They're Playing Our Song

by Carole Bayer Sager

  I think I might have thought the same thing if I were him, though I wouldn’t have expressed myself quite as vehemently.

  “How is it possible?” He looked at the empty candy box, with its wrappers scattered all over the table. “You ate the whole fucking box? Do you know how much money these fabrics cost? And how long I had to wait for them to be made?”

  Marcia said something about sending carpet people out first thing in the morning to steam-clean the entire screening room, and Sandy got out an apology as he raced to his car and revved off.

  It was the last time David ever put out chocolates. To this day he has little jars of assorted hard candies and pastel mints—nothing you’d ever really crave—just outside the screening room. Why am I telling you all of this? Because leaving his home, I laughed—really laughed—for the first time in ages.

  CHRISTMASTIME WAS APPROACHING, AND I was still dateless for Barbara Davis’s Carousel Ball, one of the city’s premier charity events. I decided to call George Lucas and see if he had any interest in an experiment in sociology. He could experience everything he hated about LA all in one night.

  “Who’s calling?” his secretary asked pleasantly.

  “Carole Bayer Sager,” I answered, wondering on a scale of one to ten how recognizable my name was. Probably a two, I thought. Well, depending on age, and demographics . . . older white females . . . it might be a three. George was a nine. There it was. A three was calling a nine!

  “Just a moment, please, I’ll see if he’s in.” Basic Secretarial Training 101! “I’ll see if he’s in.” I wondered what would happen if everyone just told the truth. “Just a moment please, I’ll see if he wants to take your call . . . No, not today. Maybe he’ll call you back tomorrow.”

  The wait seemed interminable and then there he was.

  “Hello,” he said. His voice sounded better than I remembered.

  “Hi, it’s good to hear your voice. How are you?” I asked, cringing at my fake cheerfulness.

  “Swamped. The contractor screwed up my sewage system on the new building, and I’ve got close to a hundred guys just standing around here scratching their heads, waiting for me to figure out what I thought someone else was figuring out for me.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said sympathetically. “That happens to me a lot.” What was I talking about? “At my house . . . in a much smaller way,” I added.

  He was silent, making it even easier to see my pathetic neediness. It was up to me to keep going.

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you I was thinking of you and the new buildings you told me about.” Sure I was. Every day I found myself wondering how George’s buildings were coming along. “I mean, I can’t believe that I haven’t seen where you work yet . . . in person,” I said, like the big phony I felt like, angling for an invitation.

  “Yeah,” he said, ignoring his opportunity to extend one. I plowed ahead.

  “How would you like to go with me to a really great Christmas party?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  Maybe if I could just sneak the name by him quickly, it would go unnoticed.

  “Well,” I said as fast as I could, “the Davises have this big, extravagant really beautiful Christmas party every year. It’s quite unbelievable. A million twinkly lights and I thought . . .”

  I thought what? George Lucas is going to travel to LA—a place he despises, with people who epitomize everything he hates—to see sparkling lights? He’s created galaxies. Yeah, he’s dying to come to LA to see sparkling lights.

  “Are you insane!” he interrupted me. It was the most emotion I’d ever heard him express. “I’m not comfortable in that world. That’s why I created my own.” He added, “Honestly, it’s the last place I’d ever want to be.”

  “Yeah, I kind of thought that was how you were going to feel. And I understand it, too. I mean, I don’t even know if I’ll go,” I said, as if he cared, and knowing of course I would go. “I mean, I do like the Davises, but that life just isn’t working too well for me either anymore.”

  Perfect. I was baring my soul to a man who wanted nothing whatsoever to do with me.

  “Yeah, well . . . divorce can be a real opportunity for growth,” he said. “I better be getting back to work, I’m going out of town for twelve days.”

  Oh. Maybe I could come, too. It was just a thought, not a real one—I promise I was sane enough to know it wasn’t real. It was just one of those things that passes through my head when I’ve left my body.

  If I was feeling bad before I called George, now I was feeling worse. It was hard to pretend I was seeing a man who didn’t even invite me into his world . . . but not impossible. Here was a man so reclusive I could tell people in LA we were going together, and no one would even know it was a lie.

  MY GIRLFRIEND MINDY, PROBABLY bored out of her mind with my inability to get over the loss of Burt, had urged me to write a note to his new love, Jane. She believed I needed to thank Jane for taking Burt out of the picture, which would allow something new, more loving, and healthier to come into my life. She wanted me to write it from the perspective of being well over Burt and grateful that he was gone, and then not to send it but to carry it in my wallet. Even though I didn’t feel it yet, I decided to take her advice. I wrote:

  Dear Jane,

  I wanted to write you and thank you for taking Burt away from me even though I was his wife. To be honest, if I’d stayed with him I probably would have gotten very sick because he gave so little and took so much. I will not miss his narcissism or his inability to ever really hear or see me. I want to thank you in advance for the wonderful life I will soon be living.

  Love and gratitude,

  Carole

  I folded it and put it in the back of my wallet. It was so hidden that I didn’t find it until years later and, of course, when I read it again it was exactly the way I was feeling. Thank you, Mindy.

  ALONE FOR THE FIRST time, I asked myself why I kept repeating the same dramas with the different men I was attracted to in my life. Men who never really saw me. I was the classic definition of a neurotic. I kept doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I kept choosing men I hoped would love me who could only see me as an extension of themselves. Men who loved me for my talent, but not for myself. Of course, they were all variations of my mother, who until the end of her life saw me the same way they did.

  I was starting to understand that if I wanted a different result in my life, I couldn’t keep walking down the same street and falling in the same hole. Recovery would mean I would have to learn to take a different street. I would have to put more value on myself and begin respecting and loving myself if I ever was going to be deserving of a man who really loved me.

  Thirty-Five

  MY GIRLFRIEND MARGIE PERENCHIO called me on the night before Thanksgiving in 1991, ordering me to come to dinner. She and her husband, Jerry, were having small dinner parties to show their friends their meticulously decorated new home with interiors by the famed French designer Henri Samuel.

  She wanted me to meet two of their friends, both bachelors: Kirk Kerkorian, owner and chairman of MGM, and Bob Daly, CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Pictures. I barely knew either of them, and I truthfully wasn’t sure I could get it together, but she kept insisting.

  I told her I had plans to spend the evening with a gay writer friend of Carrie Fisher’s who I had recently met and liked.

  “Are you crazy?” she said. “These are two of the most eligible bachelors in LA. Break that date and come to my house.” I told her I would see if I could change my plans. If I had flown four hundred miles for a date with George Lucas, it seemed reasonable that I could force myself up the street to where the Perenchios lived.

  Driving into Margie and Jerry’s mansion past the endless manicured hedges is a sight that I still never get used to. It always feels like I could be driving into the White House. Once the former Kirkeby mansion, now renamed Chartwell, it was one of the most dramatic an
d recognizable mega-estates in all of Los Angeles. The front of it was used in the opening of The Beverly Hillbillies.

  I was ushered down a very wide limestone staircase where a gleaming wood bar dominated a Giacometti table and chairs sitting beside a small sofa. It was adjacent to a huge ballroom, three steps down, that acted as their second living room and screening room. Kirk was already there. Margie smiled like a Cheshire cat and kind of thrust me toward Kirk, saying, “Carole, Kirk has never been here before. Why don’t you walk him down the hall and show him some of the other rooms?”

  I barely knew Kirk, but I knew I didn’t want to be alone with him. He felt cold to me and austere. I knew two women who had been, or still were, madly in love with him, neither of them able, as my friend Sue Mengers used to say, “to seal the deal,” and quite honestly I had absolutely no desire and even less energy to make an effort to be gracious. He was tall and slim, with a lot of gray, wavy hair and a somber face like one of the Modigliani paintings hanging on the wall I just passed. He was well dressed and looked expensive, maybe because I knew he was a billionaire. But a cheap one. I heard he lived in an apartment over his garage.

  Obediently, I walked him down the large hallway as he admired the remarkable job Jerry had done meticulously renovating his mansion. “Beautiful workmanship,” he said. When we turned around and walked back to the bar area, Bob Daly was coming down the wide stairs. We were introduced, though we both had forgotten that years before we’d had dinner together, invited by mutual friends. I did remember that his wife, Nancy, had once found my Lhasa apso, Hoover, when he went missing in Bel Air. The Dalys lived there as well. They returned him to me, and I sent them flowers and a very grateful note.

  When Bob said hello, I immediately thought he seemed nicer than Kirk. He wasn’t intimidating. He looked good in a well-tailored blue suit, white shirt and tie, and tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses. He had big brown eyes and beautiful graying hair. When he smiled, he looked a little like Jack Nicholson.

  He had what would turn out to be his signature drink, a cranberry juice and soda with a touch of vodka—“just a touch”—and I had a Diet Coke. Hors d’oeuvres and caviar were always in ample supply at the Perenchio home. I was surprised when Margie said “Let’s sit down,” because I didn’t know we were the only people coming. We walked upstairs to their beautiful smaller dining room. I remember feeling relieved to find Bob was seated to my left and Kirk was across the table, with Margie and Jerry at either side.

  I had taken a Valium before I left my house because I was ridiculously nervous, and it was only now kicking in. I did like that feeling. Everything felt just a little bit easier.

  In talking to Bob, I found out that he too had recently been left, by his wife of thirty years. This was similar to the bonding moment I shared with Burt ten years earlier when we both discovered we took Dalmane to go to sleep. Bob never took a sleeping pill. In fact, he told me when Nancy left him, he only slept every other night.

  How coincidental, I thought, both of us being left by our respective spouses. Though I didn’t really believe in coincidence. I believe everything happens for a reason, but I didn’t share this aloud for fear he’d think me one of those woo-woo types.

  The Valium gave me a sense of well-being I couldn’t always count on to give myself. I think it allowed me to pass through dinner congenially, almost as though I was having a good time.

  As we were getting ready to leave, Margie asked us what our plans were for Thanksgiving. I told her that Cristopher and I were going to Elizabeth Taylor’s house, and Bob said he was eating at a friend’s home with Nancy and his children. It appeared as though they were handling their impending divorce with much more maturity than I was mine. Margie said they were showing the not-yet-released Robert De Niro film, Cape Fear, at eight o’clock, after dinner, and we were welcome to come back and watch it.

  Bob asked if he could follow me home. I told him I lived only six houses down the road, but he was insistent. When we pulled up to my door, I asked him if he’d like to come in for a drink. Perhaps because both of us came from families where people drank too much, we each had a bottle of water.

  We sat on my long pale sofa with overstuffed beige chenille pillows in the den. For every story I had about Burt, he had a matching one about Nancy. It was so easy to talk to him, I had no idea we’d been talking for over an hour. We took turns spilling our pent-up sadness and sharing our surprise at finding ourselves alone at this stage in our lives.

  I wanted to be honest with Bob and let him know who I was, so I told him, “You know, I kind of live my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “What other shoe?” he asked me, in complete seriousness. Oh my God, is it possible I’m meeting a man who isn’t neurotic?

  I excused myself to go upstairs and check on Cristopher. He heard me and sat up drowsily. I kissed him and told him to go back to sleep.

  He asked me to stay till he fell asleep again, so I told him there was a very nice man downstairs who was feeling sad because he was all alone, no longer living with his wife and family, just like Mommy was no longer with Daddy. He nodded like he understood. I said I’d come up when the nice man left. He got out of bed and silently picked up his second favorite teddy bear and gave it to me. “You can give it to the man.”

  Returning to the den, I handed Bob the teddy bear and told him Cristopher wanted him to have it. Bob was very touched. I knew one thing—this man will not hurt me. I just sensed it. It was close to twelve when Bob got up to leave, asking me if I would like to meet him at Margie and Jerry’s after Thanksgiving dinner and watch the movie together. I said I’d need to see if Elizabeth would be all right with that, but I thought it could work out. There were times with Elizabeth when she would become my good mommy. As it turns out, she was so happy that I had met a nice man—a studio head, no less—that she was practically pushing me out the door before I finished dessert.

  Cape Fear was so scary that more than once I grabbed Bob’s hand in terror of what was about to happen. Later that night he followed me home again and we talked some more.

  I could be honest with Bob, and he with me. He said, “I was trying to turn myself into everything Nancy wanted me to be. It felt awful, but I tried. She wanted me to drink, I drank. She wanted me to smoke grass, I took a few puffs of grass. Whatever she wanted, I tried.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “I went horseback riding—”

  “Yeah, I went skiing,” Bob interrupted.

  “I cut my leg on barbed wire. The guide asked me if I wanted to go back and get a tetanus shot—me, who felt lockjaw setting in at the mere sight of rust—but I wanted Burt to see me as an adventuress so I said, ‘No, later’s fine. Let’s just keep riding, this is so great!’ ”

  Bob laughed. “It sounds like we both turned ourselves into pretzels.”

  I nodded. “Do you work out a lot?” I asked.

  “No, I hate it. Nancy was fanatical about never missing a day and was always pushing me to do something. I hated it.”

  “Working out was a religion to Burt. He got endorphin highs. I have no idea what that feels like. Do you?”

  “Nope, never been there.” He looked at me and said, “Do you know you’re very beautiful?”

  “Not really,” I answered. “I can’t say I feel beautiful.”

  He shook his head. “Well, you are.”

  That night he asked me out on what would be our first date. Up to that point I’d only thought of him as a very decent guy. But Bob Daly was a formidable man.

  He took me to Madeo’s, an Italian restaurant on Beverly Drive, and we were seated in a small booth. We talked about how he got to where he was. “I was eighteen and needed a job,” he told me over dinner. “I drove into New York from Brooklyn and started looking. I saw this building, I looked up, it said CBS. I said to myself, I like television, and I got a job in the accounting department. Lowest-paying job in the company. Left there as the head of the network twenty-six years later to become chairman
of Warner Bros. Pictures.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s quite a story. You must have been very ambitious.”

  “No, not really. I just wanted to do the best job I could. I never had my eye on the top job. You see, I was left back in the fourth grade in Catholic school and it devastated me, so I worked extra hard at everything. All I wanted at CBS was for each boss to say, ‘Good job, Bob!’ ”

  He spoke so clearly and logically. It was funny. He didn’t come in the Burt wrapping paper, but I knew that was all that was. Tear it off, and inside there was nothing of real substance, at least not for me. Bob seemed to have more of everything real.

  Before dessert, he pulled out a little gift-wrapped box and handed it to me.

  It was a beautiful compact. Hundreds of multicolored rhinestones made the face of Tweety Bird, one of Warner Bros.’s most beloved characters. Seeing him in living color made me smile. He told me to open it.

  There was a mirror inside.

  “I want you to carry this with you,” he said. “So every time you don’t think you’re beautiful, you can look into it and know that you are.”

  “Oh, Bob,” I said. “This is the most meaningful gift.” And I meant it. How different he was from any man I had ever known before. He actually remembered how I felt and gave me a gift that could help me feel better.

  Thirty-Six

  BOB AND I WERE really a good match, because no normal date would allow either of us this much time to wallow in past hurts. Two “dumpees” had found each other and together felt better than they did alone. We were making a real connection.

  He didn’t care about me not having long legs. He wasn’t tall, but he had no need for secret lifts to be hidden in his shoes. He had a wonderful acceptance of who he was, which is why he had no desire to change me.

  I thought Bob might benefit from removing the little extra bit of skin I could see under his chin, but he didn’t want my help. Finally, there was someone in my life whom I could not alter.