Daisy Jones & The Six(76)

Rod: At some point, you have to get back on the bus.

Graham: You think that tragedy means that the world is over but you realize the world is never over. It’s just never over. Nothing will end it.

And I kept focusing on the fact that, with Karen and I, you know, life is just beginning.

Karen: I was very thankful to Rod that he got us back out on the road. That he didn’t let us capsize.

Billy: I did what Camila said. I got back out there. The first show, we were in Indianapolis. I flew out with the band. Camila and the girls were going to join me at the next stop.

Indianapolis was … it was tough. I showed up at the hotel, checked in, saw Graham, saw Karen, and then at sound check there was Daisy. She was wearing overalls. She looked strung out. You could see it. Her sunken eyes and her skinny arms. I had a hard time looking at her.

I’d failed her. She had asked me to help her get sober. And once Teddy died, I abandoned her.

Daisy: That first night back, I think we were in Ohio, I was so embarrassed to even let Billy see me. Because I had come to him and said that I wanted to get sober. And then I hadn’t done it. I’d fallen even further than before.

Karen: I told Graham I’d decided to have an abortion. And he said I was crazy. And I told him I wasn’t. And he asked me not to do it.

I said, “Are you going to quit this band to raise this baby?” And he didn’t respond. And that was it.

Graham: I thought we were still discussing it.

Karen: He knew. He knew what I was going to do. He just feels more comfortable pretending he didn’t. He has that luxury.

Billy: Camila and the girls came to join us in Dayton. I picked them up from the airport and as I was waiting for them, I could see a guy ordering a tequila on the rocks at the bar. I could hear the ice in the glass. I could see it sitting in the tequila. It was announced that their plane was stuck on the runway and I was sitting there, staring at the gate.

As I was telling myself that I wasn’t going to order a drink, I walked over to the bar and I sat down on a stool. The guy behind the counter said, “What can I get you?” And I stared at him. And he said it again. And then I hear, “Daddy!” and I looked and there was my family.

Camila said, “What’s going on?”

I stood up and I smiled at her and, in that moment, I had it under control. I said, “Nothing. I’m good.”

She gave me a glance and I said, “I promise.” And I picked up my girls in a big bear hug and I felt okay. I felt all right.

Camila: To be honest, that’s when I questioned my own faith. Finding him sitting at a bar. Flags went up.

I started to wonder if maybe Billy was capable of doing something that I would be incapable of forgiving.

Karen: Camila was with us from then on. For as long as that tour lasted. She’d fly back and forth, sometimes she had all the girls with her. But she almost always had Julia there. Julia was about five, by that point, I want to say.

Daisy: Every night was starting to feel like torture. It had been one thing to sing with Billy when I was with someone else, when I didn’t know how I felt, when I had lies I could hide behind. Denial is like an old blanket. I loved to get on under that thing and curl up and sleep. But, leaving Nicky, singing that song with Billy on live TV, telling him I wanted to get clean … I’d ripped the blanket off of myself. And there was no putting it back on. And it was killing me. The vulnerability, the rawness. It was killing me to get up there on that stage. To sing with him.

When we did “Young Stars,” I was praying Billy would look at me and acknowledge what we were saying to each other. And when we did “Please,” I was begging him to pay attention to me. I was having a hard time singing “Regret Me” with any real anger because I wasn’t angry, most of the time. Not anymore. I was sad. I was so goddamn sad.

And everybody wanted to see “A Hope Like You” the way we had done it on SNL and the two of us kept trying to deliver that. It just kept slicing me in two every night.

To sit next to him and smell his aftershave. And see his big hands with his swollen knuckles playing the piano in front of me and to be singing, from the very bottom of my heart, that I ached for him to love me back.

I spent the hours of the day we weren’t onstage trying to repair my wounds and it was like I was pulling them back open every night.

Simone: I was getting a lot of phone calls from Daisy at all hours of the day. I’d say, “Let me come get you.” And she’d refuse. I thought about trying to force her into rehab. But you can’t do that. You can’t control another person. It doesn’t matter how much you love them. You can’t love someone back to health and you can’t hate someone back to health and no matter how right you are about something, it doesn’t mean they will change their mind.

I used to rehearse speeches and interventions and consider flying to where she was and dragging her off that stage—as if, if I could just get the words right, I could convince her to get sober. You drive yourself crazy, trying to put words in some magical order that will unlock their sanity. And when it doesn’t work, you think, I didn’t try hard enough. I didn’t talk to her clearly enough.

But at some point, you have to recognize that you have no control over anybody and you have to step back and be ready to catch them when they fall and that’s all you can do. It feels like throwing yourself to sea. Or, maybe not that. Maybe it’s more like throwing someone you love out to sea and then praying they float on their own, knowing they might well drown and you’ll have to watch.