Life with My Sister Madonna (27 page)

Our father had instilled the value of loyalty and honor in all of us. But over the years, my sister's sense of loyalty, fairness—the ability to discern who is on her side, who is not, whom she can trust and whom she can't—has clearly been eroded by the adulation, the applause, the sense of entitlement.

 

I
T TAKES
D
ARLENE
and me six months to resell the three landscapes. Six months during which I can't pay my rent, have to borrow from friends, have to struggle to survive. While my sister, the cause of my predicament, knows, yet does nothing. By the time I finally manage to sell the pictures and recoup my money, my feelings for her have undergone a radical shift.

I
FIND NO
excuse for Madonna's grossly unfair treatment of me. But when, in November 1995, she tells me that she is deeply unhappy with Carlos, I conclude that she might have been venting her unhappiness by treating me so unfairly.

Madonna feels mistreated in her relationship and says that she won't stand for being treated like a doormat or disrespected. She thinks Carlos behaves like a spoiled child. She is hurt and unhappy, and I know from her that she feels that she has never before given so much love to one person in her life. Despite that, she changes the locks on the New York apartment, which she and Carlos have been sharing, and has his things packed up and sent to him.

I realize that she regards Carlos—who, in happier times, called her by the endearment “baby chicken”—as far more than a stud she has cast in the Daddy Chair. That she really is in love with him and is fighting for their relationship to survive. An excuse for having left me in the lurch with the paintings? Perhaps. I give my sister the benefit of the doubt. So I forgive her. But I don't forget.

 

I'
M IN
M
IAMI
in November 1995 and celebrate my birthday there at the opening of Ingrid's new club, Liquid, where I meet the British supermodel Kate Moss, who soared to fame at the age of just fourteen when she became Calvin Klein's muse. Like most child stars catapulted to success far before their time, Kate is outwardly fragile and gives the impression that she might easily fall apart at the slightest provocation. Yet underneath her frail facade, she is extremely self-assured. I instantly click with her and her best friend, her fellow supermodel Naomi Campbell. The three of us become firm friends and, now and again, party together. Madonna hears that I'm hanging out with them and berates me for spending time with drug-user models.

That is not, of course, a fair description. Kate and Naomi are both stylish, elegant, smart, and fun. Kate has an apartment off Washington Square, where we often hang out. Naomi lives in a large TriBeCa loft with rolling racks of clothes people have given her from shoots. An open kitchen. A large living area and two bedrooms, with clothes covering every surface. She owns art books, but not a lot of art, with the exception of three paintings that I did for the Wessel and O'Connor exhibit, which I have give her.

One night David Blaine, the magician, is over at her apartment. He is young, unknown, and full of enthusiasm.

We are in the kitchen together talking. He asks if he can show me something.

I don't know what to expect. When he levitates himself off the floor a full five inches, I call Naomi. He does it again for her. We are both amazed. Soon he will be levitating for all the world to see.

Naomi tells me that one of her greatest ambitions is to become a singer. She plays me her record, which she has been working on with Quincy Jones. It isn't very good, but I hold my blunt Ciccone tongue and tell her it is great and that she should keep working on it. I am not being altogether insincere, because I respect her for attempting to express herself artistically and want to encourage her to persist.

I see an uncut version of the documentary about the trip she and Kate made to Africa. The entire film makes them both seem ridiculous. It features a scene on a plane in which a fellow passenger wants to snap a picture of Naomi, but she doesn't want her to, and a rather funny yet absurd fight ensues.

In South Africa, competition breaks out between Naomi and Kate over who is going to get the better present from a rich South African guy who is flirting with them both. He gives Naomi a really expensive jewel-encrusted egg, a Fabergé knockoff. And Kate gets really annoyed. In the end she also gets a gift from him that he says is expensive. She takes it back to the shop, where she finds out it isn't that expensive at all. So she goes to the guy and complains he didn't give her as expensive a gift as he did Naomi. (It could be the other way around.)

Neither Kate nor Naomi is happy with the movie because they both come out of it poorly. I commiserate with them, but have secretly spent many a night with friends laughing at one hilarious scene or another.

Kate is seeing Johnny Depp who is living in Bela Lugosi's former mansion above Sunset Boulevard. I visit them there, and when I walk in, the first thing I see is an electric chair. Johnny is in the library, and I am impressed by the breadth of his literary tastes, which range from
Moby-Dick
to an Einstein biography. I note that every single volume in Johnny's extensive library is well thumbed—no books-by-the-yard on display for decorative purposes or to impress for this most erudite of Hollywood stars. Johnny exudes smartness in spades.

We chat briefly about a movie he's working on, then he joins Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis in his dark-wood-paneled lounge, furnished with dark-brown-leather club chairs, a dark-wood bar, and boasting a view of West Hollywood. Johnny offers me a shot of bourbon. I refuse, then go up to the finished attic where Kate is hanging out with Naomi. The three of us lounge on blue velvet cushions, drink champagne, and party. After a while, I feel that I ought to go back downstairs and pay some attention to our host, but find Johnny and the Oasis boys swigging bourbon. The air is thick with the smell of pot. I spend the rest of the evening shuttling between the supermodels in the attic and the men downstairs in the living room.

In contrast, Johnny and Kate hardly hang out together at all. They don't kiss, don't hold hands, don't even touch, and it seems to me that—despite their stunningly sexual good looks—they are far more buddies than wild, unbridled lovers. The whole evening has a distinct whiff of high school about it: the boys downstairs smoking and drinking and the girls upstairs giggling and doing blow.

 

A
ROUND THE SAME
time, I move from my duplex into a high-rise apartment building in Hollywood. One Friday night, Ingrid comes over with a few friends. During the evening, she pulls out a bottle containing some cocaine and asks for a mirror. I find a small framed one. Ingrid cuts three or four lines and offers me one. I am paranoid about doing drugs in public with anyone else. I never do lines, either, “because that's too much of a commitment for me,” I say to her. I prefer doing small key bumps—putting an extremely small amount of cocaine on the end of a key and taking it that way. While I like the little pick-me-up coke provides me, I have always been determined not to lose control because of it—the way I did the first time I did it with Martin Burgoyne all those years ago. I've always maintained a very casual ralationship with cocaine—I like it, but don't need it. So I refuse Ingrid's offer of a line, but do a key bump with her instead.

Within days, Madonna writes me a concerned email insinuating that Ingrid has told her that I may have a drug or alcohol problem. Neither is true.

Madonna chides me in a rather maternal way: “I only want to say that I know you're unhappy and I'm here for you if you need support or a friend” and “it infuriates me that my favorite brother is treating himself so badly. You have so much talent and so much to offer.” But she is also stern, telling me that if I want to live a self-destructive lifestyle, that I don't do it around or in her homes. The email ends on a nice note, though: “I love you dearly and I want you to take care of yourself.”

I am mollified by her concern, but am furious at Ingrid. She has drug problems of her own, and has apparently accused me of being a drug addict. And my sister believes her. From this point on, nothing I can say or do will ever change Madonna's mind.

John Enos has become a co-owner of Atlantic Restaurant on the corner of Beverly and Sweetzer. He asks me to design the interior. I've never designed a restaurant before, but once again jump at the chance to try something new.

Then Madonna finds out and calls me. “You're not to hang out with John, Christopher.”

“But he's one of the owners of the restaurant; I have to,” I explain with as much patience as I can muster.

“I don't care. You have to stay away from him.”

“Sorry, babe, I'm hanging out with John.” And I do.

Meanwhile, I am painting more than ever. On weekends, I am the unofficial host at Atlantic Restaurant. I am starting to feel independent, to crawl out from under Madonna's shadow. Celebrities flock to the club, including Brad Pitt and Denzel Washington. One night, Denzel is at the restaurant and two drag queens walk in.

“What the hell is that shit!” he says.

“That shit is what makes the world go round and makes it interesting, so deal with it,” I say indignantly.

He instantly apologizes.

In preparation for
Evita,
Madonna is taking regular voice lessons. She has always shunned formal training, but she's really enjoying them and the strength they bring out in her voice. She is nervous, though, about making the movie, and in the wake of all the bad ones she now recognizes she's made, she is determined to make a good one at last. I tell her this is the perfect part for her and that I know she will be wonderful. During filming, she tells me things are going relatively well, but that she never sees the dailies because she's afraid to. Not to mention that director Alan Parker is keeping her and her ego on a tight leash, which I secretly applaud.

 

S
OON AFTER, SHE
discovers that she is pregnant by Carlos and she is expecting Lola, as she has chosen to call the baby who will be baptized Lourdes. Madonna decides that because she is now pregnant, Castillo del Lago is too cumbersome for her and might be hazardous for a new baby. So she buys a new house on Cockerham, in Los Feliz, and asks me to decorate it.

We meet at the house and together figure out what I am going to do with the interior. During the meeting, she raises the subject of my supposed drug addiction and tells me that she is worried my drug use will distract me from my work on the house. I feel a surge of anger that Ingrid's report of my drug use is coming between me and my sister. After all, our filial bond is difficult enough to sustain—what with the ripple effect of Madonna's fame and fortune and my own role in her professional life.

I take out my anger for Ingrid's meddling on Madonna. I tell her she's wrong about the drugs and that if she has any doubts about my professionalism, she ought to get another designer who might suit her better. She assures me she won't, and we decide to go ahead together on the house.

Although I get over my anger at Ingrid, Madonna's unfairness over the Sotheby's paintings still rankles. I may have forgiven her, but I haven't forgotten. I decide to be more self-protective this time around, as I am determined that she will never put me in the same position again. From now on I won't lay out any of my money for her. So I draw up our first decorating and designing contract. Just to soften it, I call it a “Letter of Agreement.” It reads:

I am not altogether sure how she will take me asking for a contract, so I fax it to her along with this cover letter: