Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales (12 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Home Box Office

I
had a farm in Africa . . . no, sorry, that was Meryl Streep. I had a Mediterranean-style three-bedroom in Los Angeles. This was post the Santa Monica hippie breakdown house. I had taken out a loan from my mother and stepfather, which I had vowed never to do because of the psychological strings attached. But that was before the sub-prime mortgage bonanza; California banks weren’t yet knocking down the door to do business with every unemployed actress with a couple of script ideas at Paramount. My mother has always told me to have a little money saved in a private account, and ownership of some land or real estate. She knew too many women whose husbands ran off with their savings (and their assistants) or who never bothered to check invoices from their accountants and business managers. So she granted me the ability to own my first property.

The view behind the pool and the master bath were so spectacular I would have done mop-up at a slaughterhouse for the rest of my life to live there. It was up a private dead-end road high in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, which boasted a dramatic view of Century City (the corporate—not green—part of Los Angeles, so lots of lights all night). There were avocado trees, two orange trees, and a lemon tree. And fuchsia and purple bougainvillea that poured over the roof and cascaded down all sides of the house. And there was a pool, the one thing that separated the out-of-work actors who lived in their cars and the wealthy producers who slept with them.

I decided that instead of hiring a contractor who gave his workers a nickel to his dollar, I would erase the middleman and go straight to the artisans themselves. I have always been a supporter of the workmen that hang outside the paint stores or train stations. The many I have hired and befriended have shared with me extraordinary stories about escaping war-torn nations where they were dictators or mega pop stars, only to be reduced to begging for minimum wage and installing pet doors in this country. (Imagine Justin Bieber laying down miles of sewage pipe in the Ecuadorian desert.) I found a group of Mexican craftsmen who built, painted, and tiled an unzoned guesthouse for me. I found this entourage loitering in front of a Home Depot in East L.A.—a more optimal place for networking than AA.

I showed Luis, my right-hand man in the operation, a photo from
Elle Décor
of a guesthouse in southern France, and he erected it in a few weeks, complete with wooden beams and faux cracked walls. A safety hazard? Maybe, but when you lay down in the four-poster bed and looked out the windows onto magnificent cypress trees, it felt like
A Year in Provence
, so screw inspections and potential electrical fires. Plus, I lived up the road from a famous rapper who housed albino tigers and a rare snake sanctuary, and no city officials ever bothered him.

Every morning I would have breakfast laid out for me and my fellow carpenters. I made omelets to order, bacon, fresh orange juice from my tree, and coffee. Luis and I started to get really
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
, and built an outdoor fireplace, a smokehouse (for meats and fish), and a vegetable garden with stone steps that led nowhere. I was Anthropologie to his Restoration Hardware. If everything we built hadn’t been completely off the books, you’d be browsing our Web site today.

A
round that time, my younger brother Tom, the eldest son from my father’s second marriage, called and asked if he could come to L.A. for the weekend. He was looking for film work and figuring out next steps. Standard stuff. He arrived late on a Friday night and, instead of leaving Sunday afternoon, left a year from that Sunday afternoon. (He would have stayed longer, but I sold the house, and the new owners refused to Kato Kaelin my brother in the guesthouse.) Then my friend Lyle, a homophobic gay trainer in L.A., needed a place to stay for a week, which too stretched out until the sale of the house a year later. Lyle was from a southern town where he had been star quarterback and prom king. When his Republican parents got wind that his roommate, a black drag queen, might be gay, Lyle had to move out to protect his own life on the down-low. My home was becoming a halfway house of West Elm pillows and internal angst.

And then there was Kyra. Kyra was a friend from college who was statuesque and aimless. Every other week she changed her desired profession and moved to wherever there was a vacant rollout bed. She carted around mildewy tapestries, which she would drape over lamps, tons of beaded scraps, and flattering photographs of herself in various tropical settings. She was constantly in love either with someone who was married or someone who hit her; male, female, didn’t matter. Kyra smelled like patchouli oil and glued in her own hair extensions. She called one morning to say she had a layover in L.A. for six hours, and could she come to my place for a quick drink. She had been living in Mazatlan, Mexico, but the wife of a guy she was seeing found out about her and burned down her place. The wife chased her down a dirt road waving a combat knife. Kyra was en route to White Plains to stay with her mother, a cognitive therapist, who was helpful to everyone she treated except Kyra. So she came up for a drink, fontina cheese, and rye crackers, and ended up staying in my home six months.

My solitary paradise was suddenly filled with my crestfallen chain-smoking brother, a trainer who ate broiled halibut for breakfast—my house smelled like a fish market during a heatwave—and an emotionally needy vagabond with daddy issues. I bought the groceries, paid the bills, cooked the food, did the laundry, and maintained the home in pristine condition. I was Mrs. Doubtfire without an interesting backstory. But I liked the whirlwind of my house. When people weren’t crawling all over it leaving dirty boxers and hair in the sinks, I had dinner parties, and we played cards and jumped in the pool fully clothed. It had all the fun of the 1970s, but all the caution of the ’90s.

My brother and I were in similar psychological states. He had also ended a relationship and was past the shaking-it-up phase and was looking to lay it down. I was no longer circling the drain, but doing my best to pull myself up to the porcelain rim. We spent many nights playing Trivial Pursuit and lighting one cigarette off the next. When he broke down and threatened to call every woman he’d ever met, I pulled the phone out of the wall. When I wanted to drive to my ex-boyfriend’s house and steal his garbage, he would throw my car keys into the bushes. One night he misunderstood and threw away my keys when I simply wanted to go buy laundry detergent. We stank for days. He and I were both in therapy. Tom had a rigid shrink. I had a strict Freudian woman who earned every penny. Every afternoon Tom and I shared the self-reflection of the day from our journals, things like his “I only love cigarettes” and my “I would choose pills over razors.” Even though our shrinks were our emotional mechanics, we were always tinkering under the hood.

Tom tried to like other girls, but there was always “something.” They had a mustache or chewed too loud or smelled like rancid pork. But the real problem was, he secretly compared every woman to Marisa Tomei.

J
ust when I thought my life would be reduced to dating assistant talent agents and herpetic actors, Dax entered my life. He was a British bad boy preparing to star in a big Hollywood movie. He was a strapping six-three, with great teeth (they were veneers, he’s a Brit) and muscles just above his buttocks that sank in like little soup bowls. He was the man not every mother warned you about, but mine certainly did.

He was looking to rent a house, apartment, or room for six months while he was working in America. My friend Michelle, who partnered with his agent, called to ask if I was renting the guesthouse. It had never occurred to me, plus I would have to move my brother to the guest room, the trainer to the library, and Kyra to the couch. I couldn’t bear having to walk past Kyra and whatever gold-toothed imbecile she’d picked up outside the Olive Garden the night before. But Michelle pleaded with me to at least meet him.

The doorbell rang, and I, in my stunning wardrobe of PJ bottoms, a tank top, and hair pulled into a messy knot, opened it slowly and with slight annoyance. Shabang! It was instant primal attraction, on my part anyway. In a flash I excused myself briefly to slap on a pair of tight Levi’s and cream blush. I giggled like a preteen and did my best sexy walk as I showed off the guesthouse and grounds.

“Well,” he said, heading to the front door, “[
Strong British accent
] Not sure it’s for me. I’m playing a Sid Vicious–type character, and I’m afraid I’ll be rather loud while rehearsing—”

“That’s okay! That’s great, not a fan of quiet,” I interrupted.

“How much is it a month?”

“A hundred dollars,” I said.

There was a long pause. “What?” he asked, clearly as dumbfounded as I was about my price.

“It’s a hundred dollars because I’m picky about who lives here, and you are friends with Michelle.” I was weak, desperate, and very attracted.

He sped away in a black generic sports car from Hertz. He wanted to think about it. Shit, I should have said it was free.

D
ax started filming, and I started doing his laundry. I prided myself on being the sexiest landlady for at least two miles (it was L.A., after all). One evening we found ourselves alone in the house, a rarity. He had never seen the movie
Shampoo
, which I explained was imperative for his cinematic education. During the opening credits we were already kissing. And by the next morning . . . Let’s just say Warren Beatty and Julie Christie had nothing on us.

I consider this period of my life one of the great acting jobs. When Dax was on set, I would work on a script or putter around the house adjusting pillow placements or alphabetizing bookshelves. An hour before I guessed he would come home, I would shower, lather, exfoliate, tweeze, oil, moisturize, condition, spray, powder, and bleach. I would recline on the sofa in skinny jeans and a revealing white James Perse T-shirt and read
U.S. News and World Report
. I pretended to be cooler than I really was, younger than I really was, and more sexual than I’ve ever been. I created this character of the perfect woman. A woman who was never jealous, never nagged, and was addicted to semen. There were nights when he said he’d be home at 7:00 p.m. Those were the nights when I would sit there, covered in Jo Malone Nectarine Blossom & Honey body lotion, with a plate of oysters and iced Cristal in front of the fire until the oysters looked like dried phlegm, the fire died, and the opened champagne was poured down the toilet. It was breakfast time.

I acted like I didn’t notice he never came home. I said I was at a party in Malibu (or Manhattan, Miami, or wherever the closest city with male models was) and hadn’t gotten back until 3:00 a.m. myself. “It was a nude, ecstasy orgy at Jake Gyllenhaal’s, and I was the only girl.” And he’d just stumble off to the shower. I could do without respect, gifts, compliments, faithfulness, orgasms, financial equality, or random acts of kindness. My whole self-esteem was dictated by the need to get this man to want me. Well, the pretend me. Let’s call her Alice. I had been alone for a while and it was time to couple up again.

Six months into the torrid affair between Dax and Alice, he had to return to London. The weekend before he left, my mother came to visit. Thank God she stayed with an old friend in Pasadena, otherwise she would have witnessed Alice, her courtesan daughter, warming up hand towels, pouring tea, and sprinkling rose petals in his shoes. I could tell my mother found Dax entertaining; he was classically trained and could break into a whimsical Puck from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at the drop of a hat. And it was during this week that I missed my period. I was convinced I was pregnant with a baby Jude Law. I was lying in bed watching
Guiding Light
when my mother came and sat next to me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I think I’m pregnant,” I answered, holding back tears. And fearing her damnation.

My mother took a deep breath, raised her eyebrows, and said, “Well, at least you know you can!”

My period arrived a few days later. Perhaps the stress of having my rarely sober, philandering boyfriend and my highly opinionated and intimidating mother together in the same room caused the biological blip.

When Dax’s film wrapped, so did our relationship. Rather than go through the motions of a flaccid long-distance affair, we made a clean break. He flew back to London, where barrels of dark ale and seductive wenches awaited. And I went back to the PJ bottoms, tank tops, and disheveled hair.

Y
ears later I married a man who gave me all that was deficient from the above, and Alice had finally vanished down the rabbit hole for good. Grey Gardens Two, as I had named my house, was a distant memory, my entourage spread far and wide. My brother married a sane and gorgeous girl, the trainer became a powerful (closeted) real estate agent, and Kyra changed her name, moved to Santa Fe, and sells dry ice.

My husband and I were living in Washington, D.C., far from Beverly Hills. Our life was a series of dinners with journalists debating deficits and nuclear proliferation over cheese soufflé and artichokes vinaigrette. I would hear fleeting bits about what Dax was up to from the
Hollywood Reporter
. A Molière play here, a zombie movie there. Just scraping his nails on the roof of fame. I heard he was starring in a TV crime show, playing a hard-ass cop from Baltimore.