“Oh, do you?” she said.
Then I was annoyed. Come on. Okay, I know you’re busy. But you’re in the public eye. Don’t tell me you don’t follow the tabloids. Don’t tell me you don’t know anything about other celebrities and their kids.
“Yes, my son is almost five. My daughter’s almost four, and I just had a baby.”
She said, “Oh? Congratulations.” Then we stood there. She was just plastic. In a perfectly polite way.
“Well, good to see you,” I said. She went out to her car, and her driver whisked her away.
I was sweating. My pits were drenched. I never sweat. It was that awkward. I thought, I know you’re not a robot because you can’t sing for shit. (Oh my God, I’m a mean person.) As my anxiety faded, I just felt sorry for her. I hadn’t expected her to reminisce, but this was a totally different person from the girl I’d met at Trader Vic’s. I felt sad for her. Those paparazzi photos, the ones where she looks like she’s miserable but putting on a happy face? That’s what she looked like in person. Not long after that encounter, the news would break that she and Tom had split up.
Now it was my turn to meet with Eric Vetro. When I walked in and we met, he said, “Actually, we met once before. I came to your mom’s Christmas party. I was Sean Hayes’s plus-one.” Me, Katie, Eric, Sean, Candy. Such a small world.
His studio walls were covered with records. There were pictures of every celebrity. If they could sing, or be made to sing, then so could I . . . right? The producers had sent a tape with the music I was supposed to sing. Eric played it for me. It was a whole song, start to finish. I was singing solo. And this wasn’t good old “Jingle Bells.” It was Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and the person singing it on the demo was way out of my league.
The voice coach said, “They’re going for a Glee sound with the song.” As if that was at all useful to me. It just made it all the more scary.
“I can’t sing like that,” I told the voice coach. “I can sing cute! But I can’t belt out notes. And I just had a baby! I don’t have the air.” I was going to work this newborn thing for as long as I could. The truth was, whatever it was that one might do to work one’s diaphragm, I hadn’t done it in years. Unless it was covered in the Malibu dance class I did that one time.
“Let’s just try,” he said. “Don’t worry. The worst that happens is that they bring a professional singer in.”
I apologized a million times, and he could see how worried I was.
“Let me get you some Throat Coat tea,” he said. “It helps relax your vocal cords.”
But before he could get the tea, he took a business call. Then he left the room, and when he came back, he didn’t have any tea. I was too shy to mention it, so I just took a sip from my water bottle.
He said, “Let’s practice scales.”
I sang a scale. “That was terrible!” I moaned.
“Stop doubting yourself. Let’s do the song line by line. We’ll ease into it.”
I started the song. It was not going well.
He said, “Take a sip of your Throat Coat tea.”
But I didn’t have the tea. He’d never gotten me any. I smiled and took a sip of my water, hoping he’d forget about it.
“No, try the tea,” he said.
“No, I’m okay,” I said.
He reached over to a table beside me and picked up a Styrofoam cup. “Take a sip,” he said.
He was holding the cup right up to my face. It was almost empty. He was being insistent and I was so mortified that I couldn’t bring myself to say, “This is Katie Holmes’s cold backwash of Throat Coat tea.”
I drank it. As he watched, I downed Katie Holmes’s backwash. It was gross and creepy and definitely unsanitary. Sure, we’d swapped spit years ago with the Scorpion Bowl, but that had germ-killing alcohol! It was disgusting, but in some weird universe, it was better than drinking a stranger’s tea. At least she was an A-lister. Or married to one.
By the end of our session Eric had me record the whole song. I could hear that it was off, but not bad for my first time singing in years. He told me that if we had weeks to work on it, we could probably get it to a place where I was comfortable, but since we only had one session, he was going to recommend that they bring in someone to mix with my voice and enhance it. I was fine with that!
A few days later I went to a recording session. I recorded the song, and then a cute professional singer in her thirties sang along with my recording. I heard her do it. She had a soulful, raspy voice. I have a white-girl cutesy voice. They had her do it again with a more pop-y feel. Of course she could do that—she could do anything. This girl was known for matching different singers’ voices. She’d done Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez. In theory, her voice would blend with mine, enhancing the places I couldn’t hit.
I didn’t hear the song until I was on set and had to mouth it. I was aghast. It was probably 95 percent professional singer and 5 percent me. At best. I could barely recognize myself until it came to the last “All I want for Christmas is you.” The very last word of the song was me. And one “baby” somewhere in there. Ah well, I never said I could sing.
TWO DAYS BEFORE the whole family left for Utah, I got a massage at home in Malibu. I was eight weeks pregnant. My friend Cheyenne, who used to do massages for us (and, let’s not forget, the fabulous Kelly Wearstler), had been on maternity leave for a while, and since Hattie was four months old I’d been working with a male masseuse whom Cheyenne had suggested. When she first recommended Brendan, I asked if he was gay. She said she couldn’t divulge that information, but that the two of us would get along. From that, I was confident that he was straight-friendly. I hadn’t known him long, but I was semicomfortable with him. Still, I didn’t tell him I was pregnant. I wasn’t telling anyone yet, and it was early enough that I could still lie on my stomach and not worry about it.
I lay down on the table on my stomach. Brendan had barely started when I coughed. I felt something wet—had I peed a little? How weird and embarrassing. Maybe this was what happened in a fourth pregnancy. Anyway, Brendan started working on my shoulders, and I felt more wetness. This was getting awkward. I hoped the pee wasn’t visible or anything. Then Brendan paused to get a sip of water and I reached down to the wetness. I looked at my hand and freaked when I realized it was blood. I rolled over and looked down at myself. There was blood everywhere. A lot of blood. My heart dropped. My fingertips went numb. I screamed, “Oh my God! I’m so sorry. I have to get up. I’m pregnant. And I’m bleeding. I think I’m having a miscarriage. I’m so sorry, oh, I don’t know what to do.”
I climbed off the table and headed to the bathroom, yelling for Dean. By the time I cleaned myself up, it seemed that the bleeding had stopped. But I had no idea what it meant. Had I miscarried? I texted Dr. J and sent him a picture of the blood.
He texted me back, “take it easy. if it’s a miscarriage, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. it’ll have to run its course. come in tomorrow, first thing.”
While Brendan packed up, I apologized to him about his sheets.
Brendan, trying to make light of the moment, gasped, “Oh no, my best Martha Stewart sheets!” I laughed. He speculated that he could get some good money for the Tori-tainted sheets on eBay. We decided we would split the profit: his sheets, my blood.
Brendan and I were joking around, but that night I was distraught. What had gone wrong? By the next day, when Dean and I went in to Dr. J for an ultrasound, I was shaking. As Dr. J put the gel on, I braced myself for the worst news.
“What do you see? What do you see?” I said.
“You mean this heartbeat? This perfectly normal heartbeat? Your baby’s fine.”
Dr. J thought the bleeding could have been a cyst that expelled itself, but whatever it was, I had nothing to worry about. These things happened. The baby had grown, it was moving, its heartbeat was normal, we were fine.
We left for Utah the next day.
APPARENT
LY, IN ADDITION to the singing, the Mistle-Tones producers hadn’t noticed that there was no dancing on my résumé. I didn’t even think about the dancing until I got to Utah. In hindsight, there had been some warning. They had asked me to fly to Utah a week early for dance rehearsals. Dance rehearsals? Hadn’t I read the script right? It was about a Christmas singing group. The singing was enough of a challenge, but what kind of dancing would I be doing? Anyway, I couldn’t come early—I was doing pre-prep for Craft Wars, my upcoming reality show. So when I arrived in Utah I was dismayed to see that they had me scheduled for six hours of dance a day. First the singing, now this? Had my agent pitched me as a triple threat? I hadn’t worked out in years. In fact, the only time I’d worked out in the last three years was the Zumba-like class I did with the Malibu moms where the teacher tried to push Pink on me. Plus I was pregnant. I had bled on a massage table. I was terrified of moving.
My first day in Utah I showed up at the six-hour dance rehearsal, where I was introduced to two dance pieces choreographed by Danny Teeson, a big-time choreographer. That was when I found out that everyone else who had been hired to be in my singing group in the movie was a professional dancer. Some may have had a little acting experience, but they didn’t have many lines. The girl who played my best friend was a local hire, an actress from Utah, but even she had a singing and dancing background. I’d never even been asked if I had rhythm!
At the end of that first day I was so exhausted I couldn’t stand. But I went straight from there to a wardrobe fitting. My costumes were all sparkly, skintight gowns. I had to wear two pairs of Spanx. I felt self-conscious and big. I still had a jiggly Hattie belly—I was only three months out—and another pregnancy coming up behind it!
My character, Marci, was fun and bitchy but still a little one-note for my taste. Luckily, the director gave me some freedom to play with the part. Overall, it was such a nice set and such a fun experience. It really made me want to be acting again.
WHEN I WAS making The Mistle-Tones, I fell in love with Salt Lake City. There was beautiful farmland, gorgeous houses. The food was good, the people were nice. They even had vintage shops. I started thinking . . . Maybe we should move to Utah. It was only an hour and a half by plane from L.A. At first, it was just a fantasy, the same basic fantasy I have whenever we travel. But soon the fantasy wove into real life. I couldn’t go back to Malibu. We had to move. Not to Salt Lake City, but to a place that made sense for our growing family. I knew we were in the hole and that if we moved again, we’d have to rent. So at night, after finishing the day’s work on The Mistle-Tones, I took to the web.
Then I found the perfect place. It was a spacious house in a gated community in Westlake Village, about an hour from L.A. I’d always longed for the privacy of a gated community. This one was surrounded by mountains. There was a lake, plenty of bedrooms, hardwood floors, a screening room. I showed it to Dean, and he got excited, but then I told him the price. We couldn’t afford it. It cost twice what our business manager said we could spend. But I wanted to try. It had been on the market for a year. Maybe if we pulled on their heartstrings they’d come down in price. Maybe they wanted a nice family as tenants. I decided not to mention the chickens and goats. And the pig.
MEANWHILE, I NEVER stopped spotting and cramping. Dr. J had to be wrong. I was miscarrying. Or if I hadn’t been before, I was now, after all that dancing. I started convincing myself that I wasn’t pregnant anymore. I was three months pregnant and I hadn’t even popped yet. When I texted Dr. J, he said, “If you’re really concerned, go to local ER and have them examine you.”
There was no way I was going to the local ER. Instead, I spent the month in Utah convinced I had a dead baby inside of me.
I WANTED TO see Dr. J the minute we got back to Los Angeles, but I had to do a session of jewelry hawking for HSN first. (I love my jewelry and I love what I do, but there are only so many ways to say, “Please buy my product,” on TV.) There were several more days of traveling and stewing before I could have an appointment. By the time I got to Dr. J’s office, I was a nervous wreck. As soon as a nurse led me into the examining room, I burst into tears.
“What’s wrong?” the nurse asked.
“I’m so sure I had a miscarriage,” I said. “I’m not even showing.”
She asked for my urine sample and said she’d test my levels right away. Moments later, she came back to my room.
“What does it show?” I asked.
“It’s pretty low,” she said. I began to sob. She hurried out of the room to get the doctor.
When Dr. J came in, he said, “You know, your levels are normal. They drop down at this point in the pregnancy.”
I said, “I had a dream that I came in to see you. You said, ‘It’s gonna be okay, don’t worry.’ You turned to look at the ultrasound monitor, and then looked back at me and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
He said, “Stop writing the movie in your head. Let’s take a look.”
While he started the ultrasound, I was crying hysterically. I couldn’t look at Dr. J. Everything was happening as I’d seen it in my dream. He was consoling me. Dean was standing on the other side. I knew the face Dr. J was going to give me next—it would be a look of the same sympathetic sorrow I had seen in my dream.
Then he turned to me with a big smile. “Healthy baby! I keep telling you.”
EVERYTHING WAS FINE. I went home that night, and the next morning when I woke up, I had a full, round, hard belly. My fear had somehow held my belly back. I know it sounds crazy, but when I showed Dean, he said, “Babe! You have a huge belly!”
At that moment it became real to me. The baby was okay. I was really, truly pregnant.
Now that our fourth child was a certainty, we just had to move. It became an obsession. We went to look at the fantasy house in Westlake Village. We met the owners, who seemed to like us. I had to get the house. I had to win! We confided in them that we were expecting a fourth and how much the house meant to us. They came down a bit, but the rent was still obscene. Nonetheless, we took it. And we still hadn’t sold Malibu.
Martha Moments
Craft Wars was my next project. It had come about after Dean and I had wrapped sTORIbook Weddings and when celebraTORI, my party-planning book, was about to come out. I went to TLC with a pitch book showing everything I love: the wedding planning, the parties, the crafting, the cooking, my blog. I was starting to think of myself as kind of a modern, imperfect, girlfriend-y, and of course fashion-forward Martha Stewart. With some debt but a clean record.
I had actually met Martha Stewart back in September 2010. Martha was to me what Madonna is to Mehran: Iconic. My inspiration. The one person I’d always wanted to meet. When my children’s book, Presenting . . . Tallulah, came out I asked my publicist if she could summon all her powers to help me meet Martha. She did it! She landed me a visit to the show to promote the book and do kids’ crafts with Martha herself.
My appearance on Martha was scheduled for September 21, which happens to be the birthday of my biggest fan. The first time I met Darren Martin was at a book signing at Bookends in New Jersey. He’d driven fourteen hours from New Brunswick, Canada, to be there. Ever since then we’ve kept in touch via Twitter, and he shows up at lots of my events. I’m grateful for his dedication, and I always try to move him to the front of the line and to take pictures with him. When Darren heard I was going to be on Martha, he told me he was coming to town for his birthday. It happened to coincide with the show and he was hoping to get tickets, but it looked like the show was sold out. I invited him to come backstage and hang out while I was getting ready. Darren said that it was going to be the coolest moment ever, watching his idol (me!) meet her idol (Martha!).
When the show started, I was backstage with Darren, Mehran, and my publicist. I wanted to make a good impression on Martha, and I was worried that my voice would crack, or anything else might happen to make the moment less than perfect. My fantasy was basically the same as that of me and Kelly Wears
tler, but substituting crafting for design: She’d meet me and think, Wow, Tori really can craft. She’s cool. She can hang out with me.
I walked out onstage and the first thing Martha said to me was, “You’re going to craft in those heels?”
I said, “What? Martha, doesn’t everyone craft in Louboutins?” I thought it was worth a chuckle but got nothin’.
Martha and I were making adorable papier-mâché hot-air balloons to hang in the kids’ rooms. Everything had been prepped for us to make sure we could complete the craft during the allocated segment. But at some point we came to a part where she and I were both supposed to cut strips of tape. She had a roll of thin tape on her side of the table, but mine was nowhere to be seen. She handled this minor oversight perfectly calmly while we were on the air, but then we went to break. She stood next to me, not talking to me or making eye contact, just standing there next to me. Staff rushed in, and she said, “Where was her tape? We couldn’t do the project properly.” She didn’t raise her voice, but the tone was not nice. I got it. In a heartbeat, I got exactly what type of person she was. Me and Martha, our crafting-buddy future—it wasn’t happening.
Before we’d even begun, I’d told my publicist I really wanted a picture of me and Martha. When we were done, Martha started to leave, but my publicist stepped up and asked about a picture.
“Only if it looks organic,” Martha said. She handed me my hot-air balloon and took hers in hand. I looked up at the camera, smiling, and Martha looked down at the balloon, as if she were working on it. Organic. My publicist took the picture. Then Martha put down her craft and walked offstage without so much as a glance in my direction. We were done. I was horrified. I thought about how when I did Rachael Ray, she was all about girl power. She was like, “Oh, you wrote this book? Good for you. Let’s tell the world.” We made my cupcake cones together. When we went to commercial, we chatted. It was all very pleasant. I’d expected at least the same from Martha. Sure, I’d heard rumors about her, but I had still put her on a pedestal. I came on her show not just as a celebrity but as a true fan. Our long-awaited encounter was my Wizard of Oz moment. I’d seen behind the curtain. As for the papier-mâché balloons we’d crafted “for my kids”? Her staff promised to send them to me, but I never saw them again.
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