The Ranch

“Like what? Buy it for you?” He was trying to tease her out of her gloom, but he knew he was not succeeding, and he didn't blame her. It was a difficult business being a celebrity, in spite of what people thought. From the out’ side, it looked great, from the inside, it was filled with heartbreak. And it was impossible not to take it personally. They were human, they all did.

“Can you get her to agree to let me take the kids with me? I'll cut it down to a week if that makes a difference,” although she had the reservations for two weeks.

“I'll try if you want, but I think it's pretty hopeless. And I think it's a fair bet that it'll hit the papers that you were turned down, which doesn't exactly make you look like a very moral person. And since we're pressing Leo on the confidentiality issue here, I'd rather not have all this crap dragged back into the papers.”

“Great. Thanks,” she said, trying to sound unaffected by all of it, but it was obvious that she was distraught over the entire conversation.

“I'm sorry, Tan,” he said somberly.

“Sure, thanks. I'll talk to you tomorrow.” She was crying as she said it.

“I'll call you. We have to go over the contracts on the concert tour. I'll call you in the morning.”

Her heart sank as she hung up. Her life had turned to shit over the years, and it was only at times like these that she really saw it. For all the adulation, and the thrill they talked about, the applause, the concerts, the awards, the money, this was what it really boiled down to. People making you look like a two-bit tramp, a husband who walked out without looking back, and stepchildren you never saw again. It was a wonder anyone in Hollywood could still hold their head up, or bothered to put one foot after the other.

She sat alone in her house in Bel Air that night, thinking about it, and wishing she were dead, but too unhappy and too scared to do anything about it. She thought of Ellie for the first time in years, and Mary Stuart's son, Todd. It seemed such an easy way out, and yet it wasn't. It was so totally the wrong thing to do, and yet it required a peculiar mix of cowardice and courage, and she found that she had neither.

She sat in her living room until the sun came up, thinking about all of it, wanting to hate Tony for as much as she could, and she found she couldn't do that either. She couldn't do anything except sit there and cry all night, and there was no one to hear her. And at last, she got up and went to bed. She had no idea what she was going to do about Wyoming, and she didn't even care now. She'd let Jean go and take friends, or her hairdresser, or Tony with a girlfriend. And then she remembered he was going to Europe with his girlfriend. Everyone had friends and children, and a life, and even a decent reputation. And all she had were a bunch of gold and platinum records, hanging on a wall, and a row of awards sitting on a shelf below them. But there was not much more beyond that. She couldn't imagine trusting anyone again, or even having a man willing to put up with all the garbage. It was laughable. She had made it all the way to the top, in order to find that there was nothing there that anybody wanted. She lay down on her bed, still thinking of it, and the children she would probably never see again, or not for more than a few minutes. It was as though she and Tony and his kids and their life had vanished into thin air, none of it had ever existed. Gone. In a puff of smoke… in a giant blaze… a whole life up in flames… with tabloids used as kindling.

Chapter 7

When Tanya woke up later that day, she felt as though she had been beaten. She had hardly slept at all, and something about the settlement, the news about the kids, the fact of coming home and seeing that Tony had taken all his things, left her feeling bullied and broken. She got out of bed, and felt as though she had a hangover as she grimaced and looked in the mirror. She hadn't even had a drink the day before, but she felt rotten, and she had a dismal headache.