Call Girl Confidential

by Rebecca Kade

  For the most part, she left my fourteen-year-old sister to finish raising me. And once that happened, everything changed. We went to the junior high school in town. We didn’t go to church four days a week anymore. We could have friends come into our house for the first time, without fear.

  But not before the most amazing thing happened, especially for two girls who had lived in such a strict household. My mother sent us to Europe. She had planned this trip for all four of us. The air tickets were nonrefundable; the hotel reservations had been made. “Go,” she told us. “Your father would want you to. Here’s the itinerary.”

  So, at the ages of thirteen and fourteen, we were suddenly set free on another continent. My sister led me through Paris, London, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. I remember visiting Anne Frank’s house with sadness; going to see the rock musical Starlight Express; skiing on Mount Jungfrau; and walking through the beautiful fields of flowers back to the Hotel Regina in Wengen, Switzerland.

  After growing up in a virtual prison, here we were, teenagers trekking around Europe, managing our bags, catching planes, checking into hotels, ordering dinner. Never once were we questioned. Perhaps European concierges are used to boarding-school students; perhaps they thought we would soon meet up with our parents. My mother didn’t seem to worry about us, as she was solely focused on our father. She had always been about serving our father, and we were on our own away from our parents for the first time. We were only too ecstatic to have freedom, and after observing the haute life of Europe, I yearned for more. And when I got back, it seemed that my friend Nancy Ann did too.

  Nancy Ann was the daughter of a farmer, and she blossomed early into a very voluptuous girl. Married men went after her and told her they loved her, but she did not succumb to their promises. She was very smart in that particular department. They would give her things. I watched it happen. I watched it happen in high school. Men wanted her and would do anything and give anything to get her attention.

  She started working as a stripper in a nearby town. I didn’t judge her as so many in town did. Only God can judge. I offered my friendship, but others were not that way, and one affair caused such a scandal that she fled. Eventually she ended up in New York City. I had already done the same thing.

  “You’ll come home in a body bag,” my mother had warned jokingly when I left town at age twenty, just one week after my birthday.

  Nancy Ann soon started modeling for Penthouse magazine as the featured centerfold, and then she was named Penthouse Pet of the Year. She called me. Penthouse owner Bob Guccione, who owned a mansion on the Upper East Side with a swimming pool inside surrounded by ancient Roman statuary, wanted to throw her a party. It was to be at the Chaos nightclub, and Nancy Ann pleaded, “Won’t you please come? I won’t know anybody!” I told her of course I would. I had just turned twenty-one and would be allowed in.

  I wasn’t sure what to wear to such an event, but a fashionista friend of mine who’d been in New York City longer went through her closet full of frocks. We decided on a long silver gown with a velvet bodice.

  Inside the club, there was a VIP area. “Do not let anyone sit here,” Nancy Ann sternly warned me. She didn’t want the usual gaggle of guys drooling over her on her special night. As we sat on a couch together observing the ogling men and giggling, I noticed she had a man’s name tattooed on her ring finger. She was dating a photographer and she said they were engaged. Nancy Ann was always going to marry someone. So the men were kept at bay.

  But then a man with longish hair, definitely older than I was, came into the VIP area, and for some reason Nancy Ann let him sit with us. I had no idea who he was. You see, because of the way I was raised, my sister and I weren’t allowed to watch TV until after my father had gotten sick, so I missed most of the music, movies, and TV shows of my generation, and I had never seen a music video in my home. I had seen them at a friend’s house. The only songs I knew were hymns and classical music, for the most part. I was a girl who didn’t “get” so many pop-culture references: people would mention movies, TV shows, actors I’d never heard of; they’d use catchphrases like “Excuuuuse me!” and everybody else would laugh and I wouldn’t know why. Sure, I was learning a lot being in New York now, but I had a lot to catch up on.

  We started talking. He was ten years older—I was twenty-one—and I didn’t find him particularly handsome. But he was very gentlemanly. He had impeccable manners. I did have a thing about manners. I had been used to guys hitting on me since I was fifteen. Other guys are always in your face, bragging about what they do. Mike wasn’t doing that. I do think he assumed I knew who he was. But I had no clue. Nancy had decided to leave, and he asked me out on a date. When we spoke on the phone a couple days later, he asked me, “What would you like to do? What are you interested in?” I was taken aback. I didn’t know; I was new to the city.

  He said, “I know what we should do.” I was relieved, and it was nice that he was taking the initiative by making a plan and not making me struggle to help figure one out. But it also meant I was at the mercy of his tastes.

  That night, he took me to the Blue Note on West Third Street in the Village to see McCoy Tyner. That was our first date. I remember wearing a long black skirt and a white jacket that I thought was cool at the time. Now I would be so embarrassed to be seen in it, but I had no sense of fashion. He never said anything about it. But at age twenty-one, a night of jazz at the Blue Note was definitely not my thing. In retrospect, I’m sure Mr. Tyner was great. But I wasn’t ready for it. This was not the right date for us. It should have been a clue for me: he was tone-deaf to anything I might really have enjoyed. Yet, he called and he wanted to go out again. I was twenty-one, in perfect shape, with natural light-blond hair to my hips. Gee, I wonder what he wanted . . .

  He asked me to dinner. He took me to Cent’Anni on Carmine Street in the West Village. I had never been to a really nice restaurant before. When we walked in, it was obvious they knew him, but I thought it was just because he went there often. And this was partly true.

  “What are you in the mood for?” the waiter asked. “We will make whatever you like, because you are our special guests.”

  I had never eaten off a menu in my life. Mike encouraged me to have whatever I wanted, and before long they brought me the thickest veal chops I had ever seen. The lighting was subtle, and the waitstaff made us feel that we were the center of the universe.

  The next time, he brought me to a dive bar on the Lower East Side—the self-consciously hip thing to do—but for him it was slumming, since he lived in a penthouse nearby on Houston Street. Girls kept coming up to him, gushing, “I love your songs! Can I have your autograph?”

  I looked at him quizzically.

  He asked, “Don’t you know who I am?” then said, “I’m Mike Black.”

  “I’m Rebecca Kade,” I replied quizzically.

  He said he was the lead singer of a rock band. I said, “Who are they?” He sang what I later realized was one of his hits, and added, “I’m kind of a big deal. People know who I am.” He actually said that. It was pitiful. Or hilarious. I was working at the Comic Strip comedy club at the time as an assistant to the owner, Lucien Hold. At the Comic Strip, Lucien had helped discover people like Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler. I went with Lucien to hang out backstage at Saturday Night Live and to go to the after parties. I met Darrell Hammond, Chevy Chase (rude),  Jimmy Fallon (great), Colin Quinn (wonderful), Conan O’Brien, Steven Tyler—all the hosts and musicians, just to name a few.

  Fame meant nothing to me. Character did. That’s what I told Mike, and he seemed to be a bit more respectful after that. For a while, anyway. We started dating seriously. At least, that’s what I thought! I hung out backstage at his shows, and he showered me with pricey but bohemian clothes and jewelry. I was leading the rock-chick life.

  A few months into our relationship, I got pregnant. It was on St. Patrick’s Day. We used protection, so I don’t know what happe
ned. That’s why I tell my daughter she was meant to be.

  SIX

  merry christmas, baby

  Mike’s band had a concert in New York at an intimate venue. I wasn’t supposed to go that night, but I showed up backstage to tell him the news. Lo and behold, there was another girl there. Somebody named Suzanne. I was already distraught, and now I was furious. Why wouldn’t I think there would be another woman?

  He pulled me into a dressing room and we sat on a bench.

  “You have to get an abortion,” he told me. “We’ll have plenty of time for the rest of our lives to have children.” Yeah, right. I ran out in tears and fled home in a cab.

  I called my mother. She was not happy. “You will have to raise this child, Rebecca. I am not going to.”

  I called my sister. It was the first of many drama calls we would have over the next few years.

  “You will have this baby,” Bridget insisted.

  I was scared. I was making just enough money to get me through living in New York as a young single woman. How was I going to raise a child? Clearly, Mike had made his choice, and I made my peace with that. I continued to spend time with him. He was extremely sweet to me, which I later realized was just a ploy to get me to do what he wanted. He was trying to make me believe that we would be together forever and that we would have plenty of opportunities to have children in the future.

  Despite his pressure, I was going to prenatal visits. My ob-gyn might have sensed how much Mike didn’t want this baby. The doctor said that no matter what I decided, he would do whatever I asked of him. So, one day, after nonstop pressure from Mike—after days of him telling me I was only twenty-one, that I had my whole life ahead of me, that we had our whole lives together in front of us—I broke down. He convinced me to have an abortion. He said there was still time. I called my ob-gyn and scheduled the “procedure.”

  Mike said that I was doing the right thing and that he would meet me there that morning. But that night I sat up in bed and I thought and thought. And it hit me: this decision was mine. I wanted this baby so much. He didn’t. I loved this baby already, and I didn’t need Mike. I would find a way to make it work, because I am strong and a fighter and this baby deserved the best. I called my doctor late in the night. He was completely fine with the late-night call. Maybe I read into it, but I thought he was proud of me.

  Mike called and called the next day, and called again after learning from my doctor’s office that I had canceled the abortion. “It’s OK,” he said in one message he left. “We can reschedule.” He just didn’t get it. He probably couldn’t believe I wasn’t simply doing what he wanted me to do. I truly believe to this day that he hates me for it. Not because I didn’t have the abortion, but because he couldn’t control me.

  My grandfather was turning eighty in August, and there was a family reunion planned in North Carolina. It was the same night that Mike and his band were appearing at a H.O.R.D.E. (Horizons of Rock Developing Everywhere) Festival in Charlotte, North Carolina. Nobody in the family knew I was pregnant. My mom and I hatched a plan where we’d have a big dinner party for my grandfather’s birthday. I would go to the concert to get Mike and bring him to the house so we could announce the baby together. I wanted my family to meet him before the baby was born so they could see he wasn’t such a bad guy. Apart from the abortion argument, I still thought he was a decent man at that time.

  When the day came, I was sitting at dinner next to my grandfather when he suddenly got up and made a speech: “Today, I am very happy,” he said, “because I finally get to say I’m having my first great-grandchild.” My mother had told him. “Rebecca is expecting, and she’ll be bringing her boyfriend and his bandmates to the house this evening so everyone can meet them.”

  My aunts looked shocked. No one knew what to say, since my grandfather, the family patriarch, had condoned this out-of-wedlock baby.

  I called Mike and told him, “The cat’s out of the bag.”

  He freaked out. He said, “Give me some time. I need a few more drinks.”

  “I’ll come and get you in a little while,” I said. “Leave your bandmates behind, because they’re always either high or drunk or both.”

  But just as I was about to leave, I couldn’t believe what I saw out the window. Mike’s tour bus was pulling up in front of the house.

  My family is superconservative. The ladies cover themselves when they dress, and act like true Southern women. Just imagine the looks on their faces when Mike walked in with his long hair, looking like Jesus. Thankfully, his bandmates stayed on the bus. I didn’t invite them in.

  To my surprise, my grandfather stood up and shook Mike’s hand when he walked in the door. He said, “Welcome to our family. We’re very proud you’re going to be a member of it. Thank you for bringing my great-grandchild into the world. I’m sure the rest of the family will welcome you.” I was so proud of my grandfather at that moment. I always used to say to him, “Paw Paw, if I ever get married, it’s going to have to be someone that is just like you.” If only.

  I’m sure my grandfather expected Mike to do the right thing and ask me to marry him. I tried to explain in the years that followed why it was better that we never did get married.

  And then Mike suddenly left the country on tour. He didn’t even tell me. He simply disappeared for months while I was pregnant. It was a harbinger of things to come: he was not going to be around a lot.

  One day there was a message on my answering machine. It was him. He was back, he said, and he wanted to meet.

  He came over. One of the places he had been to was Japan. He handed me a box. Inside was a little baby-blue kimono. He said, “This is my peace offering. If you will allow me to be part of having this baby, however you would like me to, I would like that to happen.”

  Soon it became evident that his contributions would be as tiny as that kimono. He wasn’t talking about marrying me, or even living with me.

  Our baby would need a crib, a stroller, clothing, and blankets. I’d gotten fired from my job for being pregnant, because I was always sick. Mike wasn’t really talking about taking on the financial responsibilities of fatherhood. He was a guy who had been made rich by rock and was living in a penthouse in SoHo. All Mike was really talking about was showing up at a few Lamaze classes.

  I was on my own, but then, my sister and I had been fending for ourselves since I was thirteen years old and she was fourteen. I would figure this out.

  I got another job right away, at Fox Broadcasting. It paid me only $34,000 a year, but at least it had benefits. I would be covered for prenatal visits and the birth itself, especially if there were any complications during the delivery.

  Mike did go to the doctor’s appointments when he was in town. He went to the sonograms. But that was it. At thirty-one, he had not matured. He tried to grow up and act the way he thought a father should, but he was scared to death.

  Our beautiful baby daughter was born in early December. On Christmas Eve, three weeks later, Mike came over. While I held our infant in my arms, he presented me with this news:

  He said he really didn’t know how to handle a child. He said, “I think I’ll be a better dad once she can talk.” He said, “I need someone who can have conversations.” He was used to someone cleaning up after him, he said. So how was he going to look after a baby when he couldn’t look after himself? He actually described the image of himself holding the baby in one arm and pushing the vacuum in the other and said he just didn’t see himself doing that.

  But that wasn’t all.

  “Rebecca,” he said, “you’re actually the ‘other girl’ in my life. I’ve been dating somebody else for two and a half years. She lives in Houston. She’s a stripper. I’m going to marry her. We are working on moving her up here, and we’re looking at houses.”

  Merry Christmas.

  SEVEN

  the worst happens

  Mike actually insisted on taking a paternity test. I said, “Knock yourself out; I know you
’re Isabella’s father.” So did science. The lab results from Mike’s DNA test came back 99.999 percent positive that he was her dad. It remained to be seen whether he could be a good one.

  She lived with me, and he paid child support, but I supported her by working full-time at Viacom in the Internal Audit department. And I prayed.

  Going to a Baptist church four days a week when I was growing up did have an impact on me, and not always a good one. I haven’t attended as regularly since I was given freedom. However, I was and still am a believer. I felt like God and I had a pretty good connection through prayer directly, but there were times when I felt lost and empty, and for some reason going to church with a congregation made me feel better. Now that Isabella was getting older, I sought out a church and found one I liked—but it was Catholic. I had had an aunt and uncle who were Catholic, and when I had stayed with them in Tennessee they brought me to Mass. At this Catholic church in New York, I was given the opportunity to be absolved each week if I truly repented and accepted Christ, instead of being yelled at for my sins when I was asking for forgiveness. I enjoyed Communion. I studied the catechism by going to night classes twice a week and seriously considered converting to become a full practicing Catholic. Living in New York, I thought it would feel so special to have that conversion ceremony take place in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I attended the Church of the Blessed Sacrament regularly, and during the Christmas season I volunteered my time to help with the holiday decorations. It made me feel closer to God, and I also felt it was a way to repent for my sins.

  For the first six years of Isabella’s life, I raised her almost entirely on my own. I rarely used babysitters, because I felt guilty enough about having to work during the day. My good friend Hana was Isabella’s caretaker as a baby when I first went back to work. It was the only reason I felt OK about being away. She loved Isabella even before she was born. My daughter was a mama’s girl. At one point we had a garden apartment on the Upper West Side, so we worked in our garden and tended our beautiful hydrangeas with care. She loved it. I got her a pool that was big enough for her to swim around in to cool off in the summer, and we would cook on the grill and sit out under the gazebo that we put up in the back and wrapped in white Christmas lights. At night it was our private, twinkling oasis. Isabella’s favorite thing to do was read, and she would ask me to read stories over and over and over again, never getting tired of them. It was only when she fell fast asleep that we would stop. Before she was taken from my home, when I left work each evening, all I could think about was getting back to my little girl.