Prairie Tale (18 page)

“You need my help?” I asked.

“I’m buying a 928 and I’m scared shitless to sign the paperwork,” he said. “You have to help me.”

“First of all, I haven’t spoken to you in how long?” I said. “And why do I have to help you? Why can’t you do this?”

“I’m begging you,” he said. “Please, Melissa? I’ve never bought anything like this in my life.”

I understood; this was considerably different than the Mustang he had purchased when we were first together. But his request was also completely absurd—so absurd that I sped over to the Porsche dealer and sat with him as he signed the papers. Afterward, Rob said he needed to talk to me. I knew what he wanted, what he was going to say, and I didn’t want to have that discussion. But he pleaded with me to change my mind and eventually broke me down.

We met up again later that day. I spent the few hours in between preparing my responses to all the apologies and entreaties I knew he was going to make. But it turned out Rob had more than forgiveness on his mind. He knew he’d been an asshole and admitted to breaking my heart far too many times. But he had, he explained, just been through the most insane experience of his life (“I’m sure you read about it,” he said sheepishly; I said I had). Then, looking like a man who’d just walked back into his life after being given up for dead in a far-off land, he said, “I’m back! I’m here. I’m me!”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“I’m not going to live without you,” he said. “I swear to God, this time it’s different.”

“Really? What makes it different this time?”

“Because this time”—suddenly he dropped to one knee—“I want you to marry me.”

He caught me totally off guard, and I froze. “You what?” I asked.

“I am formally asking for your hand in marriage,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

I was at a complete loss. I stammered things like “Well, hold on now” and “I have to take care of a few things before I can give you an answer.” I was totally thrown! I thought about Alan. I flashed on his family, whom I’d met on a recent trip to New York. I made a lot of strange sounds. I grunted and moaned. I did everything but say yes or no.

Finally, I said, “Rob, it’s just too much. Go away. Give me some time and I will give you an answer.”

So he roared off in his new Porsche and I collapsed on my bed and twisted myself into a knot, a position I stayed in quite uncomfortably for the next few days. I felt like I was in a dream. I didn’t know if I was coming or going. I didn’t believe Rob had actually proposed. Nor could I understand why. I even called him and said, “I’m going to ask you this again: are you seriously proposing marriage?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I mean
marriage
,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Within a year of asking me, you’re prepared to be married to me, because I’m not going to be engaged for decades and decades.”

“Right.”

“You’re prepared for this?”

“Put any conditions on it you want.”

“You mean this?”

“Yes,” he said. “Do you have an answer?”

“Honestly, I still can’t wrap my brain around this,” I said. “You have to give me more time.”

I really didn’t know what the hell to do. In the meantime, I had a special man in my life who was calling me throughout this quandary and asking me to dinner and movies, asking me to hang out with him as we had been doing, and asking me if he could bring me soup or just sit with me when I told him that I’d been lying low because I wasn’t feeling well.

Each time I found myself inching toward calling Rob with an answer, a voice in my head screamed at me,
Don’t do it. You already have a wonderful guy. He’s sweet. He’s caring. He adores you. You’re going to break his heart and then you’re going to be sorry.

The last thing in the world I wanted was to break someone else’s heart, especially Alan’s. I knew too well the misery of heartbreak. The thought of possibly doing so was almost more than I could bear. I didn’t eat or sleep. I talked to my cats. I asked my dog for advice. I looked heavenward for a sign from my dad. I also talked to my mother, repeatedly asking her the same question each time:
What should I do?

She finally threw up her hands and said, “It’s up to you. Who’s going to make you the happiest?”

She was right. I had to quit torturing myself and make a decision. I got out a piece of paper, titled it “The Pros & Cons of Marrying Rob Lowe,” and made a list.

A
fter a great deal of soul-searching, the choice was clear. I had invested real time and effort into my relationship with Rob and if he was telling the truth, I was in. I knew we were young, but I also knew he was the man with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. He was the one I wanted all along.

Before I gave Rob my decision, though, I needed to break the news to Alan. I wanted to be as grown-up and considerate as possible. E-mail and text messages didn’t exist back then; I wouldn’t have delivered the news in such a cold manner, anyway. I wasn’t going to do it over the phone or by letter, either. Alan deserved better. He deserved to hear me explain in person why I was making this extremely painful decision.

I went to his apartment, praying it would go all right. Unlike Rob, who I’d seen cry and scream (hey, he’s an actor, there’s histrionics and drama), Alan was very even-keeled and reserved. He wore his emotions as neatly and carefully as his necktie. I wanted to vomit, but I felt like I had a grip on my feelings as I told him that I had been forced to make a difficult decision after Rob had suddenly come back.

Alan’s face was like stone, but I saw his eyes begin to melt as he uttered a scared and hesitant “Yes?”

“Back into my life,” I continued.

“Yes?” he said.

Before I could get into the details, Alan began to cry. He realized what was happening. I felt like Alexis Carrington, just a colossal bitch. I wanted to run home, crawl into bed, and instruct my mom to tell Alan I was breaking up with him, tell Rob I would marry him, and then set up the wedding so all I had to do was show up. I didn’t want to be a grown-up having this conversation, which quickly turned heartbreakingly sad and teary.

“What are you going to do?” Alan asked.

I told him, and he started to cry even harder. Then he pulled himself together and said he didn’t know what to tell me other than he hoped I would be incredibly happy. That made me cry hardest of all. I spent the night—both of us wanted one last night together—but leaving the next morning was torture. I had to drag myself away from this wonderful guy, and then I chastised myself the whole way home. I knew I was behaving like an utter moron.

At home, my answering machine was full of messages from Rob. Unable to reach me, he wanted to know where I was. I called him back. He wanted to know if I’d made a decision yet. He said he was losing his mind. I told him that I loved him very much and had a decision, but I needed a couple more days before I saw him. When we finally got together, I was blunt about my reservations. I threw all the clichés at him, including the one about leopards not being able to change their spots.

“But I’m convinced people can change,” I said. “And maybe you are willing to change. Maybe this is a turning point for us. Maybe the fact that you have to cough up some dough to put a shiny rock on my finger will add to the fact that we have this commitment. I don’t now. But I’m not going to walk away from six years of my life, and I want to give this a chance, so…yes, I will marry you!”

After breaking the good news to our families, our biggest challenge was picking out a ring without seeing our engagement splashed across the tabloids. We snuck into a Beverly Hills jewelry store one day without attracting the attention of any paparazzi. I’d always loved jewelry, but I had no idea what the good stuff cost. The price tags shocked us. Not that I saw any rings I liked; all of them were too big or too gaudy or both, and too expensive. They ranged in price from twenty thousand to two hundred thousand dollars. Ridiculous! But like most women, I was able to summon a reserve of stamina and stay with the hunt until I found the perfect ring for me, a dainty sparkler with eleven baguettes and five marquise diamonds, all under a carat, shaped like a crown and set in white gold. I showed it to Rob and tried it on.

“This is the one,” I said.

“It is?” he said.

I nodded.

“I don’t know how much it’s going to be,” he said.

“Well, ask, stupid.”

“You’re sure you really like it?”

“It’s perfect.”

“Based on what I’ve seen,” he winced, “this is gonna hurt.”

“Maybe,” I said, grinning.

The ring was priced at twenty-five hundred dollars, still a significant sum but not anywhere near the hit we had anticipated. As we left the jewelry store, we were met by a group of paparazzi, who had been tipped off we were inside picking out a ring. Amid the whir of snapping cameras and questions about our engagement, we hopped into Rob’s Porsche and sped off to safety.

Suddenly and implausibly, Rob and I looked downright stable. Tom and Rebecca had split; so had Emilio and Demi; in fact, Emilio had fathered two children with Carey Salley, with whom he had an on-again, off-again relationship. At a New Year’s party thrown by Alana Stewart in the house she got in her divorce from Rod, I spotted Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett and thought,
Well, they’re a couple. They’ve made it. If they can do it, I think Rob and I can be okay.

Thinking back to that moment of naive optimism reminds me, at least in tone, of the scene in
Postcards from the Edge
when Meryl Streep comes home and Shirley MacLaine is waiting up for her, drinking, in pajamas with a turban on her head. They have an argument, and Shirley says, “You know, it could have been much worse. You could’ve had Joan Crawford or Lana Turner for a mother.” And Meryl says, “What, those are the choices?”

Ryan and Farrah were our control couple? My North Star?

What was I thinking?

P
er Rob, the next step was moving in with him. He wanted me to move from my mother’s guesthouse into his mother’s guesthouse.

However, his was more than fourteen feet away from the main house, and he had redone it in
American Gigolo
style, bachelor pad chic, featuring black lacquer cabinets, leather furniture, glass bricks, Bang & Olufsen electronics, and a splash of neon light. By contrast, my place was done with funky, comfortable furniture tending toward the style that would become known as shabby chic, with beautiful art nouveau accents. I also had three cats, Sylvester, Cairo, and her son, Dr. Murray Schwartz, as well as my dog, Sidney Beagleman. Rob had a cat, too, an Abyssinian named Bob Love.

I didn’t see how the hell my stuff was going to blend with Rob’s. Nor did I see how we were going to share his closet, which already overflowed with designer clothes and wardrobe from his various movies. Also, he didn’t have a doggie door for Sidney. But every time I raised a new obstacle or problem, Rob told me not to worry, that we’d figure it out, and we did.

We worked out more than just living arrangements. In one of our conversations, we divulged to each other what had been going on while we were apart. I told Rob that I’d been seeing someone very seriously, but had ended it for him. He told me about the craziness of his relationship with Stephanie. After everything was finally purged, I said, “So let me ask you a question about you and Stephanie.”

“Yes?” he said.

“What is it like fucking yourself? You guys are clones. What’s it like?”

He just smiled his adorable Rob grin.

“You noticed?”

“Who didn’t,” I said. “I mean, she’s clearly not just any other seashell, is she?”

After agreeing on a summer wedding date, Rob left for St. Augustine, Florida, where he began making
Illegally Yours,
and I turned my attention to actual wedding plans. I pored through bridal magazines, looked for dresses, and met with wedding planners, florists, and caterers to get ideas. Rob and I talked numerous times a day. He was more into the guest list, a monster task that began to resemble an awards show seating chart with all its nuanced complications. One day he said if we were going to have Francis Ford Coppola, we needed to invite Oliver Stone, too. I pointed out that we didn’t know Oliver. Rob said, “Yeah, but we really should.”

There were many similarly nutty conversations. Like could we invite Demi and still have Emilio? Could we invite my friend Leilani’s sister, who had had a less serious thing with Emilio but a thing nonetheless? Judd or his ex, Loree? On and on ad nauseam. At one point, I felt like we had to invite everyone or no one, because it seemed as if everyone in Hollywood, at least those we knew, had slept with one another. Us included. It convinced me that one day way in the future, the industry will be run by one little banjo-playing mogul with an exceptionally high forehead, little beady eyes, and webbed fingers. The quintessential product of celebrity inbreeding.

In the meantime, Rob was having a great time in St. Augustine, hanging out with Colleen Camp and the crew. But he didn’t completely get director Peter Bogdanovich. During rehearsals, Rob called me, perplexed. Peter had told him not to have orgasms during sex while he was shooting the movie. I said, “What?”

“Yeah. He said you lose a lot of energy that way, and it’s a problem. So you can’t let yourself come.”

“You’re not listening to him, are you?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“But wait. I’m not there. So what does it matter?” (Ha-ha.)

I visited a short time later and we had a nice time. Peter graciously opened his set to me anytime and I did all the touristy things in St. Augustine. Then I flew back home and hung out with friends. I was really determined to be good. Both Rob and I had multiple flings in the past, but I was going to make sure my behavior was as changed and chaste as he said his was. No John Cusack moments for me, no temporary fixes. I was Suzy Homemaker, planning my wedding, and as far as I recall, Rob was rolling along nicely, too.

Till then, I had been partying heavily. But I turned over a new leaf after accompanying my friend Lauren to a twelve-step meeting. A manicurist, Lauren was my primary coke connection. She also smoked bales of weed, and one day, feeling like her life was unmanageable, she decided to get sober. At her meeting, I introduced myself as a normy, but I left thinking my life would be infinitely better if I gave up drugs. Not alcohol, I didn’t consider that a drug; a beer or a cocktail was fine. But I felt like I was doing a lot of coke. I’d recently missed an audition because I’d woken up after a too-brief sleep looking like shit. That was enough of a reason for me.

As I did with so many things, I got way too involved too fast. I went to meetings, became a life raft for people who were sinking in their own lives, put my name on phone lists, went out for lots of coffee, and had people to my house. It was a nice network of people. They were all a little dark and fun. My life did become a little bit more peaceful, too. I could focus on other people’s drama instead of my own.

It was temporary, though. After finishing
Illegally Yours,
Rob flew straight to New York and began production on his next picture,
Masquerade.
I visited at the beginning, and I got a good vibe from director Bob Swain and Rob’s costar, Meg Tilly. Rob had rented a lovely home in the Hamptons, and we had a great time there. During the day, we hung out at the beach and took funny videos of each other with the camera his parents had given him for Christmas, and at night, we hit the hot restaurants and clubs in the city.

Charlie Sheen was also in town shooting
Wall Street.
One night Charlie, Rob, and I were at a club with Oliver Stone, tucked away in a corner booth where the shadows fell a little heavier to afford more privacy, and the music wasn’t quite as loud so we could actually have a conversation. Oliver was ranting about the terrible quality of television, going on and on about how the networks put on nothing but crap and in the process turned the culture into crap, and blah-blah-blah.

At one point, I saw out of the corner of my eye a group of girls staring at us from across the club. They had that look in their eyes. The celebrity-chasing photographers are called paparazzi. I call the people who stare across the room the recognazzi. These ones were in their early twenties and attractive. I watched them work up their nerve and walk up to our table. I thought they were going to ask for Rob’s autograph. Rob sort of sat up straighter, getting ready to sign, shameless creature that he was, while Oliver went on with his diatribe and Charlie listened. But the girls looked past both of them and directly at me.

“You’re Melissa Gilbert, right?” one of them asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Oh my God,” one squealed.

“We’ve been watching
Little House on the Prairie
our whole lives,” another one said. “We even watch the reruns.”

“Growing up, I wanted to be just like you,” the third chimed in. “I dressed as you for Halloween.”

They excitedly recalled their favorite episodes and told me more memories they had of loving the show. Everyone at the table got quiet. Oliver looked at me curiously; I don’t think he had any clue who I was. The girls, in turn, didn’t seem to be bowled over by Rob or Charlie, and had no time for Oliver. Nor did they care. After they left, I flashed Oliver a grin and said, “And that is the power of television.”

I
returned home feeling pretty damn good about life. I heaved a sigh of relief at the decision I’d made to marry Rob. It seemed he had clearly changed. With our wedding plans moving along, I celebrated my twenty-second birthday with Katie Wagner and our producer-friend Brad Wyman. Since all of us were Tauruses, we called it the bullshit party.

I broke my vow to not do drugs that night and went on a two-day bender in Las Vegas with a group of friends that included Leif Garrett. Flying home, after not sleeping for forty-eight hours, I thought I saw the writing on the wall, and it scared the shit out of me. After that binge, I vowed to never do cocaine again.

Rob asked me to come back to the Hamptons to be with him, and I couldn’t get there fast enough. I put the grizzled feeling of excess behind me and fell into an easy, loving, relaxed rhythm of visiting Rob on the set. We bopped around the Hamptons and hung out at night. We couldn’t have had a better time.

After a couple of weeks, I bid him good-bye and went home to continue wedding preparations. I looked for a dress, met with the wedding planner, and relaxed with my girlfriends. I wasn’t sure why, but I felt run-down, tired, cranky, and just plain blah. I was at our home in Malibu when I noticed my breasts were particularly tender. Then it hit me. Oh shit, my period was late!