My Inappropriate Life

by Heather McDonald

  ME:

  How was golf?

  PETER:

  Golf? Fine.

  ME:

  Well, did you play fine enough to win any money?

  PETER:

  Yes, eleven dollars.

  ME:

  Great. We’ll put that towards our $550 monthly country-club fees. Fiscally, joining the club is really working out. Well, you played with Ted, right?

  PETER:

  Yep. Ted.

  ME:

  Ooooh, what is happening with them? Are they still separated?

  PETER:

  I don’t know. We don’t talk about that stuff.

  ME:

  What do you mean you don’t talk about it? Ted’s been your friend for six years. He put a tracking device on the roof of his wife’s Range Rover and discovered it was parked at her personal trainer’s house for four-hour blocks in the middle of the afternoon every day for two weeks, and she had gained weight. Well, what is up with the personal trainer she had met while in rehab for her addiction to Oxycontin?

  PETER:

  I don’t know. I didn’t ask.

  ME:

  I didn’t either, but somehow I got your friend Ted to tell me the whole scandalous made-for-TV Lifetime movie between the piñata and the blowing of five candles at some kid’s birthday party. So, let me get this straight. You get to be gone all day and bring absolutely nothing home to entertain me with. How is your golf in any way benefiting me?

  Seriously, it’s so frustrating. It’s not like Peter doesn’t love to gossip. I tell him everything that is happening at work and with my single girlfriends, as well as my married girlfriends, and he eats it up like a Gamma Phi Beta sorority sister. I’m sorry, but I think Peter not prying is just downright selfish. The only thing he brings home is his sunburned cheeks that are exasperated by his rosacea, and I’m forced to put Laura Mercier’s tinted moisturizer on his face before we leave as a couple to a cocktail party.

  I kept running into Angelina Rose at pool and dinner parties, and each time she would tell me what a genius her daughter, Sophia, was and since she felt St. Ignatius was not going to be challenging enough for her they were looking into alternative schools. The kid was fine, but it wasn’t like she was playing Beethoven or reading The Wall Street Journal. She was just like all the other kids jumping around and whining to get their mom’s attention.

  One time, at a Halloween party, Angelina Rose was talking about her favorite subject, Sophia, and how she is so smart it’s downright scary. My friend Anna was there, talking about her son, Mikey, who is the same age as Sophia, and Angelina Rose interrupted and said mockingly, “I’m sorry, Anna, but I saw Mikey’s first-grade homework, and Sophia was doing that same stuff in kindergarten at Whispering Meadows. St. Ignatius is so behind.”

  The school that Angelina Rose eventually put her daughter into was called Whispering Meadows, and it was three times the price of St. Ignatius and was made up of mostly entertainment-industry families who think their kids poop Pulitzers.

  Anyway, the night of my husband’s birthday, our evening started while the kids were jumping on the trampoline and Liz, Anna, Dina, Angelina Rose, and I were drinking our wine and wrestling with our lamb shish kebabs. Suddenly Angelina Rose started in again about the new school she had decided to send her so-called genius daughter, and how amazing their abstract-art department is. I mean, isn’t all the art that kids do considered abstract? I don’t understand abstract art, and half the time I don’t know what my boys are attempting to draw. Just then Sophia ran in, whispered something to her mother, and ran back out. Angelina Rose turned to me and said, “Sophia just said that she and Brandon were on the trampoline together and he called her ‘lame.’ ”

  I asked, “Are you sure it was Brandon, and not Drake?”

  “Yes, she said it was Brandon.”

  “That’s great,” I said, straight-faced. “Because last week, when a boy at the park cut in line for the swings, Brandon called him a ‘fucking asshole.’ Lame is nothing.” Anna and Liz burst into laughter, but Angelina Rose and Dina were a little shocked. “Sorry, I just did six stand-up shows in two days,” I said.

  “Oh my goodness, I don’t think Sophia’s ever even heard those words,” Angelina Rose scoffed.

  I was dying to say, Really? I doubt very much that your husband has never called you a fucking asshole. But I didn’t, because I’m a lady.

  After Lately began at eight p.m. Some of the kids were in the playroom, and the others were running in and out of the living room to the backyard as we settled in on the sofa to watch the latest episode. This particular episode featured me having a breakdown over a fight I had with Peter in a writer’s meeting. Chelsea invites me to spend the weekend with her at her house to get my mind off it. We become so engrossed watching a Lifetime movie in her bed that she ends up peeing because she doesn’t want to miss out on anything in the riveting plot line.

  Angelina Rose had poured herself a large glass of Pinot Noir and was completely stretched out on the lounge portion of my sectional couch. A couple minutes into the show, everyone was laughing and I didn’t even notice that Sophia had come into the living room. She was standing by her mother’s wineglass, watching a scene where Chelsea jokingly asks my colleague Sarah Colonna if she’d brought any drugs to her pool party. Angelina Rose, still taking up the entire bed portion of my couch, said, “Sophia just said to me, ‘Mom, this is so inappropriate.’ Can you believe that? Even Sophia knows what an inappropriate show this is. Maybe she’ll be a TV critic someday.” The show resumed and I’m shown getting drunk at Chelsea’s house with actresses playing my friends. Once again Sophia comes into the room just as on the show I’m leaning over in an attempt to play Twister and they’ve edited in a big black square to block out my crotch. Angelina Rose, still lying down, was sipping from her goblet and saying over the roars of laughter, “Oh my God, inappropriate, inappropriate. I can’t believe Sophia is seeing this.”

  At this point I wanted to say, If you’re that concerned, then get off your ass, put down the wine, and take your impressionable genius of a daughter outside to play on the trampoline so she can stop being traumatized by E!’s original programming, but again I didn’t say anything.

  When Drake and Brandon’s scene was about to come up with Peter and Chelsea, Peter called them in to watch. Once again, Angelina Rose, still lying there, said to the other mother in the room, Dina, “She’s going to have her kids watch this? Inappropriate.” The boys ran in still holding their Wii remotes, saw themselves say the words “Bye, Chelsea” on TV, and ran out. They’re total narcissists, and they had no interest in seeing me, their mother, be hilarious at all. The episode concluded, and the men were all saying how funny it was as the women gathered up the dishes and drinks and headed to the kitchen.

  As I walked in, I heard Angelina Rose talking to Dina. She said, “Dina, I just can’t believe that show.” Dina said, “I know, I don’t let my kids watch much TV either because it makes me so uncomfortable.”

  Angelina Rose continued, “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to Sophia; she’s just so smart, it’s going to be difficult.”

  And that’s when my Real Housewives moment happened. Angelina Rose had caught me on the wrong day. I was coming off of only four hours of sleep, I had consumed three generous glasses of Chardonnay, and it was the day my period was due. I turned with tears in my eyes and said rather loudly, “Well, I’m sorry that the show that puts food in my children’s hungry mouths was so inappropriate and it has somehow ruined your parenting plan, but you got the Evite and it clearly stated we’d be watching After Lately and not The Sound of Music. It wasn’t my intention for any of the kids to see it. I thought they’d be preoccupied with violent video games instead.”

  As I’m saying all this, crying and shaking, I see Peter come around the corner with a look of total shock on his face as if to say, “Shit, what now?” Then my best friend, Liz, comes around the corner. If this were The Real House
wives of New Jersey, Liz would be as protective as the matriarch Caroline Manzo and as angry as Teresa Giudice, ready to flip a table at a moment’s notice. “Whoa, whoa, what’s going on here, ladies?” Liz asked as she tossed her straight, long blond hair to one side. Meanwhile, Anna didn’t know what to do and clearly didn’t want to get involved. At this moment I imagined all of us at the Bravo version of The Real Housewives of Woodland Hills reunion show, with host Andy Cohen seated in the middle holding his blue cards. It would be at the Woodland Hills Marriott because that is Woodland Hills’ most historic hotel, built back in 1986. Sitting on the couch next to me would be Liz, of course, and on the other couch would be Angelina Rose and Dina. Anna would be sitting not as close to the other two, as if to say “I’m Switzerland.” Anna would never interrupt and only speak when asked a direct question from Andy Cohen, sent in by a viewer from Beaver Creek, Nebraska. Later it would be announced that Anna chose to leave the show because she wanted to spend more time with her family and her booming candle-making business, but the truth would come out that she was asked not to return because she was so boring and in the history of the Housewives franchise, she was the first woman who honestly didn’t like the drama.

  I would wear a one-sleeved cranberry-red minidress with gold and diamond hoops and a cuff bracelet—not a ton of bangles, because those clanging bracelets are a nightmare for the sound guy when you’re wearing a microphone and they start clanging as you wave your hands to make your point about an untruth someone wrote about you on their blog. I’d pair my dress with my patent-leather nude Jimmy Choo peep-toe heels, highlighting my overly spray-tanned, moisturized legs.

  Everyone was frozen. Liz continued, “Angelina Rose, what did you say to Heather? What happened, Heather?” The hostess in me came back out and said, “No, it’s nothing, it’s just I didn’t mean for the kids to see After Lately and some (really only one, but I didn’t want to point it out) of them did and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Then Angelina Rose said, “It’s fine, Heather. Everyone makes mistakes.” She went to hug me, but my hands were wiping my tears away so she just stood there and held me awkwardly. I tried to end the hug by pulling away, but she kept on hugging me in a tight hold. Thank God her normal husband had the good sense to gather their coats and was standing there ready to leave. Dina apologized to me, saying that her kids didn’t see any of it and that she felt bad that she said anything about it.

  Once all the families had left, Peter asked, “God, what happened? Why did you get so upset and start crying?” Now, this question really pissed me off because after eleven years of marriage he should know to shut up and be on my side. I said, “OK, Peter, when you come back to earth as a woman and you’ve had four hours of sleep and three glasses of wine on the day before your period, and another woman criticizes your profession and your parenting over and over again in your home and you choose not to cry, then you can criticize my behavior tonight!”

  Liz called me the next morning as I was driving to work and said, “You know what that whole thing was about, don’t you? Angelina Rose was jealous. She is an out-of-work actress. She would die to be starring on a TV show, and here you are on not only one show, but two. She is not happy with the decisions she’s made in her life and the only way she can deal with it is trying to make a happy, confident person like you question your decisions.”

  I started to feel a little sorry for Angelina Rose and made a conscious effort to let the whole thing go. That is, until a few hours later when I checked my Facebook page, where, by the way, I have the maximum of 5,000 friends. That includes all my real friends and fans, all of whom I accepted until it got to the maximum (I now have a fan page, so feel free to Like me). Lo and behold, right there on my Facebook wall was a message from Angelina Rose. She wrote: “Heather, thanks for the great dinner and wine last night. Being a mother can be so trying sometimes and it’s obvious from last night that you are having a very difficult time with it. I will continue to pray for you.”

  OK, that was it! I no longer felt sorry for her. The first thing I did was remove the post. The second thing I did was to call Peter and tell him about it. I said, “The good news is, I’m not under some contract with Bravo. Therefore, The Real Housewives of Woodland Hills does not exist so producers cannot legally force me to hang out with this woman so we can be filmed together. We are not going to socialize with Angelina Rose and her husband, and she will never step foot in my home or on my trampoline ever again! Got it?” Peter responded with a resounding shrug of his shoulders and mild concern that we would be losing out on a gossip source.

  2

  GOING BANANAS

  I live only eighteen miles from the Chelsea Lately offices, but in order to get there, I have to take an L.A. freeway called the 405. Everyone hates this drive because the 405 is always so backed up and has been going through construction for the past four thousand years. On a day where we shoot two shows, I have to be at the studio by eight forty-five a.m. One Wednesday, I was just about to get on the freeway when I remembered I was scheduled to be on the roundtable on the show. I had completely forgotten and therefore forgot to pack a cute dress to wear. The show does not provide wardrobes for us, and I was wearing one of my classic velour Juicy Couture sweatsuits in rust. There was no way I could wear that on TV, and besides, rust is not a particularly flattering color on anyone. I quickly did an illegal U-turn and headed back. I ran into the house, picked the first dress I saw, and grabbed a pair of black heels. As I was running back past Brandon’s room, I saw Brandon—or what I thought was Brandon. In that quick second I thought I was losing my mind. I knew Peter had dropped off the kids that morning . . . did he forget Brandon? I took a second look and realized it was the toddler-size monkey that Kris Jenner gave all the kids at her Christmas Eve party. The kids had put a T-shirt and Brandon’s Red Sox hat from his T-ball team on the monkey, and at a glance he looked like a real child. I suddenly realized that if I strapped this monkey in Brandon’s car seat I could take the carpool lane on the 405. I made sure that his seat belt was secure, stuffed his monkey ears into the cap, and added a scarf because it looked cute, and layering is in.

  My fourth child.

  Now layered with a scarf.

  As I first merged into the carpool lane, my heart was beating and I kept looking in my rearview mirror at my “child” in the backseat and to make sure no cops were tailing me. It was 8:31 a.m. and by 8:40 I was getting off at my exit. It was amazing how I flew down the freeway. I was never going back to using regular lanes.

  The next morning we were not taping a show, so I had the time to drive the kids to school. When the three of them piled in, Brandon got very upset when he saw his monkey in the car. I didn’t want to tell the kids the truth for fear that they would say something to their teachers about how their mother broke the law, so I said, “I like him in my car. It makes me feel like I have a fourth child [Mackenzie, my stepdaughter now also lived with us]. I don’t get so lonely when I’m driving to work.” Something in my explanation really set off Brandon and he said, “I don’t want him wearing my Red Sox hat. That’s mine!” Brandon ripped it off of his head. “Fine,” I said. When the kids got out at the school drop-off, I noticed the baseball hat on the floor of the backseat and without even thinking about it I put it back on the monkey. When I got on the 405 with my fourth child, even though I wasn’t pressed for time, I found myself merging in the carpool lane with less trepidation.

  When the kids got in my car the next morning, Brandon yelled, “Why is that monkey wearing my T-ball hat again? He’s not even on the team!” This made Mackenzie and Drake burst into laughter, which only got Brandon more upset. “I hate that monkey,” he cried. Mackenzie continued to tease him: “Brandon, don’t say that about your little brother.” Brandon folded his arms and huffed. Could it be that Brandon, the baby of the family, was actually worried that the stuffed monkey would take his place?

  I’m the youngest of five and my dad adored me, by always giving me tons of attentio
n. When he scolded me for the very first time, I remember my brother Jim started a slow clap, like the kind you see at the end of every 1980s John Hughes film. Jim said to my three other siblings, “Finally the favorite gets in trouble too. Justice is served.” I started to cry and my dad picked me up as I stuck my tongue out at the others.

  I remember when I was six and invited Liz (my best friend from basically birth) to join our family at a basketball game. Something changed between my dad and me. When she arrived, she was wearing satin hot-pink dolphin shorts and a matching satin jacket. I was so jealous of her cool outfit. Then, halfway through the game, she asked my dad if she could sit on his lap. When we were walking to our car, she took his hand. My dad thought it was sweet, but I could have killed my best friend in a crime of passion. The way I saw it, my dad was cheating on me with another six-year-old little girl and doing it right in front of my face. I walked ahead of them and yelled, “Why don’t you just adopt her, Dad, if you like her so much better than me?” My dad thought it was hysterical. To this day, my dad brings it up when he sees Liz. The two of them still share a special bond. Needless to say, I understood where Brandon was coming from. But this monkey was not another boy; it was a stuffed animal that was saving me twelve to eighteen minutes a day on my commute. I didn’t care how upset Brandon got. That monkey was just too precious for me to give up.

  The next week, Monkey and I flew down the 405. Well, we didn’t fly. Instead of going an average of eight miles an hour we were going seventeen, but it did allow for me to stop at Starbucks and get coffee before my writers’ meeting began. On those drives in I started to fantasize about having another child. I always felt like Brandon was a baby until recently, when I was having a dinner party and I kept referring to him as the baby. One of the guests asked, “So where is your baby? Is it sleeping?” I answered, “No. It’s that huge thing over there writing on an iPad.” I knew Peter didn’t want more kids, but if I was to have a child now, things would be so different than with Drake and Brandon. For one thing, we have more money, so we could afford a full-time nanny, who could even bring the baby by the office for quick visits. And being slightly known in basic cable can be huge in the baby world. My publicist worked with Playboy’s Kendra Wilkinson when she had her baby, so he has all the connections for free maternity clothes and free baby clothes. I can see the spread now of the nursery in In Touch. I could take photos of myself with no makeup on and my chin squished into my neck to look really fat and secure a Nutrisystem endorsement deal. Me on the cover of OK in a pink bikini, spray-tanned to the hilt, wearing nude strappy heels and holding the baby so its chunky legs would fall perfectly and cover my love handles squirting over the top of my bikini bottom. I know exactly how to pose and tilt my hip to make me look the thinnest. I’d feed this baby only organic food and have the nanny make the baby food in one of those special baby blenders. I would exploit it not just to benefit me and my career but our whole family. If only I could convince Peter that a new baby would help his golf game or get him a set of free clubs, he’d be just as gung-ho as me.