The Starter Wife Read online

  Gracie sniffed under her arms to make sure her personal hygiene had met FDA standards and followed her friend outside.

  THE FLYER SAID:

  Nothing to Do This Saturday?

  Going-Away/Birthday Party for Me!

  Hubby Wants the House Back!

  Let’s Give Him Something to Complain About!

  502 Rockingham Avenue, Brentwood

  Saturday, May 21st, 2004, 7:30

  It wasn’t verse, but it got the point across: Gracie was having a going-away party at Kenny’s oversized, energy-sucking McManor with Will, Cricket, and Joan—and two hundred strangers. Gracie had printed up flyers and strewn them around various neighborhoods, from Ocean Park to Montana Avenue. She wanted to have a party, but she knew that most of her old “friends” wouldn’t attend—they wouldn’t dare risk offending Kenny. Now that she was no longer going to be a Wife Of, people in her previous, insulated life were no longer interested in her. A Wife Of could lend her name to a charity opening, a Wife Of could help get a job, a Wife Of could write a check. An ex-comm Starter Wife with less than ten years of marriage and a pre-nup was a civilian with no husband credentials and not enough money to warrant a phone call.

  Gracie, no longer interested in the people who were no longer interested in her, invited two sets of people: her few, true friends and people she didn’t know. Ana picked Jaden up for an overnight stay at her home in Inglewood, where Jaden could play with Ana’s grandchildren and her three dogs and eat tamales and yell in Spanish and stay up late and participate in the kind of giddy, liberated house-filled-with-kids noise that was not normally found in Brentwood.

  Around eight o’clock, people started showing up. First her three friends, then a steady stream of new faces—UCLA students, hipsters, divorced people, older people on a budget, sullen teenagers, baristas with tongue and eyebrow piercings from Starbucks, several homeless people, couples with young babies, lonely writer types, blue-collar types, non-English-speaking types. Gracie was determined to throw a blow-out party to celebrate her new life and, incidentally, to leave the house a wreck for Kenny the Pig.

  Gracie ordered enough pizza from Jacopo’s to cover over two hundred people and enough beer to cover spring break in St. Petersburg, Florida. Kenny’s stereo was set to decibels that would register with the space shuttle, and the older folks argued with the younger ones whether to play a little Frank Sinatra or more Jack White. Joan, who arrived without Pappy (he was, as usual, tucked in and asleep by eight-thirty), was getting her freak on with a boy who’d probably became legal just that morning. One could maybe slide a piece of paper between them as they danced in the living room. Cricket had come with her husband, Jorge, a normally decent man who was now wearing a cap on his head with beer cans lining the top.

  Gracie had just set down her fifth or sixth extra-cheese pizza when she saw Cricket standing alone in a corner, watching her straitlaced husband playing irresponsible frat boy.

  “Are you okay?” she asked Cricket.“You look a little shell-shocked.”

  Cricket grabbed her arm. “Gracie, someone peed on the Chesterfield, I’m not kidding.”

  She was talking about the antique couch in the library. Kenny’s favorite couch to pretend to read on. “So, he’ll stand,” Gracie said, looking over toward the couch she’d purchased after much deliberation. How much time had she deliberated over that couch? How could she get that time back?

  “You don’t know who any of these people are, do you?” Cricket said in accusation.

  Gracie looked around. “Sure I do.” She pointed in some general direction. “That girl works at the Starbucks on Montana, he’s that masseur at Whole Foods on San Vicente, she’s a checker there, I’m pretty sure those three guys are in Sigma Chi—”

  “And what about that woman?” Cricket asked.

  She pointed to a figure; it was hard to tell whether the figure belonged to a woman, man, or bear. Gracie surmised it was a woman. The figure wore a hood and clutched a shopping bag to her chest. She appeared to not have bathed in this millennium.

  “Don’t know her.”

  “She’s homeless!” Cricket said. “She could have germs. She could have some sort of … pox!” Cricket had gone through a germaphobe stage that coincided with her claustrophobic stage, just missing her agoraphobic stage.

  “I doubt she has pox,” Gracie said, peering at the woman closely. “Probably more like TB.”

  “I have to get Jorge out of here,” Cricket said. “He’s making a fool out of himself.”

  “He looks like he’s having fun,” Gracie said. Jorge was lying on the floor now while two frat boys attempted to pour beer in his mouth through a funnel connected to a tube held high in their hands. He seemed to be choking and laughing at the same time.

  “How are you two, by the way?” Gracie asked. She hadn’t thought of asking Cricket about her marriage in a while, consumed as she was with the demise of her own. The thought occurred to her, though, that she always believed Cricket and Jorge would be the first to divorce in her group. Cricket had been convinced Jorge was cheating on her since the day they walked down the aisle.

  “He’s cheating on me,” Cricket said.

  “Cricket,” Gracie said. “How do you know? Where’s the proof? Where’s the WMD?”

  Jorge flipped his body around and promptly threw up on the floor.

  “He’s two years younger than I am, he’s successful, he’s handsome,” Cricket said. “Of course he’s cheating on me.”

  Jorge was all of those things. The man throwing up on Gracie’s living room floor—er, Kenny’s living room floor—had four television shows on the air in addition to a pilot’s license and a body fat count of 4.2 percent. He was an overachiever’s overachiever.

  Waves of “Go, Jorge!” filled the air. Gracie smiled and clapped her hands; she hadn’t had this much fun since the four days she had off in the hospital after her C-section.

  “He’s doing a military hospital show now,” Cricket said. “Filled with real nurses!” she exclaimed. “I can’t compete with a nurse. They have those uniforms! And they like helping strangers!”

  “I know, it’s sick,” Gracie said. “Cricket, you’ve got to stop this.” But she was in no mood to manage someone else’s personal crisis. “You’ve never caught him in any lies. As far as I know, he’s never even looked at another woman.”

  “That’s his MO, Gracie,” Cricket said. “They all have one. I mean, how did you find out about Kenny?”

  “How did I find out about Kenny what?” Gracie asked.

  “Nothing!” Cricket yelped.

  Gracie grabbed her by the shoulders. “Tell me, or I’ll spill your guts all over this room.”

  “Really?” Cricket asked.

  “No, God, of course not.” Gracie took a deep breath. “I could never hurt you. So who is it? An actress?”

  “No, no,” Cricket said.

  “A model?” Gracie asked. “Typical. A young, stupid model. Of course I should have known—”

  “No, not really a model.”

  “Then what?”

  “She’s more like a … a … what’s the word?” Cricket paused as Gracie wondered whether to strangle her. Who would pause at a moment like this?

  “International superstar,” Cricket finally sputtered.

  “That’s two words,” Gracie replied coolly.

  “Britney Spears,” Cricket said.

  Gracie looked at her, wondering when the joke would land. It didn’t. “I’m burning the house down,” she said.

  “He’s cheating on me,” Cricket said, looking at Jorge, who had passed out cheek-down in his own vomit.

  GRACIE WRAPPED HERSELF up in her comforter and curled up into a forty-one-year-old, flat-assed, freckle-handed ball and whimpered like a beaten dog while the party raged on to epic proportions.

  Will finally found her around two o’clock in the morning. He fell onto the bed next to her and patted her hair. As he was drunk beyond repair, his “patting” was
on the verge of “slapping.”

  “Why so glum?” he asked.

  “A thought just came to me,” Gracie said. “Britney Spears is a home-wrecking whore.”

  “But love, love, love her grace and artistry,”-Will replied, performing a Britney move with his hands and head. “By the way, I’m pretty sure a garage mechanic named Manfredo just proposed to me. This is the best damn house-wrecking party I’ve ever been to.”

  “Did you know about Kenny and Britney?” Gracie asked.

  “Oh, please,” Will said. “She wants to act, of course she’s going to date the head of a studio. Even if he does iron his jeans.”

  “He’s going to be in Us Magazine, just like Lou said,” Gracie wailed.

  “Do you think you’ll be in the catfight section?” Will said. “That would be fab! It would really help my career. Do try!”

  Gracie hit him on the arm.

  “See, you’re feeling better already. You’re already rolling fags,” Will said. “Now, come on, it’s after two, your future hangover called. It wants your head.”

  He helped her up and grabbed her around the waist.

  “You’re never going to cheat on me, are you, Will?” Gracie asked, looking up at her friend. “You’re not going to decorate for Kenny again, right?”

  “Never, I couldn’t work for Britney,” Will said, his hand to his chest. “I’d faint at the first mention of the word ‘doily.’”

  A moment later, they were tripping into the living room, where the wide-screen television set had been turned on.

  “Who turned on MTV?” Gracie yelled.

  Britney Spears herself was singing and rolling over the bodies of several oiled-up dancers on Kenny’s big-screen flat TV, a recent and completely necessary purchase. Gracie threw a beer bottle at the screen.

  The party mania paused briefly.

  “Look at that,” Will said. “I had no idea you could shatter a flat-screen.”

  7

  JUNE GLOOM

  THE DAY THEY LEFT the McMansion, Jaden and Gracie played their final game of “What Do I Love?” in Jaden’s spacious bedroom with the story of Black Beauty played out in an elaborate watercolor mural on three of the four walls. Kenny had wanted Cinderella; it was basically the only fight Gracie had won regarding the house.

  “What do I love?” Gracie asked as she finished packing Jaden’s Hello Kitty suitcase. She wiped her cheek before she looked up at her daughter. Leaving the McFright, though she’d never considered it “home,” was much more difficult than she’d imagined.

  Jaden looked up at her mother. She had already dressed herself for the beach: pink flip-flops on her feet, an orange bathing suit, tiny neon sunglasses. Gracie didn’t have the heart to tell her there was no sun at the beach. June gloom had set in; it was sixty-four degrees in Malibu.

  “I love your eyes,” Gracie said, looking at the most beautiful face in the world. “I love your nose, I love your fingers, I love your toes.”

  “That’s four, Mommy,” Jaden replied, her lower lip poking out. “We’re only supposed to do three. That’s our rule.”

  “I can’t help it,” Gracie replied. “How can I help it?”

  When Jaden was about three months old, Gracie invented the “What Do I Love?” game. Baby Jaden would look at her and smile as Gracie would ask “What do I love?” and then would tap gently on her cheeks, her nose, her tummy. As Jaden grew, Gracie used the game as a touchstone to secure their relationship and to understand what Jaden was caring about now, today.

  Gracie could tell whether her daughter was angry or sad, or needed more attention through her answers.

  “Okay, what do I love?” Jaden said, satisfied. “What do I love? I love your mouth, I love Ana, I love Mommy’s new earrings.”

  The kid loved her nanny and she loved jewelry. Jaden definitely needed more attention. Gracie laughed out loud, the reverberation so foreign to her that she was almost surprised.

  LIVING IN the Malibu Colony for a few days brought out the modern primatologist in Gracie. She quickly became the Jane Goodall of the Beach-Bimbos-and-Bentleys set, making mental notes of the more blatant attributes and behaviors of the residents:

  Parking spots are more important than food, air, or water.

  Brag even when seemingly unnecessary. For example, claim that someone offered you twenty-six million for your house, as opposed to the true inflated number, fourteen million.

  Stare at every car that drives by. Analyze the driver and passenger for signs of fame.

  Leave your dog shit to the Fates.

  This last trait would have stuck in Gracie’s craw if she knew what a craw was: Rich people don’t pick up their dog poop. The day after she moved into the Malibu Colony, Gracie had walked around the back of her Volvo carrying two bags filled with groceries and had landed a Michael Kors sandal directly on top of a warm pile of dog excrement. She let out a yelp as she felt her foot slide into what seemed to be an endless Black Hole of Poo. The yelp was followed by a five-minute stream of well-chosen expletives befitting such a momentous occasion.

  As luck would have it, #250, on the end of the Colony culde-sac, was the first house to go to if one had a dog that needed to relieve itself. Gracie would watch in wonder as various neighbors would walk their dogs, most of whom were the official Malibu cur, the yellow Lab, to the end of her driveway to deposit the remains of last night’s Dog Chow, or more likely, filet mignon. There was a small trash can at the end of the street, specifically for depositing dog poop, which no one used.

  After sidestepping several more of Fido’s gifts, Gracie decided to take action.

  First, she bought a pooper scooper and put it within sight of all who would be walking in front of the house. Then she put out a sign, a picture of a dog squatting with a slash through it. Then she wrote up a memo to all her neighbors alerting them to the fact that Joan’s driveway was not in fact a dumping ground.

  And finally, when none of that seemed to work, she became a poop detective, hiding behind her doorway or the bushes or her Volvo station wagon, jumping out when an offender made an appearance.

  She didn’t have to wait long. A few doors down there was an odd couple—he was much older and was pushed around in a wheelchair by his driver, who also tooled him around in a Mercedes limousine; she deigned to drive herself around in a convertible baby-blue Cadillac. She was Viking tall, wore frosted pink lipstick, and was fond of unitards. He wore baggy shorts with pale, stick legs and a permanent scowl and had made his fortune in slot machines.

  Gracie knew she’d have trouble with them her first day in Malibu; she was walking Jaden in a stroller when the Cadillac came careening down the street, not breaking for the speed bumps, barely missing little Helen, who was tethered to a leash next to Jaden.

  Gracie ran and screamed after the Cadillac, which was forced to slow down for a moving van. “Are you crazy? You almost hit us!”

  To which the woman replied, “I’ve got good aim!”

  Gracie was not a big fan of this couple. She called them the Shits. Until she learned their real names, which seemed punishment enough: Monique and Harry Boner, late of Reno, Nevada. As far as she could tell, from her little communication thus far with the neighbors, there weren’t a lot of fans on their side of the fence. The Shits, er, Boners, had made plenty of enemies in the Malibu Colony. Gracie would have to stand in line.

  “Who is that woman in the Cadillac?” Gracie asked an unsuspecting Colony security officer, tooling around in the ubiquitous white pickup. The man just rolled his eyes.

  “Number 226.”

  All the houses were numbered.

  “Is she crazy?” Gracie asked. “I’m surprised she didn’t kill us.”

  “Oh, there’s time.” He grinned. He had one gold tooth, which added glamour to his otherwise bland demeanor.

  “So, they’re the bad neighbors.”

  “Oh yes, ma’am,” he said.

  Days later, Gracie was poised to strike. She was hidden on one sid
e of the Volvo station wagon as Jaden rode her tricycle in the driveway, watching with a burgeoning sensation of righteous anger as dog after dog spewed out of 226—big, furry, loud dogs bumping into each other like so many pinballs in a pachinko machine.

  They looked like a good argument against inbreeding.

  The big balls of fur were tumbling toward her house. The dogs knew where to go; they’d probably been dumping here their whole furry, oversized, stupid lives.

  And out came Madame wearing palazzo pants, a crazy cap of bleached blond froth held down by a silver headband, both items of which should have been placed in an eighties time capsule. In the morning light, Gracie could see she wasn’t as young as she’d thought. She was probably in her forties, like, er, Gracie (gulp), in which case the woman did not have youth on her side as an excuse for her bad behavior.

  For some reason, this just made Gracie angrier.

  After all, this woman had almost turned her hot dog, Helen, into a shredded meat sandwich.

  “Tiffany!” the woman sang. “Cartier!”

  Gracie didn’t know why the woman was calling out the names of jewelry establishments until she realized the woman was calling her dogs.

  “Gucci! Prada!”

  Gracie crouched down behind the Volvo as the woman walked toward the fence with the barbed wire on top, separating the Colony from the unwashed masses on the public beach. She watched as the woman spread her arms, holding some sort of baton with a cup at the end, a throwing gizmo to use with tennis balls.

  Gracie watched as the dogs crapped, peed, dug holes in the dirt where the asphalt ended, peed some more and matched that act with more crap.

  The woman made not one move toward the pooper-scooper, threw not one glance at the mini-trashcan, traipsed not one inch toward the plastic bags hanging on the fence (with a sign,“for your convenience”).

  Gracie was so taken aback by the chutzpah on display that she almost forgot to put her anger into her presentation. Finally, panting as though she was having an anxiety attack or being forced to sit through a screening of a Ben Affleck comedy, Gracie stood on her wobbly legs and shouted, “I see you!” Jaden looked up at Gracie, curious. The yell was somewhat garbled; the rise in adrenaline had flattened her diaphragm.