Nonetheless, there was an outside world that refused to disappear. My agent and manager wanted me to “take a meeting,” as we say in Hollywood, to “strategize.” I wasn’t just separated from Charlie in our private life. Soon enough, they knew, the press would be onto the story and there would be tabloid covers with photos of us torn in half saying SPLIT! (Seriously, can’t they think of any other eye-catching breakup image?) There was a lunch full of talk about how we had to be “very careful” about this in the press. They were worried what VH1 would think because my image on So NoTORIous was like everyone else’s: normal, nice, and likeable (we hoped). Now they reminded me (as if they had to) that I had cheated on my husband with a guy who left his wife and kids for me. They feared people were going to hate me. They told me to keep a low profile. If I’d been in a better mood, I might have made a joke about my nose job (my profile still wasn’t low enough?), but I just wanted the meeting to end, let the chips fall where they might.
Not a week later we received word that the Enquirer had bought photos of the two of us in Ottawa. Remember those two girls who were taking pictures of each other at the wrap party? The ones I tried to confront? Thank God we’d already told our spouses. At least they heard it from us.
I had no idea what exactly the pictures showed, but my publicist found out that they were pretty intense and made it clear that we were together. Word spread quickly. My publicist started getting calls from People magazine and other weekly magazines asking if it was true that I’d fallen in love with my costar and that we’d both left our spouses. My publicist told me that we had to issue a statement. I didn’t want to. She said that if we didn’t say anything, I was going to come across as a terrible homewrecker. But was telling my side of the story really going to change that? Apparently, what they tell celebrities to do in situations like this is to release a joint statement saying, We’ve separated and it’s mutual. Please respect our privacy. My manager talked to Charlie about releasing the statement together, but he wasn’t interested. He thought it was just for my image, and (who can blame him?) he didn’t care much what people thought of me.
Ultimately, my publicist put out a statement I wasn’t totally happy with. It was a lie or, at very best, a manipulation of the truth. She wrote that Charlie and I split up (true), that we had been living separate lives since the beginning of August (sort of, since I’d gone to Ottawa on August 3), and that we had decided to separate (“we”—definitely not true). My publicist put the statement out on the AP wire. The next day it was picked up everywhere.
Right before the press release went out, I e-mailed my mother, saying, I need to talk to you about something that’s happened in my life. I want you to be aware of it before you hear about it. Please let me know a good time to call you. My mother e-mailed back, saying, Try me tomorrow. Know that I love you and I’m always here for you. I tried her the next day, and we started playing phone tag. I finally reached my father the afternoon the news broke. He said, “Don’t worry. I love you. Do whatever you need to do that’s right for you.” He’d probably already heard the news that morning, but at least we got to talk about it a little.
A few days passed, and I gave up on reaching my mother. By now there was no doubt that she knew what had happened and wasn’t desperate to be in touch. But then, right after we’d announced the separation, her sixtieth birthday rolled around. There was a big party for her at Il Cielo in Beverly Hills. I was in the middle of filming So NoTORIous. Yes, I could have shown up at the party late, after work, but we were still in the middle of the press storm. I couldn’t imagine walking into a party full of all my mother’s friends who’d just been at my wedding. I didn’t know how to deal. People think it’s easy for the person who leaves the marriage, but I felt like I couldn’t win. If I went and put on a happy face, people would say I was heartless. If I acted serious and shamed, they’d say I was self-absorbed. So I just didn’t go.
I felt terrible for missing a milestone birthday, so (in the spirit of my parents’ “bigger is better” birthday approach) I ordered a massive arrangement of flowers to be delivered to her at the party. It was the largest, most elaborate flower arrangement I’ve ever seen. On the card I said how sorry I was that I couldn’t be there, and I backed it up with a longer e-mail to my mom explaining that I was filming, but also that it was a difficult time to go to a public event.
My mother sent an e-mail thanking me for the flowers. It said that the party was wonderful. She wrote, It was a great night. Everyone who cares about me came out to celebrate my birthday. Message received, loud and clear.
Not long after that I got an e-mail from my mother’s business manager saying something like, Your mother feels it is a good time investment-wise to put the condo up for sale. You have until March to find a new residence. Holy filicide (yes, I had to look that word up), I was being evicted. There was no mother-daughter conversation about it. Just the e-mail telling me to move. Word came back to me that she was angry to hear that I’d let Charlie stay in her apartment while we worked out the divorce, but that was third-hand information. Maybe that was the reason. Maybe it was the realization that So NoTORIous was going forward without her approval. Who knows? I didn’t understand it, but I accepted the date. I’d lived there for ten years. It was autumn. Charlie would leave when we settled the divorce. I’d get my stuff out by early spring.
Meanwhile, Charlie was furious at all the press. This was between us, and he thought it should stay that way. Not surprisingly, he took issue with my press release. As far as he was concerned, our separation wasn’t even official yet. I imagine he was sick of finding out the status of our relationship in therapists’ offices and tabloids: Charlie filed for divorce on October 15. The press picked up on it right away since filings like that are a matter of public record. It was my turn to learn private news in a public forum. But to his credit Charlie didn’t talk to the press for a long time. He could have sold his side of the story, but he wasn’t that kind of person. I respected that.
In spite of his anger, Charlie e-mailed asking to have one last meeting face-to-face. He wanted closure. He said he wanted to say good-bye while he still remembered why he loved me. He wrote, I know your fears—you’re scared to be alone with me. He suggested a quiet restaurant. He was right. I was scared. Like a coward, I e-mailed him trying to change the date. He responded saying, Actually, the more I think about this, the more it’s clearly not a good idea. He canceled.
One of my biggest regrets is not having that last meeting with Charlie. I owed him that. We had been so close for so long. I wish I’d been brave enough to say good-bye.
I never got to say a real good-bye to Charlie’s family, the warm, welcoming family who I knew must hate me for wronging and hurting their son. One family member wrote me to say, I have no interest in talking to you or having any interaction with you at all. Another young relative with whom I’d been close wrote to say, All these years when people said Tori Spelling’s a whore, I defended you. At least I don’t have to anymore. I didn’t write back to her. And that was it. There was no contact ever again.
As for the divorce settlement, well, remember how my mother threatened to call off the wedding if we didn’t sign the prenup by the end of the day? Charlie and I joked at the time that he had signed it under duress. Now the prenup was coming into play far sooner than anyone had anticipated, and there was risk he’d contest it because of the time pressure we’d been under. My mother’s efforts to “protect” me had backfired. We negotiated a divorce. Needless to say, I was the one who had to pay the settlement, not her.
Making such a big change was hard and messy. But Dean was worth it. And, though it took me some time to realize, there was a transformation beyond finally being with the right person. I’d always been so scared of change. When I was little, if my mom got a new rug or coffee table (which happened fairly often), it took me weeks to adjust. And change wasn’t the only thing that scared me. I was a mess of irrational fears. Maybe it started with the Madame
Alexander dolls, who stared at me with empty, haunted eyes as I fell asleep as a child. Or maybe it was the horror movies I watched with my mother from a young age. Whatever caused it, I invented nightmarish scenarios in my head. Every time I went to a movie theater, I thought I was going to be shot. When I walked down the street, I’d imagine that someone was following me. I was scared to sit with my back to a window in restaurants.
Then there was airplane travel. When I flew, I had to bring along a slew of good-luck items. There was the bag of crystals that my brother gave me. I had to have one crystal in each hand at takeoff. Then there were the good-luck teddy bears who had to sit out on the seat with me, and if one teddy bear looked particularly alone as I left the house, I’d have to add him to the bunch. If I flew wearing a specific necklace and the plane didn’t crash, then I’d have to wear that necklace on every plane I went on thereafter. But sometimes as I was putting on the first good-luck necklace, another necklace would catch my eye. Then I’d wonder, Why did I notice that necklace? It must be fate. And I’d have to wear that one, too. I was so bejeweled when I flew, I looked like Mr. T. If we’d crashed over water, I certainly would have sunk like a stone.
Yeah, you might call me a little OCD. Like how if I’m eating potatoes, I won’t leave one potato alone on the plate. I’ll cut it in half so it has a friend. If there are three beans left on my plate, I’ll eat one so there are two and they can be friends. I know it’s weird and crazy, but I feel sorry for the food. I don’t like things to be alone.
Now that I was with Dean, things were different. In the course of a single week I had left my whole life behind. I met change head-on. I felt open to everything that was happening. Me, who’d grown up with live-in security guards and a high-tech surveillance system in a secluded, gated fortress. Me, who couldn’t handle it if an ashtray got moved. In the first two years together we would live in six different places. It didn’t matter. I was finally safe, safe with Dean.
A lot of the OCD stuff stopped when I met Dean. I used to get all kinds of free swag, so I always had a bunch of different shampoos and conditioners in my shower. When I got out, I’d have to make sure they were all facing out because if they were facing the wrong way, I felt uneasy that they couldn’t see. And they’d have to all be touching so they’d be equal. And I used to have to tap a toe of each foot in the shower before I got all the way in or out. I remember coming back to my apartment in L.A. after meeting Dean in Ottawa. The first time I took a shower, I went to straighten all the shampoo bottles, and then I stopped myself. This was crazy. I got out of the shower and never did it again.
In spite of the shadows of my former life, I was so happy with Dean. I was finally living a smaller, more normal existence. It wasn’t exactly the laundry-room closet I’d craved, but my life was considerably simplified. I’d accumulated so much crap living in that condo for ten years, so much that I didn’t need. Here I had nothing and wanted nothing. I was free. I was starting over with Dean. I was starting a whole new life.
We were lying low at The Marlowe. Sometimes I’d pass people in the halls, which was ridiculously exciting to me. I’d never had proper neighbors before. One time a woman saw me and said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “I live here.” She said, “Why would you live here? Don’t you have a mansion?” She was so perplexed. She couldn’t fathom that I’d live where she lived. It was a very nice building! I just said, “I like it here.” There was a building barbecue by the pool every Sunday. Dean and I couldn’t wait to go.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Is That a Knife in Your Purse or Are You Just Glad to See Me?
While Dean and I played house, I was busy being the star, a producer, and one of the writers on So NoTORIous. VH1 started putting money into a big publicity campaign. Then they told me that they were going to do billboards for the show. There was going to be a building with my face on it! A gigantic photo of me and Mimi La Rue for all of L.A. to see. On the day of the photo shoot, in the flats of Beverly Hills, I got the full star treatment. I had my own trailer (which everyone knows makes you a big shot). My hair was set in curls, my makeup was high-fashion glam, and I was dressed in Marc Jacobs and Manolo Blahniks. I came out of the trailer and stood on the street corner while the cameramen finished setting up. It was a beautiful January day. There was a slight breeze, but not enough to blow my hair into my lipstick. Things were going my way. Uh-oh—remember what happens when things are going my way?
As I stood on the corner, all dolled up, a car drove by. A man leaned out of the driver’s window. I smiled, expecting a catcall. But instead, he sneered and neighed at me. He neighed like a horse. It was a horsecall. This wasn’t new to me. I knew exactly what he was trying to say. He was calling me “Horseface,” as some bloggers have in the past. I froze for a moment, then just started laughing. Of course. It was so my life. Give me a high moment, and someone will always be there to neigh at me. But I was in love and I loved my work, and this time I wasn’t about to let anything bring me down.
For Christmas, Dean and I planned to go to Canada. I was going to meet his family in Collingwood, a little town two hours outside Toronto where two of his three sisters live. We (along with Mimi and Ferris, our faithful companions) started the trip by spending a few days in Toronto, where I met all of Dean’s friends. Then, on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, we drove up to Collingwood. On the way there Dean said, “My sisters are so excited to meet you.” They both worked at a ski resort in town, and he told me that they’d arranged for us to take a carriage ride through a Christmas tree farm. A carriage ride through a Christmas tree farm sounded idyllic—now why hadn’t my father imported that winter wonderland to our backyard in L.A.?
In Collingwood there were a couple inches of snow coating the ground. We barely got our bags in the house when Dean packed a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses and hurried us off to the carriage ride.
Needless to say, I’d never seen a Christmas tree farm. I sort of pictured a big parking lot with a bunch of trees leaning in rows. I figured you wandered around, picked a tree, they’d wrap it, and you’d head home. But apparently, in Canada (and possibly in all parts of the world where places exist that call themselves “Christmas tree farms”) the trees are actually in the ground. You pick the one you want, and they chop it down right in front of you. (Note to self: Never go to a “Thanksgiving turkey farm.”)
I would have been happy to wander through the winter wonderland, but we weren’t there to pick a tree. Instead, we found our carriage. It was an open, horse-drawn number, driven by an old man and woman who looked suspiciously like Santa and Mrs. Claus. I felt like I was at some amusement park about to go on “Jingle Bells: The Ride.” It was starting to rain, but they cheerfully bundled us up in the backseat and we set off.
The path through the snow was dimly lit by hurricane candles and moonlight. The flickering candlelight reflecting off the snow gave everything an ethereal glow. All you could see were miles and miles of trees. As we drove, I started talking to the couple. I asked if they were married. They said they’d been married for forty-four years. It was the cutest thing—this little old couple doing carriage rides together all winter long. I said to Dean, “I hope that’s us.” I was only thirty-two and Dean was thirty-eight. It wasn’t unreasonable to hope that we still had at least forty-four good years to spend together.
Then the carriage came to a stop. The Clauses said, “Okay, this is where we let you off.” I was a little confused. Were we being held for ransom? But Dean said, “I think my sisters set something up for us.” We walked through the grove and came to a little table in the middle of a clearing. It was surrounded with hurricane candles. There were two chairs and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, my favorite champagne. All the surrounding trees were decorated with Christmas ornaments.
We sat down at the table. Dean said, “Oh my God, my sisters really went overboard.” I was thinking, Hmm, does Dean have the best sisters in the entire world, or is he going to ask me to marry him? And my next
thought was, Now? I’m freezing and soaked. I must look like a drowned rat. We opened the champagne and shared a toast. Then Dean dropped on one knee in the snow, pulled out a ring, and asked me to marry him. I started laughing and full-on bawling simultaneously. As I said yes, I could barely breathe. My heart was like a cartoon heart, beating so hard, it was bursting out of my chest. I felt elated and overwhelmingly in love. It was the greatest moment ever. Then it hit me. Oh. This was what it was supposed to feel like the first time. Every time I had an experience with Dean that I’d been through with Charlie was a lesson in how it was supposed to feel. Maybe I should have known Charlie wasn’t right. But only now could I look back and see a million stop signs that I had failed to recognize. I’d had nothing to compare it to.
My hair was in pigtails, absolutely drenched. We took a picture of ourselves, with me showing off the ring, so happy. It was a ring I’d seen once before.
Dean and I left our spouses to be together. Neither of us went into it thinking we’d take things slowly and just see what happened. We wanted to get married right away. Even as early as the day we were leaving Ottawa, we talked about our wedding. I didn’t know if it was going to work out, but the wedding I imagined was the opposite of my first. Everything I wanted the first time around had made the wedding feel like a play—the costumey gown, the onstage vows, the elaborate scene-setting, the large cast and extras. The two-carat diamond ring. It was all too fussy for me. Now it seemed like a contrived production—the wedding I was supposed to have for the person I was supposed to be.
Now that Dean and I were going to be together, it wasn’t about show. It wasn’t about spinning a fairy tale. This marriage was about who I was and what I wanted in my heart. And yes, that vision included an engagement ring.
Stori Telling Page 18
