One of the symptoms of mania, according to the American Psychiatric Association, is overindulgence in “enjoyable behaviors with high risks of negative outcomes.” The World Health Organization defines one of the signs of a manic episode as “behavior that is out of character and risky, foolish or inappropriate that may cause a loss of normal social restraint.”
Those definitions pretty much described me at the arrival of the 1990s.
The Warping of Al didn’t hit The New York Times bestseller list, but it did sell enough copies for my publisher to ask me to write a second novel. I was on my way to becoming a notable author—at least that’s what I thought.
I came up with a new plot for a second book: a young teenager lives with her mother and abusive father. She decides to run away and joins an itinerant camp of the Grateful Dead’s hard-core fans. I started writing and really liked the beginning, where the main character hears her mother being slapped and punched then goes downstairs to help after her abusive father leaves the house. My editor liked the first few pages, too, but when I started writing the book’s second chapter, the flow of words stopped. I had fallen victim to the infamous writer’s block.
Frustrated, I decided to take a break and focus on something else. I didn’t need to lose weight. I was thin. But I decided I needed to build much-needed muscle. I went on a health kick. To purify my body, I stopped taking all medication, including Zoloft, and joined a local gym.
From the day I first slipped on spandex, I began pushing myself harder and harder. It wasn’t uncommon for me to spend two hours in the gym six days a week. I wasn’t the only gym rat. Noah Davis was a trainer, and we immediately noticed each other. I liked Noah instantly, in part because he was big and strong but also because of his banter and charm.
Noah told me that he’d been drawn to weight lifting because it required him to push himself without forcing him to compete with anyone else or depend on other people. Mind over his own body.
“It is all about you testing yourself,” he explained. “I’ve never been interested in team sports.”
Noah had come from a military family that had moved constantly, and his father, like mine, had been a largely absent figure who’d always been at work. After graduating from a suburban Washington, DC, high school, Noah had gone to “find himself.” Eventually, he’d ended up in Manhattan, where he’d become a close friend of Fabio Lanzoni, the Italian fashion model whose physique and long locks had inspired hundreds of romance-novel covers. Noah and Fabio shared mutual interests in weight lifting, riding motorcycles fast, and bedding equally fast women. A motorcycle collision in Manhattan had sidelined Noah and prompted his move to Bozeman, where his parents had retired. At age thirty-seven, he still viewed himself as a drifter, much more comfortable being a “voyeur of the world” than getting locked into a daily grind.
I’d just finished doing a series of gut-punishing crunches one afternoon when Noah strolled over and ran his finger up the back of my leg, from my knee to my butt.
“Nice hamstrings,” he said.
I smiled.
He smiled back, with a twinkle in his eye.
We continued to flirt whenever I was in the gym. Noah and I decided to rent a room at Chico Hot Springs, a resort about an hour and a half away from Bozeman in Paradise Valley, just north of Yellowstone National Park. It was a romantic spot with two natural hot springs. After a soak, drinks, and dinner we called it a night and fell into bed.
I knew I was ovulating; I could tell from the sharp pain in my abdomen. I told Noah, and he joked that we’d make a daughter and would name her Doom.
We both giggled, but the next morning I told him: “I think we made a baby last night,” and I wasn’t kidding.
“That wouldn’t be good,” he replied in a serious voice.
I was surprised. “I told you I was ovulating,” I said. “And you knew we weren’t taking any precautions!”
A horrified look swept over his face. While he enjoyed my company, he wasn’t in love with me, and he certainly was not in a position to become a father. “I can’t even take care of myself,” he admitted. Our night together was the result, he joked, of a “hormonal collision.”
Not for me. I was in love and determined to make him love me. His casualness about our night of passion became a challenge. We continued to date during the coming weeks, and in my journal I wrote long passages about how much I loved Noah, as if I were a schoolgirl having her first crush. I wrote poetry about him and couldn’t think of much else except him. Neither of my sons liked Noah when I introduced him. And Noah, from his perspective, instantly recognized how unprepared and uncomfortable he would be playing the role of father. Being a dad was just not something Noah wanted or was ready for.
There was another problem besides my sons’ negative reaction to Noah. When he’d asked me out, I actually was seeing someone else, a Bozeman businessman. He’d taken my boys and me back east to meet his parents on Long Island and to attend a New York Rangers hockey game at Madison Square Garden. If I were going to be dating anyone, Calen and Sander would have preferred him.
On January 17, 1991, the same day Operation Desert Storm was announced, I discovered life-changing news. At age thirty-seven, I was carrying Noah’s baby.
Because I had wrapped myself in a puppy-love cocoon, I was thrilled, and I immediately began fantasizing about marrying Noah and raising our love child with my boys. We would all be one happy family.
Noah wasn’t thrilled.
“How do I know it’s mine?” he asked.
“Because I haven’t fucked anyone else since my last period!” I said angrily.
Noah was convinced that the best course was an abortion, and he offered to help pay for one.
“Maybe I don’t want an abortion!” And again, “I told you I was ovulating!”
I remember him mumbling, “All the other girls had them.”
“Well, I’m not ‘all the other girls,’ you jackass!”
It turned out that Noah was dating someone else on the side and had no interest in stopping. My big announcement turned into a gigantic screaming match that ended with Noah storming out and Calen hollering and covering his ears.
Once again, “Jessie the fuckup” was at work.
Rather than walking away from Noah, I dug in my heels. With time, I thought, he would get rid of the other woman in his life and realize how lucky he was to have me. That fantasy gave me hope.
I’d aborted Brad’s baby during my first marriage—under pressure from his parents—and terminating this pregnancy would have been the simplest step to take, although I didn’t tell Noah that. It was what several of my friends were urging me to do and clearly what Noah had said we needed to do. Although I was pro-choice I didn’t like the idea of abortion as birth control, especially when both parties knew that the chances of getting pregnant were good.
But still, I made an appointment with the local doctor who performed abortions. I canceled it the next day. Then I made another appointment but canceled that one, too. Then I made yet another appointment, and this time the nurse on the other end of the line told me to come in right away so the doctor could pack my uterus with seaweed.
“What?” I asked.
She explained that seaweed would begin opening my uterus. I’d have to leave it in for twenty-four hours.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bear the thought of some man putting his hand in me, either to pack my uterus with seaweed or take the baby out. I canceled that appointment, too.
My father and Tina were just as alarmed as Noah was. They recognized that I wasn’t in the best shape financially to take on the raising of another child, especially if I were unmarried. Plus, my erratic mood swings were becoming more and more obvious to everyone.
My mother surprised me, though. When I called her back to tell her I had canceled my appointment for an abortion, she let out a sigh of relief and said, “Oh, thank God!”
Sandy got angry and told me that I was lucky to be having another baby.
I poured out my heart to Glenn. What should I do?
By 1991, Glenn had a three-year-old daughter of her own, Annie, whose father was John Starke, a producer whom she’d met while making her first movie, The World According to Garp.
“If you really want to have this baby,” Glenn replied in her calming voice, “I will take care of the child if you decide you can’t. I will raise the baby as if it were mine.”
My eyes filled with tears, and my voice cracked. “You’d do that?”
“It’s what sisters do,” Glenn said quietly.
The next day, however, she called me back and said, “Never mind!”
“What?” I replied.
“You’d always be telling me how to raise your child—this simply wouldn’t work.”
Suddenly, we both broke into laughter.
“You’re right!” I told her. “It was a terrible idea. I would always be telling you!”
Because I’d already had an abortion, I wondered why I was dragging my feet. The answer finally came to me. I had two sons. The first time around, in Los Angeles, I had not been a mother. Now I was, and that made all the difference. I made a decision. I would have the tests I needed to make sure the baby was healthy, and in the meantime I would allow things to take their own course. If I spontaneously aborted, then it wasn’t meant to be. If this baby grew without complications, then I’d have it.
Pretty simple. This was my pro-choice baby, on my terms.
I was going to have Noah’s baby regardless of what he wanted. When I told him my decision, I fully expected him to run away. Much to my surprise, he didn’t. He wasn’t happy about my decision, but if I had the baby, he promised to “do the right thing” and not turn his back on his child.
I wasn’t certain exactly what he meant by that, and because I was the one who’d decided to go ahead, I needed to get ready, both physically and financially. I immediately stopped drinking and started a vitamin regimen. I also started looking for a job. I had launched a renegade radio station with Brad and had managed a guest ranch with Tom, so the idea of running a business didn’t intimidate me. Besides, it would help me get my mind off Noah. I was still hoping that he would marry me.
I learned that a downtown coffee shop called the Leaf and Bean was up for sale, but I knew it would be too pricey for me alone, so I telephoned Glenn and asked if she might be interested in investing in it with me. If she would provide the capital, I would put in the sweat equity.
Glenn is a Yankee who appreciates the value of a dollar, so she listened politely to my plea but warned that she would only invest if I had a business plan that made sound economic sense.
I started working on one with the same exuberance that always came to me when I was entering a manic mood. Not only was my plan persuasive enough for Glenn to invest, she also brought in a friend as a partner.
It felt good to be a partner with Glenn. There had never been any jealousy between us, although I did envy her financial success. I had proudly followed her career. She had been nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress after she appeared in The World According to Garp in 1982. The next year, she had been nominated for another Academy Award for playing Sarah Cooper in The Big Chill. Glenn had been generous when it came to including us in her Hollywood adventures. While she was filming The Big Chill, I had been pregnant with Sander, and actor William Hurt’s partner, Sandra Jennings, had been pregnant, too. The cast and crew put down bets on which baby would be born first. I don’t remember who won, but I enjoyed the camaraderie. Glenn seemed to make friends so easily.
The Big Chill led to a starring role for Glenn, who played Iris Gaines opposite Robert Redford in The Natural in 1984. The following year, she appeared in Jagged Edge, a thriller that kept me on the edge of my theater seat. And in 1987, my sister played the starring role of a lifetime in Fatal Attraction.
Tom and I had gone to see all Glenn’s movies, but I will never forget sitting in the Bozeman movie theater watching her performance in Fatal Attraction. Right before my eyes, Glennie turned into this terrifying, obsessed female predator who quickly became every cheating married man’s worst nightmare. She was wonderful in that part. In real life, Glennie couldn’t be further from her terrifying character, Alex Forrest. Yet on-screen she became this psychopath.
For better or worse, that role became linked to Glenn. I was grocery shopping with my two boys when I spotted a tabloid newspaper at the checkout counter. A banner headline screamed: THE MOST HATED WOMAN IN AMERICA! A photo of Glennie was directly below it. That headline upset me until I realized the paper was about her character. Still, my boys wanted to know why people hated Aunt Gi.
We didn’t see much of Glenn because she was so busy, but when there was a holiday our entire family would congregate in Big Piney at my parents’ house, and Glenn would fly in. She was always the same Glennie that all of us knew. No snobbery, arrogance, or superiority about her.
I remember walking with her on a sidewalk in Bozeman once, and a complete stranger charged up to us, jabbed a pen and paper under her nose, and barked: “Give me your autograph!”
He didn’t say “please,” and I wanted to smack him, but Glenn was gracious and signed it.
I don’t think Tina or Sandy or I would want the attention that she received.
You would have thought that after Glenn starred in Fatal Attraction, our family would have had a serious discussion about mental illness. Everyone knew I had been taking antidepressants and was subject to wild mood swings and strange thoughts. My father had admitted to me that he had depression, but none of us brought it up. Ever. Even Glenn didn’t see any connection between the crazed Alex Forrest character she’d portrayed and me. She thought I was irresponsible and impulsive. Mental illness just didn’t happen to us. It was unthinkable.
Thanks to Glenn’s purse strings, I signed the sales papers and was handed the key to the front door of the Leaf and Bean, on Bozeman’s Main Street. I was five months pregnant, and my first thought when I opened that door was: What have I done?
The Leaf and Bean had been in operation since 1977 and was well known downtown, but I immediately began putting my personal touches on it. A travel guide once described Bozeman as a charming town “in a John Wayne, Norman Rockwell, Bob Marley sort of way.” That fit in 1991. Bozeman’s residents were a curious blend of western ruggedness, apple-pie goodness, and northern funky chic.
Because my sister Tina was an artist, I knew how willing most painters were to show their work. I invited local artists to display their paintings for sale in the coffee shop. I built a stage in one corner and invited local musicians to play on weekends. When classical guitarist Stuart Weber, a native of Montana, played for us, he donated a couple of professional stage lights. No one had brought entertainment downtown before, and the renters in the apartments above “the Bean” began complaining to city officials about the noise. I rallied other downtown merchants, and a fierce battle broke out, in which renters fought any sort of live entertainment. We won and kept the music going. I also added a bakery to the coffee shop so we could sell our own baked goods. My mom chipped in for a large new espresso machine, and I contracted with a company called Montana Coffee Traders to provide us with all the coffee beans we used in the drinks. I even invented my own drink, which I called the Tornado. It was a double shot of espresso in coffee with cream, with a shot of steam from the wand to blend it all together.
The Starbucks phenomenon was spreading outside Seattle at about the same time as I was giving the Leaf and Bean a face-lift. We were attracting a variety of customers with different tastes. In the mornings and at lunch, we drew the business crowd. In the afternoons, teenagers began showing up because they didn’t have anywhere else to hang out. At night, we attracted younger adults out for the evening who wanted a place to relax and talk. I loved being in the center of the action.
Managing any business, especially one that offers food and drink, is grueling work. Noah offered to help out at the Leaf and Bean as part of his new “do the right thing” stance. I gave him a desk near mine in my downstairs office but got angry when I caught him talking to another woman on the phone. That’s when I realized he was still seeing the same woman whom he’d been dating when I got pregnant. What happened next made our already dysfunctional relationship even more prickly. Noah began dating one of my new employees. When I confronted him, he openly admitted it, but said he still cared about me, too. He simply was not someone who wanted to settle down with one woman.
The Leaf and Bean was going so well that when a store immediately next door to it, called Poor Richard’s, came up for sale, I got Glenn to buy it, too. Poor Richard’s sold magazines, newspapers, tobacco, and candy. I put Calen and Sander to work behind the counter but got worried when I realized they had front-row views of the soft porn available in the store in the form of Playboy and other men’s magazines. I didn’t like my boys being introduced to women who assumed such humiliating poses. I called Glennie, and we decided to eliminate men’s magazines from the store. I had two male customers holler at me. Somehow a reporter from a British paper heard and tried to tie Glenn into the flap—“Hollywood Star Refuses to Sell Smut”—but I didn’t bite. I told her it was my decision because of my sons, and that killed the story.
In September of 1991, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Matheson Sinclair Close-Davis. Noah was involved in choosing the name, as were Calen and Sander. I was still clinging to the idea that someday the five of us would become a family, despite Noah’s girlfriends.
I was so happy that I finally had a daughter. Jessie the fuckup had made the right decision in not getting an abortion. Mattie was beautiful. I put a crib in my office in the Leaf and Bean and brought her with me each morning to work.
Mattie had an immediate impact even as an infant. The other women who worked there, including the one who was dating Noah, bonded with her and wanted to help me. Mattie even had an effect on our customers. I published a monthly newsletter to promote a sense of community and to alert regulars about upcoming special events. The paper was called The Leaf Tribean, and I began penning a feature under Mattie’s name, giving customers musings about the coffee shop from a baby’s point of view. Everyone loved it—and everyone loved her.
During our first year, I had doubled revenue and made the Leaf and Bean more profitable than it had been. We were still the only coffeehouse in town—no kiosks, no other stores.
Unfortunately, my personal life was not going nearly as well.