A Father's Love (6 page)

I did other things to supplement our income. I went to school and earned my real estate license, so I could sell real estate on the side. Bruna continued teaching Italian classes one night per week at Brookdale Community College. Bruna didn't like the idea of being a stay-at-home mom. She was ambitious and wanted a career, and I respected that. I let her know that I would support her in whatever decision she made. When Sean was about two years old, Bruna took a full-time job teaching Italian at St. John Vianney, a private school near where we lived. We knew we'd never get rich at these jobs, but we didn't care. We were in love, we were content, and we were happy.

 

 

RAY AND SILVANA were very much involved in our family life. They visited often, sometimes staying at their condo for a month or two at a time before returning to Brazil. We were always delighted to see them, and we frequently went over to their place at the beach. Silvana was a good cook—in contrast to Bruna, who never prepared a meal from scratch—so we'd often enjoy sumptuous meals as a family at their condo. Although Ray and Silvana were bilingual, they spoke mostly English around Sean, as did Bruna. Occasionally, when talking “baby-talk,” they might lapse into their native Portuguese, and although Sean later picked up a few phrases, we made no real effort to teach him Portuguese.

Bruna's family members were quite generous. When we went out to eat, Ray and I usually quibbled over the check, both of us wanting to pay. “No, no. You are the son,” Ray said. “When you are older, then you will pay.”

How true.

In the summertime, we had numerous family cookouts, including my family members as well as Bruna's. We were a happy melting pot. Our good friends Michelle and Dan Langdon came over occasionally, and my buddy Bobby Chang, and we enjoyed their company. Especially after a few drinks, Ray always sang my praises. He told Bobby, “David is like my son. He's like my own blood.”

I
N THE EARLY FALL OF 2000, I WAS IN CALIFORNIA DOING A MEN'S catalogue shoot in the hills of Montecito, working at the home of Michael Bay, who had directed a number of highly successful films, including
Pearl Harbor
. During the afternoon, I enjoyed swimming in Michael's infinity pool, but later that evening, my throat grew scratchy, and I got really sick, with flulike symptoms. Patrick, a friend and fellow model working on the photo session, gave me a vitamin C drink. I felt a little better and was able to make it through the shoot.

The following week I had a job in Vermont for
Parents
magazine, so I took my mom, Bruna, and Sean along with me. The magazine loved having them on the shoot, and even included them in several of the photos. It was early October, and the fall foliage in Vermont was spectacular.

Bruna and I planned to visit Brazil with Sean shortly thereafter. I was scheduled to go on an annual golf outing to Myrtle Beach with some of my friends, so it seemed like a good plan for Sean and Bruna to go ahead without me, and for me to join them later in Rio. But when I arrived back home from the golf trip, I wasn't feeling well. I went to our family doctor, who gave me some antibiotics to combat the flulike symptoms. I started on the medication, but one morning I noticed a strange tingling in my fingers and toes. It felt almost as though I had an inflamed sciatic nerve. I thought perhaps I had pinched a nerve playing golf, so I went to a chiropractor. The chiropractor said, “This isn't something I can fix. Something more is going on here.”

I mentioned my condition to Bobby Chang, who had been along with us on the golf trip. Bobby was the head of the cardiothoracic division at Weill Cornell Medical Center, affiliated with New York Presbyterian Hospital. Bobby described my symptoms to some friends of his who were specialists, and they thought I might have contracted Lyme disease or something similar. Bobby suggested that I see Dr. Nancy Nealon, a neurologist friend of his in New York. I was feeling worse, so I agreed.

I took a New Jersey Transit train to Penn Station in New York, then boarded the subway to Dr. Nealon's neighborhood. By the time I got out of the subway car, I could barely shuffle along the street to the doctor's office. My feet felt as though they were encased in cinder blocks. Arriving at Dr. Nealon's office, I could hardly move or swallow. The neurologist began with some simple clinical exams. She then asked me to hold my arms upright as she tested me. She pushed both of my arms down using only one finger on each. I was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome. “This is serious, David,” she told me. “This syndrome attacks your central nervous system. It causes your own immune system to turn on you and could kill you. We need to get you into the hospital right away.”

The neurologist made some calls, and the hospital admitted me that same day. The doctors immediately began treating me with high doses of immunoglobulin, a blood-based substance that looks almost like a thick hair gel, which they dripped into my system intravenously, blocking the antibodies causing the problem. As the gunk filled my veins, they swelled up as though I had phlebitis. It was extremely painful, but time was of the essence. My system was already paralyzed; I couldn't move and I was struggling to keep from choking. Fortunately, my body responded quickly to the treatment, but recovery was a slow, tedious process. I entered the hospital in early October and was not released until Thanksgiving.

 

 

AFTER LONG CONVERSATIONS with Bruna, we decided that it was best for her and Sean to stay in Brazil until I was able to leave the hospital. Bruna adamantly opposed staying in Brazil at first, but it was for the best, and I was useless in my condition. She called my mom crying and telling her how much she wanted to come home to be with me. “David is my world,” she told Mom. But it was the right thing for Bruna and Sean to stay where they were. I hated not seeing them, but my concern for their well-being overshadowed my loneliness and feelings of helplessness as I lay nearly paralyzed, hooked up to the monitors above my hospital bed. Sean, of course, was still a baby, and Bruna was breast-feeding him. I didn't want them to be around the hospital, where they would be exposed to sickness and germs. Besides, I still had to go through the rehabilitation process to gain proper function of my limbs and my dexterity. This wasn't going to be pretty. I missed them terribly, but it wasn't worth taking a chance.

The colder fall weather was setting in, and I knew Bruna and Sean were cozy in Brazil with Bruna's parents, it being summer in South America, and there was nothing pressing them to come home sooner. Although we had contracts to close on a new home in October, the sellers were gracious enough to extend the date. The buyer of my town house was understanding, too, which alleviated the stress and the rush to move while I was still in the hospital. When I was discharged from the hospital in November, Bruna, Sean, and I had a sweet reunion.

Fortunately, I had a good health insurance policy through the Screen Actors Guild, so the bulk of my hospital bills were covered. My recovery and rehabilitation period stretched for nearly eight months. During that time, occupational and physical therapists came to our home every week to work with me. One of the exercises I did to help improve the dexterity in my hands and fingers was to play with an old-fashioned Erector set. Sean often sat in my lap as I worked with the nuts and bolts, turning screws and fitting the metal pieces of the set together. Sean's eyes sparkled as he watched me, so occasionally I'd let him help put one of the pieces in place. Before long, we were building model cranes, cars, and trucks together.

During my rehabilitation, I spent hours on end with Sean every day; both of us were learning to walk, he for the first time, and I for the second; I was learning how to keep my balance without the use of crutches or help from someone else. I regained my upper body strength rapidly, but my legs remained weak, and I was unsteady on my feet. Sean imitated me, trying to pull himself up by holding on to a table in our den. Near the end of my recovery, Sean took his first steps unassisted, but for about two months before that, we were pretty much on the same level. We spent hour after hour together on the floor, playing with his toys, or with him sitting in my lap as we watched television, or with me reading books to him. Looking back on that time now, I am so thankful for it. Those many days on the floor together were a special bonding season for Sean and me. I was his captive audience, and he was mine. I was happy to be able to spend so much time with my best buddy in the world. As it would later turn out, this bonding time between us was more crucial than I could ever have imagined.

 

 

BRUNA BECAME CONCERNED about both my physical condition and how we were going to make it financially. “Don't worry; I'm going to get better,” I promised her. I had saved some money before we were married, so I knew we could live off that for a while. In addition, we had a small income from some property we owned in Brazil. When we got married, Bruna's grandmother had given us an apartment in Brazil as a wedding present. Bruna's father managed and rented it out for us, and that income helped provide enough extra money to support a nanny to help take care of Sean. Bruna had found one when in Brazil, a young woman who stayed with us for about six months. When she decided to move on, Bruna found another. In Brazil, a full-time nanny earns around three hundred dollars per month.

Some of my friends teased me about having a nanny, given our relatively middle-class income, but I didn't mind. I knew Bruna had been raised by a nanny, and also that she didn't relish doing domestic chores. I wasn't sure if she even knew how to do such chores. I felt that if having a nanny helped Bruna to focus on other things she wanted to do, then the cost was well worth it.

When I came home from the hospital in November 2000, we closed on our new home in Tinton Falls. The house was a gingerbread-style dwelling nestled between the trees, with a pool and a deck in the back, on a picturesque piece of property overlooking Swimming River, a peaceful, quiet, navigable tributary eventually leading out to the Atlantic Ocean. From the front, the home looked like a modest Cape Cod–style, two-story dwelling, with a side entry and a belowground garage in the basement. But from the back, the house opened to a natural vista, a thick jungle of lush, green trees, with spring-fed ponds and several dams and waterfalls cascading to the river. I sometimes quipped that it looked like a place Tom Sawyer would have loved. One of the many aspects of the house that appealed to us was that it was located in Monmouth County, with some of the best schools in the state. When Sean was old enough to attend school, he'd be able to get a good education.

When Bruna first saw the house, she was ecstatic. “Oh, I can plant a garden right over here,” she squealed as she pointed to the side of the house. In fact, she never planted a flower, or picked up a twig in the driveway. Nor did she ever attempt to clean the house, do the laundry, or cook a meal that didn't come out of a package. The nanny cooked quite often, and we ordered a lot of takeout. Mom and Dad came over to visit often, and they usually brought with them wonderful food, including Mom's famous chicken and dumplings or tuna that Dad had caught. On other days, I cooked. I often brought home and prepared the “catch of the day,” and we had delicious fresh fish for dinner. Bruna never gave any indication that she wanted to learn how to cook, but I didn't mind.

During the latter part of my recuperation, I constructed a deck and dock down by the river. It was excellent therapy for me, and a good way to build my strength back up. By late spring of 2001, I was getting back on my feet and returning to work, so gradually Bruna's financial concerns evaporated. Although I didn't know it at the time, she would occasionally say something to her friends such as “Oh, I know David will never be rich.” As far as I was aware, Bruna found our modest, comfortable lifestyle appealing, and we were both content with it.

I began to model again as well as sell some real estate. Because I could set my own hours, we quickly fell into a pattern of me being “Mr. Mom,” staying at home more frequently with Sean. He and I did everything together, having breakfast at some of New Jersey's popular diners, going out in the boat, and playing in the Tom Sawyer–like environment of our backyard on the banks of Swimming River. When I had to meet a work obligation and couldn't look after Sean, Mom or Dad was right there. As Sean grew a little older, he came to love jumping off the dock into the slow-moving river. He and I occasionally camped out in our own personal Shangri-La behind our comfortable suburban home. We were living a dream come true.

Bruna liked my being home, but she also liked it when I took modeling jobs. My career somehow helped her feel more important or prestigious. When I appeared in a catalogue, she would often take it to school and show my shots to her friend Michelle Langdon and their fellow teachers in the break room. “Oh, look at my husband!” she would gush.

Bruna never expressed concern about my working so closely with such beautiful women. Part of that stemmed from her own selfconfidence, but beyond that, she knew that I was absolutely faithful and 100 percent loyal to her. I adored her, and never gave her any reason to be jealous.

As I had done earlier, because I was trying to be home more often, I continued to turn down the big-bucks fashion shoots that would have taken me away from my family for prolonged periods of time. I still worked a lot in New York, but I recognized that the drop in our income would be severe. To generate more money, I looked around for some additional entrepreneurial opportunities. About that time, two of my friends, Jim Freda and Gene Quigley, had established a pretty good business with a Jersey Shore deep-sea-fishing charter boat service, Shore Catch Guide Service. Jim and Gene kept saying, “Dave, we need you. You're the guy. You know this business; you grew up doing it with your dad. If you aren't going to be traveling so much, why don't you consider joining us? We have more business than we can handle. You can still do modeling when you want, and we'll help cover your charters when you have to be away.”