into our rendition of the Gilbert & Sullivan hit from
The Mikado
:

All three of us were natural hambones and we played it to the hilt. Then we each took turns singing excerpts from the operas we’d done with Plácido, ending our show with a reprise of “Nessun dorma”—and this time the three of us belted it out—that had Plácido in tears. At the after-party up onstage, Plácido hugged me tightly:

“Debbie! It was so funny, you were the Three Tenors and then suddenly these Dreamgirls!”

We’d come a long way from our “first kiss” twelve years earlier, Plácido and I had. And I was proud not only to call him my illustrious colleague, but now, also, my friend.

IT WAS YET
another spectacular night of special nights, and I’ve had many of them over the years. But the higher we fly, the harder we fall. And after that night, I went down. It was like falling off a balcony in slow motion.

My alcohol intake reached an all-time high in the second half of 2008. When I wasn’t working, I was drinking. On days off I started
the moment I woke up with vodka and orange juice and just kept going until I passed out. On performance days, I didn’t touch a drop until the work was over. But as soon as I arrived home I’d rush straight to the kitchen without taking my coat off and pour a big glass of wine and chug it as quickly as possible. I wasn’t drinking for pleasure at all anymore; I was drinking to get as drunk as possible as fast as possible. I had three different liquor stores on speed dial and I’d rotate them when I called for delivery so they wouldn’t think I was ordering so much. Sometimes when I called, I pretended I was ordering for a party.

I was so miserable, I must have been miserable to be around. I have a dim, heartbreaking, regretful memory of playing with Steinway one drunken morning and pulling on his whiskers too hard. He yelped in pain and to remember it brings me to tears. My Steiny must have been wondering,
What is happening to Mama?

By November, my slow-motion free fall was gaining momentum.

I was in Vienna to sing
Salome
at the Wiener Staatsoper and Peter was supposed to meet me there. I’d bought him a plane ticket and got us a plush, expensive hotel suite so we could have a romantic time. I was waiting for him to call from the airport to let me know he was boarding, but I didn’t hear from him. A few frantic hours later, as his flight was over the Atlantic I called his cell again and he picked up. He was still in New York. He’d never even gotten on the plane and hadn’t bothered to tell me.

What mature person—and a so-called Christian to boot—does that to someone they supposedly love? His actions should have answered that question for me, but I didn’t want to face that reality.

On a dreary, cold Sunday, Jesslyn and I slipped into the gothic St. Stephen’s Cathedral and went to mass. We were shivering cold in a back pew, and the mass was in German so we barely understood a word, but I didn’t care. The church bells tolled, and they tolled for me—I needed God, so badly

By Christmas, I’d forgiven Peter again and we visited his family
in Florida for the holidays. I was determined to be on my best behavior—I didn’t touch a drop of drink for the three-day visit even though it put me in severe withdrawal. I wanted to make a good impression on his family because I still, stupidly, hoped for a future with Peter. He had told me when we met that he never dated a woman he wouldn’t consider marrying, and that thought kept me on a string. We had a nice Christmas Eve dinner with his parents at their home, and I was feeling pretty good until I noticed an elaborately framed photo of Peter with Prince Charles displayed proudly in the living room—the one and only photo taken that evening that didn’t include
yours truly
in the frame.

Peter and I got into an argument in the car on the way back to the hotel. He was only dropping me off, by the way, he wasn’t staying with me—he was still in denial that we even had sex (which we did) and he knew his parents wouldn’t think it proper if he stayed with me.

As we drove, Peter was boasting about how he intended to buy houses for his parents and his sister and take care of all his loved ones.

When he stopped in front of my hotel, I was ready to burst into tears.

“Peter, I don’t understand what’s going on here. You tell me you’re open to marriage or a permanent relationship, and yet you’re constantly talking about buying homes for your parents, your brother, your sister . . . but what about you and me? Where do I fit in? I want a partner. I feel like we’re not on the same page. If you’re not serious about me, you need to let me go.”

He remained silent, and I got out of the car and slammed the door. We had plans to meet in New York for New Year’s after he visited a friend outside of Nashville, but I couldn’t get hold of him in the days following Christmas. I called, left messages, and filled up his voice mail. Frantic to reach him, I found the number for the friend he was visiting.

“Hi, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to find Peter. . . .”
I’d reached the friend’s mother. Funnily enough (though I wasn’t laughing), the mother had the same name as an iconic Wagnerian heroine.

“Oh, he’s not here, dear,” she said. “They all got in the car and drove to Nashville for New Year’s Eve.”

And still I forgave him. To make it up to me, he promised to visit me on Valentine’s Day 2009 in Chicago, where I’d be singing about love potions and poisons in
Tristan und Isolde.
I made romantic plans for us once again—reservations at the best restaurant, tickets to a sold-out performance of the hottest play in town, and a sexy new negligee. I even got Valentine’s Day treats for Steinway, whom I’d brought to keep me company during the run. Poor Steiny. Who knows how many times during those years he bore the brunt of my unhinging world—and sometimes the blame. One morning after a night of heavy drinking and debauchery in Chicago, I woke up in my rented apartment to find it looking like a rock band had trashed the place—spilled booze, smashed wineglasses, food smeared into the carpet, furniture upside down. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad, but you get the picture.

“Steinway!” I scolded him, “
what did you do
?!”

Only an alcoholic could blame a six-pound dog for such mass destruction.

Two days before Valentine’s Day, Peter telephoned.

“I don’t think I can come. I haven’t got my paycheck yet and I don’t have the money for the plane ticket.” Was this the same man who was buying houses for his entire family?

“Peter, I’m not going to let a cheap airplane ticket get in the way of our lovely Valentine’s Day plans. I’ll buy your ticket. You can pay me back, or consider it a Valentine’s gift.”

He was silent. “Debbie. I don’t think it’s a good idea.” He continued to say that we were indeed “not in the same place,” as I had said in the car at Christmas, and that he wasn’t coming to be with me and that it was over between us.

I hung up the phone, aghast. I had told him to tell me if he wasn’t serious about me and had urged him to let me go if he wasn’t. And now that he had, I couldn’t handle it. The reality was too painful. I needed to do whatever it took not to feel the black hopelessness that began gripping me like a tight fist. I went downstairs to the grocery store and bought six bottles of cheap white wine, went back up to my apartment, and drank until I passed out.