Spelling It Like It Is (17 page)

I asked, “How many kids am I going to have?”

She said, “Three.”

I said, “I’m going to be pregnant?”

“By November of next year you’ll have your third child. After that you and your husband will go your separate ways.”

Dean’s friend from his motorcycle world had a sex tape of us and was threatening to sell it. The charming couple at the diner hadn’t panned out as the good omen I’d hoped for. My husband had just re-proposed to me and I’d said yes, but were we trying to salvage something that was already doomed? This prediction seemed like a nail in the coffin. The next day when we headed back to L.A. to plan our vow renewal, my head and heart were struggling with doubt.

TWO WEEKS LATER, it was time to film the vow renewal. As the moment approached, I didn’t focus on Dean, or our relationship, or possibly scrambling to make everything right before we renewed our commitment. Instead I shifted into planning mode. It was so much easier to plan the renewal than to work on the relationship.

Production rented a house for us in the Hollywood Hills with a beautiful sunset view looking out over L.A. For the ceremony, Dean and I would stand out on a stone terrace, overlooking the view. Since we’d gotten married on the beach in Fiji, we painted a sandbox a canary yellow, filled it with sand and shells, and put it on the deck so Dean and I could stand in it, with the kids at our sides, to renew our vows.

As always, I got so caught up in the logistics, it was hard for me to make it on time to the actual event. When I was supposed to be getting my hair and makeup done, I was still busy arranging books and jars of flowers on a side table. James, who was helping me, kept saying, “Just go!” But I couldn’t delegate. I didn’t trust anyone else to do it my way. Mehran always says that I deal with priority number eleven before I tackle number one or two. (In this case, number one: being emotionally invested in ceremony; number two: showing up on time.)

Stella walked me down the aisle, to a song Dean and I made together, “Look How Far We’ve Come.” Liam and Dean were waiting for us in the sandbox with all friends and family surrounding them. My mother was there. My brother and his wife had flown in for the occasion. We’d also flown Patsy in. I felt nervous and guilty. People had traveled to witness what should have been a meaningful event.

We got in position. I looked at Mario, our camera guy, and mouthed, “How’s the light?” He peered around the camera, grimaced a little, and waggled his hand to say “so-so.” I had taken too long, and the sun had already set. That glorious sunset was the whole reason we had rented the house. It would have looked so beautiful on camera. At least the vintage books were perfectly piled on the coffee tables and the vases of yellow dahlias on all the tables were just so.

Dean and I stood side by side. I was wearing super-high Valentino heels and had to stand with my toes clenched so I wouldn’t fall over in the sandbox.

Reverend Lynn, who had done my beloved pug Mimi’s funeral, was officiating. In Fiji, we had read our entire wedding ceremony from leather-bound books. Now we reenacted the exact ceremony. When we got married, I had been barefoot. This time, throughout the ceremony, I worried about the sand damaging the Valentinos.

During the vows, Liam kept trying to get Dean’s attention. Dean kept putting him off. Finally Liam said, “Dad!” We saw that his pants had fallen down to his ankles. We paused the ceremony while Dean pulled Liam’s pants up and of course I had to make the obvious joke about the McDermott boys not being able to keep their pants on.

Half in the moment, half imagining the scene from a director’s perspective, the event wasn’t magical or candid for me. As I stood looking at Dean, I checked with Mario: “Can you get both of us in the shot or should I move to the left?”

That was the romantic grand finale for season five.

IN THE SUMMER before the sixth season began, Dean decided to go dirt bike riding. At that point we still lived in Encino. Dean and two friends rented dirt bikes and went to ride them in the Malibu mountains. I was at the ear, nose, and throat doctor with a sinus infection when my phone rang. I was in with the doctor so I didn’t pick up, but I glanced at the phone and saw that the caller was “babe.” Dean was calling. My phone never rings. All my friends (and Dean) know that I always text.

Then a new text popped up on my phone. It was from Dean’s number, but Miles, an old friend of Dean’s who was visiting from Canada, had typed it. It said, “
Hey T it’s Miles. I’m at the ER with Dean. Please give me a call on Dean’s phone ASAP
.”

I was with my assistant Dana. When I read the text, I turned to her and said, “Ugh. Dean got into another fucking accident. I know exactly what this call’s going to be. I don’t even want to deal with this right now. I’ll call him back when the doctor’s done.” I figured it was another road scrape, or they were stitching him up, and I was over it. I’d told him a million times. He did these super-dangerous sports, and this was his third accident. I was sick of this shit. I didn’t want to call him back, but after about half an hour I finally did.

“Is he okay?” I asked when Miles picked up my call.

He was calm. He said, “They’re just looking at his back right now to see if his back is okay.”

I said, “Okay, let me know how it is. When will you guys be back?”

He said, “I think you should come here.”

Then I started to get worried. I said, “Why, is he okay?”

He said, “They’re just checking out his back. But you should come.” He was insistent enough that I drove straight there.

When I walked into the hospital, which was in Tarzana, Miles came to meet me. He said, “I didn’t want to freak you out on the phone. He’s in the ICU.”

Dean’s lung had collapsed. He had an obtrusion on his hip with stuff embedded in it. I walked into the room. He had a tube running into his chest and a breathing mask. There was blood everywhere. He looked really fucked up. But I was so angry with him for doing this to himself, to me, and to the kids that when I walked into that room I felt nothing.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He said, “I’m okay, babe.”

I just stood there. I knew I should nurture him, but I didn’t really want to.

He was dazed from the medication, but he looked up at me and said, “I’m so sorry.”

I said, “It’s okay. Just get better.”

He said, “I promise you I am never, ever going to ride again. In fact, I’m going to sell all my bikes.” I’d believe it when I saw it.

THE NEXT DAY I got the kids ready to go see Dean. Liam, who was three, was very attached to Dean. Having him gone overnight was a big deal to him. When I’d explained that Daddy was in a motorcycle accident, Liam had begged to visit him.

There were daisies growing in front of our house. On our way to the car, the kids each picked a bunch to give their father.

We arrived at the ICU and were walking down the hallway when a nurse came up to us. She said, “I’m sorry, but there are no children allowed in the intensive care unit.”

At the time, Liam was a little mixed up about the familial relationships in his life. He didn’t know if I was Dean’s wife or sister. He always got those titles wrong. Now, when the woman told us the kids couldn’t visit Dean, Liam lost it. He dropped to his knees, threw his flowers on the ground, and wailed, “Nooooooo!”

Fists clenched in the air, tears pouring down his cheeks, he screamed, “That’s my son in there. I’m his wife!”

It was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. The nurse started smiling. She looked around and then said, “Okay, okay, come this way. Can you keep it to thirty minutes?”

I said, “Of course. We’ll make sure nobody knows we’re here.” She ushered us in.

Later, I found out exactly what had happened to Dean. He and his friends were on a trail, making their way up to a place where people ride their dirt bikes. They were only going five miles an hour. He hadn’t even started the dangerous part yet. Then he hit a rock, flipped the bike, and landed on a sharp rock that had collapsed his lung.

To me this accident, like the others before it, was a sign. He wasn’t supposed to be doing this. Motorcycle, dirt bike, Big Wheel—I didn’t care what he was riding. He kept having accidents.

Dean was in the ICU for ten days. He recovered, but we never had it out. I wanted to believe what he’d told me in the hospital. I felt bad that it had come to this, but I was glad that he now saw things my way.

Then, as season six got under way, Dean continued to ride his bikes. He claimed that he hadn’t said, “I’ll never ride again.” Instead, he insisted he’d said, “I’m so sorry. I will never
race
again.” It made no sense. He hadn’t been racing when the accident happened. I was angry and disappointed.

FOR THE YEAR after that, when I was pregnant with Hattie, things hadn’t been so bad. My anger had faded gradually, and we settled back into our marriage.

The same night I found out that our show had been canceled, the whole family came to visit. Liam and Stella walked in and immediately located the newest sweets I’d been given. Hattie bounced for two straight hours of pure joy in the jumper Dean set up in the doorway to my bathroom.

With a lollipop in her mouth, Stella climbed up on my bed and sat facing me.

“Mama,” she said, “are you gonna make it to my birthday party?”

What? This question caught me off guard. Stella’s party was a week away—a lifetime in the mind of an about-to-be-four-year-old. Was she already anticipating the disappointment she would feel when I wasn’t there? This was the second blow to my heart that day, and it hurt far more than the cancellation. In my career I’d had to start over again countless times. I knew it could be done. But I had no idea whether my daughter would be forever scarred by this experience.

I wanted to be honest with Stella. After I swallowed the lump in my throat I said, “I have to ask the doctor, but probably not.” I explained the reasons, in a way I thought she would understand, but she looked crushed. Then I said, “After the party, Daddy will bring you here, and we’ll sneak you in to spend the night with Mommy.”

“Yay!” Stella said. And just like that, the tremor left her lip and my four-year-old was back.

It was Tuesday night. This was the night Dean and I had deemed our weekly date night. The Guncles would stay at our house with the kids. We’d splurge and order two steaks from the hospital dinner menu. Dean would crawl into bed with me and we’d watch a movie on Netflix as we ate our steak dinner.

Our nanny, Paola, took the kids home, and Dean and I were alone. The news of the day had worn on me. I watched my husband as he unpacked clean clothes, snacks, and magazines for me. Day after day, he had dropped everything to be there for me and to take care of the kids, driving back and forth to see me and always coming in with a smile.

Two years earlier, Dean and I had gone through one very hard year. After that, things got better, our wounds had healed, but something had changed. Right then I realized that whatever scars had remained from my past conflicts with Dean were completely gone. His support during my hardest days showed me who he was and what we had. My husband was here with me. He was fully present. His strength showed me that we’d get through this together. It was really sexy.

I had married my soul mate and the man of my dreams. In the past years life had moved so fast that we’d both stopped finding moments to enjoy each other. I had to take responsibility for my part in this. Before this pregnancy had knocked me flat, I’d spent every waking moment moving full speed ahead. Between work, ideas, calls, meetings, and kids, there was no room left for Dean or for myself. My relationship with Dean had once been at the top of my priority list, but while his love for me had stayed constant, I’d put Dean on the back burner. When was the last time I’d given him a moment of my attention? I was stretched so thin that I felt resentful about giving time and energy to someone else. At night, when we crawled into bed, I wanted to just shut it all off.

Stuck in a hospital bed, work was barely possible. I could take calls, make decisions, design, and blog, but there was no more running from meeting to photo op to personal appearance. I was forced to rest. And the longer I lay there the more it put everything into perspective. I’d focused so much energy on work, and for what? The show was over. I should have been prioritizing my relationship the whole time.

There was a wall between us, and I’d put it there. That night, after the cancellation and the heartbreak of Stella’s disappointment, I looked at Dean and that wall came crashing down. Behind it I saw him. Waiting there for me with open arms. It was Dean. The man whom I had spotted for the first time six years earlier in Ottawa on that Lifetime movie set. The lines of life and kids cradled the corners of his eyes, but it was the same handsome man whom, on a beach in Fiji with those who would judge us left miles away, I had vowed to love forever. It was the same man who, three times now, had cradled the warm bundle of a life we had created and placed it in my arms as I lay on the OR table trembling from utter amazement. He had given me love. He had given me life. He had stood by me, tall and strong, no matter how many times I ran away within myself. And now he was standing by me in sickness and in health. A fourth-anniversary vow renewal that had been carefully produced for a TV show wasn’t what I needed to remind me how much I loved my husband. It took my being holed up in a hospital, flat on my back, alone most of the time, without any animals or work to distract me, to realize that Dean was my everything. Our love was so real and true—it would see me through everything else. I had fallen in love with my husband all over again.

Breaking News! Bigfoot Found!

I
’d been in the hospital for a month, and I hadn’t had a bleed the whole time. My fear that I would lose the baby was slowly dissipating, and I was feeling good. Also, things were happening with a new TV show I wanted to do. I’d had the idea a while back. It came from being involved in social media and meeting so many moms. I kept running into mompreneurs—these full-on carpool moms who at night, after their husbands went to sleep, were running at-home companies. The idea for the show was that I’d host a weekly mompreneur club. We’d meet to discuss our businesses and personal lives, and then the show would follow the other four moms like a smart and real
Housewives
. I’d pitched the show to a production company, Relativity. They liked it, but the right network wasn’t obvious to any of us. Then Nickelodeon launched NickMom TV. From ten to midnight every night, Nickelodeon was now scheduling mom-oriented programs anchored by a talk show called
Parental Discretion,
hosted by Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, author of
Sippy Cups Are Not for Chardonnay
. They also had mom stand-up comedy and
Mom Friends Forever
, a reality show following two best friends who now had kids. I thought
Mompreneurs
would fit right into their lineup. I couldn’t exactly trot out of the hospital to a pitch meeting, but Relativity was going to Nickelodeon to pitch several shows. When it came time to talk about
Mompreneurs
, they would patch me in.