Everything about Spanish attracted me, from its written diacritical marks to the rolled r’s and guttural g’s and j’s. Once or twice a week I worked with a local guitarist, Carlos Velasco, who sat with me at the Peach House, helping to arrange the music and tweak the lyrics I had written.
Looking back, my love affair with the Spanish language, which I suppose had started in my teens in Mexico, had been further sparked by my returning to San Miguel, and had now been reignited in the late nineties by Los Angeles, a city that was becoming more Latin by the day. Creating music based in this culture was a means for me to escape into a fantasy world, where the music spoke of love in a way that, to my ears, the English language never could compare; a world where the women were beautiful and the men usually sang and played guitars.
Before I knew it I had become obsessed with everything Latin. It had somehow become my personal mid-life crisis.
I watched Spanish television whenever I could, and even dragged my tolerant husband off to tango lessons and Mexican concerts. In spite of continuing to live our glamorous Beverly Hills life, with its full calendar of social commitments, family get-togethers, and cruises to Europe, I was suffering severe heartache about the loss of my guitar playing.
I needed to find some way to keep playing. I explained to Jack, as I once had years ago to my then-fiancé, Joel, my crazy dream to learn to sing. I felt that if I could somehow improve my voice, then, perhaps with a simplified guitar technique, I could keep the music alive inside me. Jack, who knew that I could barely manage “Happy Birthday,” shook his head in disbelief.
I was discouraged by his lack of support and distressed by the distance that seemed to be growing between us. I felt guilty that I had to admit to myself that I was no longer as in love with Jack as I once had been. He had given me his heart and his Beverly Hills lifestyle, yet culturally we had our differences, and even his son had once told me that Jack’s controlling nature must have been difficult to live with at times. I loved the man, but I also knew that he wanted a full-time wife and that I was not being fair to him.
One night, while lying in a bathtub, always my ideal location it seems for moments of life-changing inspiration, the thought came to me that it might be best for both Jack and me if we went our separate ways.
In all the preceding years that thought had never entered my head, even though we were surrounded by Hollywood, where dysfunctional marriages were endemic. Indeed, our good friends Nathaniel Branden and his wife, Devers, had just divorced, and both seemed happier to be free. My 1992 vows had been sacred to me, and I had never thought to leave until Jack’s understandable frustrations with my Latin obsession and his idea that I should quit performing altogether started to pull us apart. I silently sobbed into my pillow and wondered if I would be brave enough to break away.
I had no doubt that Jack, who already had a following of well-sculpted Beverly Hills women dying to take over should I ever leave, would find a devoted new wife in no time, someone who was not “an obsessive-compulsive workaholic,” as he frequently accused me of being. He deserved someone who could be a more suitable full-time companion to him. The man who had always told me that, apart from reading, watching films, and walking, all he wanted was my company deserved more than I was able to give.
I was filled with guilt, but my selfish artistic soul somehow needed to squeeze more out of life. If I left my marriage, I would suddenly be free to learn to sing my new songs, possibly even fall in love with the fantasy Latin man I would surely meet — and why not in the city that attracted me more each day as I followed CNN en Español’s programs, often filmed in the magical city of hot tropical nights and Latin pasión … Miami!
My three closest girlfriends supported my idea and told me that I, the free spirited artist, was living the life of a caged songbird in a gilded cage. As much as I had loved the California experience, and as much as I still adored my husband for his kind nature, good looks, and refined international persona, I convinced myself that I had never completely fit into the role as the wife of a Beverly Hills businessman. I had always enjoyed that Jack was older than I; our age difference had never been a problem — I had always been attracted to our “Greatest Generation” of men and women — but unfortunately, I seemed to be too bohemian and artistic at heart to have ever felt like an authentic Beverly Hills wife.
I tried to persuade Jack that this solution to split would eventually be better for both of us. He strongly resisted and booked us several sessions with a marriage counsellor, hoping she could enlighten me as to the madness of my ways. But my birth sign, the Cancerian Ox, personifies determination, and my mind was set.
I started to consult lawyers, firing two who wanted to take Jack for half of his net worth, an approach that I could never accept. I chose in the end a smart and ethical female lawyer, who helped us untangle some of our mutual investments.
To this day, because Jack had always been generous to me and I had not been overly greedy, I remain good friends with the wonderful Simon family.
It was hardly a pleasant experience for either of us, and it was one I promised myself never to repeat. I have no idea how some people survive multiple divorces, as breaking up any long-term love affair inevitably causes grief and heartache for both parties. My pen pal friend and confidant, Prince Philip, wrote to tell me he was sorry to hear that Jack and I were divorcing, but knowing how determined I was to keep my music flowing, he kindly added, “I quite understand the circumstances.”
Riddled with guilt, I penned a three-page letter to Jack’s four sons and their wives, whom I expected would never want to talk to me again. I told them how deeply appreciative I had always been for the loving manner in which they had welcomed me into their family. I knew that in many cases the offspring of even the most wonderful husbands tend to resent the second wives their fathers choose. In Jack’s family this had never happened. How sad for me, and for them, I thought, that we would lose each other after fourteen years of being so close. Tears were rolling down my cheeks as I wrote the words of thanks and farewell. But to my genuine surprise a few days later I received calls from all his sons telling me not to be so crazy, that I would always be a special part of their family, and wishing me only the best. Now my tears were those of relief and gratitude for the way Jack had raised his family — to offer me love even though I was abandoning them. It is a tribute to what a great husband and father he had been. Human beings like Jack Simon are indeed rare.
4
My Beautiful Miami
I made my reservation for my flight to Miami for September 4, 2004, already dreaming of palm trees and those sensuous, comforting ocean breezes I had come to associate with Miami. But as bad luck would have it, Hurricane Ivan blew in the same week, and South Florida was being assaulted by eighty-mile-an-hour winds that shredded the palms and flooded the city streets. My gold Lexus, which I had shipped out on a flatbed truck, found itself caught in the centre of the action in Tampa but eventually made it unscathed to Miami.
I rebooked my flight for a week later. Jack and I continued to cohabit, brought closer together by the devastating news that our beloved cat, Muffin, with whom Jack had fallen hopelessly in love, had an enlarged heart and was not expected to survive much longer. We were both completely distraught, but taurine supplements miraculously saved him, and Muffin lived an additional nine years, with Jack waiting on him as befitted the precious feline that Dervin, our live-in help, used to tell me was “a reincarnated prince” and certainly no ordinary cat!
As I bid adieu to the three males who for so long had been central to my life and my luxurious Beverly Hills existence, I experienced a heady mix of euphoria, at the thought of the freedom and the tropical paradise awaiting me, and a lump in my throat to think that the secure, familiar life I had once considered a fairy tale had suddenly come to an end. I was flying far away from those who loved me, and whom I had loved in
