Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton Read Free Book Online Page B

Stacey embarked on a wild and passionate affair that very soon became the talk of campus, with Stacey painted as an exotic and highly sexual young woman. It was later reported that Stacey, the daughter of a wealthy doctor, was a member of the Children of God sect, a free-love movement that practiced what the founder, David Berg, called “Flirty Fishing,” in which female members were encouraged to show God’s love by engaging in sexual activity with potential converts. Jon had reportedly shown his devotion to his new lover by wearing a “yoke” necklace designed and sold by the cult. “It was the Scandal of Northridge,” recalls a member of the faculty. In time the lurid gossip ended up in print. For example, in his biography of Angelina Jolie, Brandon Hurst stated that when Marche was pregnant with Angelina, she came downstairs in their apartment and saw Jon kissing Stacey. She went upstairs, according to Hurst, “and began shaking with shock and, as she thought she would have a miscarriage, called an ambulance.” Actually, the apartment was only on one floor, but the story stuck.
    In fact, it was months after Angie was born that Jon first met Stacey, and certainly when Marcheline and their friends went to see the play in March 1976, she never suspected that the woman onstage was her husband’s lover. One day he announced that he was going to tour with Hamlet and that Stacey Pickren was coming along. “Oh, are you having an affairwith her?” Marche asked him innocently. It was said almost as a joke. After all, they were trying for their third child and had even gone away recently for a romantic weekend when his mother, Barbara, came to babysit. Everything seemed just peachy in their world, Al Pacino now a distant memory, a moment that had passed. “She hadn’t a clue what was going on; not a clue,” recalls her best friend, Lauren Taines, formerly Stogel.
    It would have been easy for Jon to lie and make light of the matter. At that time he had absolutely no intention of leaving Marche and the children and making a life with Stacey. She was a wild and secret fling, who had taught him as much, if not more, as he had taught her. Instead, consumed by a mixture of Catholic guilt and natural honesty, he said yes. It was probably the worst decision he ever made, changing not only his life but also the lives of his children forever.
    At that moment Marche’s world fell apart. As much as she loved Jon, in her eyes infidelity was unforgivable. They went for marriage counseling, but it did little to salve the hurt; indeed, Marche felt angry that the therapist seemed to be siding with her husband because he was a movie star. Even though they were still sleeping together and went away for another romantic weekend to try to rekindle their love, it was a losing proposition. In time Marche closed the door to her heart and gave Jon the “Bertrand freeze,” placing him in cold storage for life. As an intimate of the couple observed: “She learned the freeze from her mother. It is permanent. There is no recourse. It will hurt you in places you never knew could hurt. This is at the very heart of her tragedy, like nothing else.”
    While Jon was repentant, he was now unforgiven. As he wrestled with a domestic situation that had spiraled out of control, Stacey was the entrée to a life he could not resist: drugs and imaginative sex. He moved out of the apartment on Roxbury Drive and rented a place with Stacey, leaving behind a scene of emotional devastation. “Marche was so distraught about the breakup,” recalls Krisann Morel, who became more a counselor than a babysitter. “Jon was the absolute love of her life. Every morning she would pour her heart out. ‘What am I going to do, what am I going to do?’ Marche would say. She was baffled, absolutely tormented , by his affair. She couldn’t get her head around why he would leave her for another woman.”
    While Jon admits that the rift between them was “very severe,”