That night Dean and I stayed in a room at the Chateau. To my relief our connection wasn’t geographically confined to Ottawa. It was magical. At some point I called Charlie and told him I wasn’t coming home that night, making up something about staying over at my friend Sara’s. Charlie said it was fine, but he said, “Tomorrow night we’re having sex. It’s important for our relationship.” That said it all to me. Our marriage was mechanical. Whether he knew it or not, we were both just going through the motions.
The next morning Dean spoke on the phone with the husband of the couple his family had been vacationing with in Palm Springs. By now I knew what had gone down in Palm Springs. His wife had noticed that he was acting distant. She started asking questions and he told her the truth. She asked him to leave. Now, on the phone, Dean was apologizing to his friend for ruining their vacation. He asked how his family was doing. Whatever was said, when Dean got off the phone, he started to cry. He said, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lose my kids.” I couldn’t bear to see him like that. I said, “I can’t do this. I can’t come between you and your children. Maybe you need to be with your family even if you’re not in a happy marriage.” But he said, “No. We’re in love. I have to find a way to work this out.” I didn’t want anyone to be hurt. Not Dean’s family, not Charlie. But Dean and I were meant to be together.
That afternoon during a lunch for the writing staff of So NoTORIous, there was a lot going on in my head. I hated leaving Dean feeling so sad. And I was supposed to be professional and together as executive producer of this show. I’d worked so hard to make it happen, and now I couldn’t even focus. Maybe it doesn’t speak well for my acting ability, but I wasn’t very good at faking it.
That night my friends had put together a welcome home get-together for me on the patio (always the patio!) of the Crescent Hotel in Beverly Hills. Before it started, I met up with Dean at the nearby L’Hermitage Hotel for a drink. I was dreading the encounter with Charlie so much that I was forty-five minutes late. Not very cool when you’re the guest of honor. Amy was texting me, asking, Where are you?
When I finally forced myself to go, the party wasn’t as torturous as I’d anticipated. It was easy to avoid my husband—we weren’t the kind of couple who stayed close together when we were socializing, particularly with my friends. We’d go our separate ways, then converge at the end of the night. I thought that’s what married people did. During the party, in the hotel bathroom, I told some of my other friends what was going on—that I was going to leave Charlie. The more people I told, the more I noticed the same response. Nobody seemed shocked. But I still hadn’t told the person who was least likely to have that response. That weighed on me at every moment. But I was not a brave person, and it was a lot easier to tell a friend in a hotel bathroom than to figure out how I was going to tell Charlie our marriage was over when he didn’t even seem to know I was unhappy in it.
As the night progressed, I got increasingly nervous. Charlie had made it clear to me that he wanted to have sex with me that night. We hadn’t been intimate since I’d gotten home. But if anything was clear to me, it was that I couldn’t have sex with Charlie. The fact of my affair was bad enough, but to physically go back and forth between two men seemed like it would compound the offense. It would be a disservice to Charlie. And, significantly, it felt like cheating on Dean. I absolutely couldn’t do it. Just to be clear, this wasn’t exactly in the forefront of my conscience. It was more like a jumble of anxiety somewhere in the back of my head while I chatted and joked with friends I hadn’t seen all summer. So when my friend Gueran texted me from the other end of the long table to say, We’re going to Fubar. Want to go? the answer was easy. I texted back, I’m in. Fubar was a gay bar where I knew for sure I’d be completely safe from heterosexual wifely duties.
I didn’t know it, but down at the opposite end of the table Charlie was reading over Gueran’s shoulder. He came up to me and said, “It’s getting late. Time to go home. I want to go home with my wife.” I said I didn’t want to go. We went back and forth like that a little. And then, subconsciously, I kind of realized that if Charlie and I fought, I wouldn’t have to go home with him. So, as my friend James, who played Pete on So NoTORIous, likes to remind me, “It was so genius. You screamed, ‘I’m going to Fubar!’ across the patio.”
The table got quiet. There was an uncomfortable pause. Then Charlie, jokingly, said, “If you go to Fubar, our marriage is over.” And suddenly we were closer to the truth than I’d anticipated. In a light, tipsy way I said, “Well, I want to go out with my gays. I’m going to Fubar.” That was my code for I wish everything had happened differently, and I’ve gone about this wrong, and I’m sorry, but the truth is that our marriage is over. Apparently, Charlie didn’t know the code. He said, “Can we talk about this in private?”
Charlie drew me aside, into the tiny lobby of the hotel. He said, “What are you doing? What is wrong with you? You’ve been distant since you’ve been home. I want to be with my wife.” As we all know, this was a completely reasonable line of questioning. But I was doing what guilty parties do best: picking a fight. This was the path toward not going home, and I wasn’t about to change directions. I said, “I just got home. I want to be with my friends, and you’re trying to control me and tell me when we’re leaving.” We hadn’t fought much in our relationship. I hadn’t expressed myself. Now I was on a roll. “You know,” I said, “maybe we just don’t have that much in common. Maybe we want different things. Maybe we’re at different points in our lives.” It was the exact same fight we’d had on my birthday right before our wedding. But this time there was no upcoming wedding volunteering itself as a rug to sweep the fight under.
Charlie said, “Maybe we are too different.” Now I was getting somewhere. Maybe when it came down to it, he’d understand. I said, “This makes me not want to go home with you.”
In the small lobby our friends were quietly filtering past, clearing the scene because some couple was fighting in public. Our friends Suzanne and Marcel were roommates. They lived close to the Crescent Hotel. When I saw them approaching, I told Charlie I wasn’t going to Fubar but that I was going to crash at their house. I walked out.
Dean picked me up from Suzanne and Marcel’s, and we went to a hotel called the Farmer’s Daughter that night. It was the second in what would be a series of nights in random hotels. When we woke up the next morning, I said, “I’m not going back home. I’m not going back.” I didn’t have any clothes—just the heels, rolled-up shorts, and tank top I’d worn to the bar the night before. We went to Urban Outfitters. It was nine thirty. They weren’t open yet, but the salesman recognized me. Through the glass door I told him, “I just need pants and flats. It’s an emergency.” I bought gaucho pants, a couple shirts, some flats, and some flip-flops. Then we drove to Dean’s house. I waited in the car a few blocks away while he packed a suitcase. Then we were…homeless.
At some point in those first crazy homeless days I got in touch with my therapist. I needed to talk to Charlie, to tell him I wanted to separate, and I just couldn’t do it. Part of me was afraid that if I told him in person, I’d let him talk me out of it. Guilt is a powerful emotion. What if I found myself agreeing to stay and work on the relationship when I really wanted to leave him no matter what? My therapist knew how nonconfrontational I was. She suggested that Charlie and I meet and talk in her office. She wouldn’t take sides. She’d just be a mediator and help me tell him. It sounded like my best option.
Even though my friends admitted they’d never thought Charlie was my match, they weren’t exactly gung ho on the current situation. When I called Jenny, wanting to bring Dean over to meet her, Norm—Jenny’s husband—was hesitant. He cared about Charlie and didn’t want to just blindly accept Dean in his place. I understood, but I tried to explain myself. I told him I wasn’t having an affair. I was ending my marriage. Dean was the person I wanted to be with, the person I had to be with. When he heard how serious I was, how it f
elt from my perspective, he got it. Of course, he still didn’t like the way it had come about—neither did I—but he saw that I wasn’t hurting Charlie for no good reason.
Then Mehran called. He said that Charlie had called and that he had no idea what was going on. It wasn’t right. Mehran said I had to call him.
I couldn’t summon the courage, so Jenny helped me compose an e-mail to Charlie saying that I was sorry for the way I’d behaved at the Crescent Hotel. I wrote that I was out of line but that it came from something real. I told him we needed to talk but that I didn’t want to come home. I asked him to meet me Monday morning at my therapist’s office. In the e-mail I said, Please know that I love you. I hesitated to write it. I didn’t want to give him false hope, but I wasn’t heartless. I did love him. I just wasn’t in love with him. At any rate, it was an e-mail. Hardly the best way to communicate.
That night I had dinner at the Hotel Bel-Air. Jenny, Norm, Amy, Dean, and I sat outside at the restaurant having dinner. It was the same hotel where I’d gotten ready for my wedding to Charlie, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I was trying hard not to imagine what Charlie must be going through. His wife had picked a fight with him without provocation, then disappeared. It wasn’t a pretty self-portrait. On the other hand, I was with the man I loved and the friends who meant so much to me. Charlie aside (and to be honest, that’s where I was pushing him), I was in total bliss.
Then, during dinner at the Bel-Air, Amy and I went to the bathroom. I asked her if she liked Dean. She said, “I think I do.” This gave me pause. I said, “What do you mean?” I didn’t want my friends to keep quiet this time around. I’d missed my opportunity to hear their concerns about Charlie. This time I wanted to face every doubt head-on. Amy said that Dean seemed great, but she was worried about the situation. She wanted us to take it slow. Amy is a good friend. She was being protective, and I’m grateful for that. But I was sure about Dean. I wouldn’t have caused so much trouble if I hadn’t been. This was my first—maybe my only—chance at true love. I couldn’t let it go.
The end was in place. The location and time were set. All that remained was for me to go through with it. It was Labor Day weekend. We checked into the Casa del Mar, a big hotel on the beach in Santa Monica. On Monday morning Amy showed up to drive me to the appointment. I managed to haul myself into the car, but it was the longest drive ever. My heart was pounding. I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t do it. I was sure I couldn’t do it.
And yet, there I was, waiting in the therapist’s office when Charlie came in. He saw me and started to cry. He said, “I’m not going to let you get rid of me. I love you.” We hugged and sat down. With some prodding from the therapist, I started talking. I focused on why I was leaving Charlie, not on Dean. I told him that I wasn’t in love with him. I told him that I’d never been in love with him. I loved him and he’d been a friend to me, but I married him because he was a great guy, a nice guy, a guy who took care of me. Finding someone who loved me seemed like enough. I thought you either were in love or you loved each other, but I didn’t realize they could coexist. Charlie didn’t want to hear it or believe it. He kept saying, “You’re happy. Where’s this all coming from? We have a perfect relationship.”
I pushed onward, telling him that my whole life all I wanted was to be a mom, but that in the course of our marriage I had stopped wanting children and didn’t know why. It was true. I hadn’t known what it was. I thought it was me, that I’d changed. But now I knew the real reason: I didn’t want kids with him. I explained this to him. And that I wasn’t sexually attracted to him. That I wasn’t happy in the marriage. That it wasn’t right for me.
It wasn’t sinking in. Charlie could be blind to things he didn’t want to see. Our mutual friend Suzanne had been his friend for fifteen years and lived with him when she first moved to L.A. Back in happier times we were all going to a barbecue, and she said to Charlie, “Tell T to bring her pipe.” Charlie said, “What pipe?” He didn’t know that I occasionally smoked pot. As soon as Suzanne got off the phone with him, she called me to apologize for busting me. She said, “Why doesn’t Charlie know you smoke pot?” I didn’t smoke pot very often, but when I did, I hid it from him. I wasn’t scared of his reaction—he was a gentle person—but I knew he wouldn’t approve and I didn’t want to deal. It was easier not to mention it. But even after Suzanne mentioned the existence of my pipe to him, he never asked me about it. He turned a blind eye. The whole relationship was like that. I hid certain things about myself—that was my fault. But I think part of him wanted me to hide them. He was blindsided because he was blind.
Now, in front of the therapist, he resisted hearing what I was saying. Finally the therapist stepped in: “She’s trying to separate. She’s saying she doesn’t want to be in this marriage.” Then she went on to say, “Tori is saying she isn’t in love with you. She doesn’t have that weak-in-the-knees feeling.” Charlie said, “Movie romance doesn’t exist. It’s a fairy tale. It isn’t real. We’re happy.” Then he turned to me. “Is this about someone else? Did you cheat on me?”
I said yes.
He said, “It was with Dean, wasn’t it?”
I said yes.
He said, “I should have known.”
I made sure to tell him that I’d felt this way throughout the whole relationship. I wasn’t leaving him because of the affair. I kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” And that was pretty much it. We agreed to talk again; he left angry and hurt, and I felt sorry and sad.
When a marriage fails, the story of the relationship changes. The best parts, the parts that made you think getting married was a good idea, fade from memory. I’m sure I haven’t done justice to Charlie. We had fun. We had good laughs. He adored my dogs and we’d take them on hikes together. He had no qualms about carrying Mimi in a backpack on his back, on his chest like a baby in a Bjorn, or in her pink carrier that said MIMI LA RUE in pink rhinestones. I haven’t done him justice if people wonder, If she was so miserable, why didn’t she leave sooner? Charlie made me happy. He was good to me. He made me feel safe. He shared his family with me. We supported each other. Something about it did work for a while. I wasn’t miserable, but it wasn’t right. I didn’t know what “right” felt like until I met Dean.
When I came down from the therapist’s office, Amy was waiting for me with Jenny and her baby, Delilah. As soon as I got in the car, I started crying. I was destroyed.
My manager at the time, who’d been my manager since I was eighteen and took Charlie on when we did Maybe Baby together, was becoming something of a mediator between the two of us. In the next days she called me to let me know that Charlie wasn’t going to come to our next scheduled meeting with the therapist. Instead, he was flying east to see his family. Then I knew he understood. There wouldn’t be any more talking it over. Charlie was gone—or so it seemed. He was still living in my apartment—really my mother’s apartment. There would be a divorce, and there would be press. But it was over.
It needed to end, but it could have happened in a nicer way. I wish I’d been able to communicate with Charlie from the very beginning of our relationship. And I should have handled things differently at the end. He’s a sensitive, kind person. I know he would have listened. If I’d let our differences reveal themselves earlier…well, we might never have gotten married.
It doesn’t fix the past, but at least I learned from my mistakes. From the minute Dean and I met, I took thirty-two years of being passive and nonconfrontational and changed, like that. Leaving our marriages—it was a rough road. We cared about our spouses. I’d hear Dean on the phone with his wife discussing the children. When he hung up, I’d have withdrawn. He’d ask what was wrong, and my first instinct was to say, Nothing, nothing’s wrong. I’m tired. I have a headache. But I decided to break that habit. I always told Dean the truth. I’d say, “I feel like you’re going to go back to her.” It was scary, making myself vulnerable
like that, but I was determined not to repeat my past. I’ve been honest like that ever since.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Safe at Last
Dean and I stayed at Casa del Mar for a week, but it was getting expensive. We’d conducted most of our relationship in hotels, and it was time to make our own bed and lie in it. We rented a furnished apartment in a building called The Marlowe in Hancock Park, on the east side of L.A. Hancock Park is a leafy, upscale neighborhood, but it was a world away from the mansions of Beverly Hills.
The Marlowe was not what I was used to. In my old building, The Wilshire, you drove up to the front door and handed your car keys to the valet. In The Marlowe you drove into an open lot and picked a spot if there happened to be one. In The Wilshire the elevator opened onto my private entry hall. In The Marlowe you walked through a lobby to the one elevator that everyone shared. Then you walked through hallways where you actually saw your neighbors. From the half-open hallways you could look down into the outside courtyard. It was a regular apartment building. I felt like I was living in Melrose Place (and you know your sense of reality is whacked when the best image you have of “normal” life is a television drama that your father invented).
Our apartment was a one-thousand-square-foot two-bedroom. The front door opened into the kitchen. It was modest in size but comfortably furnished. I had a little bag of the clothes I’d bought at Urban Outfitters, plus a single suitcase of stuff that Marcel had brought over from my apartment. Soon we would pick up the dogs. That was it. I couldn’t think of anything else I needed. My life was suddenly so simple, so small, so happy. To that point I was the happiest I’d ever been.
Stori Telling Page 17
