The Starter Wife (33 page)

Keeps her hip-hop artist husband medicated on a rotating cocktail of Vicodin, Xanax, Prozac, Percodan, and Ritalin. She slips the pills into his morning wheatgrass-and-flaxseed smoothie.

People comment on his calm demeanor.

21
 
WORDS ARE BETTER THAN PICTURES

G
RACIE SWUNG INTO
the gate at the Malibu Colony and waited for the slim wood barricade to rise. Usually she was just motioned on through, as by this time, though she was not officially a resident, she was a recognizable face. But today Tariq, one of the guards, the one who was probably a ballplayer in high school or college, what with his tall, lanky form, waved her down with a languid reach of his arm—

“Got something for ya,” he said, waving a white envelope in her car window.

Gracie took it from him, forcing a small smile. From what she knew from high school physics (which was little), she felt that this effort took about one million gigawatts of energy. She was amazed she could pull off even the smallest nicety.

She peered through her thick sunglasses at the envelope in her hand.

“It came for you a couple days ago,” Tariq continued in his slightly southern, singsong voice. “I think it fell through the cracks here, what with all the hoopla, et cetera.”

Gracie just stared at the envelope.

“Sorry ’bout that,” he said, the thick gold cross around his neck dropping close to her car window.

She waved at him as he raised the wood barricade and drove on, the envelope weighing heavy now on her lap.

“Gracie, #250,” in a fifth grader’s scrawl, was all that was written on the outside of the envelope. She didn’t know Lou’s handwriting, but she knew it was his.

J
OAN MUST HAVE
been walking on the beach when Gracie arrived at the house. She was grateful for this time alone, because she needed it—any more social interaction, even with a best friend, would be courting emotional disaster. Gracie slid to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, got out the bottle of white wine she knew would already be opened (thanks, Joan!), and poured herself a glass and thanked God she wasn’t an alcoholic.

Yet.

Then she sat down on the couch and placed the envelope on the coffee table and took a good, hard look at it. She stared at it as though she could reach the words telepathically.

Having failed that, she set her wine down and tore open the envelope with the fervor of someone expecting a much-needed check.

There were several pieces of paper.

She immediately went to the end. To the part that said, “Love, Lou.”

His handwriting was atrocious. Gracie found herself chastising him for not taking more time, or being less drunk
when he wrote it. She found herself chastising him for being dead.

“‘Gracie,’” it began.

“‘You’re going to think I’m crazy.’”

“You’re right, Lou,” Gracie said out loud. “I do think you’re crazy.”

“‘I had this all planned out, as you know,’” Lou continued, “‘but there was only one hitch to the plan when I really sat down and thought about it.’”

Gracie took a deep breath.

“‘And that was,’” he wrote, “‘I had devised a symphonic, poetic ending to my life. I had written, as it were, an ending that would bring an audience to its knees. And yet I wasn’t going to be taking advantage of it.’”

Gracie started crying.

“‘Don’t start crying,’” Lou wrote.

“Fuck you,” Gracie said. “Fuck you, Lou. I’ll cry if I fucking want to.”

She wanted to state her case in words that Lou would understand and respond to. She didn’t like anyone, even a dead man, controlling her emotional states.

“‘I’ve done everything I’ve ever wanted in life,’” Lou wrote. “‘I’ve traveled the world, I’ve lived in the greatest houses, driven the greatest cars, dated the greatest women (don’t start, Gracie!),’” Lou wrote. “‘I’ve even done the one thing I said would never happen. I became a father.’”

Gracie could not have stopped the tears if a gale force wind had hit her square in the face.

“‘I love my son, Gracie, you know I do. But I barely get to see him—the lawyers have taken care of that—the more my ex-wife has him, the more money she gets. He’ll be better off without the tug-of-war.’”

Gracie shook her head. How could someone so smart be so stupid?

“‘Forgive me, Gracie,’” Lou wrote on, “‘that is all I’m asking of you. Forgive me.’”

Gracie folded up the letter and placed it back in the envelope and then closed her eyes, her lids heavy with spent emotion. And she found herself back in time, holding hands with her mother at her father’s funeral, staring off into space as the reverend eulogized the only man who had ever loved her unconditionally.

“Y
OU DO REALIZE
we’re still on for Friday?” Joan announced after Gracie had awakened from her brief grief-nap, sliding the envelope into the back of her skirt.

“Friday?” Gracie asked. She couldn’t even remember what day it was today.

“Dinner,” Joan said. “Remember, I’m making dinner for you and your beau. Do you think he knows anyone?”

Gracie shook her head. She hadn’t thought of her one great kiss.

“Oh, honey,” Joan said, looking into Gracie’s eyes. “I’m sorry. Here I am, wondering what to serve…. Was it that bad?”

Gracie nodded.

“Will told me all about it,” Joan said. “He said Kenny concluded by trying to sell his fall slate.”

“He did.”

“Were you ever really married to that asshole?” Joan asked.

“I still am,” Gracie answered.

Joan put her arm around her. “It’s time for us to move on to our next mistakes, isn’t it?”

Gracie just nodded. But she knew one thing: She did not
want another mistake in her life. She wanted simplicity. She wanted normalcy. She wanted a life without a moving soap opera. She did not want a security code.

And she wanted to kiss Sam again.

G
RACIE RAN
into him, as she knew she would, the next morning in front of the street entrance to the beach. He was standing in his bright orange shorts, facing north toward Point Dume, which rose heroically through the fog; the Labrador was at his feet, making headway into a recalcitrant old tennis ball.

She could feel that he felt her presence, even though he didn’t turn as she walked up to him.

He didn’t flinch when she put her hand on his arm. He reached his hand across his chest and placed it over hers. The warmth of his skin shifted into her hands, up through her arms, into her body, into places which had been quarantined. He was so alive, this man. She could feel that every cell of his being was at the ready. He was fight-or-flight—the adrenaline response—personified.

But what was he fighting? Or fleeing from? She knew she should care, but she didn’t. She was like a teenage girl who gets on the back of a motorcycle. She was exhilarated. She was happy.

Jesus Christ, she was horny.

He turned to face her and, once again, put his hands on her face and drew her mouth toward his.

Oh, that kiss, Gracie thought, there it is, again. That once-in-a-lifetime kiss is happening twice!

They separated, just as an older couple made their way past, pausing momentarily as they spied Sam and Gracie and the intimacy of their posture.

Gracie didn’t care; she thought, let them look. Let them see what new love is like. Let them remember and take it home with them.

“Is this what I think it is?” Gracie said, admonishing herself even as the words became whole outside her subconscious. How could she be such a girl?

“Never mind!” she said, almost immediately. Why, she wondered, did she need a running narration, a commentary—why couldn’t she just let things happen, mature, take shape without the burden of language?

Because she couldn’t, that’s why.

Sam was looking at her. She wondered if she confused him as much as she confused herself. He looked like a man who was confused about little. He looked like a man who knew his place in the world and was content with it—who made decisions and lived with them, and didn’t second-guess every little thing. He looked confident and secure.

She wondered what the hell he saw in her.

“What do you think it is?” Sam asked. His head was bent toward hers. The crowns of their foreheads almost touching.

She could taste his breath, unencumbered by flavors—no coffee, no mint toothpaste. Just health.

That’s what it is,
Gracie thought,
finally putting a mental finger on the word that seemed to fit him most—unencumbered.

How does one get to be unencumbered?

“Pure animal lust,” Gracie said, finally answering her Prince in Orange Shorts. “And I’m okay with that.”

“You mean, you don’t love me for my mind?” Sam looked at her, his eyes filled with feigned worry.

“I have enough mind,” Gracie said. “What I need is a body.” She didn’t really mean it, but it sounded clever enough. And right now, she needed someone to think she was clever.

“I can live with that,” Sam replied.

“A body with a heart,” she said as he kissed her again, reaching her in places where no man had ever been before. He was a hunter, she was the Heart of Darkness.

“Careful,” she said, as they paused for breath, “you’re going on an intrepid excavation.”

He laughed. God, she loved those crow’s-feet that appeared at his eyes.

Even his wrinkles were masculine.

How would she ever survive this much passion? She would be a mere puddle when he got through with her. People would walk over her and say,“Oh, there’s Gracie Pollock—remember when she was a full human being? Before she had sex with that man who turned her into a mass of jelly?”

“Oh,” Gracie said, remembering that little thing called “breathing.” “I almost forgot. Are you available Friday night?”

Sam looked at her. Something passed quickly over his face, then disappeared into its recesses. What was it? she thought.

Oh my God, he’s married, Gracie thought. He’s married and he’s kissing me—in front of old people!

I’m a slut, Gracie thought.
I’m a wayward slut and I’m going straight to hell.

“I’m available,” Sam said, and then proceeded to wipe out any possible guilt the minx Gracie had about prying this innocent man from his wife and ten children by pressing his warm, full lips to her neck, thereby rendering her a quivering, helpless mess. She felt like that goo Jaden played with, the stuff that came in a plastic egg that stuck to carpets, even though it came with a piece of paper that proclaimed it “nontoxic and easy to clean!”

Why did they lie? Gracie thought, those mendacious, heartless goo manufacturers?

“I’m going in,” Sam said, finally breaking from their last, earth-shattering kiss. He touched her cheek with his hand and then turned and walked off toward the water, followed by the dog, leaving her shattered remains behind.

Why am I so dramatic?
Gracie asked herself.
It certainly doesn’t serve me well,
she thought as she watched Mr. Unencumbered dive over the waves.

And then she thought of Lou, diving over those same waves. Her mind spun forward—what were his final moments like? What was he feeling when he walked in? When he dove? When he chose not to take another breath?

She wiped away the one tear she would allow herself that day.

It was soon followed by others. Her effort was mocked. Her tear ducts were staging a mutiny against her mind. Why was she always being betrayed by her body?

“Screw it,” Gracie said to the wind, as she sat in the sand and cried.

22
 
MY FIRST DATE IN HOW MANY YEARS

H
OW DOES
a guy my age get ready for a date? Sam Knight thought. At least he thought he was getting ready for a date. The woman had asked him to dinner. A dinner party. A group of people. Why had he said yes? Had he said yes?

Sam walked to the security gate to have a talk with Lavender. He needed to know particulars. What to wear, what to talk about. He hadn’t had a conversation about anything substantial with a person for a long time. Mrs. Kennicot, she only commented on the weather, which was always the same, or the temperature of the water, which, like the weather, seldom changed. The Pacific was always cold, the coast was always temperate. Some days started out foggier than others. Other than that, she would ask him things: Can you fix the faucet on the bathroom sink? Can you grout that tile? The old station wagon’s making a funny noise. What’s that funny noise?