The Starter Wife (32 page)

Respect.

Jesus Christ,
Gracie thought,
people are actually here to pay their respects. They actually care. They care that Lou’s dead. They are experiencing his loss. They are in the moment. They are not onto the next big thing, the coming news flash, tomorrow’s Peter Bart column.

“Holy shit,” Gracie actually said out loud. If she could have, she would have grabbed at the air and shoved the ill-chosen words back down her throat.

Several people turned to look at her. She bowed her head, burrowing into Will’s shoulder. “Keep it down,” Will whispered, “some people are trying to mourn and others are trying to watch them do it.”

The only commotion damaging the proceedings occurred at that moment, thankfully distracting those who were offended by Gracie’s blue commentary. She didn’t have to turn her head to see whose voice had shattered the sanctity of the moment—she’d lived with that voice for over a quarter of her life.

“Hey, how ya doin’,” she heard Kenny stage-whisper to someone in the back. Kenny was not the master of the soft whisper; in fact, his attempt at whispering was louder than a normal person’s unaltered voice. “The dailies look great,” he continued in his stage whisper.

Gracie smiled. Somewhere, Lou was screaming “Bullshit!”

Will looked back, then whispered into Gracie’s ear, “So ridiculous.” He jeered, “Together, they make half a person.”

Kenny walked past Gracie and Will’s row, arm in elbow with his girlfriend, Britney. His was the only head that was cocked at an angle that signaled pride rather than sorrow or regret. Gracie was pleasantly surprised to see that even young Britney knew how to angle her chin at a funeral. Her face was downcast, her shoulders forward in her black cocktail dress, as though she knew that her famous body could be a distraction, even under the circumstances.

For a moment, Gracie wondered what it was like to have a body like that. Before she squeegeed her mind of the superficial thought. There would be plenty of time for superficial thoughts after the funeral.

She added that one to the Post-it in her head.

Kenny and his new wife, Britney (not really his new wife,
but Gracie was trying it on as an exercise in masochism), sat in the middle of the front row, two rows directly in front of Will and Gracie.

Gracie had forgotten how tall Kenny was, how much space he took up. She found herself staring at the back of Kenny’s head as the people in the second row teeter-tottered their heads back and forth, determined to find a comfortable angle from which they could view the proceedings.

Gracie didn’t bother for a better angle; she liked looking at the back of Kenny’s head, where she could observe the effects of time without interruption. What she saw lifted her mood, as though unexpectedly finding a Sara Lee cake inside her freezer. Kenny was going bald. He had a hair halo around a tiny circle of white skin she hadn’t noticed before—but why would she? She’d never sat behind him, in all the years they were married.

As though Kenny was beckoned by the power of Gracie’s eyes boring into the back of his (BALDING!) head, he turned.

Gracie jumped slightly, afraid that he was reading her mind, and then willing him to.
You’re going bald!
Gracie thought as hard as she could, as she forced a polite smile, which she knew more resembled a grimace or the look a baby gets on his face when he’s passing gas.
Hey, Baldy! Hey, nice air-conditioning system you’ve got up there! What, no more hair?! You’ve got your own solar panel!

And then, Kenny winked.

He WINKED! As his mentor, the man who had plucked Kenny from obscurity and set him on the road to riches and $12-million homes with security systems that can’t be figured out, and that frikkin’ stupid Mercedes with the electrical system that goes on the fritz the moment you hit the 101 Freeway, and the golf lessons at the country club that set you back
a cool $100,000, and the tennis court that keeps cracking, and the chef who charges $120 for tuna salad, and on and on, ad infinitum, et cetera.

Lou had given Kenny everything he’d ever wanted. And here he was, WINKING at Lou’s funeral as though it were a Dodgers game.

Gracie’s jaw had not recovered from dropping to the ground before Kenny whipped his (HAIR-LACKING! FOLLICLE-CHALLENGED!) head back into place.

The first speaker was someone Gracie did not recognize. From the back, Gracie could see her blunt-cut silver-gray hair, the ramrod-straight back (“What exactly is a ramrod?” Will asked when Gracie talked about the woman later, during their postmortem postmortem), and then, as she turned and approached the podium, Gracie noticed, as did everyone else, the striking blue eyes, the proud lift to the chin. The wrinkles. And in her spotted hands (did this woman’s bravery know no bounds?) she was holding what appeared to be a letter.

Gracie felt that she looked like someone who was a better person than everyone else in the building. She looked like someone who cared about herself but not to the extent that she neglected the rest of the world.

“Wow, no work” is what Will whispered, drawing a circle in the air around his face. “Has she no shame?”

Gracie pinched him as the woman cleared her throat and began to speak. She imagined this woman to be an aunt. Too young to be Lou’s mother, Gracie thought—and hadn’t Lou’s mother died when he was a child?

“Hello,” the woman said, her voice clear and strong. Gracie imagined a tennis racket in her right hand, beating the crap out of Martina Navratilova in some country club game. “My name is Claire Lawrence Olsen. I can’t imagine that any of you
would have heard of me, but I was married to Lou when he was eighteen.And I was seventeen.”

Claire was Lou’s first wife. Lou had a first wife? Gracie remembered the second, third, and fourth, but no one had ever mentioned the first.

“You all knew Lou much later in life,” Claire said, “but I can tell you this—from what I’ve learned in these last, sad days, he hadn’t changed much.”

She went on to describe how she met Lou by accident outside a movie theater in Brooklyn, and how he strode up to her and asked her what she thought of her new husband. She went out with him twice afterward, supervised, and he had already written her a letter, trying to convince her to marry him; her parents were not keen on having their only daughter marry an orphan with a Jewish last name and no prospects.

“I wanted to share this remembrance I’ve kept in a drawer at home through my last two marriages,” Claire said. “And no, I’m not a serial divorcée—unfortunately, now, I’ve outlived all three of my husbands. With that record, I doubt I’ll be getting married again soon.”

The audience responded, laughing.

“At least that’s what Lou used to tell me,” she continued.

She put a handkerchief to her eyes and nose and dabbed at the burgeoning wetness. And then she opened the letter she’d been holding, smoothing down the triple folded pages on the top of the podium.

She began.

“‘My dearest Claire …’”

Noises simmered through the building. Gracie recognized the noises because she herself was making them—distinct sniffling, the crinkly sounds of Kleenexes being freed from their wrappings.

“‘You say you don’t know me, so I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about Lou Manning.’”

Claire looked up, peering above her blue-rimmed reading glasses. “Lou used to be Lou Manning, before he became Lou Manahan.”

She continued. “‘I’m five foot eight inches tall.’” Claire smiled. So did everyone else. Everyone knew Lou wasn’t over five seven, if that.

“‘Okay, on a good day, I’m five foot eight inches tall. But I believe every day is a good day, don’t you,my darling Claire?’”

She went on.

“‘So, I didn’t graduate high school. Your parents have, duly, told you this again and again. I don’t deny it. This much is true. School wasn’t for me. I wanted to do something else with my life. So I joined the Marines. What an experience. What a bunch of guys. If you don’t marry me, Claire, at least promise me that you’ll marry a fellow Marine. That way, I know you’ll be safe. I know that someone will always have your back.’”

Claire had to clear her throat. Her handkerchief was doing double duty.

“‘I’m going to be something one day, Claire. I’m going to be big—not middle management, not just a guy who wears a suit and tie and hikes it to work every day, hating every minute. I’m going to be big in something I love.’”

She paused. And looked up. And smiled. How could he have been so prescient? The question was on the minds of everyone attending the service.

Claire looked down and continued. “‘And I want to take you along with me, on this wonderful ride,’” the young Lou had said. “‘Claire, at the very least, I’ll be the husband you’ll remember fondly. You’ll never regret a moment with me.’”

Claire cleared her throat for the umpteenth time.

“‘My heart is yours, Lou Manning.’

“And then he added,” Claire said, “‘You have until the 18th to make up your mind.’”

Everyone in the room howled.The young Lou was not so different from the older one—both were famous for their ultimatums, their time constraints, their willingness to drop any deal, no matter how important, if specific parameters were not met.

Claire looked up. “We did get married. But I did not share Lou’s courage. It was I who left Lou, not the other way around. He always had faith in himself, and I wish I had shared that faith. I wish I had stuck by him.”

She paused. “I will, like many of you, love him forever. Death changes nothing.”

She folded up the pieces of paper as she must have done time and time again over the years. Time and time again over the last few days. And then she slowly walked down the stairs and back to her seat. And no one said a word. It would be the first and last time the people in this room were in agreement.

The rabbi approached the podium. He bent the microphone down toward his face. “And now, Kenny Pollock, Lou’s protégé and close friend, will speak.”

Gracie looked at Will, who widened his eyes, looking not unlike her husband’s new girlfriend, Britney, when faced with a tough question like, “Is global warming really caused by increases in carbon dioxide levels as a result of human activity?” or “What goes in a shoe?”

Kenny solemnly approached the podium, bending the microphone to a straight, vertical position. Gracie caught the flicker of a smirk washing over Kenny’s face—he was always so proud of his height. He couldn’t even hide it under the circumstances. She wondered if others were aware of the tiny
manipulation of his features. Looking around, she concluded they were still caught up in Claire’s eulogy. As she should have been. But how could she help it? She was staring at a man she had spent over a decade with—and wondering WHY.

“Lou Manahan was more than a mentor to me,” Kenny proclaimed. “He was my friend.”

“Good start,” Will said. “That must have taken the better part of a day.”

Gracie elbowed him in the ribs and realized that there was a thick swath of material covering his midsection. She looked at Will, questioning.

“Are you wearing a girdle?” she whispered.

“Shhh,” he said. “Have you no respect?”

Gracie brought her hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle. Of course Will was wearing a girdle. His recent complaints about his sprouting love handles had reached epic proportions.

Kenny went on, detailing the course of his life with Lou. Talking about where he was when he first met Lou, what he was doing when Lou hired him, the movies he had developed and produced under Lou’s aegis.

Kenny seemed very comfortable up on that podium, Gracie thought. Probably because he was talking not really about Lou but of his favorite subject: himself.

Twenty minutes later, when Kenny had finished selling his latest lineup of potential blockbusters, he stepped down from the podium and the rabbi once again tilted the microphone toward his face. Will leaned over to Gracie and whispered, “My God, you missed a bullet. You’re like that stewardess who fell a mile out of a plane and survived by eating pine needles. Remember her, she was, like, Swedish or something? And gorgeous, by the way. You’re so lucky you’re on the divorce-trail.”

G
RACIE PAUSED
on the steps with Will as they left the funeral. She watched as the old movie stars left, their spouses or caretakers holding them gingerly at the elbows, riding the balance between merely assisting and making them seem decrepit. She watched as the ex-girlfriends filed out, their eyes ablaze with tears and mascara. She watched as Kenny passed her, walking out with Britney, breaking his usual stride so the photographers could achieve ample coverage.

Gracie knew she’d be seeing her ex, finally, on that cover of
Us.

But she also knew this: Lou Manahan would have been very happy. Little of the cynicism she’d associated with Hollywood funerals had been found within those four walls. There’s the irony, Gracie thought, Lou’s death would have brought him closure.

“Goddamned idiot,” she said out loud. Will gave her a look as he escorted her down the stairs, as though she herself were one of those fragile movie stars.

WIFE NUMBER TEN