Been There, Married That, page 24
Movie stars could pretend all they wanted—they were actors, after all—even the “grounded” ones who drop their kids at school or pump their own gas (in full hair and makeup) expect special treatment. They’re all normal and grounded until the restaurant host seats them at the wrong table.
“I don’t have any place to go,” I told Peter. “Trevor terminated my credit cards. My Amex was denied at Starbucks, then my Mastercard, then my debit card, which wouldn’t work anyway because I forgot the PIN code. I even tried an old Sears card. I have a little money in my checking account, but hotels don’t take checks, right?”
“There’s a West LA Motel 6,” he said. “My mother-in-law stayed there once.”
“I can only afford a Motel 0.06,” I said. “I’m the poorest rich person I know. Or the richest poor person.”
“I’m sorry Trevor didn’t tell you,” Peter said. I poured another bourbon. Hanging with the rich and famous had aged Peter. I notice he’d dyed his hair that olive color Westside men favored. I was suddenly thirsty for a dirty martini, olives on the side, at the Bel Air bar.
Who was I kidding? I couldn’t even spring for a clean martini.
“Pep and I could sleep in the guesthouse. They’d never even notice. We’d be quiet as church mice. As Church of Scientology mice, if that feels more appropriate.”
Trevor was cutting off my supply lines from every angle, like Rommel of the Riviera. Trevor had imbibed the war-for-business genre—from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War to Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World, to the CliffsNotes of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (no one in LA actually read the whole thing). The watery broth of self-help books was The 48 Laws of Power; I’d flipped through the book from time to time, laughing alone in Trevor’s bathroom.
Conceal Your Intentions …
Never Outshine the Master …
Crush Your Enemy Totally …
Guess who wasn’t laughing now? Me. Guess who’s laughing? Trevor. Trevor was definitely laughing. While deciding on whether to perform anal. (Perform? I pictured a cape and a wand.) For someone as anal-retentive as he is, I’m sure this posed a stark dilemma.
Peter shook his olive head. I licked my lips. “I’m sorry. That’s the deal. Your hus—ex-husband is desperate to sell. So far, these are the only people interested.”
“What’s wrong with our house?” I felt offended for Trevor’s house. Who wouldn’t want to live here? Besides me.
“Nothing. It’s just not … grand.” He was staring at the final drop of amber at the bottom of the glass. He brought the glass to his mouth, his weary face disappearing momentarily, as though underwater. He came up for air. “No columns, no marble. It’s not a ‘statement’ house.”
“Fourteen bathrooms isn’t grand?”
“Fourteen is on the more modest end of the bathroom scale, frankly,” he said. “They’ve been pondering a seventeen-bathroom Cape Cod in Brentwood Park. A nineteen-bathroom modern spaceship doohickey in Bel Air. There are never enough bathrooms.”
He expelled the longest sigh on record. Oh, the perils of being “Westside’s Realtor to the Stars™.” These folks were a special crew, ambitious to the point of violence. I’d seen Peter’s rival, a platinum-skullcapped grandmother, bite her way through a Christmas party crowd to get to Floyd Mayweather when it was rumored he was selling.
“Bathrooms are the new pharmaceutical comas,” I said. Was it only a few years ago everyone in town was bragging about their own personal IVs?
I checked my phone. “Pete, it’s almost seven o’clock. I spent the day in court. Pep’s had a long week, I’m exhausted, we haven’t packed a thing—”
“There’s got to be someone you can stay with,” he said. “Friends? Family?”
I’d called Trevor, but he hadn’t answered. He was hiding. I could feel him hiding. He was probably hiding in a well-appointed vagina. (Or diamond-encrusted anus? Which sounded like an entrée at a fancy restaurant on Canon, btw.) Trevor hated confrontation when he knew he was wrong.
I thought of calling Anne, but what could she say? Who could she call at this hour? Shouldn’t I let her just rest up? Also, I wasn’t crazy about making a $300 phone call.
Liz was out of town with her mother this weekend, who’d bribed her with a couple of nights at the Montage. I thought of my other friends. I’d texted Juliette the other day just to check in on her and her remodeled boobs and her new vagina and revenge-fucking. I hadn’t heard anything back. Meanwhile, Karyn had renewed her vows without me. Liz attended, and guess who else had showed up? Trevor.
Liz had filled me in on the menu. Steak, quail, potatoes au gratin …
I was persona non grata.
“Persona non gratin,” I said. “Person without cheese. I prefer persona au gratin, don’t you?”
Peter mumbled and shook his glass.
So. I stared into Peter’s unblinking, ironed face.
That leaves …
I poked a number in my phone. Dad answered on the first ring.
* * *
Saturday began at dawn, with the buzz of skateboards whizzing by on the brick walkway and homeless people fighting, yelling incoherent insults, in the sand. Pep and I had slept on the foldout couch in the living room, but when I woke up, Pep was already banging around the kitchen with Dad.
How much banging did oatmeal require?
A bang considerable bang amount.
“You guys need any help?” I called out.
“Nope,” he called back. “Pep’s handling it!”
She came out of the kitchen wielding a wooden spoon.
“What are you making?”
“She’s making pancakes,” my dad said. “You never bothered teaching this girl to cook? What, do you want her to starve to death someday?”
“Yeah, Mom,” Pep said. “I could starve!” She giggled and dove back into the kitchen. Bang.
My strapping, blue-eyed, lapsed-Catholic father was the epitome of the Jewish mother. When I’d spent every dime I had on that 750-square-foot house a hundred feet from the beach, it was to get my father out of the apartment he’d lived in, in the heart (or bile duct) of Hollywood, since forever. I wanted him to live closer to his granddaughter.
I was so proud. I’d made enough money on a movie I’d written that was rewritten by hacks with sledgehammer fingers until it became the filmic version of marshmallow fluff to buy a house. But I already had a house, or, rather, Trevor already had a house, so I wanted to buy one for my dad. Isn’t that what you do as a child of a questionable-neighborhood apartment-dwelling parent? We’d never lived in a house, my family and me. Now, two, actually, two and a half, counting Pep, would live in a house. This was big for us.
He begrudgingly approved of this little abode. A beach cottage built in the 1920s, someone’s weekend home. The place was a dump. I stepped onto faded vomit-colored wall-to-wall carpet, and my ankles were blanketed in fleas. Flea socks. The tenant, a bodybuilder who collected strays and crack pipes, stayed in his room, muttering to himself (and his muscles?) ignoring us carpetbaggers (I’d bag a different carpet, sans fleas). The place smelled like tanning lotion, dog (I hope it was dog) urine, and burning plastic.
I don’t even want to get into the Jacuzzi in the backyard. I wouldn’t want anyone to get into that Jacuzzi without a hazmat suit.
I didn’t care. I loved old houses and saw this shit box’s potential. I wrote a check and signed papers and became an adult. I owned my own tiny, flea-infested speck of land.
A few weeks later, my dad told me Nic Cage was selling his house at the end of our street, on the beach.
“It’s only four mil,” he said.
“Dad, I just spent everything I have,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s a bargain,” he said. “It’s $1,105 per square foot. That’s a good investment.”
After spending the rest of my option money to fix up the house and decorate, I drove Dad to the beach cottage to “present” my gift, which smelled like fresh paint and no more fleas. He folded his arms and walked around, inspecting the tiny home.
“So,” I said. “What do you think of the new carpet?”
He looked at it. Sniffed.
“I like blue,” he said.
I had chosen taupe.
Nothing I did/wrote/bought would ever be good enough for Dad. That morning, sitting around the kitchen table with Dad and Pep over pancakes soaked in guilt, I realized I’d married my father.
The pancakes were delicious.
* * *
Dad explained to me and Pep that he needed his place back Saturday night; he had a hot date. Pep high-fived him and went to pack.
“You and Trevor have a lot in common, you notice that?” I asked him when Pep left the room.
“Bite your tongue,” he said. “My girlfriends are hotter than anything your ex-husband will get.”
“You’re competing with my ex-husband over his girlfriends?”
“I’m just saying,” my dad said.
When we were kids, Fin and I knew Dad loved us because he loved playing tricks on us, like holding us down and dropping a glob of spit an inch from our noses. Or sticking Oreos in his eyes and chasing us around making zombie noises. Or playing “pull my finger” at the dinner table. We’d explode in fits of laughter. We were his pals, his cohorts in bad taste, not pretty little objects to be protected. We were taught and expected to get the last punch—and we did, good little soldiers. I didn’t even own a dress and didn’t wear one until elementary graduation, a hand-me-down from a neighbor. It was too tight around my middle. When I sat on the bench during graduation, the zipper split. I’d made straight As and gave my first speech, but Dad was disappointed because now Fin couldn’t wear that dress.
“Sonia and I are having dinner at 5:00,” he said. “So if you could give us some space around 6:00…”
“What about Shu?” I asked.
“What about her?”
“Aren’t you two…”
Pep walked in. “I like Shu,” Pep said.
“You’ve never even met her.”
“She speaks five languages, Mom,” she said.
“I like her too, pumpkin. But she’s getting a little serious,” he said. “I gotta pump the brakes.”
“Do you really want to blow what you have with Shu?” I asked.
“Relax,” he said. “Geez, how’d I raise such an uptight kid?” He looked at Pep, who just rolled her eyes and shrugged, like, Who the fuck knows?
After I helped Dad wash the dishes in scalding hot water (if your skin wasn’t peeling off, the water wasn’t hot enough), Pep and I took a stroll down to the beach and filled up on negative ions; I needed enough to last me through the divorce. Gabriela had told me we could stay with her family, so that was an option, but I didn’t want Bernardo to end up sleeping on the couch again.
My cell phone, sticky with sunscreen, vibrated. An unknown number.
Gio? If I opened my mouth, I might complain. I hated complainers, even me. Especially me.
“Hello!” he said. Of course I answered. What? As Pep ran down to the water, I told him everything. The awful famous couple. The Realtor’s ironed face. My dad’s mystery date.
“What happened to Shu?” he asked. “I like them together.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Stay at my place,” he said.
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” I said. Could I? “You have a place?”
“You didn’t ask,” he said. “I insist. I won’t even be there. I’m never there.”
“I thought you only stayed in hotels—”
“I’ve a house in Santa Monica Canyon,” he said. “It’s empty. I keep forgetting to sell, and then I stay there occasionally, and I realize I like it and I lose my nerve.”
I heard French seep out of a loudspeaker in the background.
“Gio, where are you?”
“Just landed in Paris,” he said. “It’s the only city left where I can smoke outside a café.”
I wanted to be Gio when I grew up. Without the cigarettes. Maybe an occasional cigarette. I thought of how sexy I’d look with one hanging off my lower lip like Brigitte Bardot. Without Brigitte’s lips. Or skin. Or eyeliner. Okay, maybe not quite as sexy.
“Gio, thank you. We’ll stay,” I said. “Just for the weekend. Until the horrible famous people leave.”
“I hope they never leave,” he said.
I hung up, and a tear fell from my eye. The smallest kindness (this kindness was more plus-sized) reduced me to a human puddle. My new hormones? Or was a kind gesture so rare? In LA, favors were on the barter system. Wealthy Angelenos only bestowed favors if they received a bigger one in exchange. Look at all the private school buildings with famous names—you think they paid for the building? They’d pay off 10 percent, get their name splashed across the top, then leave the school struggling to pay off the balance while they bought Junior into college.
Before Junior went into rehab and the singing/modeling/rapping career. Naturally.
* * *
Pep and I packed up our things, and I gave my dad a hug and he patted my back.
“I love you, Dad,” I said.
“Be good,” he said and patted me again. Good dog.
My dad was a child of the Depression. His father was an abusive alcoholic, his mother a long-suffering saint. To get to school, he walked miles in the snow in hand-me-down shoes from his older sister. He’d been small for his age, but he was tough. He joined the army at seventeen. He was a gunnery sergeant at nineteen, responsible for men much older.
If his life were an equation, the answer would be: Not a hugger.
“Watch Pep’s diet,” he said, waving his finger at me. “She’s getting too much sodium. And keep her away from the GMOs. And for crissakes, teach her some life skills.”
Translated: I love you and my granddaughter so much.
“You know what? Just send her to me every couple of weeks,” he said. “We’ll start with the basics—cooking, cleaning, balancing a checkbook.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said. “And no go on the GMOs in the meantime.”
“Keep an eye on the stock market,” he said. “Might want to stay in cash.”
“That’s easy when you have, like, forty bucks to your name,” I said. “Call Shu.”
As I left, I realized I hadn’t married my father. I’d married a different species, a rare and exotic bird of a man. The more I tried to figure it out, the more the why slithered away from me. Maybe it wasn’t about the why. Maybe it was about the who—who wouldn’t have married Trevor? It’s like asking who wouldn’t have slept with Warren Beatty in the ’70s.
No. One.
* * *
Pep and I puttered along Ocean, passing sunburned hordes of neon tourists and swarms of green Hulu bikes and terrifying scooters buzzing in and out of traffic, motorized mosquitoes diving for prey.
A typical Saturday drive in these parts is what I’m saying.
We pulled down into Santa Monica Canyon, outside a Spanish home, ivy hugging its walls, hidden behind a peeling dogwood, an old fountain gurgling in cool, shaded grass. The house was built in the 1930s for one of Howard Hughes’s favorite buxom starlets. Gio had told me she’d died there, having never left the premises for the last decade of her life. Hearing that, he’d bought it sight unseen.
I molded my hand to the tree and looked up at the sun floating through the leaves.
I couldn’t blame the old broad. I’d be buried here, if it were up to me.
“It’s a fairy-tale house,” Pep said, her eyes wide with wonder as I punched in Gio’s security code. Four numbers for the year he lost his virginity, in the middle of the Vietnam War.
“Whose house is it?” Pep asked.
“A family friend,” I said. “Daddy knows him.”
“Is Daddy coming, too?”
That’s the problem with kids—so many questions and so few answers. The alarm beeped a welcome, and I pushed the heavy door and ushered Pep inside.
* * *
I could see why Gio hadn’t sold. The house was Gio—solid, comfortable, pleasantly spooky. Spirits lived here, happy, dancing, drunk spirits. I slipped off my shoes, the cool Spanish tiles awakening my senses as I padded out to the veranda overlooking the pool, which, to no one’s surprise, at least not this reporter, was filled with leaves and green blue with algae. The land that time and The Hollywood Reporter forgot. No one would find me here. I felt myself exhale. I took another deep breath and filled my lungs with damp Santa Monica air.
I heard a noise.
A phone? A chime. The doorbell. Shit. Someone had found me. So much for the Witness Protection Program for Hollywood wives.
Whatever happened to Agnes Nash? She knew too much and said it all!
“Can I go in the pool?” Pep asked as I headed to the front door.
“It’s covered in leaves.”
“I know,” she said, wistful. “Why can’t we have a pool covered in leaves? It’s like the trees went swimming.”
The chime sprinkled the air.
Standing in front of the old Spanish door was a man in a cap and white apron, an oversized knotted plastic bag cradled in his hands.
“Are you Agnes whose smile lights up the room?” he asked.
“Depends on the size of the room,” I said, my smile lighting up the doorway, thinking of the man with the golden-tongued kiss who’d given this guy those specific instructions. “What’s this?”
“Chicken soup,” he said. “Mr. Metz said to make sure you ate right away.”
I raked enough dollar bills from my purse and coat pockets for a tip, which he refused, insisting Gio had taken care of everything. I acquiesced and dashed back inside, tiptoe-dancing on the tile, tore open the bag on the stained kitchen block, flipped off the plastic top, and sank my face into the schmaltz-glazed steam.
