There Goes My Social Life (17 page)

It was.

The movie took the box office by storm and became a cultural milestone.

With the success of the movie, I was made into a Barbie. Yes, you read that correctly: I am a Barbie doll. At the time, I didn't buy one, an oversight I regretted twelve years later, when I had my daughter Lola. Thank God for eBay!

I loved it because Dionne, Cher, and Tai were not brats, we just had very strong opinions. We weren't “mean girls” (like the protagonists in the later Lindsay Lohan movie), we just knew what we wanted and knew how things should be. We had confidence in our taste and values: we didn't smoke pot, didn't hang out with the druggies (even though we were friendly toward them), and we didn't have sex. Now, when I see my daughter Lola taking a
Clueless
nightgown to every sleepover, I smile.

This movie changed my life and gave me many opportunities. I have to thank Amy Heckerling once again. No movie got it so right before
Clueless
, and no movie has gotten it quite as right since.

ELEVEN

GOD'S WAY

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments, love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come, Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom: If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

—William Shakespeare

W
ith the success of
Clueless
, we had the opportunity to film a television series spin off. (The only two cast members from the movie who didn't sign up with the show were Alicia and Brittany. Alicia went to the Amazon River with Woody Harrelson to help save the rain forest. Brittany pursued other movie roles.) I looked forward to reuniting with this fun group of actors. Plus, the regular paycheck wouldn't be bad, either. I was still living with Matthew and his mom. Matthew was still surfing, and he had yet to drop the “aspiring” from his description of “aspiring actor.” In fact, he never worked, so I had to bring in all the income.

On the first day of the series, we were on the Paramount lot shooting an outdoor scene when I noticed a guy who looked a lot like Matt Damon. He was the “Best Boy,” which is someone who sets up the shots and makes sure everything is lit appropriately.

“I want a light here on this,” he said, asking someone to rig a light.

Our eyes met and he just kept staring at me and watching every move I made. Finally Kevin got up his nerve to say something to me. He popped his head into my trailer and said, “Do you want to go see a movie or something?” That's how the flirting commenced.

One day, Matthew brought Austin by to see the set. When Kevin saw that Austin was there, he came to my trailer. “I want to meet your son,” he said, without regard to the fact that Matthew—who was still my fiancé—was there. Kevin and Austin really hit it off. A few days later, we actually went to a movie. I remember
Tin Cup
was playing, but we barely made it through the opening credits. We ended up going to a Holiday Inn, and that was it.

“Will you and Austin move in with me?” he asked, as we lay
there in the hotel room.

The next day at work, we were openly flirting with each other. Everybody knew my situation—that I was the one making the money while engaged to a surfer who lived with his mother. It was no surprise when Kevin and I started dating. Well . . . no one was surprised except Matt. He was devastated. I gave him back his ring, got Austin, and moved into Kevin's two-bedroom apartment. He bought Austin a bunk bed and made a little boy's room for him.

Kevin loved my son so much and was ready for the role of Dad. He proposed right away. Eventually he and I had a big Catholic wedding and bought a house out in Thousand Oaks so we could be near his mom. I loved his family, and his family loved me. I made a lot of money for three years. The show took twelve- to fifteen-hour days, five days a week to shoot. His mom kept Austin while Kevin and I worked. We got to see each other all day every day. It was awesome! But I was driving from Thousand Oaks to Paramount Studios, which is like an hour and a half drive every day back and forth. I'd have to be at work by 6:00 in the morning, I wouldn't get off until 7:00 or 8:00, and I wouldn't get home until 10:00 at night. So I barely got to see Austin. I think that put a lot of stress on our marriage.

Then when
Clueless
the series stopped, so did our income. Kevin wasn't working, and we were suddenly in over our heads. And we were living in the middle of nowhere. Though our home was in a lovely neighborhood, it was about thirty-five miles from downtown Los Angeles. I'm a city girl, so I was bored to tears. I just couldn't do it anymore.

“Maybe that's the problem,” he offered. “Let's move to the Hollywood Hills and be right in the middle of everything!” And so we sold our house and rented a nice home in the hills. We tried to make it work, but a change of location wasn't enough to save us.

When I began packing Austin's clothes, Kevin simply wouldn't accept what I was saying. We had been together five years, though the marriage had lasted just a year. In spite of his protests, we remained friends, but the divorce was pretty devastating to both of us. Of all my broken relationships, this is the one that still burns. He was a great guy and a great husband. He loved Austin. In fact, Austin still considers Kevin his father. I still call him if anything happens, and he's immediately there for me.

My main problem with Kevin wasn't a problem with Kevin after all. It was a problem with me. I had never seen what “domesticity” looked like. When you grow up in front of a television in the South Bronx, raised by drugs addicts, it's honestly hard to know how to be a good wife. When I'm out in public and see families hanging out with each other, I always marvel at their casual affection and interactions. I just don't know what it's like. The closest thing to a functioning family I had was my grandparents' life-long marriage . . . which itself was rife with affairs. Infidelity and broken families perpetuate themselves. That's the thing.

I really wish that marriage could've worked. At the time, I didn't understand what love was. I still don't understand.

Austin and I moved to Sunset Plaza. I used the money I'd made on the show and lived a little bit of a freewheeling “single life.” Well, as freewheeling as you can be with a child. I met a woman named Linda who introduced me to her set of British pals, and suddenly I had a group of friends with incredibly cool accents. One night we were at a restaurant called Tangier when a man I had never seen walked in.

“This is George, everyone,” said our friend Dorian. “He's staying with me on his way to Hong Kong.”

“I'm on a layover,” he said to me, seeming to think that he needed to explain his presence in our otherwise tight group. George carried himself like an upper class Englishman. Over the course of dinner, I discovered that he had gone to Eton College, Britain's most famous boarding school, in the shadow of Windsor Castle. There young men network with the sons of their fathers' friends, learn to use the proper grammar, charm the right ladies, and prepare themselves for a possible life on Downing Street. The school has educated nineteen prime ministers—including David Cameron—and George confided that he was a third-generation Etonian.

“So why aren't you prime minister yet?” I asked.

“Someone has to do sports marketing,” he laughed. That's exactly what he did, for big world events like the World Cup, cricket, rugby, and soccer. He was traveling to Hong Kong for an event the very next day.

We stayed together all night and bonded immediately. After our night together, we dreamed about one day having a baby. I have no idea why we started down that line of thought, other than just the headiness and novelty of a new relationship.

“If we had a little girl,” I said aloud, “what would we name her?”

“Lola.”

That's how I met my second husband, and that's how we chose the name of our—eventual—daughter.

A lot can happen in a layover.

He left on Sunday to go to Hong Kong, and three days later my phone rang. “Will you come meet me?”

“Where are you?”

“I can't stop thinking of you.”

So I went to Hong Kong for a memorable few days.

“That's it,” he said. “It's you and me. You're my girlfriend.”

One night, about three months later, we were making love. Just at the climax, he put a ring on my finger.

And it was a big one.

The ring, that is.

I looked at the four carats on my hand and smiled. “I do.”

Three months later, I drove him to the airport to take him to a business trip. We couldn't keep our hands off of each other. Finally, I pulled over at the Airport Hilton near LAX and we got a room, which we used for about an hour. Soon, I found out I was pregnant . . . a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

“We have to delay the wedding,” I said. “I'm not walking down the aisle pregnant.”

George belonged to the Church of England, and he had told me of a special place in Britain where he wanted to get married. “We can just delay it,” I said.

Over the next nine months, we had a lot of work to do. We decided to set up house in Los Angeles. We bought all our furniture in South Africa and had it shipped home. When it arrived, I had a month to go before my due date.

We were unloading the beautiful furniture, putting it in the house, and dreaming of what our new home would look like.

“Uh-oh,” I said, looking down at my leg.

“Did your water just break?”

“No, I'm just leaking fluid,” I said. I dismissed it, because it was little bits of fluid that came throughout the day. It was easy to ignore with all of the unpacking and decorating.

About 9:30 at night, I finally called my doctor. “I've been leaking fluid all day.”

“What do you mean, ‘all day'?” he said, the sound of sleep thick in his voice. “Why didn't you call me earlier? Get to the hospital right now.”

“You can't hold onto this baby,” my doctor said after checking me. “If we don't induce you, you'll have to be on bed rest.”

He gave me medicine to sleep, and we selected a time for her birth: 5:25 p.m., June 21—the same birthday as Prince William. George, my mother, my best friend Cynthia, and Austin were there in the room when little Lola made her debut. George and Austin cut her umbilical cord together. I could barely contain myself. I finally felt that my family was complete.

We were so happy . . . for about two years. Then we began fighting more and more. Regardless, we thought we could make our family work, so we decided to go ahead and marry. The idea held less magic than it once had for me. Our relationship seemed to have already run its course. Though I loved George—and still do—it simply didn't seem to be working between us. But family was so important, we wanted to make it work. For our daughter's sake.

“What should we do to get married?” he asked as we sat around the house one night. Lola was already asleep in her crib, and we realized that we'd neglected to deal with this detail of life. The church wedding didn't seem like a good idea.

“Let's go to Vegas,” he said, which sounded fun at the time. How many people have gotten hitched there, taken by a bit of spontaneity and romance? Turns out, it wasn't as ideal as I'd hoped. We went to one of those ugly little chapels, he walked ten feet in front of me the whole time, and we got back on the plane as man and wife. It was a way to tie the knot without very much fuss, without very much fanfare.

If you're trying to have a wedding with as little effort as possible, that's probably a sign that it shouldn't happen. When Lola was barely able to communicate ideas, she stood between us during one particularly cruel fight. “Don't talk to my mommy that way,” she said to her father. We were divorced three years later.

After the divorce, I moved with Austin and Lola into a teeny eight-hundred-square-feet apartment. I shared a bedroom with Lola, who still slept in a crib even though she was three. Austin's room was right next door. By this time, he was a teenager! Though cramped, it worked for us. I needed to get away. From men. From expectations. From everything.

I guess I should go ahead and tell you that precisely zero of my marriages worked out. And I wasn't done yet.

After my divorce from George, I made a proclamation. “I don't want a man, I'm never gonna see a man, I don't want to think about a man,” I told my manager over the phone. “I'm focusing on my career.”

Within eight months, I was engaged to an Italian actor named Francesco, who'd had roles in some major films. I found him irresistible and charming—until he wasn't. After two years of his unemployment, the bloom came off this rose as well.

“Okay, this is not working for me,” I said. “I can't do this. You have to get a real job, the kind that pays money.” Instead of pursuing acting, he got a real estate license and began establishing a business there in Los Angeles. He tried, but we'd gotten down to our last dime.

“I need $3,000,” I said into the phone to my business manager. I was at Saks and had found a perfect dress.

“Um, Stacey, I'm not sure how to tell you this, but . . .” My business manager sighed. I could tell this was hard on him, but I was about to have a hard time if I didn't get to buy this dress. “You just don't have it.”

“I have it, Don,” I insisted. “I've worked my ass off, I know I've got the money.” It felt like every time I called my business manager I was met with hesitation and mumbled apologies. But that day it was different.

“Stacey, this is Gina,” said an unfamiliar voice on the line. She spoke with confidence and authority, as if she had earned the money and had full rights over the way it was divvied up. “I can't give you $3,000, but I can give you $1,500.”