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Divorce

My accommodating husband was supportive of my new project and, having enjoyed experiencing Canada before, he promised to come along on parts of the tour that my agent, Bernie Fiedler, was putting together. The concerts were split into two parts, so Jack and I were able to take a holiday with my parents in San Miguel de Allende, where I filmed music videos to “Bajo el Sol” and “Parranda,” the first using the empty bullring with a prancing white stallion and handsome Spanish rider circling around me in the burning midday sun.

I have long had a special relationship with San Miguel de Allende. For my parents, siblings, and me, the town had become a familiar second home ever since, thanks to my father’s sabbatical, my schoolteacher parents had packed up our trusty blue-and-white VW bus and driven us south to spend a year living there in 1967. We made annual pilgrimages to our beloved little town afterward and had frequently chosen it as a place for family reunions. Nestled in the mountains of central Mexico, this art colony changed our lives. In fact, I believe the music, art, and literature I discovered there played a significant role in developing my sense of romance. It was in San Miguel that I first started to learn Spanish and to fall in love with the soulful serenades and mariachi music that were part of daily life. It was there, under the star-sprinkled skies, that my sister, Vivien, and I kissed our Mexican boyfriends as teenagers. It was there that we rode horses in the mountains and danced to the local bands, often into the wee hours, safely in the company of our parents.

I adored being back in San Miguel, taking Jack to meet some of the town’s eccentric characters, having lunch with my friend, the renowned skater and artist Toller Cranston, chatting with former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s biographer, Joe Persico — a fan of my music and friend of my parents — and walking with Jack along the memory-filled cobblestoned streets of my adolescence, even though I sensed poor Jack was never really comfortable being in Mexico. The culture was so very different from the America he knew, but in his safari outfit and Tilley hat he did his best to enjoy himself and took long walks, striding up the hills and around the town. Because of his commanding presence Jack earned the nickname “El Comandante” among my Mexican amigos.

Still the incurable romantic, brimming with nostalgia for my past youth, I loved speaking Spanish, loved listening to the out-of-tune mariachi bands, and loved looking into the beautiful dark eyes of my young Mexican video director. I realized that I was a married woman, but as we said goodbye one moonlit starry night on the steps of the hacienda that Jack had rented, we shared a lingering forbidden kiss that remained in my mind. I was craving the romantic soul of Mexico, and those weeks in the mountain town of my adolescence had rekindled my love affair with the country, the romance of the language, and the music that floated in and out of cafés, churches, and town squares, and greeted us everywhere we went.

Back in Los Angeles, I followed Richard Fortin’s advice in late 2001 and decided to add to the album a new song I had written in both English and Spanish called “Latin Lady” or “Morenita.” Enrique Iglesias was burning up the airwaves with his infectious hits “Bailamos” and “Rhythm Divine,” and we wanted to try to catch the Latin wave that was suddenly sweeping America. A vocal piece might garner more airplay than instrumental ones, we reasoned, and our decision was edged on by the executives at Sony who were now expressing interest in the album.

The final production of these songs required my taking a couple of quick trips to Miami to add the voice of Innis, an up-and-coming Latin singer who was being touted as the next Ricky Martin. I willingly paid the hefty fee to his manager, hopeful that my new songs might excite radio. Little did I know that a few months later, after they had spent over a million dollars promoting him, Sony’s Latin Music division would suddenly drop Innis from their roster. Ay, ay, ay! The fickleness of the music business.

To this day I am proud of the two numbers I wrote in Spanish, and many people have told me how much they still love these particular songs.

• • •

Being in Miami had felt to me like the next best thing to being in Mexico, even though this city on the Atlantic tip of North America was far more Cuban in flavour. Miami was warm, and the nights tropical and alluring, but other than one sultry evening when I convinced the handsome Argentinian hotel limo driver to take me with him to dance salsa and bachata until the wee hours at Mango’s in South Beach, my trip was about work and completing the album.

Miami, however, left a lingering impression. Had I discovered a tropical paradise in America, where everyone spoke Spanish, and where Julio’s and Enrique’s songs were the soundtrack to daily life? The Miami nights were as balmy as the summer evenings of Toronto, which I missed living in the desert-dry air of Los Angeles. It made me wonder what it would be like to live there, and made part of me sigh nostalgically for the romance-infused Latin world I knew I was missing.

Jack realized that I was entranced with Miami. Always obliging and ready to discover a new part of the country, in the spring of 2002 he agreed to a month’s rental on Fisher Island, a private island that I had discovered. Situated in Biscayne Bay, it had once belonged to William K. Vanderbilt, who had acquired the island in 1925 by trading it for his luxury yacht! It now counted Oprah, Boris Becker, and a few tycoons among its part-time residents. The pretty townhouse we rented belonged to Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks.

How happy I felt as Jack and I took the little ferry to the mainland, walked every morning around the marina, read on the beach, and enjoyed dancing at the private club. My Californian girlfriend Alanna came to visit for ten days, and the three of us had a ball enjoying the island and nearby Miami Beach. On a whim Jack and I even made an offer on one of the condos, thinking it would be a fun place to visit twice a year and that over time it would become a good investment. Our minds were changed once we discovered that the resident membership fees were astronomical!

In spite of our exciting life together, the inner despair about my right-hand fingers was gradually taking its toll on my marriage. I felt that part of me, and in many ways the most important part of me — my musical soul — was being eroded, and with my failing guitar technique, my previous joy and passion for life was being drained away. Creating my new album had been a joy and had helped to distract me from the deteriorating ability of my hand to play, but of course the problem did not disappear, and neither did the depression it caused. Whether on Fisher Island in Beverly Hills, or on a Seabourn cruise we took from Manaus in Brazil up the Amazon River, I still spent hours every day sitting in front of mirrors trying to retrain my right-hand fingers. Jack tried his best to understand and kept suggesting I paint, teach, or write instead. He was unable, however, to understand the deep need I felt to keep the guitar and its music in my life. I painted a number of oil canvases, but painting pictures never brought me the same joy and fulfillment I experienced when creating music.

I decided to channel my energies into writing in Spanish and composed the lyrics and melodies to over twenty songs. 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.