Reba: My Story (32 page)

W
E
’
D NEVER REALLY TALKED ABOUT GETTING MARRIED, AND I
wasn’t sure that either of us even wanted to ever again. Still, we were certainly moving in the direction of permanence. By January 1989, we were talking about buying a house, perhaps a place on the water with some acreage. Linda DeMith was my hairdresser then, and since I figured hairdressers knew everyone and everything that was happening, I asked her about it. It only took her about half an hour to come up with a lead in Gallatin, a suburb of Nashville.

Narvel and I drove out late that afternoon to see the place. It was marked by two rock columns, which looked like somebody had started to build a fence. We drove between the columns across a cattle guard and kept going down an old road with chuckholes in it, hedged in by tall brush. Things didn’t look promising—and then suddenly a four-story, red brick house rose up in front of us. It overlooked the Cumberland River and was ringed by giant oaks. It was impressive, but I was more taken by the geese that were swimming next to it in the cove.

When Narvel and I got inside, we noticed that the current owner used only three of the many rooms because she lived by herself. Most of the windows were covered with thick curtains that hid the river view. The decorating was not exactly my style—big, ornate swans for water faucets, velvet wallpaper flecked with gold, velvet and satin draperies. But as we walked around, Narvel got really inspired.

“We can take out this wall,” he’d say. “We can add a window here.”

By the time we finished looking, we were in love with the place. And when our realtor, Francis Almany, told us we could get the two adjoining tracts of land, we were sold.
There was a lot of remodeling needed so we couldn’t move in for a year. But that was the one and only house that Narvel and I ever looked at.

I guess you could say that I’m not a very romantic person, because on Valentine’s Day in 1989 I bought Narvel a chain saw! He gave me a beautiful tennis bracelet. Narvel and I would go out to the place and help clear the land with the chain saw while the workers were on the bulldozers. At first we were working away but not getting very much done until we finally figured out that we had the chain on backward. But we had a lot of fun.

We totally gutted the house, rebuilding it from the inside out, with the help of an architect, Manuel Zietland. He designed a large bedroom for us, with two walls of windows overlooking the river, as well as specific rooms for Narvel’s children, Brandon, Shawna, and Chassidy to stay in when they came to visit. Adjoining our suite was the room that would become Shelby’s later on.

Anyone who’s ever been through building or remodeling a house with someone else knows that it’s a very tough thing to do. So, of course, Narvel and I argued through it all. For instance, we’d go into a paint and wallpaper store, look at the color chips and through the books, and before long we’d be out on the sidewalk, shouting at each other. Then we’d say, “Okay, we can do this, we’re adults. Let’s go back in.” And so we would. Then I would ask, “What do you think of this?” And Narvel would make a face.

“You don’t have to make a face,” I would say. “If you don’t like it, just say it.”

“Okay, I don’t like it,” Narvel would say. And the fight would be back on.

We struggled to pick out doorknobs, windows, trims, faucets, bathtubs, doors, lighting fixtures—all of it. Having worked together for so long, we thought we knew each other. Yet we’re still, to this day, very different people. Narvel says there’s not an impractical bone in my body, and not a practical one in his. But we also both understand the
importance of compromise in a relationship so we made an agreement. If I liked something and he didn’t, we passed. If he liked something and I didn’t, we passed. The only time we bought anything was when we both agreed on it.

Throughout the process I had always felt kind of “distant” to the house. But when I finally saw it with its red bricks painted the soft buttercup yellow we’d chosen, I cried. I just loved it.

Next we got to decorate it—which could have come close to setting off a reprise of our paint-and-wallpaper battles. Where I tend toward simplicity, Narvel wanted decorating schemes that I thought were just a little bit elaborate. But we worked it out.

While we were touring in 1989, Narvel and I shopped for furniture in almost every city we played. We’d finish our show, get on the bus, and Larry would drive us through the night to the next town for our performance. He would sleep during the day so Narvel would drive himself and me around town looking for the best furniture stores. He got pretty good at maneuvering that big, forty-foot bus around parking lots! We found pieces in Phoenix and Los Angeles, and got Chassidy’s bedroom furniture in Dallas; Shawna’s in Fresno, California. I did a live album in 1989 in Palm Desert, California, and sent home furniture from there too. And when we toured England (the bus stayed home) we bought a huge canopy bed that had to be shipped from London.

A
ROUND THIS TIME, NARVEL CAME UP WITH ANOTHER GREAT
idea. I had always toured the entire year, playing several dates every month. But now Narvel suggested that we put the show together and record in January, tour in February, March, April, and a little bit in May, take the rest of May and June off (except for Fan Fair), and then begin touring again in July and August. We would work the first week of September and then take the rest of September off. The
tour schedule would then resume in October and November, and then about the first week of December, we would quit until we went back and put our new show together.

It was a great plan, one that would give us the chance to have more of a personal life and to enjoy our new home. But before we could put it into practice, taking our first break in May, I got the chance to live out one of my wildest dreams—to get a part in a movie. Of course, I’d been acting in my videos, for five years, and on a number of television specials, but this was my first shot at the big screen.

When I first signed with William Morris in 1982, I had hoped they’d be looking out for television and movie roles for me. But every script I was offered had me as a girl singer in a country band playing in a honky-tonk. I thought, why would I want to be in a movie playing a girl singer when that’s what I do for a living?

If I’m going to be in a movie, I want to be in something different! Isn’t Hollywood supposed to be about fantasy?

Other kinds of roles did come along. I read the script for
Field of Dreams
, but no one told me that Kevin Costner was going to be in it. While I’m not sorry I didn’t do the picture, I think I would back down and play some girl singer if I was singing to him.

That’s a joke, Narvel.

Now, finally, I’d gotten a shot at a likely script. John Gaines from the booking agency APA’s motion picture department sent it to me. “Read it, you’ll love it,” he said.

Tremors
was sort of a science-fiction/horror film, only funny. As the press release later described it, “Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward star as two country handymen who lead a cast of zany characters to safety in this exciting sci-fi creature comedy. Just as they decide to leave Perfection, Nevada, strange rumblings prevent their departure. They discover their desolate town is infested with gigantic man-eating creatures that live below the ground.

“The race is on to overcome these slimy subterraneans and find a way to higher ground in this enjoyable thriller …”

John was right. I did love it and I really wanted to read for the director, Ron Underwood, so the next day I called John back. He had already set it up.

Auditioning is hard. You have to read for a group of people who just sit around listening silently. You can’t tell what they’re thinking, and it makes you self-conscious to have all that attention on you.

When I finished, Ron said to me, “Now, you know this picture is going to be shot in the desert.”

“I figured that, that’s what the script said,” I answered.

“Well,” he continued, “you’re going to get dirty, you won’t have any makeup on. You’ll have your hair pulled back.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“Well, isn’t that going to bother you?” he asked.

“No,” I said, wondering if he was trying to talk me out of the part.

I guess he didn’t know how I was brought up! All he knew were my publicity pictures with the makeup and big hairdos.

I wound up having to read a couple more times, once for the executive producer, Gale Ann Hurd, before I was told I had the part. Filming began in May 1989.

It was pretty rough! It was so cold on the set in the mornings that I needed a heater in my trailer and hot enough for an air conditioner in the afternoons. I had neither. My trailer was a little room that had a tiny table for my makeup. There was a couch and a partition that hid a toilet that smelled. At night, we all stayed in motels in Long Pine, California.

But the movie itself had a great story, and the cast was
great
. Besides Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, it featured Finn
Carter and Michael Gross, who played my husband. As Richard Schickel said in
Time
magazine, “It’s in the tradition of the 50’s horror movies.
Tremors
is bound to become a classic!”

Not a bad way to launch a movie career.…

I
DON
’
T KNOW THAT NARVEL AND I REALLY WOULD HAVE
ever gotten married if I didn’t have such a strong urge to have a baby. Up until then I had reconciled to myself that I would never have a child. That was because of Charlie. Charlie had his two boys from a previous marriage, and he wasn’t about to go to any extra trouble to make a place for kids in our life. “If you have children, you don’t sing,” Charlie had told me. “I’m not going to be cleaning shitty diapers while you’re off on the road.”

And Charlie didn’t want to share me with a child. When I was in love with him I took his attitude as a compliment. Later, I was so thankful that I never had a baby with him.

But my relationship with Narvel was so different, and I found myself longing to have a baby with him. And so finally Narvel and I began to talk seriously about marriage.

After my first week shooting
Tremors
, he came out to
meet me in Southern California. I toured on weekends throughout the shooting, and he planned to accompany me to our concert date. So we were sitting in the Los Angeles airport when Narvel asked, “What do you think about us getting married in Lake Tahoe?”

I loved the idea but wondered how we could get both of our families to Lake Tahoe. Then I got a brainstorm: “Let’s figure out how many American Airlines Advantage miles we have between us,” I said.

We called our travel agent and, sure enough, we had enough mileage credit between us to send almost all of our family members round-trip to Reno, where our bus would pick them up and take them to Lake Tahoe. Our list included: Narvel’s children, Brandon, Chassidy, Shawna and her boyfriend, Jeff; Narvel’s mom and dad; his sister, Patricia, and her husband, Dan Law, and their three kids, Jeff, Jan, and Kim; my parents; Pake’s wife, Katie, and their three children, Autumn, Calamity, and Chism; and my sister, Alice, and her husband, Robert, with their children, Trevor, Garett, and Vince. Susie and Pake were working and couldn’t come.

The week before the wedding, Mama flew out to be with me on the set of
Tremors
in Lone Pine, California. After filming that week, we left together on Thursday and drove to Lake Tahoe. On the way, we stopped at Yosemite National Park, which I had always wanted to see. We had a great time. It was so special to get to do that with her. It wasn’t until I had Shelby that I understood the depth of Mama’s love for me. It wasn’t measurable!

Then Mama and I went on to Lake Tahoe to meet Narvel, while our families arrived later that night, having flown in to Reno. I had been booked to perform at Caesars Palace, and they all came to watch the show. Then the next afternoon at two o’clock, we all boarded two of our buses and went to Zephyr Cove, loaded onto a catamaran, and crossed the lake to Emerald Bay.

Although it was June 3, it was so cold you would have
thought it was the middle of November. I wore a simple white cotton, long-sleeved summer dress. Everyone else had worn thin summer clothing too, which offered little warmth against the wind coming off the lake. Some of us huddled in blankets and others stayed below. The sun came out as Narvel and I said our wedding vows on Lake Tahoe’s beautiful Emerald Bay. If you ever get the chance, go see it! Dan Collier, from Nashville, performed our simple ceremony, and his wife, Kathy, was there as well.

Afterward, we had a wedding toast and ate the wonderful food provided by Caesars. Then we headed back across the lake to the hotel.

I did my first show and later we had our reception, catered by Caesars Palace and attended by my band, crew, and both families. I did a second show and then Narvel and I put our families back on the bus for Reno. They flew out of Nevada about six o’clock in the morning.

That much activity would kill me if I had to do it today—but I was young back then.