Anne appeared, tapping my shoulder. “Agnes? We’re on.”
“Oh, that’s me,” I said. “I’m Anonymous. Forget I ever told you my name.”
I looked back before I walked in the courtroom. Hank had just said something that made Alicia laugh. I smiled and thought about that dollar crystal.
“If it pleases the court,” Ulger Blecks said, banging his cane on the floor in front of the judge. “Agnes Murphy has proven herself to be a deficient, negligent, wholly unfit mother.”
Blecks was giving the performance of a lifetime or maybe the performance of just that morning. This was my first divorce, so I had nothing to compare it to. After a few more, I could judge more discriminately. But so far, I’d say watch your backs, Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington.
“He’s missing ‘homicidal,’” I whispered.
“Shhh,” Anne said.
“She allows a felon to babysit her only child, sir,” Blecks wheezed. “A thief. A drug dealer. A parolee.”
“No one’s perfect,” I whispered.
Blecks turned and trained his raisin eyes on me. I thought of angry Cabbage Patch dolls.
“And just recently, Judge, this woman was filmed collapsing at her own book signing,” Blecks said, spittle flying from the black gape above his chin. Ah, shit. I wrinkled my nose. “Ac-ci-dent included. Sir, we’d like to ask the court to commence drug testing on a thrice-weekly basis.”
Anne sprang up from the table. “Objection! This is an absolute manipulation, a complete twisting of the facts—”
“My client is only asking what’s in the best interests of his daughter,” he said. “Sir, he’s filing for an ex parte judgment of full custody, effective immediately.”
The judge, with the silver-blond hair and checkered skin of a man who grew up surfing and probably hit third point that morning, landed his gaze on Anne.
“Ms. Barrows,” he said, “I’m assuming you have something more to add.”
“I do, Your Honor,” she said. “I have quite a bit to add.”
Surreal doesn’t begin to describe the experience of being on trial for your child. What’s beyond surreal? Surreal-plus? Surreal-extra? Custody battles are fought every day, but when you become a parent, you don’t anticipate proving yourself worthy to raise your child in front of a judge. Unless you’re a professional athlete and you accidentally stick your penis in some strange woman’s vagina and here you are.
“Your Honor,” Anne said, “this is ridiculous. My client’s sister has not violated parole. She is charged with knowingly obtaining stolen property, but I had a chance to look at the police documents. It’s my suspicion that she’ll be released in the next day or so. Just in time for Ulger and his crew to wrest temporary custody from my client.”
“Objection!”
“Overruled,” the judge said. “Ms. Barrows, how do you suppose these charges aren’t legitimate?”
“I talked to the lieutenant on the case,” Anne said. “They don’t have a victim, Your Honor. No one’s reported the property stolen. This is an allegation based on a supposition. Nothing more. And it was orchestrated by Mr. Anonymous.”
The silver surfer-haired judge turned from checkerboard to pink like a gecko changing shades. This new tidbit had thrown him for a loop. I watched him carefully and a little acquisitively. He was attractive and seemingly reasonable. A rarity in Los Angeles. No wedding ring, not even a shadow of one. I wondered if he were single. I wondered if he were gay. I wondered if he were single and gay and open to change?
“Counsel, approach the bench,” he said.
Trevor stood up.
“Not you, Mr. Anonymous,” the judge said. “Your attorney.”
Ulger squeezed Trevor’s shoulder, and he fumbled with the chair before sitting down. I peered over and caught Trevor’s eye. I wiggled my fingers, giving him a quarter wave. I couldn’t help it. We knew each other. We had loved each other—or, at least, I’d loved him and he’d loved that I loved him. A small part of me (that I should probably bury) clung to the familiar. Trevor was no mystery to me. I knew everything there was to know about him. And though he was a genius in his work, he was clunky in the game of life chess.
In one breath, the room brightened with realization.
I wasn’t going to be afraid anymore.
Of course he set up my sister—of course he was going for full custody.
He knew there was a chance I might survive.
I’d never be forgiven.
I had to think like he did. I concentrated. What is Trevor’s next move?
He turned away.
I knew he’d do that! I was already good at this.
I looked ahead, straining to hear the hushed conversation between the stately Anne and the belligerent Ulger, who was making a miniseries of his disapproval, shaking his head, stomping his feet, banging his cane.
“Let’s move this into chambers,” the judge said. His eyes, the color of the murky Pacific, magnified by his aviator glasses, tracked Trevor and me. “Mr. and Mrs. Anonymous, you both may wait outside.”
“Is that us?” Trevor asked Blecks.
Outside the courtroom, I watched Trevor struggling with his phone for a full ten minutes before I decided to walk over to him.
“There’s no Wi-Fi,” I said. “No wifey, no Wi-Fi. Get it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re not going to get much service,” I said. “Try turning the Wi-Fi off; maybe that’ll work.”
He shot me with that infamous death stare that made development execs cry, then skated away as I slowly turned into an ice sculpture.
Not really. I wasn’t scared, remember?
I could see him tap on his phone.
“You’re welcome!” I said.
He turned and scowled, then went back to his lover, Siri.
“May I make a suggestion?” I’d sneaked up on him.
“No,” he said. “Leave me alone.”
“Our divorce has been so much fun, not to mention great for my figure, but can we end this circus?” I said. “Our lawyers meet once a month for book club, and they’ve probably already arrived at our magic number, the one they’ll argue this case up to.”
“I’m not going to settle,” he said. “I don’t settle. Ever.”
“You settled when you married me,” I said. Smile?
“Look how well that turned out,” he said.
He had me there. I deflated, expelling all the oxygen I’d held on to that morning.
“So how’s everything else going?” I asked. “I like the new trailer on that Hanks film.”
“Everything’s great,” he said. “Never better.”
“Terrific,” I said.
“Are you dating Gio Metz?” he asked.
I blinked. “What?”
“Are you fucking Gio Metz?”
“No!”
“Are you thinking about fucking him?” He sounded jealous. Maybe I didn’t know everything there was to know about him.
“What do you mean?” He could tell I was lying. I’m a terrible liar in addition to being a terrible mother. Someone call Blecks.
“He fucks anything that walks,” Trevor said.
I pressed my lips into a straight line.
“What if it swims?” I asked.
Trevor actually gave me a smile.
“Just don’t be stupid,” he said.
“I try,” I said.
“Hey, do you know why everyone’s into anal now? What’s that about?” He looked baffled. Then I looked baffled. We stood there, baffled together, bonding over the anal craze.
“Anonymous!” the bailiff called out.
“That’s us,” I said, skirting more anal talk. Was this the brave new world of dating? My sphincter winced as I stepped gingerly, following Trevor into the courtroom.
“We have a court order for parenting classes,” I told Dad, who liked to call me every day for divorce and Gio updates. He, like everyone else, was madly in love with
Gio. And Dad hadn’t even French-kissed him. Not that he wouldn’t try.
“You need someone to teach you how to parent?” he said, practically spitting out the words. “That’s pathetic.”
“It’s also the law,” I said. “I have to go. If I don’t, I could lose Pep.”
“Who needs classes for parenting? We didn’t have those when you were kids. It’s the damn government, turning us all into sheep. Wait ’til AI has its way with us. Don’t get me started on GMO.”
“Well, maybe I can learn something,” I said. “Everything I know about parenting is from you and a quarter of a mom.”
“Me?” He sounded shocked, “I was a great father.”
“You definitely did your best,” I said, “but if you recall, I cried every day, and how many times was Fin called in for beating up boys?”
My father laughed, his proud dad psyche dining out on the memory. “You cried every day because you were a scaredy-cat. Now, your sister, on the other hand—I remember a call I got from an angry mother,” he said. “Her son came home with a black eye. The kid was a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than Fin. He was the class bully. Fin whooped his sorry ass.”
Point taken.
“Maybe that’s why, Dad,” I said, tempering my approach, “Fin doesn’t mind going to prison. She learned to settle things with her fists. That doesn’t work in the real world.”
“Let me tell you something, dearie,” Dad said and lowered his voice, which was how I knew he was heated. “The world was a better place when we settled matters with fists rather than lawyers.”
I opened my mouth to object and found that I couldn’t argue with him. I would’ve loved to have popped Ulger in the mouth, but I feared he would eat it.
The intercom rang.
“I gotta go, Dad,” I said.
“Let me know next time you go out with Gio,” he said. “Be good!”
I hung up and pressed the line to the gate.
“Hey, Agnes,” a man said. “We’re here.”
I clicked on the TV to see the bank of security cameras and narrowed my eyes at the screen. Peter, “Westside’s Realtor to the Stars™” was waving at the front gate.
“I see you’re here, Peter,” I said. “But why?”
There was a pause. People talking in the background.
“My clients are spending the weekend,” he said, his voice sotto voce and mucho anxious. I heard grumbling. “Agnes . . . you’re supposed to be cleared out.”
19: You Can’t Go Home Again
When famous people decide to buy something, they often want it for free. That Weaselly Fuck and America’s Sweetheart wanted to buy the house. Wait. No. They were almost positive, somewhat confident, more or less committed to buying the house, but they needed to spend the long weekend in the place.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” I said to Peter, who didn’t bat an eye. He couldn’t bat an eye. It appeared he’d had his eyes welded—but open—by an iron. Evening had fallen, and I’d holed up with the unblinking Peter in our bar where, if you looked east, and bent over at a ninety-degree angle and shielded your eyes from the blaze of sunset, you could see all the way to O. J.’s Rockingham house.
I refilled Peter’s bourbon.
“I’m finding myself saying that a lot these days, Peter,” I said. “I’ve never heard of a man who has his sister-in-law arrested on a bullshit charge. I’ve never heard of a man who sells a house out from under his family. I’ve never heard of a man who talks to his wife about all the women demanding anal—”
“You’re not in my business, Ag,” Peter said. “In this market, you’re lucky they’re not asking for a month. The bottom dropped out, you know.”
“Don’t talk to me about dropping bottoms,” I said, sipping from my glass. “I can’t even find mine anymore.”
The famous couple was sequestered in the kitchen with the lamentable fireplace, no doubt recharging our French and German appliances (maybe I could sell them?) with their star power, while simultaneously sucking out all the oxygen in the room. With movie stars, it can all happen at once. Judging from their hushed yet urgent tones, they weren’t happy with my presence. Stars don’t like civilian-mixing unless it’s preapproved; like they’ve notified paparazzi they’ll be skipping out of James Perse at the Brentwood Country Mart between 12:15 and 12:20.
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.
Been There, Married That (ARC) Page 23
