Goddess: Inside Madonna (44 page)

With six more weeks left to film, Madonna decided to tell Alan Parker. Extremely happy for his leading lady, he immediately assured her that he would do everything to accommodate her. The most pressing problem was to make sure that the wardrobe could be altered to conceal her condition when she began to show. Parker also agreed with Madonna that the news should be kept secret for as long as possible to avoid the press’s storming the set as they had done in Buenos Aires for much less spectacular reasons. Obviously, the people in wardrobe had to be told, as well as some of the crew, since the shooting schedule would have to change.

It was a miracle that the news was kept secret for two weeks before Liz Smith, with Madonna’s permission, broke the story on April 7, 1996, in her syndicated gossip column. But not until ten days later, on April 17, did Madonna confirm what the British press had been printing for several weeks. Alan Parker issued a statement, saying that “we are doing everything possible to accommodate her condition and to keep to the schedule,” adding, “she has been splendid throughout, utterly professional and giving the performance of her life. I’m very happy for her.”

When Madonna learned that she was pregnant, her relationship with Carlos Leon had been going on for a year and a half and appeared, at least on the surface, to be an ongoing affair. He had not only visited Madonna on weekends when she had first arrived in London to record the
Evita
score, but he had also made several brief trips down to Buenos Aires. Throughout the months when they were separated, they talked almost daily by telephone. There was no doubt in Carlos Leon’s mind that the baby was his.

Friends of the former fitness trainer recall that when Madonna announced the pregnancy, he was “over the top with joy.” Cuban by birth and extremely close to his parents and older brother, his life had always revolved around family. The idea of becoming a father was exhilarating, especially since he was having a baby with the woman he loved.

Madonna had always said that she “liked to do things to take power away from men.” In the beginning of their relationship, in the gym or in the workout room of her Central Park West apartment, Carlos had pushed her to the limit of her physical ability. For a woman who was used to being in charge, their daily encounters seemed an unlikely place to begin an affair, but Carlos was dealing with a different Madonna from the one that her fans or business associates knew. During the two hours they spent together every day, she was focused, disciplined, obedient, and completely reliant on his expertise. She allowed him to be in command, and never for a moment did she act like the demanding, powerful, impatient, predatory star. Carlos had dedicated his life to physical fitness, not only to keeping his own body in shape but also those of his clients. It didn’t seem to matter that he was far from being her equal in fame or financial success. He was the ideal lover for a woman who had an insatiable desire for self-improvement and an unquenchable thirst to be the fittest, most taut, and limber. Admittedly, Madonna was happiest when she was exercising. “I’m always running around like a chicken without a head,” she has said. “The only place where I can focus and relax is while I’m doing my workout. If I had nothing to do all day, I would stay in the gym and exercise.” Those who have worked with Madonna on movie sets can attest that regardless of how early the morning call is, she is not only on time but has already spent two hours either running or working out on a stationary bike. Those friends closest to the star at the time thought that she had possibly found the perfect mate.

Carlos Leon had come to New York from Cuba as a toddler with his parents, Armando and Maria Leon, and his older brother, Armando Jr. Tall, muscular, and strikingly good-looking, Carlos was the son that his mother believed could become “another Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Both parents had aspirations for their children to achieve fame and fortune in America. When Armando Sr. finally mastered English, he got a job at a check-cashing business and, after a few years, worked his way up to supervisor. As the family gradually settled into a financially secure lower-middle-class existence, Maria encouraged both her sons to excel in sports. Neither son was particularly inclined toward studying. Armando Jr., concerned about a safe job and benefits, joined the doormen’s union in New York City. He considered himself fortunate when he finally got a job in an elegant Upper East Side apartment house. Carlos, on the other hand, with his good looks and natural athletic abilities, was more inclined to follow his mother’s advice. After he finished high school, he went to work in a gym and, before long, was singled out by several clients who offered him jobs as their personal trainer. By the time that Madonna met Carlos Leon in 1994, he was earning a decent salary and had no trouble finding girlfriends, and was often pursued by some of the older women and models whom he trained. Carlos Leon was happy and even believed that if he could make it in the competitive world of physical fitness, why not as a movie star?

With a long list of lovers of both genders, and a sensational marriage and divorce to Sean Penn, at thirty-five years old Madonna seemed to have accomplished more than she had ever imagined. Yet, the one thing that she didn’t have was a child of her own. “I need something that’s mine,” she once said, “something that I can be proud of.”

When she was married to Sean Penn, there were constant reports that she was pregnant. Much to her dismay, she never was. After the divorce, articles began appearing alluding to her “biological clock” and the possibility that the girl who had everything simply could not manage to conceive. The articles wounded her deeply. She was aware that as she approached her midthirties, she did not have a stable relationship, and time was running out for her to become a mother. “I thought people used it against me,” she explained. “‘Oh, she can’t even have the baby that she wants.’ In answer to that question in interviews, I would say, ‘Well, of course I want to, sometime soon.’ . . . So it seemed that there was this huge time that I was wishing for it, but actually I was just responding to everybody’s nosy inquiries.” In a rare interview that Madonna gave Norman Mailer, during which she seemed more sincere than ever before, she explained, “As an unbelievably famous person, you are only allowed to operate with everyone’s approval for a limited amount of time. Then you need to disappear, run out of steam, run out of ideas, get fat or something.” For Madonna, having a child was forever, something that no one could take away from her. And yet, she had always maintained that she did not want to raise a child without a father, for, in her words, she would be “raising a cripple.” Once again, underneath the rebellious woman who lived to shock, emerged the middle-class girl with good Catholic values. Madonna believed that, ideally, a child needed both parents to be assured of a good beginning for a successful life. Madonna was determined that her child would have everything she had lacked.

In 1986, when she was
starring with Sean Penn in the play
Goose and Tom-Tom
in repertory at Lincoln Center, Oliver Stone was trying to bring
Evita
to the screen. Stone, with the consent of Webber and Rice, offered the role to Meryl Streep, who passed a vocal audition. Only weeks before shooting was scheduled to begin, Streep pulled out, citing exhaustion. Stone then offered the part to Michelle Pfeiffer, who also passed the vocal audition, but also dropped out when she discovered that she was pregnant. In 1989, when Madonna’s marriage to Sean Penn was officially over, and after the affair with Tony Ward ended, Madonna was involved with a variety of other men, including the basketball star Dennis Rodman. Rodman wrote in his autobiography,
Bad As I Wanna Be
, that Madonna inundated him with faxes, saying, “In three weeks time, you have to be in this hotel in Vegas to make me pregnant.”

Years later when Madonna was finally chosen to play
Evita
, she attributed her luck in landing the role partly to Michelle Pfeiffer’s pregnancy. What intrigued Madonna was that Pfeiffer had adopted, as a single mother, a little girl whom she named Claudia Rose, only a year before she married television creator and producer David Kelley and got pregnant. Inspired by Pfeiffer’s own story, Madonna decided that she, too, would adopt a child. According to sources close to the star, she hired a New York lawyer who specialized in adoptions and, through him, placed advertisements in newspapers in Europe and Latin America, asking for a mother who was willing to give up her baby for adoption to an internationally famous star who was prepared to pay any price that was asked in return for the child. At the time, information about Madonna’s ad was allegedly leaked to several American tabloids by America’s National Adoption Register.

Though Madonna claimed to be unconcerned about the race of the baby, she wanted a child of her own. For her entire life, she had suffered from a fear of abandonment. It was an odd way for her to view motherhood, based on her relationships with her father and stepmother, and the fact that she had left home at an early age. Another aspect of her complex concerned the men in her life. She had always picked boyfriends and lovers who were dependent financially and a husband who had relied on her for emotional strength. Once she and Carlos Leon became a couple, she assumed that she would make the rules. Imagine her surprise when she asked him to sign away all rights to the child and he refused. He finally agreed that he would never seek either sole or joint custody of the baby.

According to Raoul Felder, a New York lawyer who is an expert on divorce and custody proceedings, any signed agreement by one parent, promising not to challenge custody, is assailable. “If Madonna died or became physically or mentally incapacitated,” Felder explains, “so that she couldn’t perform her maternal duties, the father has every right to petition the court for custody.” In Madonna’s situation, Felder agrees that there are always ways around the legalities of such an agreement. “Short of death,” he continues, “obviously there would never be a time when Madonna wouldn’t have the means to hire nannies or nurses.”

Another way around those legalities was a financial deal that would encourage Carlos Leon to function as a good but distant father to the child. According to sources who are close to Madonna and Leon, immediately after Madonna gave birth to Lourdes, delivered by Paul Fleiss, the father of Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood Madam, she insisted that DNA tests be run on Carlos and her baby daughter. If Madonna lacked discretion when it came to having a variety of lovers, she wanted to be sure that Carlos was the father of her child. When the results came back showing that he was, Madonna reportedly made a deal with Carlos. Numerous press reports indicate that in return for never seeking joint or sole custody, he would get $1 million in a lump sum. In addition, she guaranteed that if he ever wanted to invest in a business, she would put up the money, the total of which was not to exceed $5 million, and under specific conditions that included a possible percentage of the profits if the business succeeded.

In response to media speculation that Carlos Leon was nothing more in Madonna’s life than a sperm donor, she said, “It’s all part of the view the media likes to have of me, that I’m not a human being. That I don’t have any feelings and don’t really care for people. That I’m just ambitious, cold, and calculating. It’s all just part of the image that unhappy people like to construct for me. I’m not surprised by it. . . . It’s just one of the nonsense things that people who don’t know anything like to invent. I’m incredibly offended by it. It’s nobody’s business what sort of relationship I’m having and what I plan to do.”

It didn’t help to quell the rumors when Madonna gave Alan Jackson an interview that appeared on October 12, 1996, in the
Times Weekend Magazine
in London, during which the reporter was particularly struck by Madonna’s total lack of sentiment when she talked about Carlos Leon. When Jackson asked the star if she might marry, she said, “I don’t think marriage is a religious thing. It’s an economic thing. It’s more about money than anything else. It evolved out of women not being able to take care of themselves financially and so having to become a man’s possession—promising to love, honor, and obey him. So I don’t know what I think of marriage anymore, other than that it’s an institution which grew out of a very sexist way of thinking and living.” When Jackson pointed out that there obviously hadn’t been any financial imperative for her to have married Sean Penn, she answered, “True, but I was also younger, and I hadn’t thought things through properly.” She smiled and sighed. “I don’t know if I believe in it anymore. I don’t know what function it could have in my life. If I love someone and want to be with him, there isn’t a piece of paper or a ceremony in the world that is going to keep me away from that person. And if I don’t want to be with him, the reverse applies. . . . I think marriage is more about what society expects from you than what God does.”

Lourdes is deeply attached to
her father, her paternal grandparents, as well as to her uncle Armando Jr. As a result, Madonna has done everything to encourage Carlos’s presence in her daughter’s life. In fact, Lourdes is also extremely close to her two cousins, Anthony, who is six, and Allesandra, who is four. So far, Lourdes has been happy and seems adjusted to living in two very different worlds. When she is with her mother, she lives in total luxury, currently in a large English whitestone with nannies and servants in a chic area of London. When she visits her father at his New York apartment, she spends much of her time with his family, along with her cousins, in their modest apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

After Madonna moved to London and fell in love with Guy Ritchie, the geographic distance presented an obstacle for Carlos Leon’s visits with his daughter. He began complaining that he wasn’t able to see Lourdes as often as he wanted. At that point, Madonna offered to buy him a business in London so he could be closer to their daughter. The British press began circulating rumors that Madonna and Ritchie were having problems when the truth was that she was torn between living where her lover wanted and moving back to the States for the sake of her child. According to several members of the Leon family, Madonna had every intention of moving back to New York or at least spending more time there until she discovered that she was pregnant with Ritchie’s baby. As of now, Carlos seems to have accepted the situation. When Madonna was obliged to go to New York for the premiere of
The Next Best Thing
, he went to London to stay with Lourdes. When Madonna married Guy Ritchie in Scotland, Carlos Leon was invited to the wedding.