Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [117]
This is part of what the steps are for. It came as a big surprise to me, therefore, to find out that I needn’t have actually got into the relationship with Carla in the first place. I thought that it was something I had to do, and that I was compelled. What I found, as I worked through step four, was that I had chosen to do it. It was where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. I didn’t look at the reality of the situation at all, and with only two years of sobriety under my belt, I had very little notion of what was good for me.
I found a pattern in my behavior that had been repeating itself for years, decades even. Bad choices were my specialty, and if something honest and decent came along, I would shun it or run the other way. It could be argued that my choices reflected the way I saw myself, that I thought I wasn’t worthy of anything decent, so I could only choose partners who would ultimately abandon me, as I was convinced my mother had done, all those years ago.
I did not run away from Conor, even though there was to begin with a certain amount of fear involved in my relationship with him. I was, after all, a part-time father. Small children can be quite dismissive and unintentionally cruel, and I tended to take this very personally. However, as the time of my sobriety increased, I began to be more comfortable with him and to really look forward to seeing him. I was very much in this mood in March 1991, when I had arranged to see Conor in New York, where Lori and her new boyfriend, Sylvio, were planning to buy an apartment.
On the evening of March 19, I went to the Galleria, an apartment block on East Fifty-seventh Street where they were staying, to pick up Conor and take him to the circus on Long Island. It was the very first time I had taken him out on my own, and I was both nervous and excited. It was a great night out. Conor never stopped talking and was particularly excited at seeing the elephants. It made me realize for the first time what it meant to have a child and be a father. I remember telling Lori, when I took him back, that from then on, when I had Conor home on visits, I wanted to look after him all on my own.
The following morning I was up early, ready to walk crosstown from my hotel, the Mayfair Regent, on Park and Sixty-fourth Street, to pick up Lori and Conor to take them to the Central Park Zoo, followed by lunch at Bicé, my favorite Italian restaurant. At about 11:00 A.M. the phone rang, and it was Lori. She was hysterical, screaming that Conor was dead. I thought to myself, “This is ridiculous. How can he be dead?” and I asked her the silliest question, “Are you sure?” And then she told me that he’d fallen out of the window. She was beside herself. Screaming. I said, “I’ll be right there.”
I remember walking up Park Avenue, trying to convince myself that everything was really all right…as if anyone could make a mistake about something like that. When I got near the apartment building, I saw a police line and paramedics on the street, and I walked past the scene, lacking the courage to go in. Finally, I went into the building, where I was asked a few questions by the police. I took the elevator upstairs to the apartment, which was on the fifty-third floor. Lori was out of her mind and talking in a crazy way. By this time I had become very calm and detached. I had stepped back within myself and become one of those people who just attend to others.
By talking to the police and the doctors, I established what had happened without even having to go into the room. The main sitting room had windows down one side that