On the ride back from Schenectady, I don’t recall Tommy and me discussing what had just happened. Perhaps he knew that I saw the purity and power of the fans—that I’d discovered how their love couldn’t be controlled. It is fans who create a phenomenon, not record-company executives. Tommy was smart. He knew. But I don’t know if he realized that after that moment, I finally did too.
We arrived at the farmhouse, and all I wanted to do was take a bath. Being a performer is a production. You build up and put on, you strategize, manipulate, accommodate, and shape-shift. It requires rituals (sometimes in the form of bad habits) to return yourself back to yourself. My ritual was to wash the performer off. The addition of a large tub facing an expansive picture window was one of the few contributions I got to make to Hillsjail. The bathroom was my refuge, since putting a camera or intercom in there would’ve been a bit much, even for Tommy. The cool marble tile sent a soothing sensation through my bare feet, which had been hoisted up in heels all night. I lazily peeled off my ensemble, thankful that the sound of the water running was the only one I heard. I lowered the overhead lights and ceremoniously lit a few white candles. The water was welcoming, and I surrendered. As if being baptized, I submerged my head and lingered in the warm, dark quiet. I gently rose up, tilted my head back, and propped my arms along the edge of the massive basin, eyelids still shut, savoring every moment of this calm solitude. Slowly I opened my eyes to a radiant full moon, glowing against a clear, blue-black sky. Softly I began to sing: “Da, da, da, da, da…”
Images of the scene I had just left—adoring fans screaming and crying—flashed through my mind, blending with painful recollections of my brother screaming and my mother crying, of myself as a lonely little girl in a neglected dress. I was floating in a tub that was larger than the size of my entire living area just five years before, in a room bigger than all of the living rooms in all of the thirteen places I lived with my mother growing up. The enormity, complexity, and instability of the road I had traveled to get into this bath hit me. It was the first time I felt safe enough to go back and peek in on Mariah, the little one, and recognize what she had survived. And suddenly, the first verse and chorus of “Close My Eyes” came to me:
I was a wayward child
With the weight of the world
That I held deep inside.
Life was a winding road
And I learned many things
Little ones shouldn’t know
But I closed my eyes
Steadied my feet on the ground
Raised my head to the sky
And the times rolled by
Still I feel like a child
As I look at the moon
Maybe I grew up
A little too soon.
It would take me years to finish this song—years of anguish and survival.
MY BIG FAT SONY WEDDING (AND LITTLE SKINNY HONEYMOON)
To announce our engagement, Tommy and I took my mother to a swanky dinner in midtown Manhattan. As we walked outside after the meal, the city was all dressed up in its evening wear of bright lights and flashing billboards, and I showed her the engagement ring, a Cartier tricolor gold band with an immaculate, modest-sized diamond. It was understated, but it was also Cartier. My mother looked at the delicate, dazzling ring on my slender (and very young) finger and quietly said, “You deserve it.”
That was it. She got into the limo I had waiting for her and rode away. I never really knew what she meant by that. But that was all that was left between us. There was no womanly advice or girlish giggles—which, honestly, I didn’t expect, but I did think the occasion called for more than a one-liner.
Many reasonable people have questioned why I married Tommy. But none of them questioned the decision more than I did. I knew I would lose more power as a person, and I was already completely suffocating emotionally in the relationship. We were equally yoked to each other through the music and the business. However, the personal power dynamic between us was never equal. He convinced me that everything would be better if we were married, that things would be different. But what I really hoped was that he would be different—that if I gave him this thing he so adamantly wanted, this marriage that I believed he thought would legitimize him, or quell chatter about him having an affair with an artist on the label, it would change him. I was never completely sure why he wanted to get married so badly. I prayed that in doing so he would calm down and loosen his vise grip on my life. I hoped maybe he would trust his “wife” and let her breathe.
I was in my early twenties, just a few years removed from the shack, and the concept of a life that included both personal and professional fulfillment was unfathomable to me. I truly believed that I was not worthy of both happiness and success. I was accustomed to making all my life choices based on survival.
Back then, I didn’t choose what glamorous outfit to wear each morning; I chose what survival mechanism I needed to arm myself with that day. More than my personal happiness, I needed my career as an artist to survive. Happiness was secondary. Happiness was a fleeting bonus. I married Tommy because I thought it was the only way for me to survive in that relationship. I saw the power he could
