The Starter Wife (13 page)

Lou and Gracie stood there for a moment in silence, watching Kenny go after Reese Witherspoon with the speed and trajectory of a heat-seeking ass-kisser.

“He’ll learn,” Lou said to Gracie, as though answering a question she hadn’t dared ask.

“We’re getting a divorce,” Gracie replied.

“About time,” he said.

“I don’t want it,” Gracie said. “He does.”

“Of course,” Lou said, looking at Gracie. “You’re not going to get him on the cover of
Us Magazine.”

Gracie looked away, ashamed. She knew what Lou said was true; for Kenny, press was everything, and that’s the one thing his wife couldn’t acquire for him: press. Gracie could put together a dinner party, she could write the thank-you notes, send the flowers, remind him of important birthdays, and buy the gifts. And wonder of wonders, she could carry on a conversation. But she could not get him on the cover of
Us.

Lou placed his roughened hand on her shoulder. “Who’m I going to talk to at these things?” he said.

Gracie looked back at him without turning her shoulder. She didn’t want him to remove that hand. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Am I dying or something?”

“You’ll see,” he said. “You’ll see what happens. You’ll come to a couple more of these parties, people will invite you, they’ll want to keep the doors open for a while in case you’re not really getting divorced and then they’ll figure out the truth, that you’re not getting back together, and then the invites will dwindle and pretty soon I’ll be at another one of these overblown picnics and I’ll be talking to myself.”

“That’s my future?” Gracie asked. “As The Former Wife Of?” She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, to celebrate or grieve. She didn’t know whether he was being helpful or cruel. Or both.

“Count on it,” he said.

Gracie didn’t know what to say. She watched the party, the people, the servers, the animal balloons, the boob jobs and tank tops and collagened lips.

“Lucky girl,” Lou said.

“Me?” Gracie said. “I’m about to be excommunicated.”

“You’re getting out,” he replied. “I never have.”

She looked at him.

“You’re free,” he said.

L
OU
M
ANAHAN
regretted being honest with Gracie. What was there to gain by him telling her that her life in Hollywood was over? Finished. Done.

He drove into the flats of Beverly Hills, where he’d recently purchased a home for him and his kid.The kid who was asleep in the backseat. Pacifier stuck in his mouth. These were Lou’s favorite times. Just him and the kid. No radio, no cell phone, no noise, nothing.

He hadn’t been trying to hurt Gracie. The words had just popped out of his mouth like bombs landing on a soft target. The look on her face. But didn’t she know? he thought. Didn’t she know that her stock had dropped to less than the daytime hostess at The Ivy? Hadn’t she seen what happened to other wives? Wives who traded on their husbands’ names until the day he walked out with a secretary/actress/nanny? Lou was nothing if not honest, which in L.A. was about as rare a bird as sincerity. He looked into his rearview mirror, looked at the little head that was lolling to the side of his child seat.

Lou made a note to call Gracie. He’d take her out to dinner. He’d make it all better for her.

L
ATER THAT DAY,
Gracie put Jaden down for a nap, then drove into Beverly Hills, listening to two women talk about food on NPR and wondering when exactly she had stopped listening to music on the radio. She switched stations for a few moments, then turned the thing off altogether when she realized
she’d been listening to what was considered an “oldies” station, the one that played all the hits of the eighties.

“I’ve become the Prince-listening version of my mother,” Gracie lamented as she turned into the garage at Neiman Marcus. She remembered how her mother loved to listen to songs from the sixties on the radio, well into the seventies. She had vowed never to be stuck in a time warp, the way her mother had been—wearing red lipstick (fifties), saying things like “jazzy” (sixties).

At least, Gracie thought, as she parked the Volvo between two black BMW SUVs, I’ve given up shoulder pads and the hope to someday date Michael Jackson.

G
RACIE KNEW
it was wrong. She knew it was wrong and yet there she was, standing before the Loree Rodkin jewelry case on the ground floor of the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus. She was wearing heavy sunglasses (very Jackie O, very
Vogue
-sanctioned) and a scarf tied around her head—the only scarf she owned—a Hermès giveaway at some charity event. Gracie was going for the “chic widow” look to disguise herself, should she run into anyone she knew, but somehow had ended up with the “post-surgery” look. Other shoppers looked at her curiously, wondering if it was a face-lift, brow-lift, eye-lift, or abusive husband that had her wrapped in the cheapest of last fall’s Hermès “To the Races” Collection.

But Gracie didn’t care. She was too caught up in a mixture of guilt and glee and fear and the sight of the most beautiful pink diamond earrings she’d ever seen.

Or maybe just the only pink diamond earrings she’d ever seen.

A saleslady appeared, not at all put off by Gracie’s odd appearance. In fact, the young, knowing woman sporting a chic
black chignon seemed to be buoyed by the scarf/sunglasses getup.

“You see something you like?” the woman asked, with one of those indistinguishable accents so often heard behind sales counters in Beverly Hills.

Gracie giggled. Gracie rarely giggled these days—not even with Jaden, who could be counted on for a giggle even when headline news became overwhelming.

Gracie continued giggling and couldn’t speak. She jabbed her finger at those earrings, gesturing like an actor playing a mentally challenged mute.

“Ah, yes,” the woman said, “these are beautiful, no?”

And she took them out of the case, holding one in each hand like tiny, brilliant headlights.

“Be more gorgeous,” Gracie said to the earrings; she’d found her voice.

“Try them on.” The woman pushed the stones into Gracie’s hands.

Gracie, in a fit of courage that ranked right up there with the time she saved Billy Novak from drowning in their blowup pool in second grade, loosened her scarf and slipped it onto her neckline.

But the glasses remained.

She held up the earrings, one to each lobe.

“Go ahead. Try them on,” the saleslady said.

“I don’t need to,” Gracie said. “Wrap ’em up. Please.”

“Are they a gift?” the saleslady asked.

“Yes,” Gracie said. “A birthday gift.”

“She must be a wonderful person, to deserve such a luxury.”

“She’s the best, ” Gracie assured her.

Gracie didn’t ask how much they cost. She didn’t care. She placed the American Express on the counter and made the
sign of the cross over it to symbolize her last purchase on the card, a purchase she wouldn’t have dared to make if she were still married.

She walked out, clutching the orange Neiman Marcus bag to her chest, into the late-afternoon sunshine.

5
 
THIS IS WHY I HATE MORNING PHONE CALLS

G
RACIE AWAKENED
to a phone ringing, an unusual event given that Kenny had moved out. At first she felt she was dreaming, the sound seemed so foreign, so interred in the past. She opened her eyes slowly, focusing on her sleeping child who now shared her bed, her back toward her, her hair a pale web of knots. The phone rang again, jolting Gracie into consciousness. She had the same feeling in her stomach she’d had since Kenny told her he wanted a divorce—a gnawing, as though she was starving—but she wasn’t starving, she wasn’t even hungry. How could she be when all she did in her spare time was eat? She knew what the feeling was: emptiness. And she knew if she was going to get over their impending divorce, she would have to fill it.

Gracie finally answered the phone, knowing immediately who was on the other end when she heard the breathing. Unfortunately
it wasn’t a sexual prank, it was Kenny. He was jogging on the treadmill and “running” his morning calls. Gracie thought about how nothing, really, had changed for him. His life was the same. Except that she was no longer in it.

“Hello?” Gracie said. She tried to make her voice sound clear, which was rough going at this hour. She had read an article recently that informed the reader that even our voices age, because of wear and tear on the voice box. Gracie thought this was information she didn’t really need. Even our voices age? Is there nothing we can do? Is nothing sacred?

“Gracie?” Kenny breathed, then coughed. He was using the speakerphone.

“Yes,” said Gracie.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Kenny said.

He wants me back,
Gracie thought,
he wants me back, but it’s too late, it’s just too late because
…

“Olivier and I are engaged?” Gracie asked.

“What?” Kenny said. “I can’t hear you.” In the background, Gracie heard the incessant whir of the treadmill, his Jurassic feet pounding the wide rubber strip. Beyond the din of the treadmill, Gracie could make out actors repeating lines. Kenny was watching dailies, scenes from a current production.

“Nothing,” Gracie said. “I’m just lying here with Jaden. It’s seven-thirty and she hasn’t even stirred.” Gracie kissed Jaden, her lips sinking into her daughter’s cashmere cheek. Since Kenny left, Jaden had been crawling into bed with Gracie at night, as though sensing her mother had empty spaces that needed to be filled, starting with Kenny’s side of the bed. Postsplit up, Jaden had become more like a friend than a daughter: holding her hand for long periods of time, patting her head while Gracie bathed her, exhibiting a sudden willingness to share her favorite red jelly beans. What is it, Gracie thought,
about a mother’s sadness that turns children into compatriots?

“Maybe it’s all the cough syrup I’ve been feeding her,” Gracie joked to Kenny.

“Listen,” Kenny said,“I’ve been thinking … hold on.”

Gracie waited, watching the timer on her phone. After one minute and fifty-two seconds, Kenny came back on the line.

“Where was I?” Kenny said.

“I’ve been thinking,” Gracie replied.

“You have?” Kenny asked. “Me, too. What have you been thinking about?”

“No,” Gracie said. “You said ‘I’ve been thinking.’”

“Good,” Kenny said. “We’re riding the same wave. I like that.”

“Kenny,” Gracie said, “try to avoid the surfing metaphors. You don’t surf.”

“Diaz surfs, Grazer surfs. I’m thinking of taking it up,” Kenny said. “Listen, I think we should try to avoid running into each other, don’t you?”

Gracie took a moment. Running into each other? When had they … ?

“The birthday party,” Kenny said. “I mean, wasn’t that just too awkward? I felt embarrassed—”

“You shouldn’t feel embarrassed,” Gracie said. For all of Kenny’s ego, and there was a lot of it to go around, he never failed to feel embarrassed about something.

“No,” Kenny said, “not for me. Listen, I just want you to know, as a friend …”

Did he just say “as a friend”? Gracie wondered.

“ … people were talking,” Kenny puffed.

Gracie realized he’d felt embarrassed for her. That
she
should be embarrassed.

“Kenny, I’ve known Qiana for years, before she even got
married, before the name, nose, the boobs, the yoga, the yoga instructor, the fake pregnancy, the surrogate pregnancy—”

“I’m just saying, people are talking, and it’s not me they’re talking about.”

Gracie felt her face flush; she knew she was turning purple. “You have a lot of nerve,” she said, ignoring the early-morning old-voice-box gravel in her voice. “So much nerve, in fact, there’s little room left for brain!”

“Look, Gracie,” Kenny said calmly, “if we’re going to be buds, I have to be honest with you. Paula thinks that—”

“Who’s Paula?” Gracie demanded. She ignored the fact that he used the word “bud” in a sentence for anything other than a discussion on roses.

“My psychotherapist. She’s very spiritual. She’s like a high priestess of the Kabbalah. Anyway, she thinks that the problem with our relationship is that I could never be honest with you—”

“You have a psycho therapist?” Gracie asked, cleaving the term into two words. Kenny had never gone to a therapist. Kenny, ever the Neanderthal, thought therapy, much like Broadway,was for women and homosexuals.

“Every time I’d say ‘Honey, maybe you should try dressing differently,’ or ‘Babe, I think you’d look great with more highlights,’ you’d ignore me,” Kenny panted. “And remember the time I wanted you to call Rupert Murdoch’s wife?”

“You don’t know Rupert Murdoch!” Gracie screamed like a wild animal. Jaden finally let out a groan.

“You have got to stop leading with your ego,” Kenny said.

Gracie made a choking sound.

“Why couldn’t you have just called and invited them to our house for dinner? Would that have been so hard?” Kenny asked.

“Kenny! They have no idea who we are!” Gracie said.

“Paula said the wives in Hollywood determine social standing, wives are the connective tissue. All I’m saying is that you could have done more to help my career,” Kenny said. “Now, I’m going to have my assistant call you and tell you what I’m doing this weekend so we avoid running into each other. Off the top of my head I have a brunch meeting at the Bel Air on Saturday morning, a screening at Lou’s on Saturday night, and I think someone’s getting married on Sunday.”