Between a Heart and a Rock Place (13 page)

Still, we were all too aware that the status quo was not sustainable. Neither one of us said anything about it but we both knew that something had to change. We just didn't know what.

 

A
T THE END OF
1981 and early 1982, following the tour for
Precious Time,
we were finally able to take a few months off. For the first time since we started making music, we were on break. It turned out to be the best thing we could have done. Spyder produced the first solo album of British rock singer John Waite, who had made a name for
himself with the Babys. For all the fights that we'd gotten into with Terry Ellis about Spyder's contribution and credit, Terry was incredibly pleased with Spyder's output and he recommended that Spyder produce John's solo debut for Chrysalis, called
Ignition,
which had the hit single “Change.” Spyder had also started working on some songs with Billy Steinberg, whom we'd collaborated with on
Crimes of Passion
and
Precious Time.
Our friend and drummer, Myron, was featured on
Cat Dance,
an album from Outlaw's guitarist Freddie Salem.

While Spyder continued to work, I was ready to relax. After three records and three tours in two and half years, I was just fine being a domestic goddess for a while. I stayed home and remodeled the house I'd bought after Spyder and I broke up. I went back east to visit family and friends and, of course, Spyder. Spyder spent December in New York working on
Ignition,
while I stayed in California. We were miserable apart, so for my birthday on January 10, I went to New York to see him. We had dinner and talked but didn't get back together. When I flew back to Los Angeles we were still in exactly the same position, with both of us thinking,
Enough is enough
.

We were tired of being confused. I remember telling one journalist that it had come down to the career or our relationship, that to save the band we had to make a choice. If we kept on trying to be a couple, the band could have been doomed. We had spent the last year fighting and struggling with our relationship. We both thought that we simply
had
to go back to being friends instead of former lovers, and the only way to do that was to move on with our lives.

About the same time, we both decided to see if we could have a relationship with someone else. It wasn't something that we discussed with each other—we just did it. I went on one date, as did Spyder. I had a nice enough time on my date and Spyder enjoyed his. But throughout the night, I couldn't escape just how wrong it felt. I didn't want to be having dinner with someone else, I wanted to be having dinner with Spyder. As it turned out, he'd experienced the same thing. He called
me the next day, and when I told him I'd been out with someone else, his frustration bubbled over.

“What are you doing?” Spyder asked.

“What do you care? And what have you been doing?” I answered accusingly.

“Nothing that matters. I care about you,” he said.

“Really? You could've fooled me.” I didn't want to hear this. I'd finally made up my mind that I was going to forget him, try to start over.

“I'm sorry,” he said quietly. “I love you. I want you to come home.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It had been an entire year of pretending we didn't care about each other, an entire year of fighting every day, an entire year of hoping he'd change his mind and come back to me. It seemed too sudden, too perfect to be true. But that didn't stop me from jumping on the first available flight to New York.

The whole flight, I kept telling myself how crazy this was. My rational levelheadedness had once again abandoned me, thanks to Spyder. It didn't make any sense. After all, how could we heal the year of pain and hurt that we'd caused each other with a phone call and a visit? The yelling and the screaming, the hurt feelings and nights spent sulking alone in our hotel rooms? I wanted to believe it was true, that we really could do it, that we were strong enough and important enough to each other spiritually and creatively to make that happen. But I didn't know for sure—that is, until I saw him at the gate, holding a bouquet of flowers. That was when I threw caution to the wind.

At first, we just held each other, spending the day like awkward teenagers reunited after a prolonged stay at summer camp, talking and laughing—just enjoying each other for the first time in months. Ironically, it happened to be Valentine's Day, a holiday that both of us abhor, yet there was no doubt it would be a Valentine's Day to remember: after many hours of conversation, we decided to get married.

We didn't waste much time. The next day we went shopping for
rings. Once our minds were made up we threw ourselves completely into it and never looked back. Just like that, the last year, all the tension, all the fighting, had been erased. Myron and his wife, Monica, were the first people we told.

“Good,” Myron said. “No, wait, this isn't just good, this is great. We're so happy for you.” Listening to his voice, I knew that his enthusiasm was real. He knew that this was not the latest saga in the drama between Spyder and me. This was the end, and he could hear it in my voice. He and Monica were our best friends. They knew Spyder and I belonged together, and many times over the last year, they'd been forced to sit idly by as we'd struggled. It had been painful for them to watch us go through all that—not to mention stressful to see the ways that we'd jeopardized the band. For everyone, it was a huge relief that we'd finally come to our senses.

We felt defiant when we informed Chrysalis we were getting married. I was ready to tell them to fuck off if they started their negative talk again. This time, though, they realized that there was absolutely nothing they could say or do to change our minds, so all of a sudden they did an about-face and started offering to help foot the bill—ordering Dom Pérignon and toasting us like they'd been behind us the whole time.

Neither of us wanted to get married in Los Angeles or New York. Spyder wanted a small ceremony in a remote place, and I'd already done that twelve-bridesmaid, two-hundred-and-fifty-guest wedding. We wanted this to be altogether different and decided to be married right away in Tahiti. However, as soon as I spoke with our travel agent, Diane Nardizzi, I knew we had a time problem. The Grammys were coming up on February 24 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, and I was nominated for a second Grammy, this time for “Fire and Ice.” Traveling to Tahiti, getting married, and having time even for a short honeymoon would be tight if we were going to be back in time for the ceremony. I explained that, primarily, we wanted the wedding to
be private and in some beautiful spot—it didn't have to be Tahiti. We just had to be back in L.A. by the twenty-fourth.

Diane had a solution:

“There's a town on Maui, a little tiny place called Hana. You can't get much more private than that. It's way off the beaten path. My client Kris Kristofferson owns some property there, and according to him it is one of the most beautiful places on earth.”

Diane made the arrangements. I flew back to L.A., and Spyder followed me the next day. We'd only been to Hawaii once before, and that was to Oahu to play the Blaisdell Arena. Having no idea how small and remote Hana was, I just assumed I could buy a dress when I got there, but at the last minute, five
P.M
. the night before we were leaving, it occurred to me to pick up something to wear, just in case. I went to Robinsons-May and bought a little white lace dress off the rack for $82. That's the OCD in me—
just in case
.

I had never been anywhere in Hawaii but Honolulu, so I didn't know what to expect as far as our travel accommodations were concerned. Not only did we have to charter a small plane to fly us there, but there were only a few hours that it was available. We flew from Honolulu to Kahului on Maui at night, and as we got closer, I could see the water lit by the moon and felt us getting lower and lower, to the point that I thought,
Oh my God, we're gonna crash
. Then all of a sudden, just as it felt like the bottom of the plane was going to touch the tips of the trees, the pilot clicked a remote and this little runway lit up, a stunning strip of white light beaming out of the darkness of the jungle.

There was a warm breeze, and the trees smelled fresh from a rain. The moon came out from behind a cloud, and we could see that the airport was really just a little kiosk in the cane grass. Barreling toward us was a small, old-model red bus that kicked dust into the air as it wound its way down a little road. Clearly this was our transportation to the hotel. We were hooked.

The Hotel Hana-Maui, originally named the Ka'uiki Inn, was built in 1946 by a cattleman named Paul Fagan. It literally saved the town of Hana. When the last of the sugar plantations closed, the entire area suffered. That's when Fagan got the idea to build a small but luxurious hotel to try to attract tourists. When he got a baseball team to hold their practices in the area, it created jobs not just at the hotel, but throughout the village. The Hotel Hana-Maui was a luxurious 1950s-style hotel, not Beverly Hills luxury, but better. There was a definite
Kon-Tiki
Pacific Rim atmosphere, old Hawaii. Spyder and I stayed in the Manager's House, a small addition that was even more private than the hotel and had a private pool. Our room had this wild and colorful Hawaiian-print wallpaper, woven mats hanging on the wall, and beautiful fresh flowers and linens. Every detail felt like paradise.

The woman we talked to about wedding arrangements was named Mary Estrella. From the moment we introduced ourselves, we knew this had been the right decision. Our names meant nothing to her.
Nothing
. After dealing with fame for the last three years, we were only too ready to be anonymous. The best thing of all was that even if the people in Hana
had
heard of you, they didn't care about it. All Mary Estrella really knew about us was that we were there to get married. She handed us a huge ring of keys and told us we'd need to look around to find the place where we wanted our ceremony.

“Why do we need keys?” I asked.

“'Cause you gotta go through the pastures, and we don't want to let the cattle out. Just lock the gates as you go around.”

Oh yeah. We were in the right place.

“We've got three churches,” she continued. “But people like to get married on the land. You can just look around.”

So the next day we went looking. There are about seven hundred people in Hana, mostly local Hawaiians. For tourists visiting Maui,
the road to Hana is a popular trip and people are welcomed to the town Hana-style. But because most people only stay for an hour or so and drive back the same day, it's still very quiet and peaceful there. Things are done in the old ways. There are no car washes, no dry cleaners, no movie theaters. The people grow their own vegetables and hang their clothes on a line outside. There are no streetlights. Cattle wander around in the streets, and if they are in your way, you just stop the car and let them take their time. People are never late because of traffic (if they are on a time schedule, which they rarely are); if someone is late, it's because of cattle standing in the road.

Just being around the town on that first day, we could tell that this was a truly special place. In the last three years, we'd been around the world, stayed in countless hotels, flown on planes, driven around on buses, but we'd never been to a place like this. It was a place without complications, without egos. A sacred place where we could finally catch our breath—even if only for a few days.

Spyder and I spent the next two days driving around in a little Jeep, looking for a place to get married. We looked everywhere, not because we couldn't find the perfect place, but because it was so beautiful we wanted to search out every pasture, unlock every gate. We saw several mountains—every cliff, waterfall, stream, pond, and hallowed spot. Finally we decided on a site by the Leho'ula cliffs.

Next, we needed to meet with Reverend Henry Kahula, the minister of the nondenominational Wainanalua Church. Spyder and I are both Catholic, but since I had gotten a divorce, we knew that no priest would marry us. Henry Kahula had two jobs. He was both a minister and a mechanic at the only gas station in Hana. Mary Estrella told us how to find him.

“You go on down to the Chevron station and look around. He'll be there.”

So we walked in and called his name. He rolled out on a dolly from underneath a truck. Henry Kahula was a big man with huge hands
and a big smile. Still stretched out on the dolly, he told us he was only too happy to officiate, just needed a few details, like what time, if we had witnesses, and whether we wanted a Hawaiian ceremony. We explained that we'd already asked a couple of people who worked at the hotel, Louisa Pu and Les Mederios, to be matron of honor and best man, and that yes, we'd love to have a Hawaiian ceremony. The best part was, Reverend Kahula never got off the dolly during the entire conversation.

There were no stores in Hana to shop at for wedding-appropriate dresses, so I wore the white lace dress I'd brought with me. I married the love of my life wearing an $82 dress, and it couldn't have been more perfect. Spyder and I both had leis around our necks and
po'o
garlands of flowers on our heads. We had flower petals from the local gardens strewn around on the cliff. It was a spectacular day for a wedding. The sun was shining over Maui. The birds were flying and waves were crashing against the cliff. It was February 20, 1982, and we both knew that we would forever be tied to that island paradise.

We stayed at the Hotel Hana-Maui for a couple of days of honeymooning, loving the isolation and each other. It was amazing to realize that we were married at long last and that we'd moved so quickly to put the past year of separation behind us.

Flying back to Los Angeles for the Grammy awards, a jolt of reality began to set in. Of course it was thrilling to be there, but for the last week we'd been as close to paradise as either of us ever had been—both literally and spiritually. Returning home to an awards show would be a cruel awakening. At least this time, Spyder would be there to kiss me if I won.