Spelling It Like It Is (11 page)

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.

APPARENTLY, 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

C
raft 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 Wearstler, 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.

Back in the greenroom, Darren was on cloud nine. He was so happy and proud. “This is such a great day,” he said. I couldn’t burst his bubble. (Or his papier-mâché balloon.) But I was so bummed.

AFTER MY DISAPPOINTING encounter with Martha, my desire to be the new, modern Martha Stewart surged. Who could relate to this woman? Sure, her work was great. But people want projects they can actually execute. They want to connect with the host. They want to know it’s okay to make mistakes. I burn things. I spill things. But then I find ways to recover and make it work. Martha Stewart, with her cold, relentless perfection, is a dying breed. Who wants that? Especially in a show about the
hearth
, for God’s sake! When I went to pitch at TLC, I was hoping (like many others, I’m sure) to create a show that would jump-start my “move over, Martha” campaign.

I told TLC that I wanted to do a broad lifestyle show. I cook, I bake, I decorate, I build, I craft, I design. And I love talking with women about all that. And relationships and mothering. I had the broad idea that I could do a show called something like
At Home with Tori
, where we did different segments in different rooms of my house. (Except not in Malibu, where I was living when I went in for the meeting. A single cameraman could hardly have fit in Malibu.)

TLC seemed particularly interested in my crafting. They were obsessed with a turkey costume I’d made for Hattie for Halloween and posted on my blog,
ediTORIal
. They came back to us saying that they were already developing a crafting show and that they thought I’d be the perfect host.
Craft Wars
, as it was to be called, would be produced by Super Delicious, the same company that did
Cupcake Wars
for the Food Network.

I told them that I didn’t want to be a competition-show host like Ryan Seacrest on
Idol
. I wanted them to know how closely I worked with World of Wonder on
Tori & Dean
. I wasn’t just an executive producer in name. I was hands-on. I had lots of ideas for how the show could work. TLC made it clear up front that the show was already pretty developed, so I asked to meet with Super Delicious to make sure my “executive producer” title wasn’t a vanity thing.