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  We took a red-eye home and landed at 4:30 in the morning. A few hours later Dr. J sent me in for a mammogram. The doctor immediately saw that it was just a mass. (If the tabloids had known, they would have said, “Too-thin Tori Has Something Fatty—a Mass.”) He showed me another one on the other side. He didn’t even have to biopsy it. Dean was right. It was nothing. So what if I had real reason to be afraid this time? It was a fight I was happy to lose.

  I had promised myself that no matter what the diagnosis was, my lump had changed me. I was a new person. A person who lived life to the fullest. A girl who took life by the balls. The irony in the matter is that if my harmless little lump had actually been cancer, I probably would have experienced a radical shift in the way I faced the world, but it would have been too late. As soon as I found out that I was okay, I went on with my life as it was, irrational fears and all. I didn’t change. Not one bit. Isn’t that the way it always goes?

  Baby Steps

  Even if I didn’t change my life radically after the scary lump, there was one resolution I made. Actually, it was a notion that was always at the edge of my thoughts, but one that I kept pushing aside, avoiding confrontation as always. Still, if I was going to be honest with myself about what I wanted and needed in my life, there was one thing I knew for sure: I wanted my mother and my children to see each other.

  Stella had started saying her first words. Back in May, just before her first birthday, she was sitting in the living room of our old house when she looked up and said, “Mimi, Mimi, Mimi!”

  Stella and Mimi La Rue’s lives only overlapped for a week, and I don’t talk about Mimi to the children. I think about her every day, but I don’t walk around saying her name. But when Mimi died, a dog psychic told me that she and Stella were connected. She said, “You’ll see, when Stella can speak, she’ll know who Mimi is.”

  I said, “Patsy, did you hear that?”

  Patsy said, “Mm-hmm. I heard it.”

  We have a painting of a pug up on the wall. I carried Stella over to it and showed it to her. She pointed at the dog and said, “Mimi.”

  Liam was growing up fast too. In September Liam, now two and a half, started going to preschool for three hours, three mornings a week, at the same school where we’d been doing Mommy & Me classes for the past year. Like any mom, I was nervous about leaving him alone at school. He was still so little! The school geared us up for the transition. They told us it was going to be a hard couple of weeks, but that our children would be fine if we “transitioned” them gently. We’d leave them for a little longer every day until they were ready to stay without us for the whole morning. The word transitioning made me shudder. It sounded too much like the forced child-to-alien transformation in a sci-fi flick.

  Nonetheless, on the first day of school, after about an hour, I told Liam I was going to be gone for a bit. He said, “Okay, bye, Mommy.” I stepped out of the room and lingered in the hall with several other mommies. I kept peeking back into the schoolroom, but Liam was always busy playing. I asked the teacher if I should come back in, but she said he was doing fine. For those three hours I waited to see when he would miss me. I desperately waited for the tears, for the teacher to rush out and tell me to come back in because he needed his mommy. I heard other kids crying for their parents, but nothing from my boy. They said that the transition would be harder for the parents than the kids. It was! Those were the longest three hours of my life. Where was the attachment? Where were the tears? He never seemed to notice I was gone.

  Finally, when school was over, I went to the main yard. The kids trotted out with their backpacks, Liam last of all. When he finally came running toward me with his little backpack, he looked different. He wasn’t my baby anymore. He was a schoolkid.

  The next day when I walked him to the room, as soon as we entered he said, “Bye, Mama,” and ran off to play with his friends. The teacher smiled and said, “This is good.” I returned her smile and walked out, but if this was good, why did I feel so bad? As soon as I was out the door I burst into tears. So much for Liam’s separation anxiety. He was already separated. I was the one who was having a tough time separating.

  I stayed in the schoolyard the whole day to see if he needed me, half hoping he would, but he didn’t. When all the kids came running out with their backpacks on, I knelt down with arms outstretched, but there was no Liam. A little nervous, I went into the classroom. There he was, still playing. The teacher said he didn’t want to leave. I said, “Hi, buddy.”

  “Hi, Mama.”

  “School’s over, you want to go home?”

  “Sure, Mama.”

  And that was it. From then on I went home or to run errands between dropping him off and picking him up. The house felt strangely empty. I had forgotten what it was like to be in a house without Liam. But this was it. For the next eighteen years. During the weekdays my life at home would not include Liam.

  Every milestone that Liam passed made me think of my mother. She hadn’t laid eyes on Liam since a month before he turned one. She’d never met Stella. Our always-difficult relationship had been aggravated by my books, then her various statements. I’d always felt like I could ignore any and all of our conflict for the sake of Liam and Stella and the relationship I’ve always wanted them to have with my mother. My mother was their only grandparent, and I knew she was capable of being a loving part of their lives. I wanted them to know her.

  Then, that September, I found out my mother was having major surgery on her neck and spine. I couldn’t help worrying that something might happen to her during surgery. She hadn’t met Stella. Suddenly I felt how much I wanted them to see each other. So I emailed her to see if she could see the kids before her surgery. She happily agreed and we set it up. Our babysitter, Paola, took the kids. I didn’t plan to go and I never said that I was coming. But in her emails, when she wrote “looking forward to seeing you and the kids,” I wondered if she wanted and expected to see me. Was this her way of reaching out? I didn’t want to disappoint her, but I wasn’t ready.

  • • •

  Liam came back from his grandmother’s house completely obsessed with her. Liam is friendly, but he doesn’t form attachments with new people super fast. Still, I wasn’t surprised that he and my mother bonded. I’ve always thought that Liam and my father’s souls were connected. It started when I got pregnant with Liam right after my dad passed. The older Liam gets, the more he reminds me of my father in so many ways. He looks like my brother and my dad’s side of the family. He listens intently like my father always did, taking everything in. This may not be impressive at two and a half, but he’s been that way since he was born. He’s also obsessed with movies. Stella can’t sit still. She has to be moving and exploring every minute of every day. If I let him, Liam would happily sit in bed with me for an entire day watching movie after movie. And he doesn’t zone out. He has a furrowed brow and pursed lips, like he’s analyzing the story line and preparing to give notes. He reminds me of Dad watching edits of his shows, minus the pipe. Also, my dad hated to eat. It seemed like a bother to him. Liam’s the same way. He’s never hungry and has very little interest in eating, no matter how much we beg, while Stella is a garbage face, polishing off her meal, Liam’s meal, and our own meals without blinking.

  According to their babysitter, Stella was reserved when she met my mother. She was in a cautious phase, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that one visit wasn’t enough for her to form a real bond. She still had a good day and loved the outing. But apparently, from the minute Liam laid eyes on my mother, they were inseparable. He turned to Paola and said, “Bye bye. Go home,” then slid his hand into my mother’s. As she showed him the fruit trees in the backyard of the manor, he kept saying, “Grandma carry me! Grandma carry me!” and even though she was about to have back surgery, she kept picking him up.

  When it came time to leave, Liam had a full-on meltdown, screaming and clutching her, holding her face with both hands and saying, “No, no! I stay with Gran
dma.” I’ve never seen him do that to anyone but me and Dean, not even the Guncles (his gay “uncles”). When Paola told me and Dean how Liam had behaved, Dean turned to me and said, “It’s your dad.” I got a chill.

  Liam and Stella came back bearing gifts that my mother had given them. One of them was a stuffed animal. Paola said, “Do you recognize this frog?” According to my mother I had brought this frog to my father when he was recovering from throat cancer.

  When my dad died four years ago, my parents and I weren’t on good terms, so I didn’t have anything of his. My uncle Danny sent me one of his sweaters; it wasn’t one of the cashmere V-neck argyles that I remembered him wearing, but at least it belonged to my father. This frog was something of his, something that connected him and me. I was so touched that my mother remembered that, and kept it, and thought to give it to Liam and Stella. Maybe this frog represented our compromise.

  A compromise was in order. It was the only hope for peace. My mother’s book had come out soon after my second book. Now it was autumn and another book was due to be published. It was Dean’s ex-wife Mary Jo’s book about getting divorced. The two women with whom I had the most complicated relationships in my life both had books coming out within six months of each other, and I was writing books, and we were all talking about each other instead of to each other. It was surreal.

  I’m not going to rehash my mother’s book. She said what she said. I said what I said. We both want to move past it and I’m happy about that. And when Mary Jo’s book came out, I felt like that was her right. Everyone has their own story to tell. I didn’t set out to get involved with a married man and it’s definitely not the classiest thing I ever did, but I believe Dean when he says, “If I’d had a great marriage, you could have walked past me naked and I would have said, ‘Tori Spelling’s hot,’ and gone back to whatever I was doing.” While I am utterly aware of my role in the end of Dean’s marriage and how it isn’t exactly a shining example of female solidarity, I don’t think of myself as a home wrecker. I’m not sure I even believe in the notion of a home wrecker. I don’t think husbands can be stolen. But it is hard and awkward all around.

  We all had our books and our reasons for writing them. I didn’t want any of it to stand in the way of our children’s lives. Just as I want my kids to have a relationship with their grandmother, I want to be a good stepmother to Dean’s son Jack, which means smoothing things over with Jack’s mother.

  Everybody tries, but we’re all on tenterhooks, whatever those are. In September, Dean and I went to Jack’s first football game of the year. As we walked in, I saw that the elementary school field had three sets of small bleachers with six rows each. They were mostly empty. Some parents were standing up next to the field. I saw Mary Jo sitting in the middle bleacher with her purse by her side. She was alone. I tried to catch her eye, but she was staring straight ahead.

  As we entered, I had an instant to decide where I should sit. I was nervous. I wanted to do the right thing, so I tried to put aside all the awkwardness of the situation. We had Jack in common. And besides, I knew her, and she was sitting there. If I put aside the fact I was with her former husband, if I just removed all the complications from the equation, I knew that I would sit with her. That’s what you do when you know people.

  I plunked myself down next to Mary Jo, just as Dean fanned out past her to the next set of bleachers. Not our most in-sync moment. Now she and I were sitting right next to each other and he was sitting a few yards away. I sat so close that she had to pick up her purse and move it to the other side. I guess I went a little bit overboard; I had the best intentions, but I was so nervous that my heart was pounding. I just wanted to do the right thing.

  We said hi and I started talking about Jack. As far as I was concerned, Jack was the point. He noticed everything. It was important that we be civil for his benefit. I smiled and talked to her because I had seen in the past that when we were both there, Jack didn’t know how to act toward me. When he saw us interact, he seemed to be more comfortable.

  Mary Jo said, “It’s a dream come true. I’m a huge football fan. I love the NFL.” There it was—a lovely conversation starter. My cue to engage in a harmless conversation about a shared interest. This was, after all, a football game. One problem: I know absolutely nothing about football.

  “Oh, that’s great, then. You must be so happy that Jack is playing football.” They were playing flag football, and Mary Jo was doing her part to keep the conversation going. She was talking about the plays, the linemen, the yard line. I had no idea what any of it meant. I couldn’t tell how well Jack was doing or even if his team was winning. I thought I could find something to talk about with any woman, but she had boy material. I had nothing to offer. So I was saying things like, “He’s doing a great job. Those uniforms are really . . . footbally.” It didn’t matter if Mary Jo and I had a deep connection. The point was that we were trying. And I stuck it out the entire game without going on my BlackBerry once.

  Back in the spring I had been to a psychic who, unprompted, told me that Mary Jo was going to fall in love, that she was going to find her soul mate. The psychic’s predictions were so specific about this guy that I believed everything she said: He was going to be a Canadian living in L.A. He was going to be tall, with dark hair and light blue eyes. They were going to find happiness together. I liked that idea! If she was happy, I’d be happy. Not long after that, at Stella’s birthday dinner, Jack had blurted out, “My mom has a boyfriend.” I said, “What does he look like?” wondering if this was the soul mate the psychic had seen, but Jack didn’t know. But I hoped for that boyfriend. It had to be that the happier she was, the less anger she’d feel toward me. Plus, he sounded cute.

  Now, as I sat next to her, I did the girl once-over to assess if there was a boyfriend. Her hair looked nice: she had a fresh blowout. That was a good sign. She looked fit. Check. She looked tan. Check. Then my lady sleuth skills kicked in. I saw that her toenail polish was chipped. Dead giveaway. No boyfriend. There’s nothing embarrassing about the tail end of a pedicure, but if you were courting a new fellow, you’d never let your nails go to pot. Cut me some slack: with no football knowledge and no BlackBerry, I was driven to toenail-level observations.

  The game went on, and I sat right next to her, making my best football conversation. Both of us knew full well that she was about to go on a book tour and slam me. It felt like the truce of politics, where opponents shake hands and joke before they tear each other apart in a debate.

  A few months later I would be at a family dinner with Dean, Mary Jo, Jack, Liam, and Stella. We went to Emilio’s Trattoria. There was a large family sitting at a table near us. It was a really nice dinner, a normal dinner, and nobody watching would know that they were witnessing an ex-wife and a current wife on their best behavior. In fact, I can say for sure that an outside observer would have no idea what was going on; I know because of what happened after we finished dessert. Liam and Stella were running around. Dean and Jack got up to keep an eye on them. Mary Jo and I were alone in the booth. An older woman came over from the next table. She said, “Your children are just beautiful.” Clueless to our dynamic, she looked over at Dean and the kids and added, “You two need to make another baby.”

  Under her breath Mary Jo muttered, “Yeah, right here, right now.” Then she looked at me and we laughed. What else could we do?

  • • •

  Mary Jo and I will cross paths until Jack is a grown-up, and even then we will undoubtedly see each other at some of the milestone events in his life. I want us to find a balance. And for all our conflict, I want my mother to be a true part of Liam and Stella’s lives. I want them to know her. I want us to find peace. You need to find peace within before you can find external peace. With both my mother and Mary Jo, I knew that I had work to do. I had to do my part to build and keep the relationships.

  Make New Friends but Keep the Old

  There’s the family you’re born with, and there’s the fami
ly you choose. According to my best friend Jenny, the whole trauma of losing my kids to school would be offset by the wonderful new community of moms I was about to discover. Jenny herself had all new friends. The Westside moms. She was always telling me that I’d love them, but instead of looking forward to meeting Jenny’s new friends, I just felt jealous.

  I’ve had the same best friends for years: Jenny, Amy, Jennifer, and Sara. The Westside moms were creeping into my territory. Now when I tried to get together with Jenny, it was always, “I can’t. Every Tuesday after pickup I have lunch with the Westside moms. You’d love them; they drink wine at one in the afternoon. They’re amazing.” I didn’t like the idea of Jenny having friends I didn’t know. Then I finally had a chance to meet one of them in the flesh.

  One day Jenny called and said, “I heard you’re going to Fox today.” Jenny was right; I was going to do an interview for Fox & Friends. Jenny had heard about it through her friend Lisa, one of her new Westside mom friends who worked at Fox. Jenny told me that after I did my on-camera interview, I would go backstage and do an interview with Lisa for the web. And Jenny knew as much about it as I did. Hmph.

  Jenny was excited for me to meet Lisa, but I was skeptical. Who was this “Lisa” who was monopolizing my best friend? I’d known Jenny since high school. For Halloween once, Jenny, who would have made a perfect Sandy, knew how much it meant to me, so she let me go as Sandy while she spray-painted her hair pink to be Frenchy. The pink didn’t come out of her hair for three weeks. She was my best friend. And now I was supposed to share her?