The Starter Wife (10 page)

And look at Mr. Frumpy. Look at him. Paying nary any attention to his laptop. And yet, moments ago, whatever cable TV Movie-of-the-Week crap was on it was so important to him. Look at him, fascinated with the mat-bearing bimbo. Absolutely fascinated. Couldn’t be happier for the both of them. Maybe they’ll get married and have five thousand kids. But early, not like Gracie. Not too late, like Gracie.

Gracie watched the girl as she ordered her drink and waited. Her eyes skipped over Gracie’s way for a mere nanosecond. Gracie was sure her existence rated not a blip on this girl’s radar screen. And then Gracie remembered what another friend had mentioned to her; this friend been walking down Rodeo Drive and she’d just turned thirty-seven, and she realized everything she knew about herself before that moment was over with. Everything she’d taken for granted was gone.

Not one man looked at her.

Not a suit, not a construction worker, not a driver, not a young man, not an old one.

A moment ago, this woman had long, thick, blond hair, full lips, almond eyes, a lush body. And youth. Now, she still possessed all the physical attributes. But not Youth. Without Youth, she had nothing. Nothing but a rich husband who took long suspicious trips to Las Vegas and three beautiful kids.

And an ironclad pre-nup.

Which yanked Gracie to her next subject. Gracie was a woman on the verge of divorce, and she needed to get a lawyer. Joan had given her a Xeroxed list of divorce lawyers with fierce reputations and fiercer billing schedules.

Gracie decided to leave Starbucks for the warmer climes of her green-but-not-too-green kitchen, where she stood little chance of further humiliation.

WIFE NUMBER TWO

Is married to a famous, and famously sexual, musician. Theirs is a happy marriage, partly because she procures his concubines while he’s on the road, after putting them through a vigorous workout herself.

He recently went back on the road to pay for her jewelry.

4
 
IF I HAD A (DIVORCE) LAWYER

G
RACIE HAD A THEORY:
Forty in L.A. is like fifty anywhere else—a single woman over fifty in New York can’t get a date. In L.A., lop ten years off that number.A fifty-year-old woman in New York gets her first face-lift; in L.A., the number is forty. A fifty-year-old woman in New York can still carry an air of viability; in L.A., a woman after forty is no longer viable except to her children, and sometimes, if they are old enough for driver’s licenses, not even then. Factor in the “single” dimension and the effect is mathematically analogous to standing in a hall of mirrors.

Gracie was staring down the barrel at this future: She was a woman over forty years old in a city in which even if she had a face-lift and dieted her way back down to Mary-Kate proportions and published eighteen best-selling children’s books, Gracie was still a person who would never have another date in her life.

Neither, apparently,would Gracie have a divorce lawyer.

First on her list was Mr. Maxwell Havens, Esq., lawyer to such luminaries as Jack Welch and Tom Cruise, nemesis to such luminaries as Michael D. Eisner and Bruce Willis. And friends with all of them. Known for having a chauffeur-driven Rolls and dressing like a dandy. Did time in prison for petty theft when he was a teenager. Tired of petty theft when he became acquainted with divorce law, a license to steal big money.

Gracie punched the numbers quickly, before she could back out, and also as a result of too much caffeine.

“Havens and Sussman?”

Gracie wondered why the receptionist posed the name of the firm as a question—was it a question where she was working? If so, hadn’t someone answered the question by now?

“I need to talk to Maxwell Havens.”

“Hold, please.”

Gracie was switched over to an assistant.

“Maxwell Havens calling. This is Gina.”

A confusing way to answer a phone, but Gracie was familiar with the ploy—“always appear to be on the move.”

“Hello,” Gracie said, slightly nervous though Gina had a calming voice. “My name is Gracie Pollock. I would like to speak to Mr. Havens.”

“Your name?”

“Gracie Pollock.”

There was a pause.

“Gracie Pollock?” Gina asked.

Gracie got nervous. Was she supposed to still be using Kenny’s last name? What were the rules of divorce for the Starter Wife? She would look it up on Google right after this phone call.

“For the last nine years—until Tuesday night,” as Gracie settled the question in her head.

The girl put Gracie on hold. The hairs on the back of Gracie’s neck, which was the only place she hadn’t lost hair after the birth of her child, stood up. Gracie didn’t know why, all she knew was that this particular “hold” was weighted with portentousness. This “hold” was a bad one. Why did she feel this way? Sure, Gracie was not in the habit of calling lawyer’s offices. She barely knew any lawyers—except for the ubiquitous entertainment attorneys who argued with themselves over their competing clients’ interests and considered the term “conflict of interest” a quaint throwback, and who skied more than they worked and skied while they worked and considered skiing to be work. Gracie was about to hang up when a man came on the line.

“Gracie,” he said, “how are you, sweetheart?”

Ah, yes, Gracie thought, the familiar overfamiliar greeting, as the word “sweetheart” rang in her ears, as though Gracie and this stranger were not only close friends but perhaps had had children with each other.

“My life sucks,” Gracie replied, “who may I ask—” “Maxwell. Maxwell Havens here,” the man replied. Still with the syrup in his voice.

The hairs at the back of Gracie’s neck had given up standing and were now performing cartwheels.

“I’m so glad you called,” he continued.

“Have we met?” Gracie asked.

“No, no—but I’m a good friend of Kenny’s.”

Aha!
thought Gracie. She knew now that she couldn’t trust Maxwell Havens—no one was a “good friend” of Kenny’s. Men in L.A. didn’t have “good friends,” they had commerce.

This little factoid made Gracie crave Maxwell Havens in her life and divorce even more. She searched her brain for some clue of what he looked like—late fifties, early sixties, in
good shape (what with all that skiing). Gracie found herself daydreaming of making a love connection with someone who was old enough to be her father. Who was she kidding? If her father had been a teen groom.

“Which is why I can’t represent you,” Maxwell said.

“What? You know that’s why I’m calling?”

“I’m assuming—you’re still getting a divorce, correct?”

Gracie’s stomach lurched in the same way it did the time she accidentally cut a motorist off in traffic and he waved a handgun at her. Why would someone wave a handgun at a woman driving a Volvo with an
I ♥ TINY MIRACLES PRESCHOOL
license-plate holder? Seemed sort of beside the point, no? And what would have happened had the angry young man in the painter’s cap shot her? Kenny would have dined out on that story for months. He would have made a wonderful widower—a dream widower. His wife cut down in the prime of her life (cough) while her young child sat in her booster seat, watching cartoons on the car’s television screen. Gracie suddenly felt inferior; what was she doing exposing her child to television even in a motorized vehicle? She, who had been raised by parents who eschewed television completely. Her father claimed that watching TV would turn her brains into oatmeal. Gracie caved in to peer pressure—all the Wives Of had televisions in their cars. Gracie had just purchased the Volvo last year, and when the dealer said she might need a DVD screen in the back—for those long trips to Disneyland, Gelsons, and the three miles to school—well, she meekly agreed.

“How did you—”

“Know you’re getting a divorce?”

Why did men feel the right to finish a woman’s thought? Well, maybe certain men.

Most men.

Gracie hated that behavior. But then, Gracie would never have to deal with that kind of behavior again, now would she? Because she’d never again be dating and/or married to another man, unless—unless a massive earthquake swallowed up all the young women in Southern California.

“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.