The Starter Wife Read online

  “No, how did you get to be such a fuckhead?”

  There was a pause. Not many people called Maxwell Havens a fuckhead and lived to tell the story. There were rumors about his ties to the mob, and not like the nice mob, either.

  He cleared his throat of his unpracticed response. “I can’t represent you, Mrs. Pollock. Your husband and I have already discussed your impending divorce. The fact is, I may be representing him.”

  Gracie now felt the same excruciating, shooting pain in her head that she felt when the woman who ran Jaden’s preschool called to ask her to chair their auction dinner.

  “You can’t represent me because you may represent my husband?”

  “That’s right,” said Maxwell Havens, Fuckhead-at-Law. “And I’ve read your pre-nup. Kenny certainly plans ahead, doesn’t he.” He sounded serene and in control. Degrading her had helped him recover from her juvenile name-calling.

  It occurred to Gracie that the Fuckhead-at-Law knew about her impending divorce before she did; this guy probably knew that she was a lousy lay before she herself knew. Gracie wondered what else he knew—like, who Kenny had sent the one hundred roses to. But she needed to get off the phone. She wondered if a person could actually die of humiliation.

  “Damn him,” Gracie whispered.

  “I think you’ll find this to be true of all the top divorce attorneys in L.A.,” he continued. “He’s met with every one. Kenny’s a very thorough person. It’s one of those qualities I respect most about him.”

  Gracie hung up.

  She looked at her list of attorneys. She knew that what the Fuckhead-at-Law said was absolutely right—Kenny had met with each and every one so that Gracie would not be able to procure any of them.

  Her life was beginning to look like Pay-Per-View. But Kenny had already started the fight, long before Gracie even knew there was a ring.

  A WEEK LATER, Gracie learned that Kenny had indeed hired Maxwell Havens. She finally found an attorney in a cardboard office in the Wilshire Corridor who’d claimed that he could help her keep the one material thing she desperately wanted from the marriage. The Brown House. The house they lived in when Jaden was born. The house where she’d been most happy. Gracie would make a deal with Kenny—she would forfeit future spousal support if Kenny would buy that house for her and Jaden.

  Gracie met her attorney-to-be—a chubby, bearded man with the pale, doughy skin of an infant—at the Starbucks in Brentwood on San Vicente, a different one, thankfully, than the one in which she’d spied the middle-aged writer who wouldn’t look her way if she were standing, stark naked, spraying whipped cream on her nipples and singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” (but not the second verse).

  Is there anything as cruel as Los Angeles in springtime? Gracie thought not.

  Gracie drove south from their (her? his?) house on Rock-ingham Avenue toward Brentwood Central, home of self-indulgent mothers and their overindulged children. And vice versa, ad infinitum.

  Gracie wondered at how she had come to live on a street where a three-year-old, five-million-dollar mansion was considered a tear-down. It didn’t seem that long ago that she was living in an apartment around the corner from Canter’s in the Fairfax district, where everywhere she was surrounded by young people with no money and enough talent to anticipate bright futures. Most of her friends from that era had succeeded reasonably well, including Joan. Some were writers, some musicians. A couple had become teachers. Gracie had become someone’s wife.

  Gracie had, of late, romanticized the simplicity of her old life. There were three rooms in her apartment, the minirefrig-erator containing two essentials: cheap cranberry juice and expensive vodka (for entertaining). She remembered fondly the bed and the flannel sheets she’d bought on her own—a naughty indulgence when one had only sixty dollars in the bank. She smiled at the thought of the fifty-dollar desk with her father’s old computer, the printer that printed one page a minute, the furniture from Ikea. Her fourteen-inch television set. A carport.

  Most Americans were upwardly mobile, wanting more, more, more—bigger cars, vast lawns, sky-high mansions. Gracie had become downwardly mobile. She’d stare at tiny houses buffeting her daughter’s favorite Santa Monica park: houses with a hose and a sprinkler from Target instead of an irrigation system, homes where a father’s bellow was the intercom, homes barely bigger than her living room, where the only art on the walls was something conceived in a second-grade classroom. She would imagine herself living there. And then, her mind would drift back to her early days with her husband.

  When Gracie moved in with Kenny, she could hardly contain her excitement. It’s true, his home was a modest affair—two bedrooms, one and a half baths, a quarter of an acre. The outside was brown from its foundation to its roof, which is why they’d called it, in a burst of imagination, “The Brown House,” and why Kenny had sworn he’d sell the house every week or so. But the truth was, Kenny wasn’t home so much in the last five or six years. The Brown House had become more of a favored boutique hotel to him: he knew where to get food; he knew where his favorite towels were.

  But Gracie had loved that house—it was just the right size for their small family. The lush backyard boasted a canopy of oak trees which curved protectively over her daughter’s wooden swing set. When Jaden was a tiny baby, Gracie had purchased the old-fashioned swing set on a whim, setting it up in the middle of the backyard. She’d put Jaden on the baby swing, holding her tight, and push her back and forth and back and forth until her baby would sleep. The moments so sweet she could literally taste them, like biting into a yellow cake with vanilla frosting.

  Gracie hadn’t wanted a big house; she hadn’t wanted the burden of more space to take care of, more “things” to worry about. She had been friendly with showbiz people with huge houses. And it was always the showbiz people who had the biggest houses, houses that ranged from 10,000 to you’ve-got-to-be-shitting-me square feet; six, seven, eight bedrooms (not counting the maid’s); twelve bathrooms, foyers, decks, huge swimming pools, lap pools, indoor swimming pools for those bitingly cold Southern California afternoons, a panic room (for the wife?).

  Kenny continued griping about being a prisoner in this “shit-brown house.” Every time they’d have dinner at someone’s larger, fancier, staffed-to-the-gills house—and they only had dinner with people who had fancy houses—he’d come home in a funk, complaining about how “poor” he felt in his place.

  Maybe it was fear of real estate—“acrephobia,” Gracie called it. Gracie was supposed to be trying to find that perfect acre lot replete with McMansion and sycamore trees which had been planted yesterday, rather than forty years ago. Why was it that everything in Southern California had to be new, including the wives? What was wrong with an old house, an old tree, a worn bench, creaky floors, a lined face, gray hairs that sprang up like wiry jack-in-the-boxes? If she had searched long enough inside her psyche, Gracie might have come to another conclusion, different from the fact that in a world where New = God, she preferred Used = Comfort. She would have come to the conclusion that she was fearful of losing that last vestige of herself. She was fearful of losing whatever evidence there was that she was an individual, a fully formed human being with opinions and furrows and a soft tush. The Brown House had become her.

  Finally Gracie had given in. She’d called a Realtor by the name of Jameson Rosenau who seemed to appear everywhere, from bus benches to the pages of the L.A. Times realty section to the postcards she continually found in her mailbox. He looked handsome in his photographs, but in person he was Lilliputian—from his doll feet to his wee hands, all of five feet and spare change. He stood military-style, chest out, chin high, teeny hand just about ready to salute his new client. “I can get you a millsky for this place, I’m not kidding,” he said, smiling up at Gracie.

  Gracie raced back into the house to find her purse and recover her bearings.

  GRACIE AND KENNY moved into the house on Rockingham three months after that fateful trip with Jameson
Rosenau. The house had five bedrooms, a guesthouse, a large pool, a cabana, a tennis court, and a long driveway that would be difficult to navigate without the aid of a car and driver.

  The house was big, it was grand, it was extravagant.

  Gracie hated it. Kenny, on the other hand, loved it, and pirouetted from room to room, a thick, graceless ballerina.

  “We’ll throw tons of dinner parties!” he exclaimed.

  Gracie just nodded.

  “We’ll have people over to play tennis every weekend!”

  Gracie nodded. She had never picked up a tennis racket in her life.

  “We can have people stay in the guesthouse. Important people.” Kenny was on a roll. “People from New York!”

  “I have relatives in New York,” Gracie said, perking up. Kenny didn’t respond.

  “Jaden’s room is downstairs and on the other side of the house,” she heard herself pleading. “I won’t be able to hear her at night.” The thought of her baby so far away panicked her.

  “That’s what they have monitors for,” Kenny said. “C’mon, honey, this is what I’ve always wanted, what I’ve worked so hard for. Why can’t you be happy for me?”

  Gracie had thought about this. Why couldn’t she be happy for him? Why couldn’t she be happy? What was wrong with her? Didn’t everyone want a house with a pool and a tennis court? Weren’t they living the American Dream?

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, glaring at the chandelier above their heads as he stooped over her and hugged her.

  “I can’t wait to have people over,” he said. “Hey, you can brush up on your tennis—no excuses!”

  Gracie was secretly suspicious of all “rich kid” sports—tennis, horseback riding, swimming outside of a community pool—she found solace in cleaving to her “raised in borderline poverty” status. Living in a multimillion-dollar spec house in Brentwood would make it harder for Gracie to maintain her “waiting for the revolution” stance.

  The Rockingham house was supposed to be Modern Spanish, but it veered more into Modern Office Building with Spanish moldings. Everything about it was new, down to the week-old grass on the front lawn. Her first twenty-four hours in the house felt like an episode of Rich Folks’ Survivor. On her first night in the McMansion—Kenny was out of town attending a premiere in New York (with all the Important People)—Gracie had not mastered the ne plus ultra, expensive alarm system. The system went off eight times in a span of two hours, driving Gracie out of her mind and her bed. She wound up begging the befuddled security guards walking down her driveway to gun her down as she ambled blearily, wearing the flannel pajamas she only wore when Kenny was out of town.

  “Never get rich,” she warned the security guards, “they’ll force you to get a security system.” She never used the security system again. The dirty little secret of the wealthiest enclaves is that no one knows how to use their elaborate security systems (and everyone has ten-pound dogs).

  Everything that could go wrong in the house did from the electrical system to the technologically advanced dishwasher to every one of the six toilets. The lighting system itself was so complex that on some nights Gracie was driven to tears, wondering how to get a lamp on so she could read. Outside security lights would come on for no reason. And forget the entertainment system. Gracie could never get any one of their eight television sets to work off of the fancy ten-pound remotes. If she managed to turn on a TV, the volume refused to budge.Worse were the times she could never get it off again.

  The first week, Gracie wandered the halls, wondering how she would keep such a massive place clean. Her housekeeper, Ana, the one who’d been with them since Jaden was born, had taken one look at the house and almost fainted.

  “You need more people, missus,” Ana said.

  “No kidding,” Gracie replied. “You know anyone?”

  Thus, the house became a Rockingham El Salvador. Ana and her two sisters came to work, keeping the 8,000-squarefoot house spick-and-span, babysitting Jaden, cooking in case Kenny’s friends dropped by for dinner or a Saturday-afternoon tennis game. These should have been the good old days, the salad days.

  So why did Gracie feel so wilted?

  “You need to find something to do,” Kenny said one morning as he dressed for work. “I have a purpose, I have something that makes me happy—my job—you need to find a purpose.”

  “I have Jaden,” Gracie said.

  “And we’re scheduled to have another,” Kenny said. “As soon as she turns two, we’ll start trying.”

  Gracie shook her head. She hadn’t forgotten. Kenny always wanted two; so had she. But lately, the news was getting to her. If terrorism wouldn’t wipe them out, the environment was on the verge of collapse. And then there were all the shots she’d have to endure …

  “What about all your boards?” Kenny said. “You know, a lot of women find fulfillment raising money for charity.”

  Gracie nodded. She was thinking about all the drinking she’d seen at ladies’ luncheons. The rumors about Vicodin abuse; some of the women’s best friends had names like Percocet or his cousin Percodan.

  “I think I should go back to writing,” Gracie said. “I really liked writing children’s books.”

  “Is there a market for that?” Kenny asked.

  Gracie shrugged. She had no idea. She didn’t examine her needs in terms of market value. She wondered when she would have time to write, anyway. There were so many petty obligations encroaching on her free time. It was the cosmic joke about having money: The more money you had, the more things you had, the more things you had to take care of, the more you worry about them, the less time you have for the important things, the unhappier you are.

  Rich = Unhappy seemed to be Gracie’s equation.

  THE ONE GOOD THING to come out of El McMansion was that Gracie met Will. Will had been an up-and-coming designer—he’d worked hand in hand with the legendary designer Maria Paul—and was said to have completed most of her latest jobs, including Jackie Onassis’s last apartment. Will walked into the house on Rockingham and said, “I need a chair. Fast.” Gracie sat him down.

  “Now, tell me what happened, and don’t leave out a thing,” he said breathlessly.

  “What do you mean, what happened?” Gracie asked.

  “Water, I’ll need some water.” Will waved his arm.

  “We moved all our furniture in—”

  “Stop,” Will said. He got up to leave.

  “Where’re you going?” Gracie said.

  “I can’t take this job. I’m sorry,” Will said. “Forget the Aquafina, I need air …”

  Gracie followed him out. “Why can’t you take this job?”

  “We’re incompatible,” he snipped.

  “We’re not getting married.”

  “I can’t work with you,” he said. “Now, how do I get to Sunset from here?”

  Gracie grabbed his sleeve. He looked at her hand as though it were a rattlesnake or, worse, a bad manicure.

  “Look, Liberace,” Gracie said, “I am in no mood to play Siegfried to your Roy. The least you could do is give me advice.”

  Will looked at her and smiled. Gracie noted that his teeth were crooked—a rare treat in a homosexual man. The moment marked the beginning of a beautiful and somewhat complicated friendship, complicated by the fact that Gracie was paying Will for his companionship. She had sworn she’d never be one of those Hollywood wives who paid for friendship—whose best friends were their Pilates instructors, personal trainers, interior decorators. But she grew to love Will; she loved that he told her the truth—that basically she had no taste. She loved that she could complain to him. She loved that he shared his secrets, where to get highlights, where to find the best spa on the Baja Peninsula, where to get black-market Phenfen.

  Theirs was a true friendship, paid in full at the end of each month.

  THE WIFE OF was a full-time job; some women (and men) were better at it than others. Gracie and Will, during an extended shopping trip for a
turn-of-the-century light fixture, argued over who was the most celebrated Wife Of, the one who turned her wife status into not just a Trade but a Calling.

  The rules were stringent: The woman had to be able to warrant her own single picture in a weekly magazine, her own mention in Liz Smith or on Page Six, she had to count A-level celebrities as close friends, and she could not have had notoriety (or a real job) prior to her marriage.

  One name kept popping up: Trudi Styler, married to Sting. What does she do? Hard to tell. “And who cares?” as Will pointed out. “We all know her name. We all know her face. And she’s friends with Nicole Kidman.”

  “And she seems to be aging backward,” Gracie agreed.

  In the Pollock social circle, Gracie had met three types of Wives Of, who had two all-important components in common: None of them held actual jobs and, in a world where such things were of utmost import, they had all Landed the Whale.

  There was the InStyle Blonde—which could have been a color unto itself. This type of woman could be married to a producer who had won an Academy Award once upon a time and was on his third marriage. This wife could have been a cover model, save for the overbite (which could be corrected) and brief pit stop into porn (which could not). One could see her photo as one of Fifty Best Dressed in Harper’s Bazaar, or wearing animal print in the back of the Hollywood Reporter. She would have two children and three nannies; she would know where to get Mexican Quaaludes and how many she could take with a vodka martini. She was a living, breathing “Vagenda”—a woman with an agenda. Kenny admired the InStyle Blonde; Kenny did his best to turn Gracie into an InStyle Blonde.

  The only problem with the InStyle Blonde?

  Eventually, she would be an embarrassment.

  Then there was The Perfect Match. Gracie would call her The Perfect Match because damned if her skirt didn’t match her jacket didn’t match her shoes didn’t match her purse didn’t match her sunglasses didn’t match her nail polish (fingers and toes) didn’t match her agent husband’s polo shirt didn’t match her children’s dresses didn’t match their sandals didn’t match their hair accessories.