The Starter Wife Read online

  “I’ve become the Prince-listening version of my mother,” Gracie lamented as she turned into the garage at Neiman Marcus. She remembered how her mother loved to listen to songs from the sixties on the radio, well into the seventies. She had vowed never to be stuck in a time warp, the way her mother had been—wearing red lipstick (fifties), saying things like “jazzy” (sixties).

  At least, Gracie thought, as she parked the Volvo between two black BMW SUVs, I’ve given up shoulder pads and the hope to someday date Michael Jackson.

  GRACIE KNEW it was wrong. She knew it was wrong and yet there she was, standing before the Loree Rodkin jewelry case on the ground floor of the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus. She was wearing heavy sunglasses (very Jackie O, very Vogue-sanctioned) and a scarf tied around her head—the only scarf she owned—a Hermès giveaway at some charity event. Gracie was going for the “chic widow” look to disguise herself, should she run into anyone she knew, but somehow had ended up with the “post-surgery” look. Other shoppers looked at her curiously, wondering if it was a face-lift, brow-lift, eye-lift, or abusive husband that had her wrapped in the cheapest of last fall’s Hermès “To the Races” Collection.

  But Gracie didn’t care. She was too caught up in a mixture of guilt and glee and fear and the sight of the most beautiful pink diamond earrings she’d ever seen.

  Or maybe just the only pink diamond earrings she’d ever seen.

  A saleslady appeared, not at all put off by Gracie’s odd appearance. In fact, the young, knowing woman sporting a chic black chignon seemed to be buoyed by the scarf/sunglasses getup.

  “You see something you like?” the woman asked, with one of those indistinguishable accents so often heard behind sales counters in Beverly Hills.

  Gracie giggled. Gracie rarely giggled these days—not even with Jaden, who could be counted on for a giggle even when headline news became overwhelming.

  Gracie continued giggling and couldn’t speak. She jabbed her finger at those earrings, gesturing like an actor playing a mentally challenged mute.

  “Ah, yes,” the woman said, “these are beautiful, no?”

  And she took them out of the case, holding one in each hand like tiny, brilliant headlights.

  “Be more gorgeous,” Gracie said to the earrings; she’d found her voice.

  “Try them on.” The woman pushed the stones into Gracie’s hands.

  Gracie, in a fit of courage that ranked right up there with the time she saved Billy Novak from drowning in their blowup pool in second grade, loosened her scarf and slipped it onto her neckline.

  But the glasses remained.

  She held up the earrings, one to each lobe.

  “Go ahead. Try them on,” the saleslady said.

  “I don’t need to,” Gracie said. “Wrap ’em up. Please.”

  “Are they a gift?” the saleslady asked.

  “Yes,” Gracie said. “A birthday gift.”

  “She must be a wonderful person, to deserve such a luxury.”

  “She’s the best, ” Gracie assured her.

  Gracie didn’t ask how much they cost. She didn’t care. She placed the American Express on the counter and made the sign of the cross over it to symbolize her last purchase on the card, a purchase she wouldn’t have dared to make if she were still married.

  She walked out, clutching the orange Neiman Marcus bag to her chest, into the late-afternoon sunshine.

  5

  THIS IS WHY I HATE MORNING PHONE CALLS

  GRACIE AWAKENED to a phone ringing, an unusual event given that Kenny had moved out. At first she felt she was dreaming, the sound seemed so foreign, so interred in the past. She opened her eyes slowly, focusing on her sleeping child who now shared her bed, her back toward her, her hair a pale web of knots. The phone rang again, jolting Gracie into consciousness. She had the same feeling in her stomach she’d had since Kenny told her he wanted a divorce—a gnawing, as though she was starving—but she wasn’t starving, she wasn’t even hungry. How could she be when all she did in her spare time was eat? She knew what the feeling was: emptiness. And she knew if she was going to get over their impending divorce, she would have to fill it.

  Gracie finally answered the phone, knowing immediately who was on the other end when she heard the breathing. Unfortunately it wasn’t a sexual prank, it was Kenny. He was jogging on the treadmill and “running” his morning calls. Gracie thought about how nothing, really, had changed for him. His life was the same. Except that she was no longer in it.

  “Hello?” Gracie said. She tried to make her voice sound clear, which was rough going at this hour. She had read an article recently that informed the reader that even our voices age, because of wear and tear on the voice box. Gracie thought this was information she didn’t really need. Even our voices age? Is there nothing we can do? Is nothing sacred?

  “Gracie?” Kenny breathed, then coughed. He was using the speakerphone.

  “Yes,” said Gracie.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” Kenny said.

  He wants me back, Gracie thought, he wants me back, but it’s too late, it’s just too late because …

  “Olivier and I are engaged?” Gracie asked.

  “What?” Kenny said. “I can’t hear you.” In the background, Gracie heard the incessant whir of the treadmill, his Jurassic feet pounding the wide rubber strip. Beyond the din of the treadmill, Gracie could make out actors repeating lines. Kenny was watching dailies, scenes from a current production.

  “Nothing,” Gracie said. “I’m just lying here with Jaden. It’s seven-thirty and she hasn’t even stirred.” Gracie kissed Jaden, her lips sinking into her daughter’s cashmere cheek. Since Kenny left, Jaden had been crawling into bed with Gracie at night, as though sensing her mother had empty spaces that needed to be filled, starting with Kenny’s side of the bed. Postsplit up, Jaden had become more like a friend than a daughter: holding her hand for long periods of time, patting her head while Gracie bathed her, exhibiting a sudden willingness to share her favorite red jelly beans. What is it, Gracie thought, about a mother’s sadness that turns children into compatriots?

  “Maybe it’s all the cough syrup I’ve been feeding her,” Gracie joked to Kenny.

  “Listen,” Kenny said,“I’ve been thinking … hold on.”

  Gracie waited, watching the timer on her phone. After one minute and fifty-two seconds, Kenny came back on the line.

  “Where was I?” Kenny said.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Gracie replied.

  “You have?” Kenny asked. “Me, too. What have you been thinking about?”

  “No,” Gracie said. “You said ‘I’ve been thinking.’”

  “Good,” Kenny said. “We’re riding the same wave. I like that.”

  “Kenny,” Gracie said, “try to avoid the surfing metaphors. You don’t surf.”

  “Diaz surfs, Grazer surfs. I’m thinking of taking it up,” Kenny said. “Listen, I think we should try to avoid running into each other, don’t you?”

  Gracie took a moment. Running into each other? When had they … ?

  “The birthday party,” Kenny said. “I mean, wasn’t that just too awkward? I felt embarrassed—”

  “You shouldn’t feel embarrassed,” Gracie said. For all of Kenny’s ego, and there was a lot of it to go around, he never failed to feel embarrassed about something.

  “No,” Kenny said, “not for me. Listen, I just want you to know, as a friend …”

  Did he just say “as a friend”? Gracie wondered.

  “ … people were talking,” Kenny puffed.

  Gracie realized he’d felt embarrassed for her. That she should be embarrassed.

  “Kenny, I’ve known Qiana for years, before she even got married, before the name, nose, the boobs, the yoga, the yoga instructor, the fake pregnancy, the surrogate pregnancy—”

  “I’m just saying, people are talking, and it’s not me they’re talking about.”

  Gracie felt her face flush; she knew she was turnin
g purple. “You have a lot of nerve,” she said, ignoring the early-morning old-voice-box gravel in her voice. “So much nerve, in fact, there’s little room left for brain!”

  “Look, Gracie,” Kenny said calmly, “if we’re going to be buds, I have to be honest with you. Paula thinks that—”

  “Who’s Paula?” Gracie demanded. She ignored the fact that he used the word “bud” in a sentence for anything other than a discussion on roses.

  “My psychotherapist. She’s very spiritual. She’s like a high priestess of the Kabbalah. Anyway, she thinks that the problem with our relationship is that I could never be honest with you—”

  “You have a psycho therapist?” Gracie asked, cleaving the term into two words. Kenny had never gone to a therapist. Kenny, ever the Neanderthal, thought therapy, much like Broadway,was for women and homosexuals.

  “Every time I’d say ‘Honey, maybe you should try dressing differently,’ or ‘Babe, I think you’d look great with more highlights,’ you’d ignore me,” Kenny panted. “And remember the time I wanted you to call Rupert Murdoch’s wife?”

  “You don’t know Rupert Murdoch!” Gracie screamed like a wild animal. Jaden finally let out a groan.

  “You have got to stop leading with your ego,” Kenny said.

  Gracie made a choking sound.

  “Why couldn’t you have just called and invited them to our house for dinner? Would that have been so hard?” Kenny asked.

  “Kenny! They have no idea who we are!” Gracie said.

  “Paula said the wives in Hollywood determine social standing, wives are the connective tissue. All I’m saying is that you could have done more to help my career,” Kenny said. “Now, I’m going to have my assistant call you and tell you what I’m doing this weekend so we avoid running into each other. Off the top of my head I have a brunch meeting at the Bel Air on Saturday morning, a screening at Lou’s on Saturday night, and I think someone’s getting married on Sunday.”

  Gracie was rendered speechless for a moment. “Who are you?” she finally asked. She realized he hadn’t even stopped running, the weight of his feet punishing the treadmill even as he had the nerve to claim that everyone was talking about her, feeling sorry for her. Poor Gracie, future overage Former Wife Of.

  “Listen,” Kenny said, “we couldn’t make it work married, but maybe we can make it work divorced.”

  “That’s beautiful, that’s poetry,” Gracie said. If sarcasm were water, he’d have drowned.

  “Thank you,” Kenny said with pride. “I don’t want to take all the credit. Paula told me how to say it.”

  “As long as we don’t run into each other,” Gracie said.

  “As long as we don’t run into each other,” Kenny agreed. “I’m glad you see this my way.”

  “Hey, Kenny,” Gracie said, “I’ve found someone.”

  She was pleased to hear the clop-clop-clop of his Adidas come to a sudden halt.

  “Anyone I know?” Kenny asked, feigning emotional detachment.

  “No one in the business,” Gracie said.

  “Oh. Like a, what, a fireman? Construction worker?” Kenny asked.

  “You wouldn’t know him, he’s in …” Gracie looked around—Jaden turned her head toward her, her pacifier stuck in her mouth, ruining her bite, but in the cutest way. “He’s in the … rubber business,” Gracie said. “So I wasn’t going to be around this weekend anyway. Jaden and I are heading out …”

  She gulped. “On his jet.”

  “He’s got a jet?” Kenny asked. She noticed his studio-pres bearing had lost some of its grandeur.

  “A small one,” Gracie said. “Not like a 747 or BBJ, like a G-something. It’s a little embarrassing, you know, I’m not used to that sort of thing …”

  Twist that knife, sister, she thought to herself.

  “A G-5?” Kenny asked, his voice an octave higher. It sounded like someone was squeezing Kenny’s shaven manhood. “Have to run,” Gracie said. “And Kenny? Thanks for being so honest with me.”

  “THIS IS WHY I hate morning phone calls,” Joan said. “Anything that rings between the hours of twelve midnight and ten A.M. is decidedly off-limits. Oh, God! I hate this guy!”

  “Turn off the news, Joan!” Gracie yelled. She could always tell when Joan had the news on. She would scream “Mother-twister!” or some such tangled epithet in the middle of a sentence. It was headline-induced Tourette’s.

  “Why do I even watch?” Joan asked.“Why?”

  “Can we get back to our earlier conversation?”

  “Kenny the Pig,” Joan said, “is going to die of a heart attack before the age of forty-nine.”

  Joan liked to put curses on people who crossed her or her friends; her mother’s people, who crawled out from some swamp in Louisiana, claimed to have “powers.” Gracie thought it was safer not to question her assertion.

  “How could I have lied like that?” Gracie said. “I mean, how lame. Why didn’t I just say George Clooney thinks elastic waistbands on women are sexy?”

  “I love me some George,” Joan sighed.

  Gracie sighed as well. Didn’t everyone her age love George?

  “Okay, here’s the thing,” Joan said. “Lying is never the right thing to do—unless it’s for the greater good, and in this case there was a greater good—that of grinding Kenny into the ground, at least temporarily.”

  “What if I have to lie again?” Gracie asked. “What if he asks me about the mystery man again?”

  “Lie until you can’t tell the truth anymore,” Joan said. “You can’t be the only honest person in this town.”

  “It won’t backfire?” Gracie asked. She seldom lied; she wasn’t sure what the ramifications were.

  “How could it backfire?” Joan asked. “You’re making up a person. There’s no one to Google. There’s no name to check out. You were specific yet vague.”

  “I have to tell you, Joan,” Gracie admitted, “it felt really good to sucker-punch Kenny. Lying about having another man was like instant Prozac.”

  Then she thought for a moment. “Maybe it felt too good.”

  “There’s no such thing as feeling too good,” Joan said. “That’s where you run into trouble. Now, have you seen the news this morning? I’m going to need me a Bloody Mary.”

  KENNY, DRIVEN, Gracie believed, by the intense curiosity one has when one’s ex is screwing someone else, called a couple more times during the week, and each time Gracie lived in fear that he was going to ask to meet her nonexistent but very rich and successful beau. With each phone call he dropped hints belying his need to know, and each time Gracie had to build upon her initial, feeble lie until she had constructed a man so perfect, so worthy, so desirable that she was sure that not only did this man not exist, but he could never exist.

  “What does he do again?” Kenny would ask.

  “He’s … his family is in … the rubber business,” she’d say, “but he’s looking into other ventures.”

  “Film?” Kenny asked.

  “Well, maybe, sort of,” Gracie said. “I’m not sure. And frankly, I’m discouraging it.” To her credit, Gracie would cross her fingers and toes.

  “How much money does he have?” Kenny finally came to the real question—the question keeping him up at night.

  “You know, I haven’t asked,” Gracie said.

  “Fifty mil? A hundred mil?” Kenny asked.

  “Oh, that’s not even in the range,” Gracie said. She thought thirty or forty mil sounded reasonable enough.

  “A billion? The guy’s a billionaire?!” Kenny’s voice went to a pitch heard mainly by feral dogs.

  Whoops, Gracie thought. She knew that now Kenny would be researching the Forbes list for the Rubber Man. “I didn’t say that,” Gracie said.“I have to get Jaden to school.”

  “If the guy’s into the film business, we should talk,” Kenny said.“I could help him.”

  “I told you, I’m discouraging that particular trajectory,” Gracie said with proper g
ravity.

  “Has Jaden met him?” Kenny asked.

  “Have to run,” Gracie replied airily.

  “I THINK you’re being mean,” Cricket said. “But I guess it serves him right. Did you hear Natalie Portman is having a face-lift? Why would she do that?”

  “Stop with the meds already,” Will said to Cricket.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Gracie repeated.

  “Gracie, you’re going to have to find a guy, because he’s going to find out,” Will said. “And won’t you feel like a Silly Sally.”

  “I don’t really care,” Gracie said. “I’m just having Mad Divorcée Fun.”

  “You’ll care when he tells the story to his friends,” Will said. “We have to find you someone. Someone who fits the perfect-man mold. And then you can have a short, nasty breakup. And no one will be the wiser.”

  “I can’t wait! Where should we find him?” Cricket asked. “Sharon Stone found her boyfriend in the produce section of Ralph’s. Melons are very sensual.”

  “What’s this ‘we’? I have to find a guy,” Gracie said, “not you. Me. You’re married.”

  “He’s going to leave me, isn’t he,” Cricket said. “Jorge is going to leave me.” Cricket suffered from extreme empathy syndrome. If her friend is getting a divorce, she’s getting a divorce; if her friend has strep, she develops a sore throat; if someone in China has a hangnail, Cricket can’t get through the day.

  “Next subject,” said Will.

  WILL HAD A PLAN of attack; he was nothing if not thorough. It was not easy for a close-to-forty-one-year-old woman to find a man in L.A., so Will said that they would have to think outside the box. Because inside the box, apparently, there existed only smooth-skinned lasses and laddies and their sponsors.

  Will and Gracie went to a seminar given by a woman who called herself Dr. Melanie, the Relationship Diva. After two hours, having spent twenty dollars and scarfed down three doughnuts and a cup of bad coffee (how hard was it to get good coffee in L.A.?), Gracie found out she was to be “cherished” in a relationship. Gracie would have to find a man who worshiped her for the goddess she was, and she could not settle for anything less.