A Little Thing Called Life

by Linda Thompson

  Go on and cry

  Here’s my shoulder

  Why don’t you try

  To imagine that I’d even care

  Go on and cry

  On my cold shoulder

  You left me so sad

  And you hurt me so bad

  It’s your turn to

  Cry cry cry

  Sometimes love is overrated

  It can be so hard to find a cure

  And when a heartbreak is understated

  It comes back around, I’m sure

  Oh, oh, oh

  Go on and cry

  On my shoulder

  Why don’t you try

  To imagine that I’d even care

  Go on and cry

  On my cold shoulder

  You left me so sad

  And you hurt me so bad

  It’s your turn to

  Cry cry cry

  Over me

  LYRIC: LINDA THOMPSON

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Princes of Malibu

  While it was clear to both of us that our marriage was unraveling, neither of us were at a point where we were fully prepared, or even able to admit it. Of all things, it took a reality television show to convince us that, once and for all, we were truly done.

  It all began when Brandon and Brody made the decision to return home from college. They had both been studying at the University of Colorado at Boulder, with Brandon initially deciding to study music there. A year and a half later, Brody followed in his footsteps, as he often did.

  Although I missed them deeply, as other “empty-nesters” can relate, I was elated to see them setting off on their own path and relieved that they had each other. Brody always was that little brother who shadowed his big brother in actions both significant and minor. Thank God that Brandon is such an exemplary human being and has almost always made wise decisions, because he’s played such an important role in Brody’s life and growth.

  “You know who my dad was?” Brody often says, pointing to Brandon. “He was. Brandon taught me how to throw a baseball, ride a two-wheeled bike, gave me advice, and he really raised me like he was my father.”

  They had always been best friends as well as brothers, and it comforted me to know they had each other at Boulder for support. My own comfort was found in visiting their closets and gazing at their clothes, sniffing their pillows, and sending them care packages. Typical mother.

  But then, after he’d finished two years of school, Brandon called to tell me that he’d made an important decision about his future: He was moving back home. He knew that music was what he wanted to do, but the program at Colorado was limited to classical music and his interests were broader. Brandon was never one to make a spontaneous, knee-jerk move. He was always thoughtful and deliberate, so I trusted his judgment in all matters and agreed with his choice. Once Brody heard about his brother’s choice, though, he decided he was coming home, too.

  And so just like that, they both moved home. Brandon worked diligently on his music. Meanwhile, Brody began carving his creative path toward where he was meant to be in the world as well. Brody and his friend Spencer Pratt decided to create their own reality show and began brainstorming ideas and preparing to pitch them. Laguna Beach had been a big hit for MTV, and Brody and Spencer were looking to carve out something similar but about their lives. They were hanging around Villa Casablanca one day when Spencer looked around and had a breakthrough.

  “What about you guys?” Spencer said. “This is a show right here. You guys are like the princes of Malibu. It’s like Brandon and Brody kind of rule Malibu. Everybody loves you guys. You’re living the life here at Villa Casablanca.”

  Brody quickly warmed to the concept, but then he took it one step further.

  “Well, Mom, you and David have to be a part of the show,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  Having my life on TV didn’t appeal to me in the first place. And with my marriage under serious strain, I didn’t relish the idea of having cameras around all the time.

  “Yes, it should be about the family,” Brody said.

  Brody, Spencer, and Brandon moved forward and created a show called The Princes of Malibu. ABC, NBC, and Fox all bid on the show, and so the boys essentially had succeeded with all three networks. They went with Fox in what was a multimillion-dollar deal for them.

  I was incredibly proud of the boys’ accomplishment and the leadership role Brody had taken in making it happen. But, by this point, the show was the bane of my existence because of my increasingly despairing perspective on my marriage.

  “Mom, you have to be part of this show,” Brody kept telling me. “It’s about living at Villa Casablanca.”

  “No, Brody, I don’t want to be a part of it.”

  “Mom, you have to,” he said. “It’s part of the deal.”

  I was never 100 percent on board. But I wanted to agree for Brody and Brandon and Spencer, because I knew it was a huge opportunity for them, being the creators and producers of the show. As any parent understands, you do what you have to for your kids, even when it’s outside your comfort zone. Of course, then the situation worsened, when not long after they’d created and sold the show, I learned of David’s affair.

  “Brody, I can’t do this,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “Mom, you have to.”

  “Well, I can’t go on camera and pretend everything is okay when it’s not. I’m having a really hard time dealing with this.”

  “You’re an actress, so act. Please, Mom, you’ve got to do this for me,” Brody said. “It’s my start.”

  I’d never been able to say no to that face, and I wasn’t about to begin now. Of course, I sucked it up and acted like the happy wife, but it was all for the camera.

  I might have kept up appearances, but the relationship was obviously crumbling. I’d learned how to walk on eggshells at a very early age. I’d done it very well for my most of my adult life, in my relationship with Elvis, and then around the secret of Bruce’s true identity, and in my relationship with David. And by this point, my feet were tired of eggshells.

  More than the changes David and I were experiencing, the real change was going on inside me. I’d been dealing with David’s whims for almost twenty years, but despite all of it, I’d always stayed true to myself and to my optimistic outlook. Now, though, I’d finally reached a breaking point. I felt myself becoming a person I didn’t like being. I was sad, stressed, distracted, hurt, and withdrawn from the life I had always loved. Being with David had finally taken its toll—I might not have crumbled but I was no longer the person that I wanted to be. I needed to get back to being me.

  As I went through the list of reasons I’d found over the years to stay with him—our mutual love, his being a father to the boys, our shared musical careers, our invigorating social life—none of them, alone or together, could overcome the way I felt now. I’d been internally suffering for too long. Something had to change.

  And then there was the straw that broke the camel’s back—David got involved in the production of Princes of Malibu, creating yet another fissure. From its inception, the show was supposed to be about Brandon, Brody, and Spencer, and their vitality and adventurousness, with abundant footage of Brandon playing his music, Brody drumming in his band, and the three of them surfing and doing all the things that young, good-looking kids in Malibu do. According to their vision, it would have been somewhat analogous to Laguna Beach, only the Malibu Beach Life. Very youthful, funny, sweet, and authentic.

  That is, until David talked them into bringing in an old friend of his from Canada, who worked as a showrunner for a production company, and the boys let him be the producer and showrunner. I thought the guy had stardust in his eyes when it came to David, and would have done anything David bid him to do. They got together and came up with the idea that the show would center around David. And how Brandon, Brody, and Spencer were spoiled brats who abused him and squandered his hard-earned money while they did n
othing more than play around, have wild parties, and just generally exploit David’s generosity and good nature. This spin was offensive to me, and not only because those were my sons I had so carefully raised to be the opposite of how they were depicted; more important, it was a completely manufactured premise. I didn’t want my sons portrayed in such an unflattering light. They didn’t deserve to be the brunt of David’s dissatisfaction.

  David even admitted in his book, Hitman, that he turned the show into his own catharsis of sorts, a vehicle for his bitterness at having been put in a situation where he was a stepfather and had felt taken advantage of for many years. His decades of bitterness toward Bruce for his absenteeism, and how David had been forced to raise Brandon and Brody, and be financially responsible, finally found an outlet on the show.

  It was too painful for me to watch my kids depicted as entitled terrors, with David as the victim of their excesses. That’s not at all how our lives had really played out. Rather, the actual circumstances behind the TV reality found the boys being mature and thoughtful while David was the one who acted out.

  The situation became too uncomfortable to bear, especially when coupled with David’s absences and the multiple affairs I now suspected. On top of that, David began accusing me of having affairs, even claiming to know details of the who, when, and where. Of course, this was as far from the truth as it was possible for David to be, and I defended my innocence vehemently. But David would not be convinced. The therapist we were seeing in the wake of his affair explained that, because David had been caught behaving badly, he was projecting his guilt onto me. This explanation made sense to me, but it didn’t make it any easier for me to live with a jealous, accusatory husband.

  I finally felt so driven to redeem my reputation in David’s eyes that I made a bold decision. Of my own volition, I set up a lie detector test. I drove downtown to the building alone on the appointed day, unable to believe this surreal existence was my life.

  To feel criminalized like that, having to face a blank wall, hooked up to this machine I’d only seen in movies, with my heart racing, was the ultimate testament to how far we had strayed from what I believed a marriage could and should be.

  What if I fail this because I’m nervous? I worried as the administrator asked me a series of questions to prove that I’d never cheated on David.

  Of course, I passed with flying colors. I took the papers saying I’d never been unfaithful back to David, but I didn’t really feel any lighter inside. He couldn’t deny the facts when they were right in front of him. But I was overwhelmed with sadness that this was where we’d ended up.

  No matter how loving and devoted I was—now reduced to taking a lie detector test to try to make him feel better—I could never do enough to show him that I loved him. And I truly did love David very devotedly.

  At least I now felt able to walk away clean and have it on record that I was, even with all my faults, at the very least true to him. That meant a great deal to me. I was left feeling like David never really knew me, or the content of my character. He never saw or understood me for who I really was—someone who would have always been there for him, who was faithful to him and our marriage—a woman who loved him with her whole heart. Maybe because of how we got together, or because he’d had affairs, he couldn’t see the loyal, trustworthy person I honestly was. And after nineteen years, I was done trying to prove myself.

  Finally, we finished shooting the show, and we had about a month until it debuted on Fox in July. My goal was to keep the peace until the show aired, so the boys could have their moment, and then I’d assess where David and I were at in our marriage. My thought was that I’d try to stay at Villa Casablanca until the show aired, and if things hadn’t improved considerably in our marriage, then David and I could separate.

  Life became strangely normal for a time, and David and I were actually getting along well. I think we were both exhausted from our efforts to continue on in our marriage and as I would later find out, during this time David was also distracted by another relationship with a woman in Las Vegas. Our fourteenth wedding anniversary was on June 22, and we decided to try to have a nice, romantic evening together, in spite of all we’d been through. We got a suite at the Peninsula Beverly Hills. We enjoyed the spa and got massages together. We were getting along well, and there was still enough love and such a long history between us that it even felt romantic.

  Later, we were having dinner at Koi restaurant and a mutual friend joined us at our table.

  “I’ve got your dinner,” he said. “Happy anniversary.”

  “Oh, thanks,” we said.

  We started chatting a bit about one of David’s coworkers, a man who had recently charged fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of calls on our phone. Now, that’s a really big phone bill. Upon learning this, I had intuited the story immediately, telling David his friend was having an affair with a woman in another country and had used our phone to communicate with her so his wife wouldn’t know.

  “No, no, it’s not that,” David had said. “Those are business calls.”

  “This is not business,” I said. “Fifteen thousand dollars in charges, with calls at three in the morning, four in the morning? You are supposed to be reestablishing trust with me after your affair. We are supposed to be communicating honestly with each other, and I have no interest in being complicit in his deceit. If you are helping to facilitate your friend’s affair, that’s not doing anything to reestablish trust with me.”

  “No, no, it’s just business,” David kept insisting.

  It was clear he wasn’t going to tell me the truth.

  Now, while we were at Koi celebrating our anniversary, our friend buying us dinner, who happened to know the man who’d made expensive calls, got sort of chatty. He asked us what the man was going to do about his girlfriend.

  David turned white, knowing his attempt to hide the affair of his coworker was being outed right then and there, despite the lies David had told trying to cover for him.

  Our friend looked from David to me.

  “You know the guy’s got a girlfriend, right?” he said to me.

  “Yeah, I did know that when I saw our fifteen-thousand-dollar phone bill,” I said. “But David’s been trying to deny it.”

  David stood up from the table right then and there.

  “I’m never going to hear the end of this now,” he said. And the truth is, he probably wouldn’t have.

  In any case, neither of us ever found out what would have happened next if we’d tried to stay together. He literally left our table, got a taxi back to Villa Casablanca, and moved into one of the guesthouses. And that was basically the end of our marriage. He knew it was over because he had been lying to me, even if it had been on someone else’s behalf.

  I have to say, I was devastated. We had a long, tumultuous, but deeply passionate, loving relationship for nearly two decades. It was not easy to walk away from someone I still loved afer all we’d been through. But it was the right move.

  The Princes of Malibu aired on July 10, 2005. On Monday morning, July 11, I filed for a divorce. It took two years for us to complete the divorce proceedings, with David keeping his separate musical compositions, and me keeping mine. We divided our community property equally, and I once again did not ask for alimony. We were separated from that night of our fourteenth wedding anniversary on.

  Eventually I moved back into the Knest, glad I had never succumbed to David’s vehement wishes that I sell it when we moved into Villa Casablanca. All of the kids who grew up playing in this house, from my nieces, to my kids, to Casey and Burt, have expressed pleasure at being able to experience a sense of homecoming when they visit me there. For example, Casey brings her little girls over sometimes and points out all of the places she remembers fondly from her own girlhood.

  “This is the pool we all played in when we were little,” she’ll tell them.

  It really is special to have that continuity between generations, and especially for
the boys, who have so many formative memories at the house.

  It was a big adjustment to be alone again after nineteen years with David, but I felt no other recourse than to meet the challenge. And besides, I wasn’t alone. When I walked around the grounds where I had raised my boys during most of their childhoods, I was awash in wonderful memories of all of the family parties, and holidays, and happy afternoons we’d experienced there. When I looked at the majestic avocado tree I’d planted from a single avocado pit when Brandon was just a newborn baby, I was reminded of how my boys had grown up to be strong, noble young men as well. It was very comforting for me to be surrounded by such a verdant sanctuary as I healed. And I had my many caring friends, and my sons, to comfort me and to keep me company. I had also taken on the responsibility, and the privilege, I might add, of caring for my senescent father, who was living with me full-time and required 24/7 care.

  When I told Brody that I’d split up with David, he gave me a knowing look.

  “Mom, you’re going to be very needy now, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Yeah, I probably will be for a little while,” I said, smiling. “Just a heads-up.”

  Both boys were very attentive, looking after me in their own, unique manner. Brandon, being our family’s resident Gandhi, spent his time playing music and meditating at the Self-Realization Fellowship, so we had meals together and walked on the beach. Meanwhile, Brody was a lot more social than Brandon, so he began inviting me out.

  One night, Brody and Spencer Pratt took me to the Spider Room, above the Avalon bar. Paris Hilton was there, and we stood on a booth together, dancing.

  Who am I? What am I doing here? I wondered while maintaining a wide smile.

  Brody came by and looked up at us, giving me an encouraging grin.

  “Mom, go dance with Spencer and break out some of those eighties moves,” he said.

  Okay, I’m in the wrong place here, I thought with a laugh, taking my reality check when it came for me.

  That fall, in 2005, there was going to be a big Halloween party at the Playboy Mansion. So Brody invited me to go to along with them.