The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (25 page)

Kelly asked me to be her best friend. I’d never been asked that before. It was so sweet—so “Kelly.” I accepted!

Wow, what a bonus I got by accepting that proposal. Now I have two best friends. Friends who would go to war for me and vice versa.

Courageous, hilarious, crazy-assed, warm, generous, brave best friends.

We’ve been through heaven and hell together. The darkest hours and the brightest days imaginable. They have changed my life forever, for the better.

John was the love of my life. Both Kelly and John know the new love of my life is waiting in the wings. And I agree.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself . . . You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

—KAHLIL GIBRAN

The Art of
True Love

I
WAS 39 years old. I’d bought into the Hollywood myth that all those actresses who were older than I were belting out multiple babies by conceiving the old-fashioned way. Guess I learned the hard way—the painful way that if you want to have children, your mid-to-late thirties is the cutoff time to conceive the old-fashioned way, for the most part.

This was the Kansas girl, the babysitting, nannying lover of babies and kids. The girl who wanted four boys. The one with the plans by 33 to have two biological children, then adopt two children.

As I’ve said before, I got pregnant during
Look Who’s Talking Too
. Parker and I were both usually on opposite coasts, but we were used to that. He came to visit in Canada during shooting, and we had sex one night. I remember it well because, call me nuts, but I knew the instant we were finished I was pregnant. It was true. Four weeks into filming my second film about my talking baby, I was pregnant.

Why I hadn’t tried to get pregnant during my twenties or early thirties remains a confusion to me. But I was pregnant, and I was ecstatic. So was Parker.

It seemed too good to be true. Thirty-nine years old, the number one TV show on the air, the number one comedy in history at the box office. Mid-filming the next blockbuster and a new baby on the way. I loved my husband madly, and
Cheers
welcomed their actresses to have babies during shooting. Rhea had three children while shooting
Cheers
. They just “write it in” to the story line—wow! I was on top of the world!

All the people who worked for me were people I loved. Jim was my assistant. One of my relatives worked for me at my house, another relative was caretaker at our Oregon ranch, and my other assistant LeeAnn was by my side.

John was so happy, and he would bring maternity clothes and gifts to the set every day.

I craved only two things, caviar and spinach. I was a little nauseated, but not barf-every-morning sick. I was very sleepy, but it was such a blissful sleepy. I was so happy, the world seemed as close to perfect as possible.

When I finished filming
Look Who’s Talking Too
, I spent a month in Maine with Parker, dreaming of how our new child would someday run through the grand, turn-of-the-century 22-bedroom house that Mainers refer to as a “cottage.” It’s funny how you have a kid’s entire future planned out for them before they have even hatched. This home was heavenly. Parker and I had owned it for several years and had hundreds of friends and their children run the halls of the cottage that sits on the rocky shores of Islesboro, Maine. But this time, visions of OUR child danced in our heads.

That month went by quickly as I planned the future of my new child. We returned to LA to begin filming
Cheers
. Everyone on the set was ecstatic for me; they all had kids, except for Woody. They were so excited and set about babying me. I was starting to show a tad bit, a little chub around the waistline, which the tabloids immediately picked up on. And thus began my 21-year “fat” taunting by the rag mags.

“Kirstie Alley is getting fat and NBC execs are worried.” The NBC execs knew I was pregnant and weren’t getting worried. Of course, I didn’t spill the beans to the press that I was pregnant; it was too early to go public. After all, I was 39 years old, and “things” can happen in the first trimester. Although they were cruel, I really didn’t care much about the articles, as I was soon to be a new mother.

One day a month later, at a routine visit to the obstetrician he looked concerned during a sonogram. “Kirstie, honey, your baby’s heartbeat has ceased. The baby is dead,” he gently said. I lay there silent, which was odd for me, and tried to take it in.

“What happened, how could this happen? Are you sure?” I pleaded.

“It’s called a spontaneous abortion. We’ll do tests to see what occurred, but see here on the sonogram, this is your baby and there is no heartbeat.” And yes, I could see there on the sonogram there was no heartbeat, and for a moment there I’m sure I had no heartbeat.

Parker was not in LA. He had gone to Oregon because the girlfriend of my relative, the caretaker in Oregon, had died in a car wreck two days prior. He had gone to help my relative and his girlfriend’s two teenage daughters with funeral arrangements and such.

I went outside the Beverly Hills doctor’s office after being told that my next step was to wait for the child to come out on its own or go into the hospital on Monday for a D&C. I sat on the bus stop bench. I was dazed, alone, and broken. I sat there for a few hours, luckily not accompanied by the paparazzi.

After the baby had not come out on its own, I went into the hospital for a “routine” D&C, although nothing about it felt routine to me. I’d lost my baby and lost the reality of its existence and the dream of its future. Little did I know I was about to lose far more.

Remember my beloved, trusted relatives who were part of my glorious team? Well, it turns out that my house was actually filled with chaos and deceit. My trusted sidekick, a female relative—I’ll spare her daughter by not publishing her name—had in fact been embezzling money from me over the years. When confronted, she fled back to Kansas to “sell her things and pay me back.” Instead of doing that, she hired an attorney to ensure I would not extradite her to California to press charges. If I had wanted to press charges I would have pressed them weeks prior to her departure to Kansas. But being a die-hard Scientologist, I believe you allow people to repent and make amends. She repented all over the place, sobbing and voicing her deepest apologies and shame for betraying me. I believed it all and yes, yes, I told her, “Go back to Kansas and sell your things, pay me back, and let’s get on with the business of being friends . . . family.”

She not only hired an attorney and lied about her treatment as my assistant/housekeeper/cousin/friend, but continued to charge money on my credit cards, and demanded I return her TV set and the jewelry she had left behind. Meanwhile her boyfriend, the “animal guy” who also lived at our LA house, admitted doing drugs in the house for quite a while and neglecting the animals while I’d been filming in Canada, resulting in the death of a couple of them.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Oregon, Parker found out that my other relative and his now-dead girlfriend (who ran her car off a bridge because she was drunk and high) had been in fact selling crack from our 400-acre Oregon sanctuary. All this bullshit had been right under my nose for at least two years. I’d been so happy and so busy working that it never dawned on me that anything was going on, that anyone, especially my own family, was betraying me.

But there I was, without my baby, without my husband, without my relatives, without a clue how I could sort it all out. So I turned to my
Cheers
family, especially Rhea, Jimmy, and Ted. They were of great help. I also turned to other women who had had miscarriages, including my sister, who lost a baby two days before her due date.

I stopped feeling sorry for myself and went about the business of sorting my life out. Again! I left relative A in Kansas and sent her the TV. Then I made the choice to cut her from my life. I got a new assistant. I fired the animal guy and hired a new one. I sent relative B to a rehab, after buying him a truck that he would later repay me for. That was 21 years ago. Hopefully he’s drug-free, as I definitely haven’t seen a penny of the payback. He’s actually a good guy, but it seems without much sense of responsibility. I got my life in order. Again!

Then one day on the set of
Cheers
, about six months down the road when all seemed to be going swimmingly and I was trying for another pregnancy, I got some more crushing news. After multiple tests, I learned that I was in early menopause, no longer making eggs. At the tender age of 40, I was no longer fertile.

Oh lord oh lord oh lord! What the fuck?! This was the straw that broke my broken heart in two!

I began sobbing in Rebecca Howe’s office on the
Cheers
set. I fell apart. Now, if you’ve ever seen a sitcom, the rooms only have three walls. The front side of each room is open to the audience who attend the live performance each week.

So there I was, hiding and sobbing in plain sight. It was a rehearsal day, so thank god the audience wasn’t there. I was torn apart, I thought I’d seen my darkest months. Jeez! This was really fucked up! I’ll never forget Jimmy Burrows that day. He hugged me—and he’s not a big hugger—and said, “Oh honey, that sucks. That’s so fucked up.” That is exactly what you want to hear! No one wants to hear “You’ll be fine, you’ll be okay, it will pass!” He said the exact right words. It did suck! It was fucked up! I wasn’t fine, and I wasn’t okay, and it would never pass!

When I cry, I cry hard and loud and as if I’m dying. Then in about five minutes I stop. I get a grip on myself. I know that the only way to survive life is to get hold of yourself and quickly make a new plan. Within an hour I had a new plan. My original plan was to have two children, then adopt two children. By lunchtime I’d decided to reverse it. I’d adopt a child and meanwhile I’ll sort out this fertility shit, then I’ll have a baby. I thought it was an excellent plan, so I set about adopting a child.

The adoption laws in California were a recipe for disaster. Private adoption did not exist in hippieville (California). In the last six months of the birth mother’s pregnancy she was allowed to live with you! Can you imagine a birth mother knowing who you are and living in your house for six months prior to giving birth? All while maintaining the right to
not
give up the baby after she delivers? I do sympathize and respect mothers who opt for adoption instead of abortion, but can you imagine the blackmail position this would put celebrity parents in for the rest of their lives? Especially the period from birth until the final sign-off, which was something like six months? You could just see it: “I need a new car. Hope I don’t have to change my mind.” “I’ll go to the
Enquirer
and tell them you fed me bread and water if you don’t give me more money.” God! We had heard enough horror adoption stories by the time we started seriously pursuing it. We were terrified and paranoid, apparently rightfully so.

We had places in Oregon and Maine. The adoption laws in Maine were sane. Private adoption was legal, for both sides. We didn’t know the mother, and she didn’t know us. We took residency in Maine and began spending months at a time there. We got driver’s licenses and voted there. We established legal residency in Maine. A friend of a friend of a friend knew this person “Mary.” She was very adept at this business of adoption.

Meanwhile, back in California, I was having fertilization work done. I was being tested for everything, and my body was going cuckoo. I would be in full-blown menopause one month, then producing eggs and estrogen the next—without fertility drugs. It felt like my body was a car, and when I hit the gas in neutral it would rev up but never slip into drive. I kept lamenting to my specialist, “I’m forty years old! Tons of women older than I am have kids every day! Twins even!” This was around 1991, and not as much was known about fertility. But my doctor laughed. I could have babies too if I visited the “egg man.” What?! Kookookachoo, I am the walrus—what egg man?

“Dr. Sawyer,” my doctor said. “He’s the egg donor specialist.”

I was barely able to utter the words “I can’t have children” and certainly not ready to throw in the uterus and admit “I’ve waited too long,” so “Definitely! I want to meet the egg man.”

“Kirstie,” my ob-gyn said, “Dr. Sawyer is the reason it appears that all these actresses older than you ‘easily’ get pregnant and, in particular, have twins. But the rate of birth defects, including Down syndrome, is seventy percent higher in women over thirty-seven.”

Well, shut my mouth!
Why didn’t I know this? Why had I assumed I could easily conceive into my forties? And what about those women in the
Star
who live in Bolivia and have babies in their fifties, even sixties? Suddenly the tabloids were my reference materials. Jeez! I was confused more than ever.
Get thee to the egg man.

I did go see the egg man, and I had lots more tests. I was indeed in full-blown menopause at the young age of 40. It’s fairly rare, but it does happen to the unlucky idiots who think they can conceive when they’re 48. I knew it was true! My mother had friends who had babies at 48, 49, and even 52. What about THOSE women??? They sure as hell weren’t out shopping at the local egg farm. And even my gyno admitted that some women do get pregnant naturally in their forties, occasionally in their early fifties, but never women who have gone into menopause.

I was ready to choke myself out. Had my drug use made me prone to early menopause? Wasn’t it odd that three months after I had surgery for my miscarriage I went into menopause, for Christ’s sake? Had they screwed up? Had they removed more than the dead baby? Perforated me, implanted me with an alien baby eater—jeez! I was going insane!

The egg man was cool. Without giving names of his celebrity clients, he made it clear that he’d had only two nonceleb clients over age 42 who conceived without egg donors. And they conceived with in vitro. I tried artificial insemination, the turkey baster technique. I shot my ass with hormones until the day of. But it didn’t work. This wasn’t shocking, since the odds of IUI success are like 10 percent. I was lost. I needed divine intervention. And then, BAM! I remembered something. I remembered all those babies I babysat for from age eight until I was 25. I recalled how I would pretend the babies were mine. The best thing I remembered was how much I loved them. How happy they made me and vice versa. None of them came out of my body, yet I loved them like they were mine.