CHAPTER 30

BABY LOVE

In October 1994, after thirteen years of marriage, Mark and I finally had the baby we’d been wishing for for so long. I was glad that I didn’t have a child until the ripe old age of forty-three because things had calmed down and I had a lot more time to devote to being a mother. Well, not a lot more; maybe a little more. Actually, maybe not any more at all. Our entire income hinged on me continuing to work.

Until I turned thirty-four, I’d never had the time or desire to have a child, but suddenly the craving struck with a vengeance. I threw away the birth-control pills and we began trying. We didn’t have to try too hard. I became pregnant immediately and we were ecstatic! After announcing my pregnancy to the world, decorating the baby’s room, and making all the plans that go along with expanding a family, three months later, I miscarried. It was devastating and I went into a long period of mourning.

At the doctor’s suggestion, we waited several months and then tried again. Once more, I became pregnant immediately, but after performing one of my shows at Knott’s Halloween Haunt, I began cramping and bleeding and miscarried once again. The sadness I felt was only outweighed by the guilt. If only I hadn’t continued to work when I was pregnant!

Having a baby became my main focus. Nothing or nobody was going to tell me that I couldn’t do something that I set my mind to, even my own body. We went to various specialists to see whether we could pinpoint the problem, but no one could find any reason why I couldn’t carry a baby to term. I was healthy and fit, and there was no history of miscarriage in my family or Mark’s. During one test, we discovered that my husband’s DNA was so similar to mine that there was a chance my body was rejecting the fetus as “foreign tissue.” One doctor actually asked if there was a possibility we might be brother and sister! We went through a series of expensive and painful “blood-swapping” processes at the University of California–Los Angeles Medical Center, but to no avail.

After my first miscarriage, Cheech Marin and his wife, Patty, who had adopted a baby through Los Angeles County channels, suggested we give that a try, but years went by without a single response. The adoption agency admitted later that because we were white and older, we were at the bottom of the list. As the years passed and I continued to work and carry on my Elvira duties to pay the bills, I tried and became pregnant four more times, all ending in miscarriages. I quit doing anything strenuous, even staying in bed full-time during one pregnancy, but it didn’t help. Every miscarriage was more heart-wrenching than the last. I finally knew I had to come to terms with the possibility of never having the baby I wanted so desperately. I told myself I didn’t need to have a child to live a happy life; that there were millions of women who have had fulfilling lives without having children. I thought of my Aunt Lorrayne in particular, who, although childless, managed to have the most positive and loving influence on me and my cousins. I remember the exact moment I gave up my dream of motherhood. It was a gray, windy day, and as I stood on the deck at Briarcliff staring out at the city stretching before me and the dark clouds passing overhead, I let my dream of being a parent go. The clouds momentarily parted and a beam of sunlight shone across my face. A deep sense of well-being came over me and I knew, with every cell in my body, that it would all be okay.

The next day, I discovered I was pregnant again.

I knew the feeling like I knew my own name. After all, I’d been pregnant six times, so it was very familiar. A home pregnancy kit confirmed it. But instead of the elation I’d felt in past pregnancies, I was a wreck. I threw myself face down on the old fake-leather couch in our den and cried, inconsolable. First thing the next morning I called my obstetrician, told her I was pregnant again, and, between sobs, asked whether she could give me something to “get rid of it,” so I wouldn’t have to go through the emotional and physical pain of another miscarriage and D&C (dilation and curettage). Reluctantly, she agreed to help, and I headed straight to her office. Once there, she literally begged me to let her do just one more ultrasound, just to make sure, before we went any further. I’d had dozens of ultrasounds because of all the past pregnancies and didn’t understand the need to have another one. I knew that seeing the tiny fetus would only make me more heartsick and miserable than I already was. But after more pleading on my doctor’s part, I finally relented. As the doctor ran the warm metal wand over my abdomen, all I remember was her shouting, “This one’s a keeper!” I looked at her like she was speaking a foreign language. It took her saying the same thing over and over for it to finally sink in.

After six miscarriages, I finally had a perfectly normal pregnancy and the next nine months was one of the happiest times of my life. Mark and I couldn’t wait for our baby to arrive! I felt healthy and energetic the whole time—so much so that I even participated in a celebrity-mom workout video with Tom Cruise’s ex, Mimi Rogers, when I was eight months along.

It had been worth waiting for, worth all the pain and sadness. The child I’d hoped for, for so many years, was finally on the way. After twenty-four hours of labor and ultimately a C-section, I gave birth to my sweet, special baby—lucky pregnancy number seven.

In 1995, not long after I’d given birth, I got an offer from Hugh Hefner himself, asking whether “Elvira” would consider posing for a Playboy layout. My initial reaction was “No way.” Why would I need to do that at this point in my life? I was a new mom and my career was doing just fine, thank you ever so. But when I was offered the same amount of money they’d paid Farrah Fawcett, a record price at the time, we had to give it some serious consideration. It could get us out of debt and make life a lot easier. While we mulled over the Playboy layout, I began working with a trainer, Rich Guzman, at the Hollywood Gold’s Gym, training for the first time in my life to get back into my prepregnancy shape, just in case the Playboy thing happened.

Often, when I was doing my preworkout warm-up on the treadmill, I couldn’t help noticing one particular trainer—tan, tattooed, and muscular—stalking across the gym floor, knit cap pulled so low over his long brown hair that it nearly covered his eyes. Dark and brooding, he gave off such intense energy that when he crossed the enormous gym floor, the waters parted and people stopped in their tracks to stare. A typical sexy bad boy, he was unaware he was so charismatic that he’d garnered his own unofficial fan club. Watching him from the safety of my treadmill made my heart beat faster and the time pass much more quickly. I mean, c’mon, I was married, not dead.

One day, as I was walking into the ladies’ room at the gym, boom! I ran straight into him on his way out. Wait a minute. What? He was a she? Wow—that really threw me! Not long afterward, Rich announced he was leaving Gold’s, but not to worry, he had someone taking over his clients, who in his opinion was the star trainer of the gym. It turned out to be my former bad-boy crush from the infamous “ladies’-room incident,” Teresa Wierson, or T, as she was known at Gold’s. A former bodybuilder, track runner, and cyclist, she was an incredibly sweet person, despite her tough exterior. She had the ability to make something even as mundane as working out fun, and we trained together three times a week for the next six years, striking up a close friendship along the way.

I gave up the idea of doing the Playboy layout after asking a group of fans what they thought of the idea during a panel at a Comic-Con. Much to my surprise, they overwhelmingly gave it a thumbs-down. It was their consensus that Elvira would lose much of her “mystery” by exposing it all, which made good sense. Thanks to my fans, I passed on the offer, and I’ve always felt it was the right decision. From that day on, Hef referred to me as “the one who got away.”

One day, while sitting at my desk in our home office, I received a call from Florida. “This is the Pinellas County Police Department. Is this Mrs. Pierson?” My blood ran cold. The first thing that came to mind was that something had happened to my sister, Robin.

“Yes,” I answered hesitantly. “Is something wrong?”

“Are you Whitney and Paige’s aunt?” she asked. When I confirmed that I was, she explained that both of my sister’s children had been removed from their home and were about to be transferred into the foster care system unless a relative was willing to take them. Robin had lost custody of them after being declared “unfit” when she had a DUI accident with both kids in the car, and now their father had gone to jail after hitting my thirteen-year-old niece in the head with a metal pipe giving her a concussion and two black eyes. The state of Florida, where they lived, had finally figured out that they should no longer be left alone with either of their parents. “Yes!” I said without a moment’s hesitation. “We’ll take them!” We arranged for my nephew, Whitney, who was eleven at the time, to stay with my mother in Florida so he could continue attending the school he was in, and we put Paige on a plane to Los Angeles the next day. We immediately filed for legal custody. What we hadn’t considered is that Paige came with a lot of baggage because of her extremely dysfunctional upbringing. At the age of thirteen, she was already an alcoholic, a problem that would plague her well into adulthood. Over a period of weeks and several medical and psychological evaluations, it was decided that the best thing for us to do would be to enroll her in a live-in therapeutic school in Oregon, kind of a “kiddie rehab.” As heartbreaking as it was to send her away, we knew it was the smartest thing we could do for her at the time. She lived with us off and on until she turned seventeen, then returned to Florida to graduate from high school. Their parents’ years of drug abuse and hard drinking had made both her and my nephew’s lives a chaotic mess.

On his deathbed, I’d promised my father that I would take care of my sister Robin. As hard as I tried, I wasn’t able to do that. Robin was found dead in a motel room in Florida in 2006, after overdosing on a combination of opioids and alcohol. All I could do was try my best to make a positive impact on her two children. I’m blessed that after years of debilitating alcoholism, both Paige and Whitney miraculously got sober and have turned their lives around. It’s an enormous gift to see them both, now in their thirties, breaking the chain of substance abuse and living happy, productive lives.