CHAPTER 29

HELLO, GOODBYE

Unfortunately, the cleansing rituals we’d undergone to get rid of the ghosts hadn’t done a thing to make our bills disappear. Five years had passed since we’d moved into Briarcliff and the place was still a money pit. We’d made a couple of half-hearted attempts to sell it, but because we’d bought at the top of the market and house sales were now in the dumper, only one person came to see it: record producer Rick Rubin, who took a quick, unappreciative look around and sped off in his Rolls-Royce without saying a word. Despite our real-estate agent’s urging, we weren’t in a position to drop the price and lose all the money we’d put into it.

Expecting our first child any day, we were determined to stay in Briarcliff and make it our “forever home.” Throughout my pregnancy, and despite my bulging belly, I’d been forced to take every job I was offered in order to support our huge mortgage payments. Obviously, doing a live show at Knott’s that year wasn’t an option, but I did do a photo session in a bathtub with bubbles up to my chin and even shot a Coors commercial—from the chest up.

The house was finally coming together. Little by little, I’d found some beautiful and affordable pieces of original mission-style furniture and bought several plein air paintings by early California artists that played into the home’s arts-and-crafts vibe. Our baby’s room was almost ready, and the house was starting to feel like a home instead of a construction site. Mark surprised me with a big forty-third birthday party/baby shower, and life was good.

Almost nine months pregnant, on a sweltering Southern California afternoon in 1994, instead of sitting in my usual spot—on the steps of the pool, submerged up to my nostrils like a water buffalo—I just happened to be in the house (probably peeing for the thirty-fifth time that day) when the front-gate bell rang.

I waddled to the front door and pushed the intercom button. “Who’s there?” I asked.

The response came back: “Brad Pitt.” I paused for a second, then laughed and said, “Hilarious, John!” sure it had to be Paragon playing a trick on me because he was well aware of my infatuation with the actor.

The manly voice replied, “Uh, really. It’s Brad Pitt.”

John was doing a damn good impression of Brad’s voice, I had to admit.

I was pregnant, remember? And I’d been having some crazy, horny dreams about Mr. Pitt almost every night for the previous month after seeing him costar in Interview with the Vampire.

“No, really,” I said, becoming a little cranky. “Who is this?”

“Brad Pitt,” the voice came back. “Nick Cage told me about your house, and I was wondering if I could see it.”

Now, Nicholas Cage is a whole other witchy story. Almost seven years earlier, after seeing him in the film Moonstruck, I’d become obsessed with him. One evening, while sitting with a girlfriend in a Hollywood nightclub, waxing erotic about the many virtues of Mr. Cage, I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder. My friend’s mouth gaped open and she looked at me like bats had just flown out of my cooch. “Can I interest you ladies in a drink?” came a deep, sexy voice. I turned around and there was Nicolas Cage! Sometimes I scare me.

But back to Brad…

Rather than buzz the gate to let in the ax murderer I knew was lurking behind it, I decided to lumber down the driveway to take a peek. When I reached our spiderweb gates, I found myself staring into the impossibly blue eyes of Brad freakin’ Pitt! Seriously, I almost dropped the baby right then and there. (Which would have made a great conversation starter for my kid later in life.)

“Would you mind if I came in and took a look around?” Mind?! I couldn’t get the gate open fast enough! I gave Brad the grand tour of the property and the house, all the while trying to act cool and keep myself from staring a hole through him. He was getting ready to shoot his next film, Legends of the Fall, and his hair was long and blond, his eyes were bluer than eyes have a right to be, and he was so damned beautiful I could hardly breathe. Top all that off with the fact that he was as sweet and down-to-earth as a person could be, and I thought I’d died and gone to Hollywood heaven! Before leaving, Brad asked if he could come back and take another look sometime, and of course I said yes. Duh!

Brad came back a few days later with his girlfriend, a beautiful little ballet dancer named Jitka, who looked like a female version of him. Mark made sure he was home so I wouldn’t try anything funny in my hormonally charged state. After another quick run-through of the house, we sat in the living room with the adorable couple yakking about the history of Briarcliff and showing off the old photos we’d collected. Brad seemed genuinely interested and asked lots of questions about the house’s history and architecture.

The next day, we got a call from Brad’s lawyer saying that he would like to buy Briarcliff and was prepared to make an offer. Brad hadn’t mentioned a word about being interested in buying it, so we were completely blindsided and a little bit stunned. Even though we’d wanted to sell a year before, now that all the major work was done, the house furnished, exorcisms performed, and baby on the way, we’d made up our minds to tough it out and stay, no matter what. After spending a sleepless night thinking it over, we called the attorney back the next day and politely declined. She called back the following day and upped the offer. I went into a tailspin. I was about to give birth for the first and last time in my life and was in serious nesting mode! I couldn’t imagine selling the house at this point and moving. Where would we go? What would we do with our twenty-one rooms of recently purchased furniture? I decided the stress of moving when I was nine months pregnant was just too much, and again, we declined the offer. But when the third offer came in, enough to cover what we’d paid for the house plus all the money we’d sunk into it, we caved. The next thing we knew, we were putting a humongous moving van full of furniture into storage and moving into a rental house in Brentwood.

As fate would have it, after I gave birth, we ended up buying a much more manageable house on the same private road, directly next door to Briarcliff. During our time there, I could see Brad’s house from our upstairs balcony every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to bed. I missed that house so much I physically ached. Sometimes I’d stand on the deck just staring at it—and, no, I wasn’t spying on Brad—mourning its loss. I’ve never been so attached to any place in my life the way I was to that house.

A wacky footnote: two weeks after we moved into our new home next door to Briarcliff, Brad’s attorney called again to say Brad wanted to make an offer on our new house. I lost it—I’d just had a baby and moved twice! We turned down the offer without hesitation. I began having dreams about Brad again, only this time he was stalking me. I’ve got to be the only woman in the world who’s ever had nightmares about Brad Pitt!

We remained living next door to Brad for the next eight years—through Jitka, Gwyneth, Jennifer, and all the way to Angelina.