Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... (11 page)

One night (meaning between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.) I thought Judy sounded “different.” It made me anxious. I threw on a sweat suit and called David Begelman after assuring Judy I was on the way. I knew I could call a limo and go to Westchester by myself, but I wouldn't do that when I was worried stiff something was wrong. The final Judy responsibility lay with David or Freddie; I was not ever going to be there alone if indeed she was dying.

I didn't ever call either of them carelessly because I knew their wives were not nearly as supportive as my husband. Both women fumed at the late night calls, and both spoke of it with me, more than once. Most of their conversations had an opener like “Just who the fuck does she think she is?” This night, however, I made the call to David. “I think something is really wrong this time,” I whispered. Although these were words he'd heard many times before, he knew that if I called, he'd have to go. I was the poison taster, and the poison taster is never wrong. “I'll call a car and pick you up in twenty minutes.” Those were the only times I ever saw David in store-bought polyester rather than custom-made worsted.

We got to Judy's house just before four. We found her sprawled on the floor next to the front door. This meant we wouldn't have to go upstairs and disturb the children. It smelled fishy. That she was beautifully dressed in a diaphanous gown with matching peignoir was the giveaway. Indeed, she wore matching satin slippers with a little heel and caribou trim, and her hair was perfectly coiffed. After only two minutes I knew it was a hoax. I told David what I thought. What an actress she was. She had sounded “different” on the phone knowing I would then want to bring D or F along with me. But David looked at her and told me he thought she was turning blue. Had he really swallowed the fish, along with the hook, the line, and the sinker? But then he added, “Her pulse is not strong, and she's very cold. Call an ambulance.” I did it immediately, becoming scared that we might be looking at a suicide attempt that had actually worked. David was no drama queen, quite the reverse. He was a cool customer. He never exaggerated except when telling stories in the aftermath. Then he could go way over the top and be highly amusing. As we stood over Judy's comatose body at that moment, he was dour.

Fifteen minutes later, without our once having awakened anyone in the house, our limo was trailing the ambulance as it screamed its way down the Hutchinson River Parkway. Had Judy been dying, the forty-five-minute ride would not have helped, but then we could go only to her personal doctor, Kermit Osserman, who recognized the need to keep everything out of the press, and he could only do that at Mt. Sinai, the hospital he was affiliated with. Osserman was an elderly internist on whom Judy's late-night ravings took a great toll, but he was a trouper, wanted never to disappoint, and whenever called upon, this capable doctor and lovely gentleman was there on his marks.

With the limo on its tail, the ambulance raced up the ramp into the emergency dock, where four white-coated orderlies were waiting to transfer Judy onto a rolling gurney that would carry her inside for an examination and whatever other treatment was called for. At the very least I expected it would be another stomach pumping. Even before the brakes were set, the orderlies had the back door of the ambulance open, and in an organized phalanx quickly pulled the bed, on which Judy lay motionless, out of the truck. They lined it up parallel to the gurney, and then in one brilliant motion all four men grabbed the corners of the sheet on which she lay, yanked it up, and plunked her down on their rolling cot. Whereupon Madam sat up straight as a ramrod and, in a tone indignant with rage, spoke these memorable words:

“How dare you fucking morons handle me like a fucking side of beef? How dare you! Get your fucking meat hooks out of me, you fucking apes!” No comment from the astonished gallery was possible. Judy then got up, and with as much dignity as she could muster—given that one of the satin slippers trimmed in caribou had gone missing—Madam limped, one-shoe-on, one-shoe-off, over to the waiting limousine, got in the backseat, and ordered the driver to take her home.

Poor Kermit! He didn't deserve to be awakened at four in the morning. Judy was turning his practice into a water-cooler joke. He was a man of great integrity, totally unlike the many Dr. Feelgoods in my little black book who would prescribe unlimited amounts of any drugs Judy wanted, for a fee. At one point I became so concerned about the handfuls of Ritalin Judy was swallowing that, without a word to anyone, I decided I had to do something about it. Looking through the Yellow Pages, I found a small pharmaceutical house in southern New Jersey and made an arrangement with them to mill an identical sugar-water version. I imagined I would be helping her, but I had no idea what I was doing. I replaced all the real Ritalin in her vials with the placebo, which I purchased in big canning jars, ten thousand at a time. Although after that I never saw one iota of difference in her behavior, just doing it made a big difference to me. At least I knew that she was putting less chemical shit into her body, and that gave me a little peace of mind.

*   *   *

It seemed that most of the drugs were for insomnia. Her inability to sleep was a nasty monster that stalked her. It lived in a black hole. She teetered on the edge of that hole all the time. I imagined she knew that if she fell into it she would go mad. Drugs kept the monster at bay. They helped her to quiet a mind that wouldn't be still, a mind that made sleeping impossible. Judy cried about it. Sometimes she put her head in my lap and just wept. How sad is that? It made me wonder from time to time whether or not leaving her in peace, as she was before Freddie sought her out in London, would have saved her. If she had been allowed to veg out, eat, and do nothing, might she have survived? Finally I think not. I don't think vegging out was at all what she wanted. She knew she had options, and she chose what she wanted. She wanted the fame, the power, least of all the money—these things went into a cocktail she wanted to drink. She was as addicted to all those as she was to the prescription drugs. And once she came back, she needed as many drugs to get her up as she needed to go to sleep.

I knew nothing about drug addiction until I started working with her. Oh, I knew about alcoholism, about the falling-down drunks who populated my aunt's place on the Bowery, but I hadn't the slightest notion that anyone got addicted to prescription drugs. Bayer Aspirin is all that was found in the medicine cabinets in my home. Thrust into Judy's world, I was getting a fast education about a dozen different kinds of pills. I needed to know more, so I scoured the news for stories and devoured what I read about heroin, the drug that in the early sixties got the most lurid coverage. I could see that what I read exactly matched what I knew to be true about Judy and my experience with her—that addiction was a progressive disease that keeps increasing, as does the amount and the strength of the drugs needed to satisfy the craving.

Finally there are never enough pills. And so it was with Judy. As it was with Michael Jackson and other famous people. The more I understood her addiction, the sorrier I began to feel for her. It was tragic, and no one understood it better than David, who for his own pecuniary reasons had to keep her working. I will get back to that. David also understood she desperately needed a break, and he planted one into her schedule. And thereby hangs a tale.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A Vacation

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.