Stories From Candyland (22 page)

Anyone having a birthday party? I have dozens of boxes of streamers, candles, tablecloths, hats, cake platters, cake recipes, and more. I love birthdays.

I also love babies. That’s why I still have the beautiful Royal prams Barbara Stanwyck gave Tori and Randy when they were babies. I can’t walk by them without smiling.

I’ve quoted a lot of books in this book. Oh, boy, do I have books and magazines and videotapes and DVDs! There are hundreds of boxes of those in the attic. (I don’t have to estimate how many there are in the rest of the house, do I?)

I love my books. There’s everything from Dick and Jane primers to a college physics textbook that a houseguest left behind, from directories of Hollywood unions to home decorating books, from caring for orchids to child care.

My
Photoplay
magazines are kept in order, in plastic, proudly on display on special shelves. They are Hollywood history. They deserve a place high above all else, up, up, and away.

The attic houses various sizes of tapes and DVDs of every television show and movie my husband ever made, plus extra scripts, notes, photos, memorabilia (anyone for a
90210
lunchbox or a
Vega$
poker chip, a
Charmed
book bag or a cast portrait of
Charlie’s Angels
?). In order to explain why I have shelves and cabinets full of carefully organized boxes
representing my husband’s work, let me recap that he produced more television than anyone in history. In 1983, the
Guinness Book of World Records
saluted Aaron by naming him the “most prolific” television producer in history because of his astounding 3,842 hours of television shows. Guinness determined that someone could watch prime time seven nights a week for three and a half years without ever seeing a rerun of an Aaron Spelling show. That was in 1983. Now it’s more than 4,500 hours of programs. That’s why I have hundreds of boxes in the attic, plus rooms full of his awards, honors, favorite photos, original scripts, and shows throughout the house. I love my husband’s work.

There’s a hair salon in the attic. Why is it in the attic? We forgot to make room for it in the house. I like it. It’s near one of the stairways and has a barber pole outside that used to make my husband laugh. The place is decorated like an old-style salon, with pictures of all the hairstyles from the fifties and sixties that, for some reason, we all thought were flattering and fun.

Oh, and there’s a gift-wrapping room.

I know, I know. I wrote about how my gift-wrapping room is adjacent to my office on the first floor.

Well, there’s a second gift-wrapping room in the attic.

And, then, hiding in the attic is the really large gift-wrapping area, for the really large packages.

While my downstairs gift-wrapping room is festive, my attic gift-wrapping room is all business, with big boxes,
industrial-strength wrapping paper, heavy-duty tape, wire cutters, postage scales, reams of paper with eight-hundred-foot rolls, a shrinkwrap machine, straw, and anything a UPS store would ever need. I have a little kitchen next to it, since once I start wrapping those big packages, I sometimes won’t emerge for hours.

By the way, everything in the attic is neatly labeled, cataloged, and stored.

HAND-PAINTED CACHEPOTS FOR ORCHIDS, CARD TABLES, FABRICS FOR BEACH HOUSE, PARTY FAVORS, REFRIGERATOR SHELVES, DRAWER PULLS, STUFFED ANIMALS, MAH-JONGG SUPPLIES, HARDWARE HINGES, TORI’S SWEET 16 SEAT CUSHIONS, MONOGRAMMED HANGERS, and ROOFING MATERIALS
are some of the categories. Seriously.

If you want a sky blue Easter egg, I can point you right at it. Need a wreath that measures 16.6 inches? Miniature flowers? Custom glass for the lampposts at the bottom of the driveway? Plans for every inch of the house in ⅛-, ¼-, and ½-inch scale? It’s all there.

Wait. I haven’t accounted for all 17,000 square feet yet.

I also have a luggage section. I love luggage. There’s every size, lots of different designers, various colors, and they all have special names. I remember while I was growing up my father had the “two-suiter” and “clothing bag.” It’s much more fun today. I’ve got too much luggage, I’ll admit. I always pack too much. And I still have more, in case I ever need eighty or ninety suitcases for a family vacation. As I
said earlier, we borrowed suitcases from the set of
Hotel
earlier in our marriage when we traveled. I guess we went overboard after that series went off the air.

I’m very sentimental about everything in Tori and Randy’s life. I guess that explains why I’ve kept almost everything of theirs.

Do you want to see what Randy wore for Halloween in 1982? Got it.

The beautiful mother-daughter taffeta dresses Tori and I wore? Got them, too.

The custom seat covers I had made for Tori’s Sweet Sixteen party so the girls wouldn’t have to sit on the hard rental chairs? Yup. Right near the luggage.

I can walk through the attic and remember the happy memories just by looking at the boxes. Yes, they’re numbered and labeled, too, with a Polaroid picture of whatever’s inside attached to every box. It’s easier that way, in case Randy wants to see what he wore on his first day of kindergarten. He looked so cute in his little school uniform, with gray pants, a navy blazer, and a red tie. (Aw, come on, Randy, don’t you want to see that outfit? Tori, do you remember all those beautiful frilly dresses by Florence Eisenman? I don’t know if I can keep them when I move.)

I have quantities of spare gifts like you wouldn’t believe. There are very high expectations for a “Spelling gift,” and I always used to take the advice of the Boy Scouts to “be prepared.”

I love to give one-of-a-kind gifts. There’s a wonderful store in Los Angeles that makes handmade personalized candles designed to be burned once a year for the first twenty-one years of a boy or girl’s life. I received them for my children, and love to give them to other people for their blessings. My favorite gifts are those pertaining to something the recipient is interested in. That can be a book about a favorite subject, or a part of an antique collection. I like to surprise people with unexpected and unusual gifts.

If a colleague of Aaron’s liked eighteenth-century paintings, he was confident he could call and I had one waiting to be wrapped and messengered. How about an antique clock? Got ’em. A duplicate Lalique piece that I didn’t need for my own collection? Sure. Fountain pens when people gave them for graduation presents? What color?

There’s also a kitchen equipment section. Aaron and I had various chefs at different stages of our life. When we entertained a lot, we had a chef who liked to cook for big groups. If we decided to eat healthy foods only (which we did rarely), we’d hire a macrobiotic cook. There’s an expert for everything in L.A., and cooks who specialize.

The result was a lot of turnover in kitchen appliances, tools, pots, pans, bowls, and everything else a chef uses. So, when a new chef would come in with his or her list of necessities for my kitchen, we would move the last group of expensive former necessities to the attic. I always hoped that one chef would like what we’d bought for the last one.
Nope. Who knew there were so many different kinds of waffle irons and spice racks?

I’m trying to be mature as I tell myself, and anyone who’ll listen, that it’s time to downsize. I know people make fun of me for saying I’m downsizing to 17,000 square feet. That’s a very large home, and I’m grateful to be able to have it.

Even if I just give away everything in the attic, I’ll still have more than three times as much stuff as my new home will hold.

I don’t think self-storage is the answer. Actually, one of those companies might want to talk to the new owner of The Manor about leasing space.

Yes, I’m going to be mature and businesslike and figure out how to downsize. I have to be less like a sentimental wife, mother, and grandmother and more like a corporate efficiency expert. It might work. I have hardhats, clipboards, and tape measures stored in the attic, too, so I won’t have to buy anything new to take on that new job.

That’s the math.

Chapter 17
And Now a Word from . . .
Everyone Else

S
o, now, the end (of the book) is near, and my insecurities are running rampant. I had no shortage of them to begin with, and now I realize that “Candy Spelling” is going to be listed next to “Aaron Spelling” in some libraries and bookstores.

What was I thinking? Aaron’s stories could be traced to growing up poor in Texas, with the movies being his escape from the realities of the times. He loved stories, paid special attention to the plots, and imagined himself in the tales,
interacting with the other characters and even changing the directions of the plot.

Aaron was truly a Walter Mitty–like character, with a delightful imagination and his head often in the clouds. He loved fantasy, and loved making up fantasies in which he could live. He and television were made for each other, and he enhanced the entertainment experience for everyone.

So, I committed myself to competing with Aaron?

I had a lot of fun writing this book. I’ve learned new technology and about speech-recognition software, am struggling to figure out when to use quotation marks or italics, and if question marks go inside or outside and when. I’ve developed new anxieties agonizing over almost every word and wondering if I’ve done the right thing by writing this book at all.

Politicians send up trial balloons. I went to my friends. “What am I doing? Can I write a book? What have I done?”

Much of the anxiety (as if I needed more) came from the people closest to me.

“Candy, you’re not going to write about [embarrassing story 4,895], are you?”

“Candy, be sure you put in the story about when we . . .”

“Candy, do you remember when you and Aaron . . .?”

“So, Candy, I hope you’re going to get back at Tori for saying those terrible things about you.”

All right. I’m good at following instructions. My mother and Aaron taught me well. I want to please everyone. I want to thank everyone.

I decided to officially ask people what they thought should and should not be in my book. Here’s one piece of advice:

First, to my friend Denise Simmons, I’d love to tell the story about that afternoon in Century City with the kids, but my lawyer says it might have been a misdemeanor. Even though the statute of limitations is up, I can’t tell.

Yes, I will admit to the time in New York when I said I’d get a cab and ended up hailing a limo. I’m from California. There were seven of us. It was freezing cold. I’ve seen this in the movies. I took out a wad of cash, stepped into the street, and the limo stopped. I would have hiked up my skirt, like Claudette Colbert did in
It Happened One Night
, if that’s what it took. I sat up front with the driver. What’s wrong with that? It was cold, and we got back to the hotel fast, didn’t we?