The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (24 page)

“Um, let’s see, well that . . . um . . . That I was dancing all sexy and stuff on more than one occasion,” I answered sheepishly.

“Thank you,” he said, and it went like this for about 30 minutes with me peeling off my indiscretions. I tried not to make eye contact with Parker, but when I would get a glimpse I could see the steam shooting from his ruby-red ears.

Then in true Scientology fashion, the tables were turned. Now it was Parker’s turn to answer the two questions. I’d just assumed he had been all Goody Two-shoes while I was loving up Mr. Travolta, and because I knew I was the culprit I hadn’t given much thought to what he might have been up to.

Again, only this time addressed to Parker, “What have you done?”

Blah, blah, blah, blah, er, a um, blah, er, um, a blah, blah, my ears perked up, um and blah, blah. Confessionals are confidential, so what he said is of little importance in this story. But I can tell you, he was not up to what I was. His indiscretions were different from mine, but I was so pissed off that I wanted to leap across the desk and strangle him. But then why wouldn’t I? So far I’d only confessed the small stuff.

Blah, blah, er, um, I’m so sorry, but blah, blah.

Ah hah!
I thought, I’m definitely going to divorce him!

I’ve never been such a good listener in my life. I clung to every sordid detail as it justified an imminent split.

“What have you withheld?” asked the minister.

“Oh, this ought to be good!” I yelled.

“Kirstie, you’re not allowed to comment during Parker’s confessional,” the minister said.

“Allowed?!” I screamed. “He’s my fucking husband. I’ll say whatever I want!!” I protested.

“You’ll have your turn to comment when we come back around to you,” the minister replied.

Oh shit! Back around to me? You mean we keep going back and forth in this “he said, she said” until we actually come clean? Oh, for fuck’s sake, this is the meanest, dumbest religion on earth,
I thought. I began mentally lining up the order of the next stuff I was going to have to tell, in order of the easiest to the big babonza: “I want a divorce so I can marry Travolta.” I became quiet as a church mouse as I tried to contain my overwhelming urge to run next door and sign up at the Lutheran church.

It took us three days, back and forth, back and forth, spewing our guts out to come fully clean of
all
our indiscretions. We had dated two years before we were married and had been married for six, so we’d both racked up all sorts of crazy shit. Most of it was fairly innocuous, but we also both had some doozies.

A funny thing happens to people when they come clean with each other. Along the journey of the confessional, it went from grounds for murder to
I’m gonna kick the fuck outta you when we get outta here
, to
God, I’m so sorry I betrayed you
, to
Oh, so you’re not so innocent either, mister
, to
Wow, I respect you for having the balls to tell me that
, to
I sorta remember why I married you, we’re both a couple of louses
, to
I’m deeply sorry for hurting you
, to
I sorta love you
, to
What the hell was I thinking? I’m still madly in love with you!

Not all Scientology confessionals have this end result, and it is not the end purpose. It’s a huge achievement for all involved if it ends in rehabilitating a marriage to the point of staying together, but the end result is actually when the two people are in good affinity, reality, and communication with each other so that they can sanely discuss their future, together or apart.

I made my decision at the end of the confessional, and it was to salvage my marriage and continue on with my husband.

I called John and told him. He respected our decision. I’d like to say, as it would make my life seem more righteous and Candy Land–like, that it was the end of yearning for John. It was not. Every incarnation possible occurred over a multitude of years. I was the bee to his honey and vice versa. It was nearly impossible, no matter how much I loved my husband, to not be madly in love with John. If brother-husbands had been an option, I would have opted.

Look Who’s Talking
became an enormous hit! It made $300 million and was the highest-grossing comedy of all time (at that time). John and I were the talk of the town, even the world.
Cheers
was number one on TV and
Look Who’s Talking
was number one at the box office, so of course
Look Who’s Talking Too
was imminent. The only way I can keep track of my crazy evolution with John is by viewing the timeline of
Look Who’s Talking
1, 2, and 3, ugh, only in the life of an actress would a love affair be traced via IMDb.

John and I were struggling with our newfound “friendship only” relationship. He could not hold the line of us not being together as a couple. I wasn’t great at it either, but on one particular occasion he was the absolute worst!

It was the Christmas after
Look Who’s Talking
had been released. We were all being “very ethical” and civil to one another in the same fashion that I’d been civil to one of Parker’s costar crushes when I had her to dinner to show Parker I was okay with her now. I made two pork chops for the three of us and drank half a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild before I set about interrogating her and scoffing at every word out of her mouth.

No, no, we were all good. John, Parker, and I were all very adult about everything. So we invited John to spend the holidays with us at our Encino house. John hadn’t pursued Kelly at this point because I think although she had divorced Carl/Kevin/Kenny, she was now engaged to Charlie Sheen. Anyway, all was going swimmingly, we hired a chef and dined like royalty. John and Parker smoked Cuban cigars on the porch as I decorated the house like Macy’s windows. Christmas Eve was skits, laughter, and singing Christmas carols around the piano, all very Norman Rockwellish. We actually were doing very well together, all three of us.

Then came Christmas morning, the time for gift giving. I don’t quite remember what Parker gave me, but for as long as I live I will recall what my good “friend” John gave me. He gave me a diamond-and-sapphire ring he’d brought from Singapore, a gorgeous dress, a check for $25,000 to keep or give to my favorite charity, a gray roan dressage jumping horse that was being shipped to our ranch in Oregon, and a telephone that had cameras in it. This was pre-computers, iPhones, cell phones, and Skype, but he had found somewhere in his journeys some futuristic contraption that I hooked half of to my house phone, he hooked the other half to his house phone, whereby every day when we spoke we could see each other on tiny screens. The invention was so cutting edge that one had to have a company to hook it all up and monitor the system. If I had been my husband I would have disemboweled John, right there on the spot in Macy’s window. If it wasn’t clear to Parker then that we all had a lot of work cut out for us, I don’t know what could have jogged him into reality.

A good two-year period transpired before John and I got fairly good at our attempts to “just be friends,” and even then they were fairly lame attempts. And yet we kept trying to be ethical.

Charlie and Kelly had broken off their engagement. I’m not sure if she returned her enormous bajillion-carat pink diamond. I’m not so sure I would have. John and I were having a conversation during the filming of
Look Who’s Talking Too
and he brought up Kelly. I can’t deny that although he wasn’t mine, and it looked as though he never would be, I wasn’t ready to let him go to anyone, let alone someone as gorgeous and remarkable as Kelly. It fueled the jealousy flame like a funeral pyre.

“Well,” I said, “she is very pretty,” in a weak, half-assed attempt. It’s all so occluded for me. I can’t remember the sequence precisely, but during the shooting of the movie I got pregnant . . . by Parker; jeez, I wasn’t that gonzo. And this sorta changed the whole profile. Instantly I began ignoring John and promoting Kelly. John was in shock because of my abrupt about-face. He was right, me being pregnant was not grounds to ignore him, almost shun him. But when those hormones and those baby dreams start surging through the core of your being, all flirtations go out the window, rightfully so. In my case all communication had flown out the window. The thought of being pregnant and even speaking with John was abhorrent to me. Even being close friends felt tainted. Parker and I were like magnets to each other, and I became consumed with becoming a mother.

John and I later talked, and I apologized for being so cold and heartless. He understood, and we got our first glimpse of what “friendship only” might feel like. And it felt good.

Within the first month of my pregnancy, John had bought me enough maternity clothes to last through ten pregnancies. He was so sweet to me. Of course I wasn’t showing yet, but I tried on the maternity clothes daily. It was a truly joyous time for Parker and me and also for John. We were forming a legitimate friendship, all three of us.

I got to know Kelly a little bit, without George or Charlie. I really liked her. And soon John began dating her for real.

I had a miscarriage three months into my pregnancy, so there was a brief time about six months after when I reconsidered divorce and going after John. But by then he was falling in love with Kelly, and I could see that even if I weren’t with Parker, that she was the better choice.

Kelly has this beautiful way about her. She is a nourisher. She loves John so thoroughly, and she is the kind of woman who has the patience to handle him. He is a very intense, powerful, headstrong person. So is she, but it never conflicts with John. John and I would have ended up in some sort of
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
drama, no doubt.

There were other differences between John and me that would have clashed. I’m a farmer. I get up at 6:00 a.m. or earlier and am in bed by 10:00 p.m. John is a vampire. He goes to bed around the time I wake up. He lives for the night. His passion is flying airplanes; I used to be terrified of flying, actually, up until six years ago. We both have nonstop careers, always in motion, always in different parts of the world. I would never be willing to sacrifice my career for a man. I’m a gypsy by nature and get uncomfortable being in one location too long. Someone in a relationship has to be willing to be the one who takes care of the other and make them their priority. Call me old-fashioned, I probably am, but when a woman marries a man as powerful as John, she must be the one who yields to and supports him. I’ve never seen any woman do it more beautifully than Kelly. It’s admirable. And she does this all while being one of the most powerful women I’ve met.

When I could clearly see this for myself, I urged John to marry her and not let her get away. There were a lot of men pursuing her. She’s Kelly Preston, for Christ’s sake. He was an idiot to not go in for the kill. I’m not saying he wasn’t already intending to do it, but he was moving too slowly, even for me, so she was certainly ready to tell him to take a hike if he wasn’t ready to take the lead.

Months passed, and I hadn’t spoken to John. Then they called me from Paris. “We’re married!!” they screamed.

“Oh, my god, congratulations!” I screamed back.

I was genuinely happy for them, joyous in fact. But regretfully, I was also the teeeeeniest bit envious. I also, hideous as it may seem, had thoughts like,
Well, neither of us has kids, so . . .

We hung out together from time to time, but mostly went on about our lives. John and Kelly bought a house in Maine on the same island where Parker and I had a house. There were occasional light flirtations between John and me, but they were mostly just dying habits.

Then Parker and I adopted True, and John and Kelly had Jett.

When John and I did
Look Who’s Talking Now
, we had our babies on the set. John and I were doing a scene where I was dressed in an elf costume because in the script, he wasn’t cutting it as a full-time commercial pilot so I had to take on a part-time job. We were shuckin’ and jivin’ and doing our John-and-Kirstie thing between takes. Kelly was on the sideline holding Jett and watching.

When we broke for lunch, I was holding True in my arms. She was holding Jett in her arms. We were filming in a department store, and Kelly and I were also looking at some clothes on a rack. We were alone, no John, no Parker. She looked right at me and sweetly said, “Are you flirting with my husband?”

This was my “come to Jesus” moment. Shyly and almost inaudibly I whispered, “Yeahhhh . . . I think I sorta am. I’ll knock it off.”

She smiled that beautiful smile of hers and said, “Okay, good.”

I’ve been put in my place several times in my life, rightfully so, but this was the sweetest, most gentle ass-whooping I’ve ever endured. I took it seriously, and it hit home like a ton of bricks falling on my out-of-line head.

I cannot tell you the impact it had on my life. It made me
look
at my marriage. It forced me to inspect why I
was
still married if I was going to fall in love with other men or flirt chronically. She had posed a very important question without actually asking it:
What the hell was wrong with me?

And also, possibly,
What the hell was wrong with my marriage?

If I’d come clean, squeaky clean, with my husband, which I always did, what was there about that relationship that was unfulfilling? I stopped looking at me and started looking at us. We were both fine people, individually, but how were we really collectively?

Kelly herself is no saint, believe me, but I didn’t need a saint. I needed a friend. And that was the day we became friends.

We raised our kids and did our jobs and stayed married. John and Kelly, Parker and I. In 1997 I decided I wanted a divorce, partially for the right reasons and partially for the wrong ones. John and now Kelly were there for me.

I still knew John a lot better than I knew Kelly. At one point in their marriage, probably around 2003, they went through a little rough patch. That’s when I got to really know Kelly. I was put in the position to test my “friendship” with John—my “real” friendship. My decision was to help her. To help them. To do everything in my power to help them build an even stronger marriage. This is when I realized there were no more blurred lines. My destiny was to be his best friend.