“Hey, guys, want to go skating?” I asked Liam and Stella. Indeed they did. It was a plan. We wiggled into the crowded rental shack. I was carrying all the skates when someone asked to take a picture with me. You couldn’t move, it was so packed. “Sure,” I said, and then it began. A bunch of other people wanted pictures with me. “Of course, of course,” I said, smiling and posing as we kept making our way to a bench. As I struggled to get the kids in their skates, a man came up to me and said, “Can you just take a picture with my wife? Please? I’d do anything for you.”
Music to my ears. I said, “Will you help me lace up my kids’ skates?” It was a deal. I decided I should hang a sign around my neck: WILL TAKE PICTURES FOR CHILD CARE.
As we staggered to the rink, Dean and Jack found us.
“What are you doing?” Dean asked. It was probably only eight thirty at night, but it felt like midnight. We’d had such a long day. The kids were exhausted. We should have wandered back to the hotel and cut our losses.
He was right. I grimaced. “It was a bad idea.” We couldn’t turn back now. Stella and Liam were all in.
As soon as I got on the ice I realized what a mistake I’d made. I had barely walked a block since the surgery and now I was attempting a sake-fueled jaunt on slippery, crowded ice. I had no stomach muscles to speak of. One false move and I was a goner. Terrified to move, I clung to the side of the rink. Jack held my other arm, keeping me up. He was slightly amused by the spectacle and kept asking if I was drunk. But the truth was my nervousness completely overrode my buzz. As soon as the kids had their fill, we made a beeline back to our cozy hotel room. We put the kids down, and Dean turned on the TV. There was a “news” report that Kim Kardashian was pregnant. It was the highlight of the night. Happy 2013.
On New Year’s Day, all the kids wanted to do was go sledding. We drove around Northstar looking for a hill, but the only decent slope we found had a sign on it: NO SLEDDING. At last we found a short, sloped driveway. What did my California kids know about sledding? That little patch of snow was all they needed in the world. So much for our luxury ski vacation. We could have stayed home, fired up the ice maker for a few hours, and called it a blizzard.
AT DINNER THAT night, Hattie was fussing in Dean’s arms. I felt her forehead. She was warm, so we headed straight back to the room. On the way, Dean peeled off to get some juice for the kids from the market in town.
At the Hyatt, as we headed up in the elevator, I looked down at Hattie. She was staring up. My mother’s instinct told me something was wrong.
I said, “She’s having a seizure.” And she was. Right there in the elevator, she turned blue. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She was unresponsive. Liam had had a febrile seizure when he was her age, so I had some hope that I knew what was going on. I said, “We’ve got to get her clothes off and bring the fever down.”
The elevator stopped at our floor and we all piled out in the hallway. I instructed Laura to take off all of Hattie’s clothes and to lay her down. Then I tried to call 911. I had no cell service. Damn it. I was sure they had cell service at the Ritz.
Our room was at the other end of the hotel. Instead, I went straight to the lobby and ran out of the elevator yelling, “Call 911, my baby’s not breathing!” The woman at the desk started making the call.
The lobby was a two-story atrium. When I asked for help, out of the corner of my eye I saw feet going up the stairs turn and stop. A woman said, “My friend’s a pediatric neurologist!” I ran up the stairs four at a time, the first time I’d run since my operation. I flashed back to Liam’s febrile seizure, when, pregnant with Stella, I’d run down the stairs four at a time to call 911 for him.
The doctor joined me and we went up to Hattie. As the doors opened, we saw that she’d thrown up but was starting to come around. The doctor took her pulse, and as he did the EMTs arrived, and Dean was close behind them.
Hattie’s blood pressure was still very low, so we headed to the hospital. The EMTs gestured me forward to ride in the ambulance with her. I lay down and strapped her to me, just as I had when Liam had his seizure. As we drove to the hospital I was thinking about how much time I’d missed with Hattie. I’d had to stop picking her up when she was four months old because of the bleeding. Three months after that I left to be on bed rest. I wasn’t around for her first words or her first crawl. Throughout my pregnancy with Finn, whenever I wanted to hold her, I’d fake it with someone else standing behind her, supporting her weight. She didn’t know the difference, but I did. To this day I still wasn’t supposed to hold her while standing up. Missing the bonding with Hattie was a devastating loss that I worried was permanent. She was only attached to Dean and seemed to have no attachment to me. Most of the time when I reached for her, she turned away. I knew she would have been more comforted at that moment if Dean were with her instead of me. But the EMTs had assumed she wanted her mother.
I was so worried that she’d be like, Who is this woman? Get her off me. Instead, as we lay there together, she cuddled with me, looking into my eyes.
At the hospital they found that her temperature was still high and her ears were very infected. She hadn’t even complained! They put her on antibiotics and sent us home, telling me to make sure she took a fever reducer every three hours. Once Hattie was fine, I texted Laura to ask if Liam and Stella were okay. I was worried that they’d seen Hattie go through that. Laura said that they were fine.
Back at the hotel, Stella said, “Hattie’s eyes rolled back in her head.”
I said, “That was pretty scary but you guys did great.”
As we got the kids ready for bed, Laura said, “You were great tonight. You were so calm. I’m not sure I could do that.” It may have been the first time in my life anyone ever described me as calm. But Dean wasn’t there. I had to be in charge, so I acted. I made things happen. It was nice to realize that when push came to shove, I didn’t panic. I felt strong.
Dean went to sleep with Liam and Stella in the living room. Hattie stayed in bed with me all night. At times she’d wake up, grab her blankie, and nuzzle in with me. It was a real moment for us. As afraid as I had been in that elevator, once Hattie was out of the woods, I saw the silver lining of that dark, scary cloud. It was our first real bonding moment. At the hospital, when they were hooking her up to the EKG, Dean had picked her up and she’d turned and reached for me. She’d always been a daddy’s girl, but now I was the one holding her. I thought, Oh my God, she wants me! She’s my daughter. I gave birth to her, but I was always wondering if I fit into her world. Now I had my answer.
The next day, when we came out of our room to go to breakfast, Liam stopped right outside the elevator. He said, “This is the area where Hattie had her disease.”
WE ARE NEVER going back to Tahoe. We were so excited. All we wanted was to relax and start the New Year on a less dramatic note. To have Hattie’s seizure on New Year’s Day . . . I decided not to take it as a sign. I told myself it was just the residue of 2012 that had to be dispelled. It was the last bad thing, and buried in it was the smaller but life-changing joy of connecting with my daughter. I was full of hope for 2013.
Tori’s Post-Baby Bikini Bod
Like any postpartum mom, I wanted to get back to my fighting weight. I’d had it pretty easy after Liam and Stella, but I never got back into shape after Hattie was born because I got pregnant right away. And went on bed rest. With the complications after Finn’s birth, I didn’t worry about how I looked until I felt like I had my strength back.
For several months I couldn’t really exercise. There were a couple reasons. First, there was some risk that my scar would open up again. I was terrified of that. Second, I really don’t exercise much, period. So I took off my weight the old-fashioned way. I like to call it the Just Keep Your Fucking Mouth Shut and Eat Air diet. It’s all the rage.
I love to eat. But I nibbled rice cakes and ate soup and had dinners that looked like they belonged in some health magazine. With my sedentary lifestyle,
it was the only way, and it worked. My clothes were starting to fit again.
Us Weekly saw me out and about and noticed that I was getting trim. They called my publicist saying they wanted to do a shoot of me in a bikini. We agreed, but I wanted to wait a bit. I looked okay in clothing but I wasn’t remotely toned. But the magazine wanted to “scoop” the story, so we agreed that I would do the shoot two weeks later. Time to get my workout on.
Finn was seven months old. I hadn’t exercised for two years (and even then I only did it to lose baby weight). My body was finally my own again. I went whole hog. That first week I had two personal-training sessions. And Dean had just gotten into MMA (mixed martial arts). It was a safe version of wrestling that the whole family could do at a gym near our house.
Dean was very excited, and when Dean is excited, he buys gear. He ordered MMA outfits for all of us. Mine consisted of dorky silk shorts, a tank top, and gloves, all in pink. I love pink, but this was a bit much. I sent a picture of myself in MMA gear to Scout, Bill, and Mehran, knowing they’d be amused. But Scout was concerned. He texted, “a week ago you had intense abdominal pain and now you’re doing this? don’t you think it’s extreme?”
“It’s been seven months!” I wrote back. I wanted to have control of my body again.
“Try hiking,” Scout said.
I told him that the doctor had approved my activities and that the trainer knew what he was doing, but Scout was having none of it.
Three days later I was back at the hospital. Nothing had bothered me while I was working out, but over time the pain in my abdomen became severe. Scout was right. Should’ve hiked.
Looking at my CT scan, the surgeon said he didn’t think I had a hernia. He couldn’t tell, but he thought the problem was scar tissue pinching a nerve. Then he examined me. As soon as he saw the bulge of flesh over my scar, he told me I needed surgery to fix the bulge. He said, “I want to do this with a plastic surgeon.”
I said, “What? Why a plastic surgeon?”
He said, “In layman’s terms, it’s a tummy tuck.”
I said, “I don’t need that!”
He said, “Trust me, you’re going to want it.”
Was he saying I needed it for medical reasons or that I had to have it? I couldn’t tell.
I said, “I don’t care what I look like.”
It was true. I just wanted the pain to go away. I was happy with how I looked. And I didn’t want plastic surgery—I didn’t want to spend more time away from my children for vanity. And in the back of my head I didn’t want to have people thinking I’d resorted to surgery to get my body back.
The surgeon said that he had to fix the scar tissue. If I didn’t have surgery on the bulge at the same time, it would only get worse.
As I walked out of his office, a nurse said, “You need to know that he’s a very conservative doctor. He doesn’t usually recommend surgery.” Still, I resolved to get a few more opinions.
Meanwhile, the fine-tuning I’d wanted from working out hadn’t happened, and the bikini shoot was only a week away. I’m not interested in a tummy tuck, but I’m not completely un-vain.
I turned to slimming wraps. This fell wholly into the category of unscientific weight loss. I went to a place in my neighborhood called Suddenly Slimmer. They claimed that by wrapping my body in mineral bandages I would lose inches and my skin would tighten right up. It seemed unlikely, but at least it was noninvasive.
I used the name “Victoria McDermott” when I booked the appointment, but the woman at the desk said, “Wait a minute! I know who you are. At first I didn’t know, but now I totally know who you are.” She led me to a room where I was to sit for an hour, naked except for the Ace bandages that wrapped my body.
I went for two treatments, and the second time I brought Stella. There was a mini-trampoline in the room, and she bounced happily as I lay there getting what I told her was something to help my skin. We’d only been there twenty minutes or so when the same wrap lady popped into the room. “Hi, Tori! There’s a woman here for a treatment. She’s really excited that you’re here too! She loves your show. She’s never had the treatment before and she’s nervous. Can she come in to meet you? You can tell her about it.”
I guess she saw people naked except for mineral wraps all day long and didn’t think it would be weird for me to meet someone while lying mummified on a vibrating recliner. I’m such a wimp. “Sure,” I said. Fuck me.
The woman came in: “Oh my God, Tori! It’s so nice to meet you.”
I tried to wave a zombie hand but could barely move. “This is awkward, but hi, how are you?”
She laughed, and then seemed to get how embarrassed I was and made a quick exit.
I took a picture of Stella jumping on the trampoline and my mummified feet and sent it to my publicist with a note saying, “Gotta do what you gotta do. With my luck Stella will tell someone from Us Weekly about this tomorrow.”
For the Us Weekly photo shoot the next day, my publicist had given me clear instructions as to what I should say about my weight loss. Women didn’t want to know that I had lost weight through dieting, not exercising. I didn’t want to be the asshole who didn’t work for it. So I said that I swam. It was sort of a bad choice. I can’t do much more than doggy-paddle.
Stella, who had witnessed the mineral wraps, almost blew my cover. She was in the kitchen with the makeup and hair person from Us before I came in. When I entered, the woman said, “Oh my God, Stella told me all about the trampoline.”
“Oh, yes, I took her to a trampoline place,” I said, covering.
“You got your skin tightened there!” Stella chimed in.
“It was a great facial later that day,” I said. If I wasn’t careful Stella would land her own feature: “Tori’s Toddler Exposes Her Secrets.”
Even after the shoot, I wanted to stay diligent about my diet. I stayed away from sugar and didn’t take a single lick of the kids’ ice-cream cones. But one night Dean and I were in bed. My Ambien was just kicking in when we heard a loud thump. We went outside and found that two of our chickens were missing. Just gone, presumed dead. One of the ones that died was a favorite of mine that we’d named Elizabeth Taylor. Their coop door was busted open. We hadn’t heard any squawking, but we’d been told that there were raccoons on our property. I was devastated. Thank God Coco was safe in her dog bed in our room. She doesn’t know that she’s a chicken.
When we came back into the kitchen—maybe the Ambien was to blame—for the first time in my life I did stress eating. Sitting on the counter were brownies left over from the craft services at the Us Weekly shoot. After the shoot, as a pat on the back, I’d taken a single bite, but then Patsy said, “I see you’re off your diet.” I felt guilty and spit it out immediately. The night Elizabeth Taylor died, I ate the entire container of brownies.
Dean had never seen me eat like that. He said, “What are you doing?”
I said, “I’m stress eating!”
He stared at me, still not understanding.
“The chickens are dead!” I yelled, shoving the last brownie into my mouth. As Dean gently led me back to the bedroom, I realized I finally understood what the whole emotional-eating thing was all about. Our chickens were gone, but wow, those brownies were good.
Somewhere That’s Green
On Valentine’s Day I was in the kitchen baking treats with Liam, Stella, and Laura. I had four projects going: Rice Krispies Treats, cakes, cake pops, and cookies. Finn and Patsy were in their room. Hattie was already asleep for the night. The kitchen in our Westlake house was all windows on one side. They let in tons of sun during the day, but as the sun set, the glare made it hard to see anything but your own reflection. I pulled a batch of cookies out of the oven, and then I saw Laura’s face go white. Had my cookies burned?
I said, “What is it? The cookies?”
“No, nothing. I don’t know,” she said. Then, after a moment, she said, “I saw someone in the backyard walking past the window.”
/> “Oh, no,” I said. “That always happens to me. You’re seeing your own reflection in the window.”
“No,” she said insistently. “Someone walked by. They were light.”
“They were light?” I didn’t know what she meant.
“We’re all wearing dark tops. It was a man. He was wearing a long-sleeved khaki jacket.” She was stumbling over her words, but this was starting to make some sense: I was wearing black and she was wearing navy blue.
I said, “Really? What do we do?”
She said, “I think we should call the front gate.” That was a good idea. This was, after all, a gated community. Surely if we had a trespasser the front gate would handle it.
Laura called the front gate. She told them what she’d seen. The guard said, “Sorry, we can’t help you. You’ll have to call the police.”
Laura said, “But we’re three women alone with four babies. Can you come up here while we wait for the police?”
The guard said, “Sorry, but we aren’t armed, and we can’t go on private property.” He gave her the number of the sheriff’s department.
Then it started to hit me. What if this was for real? What if there was an intruder on the property and we were in danger at this very minute? None of the doors were locked. The sliding glass doors in the kitchen and our bedroom had doggie doors that interfered with the lock. Some of the doors didn’t even have locks. Dean had a gun but I didn’t know where it was.
“Okay, guys,” I said. “Let’s go somewhere safe until the police are here.” Laura grabbed the kitchen timer (after all, I had two red velvet heart cakes in the oven). We went out in the hallway, where we had a good view of the whole house, but I couldn’t figure out a safe place to go from there. The four of us stayed in the hall for fifteen minutes, waiting for the police. We knew because we had the timer. My cakes would be done in five minutes. I called the sheriff’s department again. This time the guy who answered the phone was snippy.
Spelling It Like It Is Page 18
