Still Talking (36 page)

“How can I stop my slide?” he told me my act was all wrong.

I was devastated. He had to know the self-doubts that would start: Am I too old for those jokes? Can I find another persona? Is this the end? My husband hit at what was sustaining me to that point. If the act was wrong, I was the reason we were in trouble.

I realized that this man, who had built his life on being my champion, had turned against me. I had become his Barry Diller. The frustration, the fear, directed at Fox, had now swung onto me, and his deep, simmering anger was like a slow-motion bomb. Even the simplest exchanges became loaded and dangerous.

I was confused by this new, huge black force in our relationship. For the first time, barely able to hold myself together, I found myself wanting to strike back at him. We had come so far together, been so good together, had one goal in business, one thought, one brain. I wanted to break this destructive pattern.

The next morning I went shopping by myself and left Edgar a note: Life is so good to us-let’s not reach a point where we can’t enjoy it-and enjoy it together. I love youand need you.

But Edgar had gone far beyond my reach. He was in a pathological world of his own. That afternoon he stood in the lobby at Claridges and told the manager of the hotel, “I lived here as a boy. My uncle was Jack Hilton, and I lived with him.” Total fantasy. The next day-with my career apparently finished-he went to his tailor and was fitted for five suits and ordered a dozen pairs of handmade shoes. I was scared, scared, scared.

My own fantasy was that on this trip, away from Hollywood and our troubles, we could heal each other-sleep and relax, have fun, get well. But in Ireland, Edgar only grew sicker. He hated the place-and his rage, his terror, his need to control, poisoned everything we did. Everything was wrong, was ugly. He complained constantly of feeling ill-that his sleeping pill had not worn off, that his stomach hurt. If this man were sitting in heaven, he would have criticized the clouds.

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Then, on our second night in Dublin, we were invited by the American ambassador for dinner. Edgar’s health was miraculously restored. He was in his element. He was wonderful, my husband again-brilliant, articulate, charming, warm. During the meal the ambassador, Margaret Heckler, asked everybody around the table to tell his thoughts on Ireland. One was a prominent Irish poet, but the most eloquent was Edgar, who quoted Yeats and then said we felt so welcomed that from now on we would never hear the word “Ireland” without realizing that it really means “Our Land.” Sitting there, I thought, That’s why I loved you-and suffered a rush of overpowering sadness.

The next day he was back in his misery. A single, small moment summed up my despair. One evening I paused in the hotel lobby to hear the piano player perform songs from The Phantom of the Opera. Instantly Edgar was saying, “Come on. Come on. Let’s go. ” I thought, Is this going to be my life? Now I wasn’t even allowed a second of pleasure. I knew then that he was going down and taking me with him.

Edgar kept postponing the best day of the trip-the drive to Blarney Castle to kiss the stone-until it was our last in Ireland. This was to be my absolute high point, the adventure I had looked forward to since the trip was planned, the escape from myself that would have bolstered me for weeks.

Well, I never had that adventure. The night before we were to go, Edgar woke me up to say he thought he might be bleeding internally. At 2:30 A.M.

I took him to a hospital, where three Irish nurses clucked over him. He basked in their attention. Feeling better, he refused to spend the night, and made plans to come back the next day. Goodbye, Blarney stone. After he was tested, the doctor came to me and said, “There’s nothing wrong.”

Moving Edgar by a wheelchair that he requested, we returned to New York and the Westbury Hotel. I had to leave the next day for three days on the road-one in upstate New York, one in Rhode Island, and one in Connecticut.

Help was arranged to get Edgar to the plane and directly to his doctor, Elsie Giorgi in Los Angeles. Traveling to upstate New York, I was close to tears most of the day. I had no peace with Edgar or without him.

Two nights later my agent called me in my dressing room. Fox wanted me to come back and do my show one week a month. They had finally realized that it had been a success. This should have been a moment of vindication. A triumph. To my surprise, I simply felt sad. And amazed. Could Barry not realize what he had done to Edgar and me? Or maybe show business is all business. I turned down the offer by setting impossible conditions.

Then came a new hammer blow. That night I telephoned Edgar and asked, “Are you all right? What did the doctor say?” He answered, “I canceled the appointment. I’m feeling fine.”

When I heard this, something inside me snapped. I had been trying to be a good wife to a husband who was breaking down, a man riding in wheelchairs through airports with a blanket on his lap, hurrying to get to his doctor.

And he had not even troubled to keep his appointment.

In New York on Sunday I had one happy day of relief meeting my two friends Kenneth Battelle and Tommy Corcoran. They said, “Let’s play!” So we walked and ate and laughed. Just these few hours of freedom felt like the treatment for a nervous breakdown when they slip you into a warm tub. I felt as if I were twentythree again.

That evening I had dinner with Tommy, such a dear friend, so funny, always there when I needed him. I poured out all my misery, and he, who had known Edgar and me for thirty years, kept saying, “It can’t go on like this. He’s got to get serious help.”

Monday morning, August 10, I flew to Los Angeles. My day of freedom, of normal, natural pleasure, had put my life with Edgar in perspective, confirmed how sick we both were. I finally acknowledged to myself that our house would henceforth be his kingdom with one subject: me.

As I always did, I telephoned Edgar from the car to say I had landed safely. But this time my deepest feelings finally came to the fore. “Edgar, we’ve got to get major

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help because we can’t live like this. We’re falling apart. We must get help.”

Edgar could not believe what I was saying. “We can handle it ourselves,” he insisted. But this time I was determined. He told me to come home, and we would talk it over. I said, “You must go into psychotherapy-and both of us will begin marriage counseling. “

He rejected therapy, saying the man he was seeing was ridiculous. He kept telling me we could work it out ourselves. I told him, “I don’t have the strength to help you. I don’t even have enough strength for myself. ” He said, “I’m not going into any deep therapy.”

A wise friend of mine once told me that people only make real changes in their lives when they feel their backs up against the wall. I finally understood what she meant. “You cannot do this to Melissa, to me, to yourself.” I told him, “I will not come home until you get help.” I drove right past our road and on to the Century Plaza Hotel.

That night I was so frantic, so frightened, that I slept in my clothes. I knew this was my last stand.

The next morning Edgar telephoned to tell me he had reconsidered. He would do as I asked, but first he wanted to go to Philadelphia. Melissa had persuaded him that talking it out with Tom Pileggi would be helpful. I was tremendously relieved. His dearest friend, so totally rational, could insure that Edgar got the help he needed.

On the eleventh Edgar telephoned his estate lawyer and told him he thought he and I might be getting a divorce, and he wanted to change his will, leaving to Melissa his share of our property, which under California law was half of everything we had. The lawyer explained that this was impossible. Nothing could be changed without the agreement of both spouses.

That morning Edgar flew to Philadelphia. He arrived at Tom’s construction office with file folders containing records of everything we owned, every piece of silver, every bank account, every insurance policy. During the next three days Edgar made Tom Pileggi go through every paper in every folder in the minutest detail, discussing the

values and dispositions. Tom told me later, “My brain felt like five hundred pounds, the pressure was so great. I didn’t think I was going to last.”

On those same days I was back at work trying to feel good about myself, trying to get my life back in gear. I had a lunch on Wednesday with the producers of Hollywood Squares. They wanted me to come on the show, but were telling me very nicely I was not going to be the star. Part of me was choking down tears of humiliation. But another part of me was thrilled to be doing it, thrilled to have somebody want me. I will be grateful to Rick Rosner and Ernie DiMassa forever. God bless them.

On Wednesday I talked to Edgar several times, arguing now about what kind of help he should get. His doctor, Elsie Giorgi, wanted to put him in a hospital psychiatric unit, but he refused, still terrified of facing himself.

Yet even in the midst of these terrible discussions, there was a wonderful grace note. Edgar said, “Did you see the new painting that came in? Isn’t it great?” I said, “Yes, fabulous. I hung it in the guest room,” and then we were back into our awfulness-“Edgar, we’ve got to save ourselves.” But now I thought things would be all right, thought we were still playing the old games by the old rules: You’re wrong-No, you’re wrong-Kiss, kiss, see you Tuesday.

During that talk Edgar said, “I’m so depressed I’m going to kill myself. “

Of course I did not take him seriously. I remember making a flip joke: “Don’t do it till Friday, because Thursday I’m going under anesthesia. “

And I was in fact going into the hospital for a minor liposuction operation, which I decided to have done after the Fox show came to an end. He laughed.

In my family, suicide was an abstract concept. I never thought anybody would kill himself; there’s a lot of talk and a half hour later you have a good sandwich and life’s not so impossible. I thought Edgar was bottoming outas I was-and now would get help, begin a total cure, brain and body. I thought then that he had tried pressing the usual buttons-“I’m sick. She’ll worry about me”-

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and suddenly the buttons weren’t working, so he upped the ante. I told my closest friends, and, like me, they all thought it was another ploy to bring me flying to his side, everything forgotten-and with my capacity for guilt, he’d keep me locked to him forever.

Even his own psychiatrist, who was speaking to him by phone in Philadelphia, told me he didn’t think Edgar was in danger. None of us thought Edgar was that kind of man. We all thought he was too much of a control freak, had too much pride to say, “I’ve lost,” was too rational for suicide-which he used to call “a permanent solution to temporary problems.”

Nobody wanted to believe it.

Edgar made the same suicide threat to Tom Pileggi, but Tom was smarter than all of us. He immediately called me, wanting to check Edgar into a Philadelphia hospital. Edgar refused. “I won’t do anything foolish,” he told Tom.

Alarmed, Melissa and I went in person to see Edgar’s psychiatrist, who said he thought Edgar was not as unhappy as we did, said he was in a regular depression and would not do anything drastic. But we should get him back to Los Angeles. Finally Edgar agreed to fly back on Friday and check into a hospital. Tom arranged for the security man to check his hotel room every hour all night in the meantime.

Tom believed deep down that Edgar was not serious. He considered Edgar too full of ambition to want to end his life; he was a man, in Tom’s words, “who lived life, who wanted to achieve everything, be everything, own everything.” That night as they parted, Edgar again promised not to do anything foolish.

No one person knew all the signals that had been accumulating, and only in retrospect do I see the pattern. Weeks before we left for England, he must have considered suicide as an option. One of our staff stole wine and money, and I found out later that Edgar claimed his stock of tranquilizers and sleeping pills had been taken and made the doctor duplicate them all.

On the weekend after we returned, while I was still East, he summoned our accountant, Michael Karlin, to the

house to discuss some items, but was really only interested in being certain the life insurance and estate planning were in perfect order.

On the other hand, nearly a week later, he telephoned Dorothy and asked her to arrange limousines to take him to the Philadelphia airport on Friday and pick him up in Los Angeles. He had a doctor waiting to take him to the Cedars-Sinai hospital to check him physically before he went into therapy.

He asked Dorothy to arrange for the accountant to see him at the house at 9:00 A.M. Saturday and have a limo to take him to the hospital at 10:00.

Also one of Gavin DeBecker’s guards should be posted at his hospital-room door. He must have been as confused as the rest of us.

On Thursday afternoon Edgar phoned Melissa, told her he was coming home on Friday, and promised her he would do no harm to himself. He was in Tom Pileggi’s Warrington, Pennsylvania, office. Tom, worn out by Edgar, had decided to join his family at their house on the Jersey shore. He and Edgar had agreed to meet the next day for breakfast. Edgar promised again not to do anything foolish, and Tom told me later, “I believed him. I thought he would never lie to me. ” When Edgar asked Tom to call off the hourly security checks at the hotel and give him a good night’s sleep, Tom agreed.

As Tom escorted his friend from his office to the limousine, Edgar picked up a nickel and two pennies off the sidewalk and said, “Look, I’ve thrown a seven.” Edgar put the coins back into his own pocket, hugged and kissed Tom, and got into the car. The driver took him into Philadelphia to a barber shop, where the barber shaved off his beard. On his way back to the hotel Edgar had the driver stop while he bought a small recorder and three blank tapes.