Mommywood (10 page)

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

W
e didn‘t live in the new house before Stella was born, but we‘d already gotten a first taste of the neighborhood. Okay, so I get it that a paparazzi-hounded reality star may not be the ―good family neighborhood dream neighbor. She‘s probably got too many cars, too much trash, reality show cameramen coming and going at all hours of the night, and a stalker or two on top of it all. Also, she‘s probably a pretentious snob who doesn‘t give a crap about her neighbors, leaves shopping bags in her wake, and would be the last person in the world to, say, pick up your newspaper if you were out of town.

From the start, the neighbors were a little skeptical about me and Dean. (I‘d be surprised if they were skeptical about Liam.) We did a little work on the house before we moved in—

changing the cabinets in the kitchen, putting up wallpaper—and one neighbor commented to me about the commotion. I was surprised; I think it‘s pretty common to paint a house before you move in.

But that comment wasn‘t all. We had considered putting up a small gate in the front of the house. Nothing forbidding—just a low gate to let the paparazzi know exactly where our property line started. Then we decided against it because it was too pricey. Next thing I know, one of my neighbors—let‘s call him Wally—sent me an email. (I‘d given my email to the Fourth of July block party planning committee. Isn‘t that what good neighbors do?) It was a polite, but forceful email that said something like, ―This is a charming, close-knit neighborhood.

We understand that you have security issues, but a huge six-foot wall is not only illegal, it will take away from the charm of the neighborhood. And it‘d be a shame to put it in because if you do, we‘re all going to get together with torches and megaphones and baseball bats, march over to your house, and make you take it down. Okay, he may not have mentioned torches. But he did mention a six-foot wall. A six-foot wall? Where did he get that?

Welcome to the neighborhood.

I responded with an equally polite email. We actually had decided not to put up a
fence
. And by the way, we were never planning to put up a six-foot anything! Then I added, ―Not having a fence puts my safety at risk, but since this is such a tight-knit neighborhood, I just know that when a rabid Donna Martin fan breaks in and you hear my screams, you‘ll rush to my aid. I fantasized for a minute about sending the email as it was, then deleted the crazed fan part.

The day I got home from the hospital we went back to filming for
Tori & Dean
. The show has a small crew, about five or six people. They show up in a single van. There are no big cameras or extras. It‘s a pretty small and quiet operation. The crew is always very respectful. When they showed up first thing in the morning, they knocked quietly and asked if the babies were awake. If anyone was still sleeping, they‘d hang out on the front lawn until we invited them in. On one of those days Wally stopped our painter and asked if we had a permit to do the show at our house. He said, ―It‘s like they‘re making a porno. Wally, our personal welcome committee.

When the painter reported this to me, all the air came out of the balloon of my dreams. Dean got really mad. He was pacing around the living room declaring that he wanted to knock on the guy‘s door and say, ―Who do you think you are? I‘m moving in with my family. We have a newborn baby. We worked hard to be able to afford to live here. This is the welcome we get?

I said, ―No, you can‘t! They won‘t be our friends. They‘ll hate us. It‘s my dream!

Dean was like, ―Fuck it, we have friends already.

I said, ―We‘ll kill them with kindness. Once they know us they‘ll come around. Dean was skeptical, but he didn‘t do anything. He knew how much it meant to me to fit in.

A week later our neighbors from across the street stopped by to welcome us to the neighborhood. I opened the door to find them standing there with flowers from their garden and homemade brownies. The bad taste of Wally‘s politely threatening email left my mouth. Neighbors were bringing brownies! I‘d only seen such encounters on TV. But I knew what it meant. It meant I really, truly lived in a neighborhood for the first time in my life. Yes, I have to admit I paused for a moment to wonder if they had poisoned the brownies, but that‘s just me and my irrational fears. It was absolutely no reflection on the perfectly nice, normal people standing at the door waiting to come in. Right. I was a mess. I‘d just been nursing Stella. I was in sweats and my hair was a disaster. Stella was wrapped in a blanket. ―I‘m so sorry the house is such a wreck! I said as I invited them in. They had a son, Sam, who was close to Liam‘s age. I hoped that the boys would be friends.

I showed them around the house, which still had stacks of boxes yet to be unpacked and piles of stuff everywhere. They were so pleasant and friendly. I was trying my best to be equally pleasant and friendly. Everyone was doing the right thing, but I could see that they felt weird. I felt weird too. We all felt uncomfortable. It should have been so nice, but something wasn‘t natural. What was going through their minds? Did they think we were normal or celebrity-warped? Did they wish we hadn‘t moved in but still dropped by anyway because that‘s what you do with neighbors? Would they have felt equally uncomfortable if we were anyone else? Is that just part of meeting the neighbors? Is it always a little awkward? Or was it me: was I the one making it awkward? I‘d never done this before. Had I brought Mommywood to their pleasant neighborhood? Or were they exiling me to Mommywood because that was where we belonged? Everyone moves.

Everyone meets neighbors. Most people look for friends—or at least acquaintances—and ways to fit in. But our celebrity brought with it other issues and considerations that had nothing to do with who we were. Was a normal relationship with neighbors possible for us? That whole internal monologue went through my head as I gave them the tour and told them I hoped we‘d all get to know one another. Yeah, maybe that‘s why I didn‘t come across well. I had a lot going on in my head.

We put the bumpy entry into the neighborhood aside to focus on more important things: decorating. Sure, I wanted the house to be super chic but my big thing was that it had to be cozy and child-friendly. That was the idea, anyway. Then I started designing. I got so excited. It was like Liam‘s first birthday party all over again. I start off small, but then I get carried away. I couldn‘t help myself. I had always lived in rentals, so I‘d never decorated my own house before. The bed-and-breakfast was my taste, but we worked with a designer who brought us ideas and samples and mostly we said yes or no. This was my first chance to design a house in the style I wanted. As soon as I got going I thought,
Wow, I have great taste!
When I was growing up, wallpaper was unchic. It seemed sort of tacky, like having a furry toilet seat cover. But now I was seeing such amazing new wallpapers. And to me nothing said ―This is not a rental more than wallpaper. I became wallpaper-obsessed. I would have wallpapered the refrigerator if we hadn‘t had a budget.

Did I say cozy and child-friendly? Sure, sure, but I‘d always dreamed of having a formal living room. It‘s funny, because when I was growing up we had, like, fifty formal living rooms and they meant nothing to me. But in my adult life I never had a real living room. It was always a living room/family room.

Sometimes it was a living room/family room/office. Now we had a separate room that we planned to use as a family room.

This was my chance to design the formal living room of my dreams.

I was decorating the house in Hollywood Regency style, a throwback to old Hollywood glamour. I did the living room fireplace in gold and black lacquered wood. There was a velvet tufted couch and an antique Aubusson rug (well, a faux Aubusson). I recovered a set of old leather club chairs—my one concession to the budget. There were light silk drapes with embossed trees. And there was a hint of Asia in the buffet and the prints on the wall. The bar cart was fantastic. It was stocked with etched crystal decanters and highball and shot glasses. Kid-friendly? Not so much.

Okay, so the living room was chock-full of accidents waiting to happen. And, wouldn‘t you know it, it was Liam‘s favorite room in the house. All he wanted to do was chase us and be chased around that room. Clearly the first time Liam decided to throw a ball in the house it was going to land smack in the middle of that glassware-filled glass cart. Still, I cherished that space. I pictured myself in a long caftan, with long painted red nails, reclining on the velvet couch with a tumbler of scotch on the rocks in hand. I loathe scotch, but who cares? I‘d twirl it in the glass and just be in heaven.

When the living room was almost complete, I started to panic. Our media room was tiny, and we wanted it to double as a playroom. Maybe we needed the living room to be a place to watch TV. Dean hates TVs. He‘d rather not have TVs anywhere, especially in the bedroom or the kitchen. But the house I grew up in had TVs in every room. Dean and I compromised: I agreed not to have a TV in the bathroom, I promised him the TV in the kitchen would be off during family dinners, and I reminded him that he liked the bedroom TV just fine when we were watching porn.

Now it suddenly seemed important that the living room have a TV. A critical anchor for the room. I couldn‘t help myself. I put a huge TV in, facing the couch. But the truth is that once we settled into the house, we never used the living room TV. Media room TV? Yes. Kitchen TV? Yes. Bedroom TV?

Yes. But the living room TV? Never. So in my dream room there‘s a gigantic TV on the wall as decorative art. It isn‘t exactly Hollywood Regency. I blew it.

The living room isn‘t cozy. It isn‘t family-friendly. We hardly ever use it. But every night before I go to bed I walk past the doorway and stop to look because it‘s so gorgeous. I turn out the lights, smile, and sigh with self-satisfaction.

At long last it was done. Dean and I, Liam and little Stella were home. And Patsy was back to help care for Stella. For my first postbaby exercise effort I wheeled out the honkin‘ double baby jogger that was the cornerstone of my suburban fantasy. I strapped on a brand-new pedometer so I could track how far I was running. I found a thermal mug that fit in the jogger‘s cup holder and filled it with iced coffee. I put on the cutest running outfit I could squeeze my postpartum body into (in case of paparazzi) and put my hair back. I gave both the kids diaper changes, slathered Liam with sunblock and arranged the shade so that Stella wouldn‘t get a drop of sun. Then I set off on my jog.

A couple of blocks later my legs seemed to stop all by themselves. It dawned on me:
I can’t do this!
Another strike against the suburban dream. From now on I would just walk.

That would be my exercise. It was better than nothing.

One day, as I was preparing to embark on one of my mega-calorie-burning strolls, our painter came in and said, ―That‘s your neighbor. He just asked me about your wall. I ran to the window to see a man just turning to walk away. So this was Wally—the one-man welcome-to-the-neighborhood committee.

He was still asking the painter about the alleged six-foot wall.

After I sent him that email saying we weren‘t building one! He didn‘t believe me! This guy I had to meet.

Dean and I hurried outside and walked right up to him.

Dean said hello and shook his hand. I grabbed him, hugged him, and said, ―Oh my God, I‘m so excited to finally meet you in person. I‘m so glad to be in the neighborhood. The whole time I‘d been telling Dean, ―We have to kill him with kindness. I‘m telling you. I believe in this. So I hugged Wally, and when I stepped back, I saw his whole facial expression change. The tenseness drained out. It was genius. He was super nice from that moment on. And just like that, hope sprung anew.

I couldn‘t blame our neighbors for having their doubts about the celebrities next door, but they‘d get to know us, we‘d get to know them, and soon enough we‘d all be playing kickball in the palm-tree-lined streets. Or at least our kids would be while we drank fruity cocktails from a punch bowl. The suburban dream was alive again.

End of an Era

T
here was an emptiness in our new house. I knew it was coming. I knew it the minute I found out that Stella was going to be born on Mimi‘s birthday. I knew Mimi was going to die. You know, one life finishes when another one starts, circle of life, all that.

Mimi was a true Hollywood pug. She wore couture clothes, which I kept in a little armoire. She would have it no other way.

People chastised me for dressing her, but you have to believe me when I tell you that Mimi felt naked without clothes. When she heard the sound of me opening the armoire, she always came flying, howling with excitement. She loved getting dressed and would push her little front legs through the sleeves. I swear, any doubter who watched me dress Mimi became a believer. Put that pug in a dress and pearls and she was happy.

Mimi starred with me in my series
So NoTORIous
on VH1.

Any time you see a dog in a scripted show, it‘s a trained dog.

Not Mimi. The script would say, ―Mimi runs across the room, jumps into Tori‘s arms, and howls. I‘d get nervous. Mimi had many qualities, but obedience wasn‘t top of the list. Stardom was, however. Mimi hit her mark every time. She was a true performer. As befit a star of her stature, Mimi walked the red carpets (okay, she was carried). The paparazzi would shout,

―Over here, Mimi! and she‘d turn, pose, and wait for the flash.

Mimi was a star, but she wasn‘t immortal. I already knew she was on her way out. She was eleven years old, which is very old for a pug. She was never a very healthy dog. She had problems with her hips, neck, breathing, heart; it‘s actually amazing how many problems she packed into that little pug body of hers. I always gave her the best medical care I could find—top vets, holistic treatments, acupuncture, water therapy, massage, pain management counseling, and plenty of love. (I‘m joking about the pain management counseling. Sort of.) The morning of Stella and Mimi‘s birthday (Mimi: eleven, Stella: zero) I‘d been a little put out that I had to deal with Mimi‘s birthday—the cake, putting her in a dress, taking pictures. Seriously, a dog party? On the day I might die in childbirth? But now I thank God I did it. One week later—just three days after we came home from the hospital—I was in pain from my C-section, so though I usually come downstairs with Liam for breakfast, that day I stayed in bed. Patsy brought me Stella whenever she needed to nurse. Around two p.m. I was nestled in bed, and Paola had brought Liam up for a visit. Liam opened a magazine. There was an ad for our show in it, featuring Mimi. Liam pointed right at her and said, ―Mimi! Mimi! for the first time.