Mommywood (19 page)

Bill, Scout, and I stood back to assess the attendees. The only people we recognized were two soap stars and Gwen Stefani and her family. There were about fifty guests in total.

Wait a minute—fifty guests? Sure, that‘s a big party for two-year-olds, but it was nothing compared to what I‘d expected.

How in the world did I make it onto the list?

Just then Diddy came up to us. He greeted us, thanked us for coming, and shook everyone‘s hand, making sure to meet and welcome each of us. He was warm and pleasant. I had assumed that a mogul like him would be too busy for us, but at his daughters‘ birthday party he seemed like a parent just like any of us, taking time to greet all the guests. I guess I get why people have preconceived notions of me; I seem to have them of other people too. Diddy couldn‘t have been nicer and more genuine.

When the puppet show was over it was cake time. Liam loves singing ―Happy Birthday. Dean held him up to see the cake. Liam leaned forward, trying to blow out the candles. It was really cute, and it all felt perfectly nice and normal, except I still couldn‘t figure out what I was doing there.

Then Kim, the birthday girls‘ mother, came over to me with another woman; I gathered it was her friend and assistant. They introduced themselves and then Kim told me that
Tori & Dean
was her favorite show. She said, ―I‘ve watched every episode. I love your family. And I loved it when you decorated that house.

You have the best style. Aha! Now I got it. I was there because Kim felt like she knew me (or would like to know me) through our show. When they were making the party list she must have thought, ―Well, I like Tori and Dean, and I like Gwen Stefani.

I‘ll invite them. It had never occurred to me that I could invite anyone I was interested in to Liam‘s birthday parties. I could invite Gwen Stefani. Heck, I could even invite Kate Winslet!

Kim said, ―We should have a playdate with the kids, and we exchanged emails. Then her assistant said, ―Or the nannies.

The nannies can get the kids together.

The party was winding down. We circled past the petting zoo, the carousel, and the miniature horse rides. There was a nice buffet, a cappuccino/hot chocolate bar, a cotton candy machine, and popcorn. Not as over-the-top as I thought it would be. But yeah, my standards are a little warped.

I‘d been texting Mehran about Gwen Stefani‘s presence since he worships her. He wanted me to go up to her. ―You have the same agent! he was texting. ―Just say hi! I‘ve never walked up to a total stranger and introduced myself, but for Mehran I sucked it up. She had baby Zuma in a sling. I asked how old he was, and how her older son, Kingston, was reacting to the baby. I wondered if it was weird that I knew her children‘s names. But then she said, ―How‘s your daughter? and I realized she knew I had a daughter. It‘s just part of our world that people, including other celebrities, know our kids‘ names. We talked about babies and siblings for a few minutes, and then we had nothing else to talk about and said good-bye.

As we left we picked up our souvenir picture, which was now mounted on pink paper and said, in purple, ―Thank you for coming to D‘Lila and Jessie‘s party. We also scooped up the gift bag that had Scout so excited. Other guests started rifling through their gift bags in the tunnel on the way to the valet, but we restrained ourselves until we got into the car. The bag contained a pink crown cookie on a stick, a plush doll, an educational children‘s DVD, a baby sling, and a child-sized Tshirt with the twins‘ names and faces on it. Poor Scout. It wasn‘t exactly what he had in mind.

I suppose if Gwen Stefani and I had had more time or we‘d been in different circumstances, we might have found commonalities, but the chances weren‘t smaller or greater that I would hit it off with her than with any other mom. There‘s no instant celebrity bond. The truth is that ninety percent of my life is the same as everyone else‘s: I go to work every day. I love my husband, we have disagreements, we continue to love each other and try to make our time together special. I have friends who mean the world to me and who annoy me and who help me navigate my life. And I‘m especially like everyone else when it comes to the mommying parts. I worry about my kids when they‘re sleeping; I try to get them to eat the right foods; I hope they‘re having fun as they start to make sense of the world; I want them to make friends, to grow, to thrive, to love and be loved. I really want to connect and talk and commiserate with others about it all, and it‘s kind of a bummer that celebrity—that other ten percent of my life—always seems to get in the way.

When we moved to Beaver Avenue, my fantasy was to be in a kid-friendly neighborhood where Dean and I would become friends with the parents of Liam‘s—and eventually Stella‘s—

friends. I wanted a community. I wanted the whole suburban dream that was so foreign to me growing up in a huge house with a long driveway that no trick-or-treaters would bother to hike. Our house on Beaver Avenue was everything I thought I wanted.

But our house was right on the street. There was no fence, no hedge, and no privacy. Our show means cameras are in our kitchen, our bedroom, our backyard. I‘m constantly exposed (without makeup), but for some reason the show doesn‘t feel like an invasion of privacy. I guess the notion that it is transmitted by cables and satellites creates kind of a buffer between us and the people who are watching us. They might see us, but I can‘t see them.

Meanwhile, when I walked out the front door of our house, I saw curtains open as people peeped out at me. One day when I was walking Stella, a woman came up to us and said, ―Hi, Stella Doreen! Then she said, ―I‘m sorry to bother you. I can see you‘re out walking your baby. But I just wanted to say that I love the show. I thanked her and was about to walk on when she said, ―Can I ask what you‘re doing in this neighborhood? A little taken aback, I said, ―I live a block away. She said, ―I‘d never have thought you‘d live in our neighborhood! She was right. I didn‘t belong. Not because I was too rich or too famous or too snobby. But because none of us could get past the fact of who I was. Nobody was comfortable, including me.

Not long after we moved in, Jack was back in L.A. and spending much more time with us. Though we had planned for Jack to sleep in the den, we started regretting that we didn‘t have another bedroom in the house that he could call his own. We wanted to make sure he felt at home. Then there‘s the fact that Dean and I work out of our house. There are always extra people—producers and cameramen—moving around us as we go about our lives. Our house was plenty big for a family of four, but it didn‘t fit the life we were living now.

You always want what you don‘t have. Growing up, I always wanted a small house. I wanted a cozy space where I could feel close to my family. Honestly, just a place where I could find my parents without using an intercom would have been an improvement. But now we wanted a room for Jack and an office for me and Dean and more space for those cameras to glide by without bumping into corners or small children. If we moved just outside L.A., over the hill where real estate was less expensive, we could trade our house for one that was big enough for our family and job, and gated to keep the paparazzi at bay.

All I ever wanted was to be normal, to raise my kids as a normal mom in a normal house in a normal neighborhood. But my dreams of normal were crashing into the reality of our family‘s special situation. Having paparazzi assault us every time we left the house wasn‘t normal. Having neighbors peek out windows at us when we came out the front door wasn‘t normal. Being followed as we drove away wasn‘t normal. I was beginning to realize that the normal I‘d been seeking wasn‘t a matter of living in the right neighborhood or bringing the right cake to the block party or walking across the street to hang out with the neighbors uninvited. ―Normal was a concept that was mostly in my head, and the best way to achieve it was to build a life where we were calm and comfortable and felt at peace.

There were other factors, of course, but I knew for certain that that life wasn‘t happening on Beaver Avenue.

If we lived in a normal house, we would have no privacy. If we lived in a private house, we would lose the friendly neighborhood. We had to find a compromise. The new house we found was the compromise. Dean and I basically traded location for space. The new house would make Jack more comfortable, which was high on our list of reasons to move. It was closer to him and Mary Jo. It was set back from the road, with a security gate that kept paparazzi at a distance. We‘d be able to get into our cars without being photographed. The rooms were on a bigger scale, which meant we wouldn‘t be tripping over light cords and cameramen as we lived our lives in front of the lens.

There was a big, grassy backyard where our children could crawl and toddle now, and later run and play tag and have a swing set. And there were neighbors, but not so close that they could see in our windows. We may have wanted a close-knit, friendly relationship with our neighbors, but we needed privacy and safety. Maybe here we would find the balance.

When I showed the house to Jenny and Mehran, they were excited. Mehran called it my first grown-up house. Jenny was like, ―This is going to be so great. Our kids will all play in this backyard together. During the summer our kids will be splashing around in the pool. We‘ll celebrate holidays here together. She saw it as I did, a place where my family and friendships would grow, a place where we would all create memories together.

That was exactly the reaction I was hoping for, but it wasn‘t the only reaction I heard.

My makeup artist has worked with me for years and years.

When I showed her the website for the new house (this is common in L.A.), her reaction was, ―Now
this
is the type of house I‘d expect Tori Spelling to live in. Hearing that crushed me. To me it meant that the house was a rich-girl mansion, the right house for the daughter of megamogul Aaron Spelling. I felt embarrassed, ashamed. I‘d worked my whole life to get to a certain place, a place where people saw me as a normal person. I know my makeup artist cares about me, and she didn‘t mean it in a bad way, but what she said tapped into my greatest fears.

After all that work, proving that I was an independent, self-supporting, hardworking actor, when I moved into this house I‘d be forever pigeonholed as the overentitled, spoiled rich girl everyone has always assumed I was. I worked hard to earn the money to buy that house, and part of me was proud of what I‘d achieved, but the rest of me was just devastated that I could never escape the preconceived notion of how Tori Spelling would live.

Red Carpet Drama

E
veryone‘s got a central conflict in their lives, a constant theme that their personal struggles and problems keep coming back to visit. In case you haven‘t figured out mine yet, this is it: part of me wants to escape the life that Tori Spelling is expected to live, and part of me is so used to that life that I can‘t imagine anything else. Red carpet events have always been a standard component of my social life. I‘m so accustomed to entering an event that way, for me it‘s almost as mindless as putting the car into park. I just do it without thinking.

There are certain expectations on the red carpet. Your hair will be done. Your makeup will be perfect. You‘ll have a fresh manicure and pedicure. You will be wearing designer clothes and will be able to correctly pronounce the name of each designer. You‘ll know how to stand in a flattering pose. Your date, whose outfit requires nearly equal attention but will receive no reaction whatsoever, will pose with you, then step out of the frame for the ―fashion shot. You‘ll answer questions in quick, friendly sound bites, with smiles and a bit of humor, wait for the final flashes, then head into the event without delay. It‘s old hat to me.

And then came Liam. But before I talk about Liam‘s first red carpet experience, I want to take a moment to discuss Liam‘s socialization, such as it is. I want to talk about boobies.

There came the day (and believe me, I thought it would be much later in his development) when Liam started wondering what my boobs were. He‘d come up to me and push on them inquisitively. Dean would say, ―Mama‘s boobies. I figured now was a good time for him to understand the human body, long before he got all caught up in adolescent drama. So I‘d lift my shirt and say, ―Mama has boobies. Daddy and Liam have nipples. Same as you‘d show your kid your belly button:

―Mama has an innie on a perfectly flat tummy. (I wish!)

―Daddy has an outie. (Dean: exposed!) He got it down pretty quickly, so when I said, ―Where are Mama‘s boobies? he‘d say,

―Boobies! lift my shirt, and come in for the honk.

Liam‘s booby grab was my favorite baby show-off trick.

Scout and Bill loved it. As for Mehran, well, Mehran had issues.

He regretted my boob job. He‘s always said that I‘d wear designer clothes much better if I didn‘t have the boobs. He‘ll say, ―One size smaller—would you ever consider it? It‘d be so much easier to dress you. Mehran has a point. In the nineties, when I bought the boobs, they looked great with the clothes, but they don‘t wear today‘s fashion well. (I can only hope they come back into style someday.) But that wasn‘t my real regret about the procedure. I‘ve said before and I‘ll say again that if I‘d known when I was twenty-one that implants could impair my ability to produce enough milk for my babies, I wouldn‘t have gotten them. That leaves Dean as the only supporter with no regrets. Dean loves them. And Liam is his Daddy‘s little boy.

When Liam reached for the goods, Dean would say, ―That‘s my boy! You like Mommy‘s boobies just like Daddy.

It was all very cute and innocent—until the Public Booby Incident. I brought Liam to the playground one day and was sitting around the other moms and nannies while the kids played. Then Liam started saying, ―Boobies! Boobies! and trying to lift my shirt. I turned red and struggled to keep my shirt down, ―Liam, not now! Poor kid, he was just trying to play the game that Dean and I love and encourage at home, and now Mama was withholding. Liam started getting really frustrated, trying to lift my shirt and chanting, ―Boobies, boobies! more and more emphatically. He was on the verge of a full-blown tantrum. I stood up (so as to be out of reach) and redirected his attention to the slide. But as I looked around, it seemed that everyone at the playground was trying really hard to
not
look at me, and they were all a little farther away from me than they‘d been before the Incident. I guess some things that are funny at home aren‘t acceptable out in the real world. Is it too early for him to learn that lesson? Because I have to admit, I still think it‘s funny.