Been There, Married That, page 20
Rudy narrowed his puffy eyes, then sneered at the roof.
“You don’t like fireplaces? There’re fireplaces all over this house,” I said. “Almost every room. Fireplace, fireplace, fireplace…”
“Let’s take a look at the master,” Peter said before shooting me a withering look.
“Have fun!” I said. “If you need help, I’m right here. Just don’t light a cigarette, the whole place could blow—”
I turned and grinned at Caster, Gabriela, and Lola, who’d emerged from various hiding places.
“Good job, jefita,” Gabriela said, and the girls clapped.
15
The Spiral Slide
Fun exercise: Mapping the downhill slide (not a fun slide, like an inflatable slide or a water slide or a playground slide) of our marriage through emails.
September 10, 2000, 3:23 p.m.
To: Agnes Murphy
From: Trevor Nash
loveyouloveyouloveyouloveyou
Margaritas at 5?
loveyou
me (T)
Trev and I were kinder to each other in the BlackBerry years. I blame the iPhone. If people can name Facebook as a cause of divorce, I can name Apple.
September 10, 201-, 3:24 p.m.
Margaritas, rock salt and a bj?
loveyoumore
Me(A)
How. How did we get from margaritas and blow jobs (great name for a Mexicali band, BTW) to this:
April 4, 201- 4:53 p.m.
From: Trevor Nash
To: Agnes Murphy Nash
What the fuck do you think you’re doing I know you put something in my suitcase it smells like dead fucking goldfish
Well.
April 4, 201- 5:38 p.m.
From: Agnes Murphy Nash
To: Trevor Nash
You’re*
Cheers,
Agnes
* * *
It’s hard reading that your kid is fat. Especially when the person saying it is her father. In a legal document. That went public. Sigh. I thought back to when Trevor first thought Pep had a weight problem.
Found it.
“She’s fatter than Brad Pitt’s baby,” Trevor had said, hovering over us as I diapered baby Pep. “We’re feeding her too much. Tell the Triplets; they’re sneaking her bottles.”
“Shush, she’s perfect,” I’d said. “You want her to be babyrexic?”
“No,” he’d said. “Of course not. Do you think she should go on a diet?”
I covered her little baby ears. She giggled and looked up at me, delighted. “Can we wait at least a year before we fat-shame our baby?” I’d asked.
* * *
At 5:35, my response to Trevor’s declaration was ready. I’d written ten thousand words in one day. At this pace, I’d have a short novel in five days, a trilogy in a week and a half. I could’ve written the next Game of Thrones or Harry Potter (if I, you know, had the talent); instead, I’d created lunchtime entertainment for a bunch of misshapen legal turds (excepting the perfectly shaped Ms. Barrows, of course).
Anger was the best muse I’d ever had; sure, she was ruddy and squat and wore a perpetual scowl, but I could’ve used that bitch years ago.
* * *
Before our crack-up, I’d awakened in the middle of the night in a stupor, sitting in the simple rocking chair my father had given me when Pep was born.
A dream, a shiny gold nugget of truth, winked at my subconscious.
“Agnes, if you stay, you will get cancer,” the shiny gold nugget of truth said. “And Trevor will make it all about him.”
In my dream, I saw a pale, bony, bedridden me, tubes running through my hairless body, the Triplets scurrying in and out of my room, with tears and hushed voices and endless making the sign of the cross over their bosoms. Dizzying amounts of crossing. A portrait of Hispanic Jesus (appearing suspiciously like Luis Miguel) hanging above my bed.
The dream rolled on, and I was hovering above Trevor at the Grill, lunching with a comely junior agent.
“Why are you upset?” Miss Comely is asking.
“My wife…” Trevor was shaking his head. “She has cancer.”
“Oh my God,” Miss Comely said as she rubbed his muscular arm and cooed in agent-in-training style.
“We haven’t been able to fuck in like a month,” he said, tears welling in his career-making eyes.
“Poor baby,” she said as she grasped his hand (where was his wedding ring?) and slipped it under the table. “Poor, poor Trevor.”
16
Deposing Made Simple
I stared at the giant kitty-and-doggy ASPCA calendar, their sad doggy and kitty eyes cajoling me to send more money than last year. Every day, I penciled in another divorce reminder. Penciling stuff in is calendar-keeping at its most atavistic, but that’s my jam—atavism.
Divorce wasn’t just a job; it was a lifestyle.
I could monetize this divorce, like Waverly suggested. I’d brand my divorce! Write a blog: The Divorce Whisperer, The Divorce Fairy, The Divorce Coach. Set up divorce kiosks at school fairs. Give speeches on divorce and resiliency (the current buzzword, having lapped mindfulness in March of this year). Coin the Divorce Diet! Start off grassroots and end up worldwide, branding the Business of Divorce. The Skinny Divorce would cost as little a day as a soy latte (with a shot of tequila)!
* * *
Fin had been playing hide-and-seek with the LAPDicks while I was #livingthedream. The detectives “visited,” dropping at odd hours—early morning, late night, right when I had sat down on one of the fourteen (sixteen?) toilets. I stopped answering the gate intercom. I’d wave at our HDTV screens as they gazed stone-faced at our security cameras.
My theory was they didn’t have a warrant, and since Fin hadn’t officially violated parole, they couldn’t officially take her in for questioning. My theory was based entirely on those same guinea pig instincts that brought me to this point and not any semblance of knowledge of legal procedure.
Still, it sounded almost feasible.
Fin wasn’t taking any chances. My personal Cato would surprise me, hiding out in my office closet, sleeping in my car, setting up a tent outside the game room where no one played pool. She’d jump out at me at as I sat down to write, or turned a corner in the guesthouse, or started my car in the morning.
I would be dead of a heart attack before Fin ever got caught.
* * *
Petra had sold a picture of me holding the bed bat over my head in the middle of the night.
TREVOR NASH’S EX BATSH-T CRAZY was the headline.
“I love you, but I never thought you two were that interesting,” Liz said over the phone. “Not like the Jolie-Pitts or the Pittanistons or the Pittaltrows.”
“Brad Pitt has sprayed his seed all over the Hollywood pasture,” I said. “He’s Johnny Applesemen.”
“I can’t believe I’m being deposed,” she said. “How would I possibly help his case? Saying you were a bad wife and mother?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Exactly,” she said. “I wouldn’t. Even if it were true.”
“What?”
“When’s your deposition?” she asked.
“Tomorrow morning,” I said.
“Are you ready? Have you been practicing? What does your coach say?”
“What are you talking about? I’m not going for the big leagues of deposing.”
“I’ll be right over.” She sighed.
* * *
Liz sat me down in my office with as serious (and bruised) an expression she could muster (given that she’d seen Dr. Braden for a “liquid facelift”).
“There are four answers you need to give in a deposition,” she said as I stared at her swollen lips.
“Four answers,” I repeated.
“The answers are: ‘Yes’, ‘No,’ ‘I don’t remember,’ and ‘Would you like me to guess?’ Your lawyer hasn’t told you this?”
“No,” I said. “She advised me to be honest.”
“She what?” Liz struggled with her alarmed face.
“She what?” Fin popped up from behind the couch.
“Jesus Christ! What are you doing here?” I asked my sister.
“I’m not here.” Fin disappeared behind the couch again.
“Are you trying to be poor?” Liz asked.
“She can’t afford to be poor!” Fin said.
“Shut up, couch!” I said. “I’m trying to be fair and get this over quickly and without bloodshed.”
Liz looked at me with an expression close to pity. I wish people would stop doing Botox long enough to get their expressions in order.
“Repeat those four answers back to me,” she said.
“‘Yes’ … ‘No’ … ‘I don’t recall’ … and ‘Would you like me to guess?’”
“Stick to those answers. Do not elaborate. Whatever you do, do not write out loud!”
“I can’t use just those answers for an all-day deposition,” I said.
“Actually,” Fin said, popping up again. “It’s sort of expected.”
“You can,” Liz said, “and you will.”
* * *
“Drop of mercury in his tennis shoe,” Fin said. “No one will ever know.”
“Let’s take this a bit further,” I said in my closet, staring at a row of black pants I’d never worn. What to wear for my debut, er, deposition? I snapped a pair of Theory from 2011. I could sell these pants. That’s twenty, thirty bucks right there. “How do you get the mercury?”
Fin slipped into a flocked red velvet Dolce & Gabbana, an old premiere dress. Another definite sell. My premiere days were over. My debt days? Just beginning.
“Break open a thermometer,” her eyes flashed. “You’ve never heard of quiet kills? How dumb are you?”
“Smart enough to avoid murder.”
“Silent blow to the back of the head,” she said, holding up two fingers. “People slip and fall getting out of the bathtub all the time.”
“Trevor doesn’t take baths,” I’d said.
“Never trust a person who doesn’t take baths,” Fin said. “Maybe you have to go to prison before you appreciate a good bath.”
“For argument’s sake, how do you not get mercury on you?” I asked. “If you crack open a thermometer?”
“Is this seriously your first rodeo, sister?” She stared at me.
“How do I break this to you, Fin?” I asked. “No, I’ve never actually killed another human being.”
“So you just quit, you just stop trying, is that it?”
The other morning, she’d awakened me as the sun was rising to tell me a dream in which she’d slipped a desert scorpion into Trevor’s bed.
“I have a scorpion at my friend’s trailer in the desert—don’t ask his name,” she’d whispered. “Little shit bit me; my hand swelled so big, almost had to amputate.”
“I’m not really comfortable with this kind of talk,” I said and rolled over.
“You’re not part of the solution, Aggie; that’s your problem,” Fin said, nudging me. “You gotta be part of the solution.”
I picked out a forgotten jersey dress as Fin traded the premiere dress for a pair of lime-green Lululemon tights that I bought and never wore because did I say lime green? I’m sorry to report she didn’t look like a balloon animal.
“I can get in and out anywhere with these things on,” Fin said, turning in the mirror. “Like climbing out of windows and such.”
“Does this say, ‘I ain’t afraid of no attorneys’?” Gray Armani suit I hadn’t worn in years. Fin pantomimed vomiting. Detailed and protracted vomiting, and I had to get moving.
“How about this one?” Simple black dress, white collar.
“Save it for the funeral.”
“This?” White poplin skirt, ruffle-collared shirt.
She laughed.
I sank to the floor. Fin stepped over me and fanned through my dresses. She picked out a purple skirt-and-blouse pairing, an ecstatic choice for a happy occasion.
“I’m not going to a party,” I said.
“Exactly. It’ll throw them off. You’re heading from deposition to like, I don’t know, one of those ladies-who-lunch things. Or a tryst.”
“You know ‘tryst’?”
“Fuck yeah, I know ‘tryst’—why wouldn’t I know ‘tryst’? I went to the same schools as you! I got straight As!” She pressed the purple dress on me.
“By flirting with the teachers,” I said.
“I should’ve married Mr. Palmetto when he asked me,” she said, a pensive look crossing her face.
“Our Spanish teacher.”
“He was very sensitive,” she said.
“He was sixty years old and three feet tall!”
“I know,” she said with a sigh as she grabbed a pair of my high, strappy heels. “Put these on, too.”
“Thank you,” I said, and, boom, I had to choke back tears. I’d never be able to handle this lawyer day.
“No puddling today,” Fin said, play-punching my arm.
“Ow!” I rubbed my arm. “Damn it!”
“Stopped crying, right?”
The front gate buzzed. A moment later, we heard a deep engine growl and the boom of a backfire.
“What the—”
“Oh, good; he’s here.” Fin ran outside and through the kitchen.
I followed, stepped out into the courtyard, teetering on fuck-me heels, or, in this case, fuck-you heels. Fuck me? Fuck you!
“Who?” I yelled over the noise.
“Your driver!” Fin yelled back as a plume of smoke blew from the carburetor. A mountain in a suit jacket emerged from the smoke.
“Girl, this is Edmund,” Fin said, beaming. “He’s taking you to your depo; he’ll wait for you in the lobby.”
Edmund extended his hand, which could cover half a continent.
“Edmund, this is so nice of you,” I said, shaking his hand, “but I really don’t need—”
“You remember him from the motorcyclist team?” Fin cut me off.
Edmund’s smile filled up the entire Palisades.
“Edmund, wait here for a sec,” Fin said, taking me aside. “I paid him, if you know what I mean. And yes, the hands match the gearshift.”
I stole another look at Edmund’s hands. He waved, blocking the sun.
“Fin, I can’t bring him to a lawyer’s office; they’ll freak out.”
“Are you, like, trying to be dim? They. Will. Freak. Out.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“If his asshole lawyers get a load of Edmund,” Fin said, “they’ll think twice before they rip you a new one, much like the old one.”
Fin opened her stringy arms and hugged me. I almost cried. Again.
I took a deep breath and stepped into Edmund’s muscle car, the dizzying smell of gas permeating the interior. I’d be high on fumes by the time I arrived. Which, you know, perfect.
* * *
Edmund and I squeezed into the elevator at Blecks Holstein … Etcetera. Anne was waiting in the lobby, documents in her lap, her hair back in a neat ponytail, briefcase at her feet. She looked so studious, I wanted to give her an A for effort and call it a day.
I introduced Edmund to Anne, and she smiled and shook his hand, not even raising an eyebrow. Edmund sank onto the lobby couch with a People magazine (Reba McEntire on the cover), his massive knees almost to his shoulders. Anne and I were led down a long hallway, past landscape and nature photos. Snowcapped mountains, shimmering streams, a moose staring into the camera.
Dead Wife Walking.
The receptionist opened the conference room, asked if we needed anything, then pointed at the twenty water bottles already crowding the table.
“I’d like those rice noodles from Mr. Chow,” I said.
“We’re fine,” Anne said.
A thin, wiry man in jeans and thick, black-rimmed glasses stood across the table, a tiny microphone in his hand.
“Do you mind if I secure this?” he asked.
“Anne?”
“They’re filming,” she said.
“Is this an audition?” I asked. “I thought I got the part already.”
I focused. Cameras were already set up against a blue screen. My divorce had high production value.
“This would make a great Netflix show.”
“Not quite,” Anne said. “This shouldn’t go more than two, three episodes.”
“I’m so glad I wore purple,” I said. “It’s a good color on me. Does this firm provide hair and makeup?”
Anne patted my hand. The sound guy hooked the microphone on my blouse. I fluffed my hair, then fished through my purse to get my lip gloss.
“Do you think they’ll give me a copy afterward?” I asked. “Maybe I could use it as a sizzle reel. Divorced Housewives of the Armpit of the Valley.”
The door opened with a bang, and the march of heavy feet as several men entered—one gaunt with an electrocuted thatch of silver hair, the next had greased-back hair and nervous eyes, then an older gentleman (using the term very lightly) packed into expensive Italian silk, belly hanging over his Ferragamo belt, who pounded his cane. My eyes met his—shiny, greedy eyes in a walnut shell face. Ulger Blecks, ladies and gentlemen.
“Grimm’s fairy tales,” I whispered to Anne.
Anne greeted the attorneys, and the men muttered their hellos, maintaining their deliberate seriousness.
“Nuremberg trials or Hollywood divorce?” I asked Anne.
“What’s that bouncer doing in your lobby?” Trevor traipsed in, dressed in a suit, no tie, collar open. Not a care in the world.
“Apparently, he entered with Ms. Murphy,” Ulger Blecks intoned, staring down at me over his reading glasses. His voice exactly how I’d imagined. In a world where …
I almost smiled.
“I assume he’s an integral part of her entourage,” Blecks said. “Perhaps another boyfriend.”
“He’s my driver,” I said. Gasps. “Wait. Not my driver, more like a friend.”
