Free Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton

and joy. One big pair of happy lips on a small body.” Marche’s actress friend Jade Dixon was also around to give Bill the once-over.
    Suddenly Marche announced that Jon was coming to pick up the children. As Jon drew close, Angie started jumping up and down and clapping her hands. Instead of yelling “Daddy,” she shouted, “Bill’s here, Bill’s here.” Jon was not amused, saying, “Oh yeah? What’s so great about Bill?” That first uncomfortable meeting in the park gave Bill a glimpse into the marital dynamics between Marche and Jon. “Marcheline suddenly becamereally cold. It was like another person. There was a bad blood in the water . . . real bad blood.”
    First Jon took Angie to the swings while James stayed with his mother. Then Jon tried to take Angie to his car so that she could spend the afternoon with him. Her squeals of glee quickly turned to tears, and Marcheline eventually convinced Jon to leave without the children. Clearly angry, he went without saying goodbye. It was a scenario that served as a template for the tumult between estranged husband and wife that would play out in front of their children again and again.
    The romance between Marche and Bill blossomed, the film student occasionally staying over at her home. Her choice of boyfriend provoked different reactions inside the family. Even though he was now living with Stacey and squiring her around town, it was clear that Jon still carried a torch for Marche. The fact that Bill was a penniless student—rather than a big Hollywood swinging dick—gave him power and hope. Jon’s mother, Barbara, and Marche’s father, Rolland, were of different minds. Their message to Bill, roughly translated, was “Keep your hands off our girl.” Marche’s father would berate her in front of Bill as if he weren’t there, telling Marche that Bill was only using her for his own ambitions. If she wasn’t careful, she would lose her looks and Jon would never take her back. In their eyes Stacey and Bill did not exist; the only dynamic that mattered was the poisoned relationship between Jon and Marche.
    In spite of parental disapproval—in time Rollie did come to respect and admire Bill—the film student found himself invited to stay with Marche and the children in the Roxbury apartment. By the fall of 1978 Angie’s exile on the fifth floor was seemingly over. She shared the bedroom on the second floor with her older brother, while Bill and Marche spent their nights in the den.
    Even though the grandparents—and Jon—might have not been happy when Bill moved in, the children felt comfortable with the new status quo. Angie started calling him “Daddy,” which made Marche giggle. Bill was not so happy, thinking that if the redoubtable Barbara Voight ever heard Angie speak to him like this, she might hire a hit man to dispatch the interloper. Instead he suggested she call him “Daddy-O,” and for a long time she addressed birthday and Christmas cards to “Daddy-O.” On the otherhand, James always called him Bill, endlessly amused by his full name, Bill Day.
    His new role as Daddy-O did have its mishaps. When they went shopping at Ralphs on Olympic Boulevard, Bill and the children would wait outside while Marche quickly bought the week’s groceries. To keep the children entertained, Bill devised a game called “Runaway Shopping Cart,” where he would put the children in the cart, let it run down a steep ramp, and catch it just before it hit a wall. Angie and James loved the game, yelling with excitement as the cart hurtled toward the concrete wall. On one occasion Marche came out of the supermarket to see her children speeding down the path with, it seemed to her, no Bill in sight. She started to scream, which distracted Bill, who then lost control of the cart. The runaway trolley hit the concrete wall at full tilt, flipping over on top of the terrified children. They were uninjured, but that was the end of the game.
    It was not Marche but the