Raising a family in Southern California isn’t all that bad. Sure, I have to deflect a lot of the self-entitlement and self-involvement that children often develop when living so close to the world’s most narcissistic city, but it does offer some pretty amazing upsides for raising children, too.
There aren’t many other places in the world where my boys can play baseball outside year-round or go to a different local theme park every weekend of the month. If they want to, Mason and Jake can go skiing in the morning and have a beach bonfire at night. They live active lifestyles and have extremely healthy diets for little boys (except for Mommy’s occasional Del Taco run, my fast-food kryptonite). It’s hard to ever be too depressed when it’s warm and sunny pretty much every day of the year.
Sure, we don’t have the change of seasons all the East Coasters commonly complain about, but Big Bear is only a few hours away, and there’s this nice house off Mulhol-land that churns out fake snow during the holidays.
Speaking of Santa Claus, he’s a particularly divisive character in the Beverly Hills area. (Perhaps it’s his weight? Or maybe it’s because no one in LA has worn a fur-trimmed jacket since the eighties?) You’d be better off talking about Scientology.
My ex-husband and I chose to raise our children Christian, but with so many Jewish friends in the area we always joked that our children were “Cubish.” We celebrated Hanukkah with our Jewish friends and Christmas with our families. For us, it worked perfectly. I think the Jews figured out a way better system than us Christians. Christmas morning in our house was always absolute chaos: wrapping paper flying in every direction, dozens of toys being opened and discarded within moments, and more triple-A batteries than could ever be appropriate. Jewish people, on the other hand, give their children one present per day. That way, kids can actually pause for a minute and enjoy the gift, before eventually discarding it and moving on to the next. When three-quarters of your children’s classmates are Jewish, try explaining why Santa Claus doesn’t go to their houses. Or better yet, why Jewish parents are telling their children that Santa isn’t real. If you’re a parent and you know your child’s classmate believes in Santa, why would you knowingly burst his bubble? It’s shocking how many parents try to do this, so in typical grade-school form, I decided to play dirty. “Well, Mason, Santa Claus doesn’t go to every little boy’s and little girl’s house. If you don’t believe in him and tell other kids not to believe in him, he flies right by,” I would say. “When you go back to school after Christmas, ask your friend if Santa came to his house . . . because I’ll bet he didn’t.”
brandi’s babble
Your kids only have one “Mommy.” (Bonus ones need not apply.)
CHAPTER NINE
His Future Ex
I often get the question “How do you deal with his new wife?” My answer is always the same: “How can I not?” I don’t have a choice.
I would love to pretend that she doesn’t exist. I’ve never been the biggest country-music fan, so it’s not like I ever stumble across her songs on the radio. (I pretty much listen to all gangsta rap, all the time—its grittiness speaks to my roots. #GhettoBrandi) I would love to believe that when my children aren’t sleeping under my roof that they are at their best friend’s house or a fully vetted and safe spa retreat for children in the Valley. Maybe it’s silly, but I’d just rather not dwell on the thought that my kids are sharing a home half the time with my ex-husband and his new wife.
I would love to believe that my ex-husband is miserable, overweight, bald, and alone. But that’s not reality—at least not totally.
The short answer is, I deal with her for my kids. Through all of this, I wanted to spare them as much heartbreak and pain as I possibly could. She’s good to them and they love her, so I try to be as civil as I possibly can. Sure, part of me gets angry thinking about her tucking my babies into bed at night in her home, when she and Eddie are the reason they no longer get to live with their mommy and daddy, but I have to learn to let that go. I’m not saying it will happen overnight, but in a blended family where cheating was involved, you will eventually need to let it go. I’m still working on the “forgive and forget” part, but its gets easier with time. To say it’s been an uphill battle would be the understatement of the decade!
I do believe, though, that Eddie is slightly miserable in his new marriage (and possibly taking Propecia again. I mean, his hair seems to be doing quite well). I know it sounds like I’m just the bitter ex-wife hoping and praying that my ex-husband—who destroyed my heart and shattered my world—is unhappy with the woman he left me for. And now that I think about it, sure, that sounds about right. But I’m not just shooting from the hip; I’m looking at the hard facts. This man, who clearly has a weakness for the ladies, jumped from one “committed” (we’ll use that term loosely) relationship to another. #Rebound. Marriage clearly doesn’t mean a whole lot to this guy, and I think given his track record, wife number two has got to be all over him like white on rice. Knowing how their relationship developed, wouldn’t she question every call he went to take privately or who was on the receiving end of his text messages?
Diving headfirst into a new marriage may not have been the brightest move. Sure, Eddie prefers to be in relationships, because he needs to feel that he’s being taken care of. However, I’m pretty confident that my ex-husband would really have enjoyed taking some time to run around town banging twenty-year-olds left and right without having to look over his shoulder for the first time in almost a decade and a half. Additionally, I’m not sure he knew entirely what he was getting himself into with LeAnn. Was he prepared to take the backseat to her life and career? Eddie relished the spotlight while he had it. (Why else do you think he would agree to all those posed paparazzi shots?) I wonder if he’ll be able to accept that it’s his new wife who will always be the bigger draw.
I was forced to deal with their relationship way before I was ready. Between the countless celebrity-gossip websites and weekly magazines, it’s sort of impossible to avoid their never-ending barrage of staged paparazzi shots. (My personal favorites are the perfectly posed yet impossibly candid photos of the happy couple cruising on a boat in Mexico, gazing off into the distance.) Photographers come with the territory when you’re working in the entertainment industry—even I have learned to accept it and utilize it when necessary—and being rude to them won’t get you anywhere. (No one wants to end up on the cover of Star without makeup.) So, while I understand the need to throw them a bone every once in a while, it seems slightly pathetic to keep pushing your stale love story down people’s throats over and over.
The pictures can be hard to see—especially the shots of her with my children. Seeing my ex-husband’s new wife playing bonus mom to my babies, the boys I gave birth to, was an absolute gut punch. Even worse was seeing her inappropriately hanging all over Eddie, wearing virtually nothing, while my children were nearby watching. I wanted to hurt this woman.
When she sent me those inappropriate text messages about her desire to “mother” my kids, I responded as most levelheaded mothers would: “Listen, bitch, you barely have my husband. I will kill you before you get your hands on my children.” That is quite possibly the kindest thing I could have said to her, given the situation. I’m pretty sure she disagreed.
Occasionally we are forced to interact, but I try to avoid making any sort of eye contact with her. What can I say? I don’t have a ton of respect for the woman, and I’m not that good at faking “nice.” So on the rare occasion that she does address me and I am required to look at her, I make it as short and sweet as possible. If my children are around, I am always polite and try to excuse myself from the situation as quickly as possible. In an ideal world, I think LeAnn feels that maybe someday she and I could be friends. Well, in an ideal world she would have kept her legs shut and refrained from fucking my husband (and he would have kept his dick in his pants). While I’ve been grateful for the overwhelming fan support I’ve received over the past few years,
I’ve also had a good number of people criticize me for “blaming” the affair on LeAnn, because my beef should be with my husband. Don’t worry, it is. #CheatersSuck. LeAnn didn’t know me when they started messing around, so she didn’t owe me anything (except maybe common decency). He was the one with a wife and two kids back at home. That doesn’t mean I don’t hold her partially accountable, though. My major issue with her was how she handled everything after the story appeared. She refused to take any ownership over her actions—even toward her own husband—and wouldn’t accept any blame. Guess what? If you’re going to play in the mud, you’re going to get fucking dirty. #ChildStarSyndrome. Then our contentious relationship sort of escalated from there.
She has nice skin. That’s the one compliment I can offer her—if forced. I’m assuming she spends a lot of time getting facials, but the amount of foundation she plasters on her face is obscene. She once arrived at a school performance with a full face of thick, caked-on makeup, a whole strip of false eyelashes, a perfect blowout, and five-inch heels. Anyone who is insecure enough to rock that look at eight in the morning for a grammar-school Thanksgiving play has a boatload of issues. Look, I’m equally guilty of breaking out the big guns, but there is a time and a place for everything—and my son’s school event is not one of them. #JustSayin.
I was never threatened by her. It gave me a strange sense of relief that Eddie hadn’t shacked up with some Victoria’s Secret model (although that might have required him to actually work for a living). Clearly, though, she was threatened by me. Not so much because of how I looked or acted, but because of my role in Eddie’s life and the boys’ lives. Why else would my ex-husband be banned from talking to me? I’m relegated to coparenting with him via his assistant? He never responds to e-mail, and my number is still blocked from calling his cell phone. How were we supposed to take care of our two children, if she erected this huge wall between us? We were clearly never reconciling, so I didn’t understand the point (and still don’t). All three of us needed to check our egos at the door if we were going to be good guardians to these two little boys.
About a year after Eddie and I separated, I decided that the three of us needed to find a way to coexist, and I thought that perhaps blended-family therapy would help. It’s a total LA cliché, isn’t it? Have you ever heard of a family in Omaha going to “blended-family therapy”? For months, the three of us were jumping down each other’s throats and triangulating the children. Mason’s nightly phone calls to Dad became less like conversations and more like interrogations. So, therapy seemed the only reasonable—albeit ridiculous—solution to the problem.
“How about therapy?” I finally asked Eddie.
He took a minute to chew it over before responding, “Let me talk to LeAnn.”
Eddie always hid behind a skirt, but I was surprised he didn’t dismiss it completely (especially after seeing how ineffective our couples counseling proved). He is a traditional Latino man, and in many cultures therapy is considered a sign of weakness, so I wasn’t sure if they would go with it.
A few days later, he sent me an e-mail saying that both he and LeAnn would be open to seeing a family therapist, if they chose the doctor.
“Ugh,” I thought. Of course it had to be on their terms. I couldn’t care less which doctor we went to, but I had to make a little bit of a fuss about it before I eventually conceded. Eddie told me that because I’m oh-so-willing to discuss personal matters with the press, he and LeAnn would need me to sign a confidentiality agreement before they would sit down in a room with me.
It took all my strength not to respond, “Right, because you both are soooo fucking famous that every newspaper in the world would be clawing for the story of what Eddie and LeAnn revealed during coparenting therapy.” Are you fucking kidding me? It was laughable. I decided that at the end of the day, this was about being better people to one another so we could be better parents, so I agreed to sign the NDA.
It took a few weeks to get it lined up, but when I arrived at the doctor’s office only a few minutes before our session, the lovebirds hadn’t yet decided to grace the office with their presence. I had made it a point not to dress up for the appointment; I didn’t want either of them to think I had any interest in trying to impress anyone. I came straight from my Pilates class in head-to-toe workout gear and a pair of flip-flops. Shortly after Eddie opened the door, his perfectly coiffed fiancée wobbled in on sky-high heels and with a full set of eyelashes. I was starting to get the idea that this was her typical morning uniform. I suppose it was almost lunchtime. Hindsight being twenty-twenty, I should have brought a glass of chardonnay.
Watching my ex-husband standing in front of me, comforting another woman and holding her hand, was probably one of the most surreal moments of my life. It was a strange sensation, because while it was extremely odd, I didn’t feel jealous. I was finally numb to their entire existence. I simply didn’t care. Since I signed away my right to speak, I can’t reveal what was discussed when we finally stepped into the therapist’s office, but I can share that it was an incredibly gratifying and vindicating experience . . . for me.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: child stars are a particular breed of hideous. Being surrounded by yes-men and yes-women all of your teenage and adult life will give people an altered sense of reality. They have this extreme sense of entitlement that they can have anything they want . . . including other people’s husbands. When LeAnn set her sights on Eddie, she was relentless about getting him, and the damage her decision would cause never seemed to register.
Well, guess what? She won. I’ll give her that. But she also won a marriage full of doubt, insecurities, and a perpetual voice in the back of her head saying, “Is he telling the truth?” If I could peer into a crystal ball, I imagine I would see an ever-growing list of canceled tours, concerts, and appearances in her future, for fear of leaving her husband home alone.
For that, I pity her.
As the saying goes, time heals all wounds. I can genuinely and sincerely say that I wish LeAnn nothing but the best, because hopefully once she gets happy with her life, she’ll back the fuck out of mine. For the sake of our children, I hope her marriage to Eddie lasts a lifetime, because the ugliness that comes along with breakups and divorce isn’t something I want my boys exposed to ever again. They care about her, and I don’t want them experiencing any more loss in their lives. I wish that LeAnn would focus her energy back on her career, instead of dieting, suing people, tweeting, and wearing bikinis. After all, she is a talented woman with an amazing voice. Maybe she needs help remembering that sometimes, too. I cross my fingers that Eddie soon finds work as a regular on a television series. Even though I no longer get alimony from my ex-husband (only child support), I know that a working Eddie is a happy Eddie, and a happy Eddie equals a happy home for the boys. I hope that someday soon LeAnn will be blessed with children of her own. I think that her having her own baby might give her a much-needed reality check on what it means to be a mother and, perhaps, a little perspective on what I went through. I’m not meaning that to sound completely bitchy . . . just a little.
Maybe one day, far in the future, LeAnn and I will be able to put our differences behind us and develop some sort of friendship. I have this hysterical fantasy that one day she and I will decide to record a duet about heartbreak. I’m an expert on the subject, and if I pull out that crystal ball again, I have a feeling she may be an expert one day, too. I can’t sing for shit, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be an iTunes sensation! However, I know that after publishing this book, I will most likely get slapped with yet another cease-and-desist letter from a certain country-music singer’s legal team. I believe it will be lucky number three.
For the time being, she is a part of my life. She is my children’s stepmother and someone I’m going to be forced to be around at soccer games, school recitals, and birthday parties. Do I want her to love and care for my children when they’re with her? Of course I do. Do I have to like h
er? Fuck no, but I do have to deal with her.
brandi’s babble
Never underestimate the impact of a properly timed “sloppy seconds.”
CHAPTER TEN
I Will Survive
The Beverly Hills Police Department’s holding cells were shockingly comfortable. I had only ever seen the inside of a jail on episodes of Law & Order, so I was pleasantly surprised by the amenities—which included a selection of the weekly magazines I so frequently appeared in those days. I’m not suggesting anyone try to get locked up; I’m just saying that it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. But it was still pretty horrible. I’m incredibly claustrophobic, and the small cells were giving me a panic attack (and obviously my Xanax was nowhere nearby). I was freaking the fuck out.
I was arrested on October 29, 2010, and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. The officer turned on his sirens behind me after I had already arrived in the driveway of my then-boyfriend’s home in Beverly Hills, just after midnight. After I refused to take a Breathalyzer test (advice from my brother, a Stockton CHP officer), the arresting officer spent about three minutes shining a bright flashlight in my eyes, before asking me to walk a straight line and then touch my finger to my nose. I mean, that’s probably something I couldn’t handle sober. I didn’t feel drunk by any means, but clearly I was tipsy enough to alert this officer. I had consumed a few glasses of wine over three or four hours, sure I was a little buzzed, but at the time, I felt more than capable of driving.
Clearly, he was unsatisfied with my performance (and was sort of a dick in general), so I was booked at 12:45 a.m. We took the short drive over to the Beverly Hills Police Department, where I was half-hoping I would run into Eddie Murphy. As I was sobbing in the station, an overfriendly booking clerk took pity on me and attempted to lighten the mood when taking my photo by saying, “This is your official TMZ mug shot.” She clearly had no idea that this really would be my official TMZ mug shot. She meant no harm, which I was grateful for, but her joke hit a little too close to home, and I started crying even harder—completely ruining any remains of my mascara. I knew it wouldn’t take long for the media to catch wind of my arrest, and it would soon be on every celeb website from here to Timbuktu. Immediately, I thought about my boys: “Oh, no. What have I done?” I started to panic. How was I going to explain this to my children? How about my parents, who’d bent over backward to help me get a fresh start? And I could only imagine the lecture I was going to get from my ex-husband. I spent the next eight hours listening to someone throwing up a few cells down and having sporadic attacks of severe claustrophobia. I killed time by perusing the list of names carved into the wall, searching for anyone recognizable. Alas, I couldn’t find Paris, Nicole, or even Lindsay. I was feeling really alone.
Drinking and Tweeting Page 12