HERE’S THE PART that makes me look really creepy. I had actually been in Kelly Wearstler’s beach house once before. Kelly had let Cheyenne use the house for a day, and I went over there to see Cheyenne’s new baby. Once inside, I did what I’ve seen people do when they come into my house. They pretend to be focused on whatever business they have with me, but I can see them peering around corners, trying to get a discreet glimpse of how I live. The whole time I was at Kelly’s house, I was oohing and aahing over the baby while at the same time internally debating whether to whip out my iPhone to send pictures to Mehran. I didn’t want Cheyenne to think I was rude. But Mehran would die when he found out where I’d been. I really wanted to share the moment with him. Prudence prevailed, and I didn’t take the pictures.
Anyway, when I finally received the longed-for invitation and came over with the kids, I had already been in Kelly Wearstler’s house that one time, and she had no idea. I was the stalker you let through your front door.
I already knew that her house was gorgeous but kind of cold. The walls were covered in beige stone. There were pale hardwood floors that blended with the stone. The palette was relentlessly neutral, with a perfectly calibrated range of textures and colorless patterns. The place was stark and flawless. It was almost impossible to believe that the person who lived there had two boys under ten years old. My kids (and pets) would have spread their toys and crumbs and fur (pets only!) all over that place in five seconds flat.
My kids aren’t as socially crippled as I am. As soon as we came in, they peeled off with her kids, and I was left standing with Kelly. A bunch of other guests milled about. It emerged that they were all about to go surfing at Point Dume. Point Dume was known for its surfing and its exclusivity. You could only enter the beach if you lived within a certain triangle and had a key. Kelly had a friend with a key. Of course she did. And Kelly Wearstler was not just an ultrafashionable, megasuccessful businesswoman. She also, unlike me, could head to a private beach, whip out a surfboard, and chill. And here she went. Clearly my vision of us nibbling crudités and chatting about our kids and our mutual passion for design wasn’t about to happen. And now that I knew she and her friends were practically out the door, how long were the kids and I supposed to stay? I had no idea what the etiquette of the situation was. All I knew was that I’d probably get it wrong.
As my head spun with all of this, Kelly was perfectly nice and welcoming. Her friends welcomed me too. I didn’t know exactly how to start a real conversation, but then I remembered we’d gone to Anguilla and stayed at the Viceroy. I knew that Kelly had designed the Viceroy, along with the interiors of many of the other boutique hotels that her husband’s real estate group owned. That had to be a good topic.
“We went to Anguilla and stayed at the Viceroy. It was great.” I told her which villa we’d stayed in—I thought it was villa ten.
Kelly said that number ten was a popular one—I remembered that someone at the resort had told us that Michael Jordan had stayed there with his family, and Chelsea Handler had too (not at the same time as Michael Jordan, though that image was worth something).
I wasn’t brave enough to make a joke about Michael Jordan and Chelsea Handler. Nor did I launch into the tale of my encounter with a stray cat at the hotel. Stray cats roam Anguilla, and everyone stays away from them because who knows what diseases they might carry. Naturally, I was the asshole who befriended the stray cat. There was one who lingered outside our villa, meowing woefully at me every day. I put out bowls of water and milk for it. After a couple of days it trusted me enough to come inside for a moment, and eventually it let me pet it. But one night when I went to pet its back, I startled it, and it bit me. It was a stray cat. I was in a foreign country. And I was pregnant, with no idea when I’d last had a tetanus shot. I had to go on antibiotics. None of this ever would have happened to Kelly Wearstler.
She said, “That villa’s so great, isn’t it?” I agreed, and then there was silence. I was at a loss. The moment was slipping away.
Then Stella announced, “I’m hungry!” Nobody was eating.
“Let’s go home and get you something to eat,” I said.
“No, no, I’ll get her something,” Kelly said. She went into the kitchen and brought out some crackers. Uh-oh. Crackers and a three-year-old was a guaranteed crumbfest. Stella grabbed a big handful. She was going to get crumbs everywhere. That’s how Kelly would remember me—as the woman whose child messed up her house. As Stella trotted around, nibbling crackers, I followed her, hunched over, my hands stretched under her chin to catch crumbs, apologizing profusely as I went. Liam was climbing on the couch—shoes off, but still. I told him to get down.
Kelly said, “No, they’re kids, it’s fine.” But was it fine? I couldn’t tell.
Then Kelly excused herself to get ready for surfing. As she walked away, I looked down at my Missoni flats, which I had never worn before. They were killing the back of my heel. I had gotten them on sale at Gilt and would never wear them again. Had their one and only wearing been worth it? Had Kelly at least noticed that I was wearing Missoni?
I told Liam and Stella it was time for us to get going. That’s where the visit should have ended, with our polite thank-yous and good-byes. We would retreat back to our house with no lasting friendship between me and Kelly Wearstler, but with no damage done beyond a few cracker crumbs on an otherwise speck-free floor. However. My children were having such a nice time that they both immediately fell apart. Liam crossed his arms defiantly and said, “No, I’m not going.” He stomped across her beautiful floors.
Liam started wailing, and Stella joined in. I quietly went over and gently took Liam by the arm. “We’re guests in this house. I know you’re upset, but let’s talk about this at home.”
He pulled his arm away, and as he did I held on. He screamed, “You’re hurting me!” My parenting skills were failing me, and now my child was publicly accusing me of abuse in front of my idol.
What made it worse was that everyone else in the room politely kept talking, pretending that nothing was happening. I knew that was the proper thing to do, but all I wanted was for someone to say, “I feel for you. My kids do this all the time.”
My failing attempts to assuage Liam went on for five minutes, which felt like five hours. Kelly tried to help, offering to bring us all with them to surf and showing them videos of her kids in a mini rock band at school. Ultimately, in spite of my efforts to extract my children, we probably overstayed by about half an hour.
We finally left. I still thought she was really cool. And nice. But I had to face reality. There was no magic. She had no real interest in me. Our summer of bonding and subsequent lifelong friendship had begun and ended in one short, awkward hour. Kelly, if you still want my advice on stone trends, I’m standing by.
The Pig Made Me Do It
Even after my fantasy friendship with Kelly Wearstler flopped, I loved our downsized Malibu life. I couldn’t help wanting it to go on forever. How great would it be if we sold our house in Encino and moved to a small house in Malibu? I thought. The family would be in closer quarters. We’d all spend more time together. We could go to the beach. Then I saw an article in a beach magazine about a chic family with tons of money and an extravagant lifestyle who had moved to Broad Beach, a small (and exclusive) private beach even farther up the coast than we were. This extremely attractive family had downsized from a seven-thousand-square-foot house to a much smaller beach bungalow. The husband and wife talked about how moving to a smaller space brought the family closer. It was terrifying for them at first. They worried about how they’d survive with so much less space. But moving to a beach house had changed their whole lifestyle. Now the tan and beachy mother, who was pictured in gorgeous caftans (my dream!), spent her days surfing with her kids. There was a photo of her cooking while the kids did their homework at a desk opposite the kitchen counter. The article inspired me. That could be us!
Anyone who knows me knows that as soon as I get a notio
n like that, well, I have to start looking at real estate listings. We had a whole month in Malibu. It couldn’t hurt to peek at a few houses. It started with my poking around online, but before I knew what I was doing, Dean and I were driving up the coast to check out some of the properties. We couldn’t afford anything on the beachfront, especially because we needed enough land for the animals.
The animals. Back in Encino, I had what I thought of as a backyard farm.
We’d always had a pack of dogs scrambling underfoot. Then DailyCandy ran a piece on a cool mobile chicken coop for city dwellers. It didn’t even kill the grass! I reminded Dean how planting an organic garden had gotten Liam eating more vegetables. Maybe if we had chickens, and Liam collected eggs, he’d start liking eggs the way he had when he was younger. Dean is always a sucker for a good sales pitch from me. He thought chickens were a great idea.
Then I stumbled across silkie bearded chickens. They have lots of extra-soft fur like poodles and a reputation for being great, sweet pets. And here’s another perk of doing a reality show. If you tell them something interests you, the show’s staff does all the research. Chris, one of our producers, found adorable silkies at a farm in Norco, California. On Liam’s third birthday, we packed up the kids and the crew and went to get chickens. We came home with three. I named one Coco (after Coco Chanel, of course). Liam chose the ultrasophisticated sobriquet Turkey Breast for the second. And Dean, taking a cue in sophistication from his son, named the third Chicken Nugget (but that one turned out to be a rooster, so we returned him).
While on our chicken splurge, we also signed up for a pygmy goat. She would be ours as soon as she was weaned. I initially named her Donna Martin, but by the time she arrived, the joke had worn off and Dean named her Totes McGoats after the movie I Love You, Man.
One day we went to the pet store Kahoots to get food for the animals, and they had a bunch of newly hatched chicks. They were irresistible. We brought home five. These we couldn’t sex, but only one of them turned out to be a rooster. We kept him and named him Jackson.
For Stella’s second birthday that June we got two rabbits. They immediately had twelve babies, ten of whom we gave away. (I identified with the mother rabbit, but I would never give my own away.) And at some point around that time I went to Petco for supplies and brought home a bearded dragon named Princess and a snake. (The snake didn’t last long. It became anorexic and wouldn’t eat. Apparently this sometimes happens with snakes. The poor thing died of starvation. I was surprised that Star didn’t pick up on the story for a “pets look like their owners” piece.) Then there was another goat. And, around Father’s Day, two rescue guinea pigs.
Coco the chicken lived in the house with the dogs. She was trained. Ish. The rest of the chickens were in a chicken coop (not the chic mobile one that had launched the madness). Totes McGoats was smart. She learned to use the doggie door in one day. But it can be hard to house-train goats because they don’t really know when they’re pooping. But since they only eat oats and hay, goat poop is sweet smelling, and to dogs it’s like candy. So the dogs followed the goat around and cleaned up after her. Life on the farm.
Something was clearly going on with me. All this animal expansion happened toward the end of the fifth season of Tori & Dean, right when Dean and I were going through relationship strife. My beef was that Dean spent too much time biking or sitting at the computer looking at racing events and gear. Maybe I should have been grateful. At least his concept of porn was racing helmets and riding gloves. He wasn’t doing horrible shit, but he was disconnected and quick to anger. There is no doubt that, although we never said it out loud, the animals created chaos and distraction. Instead of focusing on our relationship, there was an ongoing stream of new creatures to take care of. It would take me a while to realize that part of the reason our farm kept expanding was so I could postpone dealing with the issues in our relationship.
THERE WAS ONE more animal occupying a small but rapidly growing space in our backyard farm: the pig. When I heard that there was something called a micro-mini pig, which only grew to be twenty pounds, I envisioned a whole farm of minis right there in the backyard. Dean was on board. New animals were something we usually agreed on. He was always game—at least in the moment; he only got angry later when he had to clean up after them. (I’m really good at cuddling and playing with and loving the animals, but poop scooping isn’t exactly my forte.)
Soon after I first read about micro-mini pigs, a friend sent me a link to a listing on Craigslist. It described a little pig named Hank, almost fully grown and still under twenty pounds. The pictures showed him wearing sunglasses and a dog sweater. He was already comfortable wearing clothes! I had to have him. He was going to fit right in. And at four hundred dollars he was much cheaper than the other listings I’d seen, which had micro-minis costing thousands of dollars.
I called the owner right away. At first she said that they had another buyer. I immediately got competitive. When she told me that Hank slept in bed with his owners, I told her that we had a European king and thousand-thread-count sheets. He would love it at our home. (Of course, it’s the cotton staple length that matters, not the thread count, but I couldn’t go into it with her.)
The owner seemed swayed by my passion. “Can’t you come do a home visit? We’ll pay more!” I added. I drive a hard bargain.
She agreed to bring him over.
In the photos on Craigslist, Hank was tiny and adorable. When he and his owner arrived at my house, his size surprised me.
“He looks twice as big as he did online,” I said to the owner.
“Yeah,” she said. “Those pictures are a little old. He’s nine months old, though. He shouldn’t grow much more.”
She had a very sweet scrapbook showing Hank’s first months on Earth. Here was an article from his local newspaper showing him at some event. Here he was wearing a party hat. Here he was dressed up for the holidays, posing on Santa’s lap. Hank’s owner seemed very attached to him—she agreed to sell him to us, but she teared up when it came time to say good-bye. Yet for all her love of her pig, she was moving to a place that didn’t take pigs. It seemed a little odd, but I’m not one to question.
That night Dean started to set up a dog bed for the newest member of our family, but I put my foot down. The owner had said he was used to sleeping in a bed. I had promised. “He sleeps in our bed,” I said. I picked up all forty pounds of him and carried him up our spiral staircase. As we ascended, he let out a huge squeal that echoed throughout the house. I should have taken it as a cry of warning, but soon enough Hank settled in between me and Dean, his head nestled in a down pillow, and went to sleep.
In the middle of the night a noise woke me out of a dead sleep. I had no idea what it was, but it sounded like the room was flooding. I sat up in bed. Hank was no longer tucked between me and Dean. He was gone.
I stood up and crept forward. “Hank? Hank?” In the dark I couldn’t see him but I headed toward the sound of gushing water. There he was, facing the corner, pissing. Only then did I remember that the owner had warned me that pigs like to pee in corners of rooms. I wanted to say, “Hank! Stop!” He needed to be trained not to do this. But I was afraid that if I interrupted him, he’d turn and spray pee everywhere. Instead, I stood, watching silently as my not-so-micro-mini pig peed on and on. He must have peed for five minutes. By the time he was done, there was a fully soaked circle, two feet in diameter, in the corner of our plush cream wall-to-wall carpeting. I had insisted on cream, even though Dean worried the kids would destroy it. The prospect of corner-peeing pigs had not entered the bedroom-carpet negotiation.
When Hank was done, it wasn’t a job for a few paper towels. It was a job for several long-staple Egyptian cotton bath sheets.
As anyone other than me would have realized from the start, Hank was not a micro-mini, if such a thing exists. He wasn’t a mini. He wasn’t even a potbelly. He was a full-on slaughterhouse pig who would grow to be well over two hundred pounds. Mon
ths later, I texted the seller. I wanted to tell her that Hank was going to appear on our show and that he was going to be on the poster promoting it. I thought she’d want to know that he was semifamous. When I sent her the photo, I added, “And by the way, as you’ll see, I don’t think he’s a micro mini.”
All she said was, “Oh, I’ve heard about these scams.” But clearly she knew the truth—why else would she have parted with him while he was still relatively little and cute? I knew she still loved him. Why else would she sign her texts “Hank’s mom”? (Why would anyone sign their texts anyway?)
We had two goats, five chickens, one rooster, four dogs, a bearded dragon, a guinea pig, and four rabbits, and we were doing fine. But Hank really needed to be on a farm. Perhaps house-hunting for a farm in Malibu was a bit rash, but all I can say is that I did it for Hank. The pig made me do it.
THE ANIMALS WERE a critical part of this new fantasy that quickly became my obsession. As we worked our way up the coast and started looking up in the canyon, we began to find farms. It was amazing! You could live on the west side, be near the beach, and have a farm with horses and chickens. The prices (I convinced myself) weren’t as crazy if you just drove a bit farther north and inland. We could really do this. We could sell our house, move into a smaller house for less money, and live out my months-long dream of being a farmer.
That September we went into escrow on a house. It was a little house. When I said we were downsizing, I wasn’t kidding. This house was fifteen hundred square feet, a quarter the size of our house in Encino. It was barely big enough to hold our family, but what did that matter—it was a tear-down anyway. What made it desirable was that it was built on one acre of great property. You stepped out of the kitchen to a glorious view of the whole coastline. The land surrounding the house was full of lavender and fruit bushes. I pictured myself in a chic brimmed hat, holding a wire basket, picking lavender. I would sew little sachets, filled with lavender from my backyard and tied with twine, and give them as Christmas gifts. I saw myself making jam from the kumquats and tangerines. Hank and the chickens would have the run of the horse ring. (There was a horse ring.) And this whole perfect setup was really underpriced because the old woman who lived there needed to sell it.
Spelling It Like It Is Page 4
