“Okay,” he said, sitting down next to me. “The truth.”
We went through it, question by question, bringing up even the most obscure things from years prior. “When you said you got into a fight at Mel’s Diner in Hollywood,” I asked, “was that true?”
“No,” he said. “I was with somebody.”
“You went through the motions of tearing your shirt?”
“Yeah.”
“I knew it,” I said, laughing. “The way it was torn, I knew it.”
He brought up an actor I had done a film with.
“Did you sleep with him?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Were you in love with him?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I was. But you would have been in love with him, too.”
There was something about the permission to be honest that allowed us to reestablish the friendship we had in the beginning. That night we decided to split up, and yet in the months after, we became sort of best friends again. We hung out more in those months than when we were married. Before, we had been that downer couple that ruined the party when we showed up. It was that uncomfortable to be in our presence. But as separated people, our friends were like, “Hey, we can hang!”
When we announced the separation, my team gave a statement to the AP at 9 A.M. West Coast time. By 9:15, my publicist and manager started what they called “The Divorce List.” Reps for athletes and celebrities were calling to see if they could set up a date. Some were reaching out directly.
My manager called to tell me I was popular.
“Who?” I said, pretending to be disgusted but feeling flattered. “Who wouldn’t give me a day?”
He reeled off the first two, naming an aging sportscaster and then maybe a fading music producer who held on to his Jheri curl two decades too long.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m good. Please stop.”
The honeymoon period of my divorce from Chris was short-lived, and I did the laundry list of dumb things you do when you want your ex to like you. I invested in a company he started with one of my friends. I paid rent for six months on a new home for him and cosigned for a Porsche. Then he abandoned the Porsche at the Burbank airport and I inherited a bunch of bills and parking tickets. The business failed, so there went that money, too. And like my money, I have never seen him again.
Chris moved to Atlanta, where I shoot Being Mary Jane. I reached out to him once and said, “Let’s get together.” I meant it, but he owes me so much money, I’m afraid he thought it was a trap. He never showed.
He needn’t worry. My sting days are behind me.
eleven
PRESCRIPTION FOR A BREAKUP
Are you experiencing heartbreak accompanied by nutty behavior?
Symptoms include, but are not limited to, obsessively clocking your ex’s social media and light stalking of the new girl’s Instagram. You may also be having moderate to severe instances of driving past their house and hiding in their bushes. You have been given a diagnosis of generally crazy, unproductive behavior.
I am here to help. What I can prescribe is not medication, but an easy-to-follow syllabus and wine list. This is a list of pro tips best used NOW.
PRO TIP: WATCH SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS
Shot in luscious Technicolor, Splendor in the Grass is Warren Beatty’s first film and one of Natalie Wood’s best. She plays Deanie, a pre-Depression Kansas girl who understandably falls in lust and love with Warren’s Bud. He loves her, too, but has sex with been-there-done-that Juanita instead. Deanie wants to have sex with Bud so badly that repressing the desire drives her insane. Everyone who I make watch this film remembers this one doozy Deanie tosses out during her mad scene in the bathtub: “Did he spoil me? No. No, Mom! I’m not spoiled! I’m not spoiled, Mom! I’m just as fresh and I’m virginal like the day I was born, Mom!”
My mom loved Natalie Wood, so I grew up watching this film and her others, like West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause. Junior year of high school, I needed Splendor in the Grass to help get me through my first, and perhaps worst, breakup. Only then was I able to fully understand Deanie and feel understood myself. She and I knew the truth: heartbreak feels like a death sentence.
I thought Jason Kidd and I were a power couple. He was a sophomore at a nearby Catholic high school, quickly becoming a national phenom. But part of the allure for me was that he seemed like such a good guy. He came from a two-parent household and he was Catholic like me. We had this very eighth-grade relationship, despite being in high school. We didn’t have sex. I had already lost my virginity, so I was down for it, but it didn’t seem like something he had to have in order to be with me.
Two weeks before my junior prom, I went to one of his games. My friends couldn’t go and I didn’t want to do the thirty-minute drive from Pleasanton by myself, so I asked my dad if he would come along. He loved that I was dating Jason, so that was a no-brainer for him. We sat in the stands, and I saw his parents were in the bleachers across the gym. Next to them was a tall girl with an asymmetrical haircut like Salt’s from Salt-N-Pepa, only even shorter on one side and longer on the other. I took her to be a cousin or family friend. She was wearing Jason’s #32 wristband, and I thought, How sweet. He gave his cousin his wristband.
Then I noticed that he was wearing a #22 wristband. When you as a player wear someone else’s jersey number it means one of two things: You are paying tribute to a significant other who plays, or you are honoring a player who died. Now, my number was 21, so I made up this scenario in my head about who #22 could be. My teenage levels of narcissism and drama wrapped in a crazy double helix of denial. I decided Jason had a friend who died. Jason was so sensitive, paying homage to this person via a sweatband. RIP #22, I hardly knew you.
During the game, a few of his friends came over to me, led by a female friend of his with a severe case of a Valley Girl accent. “Soooo, are you and Jason going to prom?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered, innocently.
“Uhhhhmmmmm, I might, like, hold off on those plans.”
I flew right past the obvious dig. Why would Jason be busy? We had talked about prom. He’s didn’t have a game. Clueless Valley Girl.
Then, a guy friend of his came up to me.
“Hey, you know, whatever happens with you and Jason,” he said, pausing for a second, “you know, we’re always gonna be friends. I think you’re really cool.”
“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”
See this is what grown-up love was about. You created connections with his friends. And even though you know you will never, ever break up—because that would be preposterous, right?—you keep those friendships you made. I filed that knowledge away for a time I would never, ever need it.
Jason’s team won, and right after the game ended the high school gymnasium ritual of pushing in all the bleachers began. Jason was already doing postgame interviews in high school, so they had left one of the bleachers open for the entire team to sit and wait for him. He was literally surrounded by a ring of reporters. And at six foot four as a sophomore in high school, he was head and shoulders above the crop of people jotting down what he said. I could clearly see his face as I stood standing off to the side with my dad. Across from us, pointedly not saying hello, were Jason’s parents and this girl “cousin.”