“Then what should I say?”
She deleted the paragraphs I’d written, wrote one word in two seconds and handed it back to me.
I looked down. “Just say ‘Sorry’ ”?
She nodded, and I sent it. Minutes later, I heard a ping and braced myself.
“Thank you,” he wrote.
That was all he needed to hear. So, I took responsibility for my actions. But I also got to a point where I overintellectualized everything he said, because I felt I was not intellectual enough for him. All he really wanted was me to be myself. But I didn’t know who that was for him, or for me at that point. Some of my friends say I can’t blame him because I handed him this power.
I don’t know. Did he repeatedly stab me in the heart, or did I just keep running into the knife he aimed at me?
18
They Let You Dream Just to Watch ’Em Shatter
December 2006
I was in my suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington, DC, out of my gown after a State Department dinner hosted by Condoleezza Rice the night before the Kennedy Center Honors. Steven Spielberg, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Smokey Robinson were among the honorees, and of course Dolly Parton. The next night, I would be onstage at the Kennedy Center, one of the lucky performers chosen to sing in tribute to Dolly.
She’s my idol. The queen of one-liners, she’s the deepest of people, but can find the light in anything to make that depth hilarious. Steel Magnolias is everything to me, and I knew her version of “I Will Always Love You” before I knew Whitney’s. But I felt closest to her as a fan during my divorce, listening to her song “Little Sparrow” over and over. It’s a song about the fragility of hope, and how it can be crushed by men. Her vocal on that is astonishing, and I bet she did it in one take.
The concert would be taped to air on CBS later in the month, and I got to sing “9 to 5.” I thought I was ready, having rehearsed many times on-set in Shreveport, Louisiana, where I was shooting Blonde Ambition, a Working Girl redo with Luke Wilson. Between scenes, I wasted time in my trailer fighting with John on the phone or over email. He would accuse me of making a fight out of everything, but there were times he would bring up someone from my past just to have something to be jealous about. I stopped journaling, because my self-esteem was so low that I thought anything I wrote was stupid.
I lost focus on my work, which was obvious, at least to me if not everyone else, when the director’s aunt, Penny Marshall, came to the set to do a cameo. It was a huge opportunity to impress a film legend. Penny Marshall had directed Big and A League of Their Own. Plus, her brother Garry had directed Pretty Woman and a million other romantic comedies. This was the family to impress, a chance to prove myself to someone with unbelievable connections in the industry. The old Jessica would have been right there, ready to be their Goldie Hawn or Bridget Bardot, whatever their scripts called for. Penny and I had one scene together, and I needed more than a few takes. I should have nailed it. I told everyone, including myself, that I was just intimidated, but really, I hadn’t fully prepared. Still, I got by. No one ever said a word.
And now I was in DC, out of my gown and ready to check my email. My plan that night was to get to bed early, and instead I was soon on the floor, crying.
John had broken up with me via email, again. He’d followed it up by sending me a song. Aerosmith’s “Angel,” a twenty-year-old message in a bottle that I wasted near about the entire night trying to decode. It’s about begging someone to save them with their love, which is exactly what I always wanted to do for John. It was so high school, I know, this notion that the secretly deep cheerleader was going to save the hot band geek from the path of destruction he had put himself on, but that was the kind of roles we played over and over in our relationship. It was the usual complicated word problems of dating John: If a tortured artist hurls a nasty email at 10 p.m. and then a love song at 11:20, are you up or down?
I called him, but he didn’t answer. I was left to listen to that darn song over and over, when I should have been listening to “9 to 5.”
I was a mess all the next day, and it’s a blur now when I started drinking. I know I started backstage at the Kennedy Center. My mom had helped me into this Breakfast at Tiffany’s–style black strapless cocktail dress with a diamond necklace. I looked the part of Jessica Simpson, but I just had to trust that she was gonna show up.
Shania Twain was there, warming up in the staircase behind the stage to get the reverb. She seemed nervous, which scared me because I admired her so much. There were so many greats walking around: Reba McEntire, Reese Witherspoon, Allison Krauss, and Vince Gill. And I kept going back to my dressing room, where the Macallan was.
“You need to not be drinking,” my mom said.
“This doesn’t make me drunk at all,” I replied.
“Um, okay, whatever,” she said. “But yes, it does.”
Ken was trying to lift my spirits as I ran through the song, making up fake lines to be funny. I started repeating them, confused. My mom saw me take another drink.
“You need to put that down,” she said. I had never gone onstage drunk before. My dad was anxious, but he didn’t say anything. I think we all trusted that I would show up when I actually got onstage. The same way I’d always done my whole life.
Just before it was time to go on, John called me back. It was ugly.
“How could you do this to me?” I asked. “Why do I have to be thinking about you all of the time? If you are gonna let me go, let me go!”
I tilted my head back to keep my makeup dry. I think he hung up. He wouldn’t talk to me if I was drunk. And I finally realized I was.
Reba kicked off the tribute, introducing a video she had narrated about Dolly’s life. It opened with the first, haunting line of “Little Sparrow,” and my entire body tensed. The video then showed her as a kid, singing her way onto radio shows and leaving for Nashville the morning after she graduated high school. I thought about my life, and what Dolly had done with the gifts God had given her. She’d written so many songs, and I was afraid now to even write in my journal. When they played a snippet of “I Will Always Love You,” I lost it, heaving big hyperventilating sobs in a dress I wanted to burst out of, a necklace that seemed to choke me.
I began to pace around, and who knows how many people were staring at me. It came time for my part. Reese Witherspoon went out to introduce me, and of course she was perfect. The band started “9 to 5” and I waited for God to save me like He usually did. I’d get by.
I got through the first verse and chorus, and I was gone. I got lost and had no confidence to turn these lyrics into a song. I couldn’t understand the melody, the phrasing, or the tempo. And I didn’t know how to get back in.
I looked out at this bright room. I saw the President, all these dignitaries, and then Dolly. She looked so concerned. The band stopped, probably expecting me to start again, at least for the cameras.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, to her and to everyone. “It’s an honor to be here, but this song is too good for me. I’m so nervous.”
I turned, and as I stepped, I started to hop to the wing, a childish move to pretend none of this had happened. I ran to my parents, who were in full panic mode. They kept repeating, “What are we gonna do?” They were still so used to thinking we would lose everything if I messed up.