Not Afraid of Life Read online

  The key was this: anyone anywhere could file an ethics complaint for absolutely no money, illegally leak the complaint to the press, and then sit back and watch the destruction—at no personal cost. However, each complaint had to be formally processed, and Mom had to pay for her own legal defense. (It cost Mom and Dad $500,000.) Her approval rating dropped from nearly 90 percent before she went on the campaign trail to 56 percent.

  So when she asked me what I thought about her stepping aside and letting the lieutenant governor take over that last lame duck year of her term, I was all for it. As far as I was concerned, we’d lived through that chapter of our lives and it was time to move on. In fact, everyone in my family and Mom’s true friends agreed that stepping aside was the right decision for the state.

  It was a sunny Fourth of July weekend when she held a press conference in our backyard. There was one microphone on a makeshift podium, a bunch of press, and an audience of friends and family wearing short-sleeved shirts. Dad stood beside her wearing jeans, while Piper held Trig. Baby noises could be picked up through the microphone that would broadcast this speech—one of her last as governor—to millions. She had eighteen months left in her term, and they all came to an end in an eighteen-minute speech.

  “I polled the most important people in my life, my kids, where the count was unanimous,” she said. “Well, in response to asking, ‘Hey, you want me to make a positive difference and fight for all our children’s future from outside the governor’s office?’ it was four yeses and one ‘Hell, yeah!’ And the ‘Hell, yeah’ sealed it.”

  That “Hell, yeah” was probably me.

  The nation, once again, was shocked by my mother.

  That summer I was working at my job at the coffee shop with my cousin Lauden. Because I made only $7.25 an hour, it was hard to also pay a babysitter. So that day—as she did when class wrapped up and I worked in Anchorage—Aunt Heather kindly agreed to watch Tripp for me, before she went to her job. Lauden and I had poured many skinny mocha lattes that day, when a woman came and placed her order. On her way out, she said, “Hey! We’re looking for a receptionist at my father’s dermatology clinic and spa. If you’re looking for a different job, we have an opening.”

  “No way!” I said, hardly believing my ears. “That would be so much fun.” Her father was Michael Cusack, a successful dermatologist who’d been practicing in Anchorage for decades. He had even owned the Alaska Aces hockey team in Anchorage at one time.

  “Bring your résumé and we’ll have an interview,” she said as she took her espresso and put it in her cup holder. “By the way, we pay $15 per hour.”

  And with that “by the way,” my heart soared. With that kind of salary, I could afford to pay a babysitter and have a regular schedule. I went into the Alaska Dermatology and Laser Center at nine o’clock in the morning and shook the hand of Dr. Cusack, who was such a fixture in the medical community of Anchorage that his office had more than ninety thousand charts.

  He knew who I was. You can’t live in Alaska—or anywhere now—with the last name of Palin without people recognizing you. He told me what he was looking for and asked me what I wanted to do. “Listen,” he said kindly. “I’ve seen what you’ve been through, and I want to help you create a stable income for yourself. If you do good work, you can move up in seniority here. When can you start?”

  “Tomorrow?” I responded. My public speaking class had just wrapped up, and everyone in the class now knew more about swaddling babies than they ever wanted to know. Plus, I had also developed speeches about the benefits of waiting for marriage to have sex, about Down syndrome, and about the steps for decorating a house! That allowed me to start at the clinic immediately, and I was on the road to a much more stable life.

  The ladies who worked there became my instant friends. Marina was a medical assistant in her mid-twenties, Crystal was the office manager in her early twenties, and Janice, in her forties, darted around doing all kinds of things in the office. I was told I’d also do whatever was needed at the time. Though all of us were so different, we shared a serious commitment to having fun.

  All kinds of people came into the office—for skin cancer issues, rashes, rosacea, Botox, skin peels, and microdermabrasion. We had exam rooms, and I’d bounce around to each room helping everyone. After people signed in, I’d frequently be the one to take patients back to the exam room to ask some basic questions, like their name, their medical history, and why they were coming in that day. After I’d leave the room, Marina would come in to check their ailment.

  Sometimes, after I was safely out of earshot, they’d ask her, “Is that Bristol Palin?”

  Marina would lean in conspiratorially and say, “She gets that a lot.”

  I could deal with a lot of issues—cysts, stitch removal, rosacea, eczema. But the first time I learned about Botox injections, it was a little too much for me to handle.

  “So when we hit the bone, we hear a sound like this,” the doctor was explaining to me as he showed me the process. When I heard the needle go in and make that sound, I got a little light-headed.

  “Oh no,” said Marina. “She’s having a vasovagal reaction.”

  I didn’t know what that was, but it didn’t sound—or feel—good. They took me by the arm, and I had to go lie down in Dr. Cusack’s office with my feet elevated. It wasn’t the last time I’d be embarrassed at the office. One night, I dyed Willow’s hair but didn’t wear gloves. The next day, my hands were absolutely purple, like plums. And nothing would get that stain off—bleach, peroxide, alcohol wipes, nothing. So for two weeks, I had to endure the jokes of my coworkers as I worked in the dermatologist office with hands as purple as Grimace from McDonald’s.

  The questions became even more hushed. “Is that Bristol Palin with some strange skin disease?”

  People didn’t realize that the daughter of Todd and Sarah Palin would work at an eight-to-five job, doing normal things . . . as if the RNC would suddenly pay for my electric bill and ever-growing diaper expense! So we had a lot of fun with my easily recognizable face. Dr. Cusack would call me by a different name to throw people off. He’d say, “Susie, please go get those charts.”

  Since Dr. Cusack was very set in his ways, we’d pull pranks on him. He always wore blue surgical masks while doing procedures. Once, Janice drew a smiley face on the outside of it, so he put on his mask and had a big Sharpie-induced grin on his face without knowing it.

  He also had a favorite Chinese restaurant that made a waffle house look like a gourmet restaurant. I couldn’t believe that someone as sophisticated as the doctor would purposely choose to eat there.

  “Hey, want to go to lunch?” he’d ask us. “Just follow me, I know a really good place.”

  Every single time, no matter how much we complained, we’d end up at that old dusty restaurant, where the waiters knew exactly what he’d order and we’d sit on the glass-covered porch and try to grin and bear it.

  My mom is always preaching “Man was created to work!” And that certainly rang true for me throughout this entire time. For the first time in my life, I felt stable because of going to work every day. There’s something about having a job and a schedule that made me proud to be setting a good example for my son and affording his clothes and toys.

  Yet there was one loose end, and after so many months of trying to make a steady visiting schedule for Levi and Tripp, I decided to file for sole custody of my son. After all, I was the only parent with a job.

  I’d grown so tired of my personal dramas being discussed on television and newsstands that I hoped to figure out the custody issue in the privacy of my own misery. My lawyer and I asked the judge to allow us to file using fake names, in order to keep the records from being made public and picked up in the news. Initially, the judge issued temporary orders, which limited access to our file and allowed us to file under John and Jane Doe. I was so relieved!

  But then
Levi—and his attorney, whom he met while representing his mother in her drug-dealing charges—went public with the case. He said,

  I do not feel protected against Sarah Palin in a closed proceeding. I hope that if it is open she will stay out of it. . . . I think a public case might go a long way in reducing Sarah Palin’s instinct to attack and allow the real parties in this litigation, Bristol and I, to work things out a lot more peacefully than we could if there is any more meddling from Sarah Palin.

  When a reporter asked what he meant by “meddling,” Levi couldn’t produce one example. That’s because Levi wasn’t afraid of my mother. He just knew that a long, drawn-out custody battle would damage our family’s public image, create more drama, and provide opportunities for Levi to make more money. Plus, he could use the publicity to sell more articles.

  And our problems were once again thrust into the public spotlight. On top of all this, he still almost never saw Tripp. As Christmas approached, I started feeling bad about the fact that my son couldn’t even recognize his own father. That’s when I texted Levi and made a suggestion:

  Let’s take Tripp out together for his birthday.

  I knew I shouldn’t have, but it just felt weird that a big milestone—like a birthday—would come and go without a dad there. I tried to keep it on the down low. If Mom and Dad—or anyone—found out I’d reached out to him, they wouldn’t have understood. When Levi agreed, I chose an Anchorage Red Robin as a place to eat. We went on a weeknight when it wasn’t busy, around nine o’clock, to avoid anyone who might know us.

  This was the first time we’d been in the same vicinity in a long time, so I was interested in how he’d respond to seeing me and his son. I’d wanted to work out a time for them to see each other, but Levi just never seemed like he cared. The fact that he was willing to meet us seemed like a good development.

  Would it be possible to actually have a family? To get married and have a life together? Could he possibly be sorry for spreading lies about my family on national television? Had he changed?

  He slid into his seat across from me and Tripp, with hickeys all over this neck.

  “How disrespectful!” I said to him in disbelief. “Why would you show up for your son’s birthday like that? At least cover those up with a scarf or something.”

  “I got them from some drunk girl,” he said, as if that made sense. As if the alcohol on the lips of an intoxicated girl is somehow magnetically attracted to his neck. It was the same situation as seeing Levi three years ago with hickeys.

  I somehow managed to get through the meal in spite of my disappointment. But the first person I called when I got home was Ben.

  “Would you believe he’d show up looking like that?” I asked.

  Ben paused before answering. “Well, you know,” he said, “Levi has been dating a girl with a kid for a while now.”

  My heart stopped.

  “A kid?” I asked. “He’s been dating someone with a . . . kid? How old?”

  “The same age as Tripp.”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Why would Levi hang out with someone else’s baby and not with us?

  I broke down completely.

  How could he do this to me? Why did I think we could make it work? Why did I take Tripp out past his bedtime just to meet up with such a tool?

  I trudged to work the next day, and the next, as I tried to forge my way with Tripp in this world. I was thankful for my work as “Susie,” and enjoyed my relative anonymity in Anchorage.

  Because I now had a regular job with a nicer salary, I decided that I wanted to move closer to Anchorage and have my own place. The commute from Wasilla to Anchorage wasn’t too bad. On a good day, it was less than an hour, but snow and ice could sometimes make it more than two hours. As you know, Alaska sometimes has a little snow and ice. Because I’d earned a little bit of money through endorsement deals, didn’t have to pay Mom and Dad rent, and had always been cautious about my budget, I had saved enough money to buy a condo closer to work. So I approached my parents about it.

  “Really?” Mom said, her nose scrunched up the way it does when she’s not happy. “But what about that apartment for you and Tripp? You haven’t even finished picking out the colors for the wall.”

  She was right, of course. They’d already begun building this great place for me, though it would also house Dad’s plane and later Mom’s studio. I was a big part of how the family worked since Willow didn’t have her driver’s license yet and Track was stationed in Fairbanks. I ran errands and did the grocery shopping in exchange for a free roof over my head. It was a generous arrangement that had allowed me to get my high school degree.

  Even though I knew it would disappoint my parents—and complicate their lives—I was sick of the drama of Wasilla, sick of the daily commute, and ready to live on my own. Ben and I were still friends, even though he took my friend to her prom. I decided that we could still hang out as buddies even though romance was not in our future. He was a lot of fun to spend time with, especially because he was game when I suggested calling in sick to work one morning, dropping off Tripp at the sitter’s, and shopping at the mall. It felt so carefree to be shopping without carrying the baby and a diaper bag. Then we drove by condos that we’d seen on Craigslist. It was so much fun to drive by each one slowly, trying to imagine if each could potentially be my first home! Coincidentally, Gino—who followed in his father’s footsteps as a realtor—had e-mailed me the MLS post on a foreclosure that had only been on the market for one day.

  In my real estate excitement, I texted back:

  Come open it up for me so I can see the inside!

  He drove into Anchorage from Wasilla and was surprised to see me sitting in Ben’s truck. That’s the thing about small-town life; everyone is intertwined. Suddenly, my old flames were face-to-face, all so I could peek inside a condo.

  It had three bedrooms, two and a half baths, nineteen hundred square feet, with a two-car garage. It had cool high ceilings and wasn’t a cookie-cutter apartment. It had character. By the end of that day, I had already made an offer on the place. When the bank accepted my offer, I was so proud to be able to own my first home at age nineteen—through hard work and careful management of the money I earned from work and my endorsement deals. Because I wanted to protect my “new beginning,” I went to great lengths to purchase the condo privately. I conducted the sale through my attorney’s law firm under the name SM Properties. That way, I figured, I could get out from under the shadow of all the politics and family connections, to start in a new place with my new job.

  I was thrilled!

  Because my parents weren’t enthusiastic about me moving, I couldn’t exactly ask them for help in moving my things to Anchorage. However, Ben showed up, borrowed Dad’s trailer, and single-handedly moved all of my furniture—my mattress, my bed, my couch, my dishes—from Wasilla to Anchorage. He didn’t stop there. He moved all of my things into my new condo, which was three stories. Now, that’s a good friend!

  I immediately started making the condo uniquely mine—with large leather couches, flat-screen televisions, neat rugs, pink kitchen appliances, and—of course—a toddler bed for Tripp. I painted the walls purple, bought a leopard print carpet for the upstairs hallway, and a purple-and-black swirled carpet for the living room. In other words, I made it into a comfortable—yet hip—place for a nineteen-year-old to develop into “home.” I fully expected to have to replace Tripp’s tiny bed with a twin, and then with a full bed as he grew up right there in Anchorage.

  But I soon found out that even living there was not enough buffer between me and all of the Levi-produced drama.

  “Puke!” I said, when I found out my son’s father had posed nude for Playgirl. I couldn’t imagine that the stories that were circulating about my life on the Internet now suddenly had an element of porn to them.

  I was determined to move on with my life, and I put Le
vi out of my mind as best I could. When in the spring of 2010, Harper’s Bazaar contacted me to do a magazine shoot, I jumped at the chance. It seemed like a fun way to show the world that I’d moved on from the tabloid messiness that had defined my life. They arrived with an entire camera crew, wardrobe, makeup, and even an array of cakes, cookies, strawberries, and other beautiful confections made in Los Angeles and brought to Alaska just for the shoot. The gowns they brought were jaw-dropping. I felt like a princess as I slipped off my jeans and slipped on a Lanvin gown that cost more than $4,000, a Carolina Herrera shrug that cost almost $7,000, and an Isaac Mizrahi gown that cost almost $15,000. It was hilarious to be standing in my kitchen while my hair was curled and sprayed into place, all while Tripp was smearing cake all over his chubby cheeks.

  The reporter was there at my condo while we celebrated my brother Trig’s birthday. I’d decorated the condo for the event, with hand-lettered signs and balloons. Mom showed up and chatted with the reporter. It was a fun experience, one that focused on my new self, my new life, and had very little to do with that guy named Levi.

  During this time, Ben was a constant friend. Well, he became more than a friend as he listened to all of my complaints and absorbed a lot of my heartache. And we officially started dating after I ran into him around Tripp’s first birthday. Ben is a soft-spoken, hardworking guy. I actually used to babysit his little brother and sister, so we’d been friends for a long time. But the main thing that attracted me to Ben was that he seemed to really love Tripp. I was astonished how easily he played with my son. He’d change his diapers and help me put him down to sleep. We made Costco runs together, he helped me assemble my computer desk, and he stopped by in the evening on the way home from his job near my house. Later, when Tripp was a little older, Ben would put him on a snowmachine and we’d laugh as he tried to ride by himself. He’d stop and go, stop and go. But the whole time, Ben was right there beside him making sure he didn’t fall. It was refreshing to have someone help bear the weight of the responsibility of having a baby. We were inseparable.