Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [71]
NINE
The happiest day of my life, our wedding day in 1976.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
Love and Marriage
By the spring of 1976, Frank and I had been together for four years. We’d been flirting with each other even longer than that, yet he still seemed reluctant to offer me any commitment about our future together.
Neither of us was getting any younger, and Frank had a long history of losing interest after a few years. What if he met someone else? What would I do? And how would I ever find anyone who matched up to him? I was beginning to have sympathy with his first wife, Nancy, who’d never remarried since their divorce in 1951. When asked why not, she is said to have replied simply, “After Sinatra?”
Tired of waiting for Frank to “make an honest woman of me” as my mother would say, I told him during the middle of a series of concerts in Lake Tahoe that I could no longer live this way. I knew that if I left it up to him, we’d go on dating until one of us got bored or died. Although I was afraid of what he might say, I gave him an ultimatum—marry me or lose me.
“But I’m your rock!” he replied, clearly shaken.
I told him, “You’re not a rock, and I can’t go on like this. I need the feeling of belonging, and I need to have someone belong to me.”
He didn’t respond, so, deeply wounded, I flew home. To keep occupied over the next few weeks, I threw myself into organizing a tennis tournament in aid of the Third World charity World Mercy at the Riviera Hotel in Vegas. Several celebrity friends agreed to take part, and with Bobby by my side for moral support, I decided to make the most of our time on the Strip. I tried my best to put on a cheerful façade—gambling, drinking, and staying out late—but inside my heart was secretly breaking. Was this it? Was my time with Frank finally over? The thought made me sick to my stomach.
Frank flew to Chicago to drown his sorrows with an old friend, the property developer Jack McHugh. They spent a great deal of time drunkenly swearing that they would never remarry. He’d call me every now and then, but our conversations were usually brief. I knew that I couldn’t reconsider unless he was prepared to commit. As the tennis tournament progressed and the distance between us seemed to grow, I began to think that would never happen.
One day in May 1976, I was playing blackjack in the Riviera casino immediately after a tennis match when I was paged for a telephone call. “Barbara Marx,” a messenger called, “paging Mrs. Barbara Marx.” Making my way to the pit in my tennis whites, shoes, and pleated skirt, I picked up the phone to hear Frank’s voice asking, “What are you doing?”
“Answering your telephone call.”
“Are you in the pit?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to talk to you in the pit, so will you please go to your suite? I’ll call you there in five minutes.”
“All right,” I said, “but I’m just finishing up something here, so you’ll have to give me at least thirty minutes.”
I did what I had to do, and by the time I reached my suite the telephone was ringing off the hook. “This is ridiculous, Barbara!” Frank cried when I picked it up. I said nothing and waited. There was a pause before he added, “Come to Chicago.”
I realized that I’d won some sort of victory, but he still wasn’t offering me anything concrete. “All right,” I said cautiously, “I think I can manage that in a day or two, after the tournament.”
“No!” he snapped. “Come now.”
“But, Frank,” I protested, “the finals are tomorrow and I’m presenting the trophy.”
“Have someone else do it. I’ve had your things packed, and there’s a station wagon