Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts (2 page)

We knock on the door and are let in by Leslee.

“Oh hi,” said Leslee. “You guys have to see this place. It’s so amazing, I can’t even believe we’re in L.A.”

We walk through the marble foyer into a small room that has wood floors and half of a wall. It has no furniture in it and is shaped like a triangle. This is the builder’s special, a leftover space forgotten by the contractor in his rush to put this embassy on the market.

Up two steps—the kitchen with the Viking stove and Sub-Zero freezer with that island in the middle and a pot rack overhead containing nothing. We walk down two steps into a room where the book group—our role models—are sitting around a garage-sale coffee table on two ancient dirty-white futons and a lumpy stained chair. There are four neon-orange beanbag chairs on the floor. I guess that’s where we’re sitting.

House Poor.

“Elizabeth,” said Leslee, “this is…”

“Hi, make yourself at home,” said Elizabeth. “So I told him, ‘What do you mean you’re not getting a bonus? What do you think is going to pay for the back yard?’”

Elizabeth has long, straight blond hair, parted in the middle, that falls to the center of her back. She’s wearing beige-velour yoga pants and a little white T-shirt which covers all but six inches of her belly, a belly that is a little lumpy and is decorated with her war wound: a stretch mark.

Leslee sits on the neon orange beanbag chair next to me. She turns her head away from the group and toward me.

“So Elizabeth,” whispers Leslee.

“Yeah,” I whisper.

“She went to UPenn, then she went to Columbia Journalism School.”

“Oh. Does she work?”

“Well, she edits the newsletter for her Parent and Me Group.”

“A stay-at-home-mom?”

Leslee looks at me with a puzzled look on her face. “Absolutely not. She hires and supervises the nannies and the housekeeper.”

“That’s a job?”

“The housekeeper comes twice a week. And she’s in charge of redoing the house—she just finished the garden.”

Two other women are sitting on one of the dirty-white futons with her.

“The one with the wispy black hair is Renata—she went to Vassar,” whispers Leslee. “She was an editor at HarperCollins.”

“What does she do now?” I whisper.

“She’s married. I think she has a kid.”

“The one with the long brown hair is Laura,” continues Leslee. “She went to Duke. She’s got her PhD in psychology.”

I look at Leslee.

“Laura’s married and has a kid.”

So are June—a Harvard grad, Harvard Law, (“Not just a graduate from your second-tier UC law school”) who is married with a kid. And then there’s Patty, a Stanford grad who is married and trying to have kids. They’re sitting on the other dirty-white futon.

No one works. Except for Leslee and me.

And their nannies.

“What did he say?” said Renata.

“He said that maybe we need to cut back a little bit,” said Elizabeth. “So I told him, we don’t need to cut back. You need to make more money. Whatever you did wrong, you need to fix it and get that damn bonus.”

“Ugh. Doesn’t he understand that you have a lifestyle to maintain?” said Renata. “I mean, these guys—what do they think we do all day?”

That would be a good question.

“I told my husband that he doesn’t pay enough attention to my projects,” said Laura. “I mean, here I am organizing this huge fundraiser for Weston, my kid’s private school. And he’s barely involved—he barely knows what I’m doing.”

“Aren’t we going to discuss
A Mighty Heart
,” I said, suddenly noticing that everyone except for Marcie, Bettina, and I had some strawberry daiquiri-type drink in her hand.

“Forget the book,” said Elizabeth.

“I’ll buy the DVD,” said June.

“Who has time to read anyway?” said Patty.

“I heard Angelina Jolie was terrific in it,” said Marcie. “Do you think she’s had plastic surgery?”

“Aren’t her kids going to Crossroads?” said Bettina.

Elizabeth, Laura, Renata, and June turn and eye Bettina—for just a moment.

“I don’t think so…” said Renata.

“I just want to know how she stays so thin,” said Elizabeth. “So what did your husband say, Laura?”

“He said that he’s tired,” said Laura. “He’s in trial on some huge case. But I told him that’s not an excuse. My therapist told me that he needs to be involved in my things. And Weston is going to want to see that he’s committed too. So I’m making him paint some of the crafts for the fundraiser.”

“What’s he painting?” said Elizabeth.

“Some lawn trolls. We’re painting and selling those Hummel figure lawn trolls. And then he’s in charge of driving them to Pasadena, where we’re having the fundraiser.”

Pasadena. Forty-five minutes away if there’s no traffic—which is never.

“It’s important that your husband be respectful of your projects, Laura, if he’s going to be present within the relationship,” said Elizabeth. “My therapist tells me that I give everything to my husband and my children—that I don’t do anything for myself.”

“Mine too,” said June.

“So I’ve decided to hire a cook,” said Elizabeth. “I’ve found someone who will do it for a reasonable price.”

“Don’t tell me you cook every meal,” said Renata.

“Well no,” said Elizabeth. “I’m in charge of dinner on Monday and Wednesday. My husband has Tuesday and Thursday. And the nannies—our weekday and weekend—handle all other meals.”

As if she even knew where the kitchen was.

“You’ve got to be careful about those cooks,” said Renata. “Some of them don’t know how to, well, you follow
The Zone,
right?”

“Of course,” said Elizabeth.

“Well, you have to be sure that they don’t put sauce or cheese on everything… unless you’re following Atkins.”

“May I have some water?” I asked.

“In the back—at the breakfast nook,” said Elizabeth pointing to the back of the house. “I don’t know where my husband thinks we’re going to get the money to decorate the house. The back yard was so expensive—he has to get that bonus. I mean, there’s the mortgage, the nannies, the kids’ tuition at Crossroads, and those endless donations which you
must
give…”

“Don’t get me started on private schools,” said Bettina. “I mean, how
do
you get a recommendation to Thorton Hall?”

Dead silence in the room.

For five seconds.

I walked to the back of the house—the breakfast nook—something that looked like a laundry room or other odd-shaped leftover space at the back of the house that the builders had no idea what to do with, where there was a table, a half pitcher of the strawberry daiquiri-type drink, some bottled water, crackers, cheeses, and cookies set up for the book group’s break. I looked out the window at the back yard.

Elizabeth had taken the postage stamp of space between the back door and the property line and obviously hired professional landscapers to plant wild pink roses, lavender mums, a purple-blue azalea that had exploded throughout the greater Brentwood metropolis, and some three-foot-tall white flower thing that looked to be a cross between a weed and a hydrangea, something which had obviously been engineered to populate the gardens and fuel the resulting garden wars. Oh no. This was Elizabeth’s faux English garden.

In the middle of it was something that looked like a horse trough.

“Isn’t it amazing,” said Leslee, who had wandered out to get some water.

“What on earth is that?” I said.

“What?”

“That white thing out there. Is that a horse trough?”

“You idiot,” said Leslee. “That’s a bathtub.”

“A bathtub? Why does she need a bathtub in her back yard?”

“So she can take baths in the moonlight.”

“What?”

“Don’t be so common. Elizabeth likes to take nude moonlight baths in the back yard.”

“Oh.”

We looked out at the horse trough/‌bathtub.

“I think I’m going to go home now,” I said.

I walked to the family room.

“With my free evenings, I think that I’ll take a course or two at the Learning Annex or UCLA extension. I’d kind of like to be a therapist,” said Elizabeth.

“You’d make a great therapist,” said Renata.

“Thanks,” said Elizabeth. “I think I could really help people—women—take charge of their lives. And you know the first thing I’d recommend? What I’m going to do. As soon as the cook is in place, I’m going to get an assistant.”

“That is
such
a great idea,” said June. “It’s so hard to keep track of the nannies, the gardeners, the cook, and the kids.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “you just need someone to make sure that everyone is on track, in case something—like a car pool—should fall through the cracks.”

“Ah…” I said, “thanks for inviting me. It was really fun, but I have to go. It’s a school night.”

“You work?” said Elizabeth.

“She’s not married,” whispered Bettina, “she broke up with her fiancé six months ago—he wouldn’t set a date.”

“She’s an attorney… but she doesn’t work in a firm,” said Leslee.

June frowned and slightly shook her head right-left, right-left, right-left. She turned her head away from me.

“She’s a sole practitioner with her own practice?” Leslee whispered.

“Ohhhhh,” said Elizabeth, Renata, Laura, June, and Patty.

“Bye,” I said.

I slowly walked to my Honda, my paid-for Honda, and looked through the neighborhood. I passed another Russian Embassy, a house that looked like a three-story A-frame mountain cabin with two Japanese maples, a koi pond, and a Zen garden in front, and another place that aspired to be Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House on a lot that was meant for a 2-bedroom, 1500-square-foot home.

Since the day of my high school graduation to the present moment, an awareness of age-appropriate behavior and age-appropriate circumstances had evolved from some unknown source.

There was a time to be an undergraduate and there was a time to leave your childhood behind.

There was a time to have a year abroad—preferably in France or any other highly westernized country that was known for importable culture—and there was a time to come home.

There was a time to go to graduate school and a time to move on.

There was a time to work.

I knew that this was a pivotal moment. It knew that it was right in front of me. I knew if there was someone other than myself who was keeping score, that I had fallen behind.

I knew this because as I walked out of Elizabeth’s family room, I’m almost sure that I heard someone say, “There’s a cautionary tale.”

March 2007

(9 Months Earlier)

Ruined By Therapy

Dinner at The Copper Pan always found me maxing out a credit card to pay for a meal that my mother would have served on a Wednesday night. Was it really necessary to pay $34 for crab cakes and a side of fries? But there I was, waiting for meatloaf and mashed potatoes in the very same restaurant where I dumped my last fiancé not three years ago.

I was listening to my current fiancé, Frank, reveal his pain. He was nearly 35 years old and he was angry—still—so angry with his father for putting a second mortgage on the house 20 years ago so that he could send his son to Phillips-Andover—the best prep school in the country. After an hour of sharing, Frank synthesized his torment in a phrase that put his entire essence into perspective: “I could have gotten laid during high school.” And then it hit me: My competence had come back to haunt me.

I knew that by agreeing to marry him, I was looking at a lifetime of supporting a guy whose social circle consisted of low-impact buddies who felt comfortable letting their girlfriends/‌wives support them while they trashed their professional careers as attorneys, investment bankers, or accountants to pursue never-gonna-happen careers as screenwriters, film directors, or sous-chefs. “We men are tired,” he said. “It’s your turn to take over.”

And I had agreed to this because I thought that I could do everything. And so far, I always had. And he knew it.

“Why are you doing this?” said my best friend, Jennifer. “You’re marrying a piece of furniture, a lump, an energy-draining parasite.” She should talk. Her college boyfriend, Tom, was such a dolt that he made
her
fill out all of his applications to every business school in the country that he never, ever would have the grades or scores to get into. Harvard. Wharton. Stanford. Chicago. Yale. He started his quest for admittance to “the elite” the year we applied for law school. When Jennifer and I graduated from law school, I heard that Tom was still buying into that nonsense and still applying.

I thought about it. I would have to support both of us, and not just in any manner, but in a way which would ensure that we could maintain a fashionable Westside Los Angeles lifestyle, complete with acceptable cars—Range Rovers, Lexus Hybrids, and a Prius or two—and a home in the acceptable area—Brentwood, Santa Monica above Wilshire, make that Montana, and Pacific Palisades. Naturally, this would mean that I would have to continue in my practice as an attorney, a career which had much to say for itself: Bone-crushing. Always-Hit-the-Ground-Running. TMJ, “a grinder” at 28. Easily excitable, high-blood pressure at 33. Weight issues and fertility problems at 38. Divorce (if I could even find a committed relationship) and high cholesterol at 45. That, combined with the reality of having less than a 20 percent chance of ever becoming a partner, was a lot to look forward to.

This was not going to happen. I loved litigation, my chosen area of the law—on TV. In real life, I was usually buried under a tsunami of paper while stuck in a 100-degree document facility in an isolated industrial park. I wanted to punch most of my clients for even bothering to consult an attorney with their idiotic cases. The judges that I practiced before were so embittered that they dreamt of their golf games and didn’t hear a word that you said. And I had a sneaking suspicion that the red-faced, screaming litigators with whom I practiced were the very same knuckleheads who attempted to appear cool during law school by attending endless raves, taking X, and selling drugs.

The support obligation was going to be one thing, I was also going to have to be the cook. Somewhere after Martha Stewart, celebrity chefs, and the Food Network, cooking had taken on an entirely new dimension. Start-from-scratch. Free range. Grow your own herbs. Wine knowledgeable. Gourmet coffee or coffees. Whole wheat pasta and bread—La Brea Bakery, a must. Shop only at Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or—if you’re really the bomb—the endless farmers’ markets that surrounded L.A. Compost. And of course, recycle—mandatory.