The Starter Wife Read online

  Gracie came out of it figuring this was possible, if one still believed in unicorns and magic fairies and a fellow named Santa.

  Will came out of it with a lunch date on Thursday, a dinner date on Saturday, and an invitation for a weekend in Santa Barbara.

  Later, they tried a dog park. Difficult when one has an ancient miniature dachshund, Helen, who was at best indifferent to other dogs, and at worst would chase and attack the giant ones.

  Gracie met a few nice people, who happened to be women over forty, looking for that same elusive bachelor with the yellow Lab, deep voice, and muscular forearms.

  Will got three phone numbers and a lead on where to find a cockapoodle.

  Finally, their third excursion to find a man (and at this point, any man would do—they had given up their narrow thirty-six to fifty-six focus and now were willing to entertain any and all above the age of consent to still breathing) landed them at the early-morning mass at St. Stephen’s Church on Sepulveda.Will had heard through the grapevine that many cute straight men gathered there for God’s wisdom (how he had heard this through the Gay Grapevine, Gracie was reluctant to ask). In addition, word was that the pastor was in the midst of a divorce. Gracie was opposed to using the church to further her own agenda until Will pointed out that God loves all his children and wants them to be happy, including Gracie.

  She had to agree with that logic.

  When she picked up Will that morning, she realized the error of her ways.Will had stayed up all night at a transvestite birthday party in West Hollywood celebrating “Miss Pretty Mae Dawson’s” Fiftieth and was not fit to step out into daylight without a dose of Maybelline and dark shades.

  Gracie sat side by side with Will in a pew in the middle of a large, modern church. Gracie was dressed discreetly in pale colors and pearls,Will was dressed in black and wearing huge sunglasses that made him look like a young Carol Channing. Worse, he would fall asleep intermittently and snore while the surprisingly cute pastor with the six o’clock anchor’s tenor spoke about various challenges facing mankind, including the church’s need to raise money to remodel their bathrooms.

  Gracie, finding inspiration in the stained-glass windows and fine acoustics, found herself thinking about the challenges facing womankind. In particular, her own womankind.

  Will rested his snoring head on her shoulder, and it stayed there throughout the sermon.

  Gracie met several lovely couples and their wonderful children. Will got the pastor’s number.

  GRACIE HAD a Coors Light in one hand, her telephone in the other, as she talked on a conference call with Will and Cricket. The last time she’d been on a conference call with friends was sometime in the middle ages, like the 1980s. But desperate times call for desperate uses of technology.

  “Can we get back to that thinking-outside-the-box con-cept?” Gracie asked. “The only man I’ve met in the last couple weeks is you, Will, and I already know you and you’re gay.”

  “Alas, it’s all true,” Will said. “But I’m fresh out of ideas. My muse is taking a hiatus.”

  “Cricket,” Gracie asked, “you got anything for me?”

  “A rabbi at George Junior’s school,” Cricket said. “He’s fat and his teeth aren’t clean, but he’s very nice.”

  “I’m not Jewish,” Gracie said.

  “You know, you really should think about it,” Cricket said. “You could do a mini-conversion. It would take, like, ten days and a red string. Look at Madonna, I mean Esther.”

  Gracie just sighed. She found herself sighing a lot these days. Maybe she wasn’t sighing so much as wheezing, which scared her and convinced her she would die of lung cancer before she ever put Kenny in his grave.

  “So, are we just going to give up?” Gracie asked. “Is that it?”

  “I wouldn’t call it giving up,” Will said. “I’d call it more like a vacation from Desperation-ville. Look, if you want, I can get you a gay decoy. But it would cost you hair and makeup. For him.”

  Gracie hung up the phone. Things were bad, she thought, when the homosexual crowd was giving up on your sex life.

  WIFE NUMBER THREE

  Married to a baby producer. He brought something special home from the London set for her.

  Herpes.

  6

  MOVING ON OUT

  IN THE LAST few weeks, Gracie, fully excommed, realized her life had changed in both subtle and drastic ways:

  SUBTLE

  She was able to open a mailbox without ten invitations to charity events dropping on her toes.

  She was able to let the Romanian lady who blow-dried her hair go; Gracie had no reason to blow-dry her hair anymore.And she had too much pride to blow-dry it just to pick up Jaden from school with straight locks. Also, it was obvious the Romanian lady pitied her; she would prod her with ways to win Kenny back. “You sleep with him more. Americans no make the sexy enough.” Gracie was pretty sure Kenny wouldn’t come running back if she threw herself at him three times a day; he was on to better (read: younger) things.

  Her answering machine at home no longer registered forty-five calls. It usually registered five, and three of those were from AT&T Wireless, seeking new customers.

  Restaurants around town suddenly had no reservations open Friday at eight o’clock. But they could fit her in at four forty-five. On a Monday.

  Jaden’s List of No-No Words had been expanded. Gracie and Jaden had come up with a list of words that were considered off-limits.There were four of them: “stupid,” “hate,” “dumb,” and “dumb-ass.” Jaden would ask before she said any of these words: “Mommy, may I say ‘stupid’?” And Gracie would consider the request and the context, then give her daughter an answer. The List of No-No Words was now up to eight and counting. In addition to the aforementioned, there was also “shit,” “f-word,” “a-word,” and “butt” (Jaden, consumed with guilt over calling her best friend a butt, had added that one). Unfortunately, these were the only words Mommy had used in the last month and could fathom using in the near future. A vocabulary that had earned Gracie a 680 on her verbal SAT had diminished considerably. Two more no-no words and she’d be able to record an entire rap album. She was planning on calling it Angry White Bitch.

  DRASTIC

  Re Number Three, above. Except for the steady stream of invitees calling to say that, unfortunately, they would no longer be able to attend Gracie’s forty-first birthday party as planned, because: (a) they had an important business meeting and/or operation, (b) they realized they thought the date was for last year, and are therefore unavailable, and (c) their bichon frise had been run over three weeks ago.

  Gracie had been summarily dismissed from the Stevie Norber book club. Stevie was The Wife Of a semi-producer who had held the club in her home in Cheviot Hills every month for the last few years and had never let anyone else choose a book. Gracie was relieved to be exempt from reading yet one more novel about southern belles and their cancer scares.

  She stayed home most nights. Except for those few times when Will, Cricket, or Joan pried her away from reality television.

  Reality television: She had no idea.

  Staying home = staying in bed except when absolutely necessary, like house on fire or child needs a ride to the hospital.

  Remember the “pulling the pin” thing? Gracie had ex-ploded; she looked like she’d swallowed a grooming grenade. She’d canceled all of her maintenance appointments. Her hair was turning brown and wiry, her nails were splitting, and her body had exhaled. It had been holding back for years, and now … it was spreading.

  The final blow: Gracie was going to have to move. Kenny the Pig missed El McMansion. Gracie could hear Maxwell Havens’s smile stretch across his face as he told her the news.

  GRACIE HAD CALLED Joan after she realized she was going to have to move out right away. When they’d sold the Brown House and bought the McMonstrosity, Kenny had not volunteered to put Gracie’s name on the deed, and Gracie had not insisted on it. After all, it was Kenny
’s money, not Gracie’s, which was buying the McMonster. And for now, Kenny did not see the point of buying the Brown House for Gracie when he didn’t have to. Gracie would have to find somewhere else to settle down.

  Joan muttered something about cutting off Kenny’s balls with a blunt bowie knife and then muttered something about him not having any so why bother and then demanded that Gracie spend the weekend with her in Malibu, which Gracie took her up on after one additional sigh and two seconds of deliberation.

  Gracie packed Jaden and her miniature dachshund, Helen, in her Volvo and drove north all of eight miles to Malibu. They arrived at the security gate to the Malibu Colony, where Joan lived with Pappy in their second home,when she wasn’t hiding out in their Beverly Hills estate.

  The Colony was both famous and infamous. This half-mile strip of coast housed some of the most celebrated faces in modern history, and the hundred or so houses behind the white security gates were on arguably the most expensive beachfront property in California and, therefore, the world.

  And yet, Gracie said to herself, after her name was checked off the security guard’s list and she entered the gates, turning left onto the private road, “My God, these houses are close together.”

  So close together, it was impossible to breathe in one house and not cough up carbon dioxide next door. The Malibu Colony homes, which would sell for upwards of five million, were right on top of each other. They were mere inches apart. It’s like the most expensive ghetto in the world, Gracie thought.

  In this most exclusive and expensive of enclaves, one had to pick one’s neighbors very carefully.

  Gracie hadn’t been to the Colony in a couple of years. She and Kenny had spent a Fourth of July weekend there, and Gracie was promptly overwhelmed by the proximity of twin challenges: ocean sports and movie stars. She couldn’t look up from her reading without seeing a wetsuit, surfboard, kayak, or famous face.

  They hadn’t been back since.

  Gracie drove over the speed bumps, amazed at the number of construction trucks lining the row of houses. There were more trucks than Mercedeses or BMWs, more construction workers than tenants.

  She parked in front of the house at the southeast end of the Colony, a seventies wood building consisting of two large triangulated structures abutting the public beach. She noted the Latino families on the other side of the chain-link (topped with barbed-wire) fence, illegally grilling something that smelled both exotic and comfortingly familiar, its scent mixing sublimely with the sea air.

  “We’re here, Jaden,” Gracie said, “We’re at the beach.”

  Jaden awakened from her nap in her booster seat and stretched her arms. Helen barked, sticking her tongue out of her tiny cage. They got out of the car and Gracie took another deep breath—the air felt good to her—and she felt as though it was the first true breath she’d taken since her husband broke up with her via the latest technology.

  “Getcher butts in here!” she heard Joan yell through the intercom after she pressed the doorbell. “Mommy,” Jaden said, reproachful. “No-no word.”

  Gracie replied, “I’ll talk to Aunt Joanie about the language.”

  She grabbed Jaden and made her way past the guesthouse and outdoor shower and up a row of wooden stairs into the main house. The house was a mint green color, a color one could get away with only on the beach; there would be no excuse otherwise. The front door was open; Gracie and Jaden stepped inside. The interior was entirely white with bleached floors; the effect was at once soothing and stimulating. There were floor-to-ceiling windows which on one side faced the public beach, on the other the Colony beach, where the fence divided “us” from “them.” The view on clear days followed the Pacific all the way to Catalina. Maybe it was worth it, Gracie thought as she looked out toward the narrowest crescent of island, to marry a rich guy with bowel issues and a hearing aid.

  “You like my shack?” Joan asked as she rushed down from the upstairs bedroom to meet them. She had spent a year remodeling the place after buying it when the original owner passed away, obvious she was proud of the outcome.

  “It’s a pigsty,” Gracie said. “How can you live like this?”

  “The beach!” Jaden said, standing at the picture window. “Mucha aguita!”

  “Then you don’t want to stay here?” Joan asked innocently. Gracie looked at her. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “La playa!” Jaden yelled.

  “Pappy’s heart is set on staying in the south of France this summer,” Joan said. “Now, you know I hate the French, but I do love my Grand Crus.”

  “You don’t hate the French,” Gracie said. “When you were young—” Joan raised an eyebrow. “Young-er! You’d date anything with a French accent, even a fake one.”

  “I want to go to the beach,” Jaden said.

  “Even a French poodle, mais oui,” Joan said. “But I told Pappy I hate the French, just so he doesn’t think he’s doing me a big favor. Anyway, we’ll be staying at the Du Cap for three weeks, and then renting a villa.”

  Gracie whistled.“Du Cap”was French for “cash only.”

  “Mama, can we go out on the beach?” Jaden was now pulling down Gracie’s overused Juicy sweats.

  “Do you have sunscreen on?” Gracie asked.

  “No,” Jaden said solemnly. “I’m a little kid. You forgot to put it on me.”

  “A hat and sunscreen,” Joan said. “You don’t want to look like Auntie Joanie when you get to be old, do you?”

  Jaden studied Joan’s face, then shook her head emphatically.

  Gracie and Joan laughed. Joan was a natural redhead with a ton of freckles and the kind of fine Irish skin that didn’t age well. Which was enough of an argument to marry someone with cataracts.

  “That’s okay, honey, I married old. He’ll always be more wrinkled than me,” Joan said.

  “Are you serious about the house?” Gracie asked.

  “Serious as my last peel,” Joan said. “You need a house, we need someone to keep an eye on it. Pappy can’t stand the thought of renting to strangers. He doesn’t like people knowing he has a special-needs toilet.”

  “But you could get thirty thousand a month for this place.”

  “Fifty thousand,” Joan corrected her. “Over three months it would amount to a seventeen-karat Tiffany tennis bracelet or a condo in the Valley, but hey, who’s counting?”

  Gracie took a moment, then shook her head. “The special-needs toilet sounds captivating, but I can’t take it.”

  Joan looked at her. “Okay, I’ll say it. I’m worried about you.”

  “What?” Gracie asked. “Now you’re sounding like someone’s mother.”

  Joan looked at Jaden. “Honey, have you seen the deck? I need you to select the right sand toys for me. I picked them up at Sav-on, but I don’t know if they’re any good. It’s been a long time since Auntie Joan dug a hole in the sand.”

  Jaden nodded, her eyes alerted to any sign of neon-colored sand toys as Joan walked her out onto the front, beachside, glass-enclosed deck.

  Joan walked back a moment later.

  “Now, cut the shit,” she said. “You need rehab.”

  “Rehab is thirty days and involves calm, sweet-talking drug counseling types,” Gracie replied. “And sometimes you get to sleep with the other rehabitués.”

  “Speaking of sleeping, you’re not, and you’re not taking care of yourself.” Joan lifted a lock of Gracie’s hair. Gracie pulled it back, realizing she had forgotten the last time she’d combed her hair. She found herself pulling in her stomach—it had to be obvious that she’d gained ten, maybe twelve pounds (maybe a little more?) over the last few weeks. Her favorite pants when she was a size four now only fit over her head.

  “And I’d bet my husband’s golf club collection you haven’t shaved your legs in three weeks.”

  “Why would I need to shave my legs?” Gracie said. “Doesn’t that imply someone would be seeing them?”

  “How about under your arms?�
� Joan asked.

  “Okay, okay, maybe I have a little … problem,” Gracie acknowledged.

  “And your eyebrows look like two dead caterpillars,” Joan said. “You know, the first thing to go when someone’s clinically depressed is body hair.”

  “I thought it was personal hygiene.” Gracie knew she had taken a shower in the last few days, she would swear it. Except that she wasn’t sure what day it had been.

  “I’m not saying you smell great, either,” Joan said. “Here in Malibu you will find three things: fresh air, a beach to walk on, and the feel of the sun on your skin.You will rediscover the pleasure of life.”

  “And I don’t have to pay fifty thousand dollars a month for that privilege.”

  “Consider it your ninety-day rehab program,” Joan said. “At the end of ninety days, I predict you will be a new person. Just don’t look for a bookstore in town because there aren’t any. And you’ll need a special courier for the New York Times. I’m not saying Malibu is civilized, just beautiful.”

  Gracie looked at her friend..“I love you, you know that?”

  “You say that to all your sponsors,” Joan said. “Who knows, you may even find a … man.” She bugged out her eyes and wiggled her fingers around her face.

  Gracie made a buzzing sound. “No, thank you,” she said. “Haven’t I suffered enough?”

  “For a man? Never!” Joan said. “Now, you’ll need an extra set of keys, and be careful to lock up, even during the daytime. There’s more construction than living going on in the Colony, so you never know who’s around, watching the place. One of the neighbors had her necklace and a Bulgari watch stolen recently. Of course, she’d left them on her kitchen counter when her Pilates teacher came over.”

  “Crime in the 90265?” Gracie said. “Horrors!”

  Joan waved her hand at her as she made her way to the deck where Jaden had picked out a shovel, a pail, and a rake. “Let’s throw some sunscreen on this kid and get down to the beach before she throws a snit fit.”