“I just talked to you. They’re on their way.”
I said, “We’re alone with young children, baking and scared. Please don’t talk to me like that.”
He agreed to stay on the phone with me until help arrived. All of a sudden the timer went off.
The cakes! Laura and I locked eyes, panicked. “They’re going to burn!” I said. I was scared to go back into the kitchen, but I couldn’t send my bubbly blond babysitter. You know how these things go. The cute babysitter always dies first. I had to go get my red velvet cakes. But what if the guy was in the kitchen? Could I grab them and grab a knife at the same time? I made a decision. I had to go in. For the love of baking.
The guy was still on the phone. He said, “The cops are on your property.”
I said, “They’re not! Nobody’s here. But I smell red velvet burning!”
He said, “I don’t know why they haven’t rung the doorbell.”
I knew why. They were dead in our backyard.
Then the guy on the phone said, “Okay, the cops are in your backyard.”
Laura and I led the kids to the back door. I saw flashlights bobbing around. I opened the door and two cops came in.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I said, putting on my oven mitts as I ran to take out my cakes. In addition to the two red velvet heart cakes, I had two regular cakes that I was going to use for push pops ready to go in the oven. The cop came in to tell me they hadn’t found anyone on the property and to ask me a few questions.
“Tell me about the security here,” the cop said.
I said, “Hold on, I’m going to put my other two cakes in the oven.” I had my priorities straight. The cakes for the push-pop cakes went in the oven. Then I told the cop that none of the sliding doors worked, and the front door was unlocked.
“Do you know how unsafe this is?”
I said, “It’s a guard-gated community.”
He said, “Please. They get in here all the time.” We called the owners of the house, who said they didn’t have anyone scheduled to do any work. The cops hadn’t seen any footprints, but that didn’t mean anything. They filed a report, and then one of them said to me, “I would call the security situation here unlivable. I don’t know how you sleep a wink at night.”
Dean was out of town on business, due to arrive back that evening. But I wasn’t about to keep my family in this high-risk situation. We couldn’t stay in the would-be crime scene. I gave the cops some of my fondant-coated conversation-heart Rice Krispies Treats (they came out perfectly). As they enjoyed them, I packed up all the kids and the dogs and Coco so we could check in to the local Hyatt. The cops seemed a little surprised that we were leaving.
“You just told me the place was unlivable,” I said.
“Next time we can be here faster,” the cop said. “I wouldn’t go to a hotel.”
But there was no stopping me now. I had room service on my mind.
When Dean’s plane landed, my string of increasingly panicked texts came through. He read through to the bottom, which told him to meet us at the Hyatt. When he arrived, he was less than convinced about the imminent danger we’d been in.
“But the cop said the security situation was ‘unlivable’!” I said.
“Come on,” Dean said. “He was being a little extreme.” He told me that the front door had a working dead bolt and that he could easily fix the sliding doors. I wasn’t reassured.
That night, a thought that had been floating around my brain came to rest. It was happening again. We had to move. It wasn’t the intruder. All he did was provoke a temporary anxiety. But we’d been renting this overpriced house for almost a year and it was time to assess our situation. The children weren’t happy at the nearby school, and the best school we’d found for them was forty-five minutes away. We’d driven that far from Malibu to their preschool, and we knew it was hard on them. Above all, we had to downsize our lives. Our money manager insisted on it.
On the other hand, were we really going to move again? This was the ninth place Dean and I had lived in seven years together, and our homes were all over the place. We weren’t narrowing down where we belonged and how we wanted to live. What was I looking for in all these new houses? I had a notion of a home that would complete me, complete our family, and I kept thinking I’d found it, but I was never happy. I wanted a stable life. I want something permanent. I needed that. My family needed that. But what if I never found it? I didn’t want to chase an impossible dream.
What was home? I always flashed to the movie Little Shop of Horrors. Audrey is a trampy girl who dreams about a life different from hers. She sings “Somewhere That’s Green” about wanting to cook like Betty Crocker and look like Donna Reed. Her fantasy is a little more modest than mine, but the feeling is the same. And really, there is something about the simplicity she describes that I long for.
I grew up in great luxury, wanting a simple, cozy life. Now I’m torn between the two. I have a vision of waking up in the morning, wrapping myself in a big cable-knit cardigan, putting on my wellies, and flinging open the front door. The kids run in with freshly laid eggs. Dean is on a tractor. I bring him a cup of coffee, baby on one hip. I hand it to him and go back inside. But in the fantasy of this “simple” life, we’re running a farm . . . but we’re still producers. My wellies are designer. The cardigan is a thick cashmere sweater-coat. And Dean’s got a pimped-out tractor. The house I go inside is our super-cute “pseudo” farmhouse. It has been updated with all the latest amenities. No rough floors; only Viking appliances.
It’s no mystery why I have money problems. I grew up rich beyond anyone’s dreams. I never knew anything else. Even when I try to embrace a simpler lifestyle, I can’t seem to let go of my expensive tastes. Even when my tastes aren’t fancy, they’re still costly. I moved houses to simplify my life but lost almost a million dollars along the way for what turned out to be a mistake.
Our store, InvenTORI, had turned out to be a money pit. We invested hundreds of thousands of dollars remodeling, stocking the store with vintage finds, and paying the employees. Not only were we paying rent and staff, but I was buying estate pieces for the store and keeping half of them for myself. But did the people who visited the store buy our three-thousand-dollar couches? No. They’d walk in and say, “We saw the store on the show. Is Tori here today?” Then they’d walk out with a scented candle. Our business manager said, “You can’t make money selling candles alone.” The rest of my businesses were also in start-up mode. Just because I’m appearing on HSN to sell my jewelry doesn’t mean it’s profitable yet.
Then there were my parties—when Oxygen funded the parties I had a huge budget. But when we had non-Oxygen parties, I felt like I had to live up to the standard I’d set. We were overstaffed. And then there was my little shopping problem. I bought ridiculous amounts of stuff for the kids: clothing, toys, crafts. We traveled (and did crazy things like upgrading hotels at my instigation). Yesterday I went into a gas station to get the kids some water and I dropped fifty dollars on some DVDs (they were on sale!), chips, and some lottery tickets (because winning the Powerball jackpot might be my only hope). Patsy always says I’m the only person she knows who can walk into a ninety-nine-cent store and spend over a hundred dollars.
I can’t afford to live like this anymore. Our circumstances have changed. In between the moves, the store, spending a year in and out of the hospital, and Tori & Dean being canceled, our bank account has taken a major hit. I can’t keep chasing the grand lifestyle I grew up with. I have children to think of, their educations, and our lives together. When I’m flying by the seat of my pants, there’s a cost to all of us. The more I have to work to afford the luxuries I think our family should have, the less available I am for my kids. I worry that I could look up and find that their childhoods are gone.
It’s gotten so bad that our money manager is involved in every decision we make. Dean was thinking about getting a vasectomy. The idea freaked me out, but he said, “We have fo
ur kids, you want more?”
I said, “What if? What if they’re out of diapers and we decide we want more?” Then friends of ours mentioned a doctor who supposedly was king of the reversible vasectomy. He was the best. But (of course) he was expensive.
Dean and I went to see the doctor and had a good meeting. Dean wanted it done, and the sooner the better, since it wouldn’t take effect for a month.
We e-mailed our business manager, but she said, “You can’t afford this.”
Dean said, “If T were to get pregnant again, it could be life-threatening!”
She said, “Do what other people do. Use protection.” Things were really bad. Next thing you know our business manager was going to tell us to buy the cheap condoms.
They say admitting the problem is the first step. I looked around our nine-thousand-square-foot rental in Westlake Village and felt like I was living a lie. We simply couldn’t afford it. The only answer was to move again.
We found a smaller house, in a less expensive neighborhood, for half the rent. The owner had very . . . specific taste. There were sponge-painted walls and the dining room wallpaper had hand-stitched ribbon woven into a latticework, with bows and dangling ribbons. It wasn’t my dream house. But it was a house we could afford. I promised myself, and Dean, and the children, that no matter where we landed, I would make that home.
CONCLUSION:
Biting the Bullet
It is the hardest thing in the world for me to ask my mother for money. I can’t stand the idea that I need help. But when it became clear that we might not be able to afford private school for Liam and Stella, I felt that they shouldn’t suffer because of my mistakes. Or my unwillingness to suffer humiliation. So I bit the bullet and e-mailed my mother. I asked her if she’d be willing to contribute to the children’s school. She said we should go to lunch and talk about it.
I was incredibly nervous about the lunch, but I kept telling myself that if she said no to my request, that was okay. I would just take the opportunity to have a nice lunch with her. As soon as we sat down, she said that she wanted to talk about some unfinished business. Then she said, “I’m not mad, but I want to know why you haven’t paid back the money you owe me.” She was right. As soon as we sold our house in Encino, we were supposed to pay her back the money she loaned us for Malibu. What she didn’t know, because I had never told her, was that we sold Encino at such a loss that there was no money to pay her back. I came clean with her. I told her about that, and I told her the sad state of our affairs.
She took it very well. She was supportive and offered some advice. I didn’t slip into the helpless baby mannerisms that emerge when I’m overwhelmed. I behaved, for once in my life, like an adult. And I felt like she treated me like an equal. This was a major step for us.
She started talking about how she would give us some help, and that she’d like us to continue to contribute what we were already paying for their school. But while she was saying this, I had already changed direction, saying, “I actually decided I want to try to do this myself. If I’m up against the wall, I’ll come to you. But right now we’re going to try to do it. But I still wanted us to have a nice lunch.”
I was so determined to show that I didn’t need her help that I declined it before I knew what I was doing. There were a million and one reasons I should have accepted her help, but pride stood in my way.
I failed to go through with my request for money, but in a bigger way the lunch was a surprising success. It felt like I was talking to a girlfriend. At some point my mother asked, “Why do you keep moving houses and keep getting animals? What are you searching for?” but she kept checking to make sure she wasn’t crossing a boundary. I saw how careful she was being and realized that she was afraid that whatever she did would be wrong. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about me. She didn’t know how to talk to me. That made two of us. We didn’t understand each other. I had never seen it that way before. Finding common ground would take work. Maybe we could do it. I tried to give her honest answers and, for once, to listen to her advice.
That night my mother e-mailed me. She said, “I’m proud of you. I saw a whole new daughter today.”
DEAN STILL GOES to the track to race every once in a while, although with me out of commission for such a long time, he couldn’t justify it. One morning, when I was finally feeling better, he said to me, “I might go to the track this weekend. Are you okay with that? Can I go?”
I said, “What do you mean ‘can I go’? You can do what you want.”
He said, “I’d like to go on Sunday because it’s a race day.”
I said, “I’m not going to stop you. I want you to make your own choices.”
He said, “I’ve been itching to get out there.”
I said, “So do it.”
He said, “I know I told you I’d never race again.”
I was thinking that in the hospital he’d promised not to ride again, period. So ride, race, what difference did it make?
That Sunday, he went out. When he came home, I didn’t ask him about his day. I never ask because I loathe riding days. About fifteen minutes went by. Finally he said, “Aren’t you going to ask how my day was?”
I said, “No, I wasn’t going to ask, but how was it?”
He said, “Ask me how the race was.”
I said, “How was the race?”
He said, “I got to the track. I paid for the race. But then I thought about how I made a promise in the hospital. I thought of your face and all you’ve been through, and I didn’t do it.”
I knew he wanted me to thank him. I couldn’t do it. But I said, “I’m proud of you, but I don’t want you to do it for me. I want you to do it for the family. Not because I don’t want you to, but because you think it’s best for the family.”
“I thought you’d be happy with my decision.”
I said, “Okay, babe, I’m happy, babe, I really am.”
The motorcycle thing might always be a bone of contention. He wants to do it, and it will always bother me. At the same time I envy him that feeling of invincibility. How nice it must be not to spend every day living in fear. I’ve learned that just because something seems right and obvious to me, it doesn’t mean that Dean should feel the same way. I can’t impose my beliefs on him. This seems so simple in concept, but it’s very hard to put into practice. His choice to do something I find insanely dangerous has taken its toll on our relationship. It’s done some damage; I won’t lie. It will always be part of our history. But I forgive him, we both do our best to listen to each other, and, for the most part, we’ve moved past it.
I think of me and Dean as a pretty resilient, loving couple. It’s always strange to see huge, horrible lies about us in national publications. When Star wrote that we were having a three-hundred-million-dollar divorce, it came out of the blue. Three hundred million dollars! I’d divorce him for three million (and remarry him on the spot). This article said that Dean was a sex addict (hence the four kids in six years) and that he’d been plotting to leave me since the beginning. He was going for full custody of the kids—he wanted them for the money.
I’d been around the proverbial Star block, but this time something was different. Now Liam could read the headlines. The caption for the divorce article said, “Who will get the kids?” In the checkout line at the grocery store, Liam saw the article and before I could grab it away from him, he read that line out loud to me. “What does it mean? Who’s taking us?” he said. The corners of his mouth twitched downward, and I saw his blue eyes filling with tears. I quickly told him it wasn’t about him, or us, and flipped the magazine backward on the stand. That night I wrote an open letter to Star magazine and posted it on my blog. I wanted these articles to stop, not as a celebrity, but as a mom.
Liam’s sixth birthday party was at our house in Westlake Village on a warm Saturday in March. The theme was Star Wars. For the first time in my life as a mother, I scaled back. Or tried to. The party was just Liam’s classmates
. We didn’t invite any of our friends except Bill, Scout, and Mehran, all of whom my children know as uncles. Grandma Jacquie and my mom were invited too. But our total number of invitees was twenty. My original list was eighty-five.
When we did parties that were going to air on TV, companies always gave us stuff for free so they could appear on the show. Now, without all those trade-outs, I tried to keep the party affordable. Crocs agreed to sponsor the party. All the young guests would get new Crocs, which would save money on party favors. In exchange, our family would pose for a photo wearing Crocs. I had to stick to a budget for this one. That’s right. I said it. Budget.
Even so, now that I was paying attention to every dollar we spent, I saw how costly it was to throw what I would consider a bare-bones party. I mean, I couldn’t let go of the dessert table! That’s my signature detail! But I scaled back from a six-foot table to a four-foot table.
We got the mini R2-D2 cake, because the twelve-inch one was too expensive. Some of the cake pops were Star Wars characters, but most of them were plain ones in the colors of the party because it was more cost-effective. There were Jedi cupcakes and a chalkboard behind it all saying MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU. It looked yummy, but it wasn’t my normal dessert table.
For the food, we served McDonald’s, but we called the chicken fingers “Ewok bites” and the hamburgers “Vader burgers.”
Jess and I had hand-sewn Jedi tunics for all the kids to wear. She helped me set up, since I still couldn’t lift anything heavy. We were all ready to go half an hour before the party. That had never, ever happened to me before. I always run late and am still setting up when I should be dressing for the party. But this time there was so much less to do that we actually got it all done on time. I couldn’t believe it.
Before I got dressed, I surveyed the scene. That oversized house had an oversized front yard. Even with the bouncy house, the face painters, T-shirt-making with Star Wars stencils, and the Jedi training station, it looked empty. It was cute, I guess—normal—but it just didn’t look like one of my parties.
Spelling It Like It Is Page 19
