The Starter Wife Read online

  “You sure?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine,” Gracie said. “I’m going to kill myself.” Gracie was joking, of course. She’d never kill herself over Kenny; she’d heard the story of The Westside Widower, the handsome, young L.A. widower (Kenny at forty-one was young; Gracie at forty-one was middle-aged—such was L.A. math). The minute his lovely wife died of cancer, leaving him with two young children to raise, he went on a dating rampage, turning up on the mattress side of Frette sheets everywhere from Silver Lake to Point Dume. He covered more area of Los Angeles than Onstar.

  The Widower’s wife’s death was like Viagra, without side effects. Gracie wondered if such a thing could be prescribed. “Take one dead wife and call me in the morning. From your new girlfriend’s futon.”

  “I’m driving over right now—”

  “What’re you talking about? You’re way out in Malibu. By the time you got here they’d be zipping up the body bag.”

  “Where is the Kenny right now?”

  “The Kenny is staying at a friend’s house, some director who’s going through a divorce,” Gracie said. “Apparently it’s in the water at The Ivy.”

  She sat up as a realization reared its ugly head. “He planned this out. You know Kenny. He probably knew he was going to do this years ago. He probably has another family. Maybe he’s leading a double life.”

  “This is crazy, it can’t be over, just like that. What about counseling? Have you been to counseling?”

  Gracie thought about it; they’d never been to marriage counseling. Gracie had gone to counseling in the beginning of their marriage—there were many personality issues to overcome. More or less her personality issues—the fact that Gracie had too much personality. Gracie said and did pretty much what Gracie pleased, in the beginning. Before Gracie learned The Way of the Wife.

  “He just wants out,” Gracie concluded. “He just wants out.” Without thought, her hand opened, palm up, as though she were freeing a living thing.

  “You’re going to need a lawyer.”

  “Oh, God, I don’t want lawyers. Lawyers will only make things ugly.”

  “Guess what, Princess. Things are as ugly as Tony Soprano in a Wonder Bra. Tell me you don’t have a pre-nup.”

  Gracie paused. She and Kenny were to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary in a month. “Oh my—”

  “God! You have a pre-nup?!”

  “With a ten-year expiration date—”

  The pre-nup was about to be annulled. In one month plus change, it would have been null and void.

  Instead, her marriage was.

  “I’ve been Cruised!” Gracie, slurring, meant being left by one’s spouse before the ten-year anniversary mark. She’d heard that in California, if a couple has been married ten years, the wife is entitled to spousal support for the rest of her life. Allegedly, Tom Cruise had asked for divorce prior to the ten-year mark when he divorced Nicole Kidman.

  Gracie burped, which she sometimes did when she was under extreme duress. How attractive. How very attractive. Men like middle-aged, freckly handed alcoholics.

  “I can have him killed,” Joan offered. “Pappy knows people. Westside real estate is a very rough business.”

  “You say the sweetest things,” Gracie said.

  “Seriously, Gracie,” Joan said, “make up your story. Make it up tonight. Before Kenny has a chance to.”

  “My story?” Gracie asked.

  “Not too many details, keep it on the surface. I’m a little rusty, but I can help you. Include the words: ‘impotence’ and ‘bad investments.’ ”

  Gracie kissed Joan good-bye and hung up. When she had handed her valet ticket to the nice young Peruvian boy (single?) at the valet station, she’d still been married. Before she’d answered that call, she’d still been married. What would have happened, Gracie wondered, had she still been in a bad reception area? Or had she had the cell phone on vibrate?

  She would still be married. Until the morning, maybe. But at least she would have had a good night’s sleep.

  Gracie looked at her ring. She forgot to ask Joan when she was supposed to slip it off her finger. Now, tonight? After the divorce was final? When?

  She sat there, alone in her bad-cell-phone-call grief, wondering who else she could burden. Joan was an easy call—she had no children, and her husband, much like an infant, was asleep by eight-thirty. Most of her other friends had kids and marriages held together by duct tape. Gracie wondered at the marriage she’d thought she had. She and Kenny were supposed to be the happily married couple, they were the ones other people talked about in their thrice-weekly therapy sessions, they were the ones who were called The Power Couple in L.A. Confidential. How could The Power Couple break up? The Power Couple cannot break up! Gracie thought, mocking herself.We can’t break the hearts of our millions of followers!

  In her stupor, Gracie tried thinking back to what she could have done—did she miss a signal? Did Gracie speed through a marital stop sign? A blinking yellow light that said “Caution! Your husband is headed-for-divorce-unhappy”? And then it came to her. The earring. Two months ago, it had appeared in Kenny’s right ear like a midlife-crisis beacon. But Gracie had been distracted; she hadn’t thought much of it. Why hadn’t Gracie thought much of it? What would Kenny have had to do? Take out a billboard on Sunset Boulevard proclaiming himself in the throes of early-midlife-about-to-screw-someone-else crisis? Even then Gracie probably wouldn’t have noticed. Gracie avoided driving down Sunset Boulevard at all costs—the Euro-cafés and their midriff-baring constituents distracted and annoyed her. And when she did, she’d become so enraged at the sheer numbers of giant SUVs and Hummers choking the road that she wouldn’t notice the billboard unless her car sprouted wings and flew into it.

  Of course, Gracie had made fun of Kenny. Who wouldn’t make fun of a forty-year-old man with an earring? Why, the great Jon Bon Jovi himself couldn’t pull off the look in the early ’80s. Why would her slightly paunchy, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing hubby be able to pull off the look? Gracie had thought it was a passing phase, like when an errant teenager comes home with a blue Mohawk and a tongue ring. Gracie had viewed this new transition as an opportunity to try out her parenting skills.

  First, Gracie had tried to ignore the offending item. But how does one ignore a violation of the laws of nature? Women should not have mustaches and men should not wear ear jewelry. Period.

  Obviously, this step was too difficult for her. Gracie had moved on.

  Next, she had tried to talk to her child, er, husband, with an emphasis on positive reinforcement. Gracie had sat Kenny down with a glass of wine and told him how attractive he was, especially his earlobes. Gracie had told him how she’d never really noticed his ears until now, and, gee, they were really nice ears. Incredibly nice ears. Ears that didn’t need any help at all to look nice.

  Finally, she had pleaded. “What are you thinking?” Gracie had beseeched, spilling wine on herself as she gestured toward his stupid, insane, ridiculous ear (which really wasn’t so attractive, come to think of it).

  “What’s the big deal?” Kenny had said, as if he were a teenager talking to his so-out-of-it-she-hums-to-Crosby-Stills-and-Nash mother. “It’s just a statement. Besides, Steve-O thought it looked rad.”

  “Steve-O?” Gracie had asked, incredulous. Steve-O was a twenty-two-year-old Nike commercial director who was still living in his parents’ house in Encino—and embarking on a $100-million science fiction movie starring Bruce Willis. “Steve-O is barely weaned! He still wears pull-ups!”

  “Steve-O is a very talented director,” Kenny had said, as though she had insulted his very child.

  “You look ridiculous—you’re a forty-year-old man you’re successful, you’re smart—” (“ish,” she meant to add.

  Smart-ish.) “Think of your dignity.”

  Gracie had looked at him, in his trademark Hawaiian shirt and ironed jeans and, now, his earring. Maybe it was too late for dignity.

  “My
look works for me,” Kenny had said, puffing up, screaming-loud orange and green hydrangeas stretching across his chest. He looked like a proud baggage handler for Hawaiian Airlines.

  “As a matter of fact,” he had told her, “a lot of people, important people, like this look. A lot of important people.”

  “Are any of them named Magnum P.I.?” Gracie had yelled as he walked away. Again.

  Kenny had given up fighting with her.We used to fight, Gracie thought, we used to stake claims in battle and fight until our eyes bled. And then, oh my God, she thought, we’d make up, we’d fuck as intensely as we’d fight. Gracie thought they had grown up, that they were beyond screaming and punching at the air, that they knew that at the end of the day, at the end of the fight, they were still going to be together. Gracie hadn’t known that Kenny had stopped fighting because he no longer cared.

  Looking back now, Gracie could see a distinct pattern in Kenny’s repellent (to her) fashion choices, parallel to the demise of their marriage. First, there was the switch from loafers to tennis shoes, even for work.Then he traded slacks for jeans. Ironed jeans, yes, but jeans nonetheless. Gracie had even pointed out to Kenny, helpfully, that jeans are never meant to be ironed, that’s the first sure sign of middle age. The second, third, and fourth being the need for reading glasses, Mylanta, and a new wife. Then there were the Hawaiian shirts. Kenny was searching for a “look,” searching for something to make him stand out from the Armani-Prada-Hugo Boss-clad, contract killer studio crowd. He became the Madonna of the payor play populace. The fashion gambit paid off—he was soon known as the “casual exec,” he became friends with the younger, up-and-coming crowd, the video directors who became film directors, the TV actors who were transitioning into celluloid.Why would her husband want to hang out at home with his wife and three-year-old daughter? The very people who reminded him he was getting older? Of course it made sense that he wanted out. It’s a wonder, she thought, that he didn’t leave earlier.

  Gracie went to her daughter’s room and curled up on the tiny bed next to her and played with the shiny blond tendrils of hair covering half her face, always covering half her face because Gracie couldn’t bring herself to cut her daughter’s crazily perfect hair, and wondered what she would say to her in the morning. “Daddy’s not coming home,” maybe. Or: “Daddy’s got an earring and he doesn’t like us anymore.” Gracie would figure something out. And then, some time after that, Gracie would figure out her new life.

  Tequila vapors echoed through her head, forcing her into a twitching, unsettled sleep. Too late, Gracie realized that what the female bartender at a particularly uneventful agency party (oxymoron) told her was true: Tequila is the only alcohol that is a stimulant.

  The final thought that drifted into her brain haunted her sleep: Gracie had become a Starter Wife.

  3

  ONE HUNDRED (AND TWO) CLUES THAT YOUR HUSBAND IS UNFAITHFUL

  ROSES. THE ASSHOLE SENT one hundred roses to someone who wasn’t his wife. Someone who wasn’t his dead mother. Someone who wasn’t his daughter. How did Gracie find out about the roses? Her florist.

  Gracie, like all Wives Of in L.A., had a favorite florist—a messy, expensive relationship fraught with emotional potholes. The florist/client relationship was closer in her world than the hairdresser/client relationship.The right florist could be called on night and day—and often needed to be on standby. Gracie had at least three occasions a week in which to send flowers: someone’s grandmother died, someone had a baby, this person got promoted, that person got demoted, this producer has a movie opening, that producer’s movie reached 100 million, this actress is having (more) (cosmetic) surgery, that actor is having a nervous breakdown, so-and-so’s in rehab, it’s the star’s brother’s wife’s birthday.

  The list was endless.

  Gracie’s florist, a human nerve ending with concert pianist’s fingers and a head as smooth as an eggshell, called the next morning asking how she liked the flowers, letting her know how to take care of them—he prided himself on the lengths he would go for that extra “personal touch.”

  “Darling, they could last over a week with distilled water, and only distilled water, and one aspirin,” he said, hyper as a whippet. “Did you have a dinner party last week? I heard you had a dinner party last week, you know you’re supposed to call me for your dinner parties, naughty girl, are you cheating on Raymondo?”

  “I’m the one who needs an aspirin,” Gracie told him, unconsciously squeezing the phone like a lemon. Her forearm started throbbing. She knew it was because she wanted to wring Kenny’s thick neck.

  “I didn’t get any flowers, Raymond.”

  “What’s that, Precious?” he squeaked.

  Raymond was gay. Gracie wondered if he were single. Gracie wondered if gay, single men would want to go out with her.

  Gracie cleared her throat of an enormous, Kenny-hating lump. “I didn’t receive any flowers.”

  There was silence at the other end of the phone.

  “There must be some mistake,” he finally said, with a droplet of cheer at having tripped upon an appropriate lie. “Oh, yes.” Gracie heard the shuffling of papers.

  “Oh, yes,” he repeated. Gracie had known Raymond for seven years and had never heard him, to her knowledge, lie. So Gracie waited, curious and patient.This was her new life, people stumbling on their words, and her, with the newfound ability to read their thoughts.

  Gracie knew what Raymond was thinking. “Oh, shit” was probably first in his mind, followed in close succession by “Who the hell did Kenny send one hundred roses to?” then “I’m going to kill my assistant,” and finally “Wait till I tell (everyone).”

  Gracie watched her girl as she stood, arms over her head, swinging her doll-sized hips, in front of the television set, watching the most famous homosexual revue in the world, The Wiggles. Gracie had tricked her daughter long ago to listen to the television with the sound turned down almost to mute. Thus, only one of her senses could be assaulted by The Wiggles at a time.

  Gracie looked at the television set out of the corner of her eye; she could bear only the slimmest glimmer of Wiggle …

  Gracie found herself wondering if any of them were single. Gracie wondered, if she married a Wiggle, about their first dance at their wedding. Would Gracie, too, be forced to wag her arms over her head, to wrestle her hips into some sort of rhythmic motion?

  “Would it be all right if I called Mr. Kenny’s office?” Raymond asked. The man gave supplicant ass-licker brown-nosers a bad name.

  “Raymond,” Gracie said, “we did have a dinner party last week.And the flowers were sensational.”

  Gracie heard the gasp just as she hung up. She suddenly realized that if she were getting a divorce, one of the benefits was that she wouldn’t have the need for a florist except for special occasions. Raymond was probably already asking Kenny’s assistant how the recipient liked the roses and giving tips on distilled water and aspirin.

  What does one do on the first day of separation? How should Gracie mark it on the calendar? “Today’s Wednesday, so that means Tennis,Toddler Group, and oh, yes, a Trial Separation.”

  And why was she still breathing? Why hadn’t Gracie died in the night? And why, why hadn’t Gracie planned for this moment? Why hadn’t she put away the requisite $500 cash per week into her own account, like the other Wives Of? Why hadn’t she purchased more jewelry, like the wife who bought out the Cartier display at Saks two weeks before she served her husband with papers? Why didn’t Gracie know she and Kenny were headed for the destination marked “first marriage”? But Gracie couldn’t even call what they had a first marriage, could she, unless she was already in her second marriage. Damn. Damn. Damn. So many new rules, so many newfangled, meaningless niceties to incorporate into her behavior. Gracie was now a Former Wife Of—a Starter Wife. Performances would have to change.

  And just when she had finally grasped all the behavior patterns for a Wife Of. It was akin to telling an Olympic wrest
ler that he would have to compete in the women’s synchronized swimming event.

  Another horrible feeling ran over Gracie, leaving deep tracks on what was left of her psyche. Did other people know this was going to happen? Was Gracie the only one in the dark?

  Gracie grabbed at a barstool and slid her body onto it, propping herself up on her elbows on the kitchen counter. The thought of divorce had robbed her, temporarily, of any thought of eating. All Gracie desired was coffee—straight—black enough to leave her teeth looking like pieces of driftwood. And Gracie wanted it thick, thick as Anna Nicole Smith’s speech pattern. Gracie wanted her nerves to have nerves. And cigarettes. Gracie would have killed for a cigarette. But no, Gracie had given up cigarettes. Kenny didn’t like smoking, even socially. Even outside on a balcony at a party where smoking made a little more sense than jumping. Screw him, Gracie thought. She’d have given Kenny’s left nut for a cigarette right now. In fact, she would have given both Kenny’s nuts. Nutless freak. Who would want him then?

  Oh, Gracie wanted to be French. The French knew how to survive Nazi occupation, McDonald’s, and bad techno music and still look good.

  “Honey? Do you have a cigarette?” Gracie asked her daughter, who was now Wiggled out, sitting on the floor, her legs spread out before her, her Powerpuff Girl pajamas crumpled up around her pale, bony knees. How Gracie had managed to have a tall, skinny, long-legged daughter, she did not know. Perhaps Jaden had been switched at birth, and somewhere in the city a short-legged, chubby, brown-haired daughter was being raised by Swedes.

  “Bad people smoke cigarettes,” she replied. There’s no one more matter-of-fact than a three-and-a-half-year-old with conviction.

  “Who told you that?” Gracie asked.

  “Daddy,” she said. Of course.

  “Well,” Gracie said, “Daddy knows all about bad people.” So sue her.

  “Honey,” Gracie said, “I have something to tell you about Daddy—”

  Jaden had her eyes closed, her head leaning back. “Daddy’s gone away,” she said.