I love caviar. I stood there looking at it. There were three big tins of Beluga caviar. I knew that each tin cost roughly a thousand dollars. As I stood there, the caterer replaced an empty one. I had some idea of how many tins of caviar my mother’s guests would go through at a party this big. Oh my gosh, it would cost thousands of dollars in caviar alone. Last New Year’s Eve I had gone to the local cheese shop and splurged on an ounce of caviar for me and Dean. It cost one hundred fifty dollars, but it was a special occasion. Here, the caterers were replacing the large empty tin as if it were nothing.
The woman serving the caviar bar was wearing a white jacket and bow tie. She was young and pleasant. I didn’t see the toast points my parents always had at their seafood bars. I looked for their suitable replacement. I said, “Excuse me, I’m looking for the, for the . . .” Duh, I couldn’t think of the word.
She said, “Blinis?” Suddenly I had the same out-of-place feeling I used to have when I went shopping in my 90210 days, that Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman moment of looking like I was some silly girl who couldn’t afford to be shopping at Gucci. I felt like I didn’t belong. I don’t know why.
I panicked, blabbering, “Yes, sorry, I have mommy brain. I thought those were corn cakes.”
She gave me a look as if to say, “I don’t care. I just work here.”
But I kept going. “Um, do you happen to have the crème fraîche? See? You thought I was going to say sour cream. I do know the right terminology for a caviar spread.
She said, “No, but we have an avocado mousse.” Growing up we had the caviar, toast points, chopped egg, chopped onion, and lemon wedges. I was expecting that because that’s how we did it. Now everything was different and I was thrown.
Submitting to the new seafood buffet, I brought my pile of caviar, my fluffy blinis, and a scoop of wasabi caviar over to where my brother was sitting on a windowsill with his girlfriend. This huge room, with all its sumptuous sofas, and they were huddled in the corner with the houseplants, away from everyone. Leah smiled and said, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” As far as I was concerned, it was the best seat in the house. I scooted in right next to Leah.
The three of us sat there. I looked down at the caviar and said, “This isn’t how I remember it.”
My brother said, “But the crab claws are the same.” Then he said, “Do you still like to cook? Leah’s a great baker.”
I said, “Mom always said, ‘You’re either a baker or a cooker.’ I mean a cook. That was stupid, but you know what I mean.”
Randy said, “What do you cook?”
I said, “Lots of stuff Nanny made us growing up. Ground beef with frozen petite peas. Shepherd’s pie. Except I can’t make shepherd’s pie anymore because it’s minorly cursed such that when I make it, I end up in the hospital.”
Randy chuckled and said, “Do you make Nanny’s chicken dumplings?”
I said, “No, but I make her chili and the beef stew.” Randy and I were bonding again over what we knew, and Randy was just smiling. It was the simplest, most mundane conversation, but to us it meant the world.
On my way to find Dean and the kids, I ran into my mother. Throughout the evening she’d been solicitous, popping into my conversations to see if I was okay. She said, “Do you need help? There’s a lot of staff here. They can take the kids.” I said, “No thanks, Liam and Stella don’t know them.” Later she offered me juice for the kids. And now she came up to me and said, “I found the little wooden Santa cookie tray that you grew up with. I want to give it to the kids.”
I said, “I’d love for them to have that. Thank you!” First she’d given the kids the frog I gave my father. Now she’d set aside the tray for them. She was connecting my kids to the nice traditions from my childhood.
I’d just finished my seafood plate when I remembered the dining room. The whole table, which sat at least twenty, was laden with food. There it was, the lavish buffet that had eluded me all night. But just then Mom said, “It’s time. We’re opening up the candy room.” As I looked longingly back at the buffet, Mom led me, Dean, and the kids in the opposite direction, toward the breakfast room.
It was a small room (relatively speaking, of course), where we ate most of our meals when I lived at the Manor. In the middle was the breakfast table, which was white with fake snow. On the snow were mountains of cookies and candy, through which a real electric train circled around a track. There were desserts everywhere. Jars of candy. A doughnut maker. There was an ice cream sandwich station where they spread ice cream on any flavor of cookie and wrapped it in edible paper. Signs in the room said, “Welcome to Candyland.”
My mother pointed us to certain desserts, saying, “Try this one, it has this in it, and this other one has this.” She knew each dessert, and I realized that she’d had a tasting. Of course she had. She had tasted all the desserts and all the food. That was my mom.
The kids were wearing out, but Candyland gave them a second wind. I left Dean and my mom in there with them and made a break for it. I had to hit the buffet of food.
It was getting late. All the other guests had already feasted for hours, and in the dining room most of the food was gone. As I approached the table I took off my heels and slung them over my finger. I took a plate and started to serve myself. A waiter offered to help. He held the plate for me as I scooped food on, babbling apologies. “I feel really bad,” I said, as I helped myself to ravioli. “This is really nice of you. I don’t usually let people do things for me. I’m a mom.” On I went, determined to prove that I didn’t live an over-the-top life.
As I came out of the dining room with my abundant plate and my shoes still dangling from my finger, I ran into my stepson Jack holding his Candyland dessert plate. Jack had been a pleasure all night—sweet with the kids, polite, amazing. He said, “Hey, TT.”
No time for small talk. I said, “I just want to eat.” I led him into my father’s office. There was a bar set up in there. Some guests were having drinks. My brother and Leah were on the couch getting a psychic reading. Jack and I found a good corner and sat down on the floor (again) to eat. I was starting to feel pretty comfortable there. Jack said, “Your mom’s really nice.”
I said, “Thanks, yeah, she is.”
Jack said, “I really like her.” My mother had embraced him that night. There was an opportunity for peace, for all of us.
I said, “My mother has really taken to you. She wants you to come back and bowl.”
Jack said, “I like it here. Are we going to come back?”
I said, “Sure.” It was a nice moment. Then the photographer started snapping pictures. I flashed back to being twenty-two, hanging out in this office with my friends, shoes off, champagne in hand, wasted. My mother was going to look through these photos, see me sitting shoeless on the floor, and think that I was drunk and had to sit down. The reality was that I hadn’t had a single drink. But I’d held a twenty-one-pound child for over three hours in four-inch heels. The effects were comparable.
Holy crap, it was almost eleven o’clock. Time had flown. I couldn’t believe the kids were still conscious. Dean came in and said, “We gotta go. Liam and Stella hit a wall.” He hurried out to collect the kids. I said some good-byes and went out to the front. By the time I got to the now-empty foyer, Dean was on his hands and knees, wiping the carpet with baby wipes. Stella had gotten chocolate on the carpet. As he scrubbed hopelessly, Stella and Liam played with some Christmas decorations at the bottom of the staircase. My mom saw Dean cleaning and said, “Don’t worry about it.” This was the third time my child had attempted to destroy the Manor, but Mom was easy breezy. She’d been acting like a grandma about it from the start, and I was finally catching on. Maybe this house was child-friendly after all.
Then someone came with our coats and the diaper bag and we geared up the kids for the still-rainy night. My mother came out with two stuffed dogs that sang “Merry Christmas to You.” She handed one to each child.
I was holding Stella. M
y mother said to her, “Can I give you a kiss good-bye?” She gave Stella an Eskimo kiss, rubbing noses with her, and a butterfly kiss, fluttering her eyelashes against Stella’s. Stella giggled and giggled. I said, “I remember you used to do that with me.”
My mother said, “I want to ask if you want to have Christmas dinner with Randy, Leah, and me. It will just be family. I don’t even have a cook.”
I said, “Dean and I weren’t going to do anything. We don’t have any plans.”
Mom said, “Well, I was thinking of going to the Polo Lounge for dinner. Would that be okay?”
I said, “Yeah, that would be really fun.”
Dean overheard and said, “Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice?” Oh my God. Okay. I was going to have dinner with my family. After all these years my family would be together again for the holidays.
My mother walked us out. She gave me a hug and said, “I love you. I really love you. I hope you know that. Tonight was really special for me.” She made sure I knew she meant it.
I still felt some guardedness, but I took it in. I was scared, but deep down it meant everything to me. I said, “I love you too.”
As we left, we were given eye masks with cards that said “Sweet dreams” and were signed “Candy.” I knew she’d carefully chosen what color pen to use for her signature. I knew she’d picked the color of the border line on the gift card. She’s detail-obsessed just like me. Then, for the final touch, a guy dressed in knickers and a hat, like an old-fashioned newsboy, held out a newspaper. He said, “New York Times? Tomorrow’s edition?”
Wow. She was a pro.
The Start of Something
On the way home from my mother’s Christmas party I was wired, but not from sugar. I was happy inside. As Dean and I went over the little details of the party, I said, “Do you hear the way I’m blabbering? I’m excited.”
In the past Dean had been dismissive of my mother. He said, “If she’s not worthy, cut her out. When do you stop getting hurt?” But from the moment we got the invitation to the Christmas party, he was with me. He went into it open-minded and supportive (except for when he pulled his bowling alley disappearing act). I was impressed.
Now, in the car, I said, “I did it. This was hard, but it was okay.”
Dean said, “I’m really proud of you. Who knows? Maybe this is the start of something.”
Dean lost his father, first to alcohol, then to death. When he divorced Mary Jo, he lost his father-in-law, “Mr. E,” too. Dean and Mr. E had a nice relationship. They played golf together. I knew Dean missed that. Now he made a confession. He said, “I know this is premature, but if this all works out and we have a relationship with your mother, is it wrong that down the road I see having a relationship with her boyfriend like the one Mr. E and I had? Maybe he and I could play golf together. Maybe he and your mother would come and watch me ride my motorcycle.” Roger, my mom’s boyfriend, was really nice. He’d been great with the kids. True, Dean was jumping the gun. I didn’t know what kind of mom my mother was going to be, much less how her boyfriend would be as a father, but Dean’s fantasy swept me up immediately. Suddenly I was entertaining a double date fantasy—the four of us having dinner together. But what was wrong with that? Who’s to say my mother didn’t sit at home wanting the same thing? Maybe someday soon she would ride the teacups in Disneyland with Liam and Stella the way she used to with me and Randy.
There were moments, memories, traditions from my childhood that I remembered fondly. I went through a phase of having only bad recollections, but as the kids got older, going to school, having birthdays, celebrating holidays, living life with us, I started remembering the good times I had with my family. The traditions I shared with my mother came back to me. I started bringing them to the world I created for my children. My mother’s hand was in the crafts, the baking, the parties that I loved doing with and for my children.
Was the person I remembered with love still there? I knew I’d seen her when my mother collected the broken Christmas balls. She was a mommy again.
Then I had a revelation. I said to Dean, “Maybe I bought into the press too much. Maybe after all is said and done, my mother and I both listened to the press and stopped having a relationship because of it.” I knew we had problems. We didn’t have a great relationship. But the magazines, the talk shows, the headlines about feuds, all that media attention amplified our regular problems to a crazy, impossible level.
After all these years I didn’t think the press could have an effect on me. I knew the lies that were said; I knew how everything got blown out of proportion. I knew that as well or better than anyone else. Feud was their word, not ours. Estranged was their word, not ours. The press said we hated each other. We couldn’t see each other. We were at war.
Our differences were real. They created a painful family dynamic. She did things I can’t forget, and I’m sure she feels the same way. But a third party, the press, had made those differences harder to resolve. They elevated our struggles to a cold war, to something that felt irreconcilable. They pitted us against each other, then threw us together, over and over again. I told Dean, “I thought I was above it and beyond it and I wasn’t. We could have worked on our problems, but the press distorted them. We let the press distort them. We helped it happen.” We were both guilty of playing into the media’s hands. Seeing the way she was that night made me feel like I’d lost two years because of the weeklies. Maybe she felt that way too.
I said, “What happens now? Is everything fine? Am I back with my mother and brother? Do I have a complete family again? Do we just move on? For the kids’ sake I want to move forward. How do we do it?” I was scared. What if I got hurt again?
Dean said, “So what if you get hurt again? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved. Better to love and get hurt than to have anger and no love.” Dean was right. I had felt closed to my mother, but I was open. I had been the whole time. I smiled at Dean. I loved him so much in that moment.
I said, “Yeah, it’s worth it.”
During that car ride Dean and I had an amazing talk. A weight lifted off my shoulders. Dean was so understanding and patient. I felt so connected to him. He got it, everything I was feeling. He summed it up for me. He was with me going into this. We were together, side by side.
Electricity had been restored to Holmby Hills. The rain beat down on the car and shone on the streets as Dean and I drove home over the hill to our different life. All three kids were sleeping in the back seat. I knew it was the resolution of more than what we were talking about. It wasn’t just about me, my mother, and my brother. It was about me and Dean.
And just like that, our ebb was flow again. We cooked together, we spent every second together. We weren’t perfect. None of us were. But we were happy. I was a workaholic who tried to control far too much of my life. My headache wasn’t gone. Dean still rode motorcycles. I still micromanaged the color grid of the cushions on the couch. We had more untraveled roads ahead. I would probably obsess. Dean would probably withdraw. We would fight. But we welcomed the pain; we would work through it, because it was only a part of a whole that we chose and loved almost every day.
The Metamorphosis Begins
Christmas at my mother’s was a new beginning, but the rest of my life was still way out of balance. I’d tried everything—Eastern medicine, Western medicine, voodoo, phone calls to past life specialists in Hawaii, but I’d gotten no answers. I felt like giving up.
The next time I went to the pain doctor who had been treating my headaches, I said, “Why is this happening to me?”
He said, “You’ve lost Tori. You can’t function this way. Your body is telling you to make a change.”
I said, “Are you saying that I’m making myself sick? Is none of this real?”
He said, “Of course it’s real. But you’ve been getting headaches for ten years. You’ve been treating the headaches. I want to know what happened ten years ago when they started.”
Not to be
melodramatic, but I gasped. I knew exactly what had happened ten years earlier: 90210 had ended. Being on the show was the only life I had known for ten years, starting at age sixteen. I went in a girl and was expected to come out a woman. In some ways I did. But it was also kind of like being pushed out of the nest and expected to fly with no safety net. My headaches had emerged then and never gone away.
The doctor told me that I had to reevaluate my life. I needed to find myself again.
That resonated with me. I was beginning to get why I was sick and how much would have to change if I was ever going to get better. If I looked deep enough into the psychological side of my illness, I knew exactly what I’d find. It wasn’t rocket science. I was exhausted. I was working too hard and I had no one but myself to blame.
But, especially given how crappy I felt, I didn’t know how to start fixing myself. Was I supposed to put “change life” on my calendar? How much time should I block out for it? A two-hour window before lunch?
I texted Mehran, who has all the answers most of the time. Or most of the answers all the time. I wrote, “There has to be an answer here. Energy work?” In a flash, Mehran, ever resourceful, texted back with a recommendation for a Reiki practitioner. Our hairdresser swore by her, which may sound random, but trust me, our hairdresser has really good energy. He’s definitely not self-destructing with stress. And hair, as we all know, can be very challenging.
The Reiki practitioner, Patti, happened to have a cancellation right after my appointment with the pain doctor, so I went straight there. When I walked into her office, I was at rock bottom, but I would never let a stranger see how defeated I felt. I shook her hand and said, “Hi, nice to meet you” in that same little show voice that I used whenever I was nervous, the overpolite, apologetic little-girl voice that meant to say, I’m not a diva, and I’m sorry in advance for . . . for being me, I guess. And then, just to be clear, I apologized for being late.
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