Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  “Fuck off, Waverly.”

  She flashed a smile, and it was as unnerving as if I’d petted a cobra. “I adore that spunk.”

  And she was gone. I gazed over at Pep, who was still sound asleep. Thank God. No sense in both of us having nightmares.

  Years ago, I used to make chicken soup from scratch for Trevor when he was fighting a cold. I used to cook a lot of things for Trevor. That may be the only reason he married me. His mother had fed him frozen dinners, his ex-wife had ordered pizza after he’d come home from a long day at work. Trevor and I had dined out every night, mostly to Italian restaurants because Italian is the only kind of restaurant that exists in Los Angeles. Even if it’s a Chinese restaurant, you’ll find pasta on the menu. In a city where there aren’t a hell of a lot of Italians, where even the waiters at Italian restaurants are Yugoslavian. (It’s got to stop.) Well, I was sick of sticky fifty-dollar pasta disguised by boxed sauce and out-of-season truffles. Angel hair in sheep’s clothing, I said. The linguine clams has no clothes, I’d said to Trevor. He just shrugged and chowed down. He didn’t know any better. How could he? I had to put my al dente where my mouth was. I started cooking for Trevor, and after a while, we stopped going out to dinner. I made him penne with puttanesca sauce and crispy duck and eggplant parmigiana and spicy shredded beef tacos. I made chocolate chip cookies for his pals at CAA and Disney. I made him chicken soup when he was sick. I’m amazed, looking back, at how long it actually took him to marry me.

  Maybe my personality is what held him back.

  Nah.

  Then Pep was born, and Trevor and I thought we’d won the life lottery. We’d figured it out. We were pals and we were lovers. We laughed at the same jokes and relished catching up at the end of the day. We were good company. We talked to each other more than any other couple in our circle. “This is my marriage,” I’d say with blazing confidence. “It’s not going anywhere.” My friends would complain about their husbands, their kids, their pets. (My fair-weather friends, I guess, or, in Hollywood, fair box office friends.)

  Meanwhile, Trevor and I would stare into each other’s eyes over margaritas, our hearts swelling with gratitude that, over time, instead of diminishing, our love was growing. We had beaten all odds. This Hollywood marriage would have a happy ending instead of a TMZ ending.

  How could we be so lucky?

  I loved him.

  I loved him until I couldn’t stand him.

  20: Quid Pro Stole

  On Monday morning, Pep and I headed back home, well rested and well fed. (Thank you, Gio, I mused, wherever you are, blackening your lungs in the company of Frenchwomen coiled like parentheses around your bulky shoulders.) The Riviera’s curved roads, buffered by a hedge army, were empty save for the occasional nanny, head cocked, attached to a cell phone, as she pushed her bundled, silver-plated ward in a Bugaboo stroller. Rounding a turn, I almost ran over the miniature Paramount chief huffing and puffing up the hill, his trainer cooing encouragement. I felt sorry for trainers of the Hollywood power players—adult babysitters, paid to lie to their clients about their cardio capacity, their body-fat-to-muscle ratio, their marriages.

  I’d heard the conversations firsthand. “Who’s stronger, me or Ari?” “Who’s a better runner, me or Jeffrey?” “Have you ever seen Harvey work out?”

  My personal crapshoot, the security code, still worked. I breathed a sigh of relief as the gates creaked open, and I compressed Waverly’s dire warning from last night into a tight little cube and swallowed. I glanced at Pep, who was staring out the window.

  Our future was in the hands of George Treadwell.

  “Happy to be home?” I asked as I circled the driveway.

  Pep pursed her lips and looked out the window. I pulled into the garage.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Mom,” she said quietly. “I’ve been thinking . . .” She looked at me, worried, her eyes moist. “Mom, you have to win. I can’t just live with Dad. I need you.”

  I took a deep breath. “Honey, I can’t guarantee.”

  “Mom, promise me,” she said. “Mom, you’re my home. I love Dad, but he can’t, you know, handle things. Like, toast . . .” She looked around, worried. “What if I have my period and you’re not there?”

  Oh, my heart.

  My door swung open—

  “Also, can we have a princess couch?” Pep asked.

  “You won’t fucking believe this,” Fin said as she popped her head in the door. “Hi, doll!” She waved at Pep.

  “Please don’t say the F word in front of Pep,” I said.

  “I don’t fucking mind,” Pep said.

  “See?” Fin said.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “You got out already?”

  “Prison overcrowding.” Fin shrugged. “No one wants me!”

  “I want you,” Pep said.

  “And that’s all that matters, Peppers,” Fin said. “Agnes, listen, you won’t fucking believe this.”

  “There’s not a lot left that I won’t believe,” I said. “And please stop swearing.”

  “Come ’ere.” Fin grabbed my hand, pulling me through the kitchen past the swinging doors and into the living room.

  Well. There it wasn’t.

  “Where is the . . . ,” I said, tapping the side of my cheek. “I could’ve sworn there was a . . .”

  The Steinway.

  Our piano, our great, big, lonely piano, was gone. All that was left were four small divots in the rug.

  “They stole it!” Fin said. “Those Hollywood people stole my piano!”

  “My piano,” I said. I walked around the empty space where our Steinway once stood, proud and silent. Mostly silent. But hey, it looked nice, and that’s what mattered.

  “I’m the only one who ever played it. Clock’s missing, too,” Fin said, “My Tiffany fucking clock.”

  “My Tiffany fucking clock,” I said.

  “The fucking clock, too?” Pep shook her head.

  “Oh, now it’s your Tiffany clock. I was letting you borrow it,” Fin said. “Who steals something that’s stolen?”

  “I thought it wasn’t stolen.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” Fin said.

  “What the fuck,” Pep said.

  “I have to call Peter,” I said.

  “I already called the police,” Fin said. “You can’t let criminals get away with this shit.”

  * * *

  Fin wasn’t bluffing. She’d called the cops on the famous couple, but they weren’t available to come to us; I had to drive back down to the West LA station, where Fin had been hauled off in handcuffs.

  The circle of (my) life. Meanwhile.

  “This is just a big misunderstanding,” Peter, “Westside’s Realtor to the Stars™” said as we conferred under the backyard oak tree that had more legal protections than an actual human being. Peter’s voice was shaky, and he neglected to slip off his mirrored Ray-Bans, so I was talking to my reflection. And my reflection was telling me I was old. This divorce was turning me into a shar-pei.

  I thought about the shar-pei down the street that was on antidepressants. Maybe like recognizes like and I could borrow some off him.

  “You knew this was going to happen,” Fin said. Her arms were planted against her chest, staring him down as she occasionally took a drag off her cigarette and blew smoke rings at his Ray-Bans; it was all very mise-en-scène.

  Peter cleared his throat, shrinking under her gaze. “Are those prison tattoos?” he squeaked.

  “Only the ones burned in with cigarettes,” Fin said.

  “Look, it’s just a misunderstanding, girls.”

  “Girls? Girls! They misunderstood my fucking clock all the way out of this house,” Fin said.

  “Listen, Peter, Weasel and America’s Sweetheart can’t steal a whole piano,” I said. “Even though they’re famous. And rich. And powerful. Stealing is illegal, even for them!” Pause. “It is, right?” I asked.

  “Oh, they didn’t think
of it as stealing,” he said. “They’d be horrified if you thought that. They just wanted to see how your living room looked with more space! Hey, good news—they’re this close to making an offer.” He pinched his finger to his thumb.

  “I’m this close to making a police report,” I said, mirroring his gesture.

  “And I’m this close to calling that donkey-faced Harvey Levin,” Fin said. “Let’s TMZ this shit—today!”

  “No, no! They’ll bring it all back,” Peter said, waving his manicured hands. “By the end of the week. I promise.”

  “What do you mean by all?” I asked.

  He froze.

  “Never mind,” he said. “I’m on it.”

  A couple of days later, I walked in on Caster, Gabriela, and Lola in the laundry room, tittering over cups of instant coffee that they’d nuked in an old microwave.

  “Why do you keep using this thing?” I asked about the microwave, its door off its hinge. “The coffee machine is mucho mejor.”

  They started whispering, their heads in a tight circle. I would just have to wait.

  “Okay,” I said. “What’s wrong? I mean, now.”

  “Missus Aggie,” Gabriela said, first out of the chute, first to talk. “Tenemos una problema.”

  The Triplets hovered around me like hummingbirds darting in and out as I rummaged through the empty linen closet that should be called something else now. Random hand towel closet? Dust-collecting closet?

  “They took my sheets and towels?” I asked. “All of them?”

  “I wasn’t here, Missus Aggie,” Gabriela said. “Lola, tell her.”

  Lola rolled off a barrage of soft yet urgent notes. I nodded, my fist holding up my chin.

  “So what did she just say?” I asked Caster and Gabriela.

  “They took everything,” Caster said. “Mr. Wolfman, he very handsome, pero you can’t let this happen, missus. You can’t let people jus’ steal from you. What you going to do about it?”

  “You didn’t tell Fin, did you?” I asked. Fin had threatened to go to their house with a truck and pick up the piano herself.

  They shook their heads slowly, beautiful exotic birds watching a tennis match. I headed to the bathroom where I could rearrange my collection of facial creams, and I left a message for Peter.

  “Peter, they stole my sheets and towels!” I said. “What kind of monsters do you work for?”

  He returned my call immediately.

  “They were going to include them in the offer.”

  I tossed an old Noxzema in the trash.

  “Peter, you’ve been working for these people too long.”

  Eye cream from 2003. Trash.

  “Sorry, of course, okay. I’ll get them back—or I can pay you for them?”

  I didn’t have much money.

  Vitamin C serum that hurt like a thousand wasp stings. Trash.

  I didn’t have any money.

  “How much are we talking?” I asked.

  * * *

  Fin drove to Peter’s office and picked up a check for twelve grand. Those sheets I was sleeping on, Pratesi, those cost six figures. Sheets. Pillowcases. Six figures. You read that right. Are they worth it? Hells yeah. Those sheets is noice. But I’d still rather sleep with cold, hard cash.

  I guess Peter didn’t flinch when Fin demanded that figure, based on her research.

  “He only flinched when I told him I’d worked for the Mexican Mafia,” Fin said. “Good times.”

  Before our next court hearing, Trevor and I had to set a meeting with a child psychologist. “I thought we were going to parenting classes with a bunch of normal inadequate parents like us,” I said to Anne. “I was looking forward to delving into social media supervision, sleep times, and swear jars.”

  “Ulger told me Trevor would feel more comfortable in a private setting,” she said. “My stipulation is that you do it together. We want an even playing field.”

  “A therapist’s office is an uneven playing field,” I said. “Trevor loves therapy. He’s a master at therapy. He goes five days a week!”

  Trevor, like the rest of Hollywood, had spent some of the best years of his life on a therapist’s couch. The narcissist capital of the world (sorry, D.C. and NYC) loved being listened to, even if they had to pay for it. And the therapists in LA were easily corruptible; most pitched pilots and movies and reality shows on the side.

  Trevor hadn’t learned anything about himself but that he liked therapy.

  “I’ve never been to therapy,” Anne said.

  “That’s why I like you,” I said. “Okay, where do I go?”

  “By the way,” she said, “I hate to bring this up, but we’re going back and forth on the fees. There’s a chance you’ll have to pay your own.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “What are the fees again?”

  I was thinking, I don’t know, fifteen, twenty grand at this point. I could sell my jewelry, go on a payment plan.

  “We’re at $75,000,” Anne said. “Not counting this phone call.”

  “’kay, bye!” I said and hung up.

  Legal fees are like ordering a chopped salad at a restaurant. No matter how much you eat, how much you chip away at that bounty of lettuce and cheese and whatnot, there’s always more. Always. In high school, they should teach kids just to stay away from lawyers if they want to keep their money. Stay away from the court system. Makes so much more sense than teaching them algebra.

  Speaking of chopped salad.

  The best chopped salad is at La Scala Presto in Brentwood—order it with turkey, garbanzos, cheese, tomatoes, and an Italian dressing that is just the right amount of piquant. A Hollywood ex-wife I know orders it without turkey, without garbanzos, without cheese, and without dressing. Her action director husband still divorced her skinny ass, dyed his hair blond, and dates teenagers.

  She should’ve just had the fucking cheese.

  I tracked Fin to the side of the house, where she sat with her knees screwed into the dirt, pulling up weeds with Pep in our vegetable garden. I hadn’t seen the gardeners in a couple of weeks. I wondered if Esteban had been fired or, maybe, his Mexican wife who lived in Calexico—as opposed to his Mexican wife who lived in Whittier—had snapped. Every once in a while, he came to work with a black eye and a sheepish smile. Anyway, the hillside was going to seed. Vines stretched their limbs, threatening to strangle rosebushes. The fruit trees were losing their budding offspring to birds and vermin and deer.

  Pep’s arms were glazed with sunscreen, her head covered by one of Fin’s myriad minor-league baseball caps that she’d managed to collect from all over the country. There were pieces that were missing from my mental puzzle of Fin’s life. A year, here and there in her twenties, early thirties. Many months that I hadn’t spoken to her. Days I thought she must be dead, and I’d braced against the news that would arrive at any moment, a rock thrown from the sky at my heart.

  Of course, she was always fine; I was the sister losing years of my life worrying.

  “You won’t believe the numbers,” I said, struggling to stay balanced in my sensible heels, the perfect height for a therapy session being about two inches, give or take. “Legal fees. It’s insanity.”

  “Divorce is a rich man’s game,” Fin said while she clawed at the dirt, her skull rings glinting in the sun.

  “Well, that works for Trevor,” I said. “How do I look?”

  “Old?” Pep said, looking up from her work.

  “Maternal,” Fin said. “Pep, can you go fetch my pack from the kitchen? You know where it is.”

  “Please don’t smoke,” I said.

  “All this fresh air,” Fin said, “makes me miss that Riverside sludge.”

  “Give me a hug first,” I said to Pep, and she wrapped her arms around me, warm and slippery as eels.

  She climbed up the hillside, holding on to her Albuquerque Isotopes cap.

  “That’s what I was going for,” I said. “Maternal. Does my daughter all of a sudden smell like BO?”
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  “She’s growing up,” Fin said. “Fast. You know, maybe you and Trevor should just get back together.”

  I picked my lower jaw up from the dirt. “What did you just . . . we hate each other.”

  “I know,” Fin said, shielding her eyes as she gazed up at me. “You hate Trevor. Trevor hates you. That kind of passion is hard to come by.”

  She pulled out another carrot and brushed it off. “Me, I don’t hate any of my exes.”

  “Who are you talking to?” I said. “Your hate knows no bounds. Your exes know no bounds, either, which is why you have those restraining orders.”

  “Nope. I’m annoyed by them. Occasionally, I’d slash a tire and they’d put fists through drywall. That’s different.”

  “I give up.”

  “I’m just saying, if you knew what’s out there, maybe you’d make nice for the next thirty or so years.”

  I stared at her.

  “Fin, I’d stay if I could. I stayed for a long time. I can’t anymore. It’s not even personal to Trevor. It’s the world he inhabits. The world he loves. I don’t fit in anymore. I don’t think I ever really did.”

  I crouched down next to her.

  “I was at dinner in Malibu, and a director said, straight-faced, ‘It’s not enough that I succeed, it’s that my friends fail.’ Everyone laughed.”

  “Because it’s funny,” Fin said. “You take this shit too seriously.”

  “I don’t want to raise Pep to be like them,” I said. “I want her to be normal.”

  “Normal? What’s normal?” Fin asked. “Me? Dad? The way you and I were raised, to never depend on anyone, never trust anyone, and know that no matter where you go, bad luck will follow you. Everything is stacked against the Murphys! That’s how we like it!”

  I took a deep breath. The air smelled like ocean and manure; the wind was picking up the neighbors’ stables below.

  “Normal is a state of mind,” I said. “It’s like the famous line about porn. I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it.”

  Beat.

  “What kind of idiot can’t describe porn?” Fin asked.

  * * *

  “Daddy,” the icy blonde with breasts as large and firm as the tires on her (educated guess) ten-year-old white Range Rover said as she swung her bare feet toward Trevor, having slipped off her heels. Her toenails were purple, embellished at the tips with rhinestones. “Daddy, what do you like doing with me?”