The Starter Wife (14 page)

Gracie was rendered speechless for a moment. “Who are you?” she finally asked. She realized he hadn’t even stopped running, the weight of his feet punishing the treadmill even as he had the nerve to claim that everyone was talking about her, feeling sorry for her. Poor Gracie, future overage Former Wife Of.

“Listen,” Kenny said, “we couldn’t make it work married, but maybe we can make it work divorced.”

“That’s beautiful, that’s poetry,” Gracie said. If sarcasm were water, he’d have drowned.

“Thank you,” Kenny said with pride. “I don’t want to take all the credit. Paula told me how to say it.”

“As long as we don’t run into each other,” Gracie said.

“As long as we don’t run into each other,” Kenny agreed. “I’m glad you see this my way.”

“Hey, Kenny,” Gracie said, “I’ve found someone.”

She was pleased to hear the clop-clop-clop of his Adidas come to a sudden halt.

“Anyone I know?” Kenny asked, feigning emotional detachment.

“No one in the business,” Gracie said.

“Oh. Like a, what, a fireman? Construction worker?” Kenny asked.

“You wouldn’t know him, he’s in …” Gracie looked
around—Jaden turned her head toward her, her pacifier stuck in her mouth, ruining her bite, but in the cutest way. “He’s in the … rubber business,” Gracie said. “So I wasn’t going to be around this weekend anyway. Jaden and I are heading out …”

She gulped. “On his jet.”

“He’s got a jet?” Kenny asked. She noticed his studio-pres bearing had lost some of its grandeur.

“A small one,” Gracie said. “Not like a 747 or BBJ, like a G-something. It’s a little embarrassing, you know, I’m not used to that sort of thing …”

Twist that knife, sister, she thought to herself.

“A G-5?” Kenny asked, his voice an octave higher. It sounded like someone was squeezing Kenny’s shaven manhood. “Have to run,” Gracie said. “And Kenny? Thanks for being so honest with me.”

“T
HIS IS WHY
I hate morning phone calls,” Joan said. “Anything that rings between the hours of twelve midnight and ten
A.M.
is decidedly off-limits. Oh,
God!
I
hate
this guy!”

“Turn off the news, Joan!” Gracie yelled. She could always tell when Joan had the news on. She would scream “Mother-twister!” or some such tangled epithet in the middle of a sentence. It was headline-induced Tourette’s.

“Why do I even watch?” Joan asked.“Why?”

“Can we get back to our earlier conversation?”

“Kenny the Pig,” Joan said, “is going to die of a heart attack before the age of forty-nine.”

Joan liked to put curses on people who crossed her or her friends; her mother’s people, who crawled out from some swamp in Louisiana, claimed to have “powers.” Gracie thought it was safer not to question her assertion.

“How could I have lied like that?” Gracie said. “I mean, how lame. Why didn’t I just say George Clooney thinks elastic waistbands on women are sexy?”

“I love me some George,” Joan sighed.

Gracie sighed as well. Didn’t everyone her age love George?

“Okay, here’s the thing,” Joan said. “Lying is never the right thing to do—unless it’s for the greater good, and in this case there was a greater good—that of grinding Kenny into the ground, at least temporarily.”

“What if I have to lie again?” Gracie asked. “What if he asks me about the mystery man again?”

“Lie until you can’t tell the truth anymore,” Joan said. “You can’t be the only honest person in this town.”

“It won’t backfire?” Gracie asked. She seldom lied; she wasn’t sure what the ramifications were.

“How could it backfire?” Joan asked. “You’re making up a person. There’s no one to Google. There’s no name to check out. You were specific yet vague.”

“I have to tell you, Joan,” Gracie admitted, “it felt really good to sucker-punch Kenny. Lying about having another man was like instant Prozac.”

Then she thought for a moment. “Maybe it felt too good.”

“There’s no such thing as feeling too good,” Joan said. “That’s where you run into trouble. Now, have you seen the news this morning? I’m going to need me a Bloody Mary.”

K
ENNY, DRIVEN,
Gracie believed, by the intense curiosity one has when one’s ex is screwing someone else, called a couple more times during the week, and each time Gracie lived in fear that he was going to ask to meet her nonexistent but very rich and successful beau. With each phone call he dropped hints belying his need to know, and each time Gracie had to
build upon her initial, feeble lie until she had constructed a man so perfect, so worthy, so desirable that she was sure that not only did this man not exist, but he could never exist.

“What does he do again?” Kenny would ask.

“He’s … his family is in … the rubber business,” she’d say, “but he’s looking into other ventures.”

“Film?” Kenny asked.

“Well, maybe, sort of,” Gracie said. “I’m not sure. And frankly, I’m discouraging it.” To her credit, Gracie would cross her fingers and toes.

“How much money does he have?” Kenny finally came to the real question—the question keeping him up at night.

“You know, I haven’t asked,” Gracie said.

“Fifty mil? A hundred mil?” Kenny asked.

“Oh, that’s not even in the range,” Gracie said. She thought thirty or forty mil sounded reasonable enough.

“A billion? The guy’s a billionaire?!” Kenny’s voice went to a pitch heard mainly by feral dogs.

Whoops, Gracie thought. She knew that now Kenny would be researching the Forbes list for the Rubber Man. “I didn’t say that,” Gracie said.“I have to get Jaden to school.”

“If the guy’s into the film business, we should talk,” Kenny said.“I could help him.”

“I told you, I’m discouraging that particular trajectory,” Gracie said with proper gravity.

“Has Jaden met him?” Kenny asked.

“Have to run,” Gracie replied airily.

“I
THINK
you’re being mean,” Cricket said. “But I guess it serves him right. Did you hear Natalie Portman is having a face-lift? Why would she do that?”

“Stop with the meds already,” Will said to Cricket.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Gracie repeated.

“Gracie, you’re going to have to find a guy, because he’s going to find out,” Will said. “And won’t you feel like a Silly Sally.”

“I don’t really care,” Gracie said. “I’m just having Mad Divorcée Fun.”

“You’ll care when he tells the story to his friends,” Will said. “We have to find you someone. Someone who fits the perfect-man mold. And then you can have a short, nasty breakup. And no one will be the wiser.”

“I can’t wait! Where should we find him?” Cricket asked. “Sharon Stone found her boyfriend in the produce section of Ralph’s. Melons are very sensual.”

“What’s this ‘we’? I have to find a guy,” Gracie said, “not you. Me. You’re married.”

“He’s going to leave me, isn’t he,” Cricket said. “Jorge is going to leave me.” Cricket suffered from extreme empathy syndrome. If her friend is getting a divorce, she’s getting a divorce; if her friend has strep, she develops a sore throat; if someone in China has a hangnail, Cricket can’t get through the day.

“Next subject,” said Will.

W
ILL HAD A PLAN
of attack; he was nothing if not thorough. It was not easy for a close-to-forty-one-year-old woman to find a man in L.A., so Will said that they would have to think outside the box. Because inside the box, apparently, there existed only smooth-skinned lasses and laddies and their sponsors.

Will and Gracie went to a seminar given by a woman who called herself Dr. Melanie, the Relationship Diva. After two hours, having spent twenty dollars and scarfed down three doughnuts and a cup of bad coffee (how hard was it to get
good coffee in L.A.?), Gracie found out she was to be “cherished” in a relationship. Gracie would have to find a man who worshiped her for the goddess she was, and she could not settle for anything less.

Gracie came out of it figuring this was possible, if one still believed in unicorns and magic fairies and a fellow named Santa.

Will came out of it with a lunch date on Thursday, a dinner date on Saturday, and an invitation for a weekend in Santa Barbara.

Later, they tried a dog park. Difficult when one has an ancient miniature dachshund, Helen, who was at best indifferent to other dogs, and at worst would chase and attack the giant ones.

Gracie met a few nice people, who happened to be women over forty, looking for that same elusive bachelor with the yellow Lab, deep voice, and muscular forearms.

Will got three phone numbers and a lead on where to find a cockapoodle.

Finally, their third excursion to find a man (and at this point, any man would do—they had given up their narrow thirty-six to fifty-six focus and now were willing to entertain any and all above the age of consent to still breathing) landed them at the early-morning mass at St. Stephen’s Church on Sepulveda.Will had heard through the grapevine that many cute straight men gathered there for God’s wisdom (how he had heard this through the Gay Grapevine, Gracie was reluctant to ask). In addition, word was that the pastor was in the midst of a divorce. Gracie was opposed to using the church to further her own agenda until Will pointed out that God loves all his children and wants them to be happy, including Gracie.

She had to agree with that logic.

When she picked up Will that morning, she realized the error of her ways.Will had stayed up all night at a transvestite birthday party in West Hollywood celebrating “Miss Pretty Mae Dawson’s” Fiftieth and was not fit to step out into daylight without a dose of Maybelline and dark shades.

Gracie sat side by side with Will in a pew in the middle of a large, modern church. Gracie was dressed discreetly in pale colors and pearls,Will was dressed in black and wearing huge sunglasses that made him look like a young Carol Channing. Worse, he would fall asleep intermittently and snore while the surprisingly cute pastor with the six o’clock anchor’s tenor spoke about various challenges facing mankind, including the church’s need to raise money to remodel their bathrooms.

Gracie, finding inspiration in the stained-glass windows and fine acoustics, found herself thinking about the challenges facing womankind. In particular, her own womankind.

Will rested his snoring head on her shoulder, and it stayed there throughout the sermon.

Gracie met several lovely couples and their wonderful children. Will got the pastor’s number.

G
RACIE HAD
a Coors Light in one hand, her telephone in the other, as she talked on a conference call with Will and Cricket. The last time she’d been on a conference call with friends was sometime in the middle ages, like the 1980s. But desperate times call for desperate uses of technology.

“Can we get back to that thinking-outside-the-box con-cept?” Gracie asked. “The only man I’ve met in the last couple weeks is you, Will, and I already know you and you’re gay.”

“Alas, it’s all true,” Will said. “But I’m fresh out of ideas. My muse is taking a hiatus.”

“Cricket,” Gracie asked, “you got anything for me?”

“A rabbi at George Junior’s school,” Cricket said. “He’s fat and his teeth aren’t clean, but he’s very nice.”

“I’m not Jewish,” Gracie said.

“You know, you really should think about it,” Cricket said. “You could do a mini-conversion. It would take, like, ten days and a red string. Look at Madonna, I mean Esther.”

Gracie just sighed. She found herself sighing a lot these days. Maybe she wasn’t sighing so much as wheezing, which scared her and convinced her she would die of lung cancer before she ever put Kenny in his grave.

“So, are we just going to give up?” Gracie asked. “Is that it?”

“I wouldn’t call it giving up,” Will said. “I’d call it more like a vacation from Desperation-ville. Look, if you want, I can get you a gay decoy. But it would cost you hair and makeup. For him.”

Gracie hung up the phone. Things were bad, she thought, when the homosexual crowd was giving up on your sex life.

WIFE NUMBER THREE

Married to a baby producer. He brought something special home from the London set for her.

Herpes.

6
 
MOVING ON OUT

I
N THE LAST
few weeks, Gracie, fully excommed, realized her life had changed in both subtle and drastic ways:

SUBTLE

1. She was able to open a mailbox without ten invitations to charity events dropping on her toes.
   
2. She was able to let the Romanian lady who blow-dried her hair go; Gracie had no reason to blow-dry her hair anymore.And she had too much pride to blow-dry it just to pick up Jaden from school with straight locks. Also, it was obvious the Romanian lady pitied her; she would prod her with ways to win Kenny back. “You sleep with him more. Americans no make the sexy enough.” Gracie
   was pretty sure Kenny wouldn’t come running back if she threw herself at him three times a day; he was on to better (read: younger) things.
   
3. Her answering machine at home no longer registered forty-five calls. It usually registered five, and three of those were from AT&T Wireless, seeking new customers.
   
4. Restaurants around town suddenly had no reservations open Friday at eight o’clock. But they could fit her in at four forty-five. On a Monday.
   
5. Jaden’s List of No-No Words had been expanded. Gracie and Jaden had come up with a list of words that were considered off-limits.There were four of them: “stupid,” “hate,” “dumb,” and “dumb-ass.” Jaden would ask before she said any of these words: “Mommy, may I say ‘stupid’?” And Gracie would consider the request and the context, then give her daughter an answer. The List of No-No Words was now up to eight and counting. In addition to the aforementioned, there was also “shit,” “f-word,” “a-word,” and “butt” (Jaden, consumed with guilt over calling her best friend a butt, had added that one). Unfortunately, these were the only words Mommy had used in the last month and could fathom using in the near future. A vocabulary that had earned Gracie a 680 on her verbal SAT had diminished considerably. Two more no-no words and she’d be able to record an entire rap album. She was planning on calling it
   Angry White Bitch.