I fell deeply in love with Dave Grusin. The feelings I had for him helped me understand that I had never been in love before. I met him after Whorehouse was up and running. From my offices at Universal in New York City, I oversaw the daily business of the musical and the subsequent touring companies. In the process I got to know many of the execs on the West Coast. One of them gave me some material that had never gone forward as a film to evaluate as a book for a potential Broadway musical. I thought the writing was good, the story viable, and I set about finding a composer, somebody new and interesting.
I suddenly thought of this successful and immensely talented pianist, orchestrator, arranger, and composer of many celebrated film scores who had never worked on Broadway. I loved Grusin’s work. He was an original and his work was amazing. I called him and he told me immediately he had no interest in doing theater. He was enjoying a lot of recognition for his superb work in recordings, personal appearances, and, of course, film, and that’s where he wished to remain. He made it clear, however, that he was interested in me, and said he wanted to meet me.
David called me on his next visit to New York. I made a date with him thinking it would be my opportunity to talk him into composing this show for the studio, in spite of the fact that he had definitively rejected the idea. Either I wasn’t listening, or it was again a case of refusing to take no for an answer too easily.
Once we met, I found him very appealing. He appeared to have a soft-spoken vulnerability that made you want to take care of him. There was no question that I wanted to see him again—and again—and this no longer had anything to do with Universal.
Our relationship developed quickly. Deepened even faster, and in the fall of 1979 we became inseparable. I loved climbing into bed with this man. Didn’t want to get out of it. He was the most experienced lover I’d ever had. It was great. We were relishing each other’s company. As I got to know his friends, I discovered there were lots of other women who found him appealing and they also wanted to take care of him. They were the wives of his friends. Happily this was all platonic. I liked his friends. They were talented and recognized. Most were big-time Hollywood players whose work I admired, and it impressed me that they admired him. He introduced me to a starry Hollywood scene, different from my own.
David courted me on both coasts, generously and charmingly, and I was enjoying him immensely. He moved into my apartment on Fifth Avenue after two months, and then, after only five months, he asked me to marry him. I was extremely flattered, but I thought it was too soon. Although I liked what I knew, I didn’t yet know nearly enough. We both carried baggage. He would be my third. I would be his fourth. I hadn’t yet met his family. I already knew from experience that one learned a lot from families.
I resisted his proposal; I told him that we needed more time together, but he insisted that he didn’t want a long engagement. He threatened to walk if I didn’t marry him right away. An amber warning light started to flash. Though I saw it, I looked away from it in spite of a voice inside me crying out, trying hard to get my attention. But I didn’t want to lose him. I thought about my children, and how wonderful it would be for them to have another father figure better than their own. But had I taken the time to learn what I needed to know about his past as a father, I would have run for the hills!
I put the wedding together quickly, within a matter of weeks. We married on February 23, 1980, in Aspen, in a beautiful home on the famous ski mountain looming over the town. Aspen was a place we both enjoyed. David was born in Colorado, and as a young musician had picked up gigs playing piano in the resort when it wasn’t much more than a frontier town. He’d bought some real estate back then on the residential mountain where we would build a second home together—more than merely a vacation home, although it would never replace New York.
I’d been skiing in Aspen for more than ten years at that point and I owned a little condo. By 1980 the town had grown into a world-class ski resort with lavish megahomes, not unlike the one we rented for our wedding day and night. And now, at four in the afternoon on our wedding day, the interior of the gorgeous chalet was filled with glamorous people, many of whom had flown in from both coasts and some who had skied in after a beautiful day on the slopes.
The ceremony took place in front of the big stone fireplace with the perfect log fire, and against a backdrop of gently falling, perfect snow. It was as if a set decorator had done his best work for Town & Country magazine. My children were there, of course, ten and eleven at the time. I recall how beautiful Jenny looked in her little red and white polka-dot gown, her hair tied up with red ribbons. They were excited and so sweet to everyone. Two of David’s three children did not come, and although I found that strange, he convinced me it meant nothing and I would meet them later. I let it go in spite of knowing that his youngest lived only a few short blocks away. There was nothing to do about it in the eleventh hour. I took the vows from the local magistrate, and I gave this man my heart.
In the first room we inhabited together as man and wife, there were two doors. One was the entrance; the other was a closet. If you know what a movie prop closet is, you know that when one opens it, suddenly all its overstuffed contents come exploding out. It’s generally good for a laugh. Well, the closet in our room was stuffed to the max with skeletons, and when I cracked the door they all tumbled onto the floor, making a huge and frightening pile of horror stories. I started picking through the bones and learned things that were no laughing matter at all. I would describe my process as a due diligence that I should have done before we married. My education about my new husband began on our honeymoon.
As the first few months wore on, I discovered the problems were even more severe than I first suspected. They had accrued over many years. And I, who had always wanted a big extended family, thought that I could solve them all. That, then, was the beginning of the end of the marriage. How did my new husband react to my reaching out? Badly! I believe the guilt was too much for him to handle. I’d opened up a can of worms.
No longer my hero, he seemed embarrassed and angry by what I had unraveled, and the whole gestalt of ugly behaviors that went with his personality were manifest. He became silent and morose, a very unhappy man. Nevertheless I continued to dig in with energy and enthusiasm because I was persuaded that love and affection for his family coupled with treatment would make a difference. I will not discuss the nature of the problems because it will only cause more pain to some people about whom I once cared deeply, and a few of whom I still do. It is enough to say that what I saw broke my heart and I cried a river.
The more involved I got, the more it took a toll on me. I became clinically depressed. I couldn’t function. And the more depressed I grew, the farther away my husband drew. While I was making a difference for his family, I was wrecking everything for us. As things got better outside our apartment, they fell apart within. I am totally to blame for this, I told myself. Finally, I no longer knew how to make David happy. Everything I did was wrong. Look at all the good work I’m doing, I told myself, but it had the reverse effect. I faulted myself for the wreck the marriage had become, and as I continued along that path, I lost all my confidence and self-esteem until I was nothing but a shadow of the woman I had once been. At the very bottom of my ride into despair, I became a suicidal codependent.
He didn’t exactly tell me he was leaving. I found out when I went to the airport, uninvited, to pick him up and watched him come off the plane, arm in arm with his new lover.
Looking in the rearview mirror, I realize how utterly stupid I was. I managed to do the same dumb thing I’d already done too many times: taking an action without being informed. I was careless with my father when I signed over my mother’s estate, and again with my second husband when I signed fraudulent tax returns. Marrying this time was no different except for the size of the consequences.
There was never any excuse in my case for not being informed. Ever. And yet I married a man without knowing nearly enough about him. How stupid is stupid? You don’t need reminding, but I need to remind myself day in and day out of Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The results of my earlier mistakes were grisly enough, but this last one was devastating. This dumb mistake nearly cost me my life.