Backstreet Mom: A Mother's Tale of Backstreet Boy AJ McLean's Rise to Fame, Struggle With Addiction, and Ultimate Triumph (3 page)

I BECAME A SINGLE MOM when Alex was a just a little over two
years old. The year before that had been one of the most stressful periods of my life. My marriage to Alex's father had been a mistake from the
start, but I was eighteen, rebellious and desperate to leave home. I wanted
to experience life and love-the future be damned!

I grew up in a loving middle-class home. However, at eighteen I
couldn't bear to be under my parents' thumb a moment longer. I felt
smothered, as many teens did in those hippy days. It was, after all, the
late sixties-a time of free love, rampant drugs and wild-spirited youth.
I never indulged in drugs because I had lost a few friends to that nasty
stuff in high school, but in every other way I was a normal young woman of the times.

I did do my fair share of drinking. It somehow made me feel like I fit
in better with my peers. Whenever we wanted to have a party, we drove
across the state line from New Jersey into New York, where you could
buy beer with a fake ID, loaded the car up with beer and then went to
someone's house where we wouldn't be bothered by parents.

As a teen, my big vices were drinking and smoking, neither of which
I ever dreamed of doing at home. My mom, a little red-headed fireball of German descent named Ursula, had made it very clear to me that smoking was a big taboo. In her youth, she had been a "social" smoker who
only lit up on weekends with her friends. My dad, Adolph, had been a
smoker once, but he, too, had given it up. In our home, cigarettes were
public enemy number one. Smoking was not the only taboo: Mom was
very opinionated and old fashioned when it came to morals.

I was not allowed to date until I was sixteen. Of course, that did not
stop me from sneaking out of the house to go to the movies with boys.
One Saturday, I asked her to drop me off at the movie theater, where I
met my clandestine date after she left. Naturally, she returned early to
pick me up and caught me with the boy.

On the way home, she laid a real guilt trip on me for telling her a lie.
She must have told me a thousand times how disappointed she was in
me. I was-and still am-a pleaser by nature. When she questioned my
sense of family loyalty, I listened. Mom knew how to do that all too well.

Dad, a short, handsome Latin man with thick black hair, grew up in a
family where his father did not play a major role in raising the children. I
only met my dad's father once and that was when I was very young. Dad
swore that he would never be like his father and he stayed true to that.

My father was a devoted family man who worked hard to provide for
us. Only once did he ever raise a hand to me in anger and that happened
when I arrogantly moved out of the house at age seventeen. My parents
didn't have to raise their voices to keep my brother and me in line. We
knew the "look" well enough to know when it was time to stop our
insolent behavior.

Both of my parents had a great sense of humor and we laughed quite a
bit in my house, but as I grew into womanhood something changed between us. It seemed as though I saw only the worst in them. I am positive
I caused more than one gray hair on both of their heads during my teen
years. Pretty soon, there was nothing the three of us could agree upon.

When I was fifteen my parents decided to move away from the winter
weather and settle into South Florida. That was where my future husband, Bob, entered my life. We met while I was in high school. To me it
was love at first sight. While he was not drop-dead gorgeous, he had a
charm about him that won me over instantly. Bob was the little puppy
who followed me home. He had a car and that enabled us to tool around
after school. The fact that he played in a band made him the ultimate
cool boyfriend.

Bob was not very demonstrative. When it came to our relationship, I
knew it was up to me to make the first move-and I did. I proposed marriage. Much to my delight, he quickly accepted. My father had seen the writing on the wall where Bob was concerned. In an attempt separate us,
he sent me away to my aunt's house in New Jersey for the summer.

That did little to discourage us. Bob and I spoke every night on the
telephone and planned our getaway. Since we were too young to get
married in Florida, we decided to run away to Tennessee, where we had
heard it was possible to get married at the age of seventeen.

Within a month of my arrival in New Jersey, we put our plan into
effect. I told my aunt that I was spending the weekend at a friend's house,
but instead Bob came up from Florida and we drove nonstop to Chattanooga. We found a room that we could afford and then set out to complete our task of matrimony. Much to our dismay, the information we had
about Tennessee was wrong. We were informed that we were too young.

Saddened by our misadventure, we drove to Florida, where we hid
out for a couple of weeks in a sleazy motel. The only thing we could
think of to do was for me to move into Bob's apartment and live with
him without benefit of marriage. A marriage certificate was just a piece
of paper, right?

The afternoon before leaving the motel, we were lying on the couch
watching television when we heard a knock at the door. Figuring it was
the maid or the owner, Bob got up to answer it. To his surprise, he came
face to face with my brother, Bill, who had come to take me home.

"Get your things, you're going home with me," he said.

My brother is much taller and larger in build than Bob, so the possibility of a mismatched confrontation between the two of them created
an awkward silence that left all three of us staring at each other in shock.
When I recovered from my brother's unexpected arrival-and then saw
the tremendous anger on his face-I quickly gathered my things together and hurried out the door without another word.

"Mom and Dad were terrified that something bad had happened to
you," he said, using a tone of voice that reflected the seriousness of the
situation. "They called the police. Then, when they realized that Bob
was also missing, they figured out what had happened."

"How did you find us?"

"A trooper spotted your car and got suspicious."

My stay back home was short-lived. I had a huge fight with my parents and my dad told me that I was a disgrace to the family. That was the
first and only time that my dad ever slapped me. I stormed out of the
house and moved in with Bob and his family.

One year later, on October 18, 1972, Bob and I drove to Miami and
got married at city hall. Since I had not spoken to my parents for well
over a year, I didn't bother to tell them about the marriage.

I was convinced that we needed little to live on except our love, but I
learned quickly that you also needed a roof over your head and some
food on the table. Money was tight in Bob's home. His mother Irene was
a short, frail-looking, gray-headed woman in her sixties, who had never
worked. She survived entirely on the meager Social Security benefits
that she received after the death of Bob's father. Bob did odd jobs and
played in the band, but his brother, Jim, never left the house.

I convinced Bob that he needed to go to school and learn a trade. He
decided on a one-year computer school since it had the most attractive
tuition plan. Both he and his brother enrolled in the school and we
moved to Miami.

I worked two jobs and took a few classes in the evenings. Most of my
income went toward helping Bob and his brother pay their tuition and
expenses. After he finished school, Bob interviewed with a few major
computer companies and we moved to Boston for six weeks so that he
could complete his training. When we returned to Florida, a pile of bills
greeted us. Jim had relocated to another state, so he was no help with
our expenses. We had Bob's mom to worry about, as well as credit card
bills from the trip.

With all of that weighing on us, I decided to put off finishing college
and get a full-time job. There was very little money for fun stuff. Most of
our time was spent in our apartment watching television and occasionally going out for ice cream or a cheap movie.

Mom and Dad were very upset with me for marrying Bob, but they
realized that I was not going to be the first to give in. Mom eventually
made the first move and soon we were talking again. They loaned us
$250 to put down on our first house. It was only half of a duplex with
two bedrooms and a tiny yard, but it was brand new and all ours!

When we first moved in, our neighbors were other nice young couples like ourselves, but as the years passed, the development turned
into rental properties and the neighborhood declined rapidly. Many of
our neighbors moved, only to be replaced with transients and low-income families. Once, I had to call the health department and report a
neighbor who was allowing garbage to pile up beside her house.

Things for us as a married couple went pretty well for a few years.
Even so, Bob's hours were hard to deal with. Being the new guy meant
that he got all the shifts that no one else wanted. As he continued to
rack up more time with the company, his employment situation improved and we began to reap the benefits from both of us working and
having a reasonably low overhead. Meanwhile, Bob's brother moved his
mom to the West Coast to live with him, which meant that we were able to save enough money to buy a boat and take a nice vacation to the
Grand Cayman Islands.

After a few years, we began to talk about the possibility of having a
child. By then, my family had accepted Bob to the point where my mom
started hinting about grandchildren. We decided to save our money to
buy a bigger house in a nice area of town, a process that would take
about a year. By that time, Bob was earning enough money so that I
wouldn't have to work if I got pregnant. It was time to start our family.

I remember the exact moment I became pregnant. It was a night that
Bob had come home late from work. I was a little miffed because I had
made dinner and he never called to let me know what time he would be
home. He had always been bad about that sort of thing. We had an
argument, but then we made up in the usual way that married couples
do. When I awoke the next morning, I matter-of-factly said to Bob, "I
think we made a baby last night."

"How do you know?" he asked, staring at me in amazement.

"I just do."

I gave it a few weeks and, sure enough, I missed my period. Since I
was as regular as clockwork, I was convinced that I was pregnant. Once
I found out for certain, the first phone call went to my mom and dad.
They were thrilled.

We started looking at homes and soon found a lovely three-bedroom
ranch style house in a brand new development. The gods were definitely smiling on us as we sold our duplex in record time. Life was good.
The only hitch was that we couldn't move into our house for several
months and had to move out of the duplex sooner. As a result, we moved
in with my mom and dad.

JANUARY 9, 1978, is a date that I never will forget. At 7:31 that morning,
Alex was born at Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach. I was
scared to death when I first saw him. He weighed close to eight pounds,
but he was nearly nineteen inches long. He looked so ... well, fragile!

I was afraid to hold him at first, terrified that I might hurt him. We
named him Alexander after Bob's grandfather-and because every time
that my brother saw me during the pregnancy, he put his hand on my
stomach and asked, "How's Big Al doing?"

By the time we moved into our new house, Alex was four months
old. He was, without a doubt, the apple of grandma and grandpa's eyes.
My mother could not do enough for that child. He was terribly spoiled.
It took a little time for Alex and I to get into a new routine after we moved, but having a baby did not
slow me down for long. He went
everywhere I did and loved it. I
bought a small, bouncing chair
for him before he even could
crawl and he moved with me from
room to room. We were inseparable.

Unfortunately, his father never really saw having a child in the
same way that I did. I truly believe that he was jealous of Alex
because of the attention I gave
him. After Alex was born, Bob's
hours went back to the night shift
and he was hardly ever home. On
weekends he slept on the couch
all day long or watched television.
He was tired all the time and never wanted to go out. Before long, he got
back into his old routine of coming home later and later and not calling.

Then he started working on Saturdays. When that happened, I started spending more time with my parents so that I would have some adults
to talk to. I read to Alex a lot and he became a huge fan of Sesame Street
at a very young age. He was incredibly bright and learned to walk at
eight months. In fact, I really don't remember him ever crawling much.
He seemed to go from sitting up to walking. Bob missed out on most of
those pivotal moments due to his schedule.

Soon peculiar things began to happen. I began getting phone calls
from collection agencies about credit cards I had never heard of. After a
while it got really bad and the phone calls got increasingly nasty. Finally, I confronted Bob about the calls. At first he lied and told me that he
had no idea why they were calling. Then I began getting letters in the
mail outlining credit-card bills for thousands of dollars. Each one had
Bob's name on it, so he found it difficult to continue denying it.