Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [92]
Jon and I exchanged worried glances, as neither of us belonged to a church near our respective homes there. Then I remembered that I’d gone to Easter services at a church near my home in Beverly Hills, and that that church was run by a very avant-garde minister. So Jon and I hastily made an appointment to see him, planning to tell him about the required letter of recommendation and throwing ourselves on his mercy in the hope that he would write it for us. That meeting went very well, and we were told that the next required step was for us to see another minister, who would instruct us in the finer points of the religion.
Beforehand, we were both nervous, not knowing what he was going to ask us. In particular, Jon was worried that he might ask us about sex, and if we were sleeping together.
Seeing how worried he was, I reassured him. “No, no, definitely not, Jon. A man of the cloth would never ask that question!”
Jon was mollified, and I breathed a sigh of relief. So we set off together for Grace Cathedral and our appointment with the third minister.
First he asked us about our individual attitudes toward marriage, then about our respective children, our relationships with them, and how the children felt about each of us. Then he asked another question: “Well, then, how’s sex? Are you sleeping together?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Finally I mumbled, “Yes,” then held my breath, half expecting to be hit by a thunderbolt.
“Right, that’s good,” the minister said.
Jon and I breathed a collective sigh of relief and thanked our lucky stars to have found a nonjudgmental minister.
Once we’d gotten the letter we needed, we rushed home and called our friends, asking them to come to the wedding and then to the Fairmont for champagne and cake in the suite we had rented for our wedding night.
Our wedding invitation was so impromptu, so last-minute, that when I arrived at the cathedral, I half expected none of our friends to have turned up at all. Boy, was I in for a big surprise! The church was full, and all our friends were on hand to witness our wedding.
In the midst of greeting all our friends, there was a hilarious moment when a good-looking young man in purple priest’s garb came up behind Jon and his son, Jon David, and hollered, “Hey, Jon?” Jon David spun around and said, “Lucky Chuckie?” It turned out that the two of them had gone to college together at SMU in Texas!
Jon and I walked down the aisle together, hand in hand. My sister, Alison, stood up for me, and Jon David stood up for Jon. The ceremony was moving, the reception afterward warm and congenial. The day would have been perfect, except for one thing. Amid all our happiness, all our joy, all the love and the hopes for our future, one person was missing from our joyous wedding—my son, Matthew.
But Matthew’s absence from my wedding was neither a surprise nor a snub. He was in residence at the Hazelden Clinic in Minnesota, one of the eight times the clinic would make another attempt to cure him of his drug addiction, an addiction that dated back to when he was just ten years old.
IN HINDSIGHT, THE signposts are so clear, the pitfalls so evident, Matthew’s fate so inevitable, but living through the hell of all of it, day by day, week by week, year by year, was quite another story. And it is really only now that I’ve finally been able to look back and piece together the full, horrifying saga of my son’s tragic descent into drug addiction.
In 1974, Michael, Matthew, and I were living in our ranch-style home in the San Fernando Valley, a prosperous community of well-heeled, well-educated people. Little did we know that someone who lived close by, a wealthy hippie, a man with children of his own, was growing pot in his garden and smoking it with the neighborhood kids. I guess that particular person