Stories From Candyland (5 page)

Good Housekeeping
had a story the month I was born that said that trade schools would be the wave of the future. Boys would become engineers. Girls would learn advanced sewing and cooking, and the best of the best would graduate from sewing to working in big, important stores. I succeeded. I got a job at Joseph Magnin and worked my way up from salesgirl in Casual (cheap) Dresses to manager of the Lingerie Department.

I was prepared for a career in retail. My parents took me out of public school for a while and sent me to a too-expensive (my father said) private school, where I learned how to be the proper young lady. I curtsied, spoke in the right tone, danced beautifully, could set a table, and missed two years of spelling. My friend Nancy, who went to the same school, misspells many of the same words I do. It has been our private shame, except now it’s being made public, in my book.
Sorry, Nancy. I’de like you’re forgivness
.

I tried to be like my mother. She was beautiful. I’d try on her wigs and hold her cigarette the way she did, to look chic. She said I looked silly.

We had lots of rules in our house, and I was expected to follow them all. Her wish for me was that I marry a successful man, so I wouldn’t have to struggle the way she had.

“You’ll never marry a rich man if you don’t listen to me,”
she would say, as she told me I was too shy, that I slouched, that my hair wasn’t right, or that she didn’t like the expression on my face.

I was terrified of making a mistake. My shyness intensified. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing or make an inappropriate move. I thought that if I looked down, people wouldn’t notice me. I was never sure what I was supposed to do. Half the time, I was sent away from the dinner table, and I was rarely told the reason. But I did know I was being “trained.”

The biggest pressure, though, was that I was commanded to be “perfect.” My brother was imperfect, my parents decided (as did his teachers and the parents of his friends), so I had to make up for his behavior. I tried hard. But perfection and I never bonded.

Mothers want the best for their daughters, and mine was no exception. She wanted to be a decorator, so she was glad when I became interested in interior design. I think she even approved when I went to art college. She and I would sit side by side sewing, and I still have throughout my home some of the beautiful cushions and covers we created together.

My mother’s family had been very poor. Ours had its ups and downs, changing lifestyles on short notice. My father was a traveling salesman. When he came home, we were never sure if we were going to have to move again or stay in our current house. My shyness intensified every time we moved. I knew my mother felt bad about this. She didn’t want that kind of insecurity for her Candy.

I don’t think my mother ever got all the way through Dr. Spock’s book. If she did, she must have decided that she didn’t like a lot of what it said.

I came to the same conclusion.

By the time Tori was born, in 1973, and Randy in 1978, my husband had achieved tremendous success. Although I didn’t fulfill my mother’s dream of marrying a rich man, the man I married did become rich during our marriage.

By then I could afford nannies and nurses and all the child care experts in the world for my kids; but Aaron and I were very hands-on parents. We tried so hard to be perfect parents, but found there’s no such thing.

Hmm. Maybe Dr. Spock was right after all. He said the “perfect parent had yet to see the light of day.”

I have, literally, thousands of photographs throughout my house of Tori and Randy at every stage of their lives: playing, running, eating; at holiday and family gatherings; on their first day of school, last day of school; with their first bike, first car; playing with the dogs, in the pool, on vacation. Every moment was a joy, every minute a learning experience—and every day we lived in fear that we were doing something wrong.

We loved staying home and being with our kids, couldn’t wait to share the next life experience with them, and Aaron and I were always much happier at the kitchen table with the kids than at the best table at the most “in” restaurant.

We raised really good kids. I complain about my mother.
My daughter complains about me. The culture has evolved. Now a million people a week hear Tori’s ever-evolving memories of her childhood on her TV show. In retrospect, she seems to think our good times weren’t as good as others remember them. I think they were.

Tori related a story in her book about the great times we had on the beach and the joy we shared when she found beautiful seashells. Also in her book, however, she recounts how she now resents that I scattered some of the shells on the beach just so she could find them.

A few years ago, when my husband was writing his own book, Tori had a different memory.

Aaron wrote in his autobiography,
A Prime-Time Life
:

I’ll let Tori tell you some of her favorite memories about growing up:

     . . . in Malibu, at our beach house, Mom and Dad used to take us walking on the beach all the time, and they’d have Randy and me search for seashells. Somehow we always found these beautiful seashells, the kind they sell for five dollars and up in coastal souvenir shops. I didn’t find out until later that Mom and Dad had the seashells buried for us.

It was one of Aaron’s and my “favorite memories,” too. With apologies to Mr. Spock, Tori, we were not endeavoring,
ma’am, to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and bearskins. We were trying to construct for our children the best lives in the world. And, in retrospect, that’s what my parents were trying to do for me, too.

Maybe Dr. Spock’s next version will provide a roadmap for all of us. I’ll never stop trying to be the perfect mom.

Chapter 3
Fred Astaire Asked Me to
Dance Because I’se Biggest

I
was married to one of the great storytellers of all time. I didn’t have to say a word. I lived a storied life, and everyone thought they knew my life story. They didn’t. That was all right. His stories were fun, exciting, and larger than life.

My late husband, Aaron Spelling, rewrote pop culture with his shows.
The Mod Squad
and
Dynasty
dictated fashion trends. (Nolan Miller’s fashions from
Dynasty
became instantly recognizable.) It was all about the hair in
Charlie’s
Angels
.
Fantasy Island
and
The Love Boat
are still synonyms for vacations. Who doesn’t know where
90210
is or who lives there?
Melrose Place
started showing up on tourist maps. His movie
Mr. Mom
redefined spousal roles. Everyone wanted a
Starsky & Hutch
car. The “fight” between Linda Evans and Joan Collins, dragging each other around in the water, became instant camp; and we laughed when we heard stories about how fans were re-creating the scene at parties.

Everyone knew Aaron’s stories and those of the characters on his shows. When we went out, I had to be the best-dressed perfect wife, the ultimate model of the Hollywood wife, one who appeared to have stepped right out of one of Aaron’s shows. It was a role I accepted gladly. I wanted to please Aaron and be the wife such a successful man should have. We both had our jobs and knew other people’s expectations. But given a choice of attending a Hollywood gala or being home with the kids, we would always choose to stay home.

While Aaron was creating his television and movie stories, I was at home in my jeans, T-shirts, and sweats creating plots of my own.

And then there’s my humming. I hum all the time. When I think, I hum. I might ponder what I’m going to say in a meeting, so I hum as I’m walking toward the office.

I hum songs such as “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” when I think about how great the day can be, or “You Make Me Feel So Young” if my story doesn’t fit with my age.

My humming causes other people to make up stories, too.
When I hum as I walk into a store or restaurant, someone usually says, “Oh, you’re happy today.”

Tori didn’t like my humming. We were at her school buying her uniforms once and she announced that I was a major embarrassment to her. “Do you have to hum?” Probably. I hadn’t thought about it. I felt bad about embarrassing her.

I hum when I’m deep in thought. And I hum when I’m nervous. The night before my first-ever appearance on QVC with my Candy Spelling dolls, I knew I was nervous when I went to bed. I never imagined that I would hum so loudly I’d wake myself up! But I did.

I could never sneak up on Aaron or the kids. They would hear me coming by my humming. “You’d make a terrible spy,” Aaron used to say. I didn’t want to be a spy. I just loved humming.

I’ve always loved stories. In fact, I have a story about just about everything in my house, and that’s a lot of stories.

My favorite painting hangs just outside the library, where all of Aaron’s scripts are kept. I saw it in an auction catalog and was determined to get it for our home. It is called
I’se Biggest
, and it was painted in 1892 by British artist Arthur Elsley. It’s a scene of an adorable smiling little girl—all dressed up in her Sunday best—standing next to her Saint Bernard to measure her height. She’s standing on books and on her tiptoes, trying to be as tall as she can be.

I can tell from the delight on the little girl’s face that, for the first time, she feels “biggest.” I identify with that little
girl. I’ve spent my life trying to measure myself and get bigger, biggest. The little girl in the painting isn’t bigger than her dog, who is lovingly and protectively looking at her. That doesn’t stop her from believing “I’se biggest.” She’s happy, and I share in her happiness.

Her attitude is one I’ve always wanted. “I can do anything I want,” I’d imagine her saying. Then I’d imagine winning an Olympic medal, being perfect, or becoming the first woman president, even though I didn’t really want any of those. I just wanted to feel like I could.

I have a collection of hand-painted fans that I keep in a delicate cabinet adjacent to my bedroom. I have to refrain from handling them when I visit them daily because they are so fragile, but that doesn’t stop me from creating stories about each one. Each fan is so special. Some have actual ivory on their tiny surfaces; others have the most subtle gold leafing; and mother-of-pearl casually adorns a couple of the paper fans. I can’t imagine how anyone had the patience or steadiness to hand-stitch those perfect borders. I couldn’t do it. They amaze and delight me.

I try to imagine who painted each one, wonder what he or she looked like, the shape and size of the room in which the artist worked, how much in love he or she might have been to be able to paint the most romantic scenes, how many people before me owned the fans, in what kinds of beautiful houses they were kept.

I fell in love with fans on a trip to France in 1989. My
mood was romantic then, so I began buying fans with romantic scenes.

One of my first fans has a boy on one side, and he’s carrying what I’ve decided is a love letter. On the other end is a little girl and her dog. Even though the fan is only two inches tall, the boy and girl will never get to reach each other; but the anticipation and joy in their faces is enough to assure me how happy they will be for eternity.