Kris Jenner . . . And All Things Kardashian

by Jenner, Kris

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Haven

  After the verdict, it was time for a new beginning. Robert and I decided to move on from the conflict the O.J. trial had created between us for the sake of our kids. I had to end the sadness and pain of those years. It wasn’t fair to Bruce, whom I had dragged into all of it, to live my life in the past anymore. I had to move on, and I had to move swiftly. My focus reverted back to my lifelong dream: to be a wife and the mother of six kids, which meant I had two more children to go.

  By then, I was eight months pregnant. It wasn’t that hard to juggle full-time work and motherhood because I had my amazing assistant, Lisa Frias, who helped me with Bruce’s business. We had developed a pretty impressive speaking business for Bruce. He was traveling all over the country, giving motivational speeches for Fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola while attending Olympic events around the world.

  Just before our baby was due, Bruce and I went back east to stay with Kathie Lee Gifford, one of my best friends. I had known Kathie Lee since the 1980s when she was still Kathie Lee Johnson. Back then, she came to a baby shower I had given for a girlfriend, Shanon Christian. As you know by now, I love giving parties and showers, and that shower was an example of my style and taste for over-the-top celebrations. Kathie Lee fell in love with the Tower Lane house. She and I were on the exact same page: we both loved architecture and decorating and design. We hit it off instantly.

  Kathie Lee and I had drifted apart during my divorce from Robert. But when I started dating and then married Bruce, who had known Kathie Lee and her husband, Frank Gifford, for decades, the four of us became the best of friends. So during that time I was pregnant, Bruce and I spent some time at Kathie Lee’s house in Connecticut. From there, we flew down to Atlantic City, where Kathie Lee and Regis Philbin were hosting the Miss America Pageant. Bruce was a judge in the pageant along with fashion and bridal designer Vera Wang. Little did I know that, fifteen years later, Vera would be designing wedding gowns for my daughters.

  In Atlantic City, recovering from the trial and trying to unwind before giving birth to our first child together, Bruce and I asked Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford to be the godparents of our new baby. We hadn’t chosen a name yet. We were only considering K and J (J for “Jenner,” of course). I told Kathie Lee and Frank about how all my girls were Ks, so this baby should be a K too. All my daughters were still living under my roof, and if I had named this baby girl a J name—I loved the name “Jade,” for example—I was afraid she wouldn’t feel like she was a part of the rest of the family. I wanted her to feel just as loved and wanted and adored as the rest of my girls. So I knew that as long as Bruce was okay with it, I needed to commit to another K name. I thought it was fitting, too, because I was a K, and Kathie Lee, her godmother, was a K. We decided it would be the K Club.

  I started throwing names out to Kathie Lee—“Kameron” . . . “Kendall”—and she stopped me at “Kendall.”

  Luckily, Bruce loved the name “Kendall” too.

  On November 3, 1995, I gave birth to Kendall Nicole Jenner. I decided to make her middle name “Nicole” in memory of my dear friend Nicole Brown Simpson. Giving birth to Kendall, as well as all of my children, has been my greatest blessing. I know that some women dread pregnancy, and not everyone looks forward to the birth experience. But it’s been my biggest joy. I cherished those few weeks at home, bonding with my baby girl and feeling so blessed and happy to have my beautiful, ever-expanding family around me. I was surrounded by five children now, and I couldn’t have been happier.

  One of the toughest things I have ever done in my life was to introduce Kendall to Robert Kardashian. He had called shortly after she was born to offer his congratulations, both on the new baby and for my birthday, which came around the same time. He still called me often, even if we were battling over something, and he always called me on my birthday. Always. He had this goofy birthday song that he had put on a cassette, and he would just play the song on the phone. It was so silly and so cute and so Robert. We had this bond after having four children together. Now I had number five, but it wasn’t with Robert.

  I burst into tears when he called me on my birthday that year and offered congratulations on Kendall’s birth. “Come meet the baby,” I said.

  He came over a few days later, when Kendall was just a week or so old; I can still see him walking through the front door. I went to greet him, saying, “Hi, Robert!” first, before introducing him to Kendall. I could tell that he was a little nervous as I led him into the other room where Kendall was sleeping in her straw Moses basket on the floor. I stepped aside as Robert moved in front of me, leaned over, and stared into the basket. When he saw her, he started to cry a little.

  “Oh, Kris, she’s so beautiful, it makes me cry,” Robert told me.

  He picked her up, and I could tell it broke his heart. My life had gone on, and it was a very hard moment for both of us to acknowledge that it had gone on without him. He knew the joy and the memories we had with each of our babies together, and I am not sure he ever expected I would have more. I don’t think he dwelled on it, but it was a tough moment in time.

  Although I was so happy and felt so content, there was still one important part of me that wasn’t complete. I still felt unsettled, and I knew it was time for Bruce and me to finally commit to buying a home of our own. When Bruce and I got married, I had just moved out of Tower Lane and into our Malibu rental. Now we were still leasing a house in Beverly Hills with no gate or security, and I really felt like we needed a larger house. Our family was constantly growing and shifting and evolving. So I started looking for houses again. As always, I didn’t have much time. We were planning to take the entire family and all five children to Atlanta for a month for the 1996 Olympic Games, and we would be gone for at least six weeks total. Bruce had worked for the 1992 games in Barcelona, and the two of us were able to live in a hotel for six weeks because Robert took care of the kids for me. But this time we had four kids and an infant in tow. We were also working for Coca-Cola, so it was going to be a ton of work and a huge month for us. I felt we needed to buy a real home in Los Angeles before we left to ground us when we came home. We needed a home to come home to.

  There was, of course, more to it than that. I’m such a nester, and I’ve always needed a home to build memories. Of course, I had no idea in 1996 that I was searching for a house that would literally become a stage for my family on television, although it would still take several more moves before we landed in the first of the houses featured on our show. Nesting just comes naturally to me. Many of the important women in my life, like my daughters, are the same way.

  I have to have everything in my life completely organized and perfect—otherwise, I am a complete mess. I can’t think straight if my home isn’t just right. That was the way I was brought up; my environment just feeds my energy. I love creating a home, and I thrive in the order of what I create. So living in a rented house—somebody else’s house, with somebody else’s refrigerator and somebody else’s washer and dryer, somebody else’s walls and tile and decorations—is not how I thrive. I had to get us out of that rented house and into a place of our own. I became fixated on it. It became a goal, a quest.

  Once I put that vibe out there, amazing things began to happen.

  One day, one of my best friends, Lisa Miles, called.

  “Hi, Kris, I would love to have you over to my house,” she said. “You’ve never seen it. Come for lunch. I want to show you the house.”

  Lisa, who I had known since I first met and married Robert, had moved from Beverly Hills out to someplace called Hidden Hills.

  “Where in the hell is Hidden Hills?” I asked.

  It was in Calabasas, fourteen miles from L.A. She gave me directions, and I felt like I had to drive on the 101 freeway forever to get there. It felt like I was driving to San Francisco! But when I finally reached the community of Hidden Hills and drove through its magnificent gates, I did an audible exhale. It was like d
riving into another world. I saw these huge parcels of property with white fences, winding trails, beautiful homes, and trees everywhere. I drove a bit farther into the neighborhood, and I saw horses, llamas and cows, and people walking their dogs and riding their horses. I saw a dog walker with about fifteen dogs on leashes. When I rolled my window down, I could hear birds chirping and singing. It was heaven. Where am I? I thought. Who even knew this existed?!

  When I finally pulled up to Lisa’s house, I could hardly even speak.

  I was so happy for Lisa. She was living an amazing lifestyle in a gorgeous home on a beautiful piece of property. She was so excited to show me her house. She had a tennis court, a basketball court, a stable, a barn, two horses, three goats, about ten chickens, and a bunch of bunnies and cats. She was happy and calm and thriving.

  Doesn’t every fairy tale end with a happily-ever-after? I was already deliriously happy with a new baby, an amazing marriage, and a great life. Kourtney, Kimberly, Khloé, and Rob were all in school, and Kendall was, of course, still an infant. I was determined to take care of my kids and make the most beautiful home possible for them and for Bruce.

  Hidden Hills looked like the perfect place.

  “How did you find this place?” I asked Lisa at lunch that day.

  She told me the story of how she had discovered her home, and when I drove back to Los Angeles that night, I just knew. I had found our home. Hidden Hills fit the bill and it was where I wanted to live. I didn’t even know how to get there, but I knew I was going to get there.

  I practically gushed about it to Bruce that night: Hidden Hills, Hidden Hills, Hidden Hills. All I could talk about was Hidden Hills.

  “I am not living all the way out in Hidden Hills,” he said of this elusive place just fourteen miles from L.A. but over the hill and a few freeways from Beverly Hills. “That’s just not something I want to do.”

  “But you used to live in Malibu!” I said. Malibu was even farther.

  “Well, Malibu is different,” he said. “It’s the beach.”

  He was definitely not on the bandwagon. But the more I talked about Lisa’s beautiful house and the more I raved and raved about it, Bruce eventually did what he usually does: he came around.

  “Well, if you love it that much, why don’t you go look at houses out there with somebody and just see what you find?” he suggested.

  I called a friend who lived in Encino. I loved her house too; it was large and spacious compared to what you could find in Beverly Hills. You really get a lot for your money when you’re willing to drive out of town. Plus, it wasn’t like we had bazillions to spend on a house. We had a tight budget and needed a lot of space for what was now totaling nine kids: my four, Bruce’s four, and the baby we had just had together. We needed at least five bedrooms for Kourtney, Kimberly, Khloé, Robert, and Kendall, plus a bedroom for Bruce and me. That meant we needed a six-bedroom house, and a house in Beverly Hills with six bedrooms would have cost us $10 million. I knew I had to get creative to find the perfect house.

  My friend recommended a broker named Lisa, and as we drove around the incredible neighborhood, I just kept thinking, I’ve never seen anything like this. The houses were so far apart from each other and each one was absolutely beautiful. Then the real estate agent pulled up to a house that didn’t seem to fit in. It was a sprawling house that wasn’t at all like my friend’s house, the house that had made me fall in love with the area in the first place. In fact, it was borderline ugly. It looked like it might be a bit of a spec house with a sparse garden, not nearly as lush as the surrounding homes. It definitely looked like it could use a little TLC. But who knows? I thought. I still wanted to take a look inside.

  But when I walked through the doors, I immediately called the house “the monstrosity,” because it was sort of a bad shade of gray with purple carpet and black marble floors. It was so big—more than 9,000 square feet—and it had six bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a huge backyard, and a pool with horrible brick trim, but not a single tree. All I remembered when I left that day was the purple carpet. It wasn’t the castle I pictured in my fairy tale, so I moved on. I had envisioned something really special. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew I’d know it when I saw it. We looked and looked and looked at all kinds of houses, and I fell in love with one right down the street from that first purple and black monstrosity. I really loved this one. It was Spanish in style, it was in Hidden Hills, it had a tennis court and everything else I wanted. It was divine. It had extensive damage from the ’94 earthquake and was in need of repair, but regardless, I loved it.

  The house was in foreclosure and we tried to buy it. We made an offer, and the sellers accepted. A few days before we left for the Olympic Games in Atlanta, thinking that when we returned home we’d move into our new, big, beautiful, Spanish-style, Mediterranean villa in Hidden Hills, our real estate agent, Lisa, called.

  “You didn’t get the house,” she told me. “Somebody else heard that it was going really cheap, and they bought it out from under you.”

  I was crushed. I mean, I actually cried myself to sleep that night. Now what are we going to do? I had exhaustively searched every single house in both Hidden Hills and Calabasas. I just knew that that’s where our life would be. I just didn’t know what I was going to do to get there. There wasn’t time to think about it now. We were off to Atlanta for six weeks. Bruce, Kendall, our nanny, Jackie, and I went first, while the rest of the kids finished up school at Robert’s house. While I was in Atlanta, I got a phone call from Lisa. “You know that house that you saw with the purple carpet and the black marble that you thought was so ugly?” she said. “Well, they’ve lowered the price one more time, and if you want it, I think I can get it for you. You’ve got to act quickly, though, because there’s somebody else interested.”

  Bruce and I talked it over in Atlanta and decided that there was nothing about the house that we couldn’t fix. It was the first house we saw in Hidden Hills, and we thought, Why not? We could take it on as a big project and redo the house, room by room. We would transform it; we would single-handedly turn it into our dream house. Both of us were ready for the challenge.

  So we bought the purple monstrosity in Hidden Hills. Escrow closed in thirty days. Being out of town that month was a blessing, because it distracted me and kept me from obsessing about all the things that I’d have to do to turn that purple house into a home. This was a big deal for Bruce and me, because it was the first house we bought together. Is it going to close? Is someone going to buy it out from under me? I was stressed, but we were so busy in Atlanta that I couldn’t let it get to me.

  The arrival of our kids in Atlanta would have made a great scene in Keeping Up with the Kardashians, only it wasn’t so funny—at least, not in the beginning.

  I knew that Kourtney, Kimberly, and Khloé were going to be something special even then, when they were still in their early teens. They were raised in a family full of big personalities, after all, and we were always doing something really exciting, whether we were filming an infomercial or going on a fabulous trip. Everything was larger-than-life because that’s just the way our family did things, and this trip to Atlanta was not going to be any different.

  My son, Robert, and Khloé came to Atlanta separately from the other girls. They flew in with my mom and dad. Kourtney and Kimberly were to come a few days later. Before their arrival, a bomb exploded during a rock concert in Centennial Olympic Park, killing two people and injuring more than a hundred. Kourtney and Kimberly had not only been really spooked by the bomb explosion, they were scared to death. They didn’t want to come to Atlanta because they thought that they were going to be bombed. It took me hours on the phone to convince Kourtney and Kimberly to even get on an airplane.

  On the day they were to fly to Atlanta, Kourtney and Kimberly went through security, which was, of course, much lighter than we have today. Still, an escort had to take them onto the plane because they were unaccompanied minors. They were flying coa
ch and sitting on the plane. But before the plane left the ground, the girls, still spooked about the bomb that had gone off in Atlanta, were distracted by a particular fellow passenger: they were sure he was a terrorist. The girls started watching this guy’s every movement. They got each other so worked up that they started hysterically crying to the flight attendants and eventually screaming, “That guy has a bomb! We want to get off this plane!”

  By then, the plane was taxiing onto the tarmac, and Kourtney had a full-blown panic attack. She started screaming that she just had to get off the plane, that a bomb was about to go off. You can imagine the effect that yelling about a bomb would have on an airplane, even back then. Complete chaos. Kourtney and Kimberly rattled the flight attendants so much that they told the pilots and the pilots turned the plane around and took Kourtney and Kimberly off, even though their luggage had already been checked.

  Bruce and I were at an event for Coca-Cola when Bruce’s cell phone rang. It was the agent at the gate in Los Angeles. “Mr. Jenner?” he said. “This is the supervisor . . . I have your daughters here, and they have created a nightmare.”

  The supervisor explained the situation to Bruce, then added, “We’re going to let this go this time. We’re not going to suspend the girls from flying. But I do not want them on one of our flights until tomorrow at the earliest.”