Daisy Jones & The Six(18)

I say, “What are you doing here?”

He says, “You’re going home,” and he takes me by the arm and holds on to me until we’re practically on the plane. Turns out, Camila had gone into labor.

We land and he drags me into his car and drives me to the hospital. We’re double-parked in a red zone in front of the lobby. Teddy says, “Get up there, Billy.”

This whole long journey and all I had left to do was walk in the double doors … but … I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t meet my kid like that.

Teddy got out of the car and went up there himself.

Camila: I’d just spent eighteen hours in labor with only my mom by my side. And I’m expecting my husband to walk in the door and straighten up. I understand now that you can’t just fix yourself. It doesn’t work like that. But I did expect it to work like that then. I didn’t know.

Well, the door opened and it wasn’t Billy … it was Teddy Price.

I was so tired and I was sweating bullets from the hormones running through me, and I was holding this tiny baby that I’ve just met, this girl who looks just like Billy. I decided to name her Julia.

My mom was ready to take us both back with her to Pennsylvania. And I was tempted. Right then, giving up on Billy felt easier than trying to have faith. I wanted to say, “Tell him I’ll raise this baby on my own.” But I had to keep trying for what I wanted for me and my kid. So I told Teddy, “Tell him he can start to be a father this second or he’s going to rehab. Now.”

And Teddy nodded and left.

Billy: I waited for what felt like hours, outside the lobby, fiddling with the latch on the door. Teddy came down finally and said, “You have a baby girl. She looks like you. Her name is Julia.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

And then Teddy said, “Camila says you have two choices. You can get your ass up there right now and be a good husband and father or I can drive you to rehab. Those are your choices.”

I put my hand on the door handle and I thought, you know, I can just run.

But I think Teddy knew what I was thinking because he said, “Camila didn’t give any other options, Billy. There are no other options. Some people can handle their booze and their dope. You can’t. So it’s over for you now.”

It reminded me of being a kid, maybe six or seven—I had gotten really into collecting those little Matchbox cars. I was obsessed with them. But my mom didn’t have enough money to get us very many. So I’d search for them on the sidewalk, in case any kid lost one. Found a few that way. And then when I was playing with other boys in the neighborhood, sometimes I’d palm one or two of theirs. A few times, I outright stole them from the store. My mom found my stash and sat me down and said, “How come you can’t just be happy playing with a few cars like everybody else?”

I never did have an answer for that.

It’s just not my way.

That day at the hospital, I remember looking at the lobby door and seeing this man coming outside wheeling a lady with a baby. I looked at him and … he just seemed like a man I didn’t know how to be.

I just kept thinking about walking into the hospital and looking at my kid and knowing that I was the shit deal she got.

[Chokes up] It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with [her]. I wanted to be with [her] so bad. You have no idea how bad. I just … I didn’t want my girl to have to meet me.

I didn’t want … that early into her life, I didn’t want my kid to have to look up and see this man, this drunken, strung-out, piece of shit and think, This is my dad?

That’s how I felt. I was embarrassed to be seen by my baby.

So I ran away. I’m not proud of it, but that’s the truth, I went to rehab to avoid meeting my own daughter.

Camila: My mom said, “Honey, I hope you know what you’re doing.” And I think I yelled at her, but inside I was thinking, I hope I do, too.

You know, I’ve thought about this for a long time. Decades. And here is what it comes down to. Here is why I did what I did.

It didn’t seem right to me that his weakest self got to decide how my life was going to turn out, what my family was going to look like.

I got to decide that. And what I wanted was a life—a family, a beautiful marriage, a home—with him. With the man I knew he truly was. And I was going to get it, hell or high water.

Billy entered rehab in the winter of 1974. The Six canceled the few remaining dates on the rest of their tour.

The other band members took some time off. Warren bought a boat and docked it off the shore in Marina del Rey. Eddie, Graham, and Karen stayed in the Topanga Canyon house, while Pete temporarily moved to the East Coast, to be with his girlfriend, Jenny Manes. Camila rented a house in Eagle Rock and settled into motherhood there.

After sixty days in a rehabilitation center, Billy Dunne finally met his daughter, Julia.

Billy: I’m not sure I went to rehab for the right reasons. Shame and embarrassment and avoidance and all that. But I stayed for the right reasons.

I stayed because on my second day there, the group therapist told me to stop imagining my daughter ashamed of me. He said to start thinking of what I’d need to do to believe my daughter was proud of me. I’ll tell ya, that stuck. I couldn’t stop thinking about that one.

Slowly, it became the light that was calling to me at the end of that tunnel … imagining a daughter … [pauses, gains composure] Imagining myself as a man my daughter would feel lucky to have.