Finding Myself in Fashion (4 page)

THE BUBBLE BURSTS

I ACTUALLY THOUGHT I had it all—supportive husband, fantastic kids, brilliant career, beautiful city house, cozy country home—when, in January 1998, Denny dropped a bomb: He suddenly and unexpectedly told me he was leaving our marriage. He gave me little more than a couple of weeks to digest the news.

I should have seen it coming. Exactly one year earlier, in January 1997, after nearly two decades with CHUM, Denny found out that his
Magee in the Morning
radio show had been axed—his position was terminated. His frustration mounted as he tried to find another job. For the first time in our eighteen-year relationship, my ever-positive husband admitted that he was discontented. I was desperately worried, and pleaded with him to tell me what was wrong and how I could help.

One cold Friday afternoon, after I had just come home from my first trip back to St. John's, Newfoundland, in over twenty years—a cathartic experience that reminded me how much I'd grown and how far I had come—Denny finally told me he was “ready to talk.” The girls had a couple of friends over, and their laughter as they ran through our big old house jarred with my anxiety over what I was about to hear.

Denny took me into the bedroom, closed the door, and sat me down on the bed. My heart was beating like crazy.

“I guess you realize that I've been very unhappy for some time now,” he said solemnly.

“Yeah, honey, I know. I want to help you so much. It's the work thing, isn't it?” I asked.

“No. It's more than that. It's the relationship.”

“The relationship?” I retorted. I had no idea what he meant.

“Yeah. I don't want to be in the relationship anymore. I've decided I don't want to be married anymore. I want to leave.”

My heart plummeted. “But surely you just need to get away for a while—go on a trip, take some time. We can work it out …”

As I looked into his eyes, I was suddenly swept up in a monstrous blur of confusion, smashed by a tsunami of the most acute pain I'd ever known.

“Oh, my God,” I muttered. “What are you telling me?” Every last bit of me was writhing in disbelief, screaming out that this must be a bad dream and demanding that I please, please wake up because this couldn't possibly be happening!

But Denny was implacable. “I simply don't desire the relationship. I don't desire you. I'm not in love with you anymore,” he said softly and with frightening finality.

I ran into the bathroom and leaned over the toilet. My stomach was heaving, but nothing came up. Heart racing, I looked in the mirror and was repelled by what I saw: me, dressed in black like a new widow, with pasty white skin and frightened eyes. I looked drawn, horrified, pathetic. No wonder he didn't love me anymore! Still, I came back for more.

“There's someone else, isn't there?” I asked, madly grasping for some explanation.

He shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. I wish there was someone else. Then it would make it easier for you to hate me. There's no one else.”

“Don't I turn you on anymore?” I asked pathetically.

“You know you don't.”

I had no idea that was the case. My world exploded. I heard the children playing outside our door. My God! What about the kids? We're not the only ones breaking apart here. We have these kids …

“What about the children?” I asked.

“Oh, kids are resilient. They'll be fine,” he answered. Obviously, he had rationalized it all. He sounded so flippant to me. And then he started weeping. If this was what he really wanted, I asked, why was he crying?

“Because it's all so sad,” he said. “There's so much history there.”

I couldn't believe he was so adamant. He was determined to get out, and quickly. He said he was leaving in two weeks. I begged him to stay for three, just so I could catch my breath.

In retrospect, as shocked as I was, it's clear that I immediately went into survival mode. I was determined to hang on to the bitter end to whatever vestiges were left of the relationship. In between imploring him to get some counselling—which he vehemently refused to do—I cooked him gourmet meals every night, organized a family outing to the zoo, and asked him to take me to see a movie in the middle of the afternoon. Ironically, it was
Titanic
. And as I sat in that dark theatre with him, holding hands and watching that big ship go down despite all the love, passion, and romance on board, I realized that life as I knew it would never be the same.

The dark depression that overtook me in the following weeks was almost intolerable. But I knew I had to hang tight to my sense of self, and to my precious girls. They were the only things I could be sure of now. I was also profoundly grateful for my work, though I went into automatic pilot for a while, going through the paces like some kind of zombie. Actually, there were aspects of my work that I suddenly couldn't stand—the schmoozing, the politics, the hype and hustle of it all. And I remember being sickened by the sight of all those glossy fashion magazines on the newsstands, emblems of the superficial world that I believed had cost me my marriage. At least part of me suspected that this monstrous career of mine was to blame for the fact that Denny didn't love me anymore. Perhaps he felt it had consumed me. Or maybe he just didn't desire me because, at forty-five years of age, I
had lost my lustre, my sexual appeal. The fact that he was out of work and might have been going through a midlife crisis did not enter my mind at the time. Also, I didn't learn until five months later that he had been involved in a relationship for three years with someone decades younger than him. At the time of his departure, I was convinced that he had decided to leave because of some fault of mine.

Despite the devastation I felt, I was never angry with Denny, and I made up my mind not to resent him, no matter what. While I couldn't possibly understand at the time what it was that had led him to this decision, I was determined to try to have a good, solid relationship with him as we co-parented our precious girls. Although it was officially decided that we would have shared custody, we agreed that the girls would live in the house with me, and that Denny, who moved into his own apartment, would be with them every Wednesday and every other weekend. I'll never forget the first weekend he took them. I was beside myself, frantic about seeing them go off without me. My dear friends Christopher Hyndman, who was my makeup artist at the time, and his partner, Steven Sabados (this was a good couple of years before they launched their
Designer Guys
TV series), along with another sweet friend, Dan Duford, compassionately took me on a fun but totally tacky weekend trip to Niagara Falls just to distract me! I could not imagine ever getting used to this new reality of not having my girls with me whenever I wanted. It was a torment for me—especially when Denny took them up to the cottage. The thought of not being able to go to Muskoka with my family, as we had done so joyously for almost a decade, made me feel like I was being kicked out of my own life.

A few weeks after Denny moved out, I took the girls to California for March Break. My mother had been holidaying in Palm Springs for the winter, and I knew I had to break the sad news to her personally. It was one of the hardest tasks I had ever undertaken. My mother worshipped Denny and often asked me if he was really as wonderful as he appeared. “He seems too good to be true!” she used to marvel. I always assured her that her handsome son-in-law was, in fact, the real deal. Now I had to tell her that this whole chapter in my life had indeed been “too good to be true.” I was crestfallen. Fighting my creeping
depression, I gathered up every ounce of courage and optimism I could possibly muster and told her that everything was under control. I'd be okay. I just had to come up with a strategy to get myself back on track. But deep down inside, I doubted I would ever be happy again.

MY OWN PRIVATE PARADISE

OUR FAMILY'S COTTAGE—that charming, humble gem of a place, built in the 1930s on the southern shore of Penn Lake—was paradise to me for nearly a decade. Denny and I had bought the property in the fall of 1990, when our girls were three and one. We wanted a family retreat where they could grow up and be close to nature—something neither Denny nor I had had as children, and something we'd always longed for. Our tiny, perfect cottage felt better to us than we ever could have imagined, and we travelled there religiously just about every weekend, forty-eight weekends a year, no matter what the weather. It was unquestionably the happiest, most comforting home I'd ever known. At the end of every week we would pack up the two cats, the two kids, and even our pet turtle, Sheldon, and make the two-and-a-half-hour trek to Muskoka, all cozy in the car, often singing along the way. Sometimes, if I had been on a business trip, Denny and the kids would pick me up at the airport, and we'd all head directly to our little piece of heaven—and the blessed chance to be together as a family for a couple of precious days. For me, it was part of striking the perfect balance, and I loved this aspect of our lives most passionately.

After Denny and I broke up in 1998, we attempted to share the
cottage for about a year and a half, using it on alternating weekends. I started piling kids and cats and turtle into my car, and we headed up to the cottage on our own. But it drove me crazy. I took the greatest pains to make sure that everything was “just so” every time I left, from the way the bed was made to the way the boat was put away. I knew nothing would escape Denny's scrutiny. So while I had mastered weekend highway driving, lighting roaring fires, calling the plumber, and even discarding dead mice, I realized that I wasn't getting any closer to real independence, and the pain of constantly being reminded of what we'd lost there was just too much for me to bear. I finally asked Denny to buy me out, and I made up my mind to find another country home where the girls and I could create a new brand of family togetherness and cozy, happy times.

I knew I wanted nothing that would even remotely remind me of Muskoka. I was entertaining a new dream. Since our dear cottage was made of wood and was situated on the water, I fantasized about a stone house on an expanse of land. I envisioned myself on a farm with a French country motif, a poetic place full of bucolic charm that would speak a very different romantic language to me.

In the fall of 1999, I began scouting properties to the north and west of Toronto. I had decided a trek like the one to Muskoka was a little too long to make by myself every weekend. I wanted someplace that would be a bit more accessible—no more than an hour and a half away. But the places that were available within my price range were nowhere near charming, and all seemed to require a fair bit of work. I wanted a place I could settle into right away, without the fuss of a major renovation. It was a tall order—a stone house with character that didn't need any major work, on a decent piece of land, no more than ninety minutes from Toronto.

I was getting discouraged, but I wasn't quite ready to give up. I had faith that if I really was supposed to find this new home, I somehow would. And then, serendipity set in.

There was an art auction preview one October evening at a stately Toronto home. It was there that I met Bruce Bailey, a stylish, charismatic, slightly eccentric, and very prominent Toronto art collector. We
instantly clicked. I began telling him my story: I was in the throes of getting over a sad divorce, I said, missing Muskoka terribly, but trying to put down some new country roots. I told Bruce I'd looked at several properties, but nothing had grabbed me.

“Have you tried Northumberland?”

“Where is that?” I asked, never having heard of it.

“Just east of Toronto. The prices are fabulous! You'll get much more value for your money,” he said.

Bruce went on to tell me that he owned a glorious two-hundredacre farm in Northumberland County, where he raised thoroughbreds. Then he asked me what I was doing on Sunday. I told him it was Joey's tenth birthday. “Well, it's my son's birthday on Sunday too, and I'm having a big birthday party for him at my farm. You must come and bring the girls!”

It started to feel like kismet, and the thought of taking Bekky and Joey to a wonderful farm, complete with horses, on an early fall day was tempting. I had a gut feeling we would all love it. So I accepted Bruce's friendly invitation, and that Sunday, Bekky, Joey, and our ninemonth-old Golden Retriever, Beau, piled into the car and headed for Northumberland.

It was a spectacular sunny day—exactly the sort of early October day on which Denny and I had discovered our little bit of Muskoka, nine years earlier. The fall colours were in all their glory, and life was finally feeling close to perfect once again. Bruce's property was sensational, and we spent the day socializing with his guests, riding through the fields in a small horse-drawn carriage, playing with kittens in the barn, and chasing after our rambunctious puppy, who was delirious with excitement. It was one of the best days I'd had in a long, long time. I decided then and there that come spring, I would try to find a country home for us in this exquisitely beautiful neck of the woods.

In May 2000, a friend recommended a real estate agent who specialized in the area. The agent told me about a “quirky” property in Alnwick Township, about fifteen minutes away from Bruce's farm. The property included a charming little stone house, built in 1842, which had been very well cared for and, except for some redecorating, wouldn't need
much work at all. The property, which had been on the market for a while, even had a pond on it, perfect for Beau. The only downside, according to the agent, was its size: a whopping 123 acres! The house was smack dab in the middle of all this land, so while there was privacy, the agent felt that the property in general was a little enigmatic, and that's why it hadn't sold. I made plans to see the place that weekend.

The magic set in the moment I turned onto a winding dirt road and started the gradual uphill climb past patches of forest and golden meadows. When I finally got to the front gate, I was charmed when I noticed that atop the two stone pillars were two stone roosters, each with a distinct air of antiquity and a cocky sense of pride and permanence. I could swear they were calling my name. My heart melted as I turned into the long tree-lined driveway. The light was radiant and everything was in bloom: towering lilac bushes; flowerbeds brimming with tall, unruly hollyhocks; overgrown patches of giant-leafed rhubarb; endless expanses of emerald lawns; and vast corn- and wheatfields and wildflower pastures that stretched beyond the rustic log fences. To add to the charm, an assortment of eclectic birdhouses perched atop several tall wooden posts. Even before I set eyes on the old farmhouse, I knew I had come home. This setting was light years away from the rugged beauty of Muskoka and that sparkling lake I so adored. But somehow, the sad memories of all those painful months—when I knew I was losing our beloved cottage—began to dissipate. I had discovered a new country haven, and it was exactly as I had envisioned it. My guardian angel—perhaps my late dad—was taking care of me once again.