by Jennie Garth
This little routine of ours went on for a few months, but after each one of her visits, I began to feel that my house was being infused with her warm, loving essence, and I finally caught on that Evangelina was beginning to transform my tiny, largely uninhabited house into a home. If I brought in something new—say, some throw pillows, or a new duvet cover, or a vase—she’d exclaim about how lovely it was (she was a huge, early fan of my decorating sensibilities). She’d ask about my work, in her halting English, while she fussed over something, and I realized that, with my mom back in Arizona a lot of the time, it felt wonderful to have someone else looking out for me in a warm, maternal way. Evangelina, who is only about ten years older than me, has the most giant and generous heart of all time. And today, she’s got a beautiful grown daughter to prove it. Soon her once-a-week visits became twice-a-week visits, and before I knew it, Evangelina was an essential part of my heart team. We’ve been together ever since.
Now I had two friends in LA—Patrice and Evangelina, two women I knew I could count on—and I began to think that maybe I would be able to make it; maybe I would be able to hack it here in Tinsletown on my own. If I had had a beret back then, maybe I would have even tossed it in the air, à la Mary Tyler Moore.
For the first time in a very, very long time, maybe the first time ever, really, I felt like I was beginning to put down some roots.
I LIKE YOUR STYLE
My life really did go from zero to sixty when 90210 broke out, and so did my visibility—and viability—as an actress. When I think back on it now, it’s pretty insane that I went from being a high school junior in Arizona to being an established television actress in Hollywood in just three very short years. It was a change that wasn’t just fast as hell; it was confusing and difficult to make sense of, because on the outside I seemed to have it all: financial security, a great job, a sweet new boyfriend (more on that later), and a great family (though they were all too far away). But going from being a sheltered, lonely, and shy teenager to a very public figure in such a short amount of time didn’t quite jell inside. I mean, honestly? It still seems really strange to me. I still see myself as a girl from a tiny dot of a place in the middle of nowhere, at times, and so I’m always trying to get the inner reality of who I am to match up with what the outer world sees. I’m not complaining, of course, just saying it’s a bit of a paradox. And often a challenge.
Lucky for me, I’ve met some really great people who have helped me stay grounded and real, no matter what the media says about who I am or what is made about whatever happens to be going on in my life. The person who has probably been the closest to me since I was launched out of deep, deep obscurity is my friend Adele, a remarkable woman and partner in crime whom I’ve now known for half my life.
I met Adele right around the time I bought my second home. I had just turned twenty, and when security really did start to become an issue, I sold my sweet, tiny first house and moved into a place that had the kind of security being a recognizable star requires. It was a great house, set back on a pretty sizable piece of property and down a very long driveway that was hidden behind a giant wrought-iron gate. The house was big and it needed a lot of work, and so Mr. Showbiz convinced me that, if I were really going to undertake the renovation I envisioned, I’d need more than just Evangelina’s help: I’d need a personal assistant.
I honestly didn’t quite know what this meant, and I still had trouble asking Evangelina to do things like, say, empty the dishwasher: I mean, I had two hands, right? I wasn’t helpless, and I hated burdening people. Even by then, I’d pretty much mastered that kind of do-it-yourselfness that can, if you’re not careful, actually be mistaken for the kind of independence that others interpret as your not needing them, and then you’ll find yourself more alone than is good for you, but hey . . . I’m digressing into thoughts that are way too deep here, so back to the story at hand. In my mind, I pictured a personal assistant as someone wearing a serious suit and intimidating eyewear and a severe updo who would be chasing me—a girl who pretty much did nothing but work—with a day planner and a pencil and a disapproving smirk on her face. What on earth would I do with a person like that? Clearly nothing, because that is not what the universe had in mind for me when it came to hiring a personal assistant.
Enter Adele.
Mr. Showbiz had put an ad in Variety that read, “High-profile actress seeks assistant.” Then he met with a bunch of people and winnowed it down to the top three or four. Then he set up brief meetings for me with each of them. Mind you, these were all very well-qualified and decent people; now I just had to choose one. Well, the first interview was just plain embarrassing—at least for me. I mean, I sat in front of a woman who was probably twenty years older than me, and I clutched her résumé in my hand while she regaled me with stories of how she’d whipped some Hollywood heavy hitters’ lives into shape. I was impressed—and terrified by her. Next, I met someone who was nice, but when I couldn’t remember her name, I knew she wasn’t the one.
Then I met Adele, a woman only a year or so older than me who had, to my completely uncool mind, the absolute greatest sense of style. In she came, wearing black combat boots, cropped and cuffed black pin-striped suit pants, and a white puffy blouse (very circa 1994), and I thought, Wow. This girl could definitely help me in the fashion department. It’s important to note that while I was wearing a long denim skirt, a white T-shirt, and a gold cross around my neck, I too, wore . . . combat boots. Even though mine were brown suede, there it was: the essential mind-meld, the sign that we were meant to be together, because we both had on chunky boots. Adele had worked in Hollywood before, as a personal assistant to an actress, even, but she had been in New York for a few years, and she was only now getting back to LA. There was something so not Hollywood about her. Something so down-to-earth. I got a sense that she’d be good for me, on top of being a good assistant. I hired her on the spot. And it was, I have to say, one of the best decisions I have ever made.
Adele became pretty indispensable immediately, because I dived headfirst right into renovating that house. This was no minor tweaking of the decor, mind you; this was a full gut renovation, and I had a great contractor named John, but needed someone to be on-site, acting as my eyes and ears while I was out in Van Nuys at work. Adele took this all on without flinching, and so immediately, her positive influence on my life was evident.
Working with Adele and John the contractor, I learned pretty quickly that gutting a house and putting it back together turned out to be the kind of large-scale project I could really sink my teeth into. I dug it! I found demolition of any kind to be a blast, and doing all the work of consulting with architects and poring over plans and making decisions about where, say, a wall ought to go, kind of . . . relaxes me. Since that first redo (on what Adele affectionately refers to as the Woodstock house), I’ve renovated three or four more houses, and I’ve come to realize that, deep down, I’m really a frustrated interior designer who is most at home around tile guys, plumbers, and other nuts-and-bolts home-building pros. I’m definitely more comfortable in a torn-down house than I am on the red carpet, and if I had to identify one superhero strength I might have, I’d say it’s renovating houses.
I changed everything about that place on Woodstock, including putting in a rose garden—I got to buy a farm-grade tiller!—and adding a huge freestanding guesthouse in the large, parklike backyard.
Adele became my partner in crime in so many ways, so quickly. She had an office in my house, and it became Jennie Command Central. Every morning we’d meet there and go over what had to be done; then we’d start talking about stuff we just wanted to do. We were both superprofessional and hardworking, but if we found ourselves in the Woodstock house together with some time on our hands, we’d get really crafty together: We did a lot of baking, or we’d garden. At one point we really got into jewelry making, and it kind of got out of control: We made bracelets and earrings, and it was such a crazy obsession that we made all of our Christmas gifts. I also
agreed to do a 90210 Christmas special—but only if my friend Adele could be in it, too. So the camera crews came to my house and filmed us while Adele and I made cutout cookies.
Adele also served as my security detail. Well, my security blanket, anyway. She figured out that she could coax me out to the mall if we went at ten a.m. on a weekday, because that’s when all the crazed 90210 fans would be in school. Or she’d come out to the set in Van Nuys to hang out and I’d find myself relaxing and laughing and having fun during the times I’d normally just go off to rest and be by myself. She was also an excellent pet wrangler (at one point, I had seventeen animals, which meant Adele spent a lot of time at the vet, too). Plus, she could make me laugh harder than anybody, or she could just be by my side without either of us feeling the need to talk at all. I liked that about her. A lot.
Most significantly, Adele helped me come out of my shell, in terms of getting to know other people. She was so open and forthcoming that she taught me, by example, how to engage with others, even if where they were coming from was a place I had no clue about. The best example of this happened when we had been working together for about two weeks. I can’t remember where we were going, but we were in my car and as we were driving down the freeway, Adele said, ‘We’ve been with each other all day every day for a while now, and I thought it would be good to share some things about myself with you.” I was driving when she said this, and she just plowed ahead: “I’m in a relationship with a woman, who is also an actress, and we’ve been together for about four years. We’ve recently been discussing the possibility of ending our relationship, and I thought you ought to know that I may be moving in the next few months and that, though this is a painful and difficult time, I will work hard and will be very professional.” I was so blown away by Adele’s maturity and candor, and I realize now that she sounded very much like the excellent psychotherapist she is today.
Adele is one of those people whom other people want to know. She’s warm but not intrusive, wise but not bossy. She’s the best listener I’ve ever met. Adele was, and is, all about the truth: she wanted to know how I was feeling, what I was thinking—she has this gift of cutting through all the BS with anyone she’s fond of. I credit her with being real with me in a way that helped me to relax and just be myself with her, which is something I needed at that time in my life: the friend who tells it like it is. Telling the truth, though not easy when you struggle to be honest with yourself, is always the right, liberating thing to do, and Adele, more than anyone, has helped me realize this.
Talk about capable. That’s Adele in a nutshell. Within weeks of coming to work with me, she was not only overseeing the renovation of my house, but she also planned my first wedding. But more on that later. First I want to share with you one of the crazier episodes of my life with Adele.
DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR
Kombucha.
I’m betting you’ve heard of this crazy stuff, which is considered to be one of the magical, age-defying, disease-busting elixirs of life that you can find bottled up and on refrigerator shelves at bodegas and grocery stores across the land. Never mind that it will set you back about five bucks a bottle. This stuff may promote health, but it tastes gross, and the growing of it is even grosser.
How do I know this, you ask?
Because I used to grow the stuff—way back before it was cool, before it was ever, probably, legal. And I didn’t just grow it: I traveled with it. But I get ahead of myself.
It was circa 1994 and I was well settled into the routine of 90210 when I heard about this “magic” (not that kind) mushroom that, when fermented, created a tea that would impart all kinds of health benefits, not the least of which was an overall sense of well-being and serenity, which I desperately needed.
Enter the kombucha mushroom, which is no mushroom at all—oh, no. It’s a gooey blob of yeasts glommed onto bacteria, and when it’s left to sit in a brew of black tea and sugar . . . strange and mystical things happen. The “mushroom” (a gross, quivering, jellylike disk) blooms and ferments, and if you take good care of it, it will throw off a spawn (baby kombucha!) in about ten days. At that point (once it’s multiplied) you drink the black tea that it’s been sitting in. Delicious! And then you begin the process all over again.
Here’s the thing, though: To grow kombucha you have to put it in a warm, dark place and not disturb it. And by not disturb it, I mean it needs to never see the light of day, and no playing of Pearl Jam at high volumes within twenty miles of the thing.
So I had kombucha mushrooms floating in black tea soup, covered with cheesecloth, hidden in the closets throughout my home. Anyone who came to my place knew something was up, because my house smelled like the inside of a giant, unwashed pickle barrel. It smelled just the way kombucha tastes—only about five thousand times stronger. Every week or so, I’d open a closet, find that the mushroom had given birth, and then I’d strain off the disgusting tea it made and drink it.
Yup. I did that.
But it wasn’t just me.
Adele, my faithful friend, was my kombucha partner in crime.
I remember during one 90210 hiatus when I headed off to Toronto to make a TV movie, and somehow or another, we managed to smuggle a new spawn into the ritzy hotel where we’d be living. We would be on location for about three weeks, which was just enough time for the kombucha magic cycle to happen a couple of times. If we could get our little mushroom in, we’d be able to guzzle the gnarly fermented “tea” a few times, certain that if we did, we’d both live to be at least one hundred and seventy-five.
But here’s the thing. You’ve got to treat the kombucha like it’s a colicky baby that’s been up all night and seriously needs to catch up on its rest. This means you put it in a glass container, cover it with something that will keep it clean but yet will allow air to pass through it, and then you put it in a cool, dark place where it will be undisturbed. Easy.
Whenever there was kombucha in the house, Adele and I would talk as though we were professional golf commentators, in these low, soft, supercalm voices, and we would tiptoe around, barefoot. It was crucial that we not disturb the kombucha, because we knew how crazy-sensitive that stuff was; one slipup and we might wind up with a toxic blob that would grow out of control and would consume whatever was in its way. Then we’d really be in trouble.
Actually, I had read somewhere that kombucha, a living, stinky thing, had, some believed, the intelligence of a dolphin. I don’t know if I would go that far, but I certainly had a deep respect for the kombucha. A certain naive reverence, if you will. I wanted this stuff to cure what ailed me, and so I ascribed all kinds of super healing powers to the stuff, and my hopeful attitude helped in more ways than one, given how nasty that stuff tasted.
But back to our hotel room in Toronto. We were all settled in, but we had a bit of a dilemma. How would we keep the housekeeping staff from disturbing our kombucha distillery? Adele came up with the brilliant idea to make a straightforward sign that read: DO NOT OPEN THIS DOOR UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! She wrote this out in giant, black block letters and taped it to the closet door. Clearly anyone who came into our suite would know that something was up, because our clothes and shoes were all over the place, stuffed into the dressers and hanging on the backs of doors and along the curtain rod that hung over the bathtub. There was something that was not clothes or a suitcase in that closet—but what?
I mean, that sign had to be pretty enticing, right?
Certainly, if I were a housekeeper and I came into a room with a sign like that, I’d be pretty tempted to at least sneak a peek.
That is, of course, if I could stand the kombucha stench, which got stronger with each passing day. At this stage of my own personal kombucha phase, I was pretty used to it, but even Adele and I would flinch when we’d open the door after eight or so hours away from the room. Once we could breathe again, we’d look at each other, smile knowingly, and say, “Ah. Kombucha!” in those crazy golf voices we would automatically slip into.
I don’t know if anyone at that hotel ever broke the kombucha code and opened that door, but I do know that no one stole our mushroom and we were able to not only enjoy a few rounds of kombucha tea, but lo and behold, our mushroom gave birth on location! It was customary to give the babies away to others (kombucha culture was all about sharing the health and the wealth), but I don’t recall whether we left it for our housekeeper or not.
Come to think of it, I don’t know whether we ever took that sign down, so . . . even though it’s been twenty years . . . perhaps our kombucha mushroom is still there, in that hotel closet in Toronto, multiplying and multiplying and . . .
I shudder to think. . . . And now I’m thirsty, too.
RUNNING DOWN THE AISLE
By the time I met Adele, I’d been seeing a guy named Dan for a while. Dan was an aspiring musician I met through another musician friend of mine. He was tall, big, cute. And he reminded me a lot of my dad in some ways, the dad that I remembered from my childhood: the big, strong, charismatic, totally lovable blond. Once my mom had moved back to Arizona, Dan moved in and I converted the guesthouse into a fully equipped music studio for him, complete with a sound booth and very expensive soundboards and all the state-of-the-art recording equipment that we could possibly cram in there. So while I logged my long days on the 90210 set in Van Nuys, Dan, a drummer, immersed himself in the music scene.
We were two kids playing house, taking my crazy “fame” ride together. Now I didn’t have to walk the red carpet alone; Dan would be there for me. And now, when I had to do publicity or promotional events, I had someone to hold my hand when things felt overwhelming or my sense of vulnerability would start to tip over into panic. Most important, I had someone there when I came home at night. This was incredibly reassuring, and it gave my life the kind of settled vibe that I had been aching for.