Been There, Married That, page 19
Ms. Nash apparently just cut short a stint in rehab for an undisclosed eating disorder.
Trevor Nash is asking for sole physical custody and no support.
“Have you looked at the comments?” I asked, handing the phone back to Fin. “I’m not strong enough.”
Fin scrolled through and started to smile. She snorted.
“The people have spoken,” Fin said. “They think he’s an asshole.”
“Then I’m in real trouble,” I said. “The comments section is all that matters; this is going to make Trevor insane. He wants everyone to like him. He needs everyone to like him.”
“Doing a pretty shitty job of it,” Fin said.
Gabriela said something in Spanish. I caught pendejo, then something about knives, which, you know, fair enough, as Fin explained the comments section.
“I’d better get started on my response,” I said, brushing off my slacks and heading into the house. “The most important words I’ll ever write and no one is ever going to see it except lawyers.”
“And TMZ,” Fin added.
“No. It’ll never see the light of day,” I said. “This is going to be buried deeper than a Mafia hit.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I said, stepping inside the church door. “I’m going to tell the truth.”
14
Beyond a Reasonable Lout
Every time Trevor left town, he’d be replaced by a crew working in the house. Men in jeans and work boots, tool belts slung low around their billowing waists. There was always something broken in a house this size, usually more than one thing. Usually, many things. That light, this faucet, that chair, this psyche.
Just kidding. There’s no fixing the psyches in the dead zone.
Meanwhile, whatever was broken was guaranteed to cost as much as a Kia.
“What’s that dude working on?” Fin said as she sniffed and narrowed her cat eyes at a man traipsing through the kitchen with paper booties covering his work boots.
“No idea,” I said. “Light fixtures? And I think a deck chair is broken.”
“Huh,” she said, her stare following him as he made his way down the hallway to the master.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” she said, chewing her lip. She got up to assess the white van parked in the driveway.
“Why doesn’t the van have any markings?” she asked.
“Fin, I don’t speak conspiracy,” I said.
“Aggie, you don’t speak common sense,” she said. “Look around you; you have no idea who’s coming in or out of this place—”
Another worker was cutting through the kitchen from the deck. Cap, belt, tool box, booties. I guessed electrician?
“Hey, dude,” Fin said. “How’d it go.” She wasn’t asking.
He grunted.
“Okay, I have to get dressed,” I said. “I’m meeting Liz for an early dinner. Now that I’m forcibly retired.”
“Where?”
“Giorgio’s. She’s paying.”
“Bring me back the Dover sole,” she said, staring at the van. “Extra lemon sauce. No capers. Actually, bring me back two.”
“Two?” I asked, sarcasm dripping off my tongue. “Is that all? Anything else?”
“Nah, that’s good,” Fin said. “But he may want dessert.”
“Who? Who may want dessert?” I asked, having visions of one of Fin’s dealer boyfriends moving in.
“I’m meeting with the writer.”
“You’re … doing what with whom?”
“Sami. The writer.”
“The writer for what?”
Fin rolled her eyes. “Where’ve you been? The guy with the script.”
Clang. Screech. Plop. My brain finally computed.
“Uber driver Sami?”
“Yeah,” she said. “The script’s not bad. Has a lot of potential.”
“How many screenplays have you read?”
She thought for a moment. “One.”
“You’ve never read one of mine?”
“No. Was I supposed to?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“First,” she said, “we gotta loosen up the dialogue. It’s too stiff.”
“I don’t … okay.”
“Yeah, I told him I’d produce it. And I’d bring Trevor in.”
“You lied to him,” I said. “You totally lied to him.”
“Isn’t that what Hollywood producers do?”
Stumped.
“Yes,” I said.
“I didn’t exactly lie to him,” she said. “I gave him hope. That’s different. Believing is doing.”
“Did you get into Trevor’s old Tony Robbins tapes?”
“Hey, don’t knock him,” she said.
Another worker wearing a white hazmat suit snaked silently through the kitchen.
“Almost done?” Fin said to him.
“Uh, ask my boss,” he said.
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” Fin said as he retreated.
“Don’t be rude. They’re working on the lights,” I said. “We’ve had electrical problems for a year.”
“Sometimes I wonder how you manage to feed yourself,” Fin said before grabbing an apple and disappearing after the electrician.
* * *
I stepped inside Giorgio’s, teetering on car-to-table gold heels that Fin insisted I wear and warmed by the familiar dim lighting and the smell of garlic sautéing in olive oil. The room felt like home, if you lived in a renovated, million-dollar home in Tuscany.
“Right this way, Mrs. Nash,” the hostess said as she escorted me to a corner table. We took three steps before the owner, an older Italian man with an air of eternal weariness, took her aside. He glanced at me with sorrowful eyes, then whispered in her ear before heading back into the kitchen.
She turned in the opposite direction, making a beeline for the outside tables. I followed.
The screen door slammed behind us.
“I don’t want to be seated outside,” I said with a shiver.
“It’s nice out here.” I could see her breath hanging in the air.
The tables shone wet from the afternoon showers.
“Is it possible to get the table we usually have?” I gestured toward the restaurant. There was no one outside.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“No? It’s empty. And it’s so early.”
“No,” she said with a warm smile. “Would you care for a wine list?”
“Please.”
I wiped the moisture off my chair and took a seat.
* * *
“I’m being deposed,” Liz said as she sat down, slapping a piece of paper on the table. “What are we doing sitting out here? It’s freezing.”
“Wait, what? You’re being deposed?”
“For your divorce,” Liz said. “I was just served. Right here at the valet. I thought I was being mugged!”
My phone was ringing. My book agent. Calling from New York.
“Hey, Lucas,” I said.
“I’m fucking being deposed,” he said.
“For my divorce?”
“Yes,” he said. “What the fuck?”
My TV agent was ringing through. I hadn’t talked to him in six months.
“I’ll call you back, Lucas,” I said. “Hello?”
“Your husband’s deposing me,” TV agent said.
“Sorry,” I said. “Hey, did you ever get feedback on my pilot script?”
“Gotta run,” he said. “Conference call.”
* * *
After my coming-out dinner was hijacked by Trevor depo bombs, I headed home and emailed Anne.
To: Anne Barrows
From: Agnes Murphy Nash
Trevor is deposing everybody. Everyone. With the exception of Bernie Sanders and the Progressive Insurance lady.
Cheers,
Agnes
I’d just finished devouring a three-course meal, including a tiramisu. No one except Giorgio’s does a good tiramisu in LA, but, valiantly, I keep sampling others. Despite my gluttonous efforts, my stomach grumbled. My new divorce metabolism was working overtime. I grabbed a questionable hunk of cheese out of the refrigerator, set it on the chopping block with water crackers, then padded downstairs to the wine cellar.
Crackers and cheese could only be digested properly when escorted by a red. What would it be tonight?
I grabbed a Beaujolais. Beau-jolais! Pretty and happy! Would I ever be pretty and happy again? If not, I could drink it!
The phone rang, jangling my nerves. I focused on the screen. My dad was calling me on the house line. I sighed and answered.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “I’m being deposed. What the hell?”
“I know,” I said. “It’s all part of the ‘discovery phase.’ It’s like Discovery Channel without the wild hyenas, unless you count divorce attorneys.”
“I’m not intimidated by fancy lawyers,” he said.
“I know, Daddy,” I said. Of course he was intimidated. My dad owned one suit. One dress shirt. One pair of black patent loafers. He’d lived his entire life pretending not to be intimidated by exactly these people.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “It’s late.”
“You, too,” I said.
“Be good,” he said, he always said.
“What if I’m not?” I asked, but he’d already hung up. But I was wondering. What if … what if I’m not good, for once? Will it make a difference? Being “good” had brought me what, exactly? I decided to take the opposite of my father’s advice. I drank two glasses of Beaujolais because now I was into being “bad.”
Then I did the exact thing you are never to do during a divorce proceeding.
I emailed the petitioner directly. I emailed Trevor.
To: Trevor Nash
From: Agnes Murphy Nash
Really?
Signed,
Agnes
My phone pinged a moment later.
To: Agnes Murphy Nash
From: Trevor Nash
Really what?
I wrote back immediately.
To: Trevor Nash
From: Agnes Murphy Nash
You’re deposing my dad?
My agent.
My manager.
My book agent.
My best friend.
Sent.
To: Agnes Murphy Nash
From: Trevor Nash
It’s called divorce. Why, is there someone I’m forgetting?
(Okay, I had to smile.)
To: Trevor Nash
From: Agnes Murphy Nash
Yes. That’s my point.
It’s like a birthday party, Trev—you can’t just invite 90% of the people you know—you have to invite the other 10%.
Aggie
I was halfway drunk with the halfway bottle, and I was an idiot. Trevor’d thrown me a crumb, a reposte, and I ate it hungrily, trying to satiate my hunger for comfort emails. I’d reacted to the tiniest piece of evidence that my ex wasn’t, in fact, a monster. I’d signed off with my nickname(!). As though we were friends(!). And, no, you can’t hate me anymore right now than I hate myself.
I took myself to bed.
* * *
After dropping Pep off at school, I spent the morning huddled in my office directly beneath Pep’s room, jotting notes on Trevor’s declaration and listening to the sisters’ calming voices weaving in and out.
Trevor and his team of Energizer Battery attorneys had reached into their bag of tricks and had come up with ridiculous accusations based on the flimsiest of evidence. So today, I’d play Divorce Monopoly, respond to each and move my piece (life) forward. I needed to pass Go and collect what was left of my self-esteem.
Trevor was the top hat; I was the Scottish terrier.
August 7, 201-
To: Trevor Nash
From: Agnes Murphy Nash
Oops. Forgot Pep’s snack in the car. Please notify the Bad Mom brigade.
XoxoAg
Apparently, years ago, when Pep was in first grade, I had forgotten—well, you can see, carrot sticks and a little bag of organic oatmeal cookies (that tasted like wood chips and sponge).
And more recently: November 8, 201-: Agnes went out to dinner, leaving minor daughter alone at home with ex-convict sister.
I’d gone out to a birthday dinner for Liz from 7:10 to 8:45. I’d made Pep’s dinner before I left and had returned to put her to bed.
I cracked my knuckles, cracked my neck, lay on the floor to crack my back. I jogged in place for a couple of minutes. I sang notes do re mi do re mi do re mi.
I was ready. The only thing I had going for me was the truth. I’m sure that was enough.
(Hahahahahahahaha … ha.)
I flipped open my laptop. Blank page, get ready! You and me, we’re against a five-headed monster—the hydra of Trevor and his legal team. I read a Native American proverb, typed on a small slip of paper I’d saved from a trip with Trevor—“He who writes the words runs the world.”
We’d been vacationing at a five-star spa in Wyoming, and housekeeping would leave behind these slips of paper with Native American sayings, along with the day’s temperature and what time hot yoga in the woods started.
I started typing. My fingers landed with a series of thuds. I tried again. Something wrong with the keyboard. I checked the cord, the outlet (as though that would make a difference). Reboot computer, reboot my life. Seventy-nine percent. Plenty of power.
Tap. Thud. Tap. Thud.
My keyboard was jacked up.
“Fin!” I yelled as I ran up the stairs. “Fin!”
* * *
Fin emerged from dodging the LAPD to check out my laptop. She poked the keyboard, then before I could stop her, snapped off the laptop assembly, exposing a yellowed, gooey substance.
“Glue,” she said. “That phony electrician glued your keyboard. Trevor’s getting you where it hurts—your laptop”
I screamed and banged my fists on the desk. I flung the pillows off my love seat. I kicked the antique wastebasket. (Then apologized, of course.) Fin stared at me, then her chewed nails, then back at me.
“I can fix this,” she said. “You want to use mine?”
“You have a laptop?”
“I can get one,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“You want a laptop or not?” she asked. Then, “New or refurbished?”
I thought for a second. “New.”
* * *
Fin hooked me up, and by the end of lunch, I was five thousand words in. (Nope, didn’t ask where she got the laptop.) The intercom rang; I ignored it. A few seconds later, footsteps and a knock at my office door.
“No one’s here!” I said. “Don’t bother me for another five thousand words!”
“Missus,” Caster said, cracking open the door, her eyes nervous, “the Realtor mister is here.”
I’d forgotten our house was for sale. Forgotten? Repressed. I followed Caster upstairs just as the “Westside’s Realtor to the Stars™” was pulling up the driveway in his black Range Rover. Peter Marks parked, followed by another black Range Rover with tinted windows and another black Range Rover with tinted windows. I observed the Rover parade from the kitchen. Peter, an affable guy with feathered hair, aviator shades, and boots—like an extra from a Hal Needham movie—conferred with his clients, who’d spilled out of the second Rover. America’s Sweetheart and That Weaselly Fuck. (No one emerged from the third Rover. To this day, its occupants are a mystery.)
That Weaselly Fuck, a multi-hyphenate Brit of enormous and unfair talent (and appetites), was a well-known jerk. Sorry. Asshole. Sorry. Cunt of the highest order.
“Muy guapo,” Caster said, fluttering her eyelashes.
“Muy hamster-like,” I said, because he was petite, with a face like a hairless rodent and tiny hands. “She’s sweet and has hair like whipped butter, and why is she with him?”
America’s Sweetheart was carrying That Weaselly Fuck’s progeny in her arms. She’d just given birth to a third girl, and I thought that might spell trouble. I’d met That Weaselly Fuck at a Vanity Fair party years ago, then multiple dinner parties, award shows, backyard political soirées—each time I was introduced, a constipated expression would descend on his pinched face and he’d slink away, in the direction of a “name.” Most movie stars at least pretend to be polite—it’s called acting.
I’d heard through the Hollywood grapevine his latest issues ping-ponged from hookers to Jim Beam to heroin. I didn’t want to leave America’s Sweetheart alone with him behind these gates. I decided they couldn’t buy this house.
“Aggie.” Peter greeted me with a big hug. “This is Rudy and Sal,” he said. “I’m sure you guys have met.”
Rudy, his weak jaw slack and stubbled, gazed at me with hooded eyes. There it was, the familiar constipation.
“Of course,” Sally said, blowing her famous blond bangs out of her eyes and reaching out with her free arm for a hug. Her skin glowed luminously, her 1,000-watt smile blinding yet sincere. I wanted her to go into witness protection. “Agnes, how are you?”
She smelled like spring. I oohed and aahed over her baby girl, who brought back all the baby smells and baby sounds and baby feelings and baby regrets that at this rate, I’d never have another.
“Richard Ellsworth designed this house for Henry Blake and his bride,” Peter was saying. Blake had been a director of many musicals and consumer of much bourbon; he’d died at forty-eight of cirrhosis. “It was their honeymoon home. There was an extensive remodel in 2005, adding over ten thousand square feet.”
Rudy grimaced. “I loathe musicals,” he said, his nostrils flaring.
“Every room in the house has a relationship to the outdoors,” Peter said. “It’s sort of a signature touch.”
Sally nodded and flashed her dimples.
“Get rid of the fireplace,” Rudy said. “It’s too old and smells funky.”
The fireplace was original and integral to the design of the house.
“It is old,” I said. “But it basically holds up the roof, so…”
