Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway (50 page)

 

A nurse stepped into the nursery and gently picked up Tina. I followed her to Marie’s room and stood at the doorway watching the two of them, watching Marie hold her daughter as if they were the only two people in the world. As the nurse left, Marie looked up and saw me. A troubled look flickered across her face, and then she looked quickly down at her baby again. I felt like I was violating a precious moment. The urge to hide my face and run out of the hospital came over me. Instead, in a quiet voice, I said, “Hello, Marie.”

 

“Hi, Cherie.”

 

“She’s beautiful.”

 

Marie smiled at that. “Isn’t she?” she said, her voice dripping with wonder. Marie, the new mother, looked tired. She looked up to me again and asked, “How are you?”

 

“Fine.”

 

We remained in silence for a moment, the only sound the tiny, almost musical cooing of Tina. There was a wall between Marie and me. Her guard was up, and although she was only feet away from me, the gulf between us seemed unbridgeable. I thought briefly of that rainy day when she drove off, leaving me covered in mud, drunk and high, because she couldn’t bear to watch her twin sister debasing herself any more. She couldn’t watch her twin sister kill herself in this most humiliating of ways for one more day. I suppose that she was even allowing me in the room after all of that was a tiny miracle of its own.

 

“I’m sober,” I said.

 

“That’s nice.”

 

“I mean I’m really sober. For good this time.”

 

“I’m glad for you,” Marie said icily.

 

Of course, she didn’t believe me. How could she? Nothing could really make her believe except the evidence of her own eyes. How long would be long enough? Thirty days? Sixty? When do you realize that something is forever? All I knew was that I had to stay true to my promise, and live my life without drugs or alcohol. Then, maybe one day . . .

 

I looked at Tina. She was smiling and gurgling, and seemed more content than any human being in the world. She was so beautiful, so innocent and pure. All I knew was that I wanted her to remain this way forever. Of course, I wanted to ask Marie if I could hold her, but I didn’t dare. If she had said no, I didn’t think I would be able to take it.

 

“I really am through with drugs, Marie. And alcohol, too. I mean it. I even quit smoking.”

 

“That’s nice, Cherie,” she said again.

 

I felt stupid for even saying it. There was no use trying to convince her with words. Words are cheap. Maybe Marie knew me better than I know myself. Or maybe she just knew the old me. This new me, who was emerging blinking into the light after ten years of being scared, in pain, numb, and consumed by sadness was new to me, too. We’d have to get to know each other all over again. That would take time, though. But I held on to the hope that someday, some way, my sister would be able to forgive me. That I’d be able to forgive her. That maybe I’d even be able to forgive myself.

 

I wanted that more than anything else in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 34

 

The End of the Ride

 

 

 

 

It was June and the days were getting longer. The sun rose in the mornings and fell at night with a reassuring regularity. The passage of time no longer seemed daunting to me. Without cocaine, pills, and alcohol ruling my existence, the clocks actually started to make sense again. I had been clean for three months, and I was no longer a neon blur in the fast lane. I was no longer the Cherry Bomb. I was plain old Cherie Currie again, and I liked it.

 

For the past three months, I had been attending twelve-step meetings twice a day. I felt healthier and happier than I could remember feeling in a long, long time. My old friends, the friends who knew me from the days when I was the ultimate party girl, would sometimes laugh and tell me that I didn’t need those meetings anymore. “You’re clean!” they would tell me. “So why do you keep going?” I’d just smile, because they didn’t understand. Not really. I was smart enough to realize that if I didn’t keep going to those meetings, at least for now, there was a very good chance that I would use again. It might just have been a glass of wine or a line of coke that somebody offered me at a party, but I knew how easily I could convince myself that one line, or one drink, was okay.

 

It was amazing to me how all of the alcoholics and the drug addicts that I met in those rooms seemed to have stories similar to my own. They might have been mailmen, nurses, doctors, or musicians, but their addictive behavior almost always followed an identical pattern. When I heard them speak about their experiences, it confirmed for me that one drink or pill or line would take me right back to where I started. With every day of hard-won sobriety, the stakes got bigger. With each passing day, I stood to lose more and more if I decided to use again. No—I did not want to start over. I did not want to ever feel that horrible sickness, that utter and incomprehensible demoralization, again. The meetings were my way of ensuring that this didn’t happen.

 

I took a job at a place called Designer Linen in the Topanga Canyon Plaza Mall. The first-ever “real” job of my life. When the man asked me what I wanted an hour, I didn’t have a clue how much to ask for. Unsure, I mumbled, “Two fifty?” He smiled and was more than happy to oblige. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I found out that the legal minimum wage was $3.25. I was making less than Marie used to make at the Pup ’n’ Taco. At times, that was difficult. Never in my life did I have to work so hard for so little. It felt slightly embarrassing to have a job in a mall after everything I had achieved in the past ten years . . . but I wanted it. I wanted to feel normal for once in my young adult life, and it made me proud to stand on my own two feet. That was what was most important to me, not what anybody else thought about it. To me, it was an adventure. An adventure in reality and humility. I was able to take home eighty dollars a week, and all of that money went to help Aunt Evie with the groceries. After everything that she had done for me, this small form of restitution made the petty annoyances of working at the linen store feel worthwhile.

 

I was the only person working at the store except the owner, and often the work was backbreaking. My boss was an olive-skinned man with a heavy Arabic accent. One day I confronted him about my salary, angry that he hadn’t informed me about the minimum wage when I’d applied. He laughed, and said it had shocked him that I’d asked for so little, and gave me a raise on the spot. “I was just giving you what you asked for!” He smiled. He was awful, really. But there was nothing else in the world I needed to be doing more than working there. Working at the mall gave my life structure. The sun rose at six, and I was up by seven. I was at work by nine and home at six. It might seem strange, but this kind of routine was completely alien to me.

 

I was “paying my dues,” plain and simple. I needed to. I wanted to touch the face of reality; I wanted to look with pure crystal clarity at how close I had come to dying. To candy-coat it in any way would be a travesty, and I knew that it could possibly lead me on the road to destruction once again.

 

When I was fifteen years old, I imagined that I could just jump into being a rock star, and never have to struggle for it. It was like one of those rides at the carnival where the bottom drops away and you’re stuck against the wall, spinning wildly, feeling sick and disoriented, unable to get off or even move until the ride stops. When you finally get off a ride like that, you have to grab onto a wall or a pole, just to get your balance back. I thought of the job at Designer Linen as my pole.

 

One day I was folding and stacking linens when a familiar face came into the store. I looked at her, and then froze. She didn’t recognize me at first. Of course, she wouldn’t have; she would never have expected to see me in these circumstances, working at a linen store in the Topanga Plaza Mall. She noticed me staring, but I guess she was well used to people staring at her. Everybody recognized her in those days. It was strange to think that I’d beat her out for the role in Foxes.

 

She stopped, looked again, and then her eyes opened wide in recognition. “Cherie? Is that . . . you?”

 

“Hi, Rosanna,” I said quietly. I had become friends with Rosanna Arquette because of my brother-in-law Steve Lukather and Toto (the song “Rosanna” was written about her).

 

There was a mix of emotions when Rosanna came over to me. Shame? Maybe just a little, but it wasn’t shame for what I was doing there—working like other normal, everyday people do every day. It was what got me there that made me ashamed. The urge to run away came over me for a moment, but I told myself that there was nothing to be ashamed of. I was much more proud of myself in those days than I had been in a long, long time. I may have thought of myself as the glitter queen in the distant past, but in those days I was the unhappiest I had ever been. Today my happiness did not depend on what other people thought of me. It did not come from a pipe, vial, or a bottle of booze.

 

“Cherie . . .” Rosanna was looking at me with this bemused amazement on her face. “Cherie! What on earth are you doing here?”

 

“Working,” I said, giving her my proudest smile.

 

“But . . . but what about your music? What about your acting?”

 

I shrugged calmly. “There’ll be time for that again,” I said. “Just not right now.”

 

“Well . . .” I could see that she was totally caught off guard by this, and she was struggling to find the right thing to say. “Well . . . you look great. You look really great, Cherie.”

 

“Thanks!”

 

That was a compliment that I really needed. Since getting clean, I had put on twenty-five pounds, and looked healthier and more alive than I had in years. It was nice to get the reassurance.

 

“I feel great,” I told her. “You know, I’ve been off drugs for six months now.” I didn’t mind telling her that. It was no great secret that I used drugs, and to be honest, it seemed that everyone in Hollywood had a drug problem of one kind or another. Hollywood people would admit to being drug addicts long before they’d admit to having plastic surgery. “I’m in the twelve-step program,” I added.

 

She reached across the counter and took my hand. She smiled warmly and said, “Good for you.” Then she laughed slightly. “I know plenty of people who should be doing what you’re doing.”

 

“I saw your last movie. You were great.”

 

Actually, I’d seen all of the movies she’d been in. Desperately Seeking Susan, Silverado . . . Rosanna was a fantastic actress. In the early days of my sobriety, it was hard to watch movies, especially any movies that starred contemporaries of mine. It reminded me too much of what I had lost. It made me realize that I could have had roles like that if I hadn’t let drugs tear my career apart. But I made myself get over it. That was ego, pure and simple, and those kinds of thoughts always led nowhere.

 

“So, how’s Marie?”

 

“She’s fine.”

 

It still wasn’t easy to think about Marie. There was a lot of unresolved hurt there. Something had profoundly altered between us. Sometimes I wondered if we would ever be able to get back to just being sisters, without any of the bullshit that went on between us, poisoning the air.

 

“Have you seen the baby yet?” I asked.

 

“Not yet. Soon, though.”

 

“Excuse me, Cherie! I need you!”

 

That was my boss. He hustled over, ranting and raving as usual. Whenever this happened, the urge to tell him to stick his lousy job would come over me, but I always resisted. The old Cherie would have done that and not thought twice about it. But I didn’t want to be the old Cherie anymore.

 

“Come on! Ring her up! No time for conversation!”

 

I smiled at Rosanna, and she handed me her linens. I could see that the fact that I was waiting on her made her feel uncomfortable. It didn’t bother me, though. Not even my pain-in-the-ass boss, standing over me and glowering at us, could ruin my mood.

 

Before she left, I made eye contact with Rosanna for a moment that seemed to last a lot longer than it really did. I handed her the bag.

 

“You know what, Cherie?” Rosanna said to me. “You have a lot of guts.”

 

I smiled my thanks at her and watched her walk out toward the entrance, back to a life that—for now—I was no longer a part of.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 35

 

This Side of Forever

 

 

 

 

Ventura Boulevard never changes. Not really. New buildings go up, old ones come down, but the landmarks remain pretty much the same. Everybody who lives in the Valley has their own landmarks along Ventura Boulevard, and I’d guess that no two people have the same ones. I was pondering this as I took a trip down that boulevard on my way from Aunt Evie’s place to Studio City. The warm morning air felt good against my face as it blew through the open windows of my car.

 

Two years sober. This was quite an achievement. The idea that I could abstain from drugs and alcohol for two whole years would have seemed impossible to me once upon a time. But today, I was there.