Apropos of nothing, David invited me into his office one afternoon and asked, “How would you like to go on vacation?” I had now been working two and a half years with nothing more than the occasional Sunday off. I preferred to think of what I was doing as building my career, but what I was really doing was acting as an enabler and general handmaiden to a demented, demanding, supremely talented drug addict, while also being a doormat for one brilliant male narcissistic egomaniac. And I was totally whipped. I got all excited at the prospect of a vacation, forgetting for a moment that when a snake is in the grass, you can’t always see it. I jumped at the opportunity. Then David added, “Judy is going yachting in the Caribbean, and she would like you to go with her.” Can anyone make “yachting in the Caribbean” sound bad? David just did that, I said to myself. David offered me a thousand dollars extra to go, and I said I would. I didn’t do it for the money—not that I disliked having it—I did it because I hadn’t arrived at a point where I felt comfortable saying no. I wasn’t yet sure what letting Begelman down would cost me. I hadn’t developed enough confidence to take the risk professionally. However, that, too, was about to change.
I went home and told my sweet husband I was leaving for two weeks. As usual he was just fine about it, actually excited for me. I was always a tad less guilty when I wasn’t home cooking dinner, which was not anything I did well, often, or had any appetite for.
* * *
So how does a non-yachting person get a yacht without having to rent it? One borrows it from a rich friend, of course, and Judy had a fine collection of those. Newport wasn’t the only place where she knew wealthy people she could call upon. Charles Wacker was rich enough to have a whole avenue named after his family—as in Wacker Drive in Chicago. I assumed that Charlie—as Judy liked to call him—owned a lot of shares in the family’s holdings on the street that bears his name. I’ve never been on Wacker Drive in Chicago, and I’ve never met the man, and I often wish I’d never met the boat.
The plan for the vacation with Judy was to cruise on Charlie’s yacht from Miami to Nassau. When I heard that, things began to sound a little better. There might be at least some upside to go with what most likely would be a downer.
In my mind’s eye I saw a big beautiful boat, something gleaming white with polished teak accents and oversize staterooms, a fantasy yacht made by Chris-Craft. Putting my marriage aside momentarily—which was getting easier for me to do all the time—I imagined stopping at glamorous yacht clubs and meeting handsome, debonair men, spending days with charming company as we glided over a silken sea. The fact that Judy was taking along a hairdresser seemed to confirm that possibility. Our crew would be uniformed, the cook world class; maybe we would have a madcap, wild, and wonderful time. I prepared myself for that, mostly at Saks Fifth Avenue. It was the season for cruise wear, and I treated myself well. I think I was ready for a little romance, but even if I couldn’t find it on this trip, the consolation prize would be my new wardrobe.
Judy and I, along with a hairdresser named Orval Paine, who I believe hailed from somewhere in the Midwest, went directly from the airport in Miami to the docks at four in the afternoon. All the gleaming yachts were there just as I had imagined, each one tied up to its own slip. None of them was ours. Moored out in the distance was a very large trimasted, square-rigged sailing vessel that looked like a pirate ship. It had to have been salvaged from an old Errol Flynn movie, or maybe had once been a floating junk on the China Sea. It had on its prow a carved wooden bare-breasted mermaid with flowing golden locks.
Not that, I said to myself as I looked at the oddity, already knowing, without anyone having to tell me, that “that” was it. Gratefully I noted that there were no portholes with cannons peeking out. Somehow strappy sandals didn’t go with this awful spectacle. Backless chiffon didn’t. Gleaming white ducks didn’t either. The beautiful luggage we had brought filled with lovely things didn’t go with. A corncob pipe and a parrot went with.
I don’t think Judy expected to see this huge hunk of floating junk either, for while she hadn’t discussed her wardrobe with me, it was clear from her abundant luggage that she, too, expected something different. The four and a half inch stiletto-heeled Fiorentinas she was wearing were more than a bit inappropriate. However, she never once flinched, and after she set eyes on the captain for the first time, the boat could have been an old claw-foot bathtub and it wouldn’t have mattered.
It was clear she liked the eye candy she was looking at. There was nothing not to like. Our captain was young, tall, slim, blond, blue-eyed, and attractive. Judy eyed him lasciviously and said, “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get the hell out of here.” She instructed me to count the pieces of luggage to make sure nothing was lost, which was only a reflection of her nervousness about the little white carry-on with the prescription drugs. Rest assured it had become an extension of my arm. Then she told the sexy sailor we were ready to come aboard.
The captain, however, had other ideas. He thought we had come down to the dock to look at the boat, and that’s all he was prepared for. He hadn’t even shopped for food yet. He saw that we would need a barge just to get our luggage out to the mooring, and he didn’t happen to have one of those either. He would need the balance of the evening and part of the next day to organize.
“I’m sorry, Miss Garland,” was what the captain opened with. “It’s a really bad idea to get under way at night. I think you would enjoy yourself more if you rest tonight, especially after your trip. It will give us some time to load your bags,” he said, looking at enough suitcases to fill his entire hold. “Treat yourself to a great meal in a good restaurant tonight, because it may be the last great meal for a few days.” He chuckled at his own humor. I did not. “We’ll leave by noon tomorrow.” Uh-oh, I thought. No world-class cook? Uh-oh, issuing instructions to Judy? Uh-oh.
Judy, who knew better than the rest of us the difference between elegance and crap, was now going to spend two weeks on this hunkajunk so she could fuck the captain. For goodness sake! Sexual politics had not yet granted women permission to be avaricious takers. Judy was way ahead of the curve. She was the most promiscuous woman I’d met up to that point.
“We’ll have dinner on the boat and leave tonight.” Judy’s response was definite, and slightly tinged with anger. She had already picked out her course.
At her command I waded into the wet and nasty dinghy that had brought the captain to shore. Judy waited until he carried her into the dinghy. Was this going to be the transportation for the bags too? It would take most of the night just to load them. My mood was sinking faster than the sun, and it didn’t improve once on board.
The boat was ugly, all of it. My “stateroom” was an eight-by-ten dark, windowless closet with a double-decker bunk nailed to the wall. A dresser was its only other piece of furniture, and the unfortunate smell inside the drawers was reminiscent of what I thought Smee the pirate might smell like. I knew I would put no new clothes away there. The carpet in the living room looked as if it had been on a sinking ship, and the furnishings, such as they were, could generally be found on a curb awaiting the garbage truck. Where did I go wrong? I asked myself. The most obvious answer was: in Saks Fifth Avenue!
Orval—such a decent, kind, concerned, and likable man—and I had absolutely nothing in common except, of course, Judy. Conversation about her was off-limits. So there we were, chugging off into the dark, watery unknown with little or nothing to say to each other: one Midwestern hairdresser and one New York wannabe-sophisticate. He wondered if he had brought along enough hairspray, given the humidity, and I wondered if I would eat or starve. The best we’d been able to pull together in that department was cheese-and-mystery-meat sandwiches moldering in the ship’s tiny fridge. Our first-and-only mate was busy with the equipment. Omigod! Where was the crew?
The handsome captain had disappeared into Judy’s living quarters and was not to be seen again that evening. First-and-only mate was all by himself. I didn’t know squat about sailboats, save for what I had seen in the movies, and what I had seen in the movies convinced a sailing moron like me that a staff of two on an eighty-foot boat was woefully insufficient. And now we were down to one. Didn’t Errol Flynn have at least forty pirates with him? I started recounting the faces of the character actors I remembered in pirate movies—kind of like counting sheep—to occupy myself with something silly enough to keep me from being depressed.
Handsome C (which is what I will call our captain because I no longer remember his name—and he was not memorable, except maybe to Judy) wasn’t anywhere in evidence the next morning either. At some point that night we’d put into port in a small marina at Bimini. Everyone was asleep, ostensibly, and since it didn’t look like we were soon going anywhere, I got off the ship. I thought that if it suddenly left without me, that would not be the worst thing. It was now more important to try to find a muffin or a bagel. There were bikes to rent right across the road from the dock; I got one and pedaled all three miles of the island from one end to the other without, alas, finding a town, a scone, or even a bread crumb. So far nothing on this trip was decent except the weather.
Judy called for Orval at three that afternoon. It had been smooth sailing, not that I had as yet seen one sail hoisted. Apparently it took two to do that, and our captain was still belowdecks. So we simply chugged along, using up our supplementary fuel, and I suppose Handsome C belowdecks was still doing the same thing. At four we pulled into a gorgeous marina with a yacht club, at the tip of an island called North Cat Cay. Finally a place that held some promise!
Hungry for more than just bread alone, I ran around the smallish island to see what it was about. Money! That’s what. A haven for wealthy fisherfolk, but hardly what one thinks of as your little fishing village. I saw nothing but large estates scattered about, and the kind of gleaming boats I had dreamed of not long ago in Saks.
Returning to the yacht club, I was able to con a piece of pie out of a server cleaning up after the lunch crowd, hoping that it wouldn’t be long before I would be sampling something more nutritious. Every step along this merry vacation seemed to be a problem. Not yet having had breakfast (or dinner the night before), I felt ready to do an unnatural act for the kitchen staff to get us something to eat. The name Judy Garland opened their refrigerator if not their warm ovens and hearts, and soon the five of us were gobbling up all the leftovers, the only patrons in the empty dining room. Oh, for some glamour too!
Handsome C’s head was falling into the gazpacho. First-and-only mate was dazed as well. Orval was praising the hairspray he’d chosen, and Judy’s coif bore the motionless proof. But she was smiling. I was too busy eating to care about any of them. Who could possibly know when, or even if, the next meal would appear?
At Cartier, one of a few elegant shops close to the yacht club, Judy bought the captain a watch. The thought crossed my mind that such a gift is generally awarded to a faithful employee after twenty-five years of service. I wondered if something even more substantial should have been given to our beleaguered Handsome C, who had likely done twenty-five years’ hard labor overnight. He forced a smile in gratitude and made a shy thank-you in front of Orval and me, while leaning against the exterior wall of Cartier helped keep him upright.
I inquired if we could stay overnight at the yacht club, thinking there would be a swell dinner crowd and the strappy sandals would get their first outing. I saw the captain’s face brighten a little. I’m sure he was grateful to be topside. Judy, however, wasn’t interested. She was anxious to get going again. The break was over. Handsome C had to go back to work belowdecks.
Then we were again powering off into another sunset, now aware that it was the wrong time of day to get under way. Judy and Handsome C again vanished. Not able to endure another night talking about either hairspray or sea spray, I went below to spend time in the library, such as it was. The books were yellow with age, their bindings cracked and dried. I was in despair. I turned in by nine, knowing I would want to get an early start in Nassau the next day. Civilization! Sophistication! Food awaited me!
Sometime in the wee hours, maybe around two, I was thrown out of my bunk. Wacker’s wonder was pitching and rolling, each roll sending me across the small room to collide with the nearest wall. It was almost impossible to stand, harder still to walk, but I had to get out of my tiny cabin before sustaining serious bruises and upchucking the only meal I’d eaten in two days. I made my way into the living room, where I saw a yellow oilskin outfit lying on the sofa. No one had to tell me it was for me. I had a terrible time getting the pants on; I felt like I was inside a bottle being violently shaken. I had a death grip on the dining table with one hand, simply trying to steady myself so I could dress with the other. After I’d somehow managed to tie the hood tight under my chin, I climbed up to the deck to see where the merry vacationers were. The massive waves I saw overwhelmed me, but I had no time to think about being scared. I had to tie on to the lifelines first. That or go overboard.
Here comes the tall-sea-tale part. Even as I think about it today, I fear no one will believe it. But I do know what happened that night, and I’m grateful to be alive to tell the story.
Everyone was up on deck clinging to the lifelines while waves washed over our heads, leaving each of us gasping like so many asthmatics. It’s over, I said to myself. This ship is going down, and we’re all going to die right here, right now, tonight.
Suddenly the most insane thought washed over me along with the very next wave: the black humor of the dying. No one will ever know I was here. Headlines will scream: “Judy Garland lost at sea!” I hate my billing. I have no billing. There won’t even be a single mention of my name. It will all be Judy. I looked over at her. She was shrieking nonstop. This time she finally had good reason to. My next thought: Judy, it doesn’t matter if you strain your voice anymore. Nothing can save you. I remained calm and stupid. “Are we in the Bermuda triangle?” I screamed, aware of all the vessels that were lost out here and never found again. No one could hear me. Would they send out people to find us? Would the loss at sea of the great Judy Garland be made into a film? My mind danced around these stupid questions as I struggled to stay on my feet.
We finally managed to use up our fuel. No-longer-Handsome C and his first-and-only mate somehow got to the mainsail, and in trying to hoist it, bent the winch. No gas, no sail. We would toss like a little microbe in this maelstrom until either the storm was over or we were finished, and I thought the latter the more likely of the two.
But no—not what happened. The storm stopped—just stopped dead. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived—from out of nowhere, back to nowhere. No-longer-Handsome C told us squalls like this suddenly popped up and then, just as suddenly, vanished. Nowhere on the horizon was there even a vestige of the storm left to be seen. The sky was cloudless, and our captain went about his business as if nothing had happened. Instead of being grateful to be alive I was angry that he was living. Why didn’t you warn us earlier, you moron? It was a silent scream. There had been enough screaming going on without mine to add to the confusion.
The sea was now as flat as a tabletop, and we were resting on its smooth surface, motionless in a gently falling rain with one single cloud in sight. Right above us, of course. Looking east on the horizon we could see the glow from a sun that would soon show itself on what promised to be another perfect day in paradise. It was the most beautiful dawn I’d ever seen. There’s nothing prettier, I thought, than watching the start of a sunrise through the rain. It was a spiritual moment deserving of an inspiring movie score by the likes of Dimitri Tiomkin or Vangelis. Judy might have appreciated that, but at the moment she could appreciate nothing. She was still shrieking.
Our hapless captain was finally able to get through on the radio to the shore patrol on the Nassau coast. Their coast guard arrived a few hours later with fuel and provided us with an escort into the harbor. We had drifted fifteen miles in the storm during the night, but we had survived. This part of our luxury vacation cruise was now over, thank God.
The beautiful Nassau I’d imagined, however, was not where our nautical escort brought us. The large cruise ships, gleaming yachts, and sailboats were all missing. We were in an ugly, heavy-duty commercial port where the freighters that normally supply Nassau were being unloaded. Big old rusted container ships were tied up to the large cement docks that jutted out into the harbor. As usual, our galleon looked ridiculous, and our silly appearance attracted unwanted attention. The longshoremen just beginning their day’s work stopped what they were doing to stare at us as we tied up. We were an oddity in any port; I’d gotten used to that, but Judy’s howling turned us into a freak show. I decided immediately that we had to get Judy off the boat and away from this island ASAP. Personally, I couldn’t wait to get away from the boat. If I never had to look at it again, that would be just fine with me.
No-longer-Handsome C wanted to know the plan. His look was grim. I assume he was worried that we would want to stay here a little longer, or, worse, go somewhere else. “Get out of here as fast as we can,” I assured him. It came out sounding as angry as I really was. I noticed that he did not offer to help; he just stood there waiting for instructions. I spied a dismal little hotel across the street and told Orval I was going to check it out. He said, “We can’t take Judy to a place like that!” I could see that no-longer-Handsome C, too, was worrying that I would change my mind about the dump and decide not to leave his ship. Trust me, when I took a second look, I almost did.
The lobby of this dreary hotel was a haven being used by some nonthreatening derelicts to sleep off their drunk from the night before. I had a feeling that they’d been in the same chairs, rent-free, for the last twenty years. The desk clerk gave me the key to a suite on the second floor that was not only available but for which I doubted there had ever been any demand. I ran back to the boat, where Orval had brilliantly managed to calm Judy (with promises that he could save her hair? Mine was completely finished) to the extent that she was now merely crying—a notch down on the disaster scale from shrieking. Crying was manageable. However, Judy could not manage to walk. I grabbed her purse and the little white carry-on, left my beautiful Saks wardrobe behind (it didn’t seem I would have any immediate use for it), and Orval and I, each holding Judy under an arm, literally dragged her across the street. Our great crew had disappeared below. I intended to come back to tie up the loose ends once we got Madam sedated and put down.
We dragged Judy into the lobby, and the desk clerk (and everyone else who came suddenly awake) looked at us with something between disbelief and disgust. After explaining to him that our “friend” was seriously seasick, we were able to schlep Judy up the flight of stairs to the second floor, and into the shabby apartment, where she swallowed the offered sleeping pills and fell on the bed.
Orval followed me into the ugly hospital-green living room so that I could tell him the plan. “We’re not going to stay in Nassau,” I said. “We’ll let her sleep for a few hours so I have time to get on the phone and make some arrangements to immediately go back to Miami, where we can get some control over this mess.” Orval quickly agreed because in his view I had debased Judy by putting her in this fleabag. Although he meant well, he had little else to offer besides extra very-much-needed male muscle. And one other thing: He was good company in this awful moment. He was unflappable and of sound mind, which I so appreciated. I asked him to return to the boat to start getting our luggage off while I made plane reservations and tried to find a car to take us to the airport. Off he went only to come back a few minutes later: “They’re gone,” he told me.
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“I mean the boat is so far out of the port they couldn’t hear me yelling to come back.” Our crew now had plenty of gas, and it was unlikely they were going on a lunch break. Most likely they wanted to see the last of us more than I wanted that very same thing.
I was nonplussed, perplexed, and paralyzed, but I didn’t have the luxury of basking in those feelings because moments later there was a loud, aggressive knocking on the door. The desk clerk was standing there sputtering something in anger, all red faced and furious. He pushed his way past us into the bedroom, where Madam was holding court in her underwear on the little balcony that looked down over Bay Street. This was no awful nightmare, it was really happening, not to her, but to me. Judy was crying and, at the same time, singing “Over the Rainbow” to a large group of big, beautiful, black, seminaked longshoremen below. Their number was growing, and they were hooting, hollering, and generally getting crazy. I doubt even one of them had any idea who she was—just some drunken woman who liked taking off her clothes and singing. They were going to enjoy it while it lasted, and it lasted a little longer than the desk clerk liked. Judy had a death grip on the wrought-iron balustrade that framed the little balcony. It took all the strength Orval and I had left to pry her fingers loose. We dragged her back into the room kicking and screaming, while the desk clerk told me in emphatic terms to get her out of the hotel inside of ten minutes. “Orval,” I said, “sit on her if you have to!”
I couldn’t take a chance on driving in this unfamiliar place with a crazy lady in the car. I needed a driver. The only vehicle I could find on short notice that came with a driver was a hearse. Seemed appropriate to me! Although we were not yet dead, we were still wrestling with a near-death experience. Orval and I managed to get Judy back into the aqua muumuu she had stripped off and, using a hold just shy of a hammerlock, got her downstairs again. Wacker’s wonder was nowhere on the horizon.
In moments of extreme duress I react with efficiency while contemplating nonsense. Would I ever again see the strappy sandals, which I had had on my feet only once eons ago (three whole days) in Saks Fifth Avenue? Good-bye, floating chiffon! The once-gleaming white ducks, now stained and filthy past recognition, were all that remained of my purchases, and only because they were on me and had been from the get-go. They were now ready to be trashed. My clothes were sticking to me, and they smelled. I smelled. It’s okay, I reasoned, still somehow capable of being momentarily rational.
Judy had admirers in the hotels where she had performed. Someone would surely save us. On the way to the airport, Judy’s demeanor ratcheted down yet again to mewling and whiny, and although she was operating on shaky legs, they were her own. Things got even better once in transit. We were seated against the bulkhead of the all-one-class plane; Judy at the window, I sat on the aisle next to her and Orval across from us in the same row. Only a sprinkling of passengers behind us, and given that Judy was still whimpering, we were fortunate not to have autograph seekers streaming down the aisle. Maybe we could even get away without her being recognized.
When she asked me for her makeup, I rejoiced. The ugly episode seemed to be over. It appeared as though she wanted to look respectable when she got off the plane in Miami. She took her compact out of the travel pouch, looked out the window on her right, and then started to powder her nose. When she turned back to me, it looked as if blood was coming out of every pore in her face. She was cut and bleeding all over her cheeks, her forehead, and her chin. Blood stained the entire front of the aqua muumuu.
She had apparently taken the mirror out of the compact, cracked it against the window, and powdered her face with the shards of broken glass. She looked at me exactly as she had in the past when she cut herself; that is, with a sort of quizzical smile—I call it her Mona Lisa look—it says, Okay, feast your eyes on what I’ve done. Now what the fuck are you going to do? Will you abandon me? It was the acid test. The episode is made even more ghoulish when she grabs me and hugs me, so that blood is all over me too. I am talking to her, trying to reach her, but she does not hear me because she is once more in that dark tunnel beyond the sound of anyone’s voice. And, frankly, what is there to say? I’m not sure what keeps me from screaming.
Judy and I had been through many bad scenes together, but never one like this. Little by little she was teaching me about self-mutilation. The stories about Judy in the press and on the tongues of the gossips were all about drugs and liquor. I had never read a word about cutting and burning. It was news even to David and Freddie. Did others know? I don’t know. I only know what I saw, and what I saw convinced me that Judy cut herself when I was there because I could save her. Here again I found myself thinking, She will overdose on pills when she is alone, but never cut or burn herself in private. She needs both a witness and a savior, and sadly, it is me. And so it was during all the time we were together.
* * *
This episode went way beyond pills (not that they couldn’t kill her; in fact, they did) and beyond slitting her wrists because it was so ghastly, grisly, so unexpected, and so bizarre. It shocks me when I hear about someone cutting themself. But Judy Garland?! That face! That fabulous face! Perhaps not one of the most beautiful faces, but certainly one of the most endearing. Dorothy’s face. The face of our childhood. It didn’t belong solely to her, it belonged to us all.
It was the most horrific thing I’d ever witnessed. I think, many more times than I would like to, about being twenty-six and sitting there while one of the world’s greatest entertainers is slashing her face to ribbons right next to me. The plane was flying over the Caribbean, but Judy was a million miles from Oz, and my feet were planted in hell.
I sent Orval running to the stews for towels, water, ice, and first-aid—whatever they had. They knew Judy was on board, and they were excited. They all came running, empty handed, to see what was wrong. Wasted seconds—nothing to stanch the blood! I was frightened. Blood everywhere. All over her, all over her seat, covering her muumuu down the entire front to the hem, on her legs, all over my filthy white pants, my shirt, and my face. I can only imagine what a horrible sight it was for them. One quick glance, however, and they sprang into action, and, God bless them, they didn’t ask any questions. They took care of her as well as they could, given the limitations. I promised them all autographed pictures. How lame is that? They would have terrible stories to tell. Would anyone believe them? My mind went there for a moment. It didn’t matter anymore. Just get on with it. I was exhausted, and I’d stopped caring about Judy, about what anyone would think, about anything or anyone including myself.
We were able to get off the plane. The stews had packed her face in towels loaded with ice. One of them had a so-called coolie hat, and with its sash we tied everything into place. We tried getting some stains off her clothing and mine, but it was hopeless. We were both a mess. One of the stews spoke to the pilot on my behalf, and, following my instructions, he radioed ahead to Ben Novack, owner of the exquisite Fontainebleau, where Judy had performed.
I knew something about the dealings that Freddie Fields had had with Novack. Back in another lifetime, Novack had advanced Sid Luft, then Judy’s husband, twenty-five thousand dollars for an engagement that Judy never played. Luft stole the money. Freddie settled the problem by having Judy do two successful performances at the Fontainebleau. Novack became a friend again—and Judy was a friend in need. Indeed!
Fortunately he responded to the call and, best of all, was able to arrange a limousine waiting on the tarmac when we arrived in Miami. With the cockpit crew, we carried her into the car, and it sped to the hotel. Novack was waiting for us at the back entrance by the kitchen, where Judy was quickly whisked up the service elevator to the presidential suite in the penthouse. Novack rode with us. It was a kind of insurance that none of the hired help would ever say a word to the press if they wanted to keep their jobs.
Like so many others who had done favors for Judy, Novack was extending himself to protect his franchise. Now he would always be able to book Judy and fill his nightclub. And what was I getting out of it? My salary was hardly enough. There wasn’t a moment of Oh, poor Judy! left in me. I was fed up. I was finished. I had reached my saturation point. This last ugliness went further than I was willing to go. I started questioning everything. Did Judy’s personal unhappiness entitle her to create so many problems for so many people? Was she worth all the trouble and unhappiness she caused? Maybe she was to the people she made a lot of money for, but I wasn’t one of them. I was a salaried employee. I hated how my bosses were exploiting a sick woman, and I was helping them. And the longer I hung in, the unhappier I got. This didn’t mean I was any less ambitious than before, but I started to feel that maybe I could serve that ambition without serving her. I would see this chapter through to the end, but, for my own survival, I felt I had to close the book on her.
The presidential suite that Ben Novack put us in was an expansive blue, white, and gold monument to luxury with many spaces: a huge living room, a dining room with a table meant to seat at least twelve, four bedrooms, and multiple baths. It was designed for entertaining on a large scale. It was decorated with expensive furniture upholstered in the finest fabrics, and offered incredible ocean views from almost every room. I didn’t know such places existed.
There would be time to look, touch, and admire later. Now was the time, finally, to get a doctor who could take care of Judy, do whatever he could for her cuts, and put her to sleep for at least twelve hours. (I hated thinking of myself wanting always to put her to sleep.) Men like Ben Novack were able to accomplish virtually anything quickly. A doctor appeared and took care of business. First he pumped a horse-size syringe of Demerol into her butt, and she went out; then he went to work on her cuts. Orval and I chose our own bedrooms and said goodnight to each other knowing that, without our having much in common, we now shared a bond that could never be broken. I was so tired I was ready to go to bed dirty, but then I would have soiled the beautiful sheets.
A hot bath with fragrant bath oil, a shampoo, rich body lotion, a valet who took away all my clothes (including the filthy sneakers), a brand-new terrycloth robe that felt like cashmere to me, a king-size bed with exquisite linen—all mine! It was hard realizing it had only been three days since I’d left New York: three days that felt like a year, three days in which I felt I’d aged ten years. I lay back in the bathtub and thought about my next move while luxuriating in the glorious hot water. I would call David Begelman first thing in the morning and quit. I was ready to move on, and not a minute too soon. Let someone else carry the drug case all over Christendom; let someone else watch Judy pour a fruit cocktail of pills from myriad vials into her hand each night, washing them down with the awful swill she drank. I was sick of the pills, and especially sick of the goddamn wine, of needing a standing order for a dozen cases at a time. She left half used bottles everywhere she went. Let someone else buy her handbags large enough to carry two bottles of liebfraumilch—the 9 percent solution that she said was saving her life—on all the planes, trains, cars, and boats. The booze that was saving her life was ruining mine, and I was horrified by the self-mutilation.
I never slept soundly with Judy in the house. It was 11:00 p.m. when I finally turned in, and 4:00 a.m. when I awoke. I got up and slipped quietly down the hall just to make sure Madam was okay. I may have hated her after these last three days, and I definitely knew I was going on without her to wherever my future might take me, but at that moment she was still my responsibility. I wasn’t sent to Miami with her for a yachting vacation, but to take care of her, and until I turned her over to someone else, I would fulfill that task. We had been through something terrible together. She had fallen apart. I was still standing. I knew I was by far the stronger of the two of us, and it was my job to help her survive.
The suite was dark and quiet; it felt normal for four in the morning. I turned on a light in the corridor and tiptoed to her door, opening it ever so slowly so that it wouldn’t make any noise. She wasn’t in bed. I could see from the illumination in the hall that her room was empty. I immediately looked at the bathroom door, which was wide open, the bathroom dark. I turned on the lights and went in. She wasn’t there. I ran through all the open rooms in the suite. She wasn’t in any of them. Finally I went to Orval’s room and woke him up. “Judy’s gone,” I said. In his stupor it didn’t register.
“Who’s gone?” he asked me.
“Judy’s vanished into thin air. She’s not here! Orval, get up.” He was now fully awake.
“She must be here,” he said.
“Come look.” He went with me to her room, and we started to do what I now think of as being one of the silliest things I ever did. We looked behind the drapes and under the beds in all the rooms. We checked out the closets and looked in the bathtubs. We got busy agreeing with each other that with the amount of Demerol that had been pumped into her butt, even standing up would be hard for her to do. Leaving, impossible! And yet she was gone. Finally I called the switchboard, asked for the desk, and inquired whether anyone had seen Ms. Garland go out. They gave me the answer they were instructed to give.
“I’m sorry, we don’t presently show her registered in the hotel.”
“C’mon, you and I both know she’s here, except she’s not—at least not at the moment, and I’m in the presidential suite with her, except she’s not with me. Now you can see that I’m where I’m supposed to be. I have to find out where she is.” The person at the desk steadfastly maintained that she was not registered, and the assistant manager on duty did the same. So much for that! I had no clue about where to look, but I did know what to do next: I called Begelman, filled him in, suggested he get his ass on the next plane to Miami and said: “By the way, I quit. If you’re not here, I’m leaving anyway. This is your vacation now.” I couldn’t believe those words had come out of my mouth—including “ass.”
I meant to make good my threat. I planned to be gone the minute I was dressed. Unfortunately I had to wait for the valet to deliver my clothes, and they didn’t show up until 11:00 a.m.—at about the same time as Begelman. By the time he got to Miami, he knew exactly where Judy was: at some fleabag hotel on lower Collins Avenue (the part of town that’s been gentrified and is now trendy South Beach). Clearly she had called him sometime during the night. It was impossible for me to imagine her moving herself around Miami Beach with dressings all over her face. And bloodstained clothes. What kind of place had she gone to? David told me she had registered as Mrs. David Begelman. She was delusional.
This “thing” with David (I could no longer dignify it by calling it an affair) was like some ghastly pas de deux, in which she depended on the sick dynamic between her and her controlling lover. David depended on it also. The moment one of them stopped dancing, the dance would be over. Neither one could leave the dance floor. They were equally addicted, and equally dependent.
I’ve concluded, at least for myself, that “dependency” is the operative word, as I was learning it is with addicts, and they were both addicts. He—an addicted gambler—depended on creating chaos. She—addicted to prescription drugs and liquor—depended on pain. They fed each other’s illness. And I had seen more than enough of this bedlam to know that I now wanted no place in this picture. I was willing to tar myself with several brushes: ambition, dysfunction, neediness, but I was not an addict living with all the sturm and drang that comes with that, and I wanted no part of it in my future. Of course it doesn’t always work out that way. But for the moment I believed I was growing up past the need to participate in what I thought was sick. Yes, I could become successful without living with sick people all around me.
So she had managed to stage another hideous drama to get David’s attention. Although he was not fucking her at this particular time, it would come again. Meantime he was still manipulating her. He was the Svengali who hypnotized her, had her totally within his control—and he seemed to exercise this control easily as making mayhem was part of his nature. Maybe she was still in love with David. I wouldn’t hazard a guess. It seemed to me, however, that with Judy, being in love meant being dominated and controlled. Since David was out at this time, there had to be someone who was in. There always had to be someone. It was Sid Luft. And there was no one more dominating than Sid. All I knew about him were the things Judy told me. I did not know him, or mix it up with him, until later. I’ll get around to him. The brute deserves his own chapter.
* * *
By the time David arrived at the Fontainebleau, he had already seen her. He told me he put her in a hospital, and that I needn’t be concerned about her anymore. I wasn’t, and I thought he understood that I really was leaving. I felt so very finished, with him, with her, with the job, with anything that fit into that sentence. He absorbed that and then said, “I want you to come with me to something special.”
“No!”
“It’s really important. For old times’ sake! You can still take a plane late this afternoon. I’ve put you on first class at five o’clock. Isn’t that okay?” he asked me in his most plaintive way. I silently called it his bullshit tone. But finally I agreed to go with him after I extracted another thousand for the new/old/lost wardrobe.
He took me to an elegant luncheon at an estate on Miami Beach’s bay side in an upscale part of town. It was a beautiful white-frame home with an imposing entrance, but it really sparkled when you walked through to the back. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on a large, manicured lawn that sloped gently down to the bay.
It looked to me as though the whole of Miami high society was politely partying on that lawn. I stood there for a moment looking at all the women dressed in poufy organdy dresses with matching picture hats, and I was embarrassed. I looked like Popeye in drag. David had done it again. I felt he was having a cruel joke at my expense.
David didn’t have a decent instinct ever, ever, ever. He had already hurt me, hurt Judy, hurt Lee, and hurt many others he worked with. He was cruel, and I was in the wrong frame of mind for any of his “fun.” Whatever wonderful charitable event these women were in the midst of participating in, it had nothing to do with me. David knew that. He also knew the chapter and verse of what I’d just been through. How could he be so callous? But that was David: always pushing the envelope. While his action might give him a few jollies, he knew it would make me angry. Why? I was vain about my appearance. I understood that I looked as if I had accidentally stumbled into the wrong place. I felt like all the women were staring at me, feeling sorry for me. Moreover, I had told David on the phone what I had been through, and he was both sensitive and intelligent enough to understand that this scene was completely inappropriate under the circumstances. It amused him. My anger amused him. How cruel!
Unfortunately for him he didn’t realize just how furious I was. I made a fist, pulled back my arm, and with all the strength I had left in my weary body, I punched him as hard as I could in the face. He went sprawling backward into the table behind him, on whose fancy white cloth at least fifty set-ups were resting. The table went over with him on top of it. I don’t think it was the force of the blow that sent him reeling; it was more likely the shock. I didn’t wait to find out. I was out of there before anyone could ask: “Who is she?”
* * *
Back in New York I stayed home, allowing my anger to cool for a while, refusing to respond to David’s calls. But after about a week, I knew I wanted to go back to work as long as it meant I would never have to work for Judy again. I was bored sitting at home. There was nothing for the “good little wife” to do, plus—I wasn’t her. Although I discovered reading again, I had much too strong a work ethic to curl up in a corner with a book during the working person’s day. And when I questioned myself about looking for a job, the answer was always the same: Forget about that! I had now put three years into FFA. That, I believed, was my equity. I wanted to turn it to account for myself. I wanted David’s job—well, not quite.
It was time for me to be an agent, a real agent, not a stage manager, not a dresser, not an assistant or a trainee. I needed to advance my career. I had to get back. I no longer had any fear that limiting my boundaries would cost me my job. My confidence had taken a huge leap. Freddie and David knew that they could always trust me to get the job done. Any job. And I knew that after what I’d been through in the last two years, there was damn little I couldn’t handle.
* * *
I didn’t learn anything about Judy from this episode that I didn’t already know, but I learned something hugely valuable about myself: I was totally dependable, responsible, and capable. I could be counted upon in any situation to act with reasoning intelligence to bring things to a reasonable conclusion. Were these qualities always there, lying dormant, waiting to be tapped? I don’t know. But I had now been tested time and time again, and I didn’t disappoint myself or anyone else. Grasping this gave me confidence, and the confidence was brand-new. I would never feel threatened about my job again. I was “womanpower” worth having.
I met with F&D and made my demands. I wanted to be an agent. I wanted five hundred dollars a week. They agreed to my terms. They needed more manpower. (We weren’t up to calling it womanpower yet.) The business was growing. Freddie was talking about opening an office in LA. “If you’re going to be successful, you better remember this,” Freddie said: “The business belongs in the hands of the people who sign the clients!”