Free Both of Us by Ryan O'Neal Page B

just lived our lives. It didn’t seem to affect our careers.
    Farrah and I spend the holidays in Malibu. As I was going through my journals for this book, I found an entry from that New Year’s morning that gave me pause. Tatum and John had come to LA to attend a party. They brought Patrick to the party with them. They all stayed at the beach house with Farrah and me.
    JOURNAL ENTRY, JANUARY 1, 1985
    John and Tate have left for the airport to fly to Las Vegas so he can play tomorrow against Conners. Tatum’s first match. After they left, Patrick told me something unusual. When they got home last night at four a.m., Tatum wanted to continue to party, which included tequila shots and pool until sunrise. Poor Patrick finally put her to bed after she started to see the pool balls two at a time.
    I was so relieved to see Tatum and Farrah getting along for a change that I didn’t worry that my daughter, who’d never been a drinker, who would confiscate my glass when she was a little girl, had gotten wasted the night before. Farrah had admitted to me two months earlier, when she was seven months pregnant, that Tatum and John had offered her cocaine. I was surprised because at the time Tatum was still proclaiming her objections to drugs and alcohol. I assumed John was the instigator and Tatum just went along.
    The more things devolved with Tatum, the more determined I was to get it right with the new baby. What I didn’t understand back then is that every day you’re a parent is another chance to make things right, no matter how old your children are. That’s why I’m still trying with Tatum even as I write this.
    But back to January of 1985. Our first trip to the hospital is a false alarm. I still chuckle about what happens next.We return home and the moment we walk in the door, Farrah asks me for her special blanket. I have no idea what she means. I’d never heard her mention any blanket before, so I skip to the linen closet and grab the first one I see. “No, that’s not it,” she says. “I want my blankie, get me my
blankie
!” She’s near tears and I still haven’t a clue what she is talking about. I say, “Farrah, I don’t know which one that is, you’ve never asked me for a blankie before.” She replies, “The one in the bag!” She must be referring to the suitcase we’d packed for the hospital, so I lope to the garage to retrieve it. Pleased with my quick thinking, I hand it to her. “No, that’s not it either!” she cries. Suddenly I see a cab pulling into the driveway and Farrah’s mom, Pauline, getting out. Relief washes over me. The Mounties in the form of my unfriendly mother-in-law have come to the rescue. Momma soon retrieves her daughter’s sacred bit of burgundy cloth.
    The next trip isn’t a false alarm. Farrah is determined to have an all-natural birth: no drugs and no epidural. We’d decided on the alternative birth center at Valley Presbyterian. Farrah’s room looks more like a deluxe suite at the Four Seasons than a hospital room. They hook her up to a machine to monitor her contractions. This is all brand-new to me. I wasn’t present for the births of my other children. Back then, fathers were banished to the waiting room.
    An hour goes by; nothing’s happening and Farrah starts to get bored. “Let’s take a walk around the maternity ward and see who else is here,” she says. “With all those wires?”I ask. Next thing I know, Farrah is out of bed and on her feet, tiptoeing down the hall, peeking into the other rooms, waving hello to people, while I’m behind her pushing the monitor. The dial starts to beep and it’s getting louder. “Honey, don’t you think we should go back?” I say. Just then she’s hit with her first big labor pain. “Please, for the love of God, can we go back now, Farrah?” So we turn around like a little choo-choo and head to our suite.
    Now she’s in full labor, and she’s pushing, pushing. Hours go by. Something’s wrong. All we can see