Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  Trevor ran his hands through his hair.

  “I, uh, like to . . .” He looked at me, sitting on the other end of yet another therapy couch. This one was light gray and too soft and too low. The air conditioner blasted the arctic front down our backs, and the blonde’s cold nipples pointed toward the SoulCycle across the street.

  “You like to watch your old movies with her,” I said, prompting him. I had already run through, in my head, I like to watch her games, I like to put her to sleep, I like to take her to Rosie’s ice cream shop after school. None of those worked.

  “Yes!” Trevor turned toward the therapist. “She—”

  “Talk to me like I’m Pep,” she said and winked.

  “Is this normal?” Trevor asked me, alarmed.

  I sighed. Our Pep didn’t use therapy as a personal Match.com. But on the other hand, what better place to get to know someone?

  “We need a new therapist,” I said to Anne, who’d called me after the session. I’d taken to talking extra fast on legal calls, like Audible 3x. I sounded like a human chipmunk.

  “Why? What’s wrong with this one?”

  “Who, Angelyne?”

  “She comes highly recommended.”

  “I’m getting very mixed signals,” I said. “I’m not well versed in child psychology, but should family therapists look like they’re auditioning for Real Housewives of Equinox?”

  “In this town, the answer is yes,” Anne said. “I called because I have news.”

  “I hope it’s fake news,” I said. “It’s the only kind of news I can stomach.”

  “We lost Morris.”

  “Who?”

  “Our judge. He had a surfing accident.”

  “I knew it,” I said. “Surfing in LA shows poor judgment, pardon the pun. Who surfs in those syphilis-coated waters? Who do we have now?”

  “Fezel,” she said. She didn’t sound happy.

  “Is he tough?”

  “She,” Anne said.

  “So that’s good, right? A she? Sisterhood and all that, fight the power, fight the man, mansplaining and man-spreading and Manhattans, right?”

  “No.” Anne sighed. “Adorna Fezel. She’s basically our worst nightmare. A childless judge. In fact, I’m not sure she ever was a child.”

  21: Disorder in the Court

  Juliette overdosed on a girls’ trip to Cabo, but it wasn’t like it was a big deal or anything, as she told it. In terms of overdoses or overdoing-it doses (as she called them), this one was mild. Her heart hadn’t even stopped.

  She’d been floating in the hotel infinity pool and one of the waiters had bought her a few drinks, then offered her a few pills, then offered her his dick, and then a few more pills, and before she knew it, she was helicoptered out to an emergency room somewhere on the Baja Peninsula.

  Now, she was happily ensconced in her tidy room at New Hope Malibu. (Promises was booked; a bridal shower in the Colony had taken a wrong turn on the Percocet highway.)

  “Guys, I’m starting to trace all my issues to my mom,” Juliette said. “I think she overloved me and gave me too much attention, and honestly, it just made me hate myself. Who deserves that much unconditional love?’

  “I love Pep unconditionally,” I said. “I hope she doesn’t hate me so much she has to drug herself.”

  “She already hates you; all girls hate their moms,” Liz said. “It comes and goes like a wave. Are you familiar with the self-loathing wave?”

  “I surf the self-loathing pipeline every morning,” I said. “I just realized something. My mothering is based on TV shows. All I know about mothering is from Clair Huxtable. I’ll never measure up.”

  “My mom touchstone is Carol Brady,” Liz said.

  “Morticia Addams,” Juliette said, raising her hand.

  We had a moment of silence.

  “Okay. Enough about your semi-overdose,” I said. “My legal bills are mounting. I may have to sell Pep.”

  “I’ll buy her,” Liz said, “then you could still see her. I mean, you could cook for us and take her to the movies on occasion.”

  “You’re a perfect co-parent already,” I said. “I seriously don’t know what I’m going to do if I have to pay for my attorneys.”

  “Why don’t you have your jewelry ‘stolen’?” Liz said in air quotes. “My mom has hers stolen when she gets tired of it. I know the guy in Beverly Hills.”

  “Insurance pays top dollar,” Juliette said.

  “Rich people know things,” I said. “I’ll have awful famous couple visit the house and leave my jewelry draped over the chopping block.”

  “Sign over that Venice house to your dad, by the way,” Liz said.

  “I would, but I worry,” I said. “He dates women he’s met off the internet.”

  “Start a GoFundMe page,” Juliette said. “I did. Half the people here have GoFundMe pages. They raise money for rehab, get out, and spend the rest on drugs.”

  “It’s like the Krebs cycle for sober living,” I said.

  “I set mine up for my assault,” Juliette said.

  “Oh my God. Juliette. Why didn’t you tell me? You were assaulted? The hotel in Mexico!”

  “Oh no. This guy grabbed my ass at a nightclub,” she said. “It was like thirteen years ago.”

  “Are you out of money, too?” I asked.

  “She needs to pay off her plastic surgeon,” Liz said.

  “Times are tough. I just leased a brown BMW,” Juliette said with a shudder. “Anyone who drives a brown car is poor.”

  I looked up Juliette’s GoFundMe page as soon as I got in the car. There was a big picture of Juliette with the tight, shiny skin of a mango, playing with a kitten.

  There were updates. A few pictures down, it showed her with a bright red face—the result, she claimed, of a sun allergy. Which looked suspiciously a CO2 laser allergy.

  She’d raised $15,000.

  I scanned other GoFundMe posts—a disabled veteran bordering on homelessness in Seattle, a young family burying a toddler raising money for funeral expensive. Both parties were asking for three grand.

  I took out a secret card I only used for dire emergencies—one that Trevor had forgotten but I’d felt too guilty to use. I donated money I didn’t have while sitting in my car in the hot Malibu sun. I couldn’t pay my own bills, but somewhere in Seattle, a veteran would sleep with a roof over his head, and in Omaha, a toddler would be buried.

  Perspective is everything, I told myself.

  Except cash. Perspective isn’t cash.

  * * *

  Trevor and I were hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains on a hazy, damp morning, and I twisted my ankle running down a hillside. So. There’s childbirth pain, then there’s sprained ankle pain a mile in on a hike. At least in childbirth, you’re handed a baby afterward.

  Trevor had picked me up and carried me all the way down the mountain to our car. I’d gazed at him, my heart filled with love. He’d kissed me and set me down gently in the passenger seat.

  He’d kept kissing me, and we made out in the car, my ankle throbbing, until the windows fogged up. I remember someone’s car alarm going off in the distance. To this day, the right car alarm tugs at my heart.

  The car alarm in my dream never stopped. I opened my eyes. I’d slept through my iPhone alarm.

  I looked at the time—7:10. I had to be in court by 8:00.

  Fin borrowed Esteban’s hedge clippers and snipped off ankle monitor #3 (we’d named him Ted) to drive me even though I knew I could drive myself even though I was freaking out and finding it hard to see. Google Maps was telling me I was late. Waze was telling me I’d blown it. That’s when you knew you were in trouble. Google Maps was the spinster of traffic directions, sending you the safest, longest way to your destination; Waze was your dissolute, alcoholic cousin, guaranteeing a head-on with a trailer truck on a left turn onto a four-lane highway, but you’d arrive three minutes earlier.

  Fin flew down streets and alleyways and I closed my eyes, an
d when I opened them, she was pushing me out the door in front of the looming courthouse on Figueroa.

  “Are you coming in?” I asked.

  “I just cut off my ankle monitor, so I should call N’Chelle and head out there.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She looked at me. “I’ll go find a parking spot.”

  * * *

  Anne had cornered Ulger at their monthly history book club (this month’s selection: Warren G. Harding: The Presidential Diaries) and forced him to streamline the process by not allowing him his Pappy Van Winkle, straight, until he agreed we’d shoot for one court hearing for both custody and support. One. Not eight.

  Court was already in session. I sneaked in, searching for a familiar face in a sea of marital despair. The atmosphere was so poisonous I hesitated to inhale.

  Sitting on the bench in front of the courtroom, before the great seal of California, was a large woman, her pudgy mitt, encircled with gold bangles, serving as a hammock for her chins as she eyed a lawyer in a suit that should’ve been buried in the ’80s. Adorna Fezel clicked her long, red nails, painted with the blood of children. The lawyer’s client sat forward, shoulders hunched.

  There are places you’d like to live and not visit and places you’d like to visit but not live. This was neither.

  “Your Honor, my client is concerned about his Star Wars collectibles. His ex-wife hasn’t handed over Princess Leia, despite a court order.”

  The judge replied, then her heavily lined sapphire eyes flicked my way as I tiptoed toward a row of gold watches and pinkie rings.

  “Can I sit with you guys?” I asked Ulger. His young, yet-to-be-disfigured henchmen shook their heads and growled.

  “Sit with your attorney,” Ulger said, scowling.

  “Anne isn’t here yet.”

  “Agnes,” Ulger said.

  “Ulger,” I said, mimicking his baritone. “Okay, okay, I’ll be back there if you need me. Nice jacket, by the way. Did you wear that for me?”

  Who needs drugs when you have nerves? I squeezed into a seat where I could watch Ulger whisper sweet, expensive nothings to his underlings. He glanced back at me. I winked. Anne, just in time to stand in front of my humiliation train, slid in next to me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I was just down the hall, another case.”

  “Business is booming,” I said.

  “It’s certainly not the dry season,” she said. “I have good news for you.”

  “Good news?” It felt like I hadn’t heard that phrase in so long. I repeated it to see how it felt, rolling around my tongue like a caramel. “Good news?”

  “The Penthouse therapist gave us a favorable report,” she said. “The judge can’t ignore that. I think you’ll be very pleased.”

  Trevor must’ve rejected her advances. I almost burst into tears. I grabbed her hand.

  “I wasn’t worried, but I was worried,” she said. “So now, the primary focus will be on finances.”

  “Great! I don’t have any,” I said. “This should be a breeze.”

  I barely had time to compose myself when the bailiff turned from the judge’s bench and yelled, “Anonymous v. Anonymous!” as though we were in Yankee Stadium, not a claustrophobic courtroom filled with people barely keeping their heads above water. A few folks started shuffling out. “You might want to stay for this,” I said as I weaved toward the front of the courtroom to take my seat of shame.

  The bailiff eyed Trevor’s team as five attorneys, two carrying a large poster board, clambered up to the plaintiff’s table in front of the judge. It seemed a strange place to bring artwork.

  “How many of them are there?” the bailiff asked. “It’s like a circus.”

  “Complete with clown car,” I said and settled in.

  I remember what happened in that courtroom like a movie sequence, like something that didn’t happen to me but perhaps to Sandra Bullock. Like so:

  INT. COURTROOM—MIDMORNING

  The air is stifling. Outside, the day promises to be a hot one. The courtroom is filled with people—men in suits, men holding their caps in their hands, shuffling their feet in their seats. Women in black and gray, clutching tissues, their lawyers speaking softly in their ears. The presiding judge is a big lady, a massive judicial structure, her dishwater hair with one curl adorning her forehead like an upside down question mark. Her nails are inches long and painted red. She spends a lot of money, time, and effort on her hair and nails. Our heroine, Agnes, sits next to her lawyer, Anne, in front of the judge. Agnes is wearing a light pink dress with a small bow at the collar, a suit jacket, and modest heels. She looks professional and in charge and the type of person who’s not afraid to wear pastels to court. She has a, dare we say, Jennifer Garner / Sandra Bullock mom-next-door quality. She looks quite young for her age (and like a really nice, decent person). Anne, her lawyer, is what you want to grow up to be; she’s attractive and commanding and looks like someone who should be on a dollar bill.

  On the other side, Trevor sits with Ulger Blecks and a slew of other, smaller-in-stature attorneys. A Russian nesting doll of diminishing attorneys. Or an Attorneys “R” Us store, all sharing the same solemn, dour expressions, even though a couple are so young Agnes could’ve given birth to them. There are poster boards involved.

  The judge clears her throat. The bracelets jingle and jangle. Agnes leans over to Anne.

  AGNES: This is the person who’s going to be deciding the fate of my child.

  ANNE: No. You decide her fate. She settles living arrangements.

  Agnes leans back in her chair.

  AGNES: Duly noted, counselor.

  BAILIFF: Anonymous v. Anonymous. Honorable Judge Fezel residing.

  Agnes, Anne, Ulger, and his attorneys all stand, making a lot of noise.

  Agnes turns and looks at the courtroom. All eyes are on them. No one’s left the room.

  She turns back.

  BAILIFF: Anonymous v. Anonymous, case number 46E.

  The bailiff hands the judge a file.

  JUDGE (shuffling papers, looking down): We’ll start with distribution of property. Who’d like to go first?

  ANNE: Ulger?

  Ulger smiles.

  ULGER: I’d love to.

  Ulger stands and moves to the front of the table. His minions stand beside him, with their visual aids, which have not been unveiled yet. It’s all very dramatic.

  ULGER, CONT: Judge Fezel, I’m sure you’re aware that the economy has shifted, and even clients like mine have experienced a change in their lifestyles. No longer can Mr. Anonymous fly private, for example, to New York, for a meeting with, say, Denzel Washington, or even to a premiere of his newest movie. The Paramount jet is no more, sold to the Russians. The Sony jet is no more; the Universal jet a memory. Producers are paying for their own tickets and sometimes hotel rooms. Per diems have dwindled. Movies have to come in, Judge Fezel, under budget and on time. The Chinese, who now own half the studios, brutally slash film budgets and studio deals and free coffee. Let me show you some statistics.

  JUDGE FEZEL: Please.

  ULGER (to his team): Unveil the poster boards.

  Ulger’s minions drop the black covers from the boards, and Agnes can feel everyone in the rows behind her leaning forward in their seats. At least they’re getting a show, if not a Princess Leia action figure.

  Graphs and columns and numbers saturate the boards.

  AGNES (to Anne): I got a C, okay C-, in macroeconomics—what does this mean?

  JUDGE FEZEL: Mr. Blecks, I’m anticipating that you’ll explain, in a timely manner.

  ULGER: Of course, Your Honor. Here (pointing to the first board), you’ll see the effect that streaming has had on movies and television, my client’s bread and butter.

  And here, you’ll see the concomitant effect on Mr. Anonymous’s income.

  (The judge squinted above her glasses.)

  JUDGE FEZEL: Is that . . . how many zeros is that?

  ULGER: It’s gone
from seven to six.

  JUDGE FEZEL: Seven zeros.

  ULGER: To six, your honor.

  JUDGE FEZEL: Please proceed.

  * * *

  Allow me, First-Person Agnes, to step in here to paraphrase the rest of Ulger Blecks’s opening statement. Ulger painted a bleak picture of Mr. Anonymous living just above the poverty line—the poverty line providing enough for five lawyers, a kid in private school, and a penthouse at Testosterone Towers. The judge watched him paint a squalid picture, his voice building, then diminishing as he waxed eloquently about the trials and tribulations of a producer finding himself at the mercy of a revolving door of studio heads and the goddamned economy.

  Magic show! The master of ceremonies gestured with his cane, and another poster board was unveiled by a magician’s assistant / junior lawyer.

  Voilà! A graph of Trevor’s past to future projected earnings. It had a sort of modern art feel—lines, squiggles, numbers, letters—that I thought would go well in my future dining room, if I were lucky enough to have one.

  Forget HBO, Hulu, Netflix, and Chill. I turned and looked around the courtroom. Every sad, anxious, angry pair of eyes was glued to the bull in a suit banging his cane. I didn’t blame them. Mr. Anonymous’s life was fascinating to me, and I’d lived it as a guest. More like an accessory. A human being that went with everything. You could pair me with a premiere, a dinner party, a trip on a billionaire’s yacht. I went with everything until I had too many opinions and a baby, and then I went with nothing.

  Anne rose to speak after Ulger collapsed next to his troops, spent; the poster boards were retired. I wanted to ask him if I could keep it as a souvenir.

  Anne rebutted Ulger’s claims point-by-point (“current savings”) as I tuned out (“projected income”) and stared at my feet. I’d wasted years writing books when I could’ve been working on a series, going to med school even though I hated blood and chemistry—okay, law school, a trade, a skill, anything else. I’d made just enough money to buy my dad a house and pay my sister’s legal bills. That had been sufficient. Had been. Was. That was then, this is now. But I hadn’t put anything away. I was no different from any other observer in the courtroom, except no one would feel sorry for me. I didn’t blame them. I didn’t feel sorry for me. I felt ashamed.