You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-Nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood, Love, Loss (28 page)

Professionally it had not been a great year for Rick. The Lakers did
not “fourpeat.” Rick had been beset by foot and neck injuries. He had had surgery and was on the bench for a big chunk of the season. Then he had spent the summer rehabilitating, but he never fully recovered. He developed bulging discs in his neck that affected his back. That summer he was traded to the Boston Celtics, the team where he had begun his career. He ended up retiring a few months later.

I got a call from Rick at 11:55A.M. on August 19. He told me he’d gone to see his lawyer that day and filed for divorce. He said he wanted me to know because it would be announced the next day on ESPN. But just five minutes later it appeared on the ESPN scrawl.

RICK FOX FILES FOR DIVORCE FROM VANESSA WILLIAMS
.

Rick’s publicist, Staci Wolfe, made a statement to the
National Enquirer
: “They are heading for a divorce and have been so for the last eighteen months. They’ve virtually been leading separate lives.”

Wow! That was news to me. The last eighteen months? Really? How come I didn’t know anything about this? I knew things weren’t great, but I had no idea they were horrible for so long. Here was some publicist talking about our marriage like she’s an expert on it.

I called my lawyer to strategize. “It’s not irreconcilable differences because I don’t want to get divorced. So no, I’m not going to agree to that,” I said. I wanted Rick to realize all that he was giving up—his wife, and especially his daughter.

In another twist of fate, the next album I was scheduled to record was filled with love songs. So that fall, I had gone to the studio to record tracks for
Everlasting Love.
The CD comprised mostly love songs from the 1970s—Jackson 5’s “Never Can Say Goodbye,” Stevie Wonder’s “Send One Your Love,” and Melissa Manchester’s “Midnight Blue.”

I was singing about love when the man I loved didn’t love me anymore. Talk about pain!

I had also decided to put “Today and Everyday”—Rick’s wedding poem—on the CD. Was I trying to torture myself?

What had once been a love song had become so bittersweet.

When it was time to sing it, I took a very deep breath and concentrated on the melody and my breathing. I tried not to picture us at the altar. The words that had been so beautiful, so full of hope, of love, of promise, now felt just plain sad.

Today and everyday, I am yours for all time

Today and everyday, like a miracle, baby, you are mine

And though the winds may blow us far, far away

Don’t you forget my promise, listen to what I say

I’m yours today and everyday.

I thought about all this as I sat on the balcony of the twenty-eighth floor of my apartment on a moonlit night in Miami. That song had been a gift from Rick to me. And even though Rick was gone, that song would always be mine.

Rick with Sasha on the beach in the Bahamas, September 2000

Mom, Dad, and baby in the Marina house—a Sasha sandwich

PART FIVE

SAVE THE BEST
FOR LAST

CHAPTER

28

But he’s such a good man. He’s such a good, good man.

—HELEN WILLIAMS

I
thought my father would live forever.

Dad was one of the healthiest people I knew. He was active every day—chopping wood, mowing the lawn, and gardening. He’d have oatmeal for breakfast and snack on peanuts and raisins out of big jars he kept in the kitchen and in his car. Dad loved to bake wholegrain muffins with dried cranberries and bananas. He munched on the fruits and vegetables he planted in our garden in the backyard. My father was organic, eco-friendly, and green before it was trendy.

Dad had always been extra sensitive about his heart because his parents died so young—his mom, who struggled with high blood pressure, died of preeclampsia and a heart attack at twenty-eight, shortly after giving birth to her fifth child; and at fifty-three, his father also succumbed to a heart attack.

My dad wasn’t going to be a victim of a bad heart, high cholesterol, or high blood pressure. He did everything possible to stay healthy for his family. And it worked—Dad rarely got sick. Dad was strong and vibrant. Dad seemed invincible.

But it was more than just Dad’s health that convinced me he’d be around forever. My father was the leader of the Williams tribe—a clan filled with artists, teachers, dreamers, and optimists. To me, my dad was larger than life. I couldn’t imagine a world without him in it.

So when my mom called me in Miami on Saturday morning, January 14, 2006, to say that Dad was really sick, I was shocked. First, Dad didn’t get really sick. And second, Mom wouldn’t call if Dad was going to be okay. She’d handle it herself and tell us about it afterward. She thought she could take care of most situations and wouldn’t want to bother us.

But I didn’t even recognize Mom’s voice. She sounded panicked.

“You need to come,” Mom said. “You need to come
now
.”

What? My heart started pounding. Mom sounded so unlike herself—could Dad’s condition be
that
serious? How could this be happening? Thank God we were only a short forty-five-minute plane ride away.

We went to the Bahamas for a party.

On Friday, January, 13, 2006 (yes, Friday the 13th), Milton and I arrived in Nassau to celebrate a friend’s sixtieth birthday. We’d had a lovely Bahamian lunch with some dear friends at a restaurant. Milton was full of energy, talking about his life, his children, his grandchildren. That night, we continued the party with some Chinese takeout at our friend’s house. Halfway through the meal, Milton got up from the table. In the kitchen he told me that his stomach was bothering him.

Milton has always had a sensitive stomach and we’d mixed a lot of cuisines that day—conch for lunch, and egg rolls and a variety of Chinese foods for dinner. I put on the kettle and fixed Milton some mint tea. He sipped it, but it didn’t stop the pain. Soon, he was doubled over.

We left the house and went back to our hotel, but he didn’t feel any better. I called a doctor friend of our hosts who examined Milton in our hotel room and felt he needed to be admitted to the hospital. The doctors there said he had to stay overnight.

Then they administered tests.

“His pancreas is inflamed,” they told me. This was more than just a bad stomachache, and I was concerned.

So I called Vanessa.

Fortunately, I was nearby—in Miami—for the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts’ YoungArts Week, where I was teaching master classes to seniors in high school who were scholarship finalists. (I’d also been a scholarship finalist in this program my senior year.) My television series
South Beach
was in limbo after being shut down because of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I’d shot eight episodes and was waiting to hear if the show would continue or be canceled. I still had a few months left on my Miami apartment, so I invited Chris, my brother, to spend some time with me and the kids.

After Mom called, Chris, the kids, and I rushed to the airport and took the forty-five-minute flight to the Bahamas. I prayed the whole time we were on the flight that this would not be a big deal; that Dad would be on the mend and sitting up in his hospital bed by the time we got there. I thought about the last time I’d seen him—just two days ago. On Thursday, the mother of one of my parents’ neighbors had died and we sat shivah with the family. My dad had baked sugar-free wholegrain muffins for them. We looked at old
photos and reminisced. How could Dad have made muffins two days ago and be deathly ill now? It didn’t make sense. He had to be okay. Dad was strong; he was a fighter; he would be fine.

There was the sound of my mother’s voice echoing in my head.

“
Your father’s really, really sick.
”

My mother never ever asks for help. It’s not in her nature. She’s tough. She’s like steel. If there was a problem, she could handle it. Alone. But this time there was her silent plea to me.
I need you here. Help! I can’t do this alone.

It’s always shocking when a parent needs their child, no matter how old the child is. Here I was, middle-aged, but I’d never heard Mom like this before. And it scared me.

When we arrived in Nassau, we rushed straight to the hospital. Dad was in a hospital bed.

He looked at me and said he was having a hard time breathing. I could hear the fluid in his lungs and it sounded like he was drowning. The doctors told us that his kidneys were failing and that his pancreas was inflamed. They told us that his situation was very serious.

Chris, Jillian, Sasha, Mom, and I surrounded Dad’s bed. I stood next to him and squeezed his hand. What was going on? How could he suddenly be this sick?

“I can’t breathe,” he panted. “I feel like I can’t breathe.”

I stroked his hair and tried to calm him, but I didn’t know what to say.

He couldn’t catch his breath and his stomach looked swollen and distended. He was drowning in toxins. Mom had to make some serious decisions. We spoke to the doctors.

What’s the next step?

“We can’t take care of him here. Our facility just doesn’t have what you need. He should be in a teaching hospital,” a doctor told us. “We’ll need to medevac him right away.”

The doctors explained that my dad’s pancreas was severely
inflamed and his organs were shutting down. He had to be flown off this island as soon as possible. They said at this state of my dad’s condition, acute pancreatitis, recovery takes a long, long time, and my dad could be in a hospital for months. “If he survives.”

If he survives.

We got busy, calling on doctors we knew, trying to figure out which hospital would be the best place for someone with Dad’s condition. In the end, the decision was up to my mother. She said she wanted him at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, which was only a few miles from home. So a neighbor of mine—Dr. Tony Pucillo, a cardiologist—made the arrangements to get him admitted there.