Official Book Club Selection (26 page)

She said something I always remembered. “You know, we all make our own deals.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Look, nobody knows what happens in a relationship except the two people who are in it.”

What Joan was saying was, tailor the relationship to the needs of the people in it. Who said it had to conform to a conventional template where the man paid for everything, or the woman had to act like a doormat, or each person had to be taken care of in certain, established ways? We all bring different things to the table.

In my case, I didn’t need to be taken care of financially. I didn’t need a boyfriend to buy me a necklace. Matt was offering me something I desperately wanted, which I thought was love. He had many obvious qualities: He was smart, funny, and easy to get along with. But what separated him was that he genuinely seemed to be deeply in love with me. More than any man had ever been. I thought, I’m someone who very much needs to be taken care of emotionally, I need someone who’ll put up with my moods and my crap and be a good guy who’s there for me because of the pressures of what I do. Now, I don’t like guys who are cheap, but I feel like if a guy is hardworking and poor, that’s not a crime. I’m okay with that. If paying for things was a way for me to fulfill a certain role, then I believed it was a deal worth making to be with a guy I considered an emotional partner. Plus, there were probably areas where I didn’t meet every one of his criteria. Maybe he’d wanted a tall blonde, or someone younger, someone more book-smart—Matt was certainly brighter than I was—or someone who worked in a field less demanding or chaotic.

Most important, though, we had a good, open conversation about things. He told me what he couldn’t do. I told him what I could do, and what I was hoping for in a relationship.

Ironically enough, after our talk, the waiter came over and told us there was an Oklahoma family at a nearby table who were big fans of mine, wanted to pick up our check, and just had. I turned to Matt and said with enthusiasm, “And sometimes that happens!”

Matt moved out to LA, and though he spent nearly every night at my house, I felt comforted by the fact that he had his own place, a shared rental with his sister and her boyfriend. As we got closer, it was evident he could handle himself well in all sorts of situations, from being on the Suddenly Susan set with me, to going to tedious work-oriented press or network events, to hanging out with my friends. Best of all, at the end of the day, when it was just us, we could share a pizza, laugh at the ridiculousness of showbiz life or something on television, and just be a real couple. I thought he did a great job of being in my world, but allowing me into his world, too, meaning when he’d talk about the things he was interested in, I felt I could just listen to him forever. It was never just all about me. If we had to travel somewhere because of a work engagement, we’d turn it into a vacation where we would go on runs together, eat at someplace wonderful, stay up late to watch movies in the hotel.

Best of all, Matt had a great attitude about Hollywood. He got a kick out of it, but wasn’t overly impressed by it, either. It’s a unique quality that I’d been hoping to find in a partner.

When Matt moved to LA, he didn’t have a job at first, but then he found employment as an IT guy. The fact that he kept going from job to job, though—comments like “They’re all idiots” and “I can’t work in that environment anymore” kept coming up—was something I probably should not have turned a blind eye to at the time. But I was busy myself, and more and more I realized I needed somebody to be with me at events like the awards that I hosted or various stand-up gigs around the country. I’d ask Matt to come with me to these jobs, and he did because I think he sensed my need to have a supportive presence with me. But it admittedly caused problems with him keeping jobs back home.

I really felt our relationship was working, though. One day, on a wonderful vacation in Mexico, we were in a beachfront hut—romantic, calm, beautiful—when Matt turned to me and said, “You know, Kathy, I love you and you mean the world to me. I’m so happy to be with you, and I feel that you’ve made my life better.”

Matt often said loving things like that. “I love you, too,” I said.

“I’d like to know if you would be my wife.”

I was completely unprepared for this. “Are you doing a bit?” I joked.

He laughed and said, “No!”

“Seriously? You’re asking me, or is this a bit?”

“No, I am not doing a bit!”

We were both laughing hard now, and then I said, “Did you ask my dad yet?”

“No.”

“You’re supposed to ask my dad first.”

“I don’t want to call your dad.”

“Well you have to. That’s the rule.”

The whole thing was light and fun, and we just kept laughing about the formality of marriage proposals, and then I said, “Yes, I would like to marry you!” Pause. “But you have to call my dad.”

We went back to LA. Matt called my dad, and Dad made some joke about somebody finally taking me off his back, and that was the start of our engagement. Since I wasn’t inclined to have a typical wedding, I came up with an idea from an Oprah segment where a couple got a free wedding by promoting all the vendors on all the place cards at the tables. Well, I could afford a wedding, so getting a free one was pointless. But I always felt that shelling out tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, on a one-day party was a waste. What if I took the money I would have spent on a nuptials bash, donated it to charity instead, and then got people to sponsor the wedding?

I got the venue, the booze, the cake, everything donated, and in return these people got publicity because the wedding was covered by People magazine and Entertainment Tonight, and I talked about it everywhere I could. I then turned around and wrote a check to amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, for $50,000, and requested all guests donate to them directly rather than give me gifts. In addition to being romantic and fun, the day also benefited an important organization.

Again with Brooke and looking kind of gay. God help me, I married the wrong person.

I made Brooke Shields my maid of honor, because her celebrity would help the charity tie-in cause. “Are you sure you want my face to be the last face you see as a single woman?” she responded, when I asked her to play this role.

The wedding party. On the right is Matt’s best man. On the left is my best man.

“If I can get you a great loaner Richard Tyler dress, then yes, I’m sure.” What I meant was, if I could tell People magazine that model Brooke Shields would be wearing a Richard Tyler cocktail dress (People eats that shit up), then I was one step closer to getting a publication to cover it. By the way, both my beautiful wedding dress and Brooke’s black cocktail bridesmaid dress were designed by Richard Tyler. She got to keep hers. I had to give mine back.

Of course, Brooke being Brooke, she wanted to throw a bridal shower for me, even though I told her she didn’t have to do anything but show up on my wedding day looking beautiful. With only a week’s notice, she decided to host a shower for me at Chado Tea Room, with tea and scones and all things girly. Well, it was so D-list, it cracked me up. Get this: two people showed up: my hair and makeup person Lisa, and my mom. I thought it was awesome, really more a “luncheon” than anything as high and mighty as a “shower.” But Brooke felt terrible. “Everybody I invited was unavailable!” she said.

Dad walking me down the aisle. Who knows what inappropriate joke he just cracked.

I sort of couldn’t believe it. “You called people up personally and they said no?”

“I know,” she said dejectedly.

“Well, that’s a testament to how people feel about me,” I said, and we all laughed.

February 18, 2001, was the big day. We held the wedding at a restaurant on the top floor of a building in Hollywood, and it was really casual and fun, just like I’d hoped. I loved the tongue-in-cheek elements, like walking down the aisle to Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian,” and Bill Maher toasting about how he hates marriage and thought I was marrying Matthew Modine. But Brooke rocked her toast as only Brooke could, saying how she felt Matt was this great calming figure in my life, and brought out my best side. People magazine and ET were thrilled with the celebrities in attendance: Jenny McCarthy, Camryn Mannheim, Eric Idle, Jane Krakowski, the cast of Suddenly Susan. The food was wonderful—although the cliché is true, neither Matt nor I had a bite of any of it—my dad gave a funny speech, and I was surrounded by my friends and loved ones. Plus, when Matt and I got home, after hitting a drive-thru to eat something, we discovered Brooke and her husband Chris had surprised us by putting rose petals all over the bed. It was undeniably romantic and gorgeous.

The first years of married life with Matt were, I have to say, blissfully happy. We got along great, and even when we didn’t, we were able to talk about our problems and come to agreements. He wasn’t a screamer. He’d be bright and rational about it. Our disagreements were hardly fights.

There were red flags, though, that I wish I’d paid more attention to, like Matt’s work situation and his inability with money. After he quit his last job, he started expressing an interest in opening his own computer/IT consulting business. We had a pretty serious discussion about it one night. I told him it was obvious this was really his dream, and that it seemed he was better suited being in business for himself rather than working someplace for someone else.

“How about this,” I said. “I will foot the bill for your new business entirely for a year. We’ll build you an office downstairs in the house, and I’ll do everything I can to support you.”

For a year or so it didn’t bother me that he wasn’t going to a regular job job, because he was ostensibly starting his business, most of his clients being friends of mine I had hooked him up with. Plus, with Suddenly Susan in the past, I was taking more road gigs, and he could accompany me because he was making his own hours.

Matt’s mother, however, wasn’t so sure about him starting his own business. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said to me once.

“Why?” I said.

“Matt needs structure. If he’s just running his own business and accountable to no one but clients, that’s not enough structure.”

“Well, I believe in him and think he can do it.”

I thought, if it doesn’t work after a year, he could go back to an in-house job. But what was beginning to worry me was that he could never seem to amass any kind of savings. Sometimes he’d get mad that being on the road with me didn’t allow him to service his clients properly. I’d agree and then he wouldn’t go on the next trip. But after a month I’d ask him if he’d saved anything. I was covering at least 95 percent of our expenses. He’d say, “I have eighty dollars in the bank.”

He was charging his clients $100 an hour. He’d tell me he was working five hours a day. He’d have made $2,500 that week. Where was the money, I’d ask?

He never had an answer. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” he’d say. “I’m not good with money.” This was such a foreign concept to me, being an adult and not knowing the basics about how to manage money.

I suppose I knew he wasn’t good with money because I had gotten a different call from his mother before we got married, about his car. She told me then that Matt didn’t have good enough credit to get a loan for his car, so she’d cosigned, but then Matt began defaulting on his car payments and it was beginning to affect her credit. This surprised me, because while I knew Matt wasn’t making much money, I certainly thought it was enough to make car payments.

“I thought you should know this,” Matt’s mother said to me, “because I don’t think Matt realizes that it made my interest payments on my house much higher. After you marry him, this is going to become your problem,” she joked.

I said, “Well, I’m sorry he did that to you, but I’m not going to co-sign a car for him. I can’t have him or anyone destroying my hard-earned credit rating.” It’s at those moments that I can’t help but hear my finance-savvy mom’s voice in my head saying, “Keep your money separate. If he’s bad with money, don’t commingle it. Use your head.” I didn’t tell Maggie about this, but I’m sure her radar would have gone off louder than mine did at the time.

When I confronted Matt about the car payments, he was remorseful, saying, “I didn’t realize,” but he also said his mother was exaggerating and being overly dramatic. But I had to stress to him, “Matt, this is a serious thing. You’re a thirty-year-old man, you shouldn’t need your mother to cosign for a car, and you never told me you’d defaulted on payments.”

He said he’d pay her back, and I believed him. His finances were never my business, anyway. We didn’t have any joint accounts. Frankly, I’ve never understood joint accounts between spouses. I can’t imagine wanting to add my name to anyone’s bank account, checking account, or credit card for any reason. Remember, folks, I was no spring chicken when I got married. I was forty. I thought the best way to make it a nonissue was to make it a nonissue and keep things separate. So I never asked to see paychecks, and I wasn’t over his shoulder micromanaging him beyond occasionally showing concern for whether he’d saved money or not. But I really thought between not paying for the house and sharing my insurance, and only having a few bills—a car, a cell phone, not much else—that there was no way he couldn’t make that work.

Those “I have only eighty dollars in the bank” conversations were worrisome, but I never saw them as the end of the world. Remember, when you’re in love with someone, you tend to overlook things. Mind you, when it came to his business, he was always getting up to go somewhere for it. He seemed to be on the phone constantly talking to clients. When I’d speak to friends I’d hooked him up with as clients, they always expressed that they liked Matt and thought he was really nice. I never got into business specifics with them.

Things started getting tense when Matt started having trouble getting clients on his own. Pretty soon he was blaming me for the failure of his business, because as he put it, if he was at Newark airport with me, how could he get to a client’s place in forty-five minutes if their computer crashed? I’d feel bad, and started thinking maybe his mother was right: Maybe he did need structure. But from what I could tell, he was always down in his office working, or going off somewhere to work. I trusted him.