Spelling It Like It Is (5 page)

I’d say, “Kelly, I love what you’ve done with malachite.”

She’d reply, “Thanks, Tori. What do you think the next stone in design is going to be?”

“You must do tiger’s-eye, Kelly.”

“Tori, you are a genius.”

Then we’d air-kiss and frolic in the sand in matching BFF caftans. (Too seventh grade?) “So lucky,” we would say. “If we hadn’t been neighbors we might never have met!” Failing that, I would be excited just to say hi on the beach once or twice and bask in her fabulousness for a summer. We even had an in—my friend Cheyenne.

Cheyenne was our occasional masseuse (We’re mommy friends, I swear. We double date with our husbands. Does that make it sound less fancy? I’m not talking weekly massage! Just biweekly. Kidding), and she also worked on Kelly. I was always not-so-subtly probing to find out what she was like. Now that she was next door—well, I upped my game. Trying to be discreet, I offhandedly mentioned to Cheyenne that Kelly was next door, and that we both had kids, so if she ever wanted to have a playdate . . . Cheyenne could give her my e-mail. That’s right. I was that person.

All July I kept an eye out for signs of life at the Wearstler house, but for the first couple weeks we were in Malibu, it seemed to sit cold and empty. Then one day I heard laughter coming from the beach nearby. The Wearstlers had arrived. Their kids were running around on the sand. This was my golden opportunity, but I couldn’t rise to the occasion. I was too shy to look in their direction, much less to go over and say hi. Instead, I slunk inside and glanced back as the screen door closed behind me. I caught a glimpse of someone with a wide-brimmed hat and flash of long, golden hair. It had to be Kelly.

Days passed. If I was ever going to meet her, I needed a plan. I brought Mehran in on it.

“Why don’t you take a walk on the beach?” he suggested. “Or go to her door and introduce yourself. Borrow something—an egg. Or maybe a slab of agate.”

Mehran was full of potential meet scenarios, but I couldn’t execute. I was much more comfortable stalking from afar. The closest I came was one day when we were out on the beach and I noticed Kelly’s sons playing Frisbee nearby.

“See the two boys playing Frisbee?” I said to Liam and Stella. “You should join in!” But no. They just wanted to keep playing in the sand. Foiled again.

Then one day it finally happened. I walked out onto the balcony and heard a pleasant voice calling out from the balcony next door. I couldn’t respond. I scurried back inside. Dean was standing there, looking at me.

“Isn’t that Kelly Wearstler calling you? Why aren’t you answering her?” he said.

“Um, I think she’s talking to someone else,” I said. “She’s saying ‘Cory.’ ”

Dean peeked out the window. “She’s standing right there,” he said.

I looked out the sliding door. There she was, waving and saying hi. I stepped back out onto the balcony. So nervous.

Kelly was standing on her nearby balcony. She had long blond hair. She was wearing a cuffed blouse, really short turquoise jean shorts, silver high-tops, and bangles. She held a parasol and didn’t seem to have any makeup on. I could tell that this outfit was something that she just threw on for a casual day at the beach. It wasn’t something she had carefully put together. I loved her throw-on look. I loved everything about her.

Kelly said, “You have kids my kids’ age, right?” Cheyenne had delivered!

“Yes, I think that’s right,” I said, so coy.

Kelly said, “Bring them over if you want.”

I said, “Now?”

She said, “Sure, just come in on the street side. I’ll meet you there.”

Here it was. The invitation I’d been waiting for. Not only would I meet Kelly Wearstler, I would get to see her beach house. With her in it. It was the chance of a lifetime. But I couldn’t do it.

“Dean, can you walk them over?” I said. But no, Dean claimed to be in the middle of making lunch. As if lunch mattered at a time like this.

Oh my gosh. Was I dressed okay? I was wearing maternity jean shorts, a short-sleeved white peasant top from Forever 21 in size 10, and short fringed Uggs. If I was going to go through with this, I thought I should change into something a little more worthy. But what if she’d seen what I was wearing and figured out that I’d changed my clothes? That would be the worst. Still, maybe she hadn’t noticed my feet. I threw on a pair of Missoni ballet flats as a last-ditch effort. I was unfashionable and hugely pregnant. But I was doing this.

HERE’S THE PART that makes me look really creepy. I had actually been in Kelly Wearstler’s beach house once before. Kelly had let Cheyenne use the house for a day, and I went over there to see Cheyenne’s new baby. Once inside, I did what I’ve seen people do when they come into my house. They pretend to be focused on whatever business they have with me, but I can see them peering around corners, trying to get a discreet glimpse of how I live. The whole time I was at Kelly’s house, I was oohing and aahing over the baby while at the same time internally debating whether to whip out my iPhone to send pictures to Mehran. I didn’t want Cheyenne to think I was rude. But Mehran would die when he found out where I’d been. I really wanted to share the moment with him. Prudence prevailed, and I didn’t take the pictures.

Anyway, when I finally received the longed-for invitation and came over with the kids, I had already been in Kelly Wearstler’s house that one time, and she had no idea. I was the stalker you let through your front door.

I already knew that her house was gorgeous but kind of cold. The walls were covered in beige stone. There were pale hardwood floors that blended with the stone. The palette was relentlessly neutral, with a perfectly calibrated range of textures and colorless patterns. The place was stark and flawless. It was almost impossible to believe that the person who lived there had two boys under ten years old. My kids (and pets) would have spread their toys and crumbs and fur (pets only!) all over that place in five seconds flat.

My kids aren’t as socially crippled as I am. As soon as we came in, they peeled off with her kids, and I was left standing with Kelly. A bunch of other guests milled about. It emerged that they were all about to go surfing at Point Dume. Point Dume was known for its surfing and its exclusivity. You could only enter the beach if you lived within a certain triangle and had a key. Kelly had a friend with a key. Of course she did. And Kelly Wearstler was not just an ultrafashionable, megasuccessful businesswoman. She also, unlike me, could head to a private beach, whip out a surfboard, and chill. And here she went. Clearly my vision of us nibbling crudités and chatting about our kids and our mutual passion for design wasn’t about to happen. And now that I knew she and her friends were practically out the door, how long were the kids and I supposed to stay? I had no idea what the etiquette of the situation was. All I knew was that I’d probably get it wrong.

As my head spun with all of this, Kelly was perfectly nice and welcoming. Her friends welcomed me too. I didn’t know exactly how to start a real conversation, but then I remembered we’d gone to Anguilla and stayed at the Viceroy. I knew that Kelly had designed the Viceroy, along with the interiors of many of the other boutique hotels that her husband’s real estate group owned. That had to be a good topic.

“We went to Anguilla and stayed at the Viceroy. It was great.” I told her which villa we’d stayed in—I thought it was villa ten.

Kelly said that number ten was a popular one—I remembered that someone at the resort had told us that Michael Jordan had stayed there with his family, and Chelsea Handler had too (not at the same time as Michael Jordan, though that image was worth something).

I wasn’t brave enough to make a joke about Michael Jordan and Chelsea Handler. Nor did I launch into the tale of my encounter with a stray cat at the hotel. Stray cats roam Anguilla, and everyone stays away from them because who knows what diseases they might carry. Naturally, I was the asshole who befriended the stray cat. There was one who lingered outside our villa, meowing woefully at me every day. I put out bowls of water and milk for it. After a couple of days it trusted me enough to come inside for a moment, and eventually it let me pet it. But one night when I went to pet its back, I startled it, and it bit me. It was a stray cat. I was in a foreign country. And I was pregnant, with no idea when I’d last had a tetanus shot. I had to go on antibiotics. None of this ever would have happened to Kelly Wearstler.

She said, “That villa’s so great, isn’t it?” I agreed, and then there was silence. I was at a loss. The moment was slipping away.

Then Stella announced, “I’m hungry!” Nobody was eating.

“Let’s go home and get you something to eat,” I said.

“No, no, I’ll get her something,” Kelly said. She went into the kitchen and brought out some crackers. Uh-oh. Crackers and a three-year-old was a guaranteed crumbfest. Stella grabbed a big handful. She was going to get crumbs everywhere. That’s how Kelly would remember me—as the woman whose child messed up her house. As Stella trotted around, nibbling crackers, I followed her, hunched over, my hands stretched under her chin to catch crumbs, apologizing profusely as I went. Liam was climbing on the couch—shoes off, but still. I told him to get down.

Kelly said, “No, they’re kids, it’s fine.” But was it fine? I couldn’t tell.

Then Kelly excused herself to get ready for surfing. As she walked away, I looked down at my Missoni flats, which I had never worn before. They were killing the back of my heel. I had gotten them on sale at Gilt and would never wear them again. Had their one and only wearing been worth it? Had Kelly at least noticed that I was wearing Missoni?

I told Liam and Stella it was time for us to get going. That’s where the visit should have ended, with our polite thank-yous and good-byes. We would retreat back to our house with no lasting friendship between me and Kelly Wearstler, but with no damage done beyond a few cracker crumbs on an otherwise speck-free floor. However. My children were having such a nice time that they both immediately fell apart. Liam crossed his arms defiantly and said, “No, I’m not going.” He stomped across her beautiful floors.

Liam started wailing, and Stella joined in. I quietly went over and gently took Liam by the arm. “We’re guests in this house. I know you’re upset, but let’s talk about this at home.”

He pulled his arm away, and as he did I held on. He screamed, “You’re hurting me!” My parenting skills were failing me, and now my child was publicly accusing me of abuse in front of my idol.

What made it worse was that everyone else in the room politely kept talking, pretending that nothing was happening. I knew that was the proper thing to do, but all I wanted was for someone to say, “I feel for you. My kids do this all the time.”

My failing attempts to assuage Liam went on for five minutes, which felt like five hours. Kelly tried to help, offering to bring us all with them to surf and showing them videos of her kids in a mini rock band at school. Ultimately, in spite of my efforts to extract my children, we probably overstayed by about half an hour.

We finally left. I still thought she was really cool. And nice. But I had to face reality. There was no magic. She had no real interest in me. Our summer of bonding and subsequent lifelong friendship had begun and ended in one short, awkward hour. Kelly, if you still want my advice on stone trends, I’m standing by.

The Pig Made Me Do It

E
ven after my fantasy friendship with Kelly Wearstler flopped, I loved our downsized Malibu life. I couldn’t help wanting it to go on forever.
How great would it be if we sold our house in Encino and moved to a small house in Malibu?
I thought. The family would be in closer quarters. We’d all spend more time together. We could go to the beach. Then I saw an article in a beach magazine about a chic family with tons of money and an extravagant lifestyle who had moved to Broad Beach, a small (and exclusive) private beach even farther up the coast than we were. This extremely attractive family had downsized from a seven-thousand-square-foot house to a much smaller beach bungalow. The husband and wife talked about how moving to a smaller space brought the family closer. It was terrifying for them at first. They worried about how they’d survive with so much less space. But moving to a beach house had changed their whole lifestyle. Now the tan and beachy mother, who was pictured in gorgeous caftans (my dream!), spent her days surfing with her kids. There was a photo of her cooking while the kids did their homework at a desk opposite the kitchen counter. The article inspired me. That could be us!

Anyone who knows me knows that as soon as I get a notion like that, well, I have to start looking at real estate listings. We had a whole month in Malibu. It couldn’t hurt to peek at a few houses. It started with my poking around online, but before I knew what I was doing, Dean and I were driving up the coast to check out some of the properties. We couldn’t afford anything on the beachfront, especially because we needed enough land for the animals.

The animals. Back in Encino, I had what I thought of as a backyard farm.

We’d always had a pack of dogs scrambling underfoot. Then DailyCandy ran a piece on a cool mobile chicken coop for city dwellers. It didn’t even kill the grass! I reminded Dean how planting an organic garden had gotten Liam eating more vegetables. Maybe if we had chickens, and Liam collected eggs, he’d start liking eggs the way he had when he was younger. Dean is always a sucker for a good sales pitch from me. He thought chickens were a great idea.

Then I stumbled across silkie bearded chickens. They have lots of extra-soft fur like poodles and a reputation for being great, sweet pets. And here’s another perk of doing a reality show. If you tell them something interests you, the show’s staff does all the research. Chris, one of our producers, found adorable silkies at a farm in Norco, California. On Liam’s third birthday, we packed up the kids and the crew and went to get chickens. We came home with three. I named one Coco (after Coco Chanel, of course). Liam chose the ultrasophisticated sobriquet Turkey Breast for the second. And Dean, taking a cue in sophistication from his son, named the third Chicken Nugget (but that one turned out to be a rooster, so we returned him).