Drinking and Tweeting (16 page)

The boys and I went to one birthday party in our old Calabasas neighborhood for a two-year-old boy at which the “event planner” had blocked off the entire cul-de-sac
to create a race-car track. The birthday boy could barely walk, but he needed a fucking racetrack at his birthday? The dads sure did seem to enjoy it. Birthday parties here are almost always more for the parents than they are for the children. There’s a certain need to impress and outdo one another: If one party had Buzz Lightyear show up, the next would have Buzz, Woody, and Mr. Potato Head appear. The gift bags alone cost a fortune. You’re spending $10 to $15 a goodie bag for roughly thirty kids . . . and for what? To fill it with junk that most kids will likely toss to the corner of a room as soon as they get home? When it’s all said and done, the kids don’t give two shits. They just want to run around, scream, and eat cake.

For Mason’s first birthday, I spent $10,000 on an incredibly lavish party—complete with an ice bar and margarita machines, costumed entertainers, and catered Texas BBQ. Mason slept through most of the festivities, but the nanny did trot him out for a few photo ops with his birthday cake. (Staged photo ops were something that would unfortunately become second nature for my little man.)

After my divorce, I could no longer afford the decadent birthdays the boys were so used to having, and I felt guilty. For Jakey’s fourth birthday party, we took over a Chuck E. Cheese in the Valley, and I remember sweating over having to split the bill with their dad. (Couldn’t he and his sugar mama have just picked up the check? I was the one forced to sit there with a broken ankle, across from his new wife and my former in-laws.) The following year, I decided to do my own thing and keep Jake’s birthday party low budget: a platter of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, a grocery-store cake, and a few bottles of wine and beer for the adults. And you know what? I think it was the best party he ever had, because there wasn’t all this stress and anticipation. Instead, he got to run around in the backyard like an animal with all of his friends, jumping all over the swing set and playing games. Inside, the parents all appeared casual and relaxed. Or maybe I just noticed it, because I finally was.

Raising a family in Southern California isn’t all that bad. Sure, I have to deflect a lot of the self-entitlement and self-involvement that children often develop when living so close to the world’s most narcissistic city, but it
does offer some pretty amazing upsides for raising children, too.

There aren’t many other places in the world where my boys can play baseball outside year-round or go to a different local theme park every weekend of the month. If they want to, Mason and Jake can go skiing in the morning and have a beach bonfire at night. They live active lifestyles and have extremely healthy diets for little boys (except for Mommy’s occasional Del Taco run, my fast-food kryptonite). It’s hard to ever be too depressed when it’s warm and sunny pretty much every day of the year.

Sure, we don’t have the change of seasons all the East Coasters commonly complain about, but Big Bear is only a few hours away, and there’s this nice house off Mulhol-land that churns out fake snow during the holidays.

Speaking of Santa Claus, he’s a particularly divisive character in the Beverly Hills area. (Perhaps it’s his weight? Or maybe it’s because no one in LA has worn a fur-trimmed jacket since the eighties?) You’d be better off talking about Scientology.

My ex-husband and I chose to raise our children Christian, but with so many Jewish friends in the area we
always joked that our children were “Cubish.” We celebrated Hanukkah with our Jewish friends and Christmas with our families. For us, it worked perfectly. I think the Jews figured out a way better system than us Christians. Christmas morning in our house was always absolute chaos: wrapping paper flying in every direction, dozens of toys being opened and discarded within moments, and more triple-A batteries than could ever be appropriate. Jewish people, on the other hand, give their children one present per day. That way, kids can actually pause for a minute and enjoy the gift, before eventually discarding it and moving on to the next. When three-quarters of your children’s classmates are Jewish, try explaining why Santa Claus doesn’t go to their houses. Or better yet, why Jewish parents are telling their children that Santa isn’t real. If you’re a parent and you know your child’s classmate believes in Santa, why would you knowingly burst his bubble? It’s shocking how many parents try to do this, so in typical grade-school form, I decided to play dirty. “Well, Mason, Santa Claus doesn’t go to every little boy’s and little girl’s house. If you don’t believe in him and tell other kids not to believe in him, he flies right by,” I would say. “When you go back to school after
Christmas, ask your friend if Santa came to his house . . . because I’ll bet he didn’t.”

brandi’s babble

Your kids only have one “Mommy.” (Bonus ones need not apply.)

CHAPTER NINE

His Future Ex

I
often get the question “How do you deal with his new wife?” My answer is always the same: “How can I not?” I don’t have a choice.

I would love to pretend that she doesn’t exist. I’ve never been the biggest country-music fan, so it’s not like I ever stumble across her songs on the radio. (I pretty much listen to all gangsta rap, all the time—its grittiness speaks to my roots. #GhettoBrandi) I would love to believe that when my children aren’t sleeping under my roof that they are at their best friend’s house or a fully vetted and safe spa retreat for children in the Valley. Maybe it’s silly, but I’d just rather not dwell on the
thought that my kids are sharing a home half the time with my ex-husband and his new wife.

I would love to believe that my ex-husband is miserable, overweight, bald, and alone. But that’s not reality—at least not totally.

The short answer is, I deal with her for my kids. Through all of this, I wanted to spare them as much heartbreak and pain as I possibly could. She’s good to them and they love her, so I try to be as civil as I possibly can. Sure, part of me gets angry thinking about her tucking my babies into bed at night in her home, when she and Eddie are the reason they no longer get to live with their mommy and daddy, but I have to learn to let that go. I’m not saying it will happen overnight, but in a blended family where cheating was involved, you will eventually need to let it go. I’m still working on the “forgive and forget” part, but its gets easier with time. To say it’s been an uphill battle would be the understatement of the decade!

I do believe, though, that Eddie is slightly miserable in his new marriage (and possibly taking Propecia again. I mean, his hair seems to be doing quite well). I know it sounds like I’m just the bitter ex-wife hoping and praying
that my ex-husband—who destroyed my heart and shattered my world—is unhappy with the woman he left me for. And now that I think about it, sure, that sounds about right. But I’m not just shooting from the hip; I’m looking at the hard facts. This man, who clearly has a weakness for the ladies, jumped from one “committed” (we’ll use that term loosely) relationship to another. #Rebound. Marriage clearly doesn’t mean a whole lot to this guy, and I think given his track record, wife number two has got to be all over him like white on rice. Knowing how their relationship developed, wouldn’t she question every call he went to take privately or who was on the receiving end of his text messages?

Diving headfirst into a new marriage may not have been the brightest move. Sure, Eddie prefers to be in relationships, because he needs to feel that he’s being taken care of. However, I’m pretty confident that my ex-husband would really have enjoyed taking some time to run around town banging twenty-year-olds left and right without having to look over his shoulder for the first time in almost a decade and a half. Additionally, I’m not sure he knew entirely what he was getting himself into with LeAnn. Was he prepared to take the backseat to her
life and career? Eddie relished the spotlight while he had it. (Why else do you think he would agree to all those posed paparazzi shots?) I wonder if he’ll be able to accept that it’s his new wife who will always be the bigger draw.

I was forced to deal with their relationship way before I was ready. Between the countless celebrity-gossip websites and weekly magazines, it’s sort of impossible to avoid their never-ending barrage of staged paparazzi shots. (My personal favorites are the perfectly posed yet impossibly candid photos of the happy couple cruising on a boat in Mexico, gazing off into the distance.) Photographers come with the territory when you’re working in the entertainment industry—even I have learned to accept it and utilize it when necessary—and being rude to them won’t get you anywhere. (No one wants to end up on the cover of
Star
without makeup.) So, while I understand the need to throw them a bone every once in a while, it seems slightly pathetic to keep pushing your stale love story down people’s throats over and over.

The pictures can be hard to see—especially the shots of her with my children. Seeing my ex-husband’s new wife playing bonus mom to my babies, the boys I gave
birth to, was an absolute gut punch. Even worse was seeing her inappropriately hanging all over Eddie, wearing virtually nothing, while my children were nearby watching. I wanted to hurt this woman.

When she sent me those inappropriate text messages about her desire to “mother” my kids, I responded as most levelheaded mothers would: “Listen, bitch, you barely have my husband. I will kill you before you get your hands on my children.” That is quite possibly the kindest thing I could have said to her, given the situation. I’m pretty sure she disagreed.

Occasionally we are forced to interact, but I try to avoid making any sort of eye contact with her. What can I say? I don’t have a ton of respect for the woman, and I’m not that good at faking “nice.” So on the rare occasion that she does address me and I am required to look at her, I make it as short and sweet as possible. If my children are around, I am always polite and try to excuse myself from the situation as quickly as possible. In an ideal world, I think LeAnn feels that maybe someday she and I could be friends. Well, in an ideal world she would have kept her legs shut and refrained from fucking my husband (and he would have kept his dick in his
pants). While I’ve been grateful for the overwhelming fan support I’ve received over the past few years, I’ve also had a good number of people criticize me for “blaming” the affair on LeAnn, because my beef should be with my husband. Don’t worry, it is. #CheatersSuck. LeAnn didn’t know me when they started messing around, so she didn’t owe me anything (except maybe common decency). He was the one with a wife and two kids back at home. That doesn’t mean I don’t hold her partially accountable, though. My major issue with her was how she handled everything after the story appeared. She refused to take any ownership over her actions—even toward her own husband—and wouldn’t accept any blame. Guess what? If you’re going to play in the mud, you’re going to get fucking dirty. #ChildStarSyndrome. Then our contentious relationship sort of escalated from there.

She has nice skin. That’s the one compliment I can offer her—if forced. I’m assuming she spends a lot of time getting facials, but the amount of foundation she plasters on her face is obscene. She once arrived at a school performance with a full face of thick, caked-on makeup, a whole strip of false eyelashes, a perfect blowout, and five-inch heels. Anyone who is insecure enough
to rock that look at eight in the morning for a grammar-school Thanksgiving play has a boatload of issues. Look, I’m equally guilty of breaking out the big guns, but there is a time and a place for everything—and my son’s school event is not one of them. #JustSayin.

I was never threatened by her. It gave me a strange sense of relief that Eddie hadn’t shacked up with some Victoria’s Secret model (although that might have required him to actually work for a living). Clearly, though, she was threatened by me. Not so much because of how I looked or acted, but because of my role in Eddie’s life and the boys’ lives. Why else would my ex-husband be banned from talking to me? I’m relegated to coparenting with him via his assistant? He never responds to e-mail, and my number is still blocked from calling his cell phone. How were we supposed to take care of our two children, if she erected this huge wall between us? We were clearly never reconciling, so I didn’t understand the point (and still don’t). All three of us needed to check our egos at the door if we were going to be good guardians to these two little boys.

About a year after Eddie and I separated, I decided that the three of us needed to find a way to coexist, and
I thought that perhaps blended-family therapy would help. It’s a total LA cliché, isn’t it? Have you ever heard of a family in Omaha going to “blended-family therapy”? For months, the three of us were jumping down each other’s throats and triangulating the children. Mason’s nightly phone calls to Dad became less like conversations and more like interrogations. So, therapy seemed the only reasonable—albeit ridiculous—solution to the problem.

“How about therapy?” I finally asked Eddie.

He took a minute to chew it over before responding, “Let me talk to LeAnn.”

Eddie always hid behind a skirt, but I was surprised he didn’t dismiss it completely (especially after seeing how ineffective our couples counseling proved). He is a traditional Latino man, and in many cultures therapy is considered a sign of weakness, so I wasn’t sure if they would go with it.

A few days later, he sent me an e-mail saying that both he and LeAnn would be open to seeing a family therapist, if they chose the doctor.

“Ugh,” I thought. Of course it had to be on their terms. I couldn’t care less which doctor we went to, but
I had to make a little bit of a fuss about it before I eventually conceded. Eddie told me that because I’m oh-so-willing to discuss personal matters with the press, he and LeAnn would need me to sign a confidentiality agreement before they would sit down in a room with me.