High On Arrival (20 page)

The plane arrived at Albany airport very early the next morning. I made my way off the plane, stepped out of the gate, and—there was no one there to meet me in spite of the arrangements I’d made with Dad. I waited … and waited. Waiting for Dad again. I was so tired. I’d been up for days and now the drugs were all gone. I made a few calls. After four hours of trying to reach Dad or anyone who might know where he was, I lay down on a bench and promptly fell asleep. I was pregnant, coming down, exhausted, and alone in upstate New York. But the nightmare was over.

21

When someone finally woke me up at the airport it wasn’t my father. It was Dad’s driver, who had instructions to take me to meet my father at a hospital in Glens Falls, New York. When I got to the hospital, my father wasn’t there. He was out of town with his girlfriend Marci. I just cried and said I wanted to go to bed.

Since they didn’t have a detox program, they put me in the psych ward of the hospital. I turned over my precious needle. As the cocaine cleared my system for the first time in ages, I felt melancholy descending on me. Coming down was the feeling that always made me want to go up again, made me crave more cocaine. And I also felt addicted to the needle, to the familiar ritual that meant a high was coming soon. I was sick from dehydration and malnutrition, throwing up and experiencing intense pains in my abdomen and back. I slept and wept and waited for Dad to come, because being alone just made it all worse. While I was in the hospital, Mick appeared on
Saturday Night Live
with Lone Justice. I tried to tell my fellow inmates in the psych ward that the rocker on-screen was my boyfriend, but they didn’t believe me. I guess I wouldn’t have believed me either. After I’d been there a while, Dad and Marci came with a bag of candy, soda, and chips. And a Kmart maternity outfit. ’Nuff said.

A nurse on the birthing floor of the hospital, Marie Capezutti, heard that there was a pregnant woman detoxing. She came down to my room, strapped a monitor around my belly, and told me the back pains I’d been having were Braxton Hicks contractions. I was so glad to have some attention, so relieved that the baby was okay. Marie had me moved up to the birthing ward, which was called the Snuggery. It was the antithesis of the squalor and depravity of the L.A. apartment I had fled.

When I met the head of the natal unit, Doug Provost, he looked at me and my track-marked arms and asked if I had considered adoption. I was appalled. How could he think that I didn’t want this baby? Of course, it certainly seemed as if I’d done everything in my power to kill it. I was twenty-seven years old, pregnant, and had shot coke until my sixth month. Now I just felt very tired. Tired of running, tired of using, tired of lying and scamming, tired of living. But my desire to keep the child and be the best mother I could be never wavered. They told me my child might be stillborn, born prematurely, or mentally ill.

My dad and I had a long talk about where I should go to give birth and take care of the newborn. Dad wouldn’t be around much—he was going on the road with the Mamas & the Papas—we’d dropped the “New” from our name. A woman named Laurie Beebe had been hired to fill in for me for the end of my pregnancy and the first couple months of the baby’s life. Nonetheless, Dad said, “I know I haven’t been there for you. But you’re about to give birth to my grandson. Take as much time off from the band as you need. You’re not going to lose your job. Stay here, near me.” His words made me feel safe. Bolton Landing, where Dad and his girlfriend were living, was a small town outside Glens Falls, New York. It was far and protected from the toxicity of L.A. I decided to stay.

The house Dad found for me was an old log cabin, with Lake George right outside the window. It was Christmastime, and the icy force that swept across Lake George rattled the windows and pushed under the doorjambs. In town I made friends quickly, as I always have. A local attorney named Rolf lent me an old truck to get around in. A guy named Andy taught me how to build a fire. I didn’t get high for the remainder of my pregnancy.

My friend Amanda came to visit. The first thing she did was pull out a bindle and say she found it on the floor in a public bathroom. I emptied it into the fireplace. I was so proud of myself.

Mick was on the road with Lone Justice. They had a huge new gig, opening for U2 on the
Joshua Tree
tour. I missed him terribly. When the band had a break for the holidays, Mick went to pack up my foul L.A. apartment. He was shocked at what he found. Now he knew that needles were involved—the place was a junkie hangout. Still, Mick carefully, respectfully salvaged my treasured possessions from the wreckage. He put it all into storage, ran out on the rent, and came east to me.

On Christmas Day we went to a friend of Dad’s for dinner. Halfway through the meal I started having contractions again. It was still too early for the baby to come. My dad drove us to the hospital. I lay in the backseat with my head on Mick’s lap. At the hospital the docs put me on something called Brethine to stop my contractions. I stayed the night to be monitored, and Mick stayed on a little foldout bed next to me. Then they let me go home again. After Christmas Mick went back on the road with Lone Justice. I was in and out of the hospital with contractions. I very much wanted my child but I was scared to death. Scared of becoming a mom, scared of the baby coming out sick or unhealthy, just plain scared.

On the first of February, my doctor decided I was far enough along to be taken off the Brethine. The next day I was with my new friend Lucy at a bar, which may not be the appropriate place for a woman in labor, but it was a step up from the example I had been given: my stepmother giving birth to Bijou on the living room couch. At three in the afternoon I sat on a bar stool, timing contractions on the bar clock. It began to snow. I called Marie, the nurse, who had become a good friend. She said to wait a few more hours, so I went home. Around nine that night I started getting nervous. The snow was coming down hard now. There wasn’t anyone around to take me to the hospital. What if I got stuck in the blizzard, gave birth alone in my car, and we both froze to death? I panicked, threw clothes in a bag and shoes on my feet, and jumped into Rolf’s truck. The back window of the truck was broken and snow filled the backseat as I drove the twenty-five miles down the dark country highway in labor, in a snowstorm, to the hospital.

My son, Shane Barakan, was born at Glens Falls Hospital at 2:42 a.m. on February 3, 1987. He was jumpy from all the cocaine. The hospital knew my recent past. They could have taken him away from me, but they didn’t. Instead, Marie taught me how to give him a bottle, how to burp him, and how to change his diapers. I took a class in infant CPR. I was so happy to be a mommy. I was so in love.

After a few days it became clear that I was going home to an empty house because Mick was stuck on the road for another eight days. Dr. Doug took pity on us and invited me and Shane to come live at his house until Mick got back. He moved me into his house with his wife and children.

The Provosts lived in a beautiful home in Glens Falls. They set me up in the guest room, and Shane slept beside me in a little bassinet that Doug’s wife, Judy, set up for him. Judy gave me baby clothes and furniture, everything I needed but hadn’t known or had the wherewithal to buy. I slept next to Shane with a hand on his precious shoulder. We stayed with the Provosts—such generous people—until Mick came home.

Mick was thirty-two years old. He had been a rock ’n’ roll guitar player all his life. He had those long black locks and usually wore skintight jeans and pointy boots. He was beautiful and he had a heart of gold, but he had told me, over and over again, that he had no idea how to be a father. When his plane landed in Albany, he came straight to the Provosts’ house to meet his son. I dressed Shane for his father in an awesome tie-dyed one-sie with long sleeves. The hood of his bassinet was facing away from the door. Mick came in, and as he walked toward the bassinet it was as if he expected to see Rosemary’s baby. But the minute he picked up Shane, his whole face changed. He was as in love as I was. Mick, that startled, scared rocker, was transformed into an amazing father.

Doug and Judy sent us away with a bottle of champagne, a changing table, a swing, and clothes for Shane. The three of us went home to our log cabin. No matter what I had done during my pregnancy, no matter how low I had fallen, there was this salvation: Shane, a perfect little baby boy, proof that I hadn’t destroyed everything. I loved him, we loved him, I wanted the best for him from the moment I laid eyes on him. I wanted to give him the love my parents had always given me, the care they hadn’t, the safety, protection, and parenting I had only begun to understand how much I missed. I wanted all these things for him and had no idea how badly I was about to blow it.

22

Mick helped me set up the house for Shane. The cabin was idyllic. Along the front was a long, screened-in porch, looking out on a picturesque marina. February wasn’t porch weather—winter in the Adirondacks is long and brutal—but there was a big, cozy living room with a stone fireplace. We pushed the two sectional sofas together to create a fully enclosed king-size play-pen where we could snuggle with Shane.

Mick stopped doing drugs the moment Shane was born. “We’re parents now,” he told me. “We can’t keep living this way. We have this little life—it’s our responsibility.”

I said, “Yeah, oh, you’re absolutely right.” Then Mick had to go back out on the road. I drove him to the train station and cried my eyes out. With Mick on the road, I was lonely. Bolton Landing felt like Siberia. I tried really hard to stay clean, but not hard enough. In hindsight, I liked the
idea
of being clean, but I had no idea how to go about it. I didn’t know about recovery as most people think of it now—a process that includes self-examination, therapy, and support. I didn’t know I needed help. I thought that I just needed to stop taking drugs. Using willpower. And that I definitely didn’t have.

The town had two bars, and I couldn’t score anything good. My friend Lucy said she knew somewhere we could go for decent coke. It was hours away. I brought Shane, who slept soundly in the car as we drove through the night, getting lost on our desperate search. When we finally found the place, I went in carrying my sleeping infant in my arms. Do you take the baby into the crack house or do you leave him alone in the cold car? Even though I hadn’t read the parenting books, I was pretty sure they didn’t cover these decisions. The house was dark and creepy, with unsavory people lurking around. They were selling crack, and crack was not for me. It made me even more of a lunatic. We turned around and drove all the way back empty-handed. My innocent son had been to a crack house. It was yet another new low.

When Shane was two months old I went back on the road with the Mamas & the Papas. At the same time, Lone Justice was now opening for U2 on the European leg of the
Joshua Tree
tour. Mick came out to meet me at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and collected Shane to bring him to Europe. That was the plan—we would both go on the road as needed, and we would trade off taking care of the baby.

I hated saying good-bye to Shane, but I knew he’d come back soon. His father adored him and had a right to spend time with him too. I handed Mick the baby, a sling to carry him, and a diaper bag, and my boys were off.

Mick boarded the plane to fly to Rome or someplace like that, with his long black hair, a little of the last night’s makeup, and his guitar, looking every bit the band member that he was. Except he had tiny Shane snuggled up on his chest. Then he reached up to get something out of the overhead compartment and inadvertently banged Shane’s head on the shelf above. Shane started wailing. People on the plane looked at Mick as if to say, “What have you done to that child?”

The first years of Shane’s life, I was on the road more than half the year. Sometimes Shane was with me and sometimes he was with Mick. While Mick cared for Shane, I thought about my baby constantly. Whenever we sang the song “Dedicated to the One I Love,” I dedicated it to Shane. When Bijou, who was seven, came to the show, she protested, saying, “Here I am, sitting in the audience, and you dedicate the song to a baby who isn’t even here.”

I was glad to be back at work, but on the road the craziness began again. I had someone FedExing me cocaine, and before long I brought this practice home. Mick still thought I was clean, so I’d wait until he went out of town to arrange a shipment. Then, when I was alone with Shane, I’d put him in the bathtub and play a game. I’d say, “No peeking,” pop behind the shower curtain, and shoot up. Again, Mick had no idea this was going on. As I went downhill, Mick was trying to improve us both. He arranged for us to go to a hypnotist to stop smoking cigarettes. It was a group hypnotism during which I snuck out to the bathroom to do lines. Mick never smoked again. As for me, well, I’m pretty sure that being high doesn’t exactly enhance hypnotism’s success rate.

Things got very dark. FedExes came from my dealer in New York to hotels all over the country. They would arrive at the hotel before I did with “Hold for Arrival” written in familiar blue handwriting. I’d be on tour, alone in my hotel room, late to the stage. People would be knocking on the door and I’d be in the bathroom shooting up. Then I’d run out onstage. Shooting cocaine isn’t anything like snorting cocaine. The rush of the drug hitting my bloodstream made the world seem like it wasn’t a real place. I saw and heard things that weren’t there. Shapes moved around me. It was frightening. I got to that point, but I still had to go onstage. I was hardwired to go onstage. I couldn’t not go onstage.

At home, Mick lived my lies. Promises went unfulfilled. I said I would be somewhere and didn’t show up. I said I would “be good” while he was on tour but went on a tear. Soon enough the pretense fell away. Mick became increasingly upset and concerned. He could see that I was going down, down. What he objected to above all was my behavior around Shane. He grew afraid to leave me alone with our son, who was by now four years old, and with good reason. I was not a good parent. When I came home from the road, I’d sleep for days. Then I’d tune out Shane and smoke or shoot coke in the room next to his. When Mick had to go out of town and leave me alone with Shane, I wouldn’t always take him to his daycare/preschool. I’d rent movies and sleep all day while poor little Shane had to fend for himself.

I always wanted to be a good parent. But I was doing the same thing to my family and child that had been done to me. I was committing the sins of the fathers. Shane wasn’t in dirty diapers or unwashed or unfed. But I did what I wanted to do. I was pursuing my own interests. It’s been hard to come to terms with that.

What caused the shift? Was it the drugs themselves, or was it the incest, which had escalated? It’s a painful admission, but after Shane was born, when I went back on tour with the Mamas & the Papas, the incest became consensual.

The first time it had happened, back in Florida, I felt raped. That event stood alone. Many years passed before he touched me again. But as the isolated encounters added up, I could no longer tell myself that I was having sex with my father against my will. It was consensual, but not in the way one might imagine consensual sex. It didn’t happen daily or weekly. It wasn’t planned or discussed. And it most certainly wasn’t romantic or real. We didn’t walk around holding hands. Sex with my father was never anything but an occasional act of drug-fueled desperation, a hopeless grasp at comfort and security in a daze of hell.

When I woke up in the morning next to my father, my first thought was inevitably,
Oh, fuck. How am I going to do this day, this life, again? How can I function with what’s going on in my life and my mind?
The sex with my father was like a runaway train. It took on a life of its own. It was a fact. It was happening. This was what I had become. And I felt like I had no power to do anything about it. My world was built around my father. He was my boss. He controlled my paycheck and therefore my drug supply. I was so fucked.

But now there was a new element. I didn’t want it. I didn’t enjoy it. But at the same time—I did. I started feeling complicit, like I was just as much an instigator as he was.

Take a girl who has the daddy issues that I did, then throw huge amounts of drugs at the relationship—it’s a toxic mix. And then there was the compelling, magnetic man who was my father. I knew him very well. We had been great friends for many years. We laughed and joked and had great talks. He felt more like a friend than a father.

Many years earlier, I’d been in New York at my father’s apartment with my dad, Genevieve, and Mick Jagger. Dad and Genevieve went into the bathroom to shoot up. When they came out, Mick said, “Why do you do drugs in front of and with your kid?”

My father said, “I’m not going to hide anything from Max. We’ve been friends for too long.” His twisted idea of the parent-child relationship was all I had known. But it was more complicated than that. For all I knew him, for all the time I’d spent with him in recent years, I hadn’t let go of the child who was still waiting for him. I was desperate to connect. And here I was spending day in and day out with him. Dad—my charismatic, magnetic sorcerer father—was available to me. That—minus the sex—was the experience of John that all his children would have killed for. And it was happening to me. A route to him had presented itself, and it satisfied some part of me that was at war with the rest.

Incest is an abuse of privilege. It is an abuse of trust. It is abject manipulation. By making it consensual, I turned my anger and confusion inward and made it my fault. I thought,
This is a bad thing. Why am I letting this happen? Maybe Aunt Rosie was right. There must be something inherently wrong with me
. I felt dirty, I felt shameful, I felt completely and utterly alone. It brought out many fears—fear that people would find out, fear of my own thoughts. I felt like I couldn’t trust myself. I knew it was wrong, but I didn’t put a stop to it. I felt powerless to do so, and I blamed myself for that too. What I never wondered, never, not once, was,
How could he do this to me?
I couldn’t question him. I couldn’t hate him. So I hated myself. This kind of self-blame is classic, textbook in incestuous abuse, but I didn’t know that at the time.

But this is important. My father abused me, but he wasn’t a monster. He was a tortured man who led a tortured existence. I waited until he died to talk about this because I didn’t want to put him through it. I had and have profound love and respect for him. This is hard for me to talk about, not so much because of how personal it is to me as because of what I’m doing to his memory—to the way other people remember him—his friends, his fans, his family and other children. My first instinct is to preserve his great legacy. He wasn’t a good father, but he was a musical genius, and the truth about our relationship doesn’t change that. But these are the reasons that people are silent about incest: Conflicted but deep love for the perpetrator. The desire to protect the family. The fear of what the revelation will do to one’s own reputation. If nobody ever rocks the boat, if real stories of love and incest and survival are kept behind the closed doors of therapists’ offices and judges’ chambers, then current and future victims are destined to do what I did, to weather it alone, to blame themselves, to hide behind drugs or whatever other lies and oblivion they can find. It happens, it happened to me, and the desire to preserve my father’s legacy is not reason enough for silence.