The Last Birthday Party

by Gary Goldstein

  “Well, they don’t know what they’re missing.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  A few days after he returned from Cambria, Jeremy found himself hiring his first and—please, God—last divorce lawyer, the unfortunately named but otherwise agreeable Arvin Box.

  The attorney’s neat, understated office was in a high-rise building in Encino, unlike Cassie’s lawyer who worked in the swankier Century City, in one of the Westside area’s many elite mega-towers. It meant nothing to Jeremy, who was simply happy that if he had to drive over the hill and into the San Fernando Valley he could pay a visit to his mother, who lived near Box’s building, following his appointment.

  After a few minutes of chitchat about Annabelle—Arvin already knew that she and Jeremy were an item (“Please take good care of my boyfriend,” she no doubt told her former client)—and show business (his daughter-in-law’s sister wrote sitcoms, did Jeremy know her?), the natty, sixtyish Arvin got down to brass tacks. His genial manner turned appropriately steely as he asked Jeremy a fusillade of personal questions, laid out the pros and cons of Jeremy’s legal prospects against Cassie, explained his fee structure and promised a swift and mutually satisfying conclusion to the proceedings—as long as Jeremy and his ex-wife stayed as practical, realistic, and unemotional as possible. (Shades of Cassie’s warning to Jeremy; must be a lawyer thing.)

  “Just know, knock wood, that I have more work than I need, so it’s also in my best interest to wrap this up as quickly and amicably as possible. If that sounds like bullshit, I assure you it’s not. That being said, I’ll fight like a motherfucker to make sure you don’t get taken to the cleaners and can walk away with the most intact and dignified life you possibly can.”

  As if in punctuation, Arvin popped a few gummy bears from a jar on his desk. He offered the candy to Jeremy, who declined, too queasy to ingest more than the overwhelming reality of his case.

  That, unfortunately, included the confirmation that yes, given California’s community property laws, Jeremy would have to buy out Cassie’s share in their Laurel Canyon home—at current market value—if he wanted to stay in it. It wasn’t impossible, but it also wasn’t recommended.

  “You can put yourself in total hock if you want,” said Arvin. “But unless you’ve got unlimited funds, it’s cleaner and frankly smarter to just sell and start the hell over on your own.”

  Jeremy’s shoulders sagged.

  There was a ray of sunlight for Jeremy: the fact that, at least until just recently, Cassie made significantly more money than he did, even with her modest lawyerly earnings from the nonprofit sector. So she may be legally obligated to pay temporary alimony until the divorce was finalized. On the downside, because, of course, there had to be one, Cassie would get to share in any and all profits from Offensive Measures, even if Jeremy didn’t receive any actual money from the sale until after the split.

  “You wrote it while you were together, so Cassie can claim she was your motivator, cheerleader, muse, dick stroker, whatever, and deserves to share in its success. Tale as old as time,” explained the attorney, dipping into the jar for a gummy bear refill. He seemed to favor the green ones.

  “Technically,” Jeremy thought out loud, “I rewrote the script after she left, and sold it based on that draft, not the early ones.”

  Arvin scribbled a few notes, then looked back up. “Irrelevant, counselor!” he shot back like a bad actor in a courtroom scene. “Wish it wasn’t, but the law’s the law. And some things you can’t argue.”

  “Don’t you just hate it when that happens?” Jeremy joked, but his heart wasn’t in it. Still, his general terror aside, Jeremy got a good feeling about Arvin. He found him supportive, direct, and helpfully unequivocal. In truth, Jeremy needed as few choices to make as possible; things would go faster that way and it would keep his head clear for all the major non-divorce items he’d be dealing with over the next few months.

  Arvin rotely outlined next steps—serving and responding to divorce papers was up top—and tossed out a string of terms like “petitioner,” “temporary orders,” “disclosure,” “discovery,” “settlement,” “hearing,” and “trial,” all of which landed for Jeremy in a big, blurry mental heap.

  “Oh, and the second you get home,” Arvin added, “you must change the passwords to all your personal accounts—and don’t forget everything on the goddamn cloud.”

  “Okay, but Cassie would never go in and steal anything. She’s not that type of person. I mean, she’s a lawyer herself, so.” Jeremy could see Arvin’s gaze withering in real time. Jeremy, sufficiently cowed, said, “Okay, got it,” then handed over his Visa card to pay his new lawyer’s ample retainer.

  “Guess who called me today?” asked Joyce with nothing short of self-satisfied glee.

  “Barack Obama. He heard he was the one person in the world you’d most like to have lunch with, and he’s ready to take you up on your offer. What are you going to wear?” Jeremy was fixing Joyce’s oven door; the screws on each side had simultaneously popped out, and she was left with a lethal accordion of metal and glass.

  “That’s still one of my fantasies, but no, guess again,” she answered as she watched Jeremy try to align the door’s trio of weighty slats. “And for God’s sake be careful with that thing. I really should have called a repairman.”

  Jeremy gritted his teeth as he squeezed the panels together and, one at a time, carefully reinserted the Phillips-head screws that held them in place. What a piece of shit, he thought, but kept that to himself. He didn’t want to offend Joyce. She was so proud of every major purchase she’d made on her own since Larry died. “I don’t know, Ma, who called you today?”

  “Your soon-to-be ex-mother-in-law, that’s who!”

  “Rhea called you? Really? She and Henry haven’t even called me all this time.” Jeremy gave the oven door screws one final tighten and declared victory. “Gotcha, you bastard!”

  Joyce eyeballed the mended door. “I take it back, I didn’t need a repairman. You’re my hero.”

  “Just call me Superson,” her hero quipped, relieved he had actually fixed the damn thing. “So what did she say?”

  “Who, Rhea? Oh, just that she and Henry felt terrible about you and Cassie and hoped we could still be friends.” Joyce opened and shut the oven door a few times with a wondrous look.

  “That’s it? After twenty-seven years?”

  “Sounds like it was more than you got.”

  Jeremy glared at his mom’s unlikely flippancy.

  She squeezed his arm. “Sorry, sweetie, I’m just saying.”

  “Okay, but you were never exactly friends, so why now?”

  “Well, we were friend-ly. And God knows we’ve spent enough time around each other. But, y’know, your father never got past them backing out of paying for the wedding, so he mostly just put up with them for appearance’s sake.” She grabbed the kettle off the stovetop. “I’m making some tea. Want some?”

  Jeremy checked his watch. “I’ll take a beer if you have one.”

  “Ooh, good idea. It’s too hot out for tea, anyway.” Joyce flung open the fridge, dug out a couple of bottles of Corona, and handed one to Jeremy.

  They sat across from each other on stools at the squat granite peninsula that stuck out like a thumb from the kitchen wall. Joyce had lived in the two-bedroom-with-a-den condo since she’d sold their longtime Sherman Oaks ranch house the year after Larry passed. Her unit, on the top floor of the two-story, courtyard-style complex, was a bit sterile and boxy, if unusually roomy for its relatively new age. But Joyce snugged the place up with lots of warm colors, cushy furnishings, wood-framed artwork, and several walls of packed pine bookshelves. Some of the décor was from the Sherman Oaks house while much was bought new when she moved into the condo. “I don’t want too many old memories hanging around me,” Joyce had explained at the time. Plus her shopping jaunts h
elped keep her mind off her loss and focused on the future. “Forward march!” she called it.

  Jeremy felt a belated wave of defensiveness toward his parents. “Cassie was mortified, you know, the way Henry shot his mouth off about footing the whole wedding bill—when no one even asked him to—and then, in the light of day, deciding the families should split it. I don’t blame Dad for being pissed off.”

  “Oh, we all had too much to drink that night celebrating your engagement, who knows what we said,” Joyce recalled between ironic sips of beer. “I couldn’t hold it against Henry, even if your father did. Besides, Dad and I were happy to pay our share. Your wedding was … well, it was a glorious night, wasn’t it?”

  The question sat there like an ill-timed stink bomb until Joyce, realizing the faux pas, waved a hand and said, “Anyway, I thought you liked Cassie’s parents. At least more than Cassie did.”

  “I did. I do,” answered Jeremy. “I always thought Cassie was overly hard on them, especially given how devoted they tried to be to her and Matty. Even if, when it’s all said and done, he is closer to you.”

  “Well, I am just so much damn fun,” Joyce said, only half-kiddingly, then raised her bottle to Jeremy and took another swig.

  “It’s just weird to be so involved in people’s lives for so long and then poof—it’s like you never were.”

  For a guy who had an awesome new girlfriend and had just sold a screenplay to a major buyer (Juliana left a message today: he’d have the contract by week’s end), Jeremy was looking awfully glum.

  Joyce stood. “You’re depressing me, you know that?”

  “Sorry, Ma. Where are you going?”

  She gestured with her half-full Corona. “Let’s finish these out on the lanai, okay?”

  That’s what Joyce miscalled, as if she were the fifth member of the Golden Girls, the compact balcony off the living room that had just enough space for two deck chairs, a little table, and a potted plant or two. Jeremy followed her out. They sat and looked out at the symmetrically planted, overly pruned courtyard beneath them. It was so precise it almost didn’t look real.

  “So tell me about Cambria,” said Joyce, nestling into the soft canvas of her chair.

  “It couldn’t have been more relaxing. I’ve never spent so much time communing with the ocean. The place was lovely.” He finished his beer and wouldn’t have minded another, but knew Joyce would tell him he shouldn’t drive home tipsy, and she’d be right.

  “I meant something interesting,” she said with a cagey grin.

  Jeremy had no idea what she had in mind.

  “Like where’s this going? With Annabelle. You go away with someone new, you learn a lot about them. What did you learn?”

  Joyce waved down at a woman around her age crossing the courtyard beneath. The neighbor waved back and kept going. “That’s Helene Darvell, she’s one of your fans. She’s Australian, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know, and one of my fans of what?”

  “Your movie reviews, of course!”

  Oh. “Did you tell her I was fired?”

  “I didn’t have the heart. She’ll figure it out herself, I’m sure.” Joyce sat upright. “So we were talking about the darling Annabelle.”

  “Were we?” Jeremy asked dubiously. Joyce had that look on her face he knew all too well: she wanted answers and she wanted them now. It’s not like he had anything to hide. “She’s fantastic. I’m crazy about her.”

  A tear bubbled up in Joyce’s eye. “Honey, I’m so thrilled for you. She feels the same, I hope? I mean, how could she not?”

  “Cassie didn’t, so clearly I am resistible in some circles,” he offered dryly. “But, yeah, I think—I hope—we’re on the same wavelength, romantically speaking.”

  Joyce’s expression turned somber. “Promise me you won’t hurt her. That’s all.”

  He looked astonished. “Why in the world would I hurt her?”

  “Oh, darling, you’re taking this the wrong way, I can tell.”

  “What way should I take it?” Now he really wanted that second beer.

  Joyce chose her words carefully. “I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose. Of course you wouldn’t. You’re a good person, too good sometimes.” She took Jeremy’s hand. “It’s just that no matter how sweet and kind and considerate Annabelle may seem, when you lose a spouse it leaves you far more vulnerable—let’s call it what it is: crazy—than even you yourself could ever imagine. It’s unpredictable and raw and bone deep. It’s been six years, and I’m still astonished at how your father’s death can hit me sometimes. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  Jeremy did—and he didn’t. He and Annabelle had discussed Gil’s absence, so Jeremy felt the issue had been sufficiently road tested (maybe literally). He completely grasped the loss and trauma involved, but also believed Annabelle wouldn’t be in a new relationship if she was that emotionally or romantically incapacitated.

  “I do, Mom, I know what you’re saying,” Jeremy semi-truthed, “but I think Annabelle and I are good on that front.”

  Joyce gazed at Jeremy in that grave, fixed way that reminded him of when he was small, and she’d impart some key life lesson (“Never let anyone tell you what you’re thinking!” sprang to mind). Watching his mother now, Jeremy noticed that she looked tired, slightly distracted; her gray-green eyes were a bit rheumy, her normal joie de vivre low on the joie.

  “Good, I hope so,” Joyce finally said in response. “You both deserve to be happy. And, guess what? Cassie does, too. I’m just sorry it couldn’t have been with you.”

  “We had a good run, Mom. Just wasn’t meant to be, I guess.”

  “That’s awfully equitable of you, sweetheart. Still, there’s something special about living out your life with one person, someone who knew you when you were young and knows you when you’re old and rickety.”

  “You’re hardly rickety, Ma.”

  “I wasn’t talking about me, sweetheart.” She smiled wistfully.

  CHAPTER

  28

  Jeremy’s deal closed that Friday as Juliana promised. He happily signed his contract electronically and emailed copies to his agent and the business affairs department at Monolith. The last time he’d signed a screenwriting deal it was in person, in pen, on paper, and in triplicate (oh, and notarized).

  Twenty minutes later, Ian’s assistant, Xani (somehow short for Alexandra), called Jeremy to set a notes meeting with her boss for Monday morning at eleven. “You’ll be working through lunch so we’ll order in. Anything you don’t eat?”

  “Crow,” Jeremy answered to a forest full of crickets. He guaranteed Xani was straining to figure out if that was in the poultry family without having to ask. He saved her any further brain power and quickly added, “Anything is fine, thanks.” He was more concerned about the fact that Ian had so many notes they’d have to eat their way through them.

  “Look, the notes are just a way for execs to justify their existence—and, to be fair, sometimes they do have good ideas—while you work off the rewrite and polish fees you fought so hard to get,” said Zoë that afternoon, as she accompanied Jeremy on his daily backyard walk. He’d increased them from thirty to forty-five minutes a whack, and had even convinced several friends to join him on his quirky routine when they’d stop by to visit.

  “Juliana did the fighting, I did the nail biting,” joked Jeremy.

  “As it should be,” said Zoë, who had just been hired to adapt a best-selling novel for a Showtime miniseries. Her career had had its share of ups and downs but was on a major upswing. She credited Juliana, thought she was a whiz; Jeremy would find out.

  “That thing looks like it’s seen better days,” she noted as they passed the old grapefruit tree.

  Jeremy stopped to pay the tree homage. “Yeah, it’s been in bad shape lately,” he said, taking in its crumbly leaves and sad-looking
fruit. “I keep thinking it’ll get better all by itself, but I clearly have no predictive skills.”

  “You’re just being an optimist, nothing wrong with that.” Zoë studied the blighted tree. “Tell you one thing, you can’t be a writer without it—hope, that is. Especially when you get to our age and the deck’s increasingly stacked against you.”

  “‘Our age?’ Wow,” said Jeremy with mock indignance. “I’d like to think my best work is ahead of me. I mean, it better be, or I’m barking up the wrong tree, all puns intended.”

  He started walking again and Zoë followed. “Just keep your eyes on the prize,” she advised. “You’ll be fine.”

  “You mean, get my movie made?”

  “Well, sure. But it’s all about parlaying this sale into bigger, better-paid work. The window’s open, pal, but it shuts crazy fast. Today you’re on the hot-shit list, tomorrow you’re answering ads on InkTip,” she said, referring to a popular website where lesser-known producers search for unsold scripts.

  “Juliana wants me to start writing a new screenplay,” said Jeremy, with a glance back at the grapefruit tree. He wondered if he should finally bring in a tree doctor, or whatever they were called. Maybe it could still be saved.

  “Oh, fuck that. Sure, go spend six months writing another script with no guarantee of a sale. No skin off her back, right? She just says that to cover her ass if she doesn’t get you another job, which is her job this very second. She knows that, and now you know that. Besides, it’s not like you don’t have plenty of work ahead of you on Offensive Measures. So while you’re sweating that, she can be lining up your next gig. Capeesh?”

  “I thought you liked Juliana.”

  “I fucking love Juliana. But sometimes she’s a heinous crossbreed of Teflon and bullshit. So, sure, come up with some new script ideas to pitch in case you need them, but never let Juliana forget that she works for you. Right now, you’ve got the boat and the oars.” She stepped off her proverbial soapbox and shrugged. “That’s my take, anyway.”