Life on the Ramona Coaster (16 page)

Season 7, Turks and Caicos

Thankfully, Carole and I hit it off immediately. She has a wonderful free spirit and true depth of character. I have tremendous respect for her as an accomplished producer, journalist, and author. We’re very different; she’s very downtown and I’m very uptown, but we’ve always gotten along very well. In fact, my friendship with Carole has definitely influenced me because my look is becoming much more downtown. I’m not always wearing those proper dresses and heels that I used to live in. I’ve loosened up and my look has become more edgy.

The biggest surprise for me was how I wound up falling out with Aviva over the course of Season 5. Initially we got along well, but then it seemed as if she just turned 180 degrees on me. The tension between us began even before all the drama in St. Barts, but it skyrocketed to a whole new level after that. My experience with Aviva has been that if you don’t do what she wants you to do, she gets very angry and spiteful. When I questioned why she had brought her husband on our girls’ vacation to St. Barts, she got furious. I do feel that LuAnn stirred the pot by telling her that we had joked about asking Reid to stay at a hotel. I don’t know why she repeated that. Maybe she wanted to redirect the focus away from us questioning her about Tomas, the Johnny-Depp-in-
Pirates of the Caribbean
-look-alike we met at the nightclub, Le Ti. During the Reunion episode LuAnn admitted to bringing him back to the house, but denied that anything physical happened between them. All I know is, LuAnn loves men and men love LuAnn, so I can only begin to imagine what really happened. I do think that if she
was
trying to deflect attention, it was a very smart strategy on her part because once Aviva called Sonja and me “white trash” no one was thinking about LuAnn and the pirate anymore. After that, I felt like Aviva went crazy on Sonja and me. Sonja rarely loses her temper. Generally, she takes on a very calming role when there is a conflict, but this fight even pushed her buttons. My favorite line of that season was when she took back her apology to Aviva and said, “Can I get a Return to Sender?”

Photo on the wall at Le Ti

One of the most intense moments of that season for me was when I met Aviva for tea after we got back from St. Barts. After I shot that scene with her, I felt bruised as though she had punched me with her words. I had already apologized several times and sincerely hoped that at this meeting would enable us to get to a better place. Harry, Aviva’s ex-husband, and I have been friends for years, long before I met Aviva. I had called him to see if he could give me some insight into why Aviva had gotten so angry. Unfortunately, she mistook my concern as criticism of her phobias. I honestly did want to mend fences with Aviva. I know I am not perfect and I too can overreact in stressful situations. I did not want the conflict to continue. Life is too short to hold onto ill will and anger for extended periods of time. That’s why I could not believe the anger that I felt was being directed at me at that day. At times, it seemed even more intense than anger; I felt there was hatred in her eyes. It was as if Aviva became a snake full of venom and vile words. Part of me was in shock. For a while I was frozen in my chair and then I just had enough. When I get upset, I’m the type of person who can’t deal with someone getting angry with me so I tend to walk away. I admit that’s not always a good trait, but this time I really just couldn’t take anymore. I remember that afterwards the head producer said that he couldn’t believe how long I sat there and I replied, “Well, you always tell me I end the conversation too quickly when I get upset and I run away, so I thought I’d make you happy.”

Other than showing up in St. Barts with her husband in tow, Aviva always seemed to have a reason not to join us on our trips. She’d say it was her phobias or asthma, but I believe that the real reason is that she does not want to push herself out of her comfort zone. I think that when she’s backed into a corner or her motives are questioned, she feels the need to create drama the way she did in the final episode of Season 6 when, at Sonja’s party, she slammed her prosthetic leg on the table and then threw it across the room. I believe Aviva did that because she knew she had made a major mistake not coming with us on the trip to Montana and I think she felt that she needed to do something to redeem herself. In my opinion, it was a very calculated move. Our show is completely real and unscripted, which is why it has been so successful, but I believe that Aviva had scripted that scene in her head long before she got to the party. I’ve seen her remove her prosthetic and it takes deliberation, so I don’t see how in the heat of the moment she could have had the presence of mind to unbuckle it that quickly and whip it onto the table.

All of a sudden, BOOM, there was a leg on the table. We were all shocked, so I do think she got the reaction she wanted. Every jaw in the room dropped. You almost felt like she had cut off her leg because her prosthetic is so realistic looking. I remember Kristen Taekman, who was new to the show that season, blurted out that she felt like she was going to vomit. People were offended by that comment, but I understood where she was coming from. Aviva’s leg is very lifelike so having it suddenly appear on the table was like something out of a horror movie. I remember, in Season 5, Reid played a practical joke on me using Aviva’s prosthetic. We were at their home in Miami and they had Mario and me stay in their gorgeous master bedroom. I was in the huge walk-in closet and when I walked back into the room, one of Aviva’s prosthetic legs was on the side table. I freaked out for a second because I thought someone had been murdered and dismembered. It was a very jarring experience.

Although I’ve had my differences with Aviva, we have moved on from that confrontation and we are still friends. I was actually having lunch with her recently when Andy Cohen called to thank me for being so open about my life during the filming of Season 7. (That was a little awkward.) I think Aviva needs to feel in control and she has a hard time putting herself in a situation where that might not be the case. I understand that impulse. It’s the reason that I was initially reluctant to go to Africa. There were too many unknowns, I would have to rely on other people, and I wouldn’t have any control. But I took a leap of faith and it wound up being the most exhilarating and spiritual experience of my life.

The Singers on safari in Africa

In 2013, I returned to South Africa with Avery and Mario. After hearing all about my trip, Avery had been dreaming of seeing Africa for herself and I wanted to share the experience with her. She had been accepted to Emory and would be leaving for college in August, so Mario and I decided to take her to South Africa in April of her senior year as a graduation present.

Our first stop was at Phinda Forest Lodge, in KwaZulu-Natal, a province in southeastern South Africa. Every morning, we got up early for a three-hour safari ride through Phinda Private Game Reserve, so I was able to share with Mario and Avery the wonders of the African wilderness that I had experienced on my first trip. We also visited several schools and a health facility supported by Empowers Africa. At Phinda we visited the first school in this area for handicapped children. Before this school was built, many children who were confined to wheelchairs or had learning or physical disabilities would just stay home alone all day.

Krista Krieger had graciously set up this school visit for us, but we ended up being such a large group that, although it was a beautiful experience, Avery wasn’t able to interact with the children as much as she had hoped. She said to me, “Mommy, I really want to have a more intimate experience.” So at our next stop, Dulini Lodge in Sabi Sands Game Reserve near Kruger National Park, we went to another school and had a much more hands-on experience. We had learned that the boys play soccer and the girls play a game called netball, which is similar to basketball, so we bought and donated sports equipment to the school (soccer balls for the boys and netball hoops for the girls). One of the best moments of the trip was when they gave Avery a uniform to wear and she got to play netball with the girls at the school.

Avery with school children in South Africa

We had already started filming for Season 6 by then, but I took the time off because I felt it was important for Mario, Avery, and I to have that time together as a family before she left for college. That trip was an incredible bonding experience for us. I wanted to teach my daughter the valuable lesson that I had learned on my own trip three years earlier. To truly grow as a person you have to take yourself out of your element and open yourself up to change and new experiences.

Little did I know, however, that I was about to be taken forever out of my comfort zone. Over the following year, my marriage of twenty-one years collapsed in an excruciatingly public way, and I found myself sorting through the rubble of my life in search of some kind of foundation upon which to begin rebuilding.

Our first wedding day, March 1992