get out of my mind, that the child I was carrying had my brother’s soul. Pat was trying to come back into the world. As I lay there I had a very clear sense of the child’s life. I saw it like a series of snapshots. I could see his face—he had my brother’s soulful, big blue eyes.
In the morning we’d catch a plane to Italy. This was my last chance to change my mind, to keep the baby and tell Patrick to go to hell. I asked for a sign, something clear and incontrovertible that would leave no doubt as to the course of action I had to take. It was a completely clear night and out of nowhere a huge bank of clouds appeared and covered the moon for a full minute. I began to weep. I’d been trying to act as if Patrick’s indifference didn’t matter, as if things would somehow work out in the end. Lying there in the darkness I knew that there would be no fairy-tale ending. I wasn’t ready to raise a child on my own. My chest felt tight, my heart felt like water-laden cloth, clinging and heavy. I’d made my decision. I would be losing a whole person’s existence, I’d be denying my brother the chance to come back into the world, and I cried and cried because I didn’t know if there would ever be another chance after that, if his soul would ever want to come back to me again.
When I ran out of tears and my whole body was numb from the cold, I got up, wiped away the smeared mascara, and went back inside. I put on a smile for Patrick and his friends. He was laughing and drinking. He hadn’t missed me at all.
In the morning we traveled on to Rome. We were shooting
I couldn’t confide in anybody because I didn’t want to appear unprofessional and no one was supposed to know I was pregnant. I was very self-conscious, because all my clothes were tight fighting—think gold lame jumpsuits—and I was starting to show. It didn’t help that I was sharing wardrobe space with Shari Shattuck, who had a gorgeous figure. Shari and I starred together in the 1990 film
Patrick found me a doctor who looked older than the Coliseum. This was Italy in the ’80s, a conservative, Roman Catholic country where abortion was illegal. You had to have connections to find a doctor who would perform the procedure. That day I learned firsthand how important it is to have both a surgeon and an anesthetist. The guy put me under for what was supposed to be eight minutes, and I regained consciousness after eight hours. He’d over-anesthetized me. It was all a big secret, so the next day I had to don my gold lame jumpsuit and go back to work, having nearly died and minus one child.
That experience changed me. I started building an emotional wall to protect myself. Watching my parents as I grew up, I knew what I wanted, and it wasn’t what they had. I wanted to have a nice house and perfect little children, one boy and one girl, and a relationship with a smart, handsome guy who respected my need for independence. That was my dream. After the abortion, I knew I couldn’t take that for granted, that in opening yourself up to a partner you were just as likely to be run through with a knife as embraced. Patrick made me wary of love, and after being forced to give up my baby I never wanted to go through something like that again.
Unsurprisingly, after we returned to L.A. things started to unravel with Patrick. The abortion wasn’t the death knell of our relationship though, because I wanted to be there for Justine. That little girl needed me. Out of nowhere Patrick told me he was sending her back to Paris to live with her mother. I was hurt and outraged. I’d lost one baby to this relationship already and now I felt as if I was losing another. Of course I had no legal rights, and no real way to protest what he was doing. By that time I had raised Justine for almost two years, and he didn’t even give me the chance to talk things over. It was done, decision made.
He told Justine to say goodbye to me before he took her to the airport. She cried and clung to me and wouldn’t let go.
“I don’t want to go away. What did I do, Mommy? Why are you making me go?”
She kept on asking that again and again until Patrick pulled her away. I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life, a lot of physical and emotional pain, but that moment was truly heartbreaking. I’ve never experienced anything else like it.
Once Justine was gone I couldn’t eat or sleep because I was so worried for her. I wasn’t given her phone number in Paris, so I sent her letters and presents, little reminders of our life together. I never received a reply.
I’m not sure why he did it. Perhaps he was jealous of the bond I was forming with her, perhaps he thought that Justine was coming between us. If he really thought that, he was stupid, because after he sent her away I left him.
I was due to move out while Patrick was away at another festival in Europe. In the meantime I’d been cast in the Adam Rifkin film
“Absolutely. Mi casa es su casa.”
The crew rolled in. Lawrence Bender of
It turned out that when Adam said “experimental” he really meant it. I can’t remember there being a script at all, and Charlie Sheen was credited as the writer. He narrated parts of the story in a voiceover and contributed some of his own original poetry to the project. Even then he was developing his unique talent for self-expression. Here’s an example of some of his freeform poetry from the movie:
Since there was no script, Valerie and I improvised our scenes. I would rant about my asshole husband who’d cheated on me, and Adam would cut to a picture of Patrick and me that was still up on the mantelpiece.
It was amusing enough at the time, but the icing on the cake came a year later when I ran into Patrick at Cannes. He’d just seen a screening of the movie and was totally perplexed.
“How did my house get into a movie? Why was there a picture of us? When did it all happen?”
I just shrugged, smiled, and walked on. In hindsight, it was the act of a twenty-one-year-old striking back at the older man who’d hurt her, but I don’t mind telling you that at the time it was beyond satisfying.
I ran into Patrick again in 2007 at Bill Panzer’s wake. Bill was the producer and creator of the
I’d had a gorgeous outdoor mirror that my mother bought me for my very first apartment. It wasn’t expensive, but it was tall and beautiful with carved corners, and it looked perfect next to Patrick’s swimming pool. Twenty years and that was the first thing he could think to say? Perhaps losing that piece of pretty glass was a reminder that he’d also lost the girl that went with it.
