I'm Not Dead... Yet! (20 page)

From the day I fell in love with Karla I knew I wanted her to be the mother of my children. Our children. Throughout our first pregnancy, I had the luxury of being able to go to all doctor visits with her (great thing about an actor’s schedule) seeing our all-in-one family/obgyn/pediatrician, Susan Stangl. She was the first doctor either of us had who answered our questions completely and with clarity. Karla knew more about cutting edge nutritional information than anyone I had ever met, and she practiced what she preached. She wanted a natural childbirth, and we read every book we could get our hands on, so we felt comfortable making jokes and having fun in Corky Harvey’s LaMaze class—paying no attention whatsoever to the C-Section lesson. Why would we need that info? Karla was incredibly healthy and could sing louder than anyone since Ethel Merman—we assumed she’d hit a high note and our beautiful baby girl would come flying out into my arms.

Cut to: two weeks overdue, meconium in her water, induced with a Pitocin drip, twenty two hours of labor, and two hours of pushing, (inspiration for some imaginative moments in our movie
Modern Love
) and finally, me holding Karla’s hand in the operating room as our exuberant and rhapsodic Lyric was welcomed to the world. Two ‘authentic’ romantics—now we were three!

On the day Lyric was born, Karla’s record label sent a beautiful congratulatory gift basket. That very same day, Sam and Winston (Karla’s managers) received a call from an Epic executive saying she was being dropped from the label “because we don’t believe she’s a viable female rock & roll artist now that she’s a wife and mutha.”

If Karla had a child out of wedlock, that might’ve been rock ’n roll appropriate. An unwed rocker-mom is sexy.

I was pissed. I was angry
.

I could barely control my temper.

My heart pained… but Karla was completely and uttterly blissed out—nothing could take away from the miracle of our daughter’s birth.

I never intentionally kept a secret
from Karla; she knew I was born with a heart murmur, but only heard the party line: It’s not a problem. I gave no details about how I was feeling. Karla says she thought of me as this incredibly stoic, heroic, other-worldly being—with the humanistic values of the people she admired most: her mother Vivienne, her Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Bob. She had never known anyone so athletically or artistically driven, and she respected me too much to ask for more than I was willing to share. Until one day, when I came in from a 16 mile run in the smog filled San Fernando Valley sweltering heat, and collapsed in a pile on our bedroom floor where she was breast feeding Lyric.

She gently said, “Darling, this can’t be right.”

She didn’t understand my sense of denial; all of my absurd rules and regulations. I told her, “This is what everyone looks like after running 16 miles in 100 degree heat, breathing L.A. smog.”

Nothing was going to stop me from running the New York Marathon.

Running Brave
had been set to premiere just before the Marathon (Sunday, November 6), and it seemed like a great idea to tie in publicity for the film with me entering the race I had always wanted to run. My personal goal was to break 3 hours, and knowing that Billy and Pat Mills would be in town for the film, I felt inspired to take on the challenge.

When the race began, I did a very foolish thing. I got claustrophobic in the back of the pack of 19,000 runners and had to get away from the slow amoeba-type jog in the first few miles. This was before runners wore computer chips in their bibs or shoes, so unfortunately, I knew I had to make up for losing the first 10 minutes behind the mob of joggers before I even crossed the starting line. I ran a 4:52 third mile (and that was restraining myself). But because of the energy I wasted in mile 3, I was haunted by mile 23. I didn’t hit the wall, I hit a tsunami. My goal of breaking 3 hours was ‘dashed’ when I crossed the finish line in 3:05:15.

Some people say, “Yeah, but if it took you ten minutes to just get across the starting line, you really ran ten minutes faster.” Unfortunately, I don’t believe that. When I crossed the finish line, the clock read 3:05:15. That means I ran 3:05:15. End of story.

When Karla got a call from her pal, 60s songwriting icon Ellie Greenwich, to star in the original version of her musical,
Leader of the Pack
, at The Bottom Line in New York, I became a house husband. I loved my new role, spending time with our baby and supporting Karla’s career. She worked with the great Darlene Love and Paul Shaffer (as Phil Spector), and got a great review in the
Village Voice
: “The surprise was Karla DeVito, who sang ‘Be My Baby’ and ‘Baby, I Love You’ clearly and unaffectedly and then did a ‘River Deep Mountain High’ which was a credit to her race.” That’s Karla…

When
Leader Of The Pack
went to Broadway, Karla had to turn it down as she had to be in L.A. recording her A&M album,
Wake ’Em Up In Tokyo
. I had given Karla’s Epic demo to Herb Alpert (the ‘A’ in ‘A&M’); he loved it, and executive David Anderle wanted to produce her album in L.A.

The Marathon became a wake-up call
for me. I was having more difficulty breathing—and didn’t want to hide my problem from Karla. So I agreed to see someone. At that time in my life, I made the same mistake most people did; I assumed: ‘Doctors know everything.’

Doctor #1
:
“You eat too much candy. Go home.”

I stopped eating candy. It didn’t help.

Doctor #2:
“You’re under too much stress. Here’s a prescription for anxiety. Go home.”