Mommywood (16 page)

Then, soon after Stella was born, Mary Jo decided to move back to Los Angeles. She told Dean that she wanted Jack to be near him. This meant Jack‘s time was split much more evenly between his two parents. Now Jack was moving back and forth from her house to our house every week. When he was visiting I had three children to take care of. I want to be careful here. I love Jack, and I don‘t want to write anything that will ever hurt him. What I want to talk about is how in a family with children from different marriages, there are times when everyone has to shift gears.

When you have a baby, you start at the beginning. You watch a child grow. You have a history together. When you suddenly have a ten-year-old living with you, you‘re starting midstream. He‘s already half-formed. He has a history without you. There are traditions and rules and behaviors in place and you‘re just jumping into the middle of his life. It‘s pretty mind-blowing. No matter how much Dean and I talked about Jack, it was impossible for me to feel prepared. And I‘m sure Jack felt the same way. We had to stumble and feel our way toward a relationship that worked for us, one that can‘t have been easy for him in the first place. It‘s a constant, ongoing effort to find the balance between being a mother figure to him and not over-stepping the bounds of a stepmom. Kids need boundaries to function, but how am I supposed to know what those boundaries are? I‘m raising infants!

Here‘s another challenge: should Jack live by the rules of our household, or should we follow the rules of his mother‘s household? Family dinners have always been important to me.

In my mind, at dinnertime everyone is given the same nutritious meal—say turkey meatloaf, broccoli, and mashed potatoes—and everyone eats what they want of that meal. But Jack‘s mother might believe in giving him choices. Or she might believe in the Clean Plate Club. Or she might want him to be a vegetarian. So he sits down to a table with one set of ideas, whatever they are, and is expected to abide by another. It‘s tough to know how and what lines to draw. I wanted to be a good parent-figure while not intruding on his birth parents.

In theory, I should look to Dean, as Jack‘s dad, to draw those lines. But Dean still feels guilty about the divorce, while I can be emotionally removed. I think sometimes Dean‘s too lenient with Jack. Meanwhile, Dean says I‘m quick to reinforce rules with Jack but that Liam needs boundaries as well. When it comes down to it, I actually think the hardest part isn‘t being a stepmom. It‘s caring for kids who are so far apart in age.

Jack didn‘t want me to come to his birthday party—he‘s a kid, he‘s still dealing with mixed feelings about me—but we thought it was best for me to be a constant, positive presence in his life. At first we came up with an alternate plan. Instead of my coming to his party, we would have a family dinner: me, Dean, Mary Jo, Jack, and two of his friends. The only time I‘d ever met Mary Jo was when I went to her house because she wanted to discuss how we cared for Jack. I became so paranoid that she had it in for me that I had a kitchen knife hidden in my purse in case I needed it for self-defense. I was honest, maybe too honest, about that encounter when I wrote about it in
sTORI
telling
. Mary Jo never said anything about my book. Jack never said anything either, until one day he said, ―Everyone says Tori wrote this book trashing her whole family. Dean said, ―Did you read the book? Jack said, ―No. Dean said, ―Well then, you can‘t judge.

It‘s a no-brainer that I would never say anything negative about Mary Jo in front of Jack. But when Jack said to me, ―My mom says you‘re the ugliest living thing in this world, I had a feeling Mary Jo and I didn‘t read the same rule book. (Er, I‘m pretty sure her rule book says something about it being very uncool to fall in love with other women‘s husbands.) I just said,

―Yeah, that‘s not very nice to say about people. But I think your mom‘s very pretty and you can tell her I said that.

This family dinner would be the first time I‘d seen Mary Jo since the knife-in-my-purse encounter. It would be the first time I‘d ever seen Mary Jo with Dean and Jack. It would be the first time we all tried to be a big, integrated, crazy modern-day family.

We went to Miceli‘s, an Italian restaurant in the Valley famous for its singing waiters. When we walked in, I gave Mary Jo the warmest ―Hi you‘ve ever heard, being sure to make eye contact. I wanted to set a friendly tone. We all walked to the booth. Mary Jo sat down, and then I slid in right next to her. I didn‘t want to wait a beat. I figured, if I just pretended we were all friends, out to have a nice, celebratory dinner, it would kind of be true. Mary Jo was fine. She was perfectly nice. If the way we acted in each other‘s company that evening was the way we acted in our separate homes, I was sure Jack would have a seamless transition into a split, but warm and loving, family.

And yet. Even though to all appearances it was a normal dinner, I somehow felt inferior to Mary Jo. I have no idea why.

She was so proper and mature. When I giggled I felt like a silly schoolgirl. When we got our food, I looked down to make sure I had my utensils in the right order. I felt twelve. It was nothing she did or said to me, and granted, it was an uncomfortable situation all around. For some reason I just felt like I wasn‘t smart enough or cultured enough. Later, when I told Dean, he just said, ―Welcome to my world.

But we all had to admit that the dinner went smoothly. Our family was nothing Jack had to be embarrassed about. There would be no drama if I came to his birthday party. So we decided that I would go after all. It was a laser tag party at a space in the Valley. I was nervous about what my role was and how Mary Jo would treat me, but as it turned out, it wasn‘t Dean‘s ex-wife whose behavior would surprise me, it was my ex-costar.

The first thing that happened at the party was that everyone gathered in a briefing room to learn how to play laser tag. There were about twenty people there. I already knew that at Jack‘s new school he had befriended another boy whose name was Jack too. One day when Dean went to pick Jack up from school, he met the other Jack and realized that it was Jack Perry, son of my former costar Luke Perry.

We knew Jack Perry was coming to the birthday party, and when I entered the briefing room I saw Dean sitting with Liam in his lap, a space next to him, and then Luke. It had been a while, and I was happy to see Luke. In fact, I figured he probably came to the party in part because he thought I was going to be there. I squeezed into the place between Luke and Dean, said, ―Hi! and leaned in to give him a kiss and a hug. He sat there. Stone.

I pulled back. Luke stared straight ahead at the woman giving the laser tag lecture. I sat there in the seat right next to him, half listening to the instructions (even though I didn‘t plan to play) and half completely puzzled. I tried to work out why he‘d given me the cold shoulder. Maybe he was busy trying to focus on how to play laser tag. No, now he was checking his BlackBerry. Maybe he thought we‘d catch up later? But when the woman finished, he slipped out of the briefing room without saying a word to me. I was completely mystified. And uncomfortable. As if this birthday party hadn‘t been awkward enough to begin with.

My friend Scout was sitting next to Mary Jo for the instructional section. When it was over, she turned to him and said, ―Are you playing?

Scout said, ―No.

She said, ―Can you hold my purse? and handed it to Scout.

Then Mary Jo went off with the kids to play laser tag, and Scout came out of the room holding Mary Jo‘s purse, bewildered.

I took Liam into the arcade room to see all the flashing lights. Luke continued to ignore me. When we crossed paths, he walked right by me as if I were a wall. At one point he came up to me and Dean and started to talk to Dean. I figured I‘d been imagining things, that he was there to talk to me and Dean together, but when I turned to him, he walked away. At one point I came out of the arcade room holding Liam and saw Luke looking my way. I made sure I caught his eye. Ha! He‘d have to say something to me now. And indeed he did. He said, ―Where‘s the bathroom? in an angry tone. Maybe the laser tag pizza didn‘t agree with him. I said, ―I don‘t know, then suddenly felt guilty about not knowing the layout of the laser tag facility. He rolled his eyes and walked away.

My friend Scout was with me at the party for moral support.

I told him what was going on and he said, ―It‘s gotta be the book. I racked my brain. What had I written in my book that made Luke hate me? I couldn‘t think of anything. Finally Scout said, ―The Christmas party. You wrote about him punching out Nick at your parents‘ Christmas party. It was true. I had written about Luke fighting with my then boyfriend. But in that story Luke was my friend and hero. He was protecting me from a bad boyfriend. I admired him and was grateful to him for that act.

If the problem was that Luke wasn‘t wild about my book, well, he wouldn‘t be the only former costar to have a less-than-thrilled reaction. Ian Ziering did some interviews saying he was upset about my book, that I blew things out of proportion. He said I shouldn‘t have spoken badly about the experience. Of course the news magazines ran his comments as if we were in a huge blowout: ―Ian vs. Tori. But the next time I saw Ian was at the Silver Spoon Dog and Baby Buffet, which is basically a celebrity free-gifts party, in Century City. I was extremely pregnant with Stella, and Dean and I were being interviewed by
Access Hollywood
. Out of nowhere, Ian appeared and jumped into our shot, all smiles, patting my pregnant belly and saying,

―Hi, Mama.

As for Shannen Doherty, she was on the cover of
Us Weekly
with the headline Shannen ―Defends Herself Against Tori Spelling‘s ‗Lies.‘ I got emails from friends and fans saying,

―Oh my God, I can‘t believe she said that, but I wasn‘t concerned. I know I told the truth as I saw it, and she probably felt that she was doing the same. Regardless, I‘m pretty sure that her accusations caused a spike in the sales of my book.

When I thought about it more, I decided that if I knew Luke, he hadn‘t read the book at all. What happened is that he probably got questioned about it by friends and the media.

They‘d say something like, ―Tori wrote that you punched out her boyfriend at her parents‘ house. Maybe they made it sound like a bad thing. Or maybe he just didn‘t like having those years rehashed at all. Did all that brooding as Dylan McKay rub off on him?

I know, I know. In an ideal world I would have simply walked up to him and asked him what was wrong. But he was
so
cold. So instead, I hid. Seriously, at some point I really have to learn to confront people because the mystery of that behavior will just eat at me. By the end of the party I was like,
Wow,
compared to Luke, Mary Jo’s a breath of fresh air.

I have to admit that I was surprised, pretty much across the board, by the way people reacted to my book. With a few exceptions—notably my mother and a couple of things I said about Shannen (and even then I tried to see both sides of the stories)—I really tried to save the worst, most embarrassing revelations for myself. I tried to be aware of everyone else‘s feelings and privacy, and I‘m sorry if some of the stories I thought were positive (like Luke‘s punch-out) or funny at my expense (like bringing a knife in my purse when I met Mary Jo for the first time) were not thought so by other people.

I live a public life, and when other people cross into that life, I have to weigh my rights to be public against their rights to be private. If celebrities, who are used to the attention and the way the media warps its presentation of facts, reacted so strongly to what I thought were tiny, innocuous mentions, then how must Mary Jo have felt? The discomfort I felt at Miceli‘s must have been minor next to the discomfort Mary Jo experienced from knowing people had read personal things about my relationship with the man who was now her ex-husband.

There is more to say about being a stepmother, but it‘s not my right to say more, not if I care about the people involved, and I do very much. That‘s a lesson I‘ve learned the hard way from my last book.

Retail and Therapy

W
e were a family of five now, and we needed to work on the issues that arose from Jack‘s moving back to town and Liam‘s being so attached to Dean. I grew up in a situation where I didn‘t have to take care of myself, much less take care of others.

People did everything for me. Now I realized that Dean was doing the same—doing most of the heavy lifting while I stood by as helpless as when I was a girl whose parents had a household staff of at least twelve. I didn‘t want to be that helpless person anymore—especially if it interfered with my relationship with my children—but I didn‘t know how to be anyone else. How do you transform a Hollywood starlet into the responsible, confident wife and mother she has always wanted to be? A little couples therapy was in order. Dean and I went back to see Dr. Wexler, the therapist who had guided me through the end of my first marriage.

I hadn‘t seen Dr. Wexler for years, but I knew that she did family counseling. So we went in there and described the situation. I had to admit that when I found out I was having a girl, part of me was excited because she was bound to do girl things—things that Dean hadn‘t experienced with his boys already. I love that Dean and Liam have such a close relationship, and most of the time I know that Liam loves me like crazy, but I hoped to have more of that ―new parents together experience with Dean and Stella. I also talked about how I felt that Dean didn‘t let me do enough—that I wanted to participate but when I did he sometimes criticized me.

When Dean‘s turn came, he said that I was overthinking it, that parenting was instinct. He didn‘t want to have to think about who was doing what and whether things were shaking out evenly. He thought I should just step in and do it. What was he supposed to do if he came in and saw that Liam had a dirty diaper? Let Liam get a diaper rash while everyone waited for me to notice?