No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel (46 page)

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 353

And then, good God—it got better. I woke up one morning and I had this strange feeling that today was going to be easier. And it was. Don’t get me wrong—it was no walk in the park. But I managed. Without falling apart.

“I think I’m finding my way back,” I told Tony.

“Good,” he said. “I knew you would.”

I went off to shoot Sharon Stone. “You seem different, Janice,” she said as I fiddled with my camera. We had met before—a lifetime ago, when she was a nobody and had come to pose for Mike Reinhardt; then later, on the set of
The Specialist
, along with my not-so-good old buddy Sly.

“Different bad or different good?” I asked.

“Different good,” she said.

I felt like hugging her, but

I didn’t. I just took my pictures and packed up my gear and headed home.

Christmas came and

went. I made it through

without a drink, and Savannah made it through without a daddy. She got other presents—too many, of

course, because I felt so

guilty—and she seemed

to like most of them.

BICEPS BY

YOU-KNOW-WHO.

HOLLYWOOD,

CALIFORNIA, 1994.

((((((((((

354 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

Early in January we went to the mall to return the ones she didn’t want. We were coming off the escalator when I saw Michael Birnbaum moving toward us. My heart leapt into my throat. We hadn’t seen each other in close to seven years. He froze. I froze.

“Hello, Michael,” I said.

“Hello,” he said. He looked down at Savannah—

anything to avoid meeting my eyes—and smiled at her.

“And who might you be?” he asked.

“Savannah,” she said.

“Savannah,” he repeated. “What a beautiful name.”

He looked back up at me. Like everyone else in the

world, he’d read the tabloids during my very public breakup with Stallone, so he knew that Savannah was the child in question—the child who didn’t belong to Sly. I wondered if
he’d
ever wondered whether she was his, but then I realized he had no reason to wonder. The papers had made me look like a total slut. I’d had one very bad week, certainly—three men in three days; not my finest hour—

but, contrary to popular opinion, I didn’t fuck everything that moved.

Jesus. The way Michael was looking at me. I wanted to grab him by the lapels and pin him to the wall and say,

“You dumb bastard! She’s your daughter! Look at her, goddamn it! The same coloring, the same long limbs, the same cheekbones! A blind person can see the resemblance!”

And that’s exactly what I did—in my mind. Another

exciting Hollywood fantasy sequence: passersby stopping to stare. Savannah sobbing. Michael taking her in his arms and blubbering like a baby.

But I decided not to make a scene.

“It was nice to see you after all these years,” Michael said.

“It was nice to see you, too,” I said, calm as can be.

N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 355

“Call me sometime,” he said. “I’m listed.” Then he

looked down at Savannah. “Nice to meet you, Savannah.”

“Can we go now?” Savannah said, and Michael laughed that nice laugh of his and went on his way.

I had a drink when I got home. Just a little one, from the small bottle of vodka I picked up at the corner store. It tasted fucking great. But I only had one. And then another little one before bed. Just a teeny weeny one.

The next day I didn’t have a drink at all. But I knew where the bottle was. My twelve-step buddy called, wanting to know why she hadn’t heard from me. “Not hearing from me is supposed to be a good thing, right?” I said. She laughed and told me she was there if I needed her. Tony Peck called. We chatted a bit. He said I sounded different.

“Different good or different bad?” I asked.

“Not good or bad,” he said. “Just different.” But I could tell he was concerned.

I had a little tiny drink the next day. Just one—honest.

And two very tiny drinks the day after that. Then I began to lose count. I went to the corner store for more booze. I went so often that the clerks were reaching for the bottle before I reached the counter. I started hiding bottles everywhere. I felt like I was starring in my own version of
Days
of Wine and Roses
. I got very drunk one night and found myself having an imaginary conversation with Jack Lemmon, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in that amazing movie. “I’m proud of you, Jack,” I slurred. “You came out of it all right.”

And Jack got a dirty little gleam in his eye and said,

“You’re a good-looking girl, Janice.”

And I said, “I’ll drink to that!” And I did.

Savannah walked into the room in the middle of one of these little fantasies. “Who’re you talking to, Mom?” she asked.

356 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

“Nobody,” I said, slurring. “I had the TV on.”

“Why are you talking funny?”

“Funny? Who’s talking funny? The only talking we’re going to do around here is serious talking. So I’m going to ask you again, seriously, are you sure you don’t want to go to Disneyland for your birthday? We can take five of your best friends.”

“No,” she said. “I told you. I want to go to The Time Machine.” The Time Machine was some arcade-type place on Ventura Boulevard. We’d been there often, just to pass the time, and Savannah loved it. But I wanted to give her something special.

“How about the zoo?” I asked. “Or the Santa Monica

Pier? We can have it at the carousel at the Pier. You can bring your whole class.”

“No,” she said. “I want to go to The Time Machine.”

The next day, after I packed her off to school, I popped two Advil, washed them down with cognac, and dug up Michael Birnbaum’s listed number and called him.

“Hi, Michael,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Wow,” he said.

“You asked me to call.”

“So I did,” he said.

“How would you like to go to your daughter’s seventh birthday party? It’s a couple of weeks from now. We’re having it at The Time Machine, on Ventura Boulevard. It should be fun.” He didn’t say anything. “Michael?” Still nothing, but I could hear him breathing on the other end.

“Michael?”

“What did you just say?” he asked. He couldn’t disguise the shock in his voice. He sounded depleted. He sounded, in fact, like he’d been punched in the gut.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I began to cry. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how to tell you. Simon tried to take N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 357

Nathan away from me. I didn’t want to go through that again. I don’t want to lose my daughter.”

“That little girl—the little girl at the mall last month?

She’s
mine
?” Michael was still in shock.

“I guess I could have found a better way of breaking it to you. I’m sorry. I just—what was I going to say? Will you come to her birthday? Please?”

“Give me your number,” he said. “I need a few minutes.”

I gave him my number and he hung up without saying

good-bye. I waited for him to call back. He didn’t call back. I had another drink. The phone rang. I thought it was Michael, but it was Tony Peck.

“You sound like you’ve been drinking,” Tony said.

“No,” I said. “I’m stuffed up. I think I feel a cold coming on.”

“You want me to believe that?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll believe it.”

“Can we talk later?” I said.

“I’m here,” he said.

I hung up and had another drink. Savannah came home.

We swung by Simon’s house, and I picked up Nathan and took them both to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. I wanted desperately to order a glass of wine, but I

restrained myself. I ate everything they wouldn’t eat: Pizza.

Pasta. All the bread and butter. The remains of two ice-cream sundaes. When I took Nathan back to his father’s place, I hugged him so hard his bones practically cracked.

“You okay, Mom?” he asked me.

“Never better,” I said.

I drove home and put Savannah to bed and started reading
The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig
. It’s a very funny story, and Savannah could never get enough of it. I had to stop a few pages in, to catch my breath.

358 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

“What’s wrong, Mom?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I love the way the Big Bad Pig

changes.”

“That’s no reason to cry,” she said.

She was wrong. The Big Bad Pig could change, but
I
was never going to fucking change. I pulled myself

together and finished the story and turned out the light and tucked her in.

“Good night,” I said.

“I love you, Mom,” she said.

“I love you, too,” I said, and I crept out of the room and down the hall to my own. I lay on the bed, lost in deep, troubling thought, until sleep carried me away.

The next morning, a Saturday, Savannah was back in

bed with me, snuggling again. “I want to make my own birthday invitations,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. And that’s what we did. We sat at the table in the den, Savannah and I, making the invitations on the computer. She wanted them to be perfect. She drew a little ticking clock in the upper left-hand corner. “Get it?”

she said. “
Time Machine
. A clock. Time.”

“Very clever,” I said.

We printed out the invitations and she had me hand-

address each envelope. “You have beautiful handwriting, Mom,” she said. “I hope I have beautiful handwriting when I grow up.”

“Of course you will,” I said. “They have handwriting classes in Beverly Hills.”

“Really?”

“No,” I said, smiling down at her. “I’m just kidding.”

“You’re funny, Mom.”

We walked hand in hand to the corner mailbox, with our stack of envelopes. We were inviting every kid in her class, along with assorted hangers-on. She insisted on dropping N O L I F E G UA R D O N D U T Y 359

the envelopes through the slot one by one, counting as she went. “Boy,” she said, “I’m really popular, huh?”

“Yes,” I said. “A girl can’t get more popular than you.”

On the way back to the house, I realized we hadn’t

printed up an invitation for Birnbaum.
Well, fuck him,
I thought.
He knows the truth now. Maybe he’ll do the right
thing.

Her birthday fell on a Thursday that year—February 24, 2001—but we were having the party a couple of days later, the following Saturday. Still, I wanted that Thursday to be special, too. I invited Nathan for dinner, along with two of Savannah’s best friends, and a good time was had by all. I sang loudly and embarrassed my kids. Everyone was

laughing. When Savannah blew out the candles, I felt like I was looking at a Norman Rockwell painting. Or
part
of a painting, anyway. The good part. A bunch of happy kids.

And me? I stayed on the fringes, trying not to ruin the picture.

I crawled into bed that night feeling pretty good about myself—better, in fact, than I had in a very long time. For days now, I’d been running around like a typical suburban mother. We weren’t going to overdo it, I told Savannah. We weren’t trying to compete. But we still needed the expensive caterers for the peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, and the helium balloons with Savannah’s name on them, and the Pokemon birthday cake from the best bakery in Los Angeles. As I lay there thinking about what I still needed to do, the phone rang. It was Michael Birnbaum.

“We need to talk,” he said.

We met for drinks the following night. He picked a

nightclub that was loud and dark. I guess he didn’t want me to see his face. Maybe he was worried he might start crying. What is it about men and tears? The guy had a right to cry; he
should’ve
been crying.

360 J A N I C E D I C K I N S O N

I explained again why I’d never told him about Savannah, how afraid I’d been of losing her. And I apologized for the way I’d treated him when we were together. “I’m really ashamed,” I said. “I have done a lot of things in my life I’m ashamed of, but this is at the top of the list.”

“I can’t believe I have a daughter,” he said.

“Will you forgive me?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “Will you come to her party? It’s tomorrow.”

Michael took a long time answering. Then he shook his head from side to side. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the right place for it.”

“Please don’t abandon her, Michael,” I begged. “Please don’t punish her for my mistakes.”

“What must people think of me?” he said. “That I’m a five-minute dad?”

“Nobody knows, Michael. I’m the only one who

knows.”

“No,” he said. He was angry. “
I
know.”

“Why don’t you just say ‘This is great. I have a lovely young daughter. I’m a lucky man,’ and move on?”

But he didn’t say it. He signed the bill and left without a good-bye. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I ordered a drink. And then another. And then I walked upstairs, to the disco, and sat at the bar and had a drink. I watched the people on the dance floor, kids mostly, and thought of the kid I had been. Christ, I was a middle-aged woman.
Was I
ever going to figure any of it out?

I didn’t finish my drink. I went outside and got in my car and drove home.

CLEAN AND SOBER

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

The next morning, Savannah woke me up an hour earlier than usual.

“Come on,” she said. “Today’s my party!”

I only had a trace of a hangover, thanks largely to a megadose of aspirin the night before.

“What party?” I said, but I was smiling. Savannah

laughed. She couldn’t contain herself. She wanted me up and dressed and ready to rock and roll. We had to make sure we were at The Time Machine early,
real
early. So she dragged me downstairs and I made breakfast—Corn Pops for her, coffee for me—and we were there by eleven

o’clock.

The balloons arrived. The caterers arrived. The cake arrived. And then the kids arrived. And for the next four hours everyone had loads of fun. Including me. I looked at all those happy kids and thought,
This is it. This is as good
as it gets
.