The exquisitely styled Lady Gaga impersonator at the adjoining table leans in close, her platinum wig brushing my arm. “Happy Pride!” she (or possibly he) says.
“Pride?” Charlotte says.
“You must be from out of town. Well, you ladies lucked out,” Gaga bubbles. “Tonight’s the first night of Gay Pride weekend. Half a million people are on their way to this very spot as we speak. And you have front-row seats!”
“But it’s only June eighth,” I say. “Pride is the last weekend in June.”
“In lesser locales, yes,” Gaga says, batting her inch-long rainbow-colored eyelashes. “But, darlin’, you’re in the City of Angels now. We’re always ahead of the curve.” She giggles, grabs her overflowing breasts, and gives them a shake. “So to speak.”
I turn to Charlotte. “So . . . you and I arranged to meet on the gayest corner of the gayest city on the gayest night of the year.”
As Charlotte takes this in, I realize I’m assuming she’s straight. And that she’s probably assuming the same of me. God, are you listening? Please make it okay with Charlotte that I’m gay.
“The person I’m getting divorced from is a woman,” I tell her. “I’ve been going to San Francisco Pride parades for the last twenty-five years. I should have known better.”
“Talk about your rookie moves,” Charlotte says without hesitation. “No wonder it took us an hour to park.”
This strikes me as funny. So funny that something strange happens. I laugh. I laugh! Charlotte laughs, too.
I take a long sip of my pretty basil martini, put the pretty glass down.
“Did you hear that?” I blurt. “I just said the D word and laughed.”
“Congratulations.” Charlotte raises her goblet, and we clink glasses. “To laughter,” she says. “Whenever, wherever, whyever.”
How committed would I have to be to my misery to let it blind me to all this color, all this pride, all these bright spirits, all this fun? Apparently, more committed than I am. And so, for a couple of hours on the first night of my first Los Angeles Gay Pride weekend, I experience my first sustained break from years of relentless despair.
When I return to the spot where I left my car and find it missing, and walk around looking for it elsewhere in case I misremembered its location, and return to the spot where I parked it and find it still missing, and carefully read the four seemingly contradictory signs on the nearest pole, and I realize that the gay City of West Hollywood has towed my car, and I call an Uber to take me to the tow yard, where I write a check for $250, it barely puts a dent in my greatly improved mood. Somehow, I landed in one of the world’s greatest, gayest cities. Better yet, I have a friend who lives there, too.
FIVE
Memorial Day weekend. For the first time in decades I’m being paid not to work. Unfortunately, four days without adult supervision is not my idea of fun right now.
Jules goes east to meet up with Clara, so at least my pity party goes unwitnessed—even by God, who seems to have taken the long weekend off. S/He doesn’t respond to my prayers for a call from Charlotte, a knock on the door from a neighbor, an invitation from anyone for anything. Various sub-cliques of my coworkers, according to their Facebook posts, are hanging out together, showing off their bikini bods at pool parties, toasting one another at bars, playing Frisbee at Zuma Beach. Of course they don’t invite me to join them; I wouldn’t have invited someone my age when I was theirs. So I spend my first paid day off in a couple of decades in a borrowed bed beneath wide-open windows, listening to other people’s laughter, smelling other people’s grilling food.
When the infernal sunlight finally dims, I seek comatose comfort, bingeing on Prosecco and Sex and the City reruns, telling myself I’m crying because Aidan broke up with Carrie. I mean, Carrie at Miranda’s wedding, bravely wiping away tears, mustering a smile for her bestie’s wedding photos? Who wouldn’t cry at that?
I have big social plans for Saturday. I’m going to waylay the mailman, just to make sure my voice still works. While taking a ninety-second pee break from my stakeout, I hear the mail slithering through the slot, plopping onto the floor. Opportunity missed.
By the time the weekend is finally over, I’ve committed a host of inglorious firsts. First Trader Joe’s frozen meal. First bottle of bubbly consumed alone. First holiday with no human contact. First holiday without a home.
—
MY FIRST PAYCHECK CARRIES good news and bad. Given deductions, it’s going to take months to save enough money for first and last months’ rent. And then there will be furnishing my new place from scratch, since scratch is what I currently own. I’m going to have to supplement my income with some freelance work. At least I’ve got plenty of time to do it, what with all these empty nights and weekends.
I e-mail Pam, a bestselling writer friend who’s always fielding editing requests from the would-be authors who flock to her events. Twenty minutes after I ask her to send any surplus work my way, I get an e-mail from “Kenny Loggins.” Spam, I assume, and hit delete. Then my phone rings.
“Meredith? This is Kenny Loggins. I just turned sixty, and I want to write a book about my life. Pam said you could help.”
—
THREE DAYS LATER, Kenny and I are sitting on the patio of his Los Olivos mountaintop compound, overlooking a green meadow wrapped around a turquoise pool. Kenny Loggins is telling me the stories of his life. As he talks, I’m typing into my laptop, sketching an outline for his book, falling just the tiniest bit in love. I can’t believe this is a work meeting. With a rock star. Whose songs have been the soundtrack of my life.
During a lull, my stomach growls. Kenny laughs, jumps up, and pulls me to my feet. “This day’s too pretty for working. And I already know you’re the right person for the job. You’re hired, okay? Let’s go have lunch on the beach.”
The two of us and Barney, Kenny’s Australian shepherd, climb into a hybrid SUV. Kenny opens the sunroof as we head down the mountain. The sky above the beckoning sea is even bluer than L.A.’s. The air is crisp and ocean-kissed and clean.
Kenny takes a hand off the wheel, slips a disc into the CD player. “I have a new band. Our first album’s dropping this fall. Want a taste?”
“Sure,” I say. Pinch me, I think.
The car fills with sweet, sad guitar strains and a woman’s voice, singing about being alone on a Friday night after a breakup. Kenny joins in, his voice in the car entwining with his voice on the CD.
The sun comes up / It’s another day . . . / And you see, Hey, I’m still breathing.
Take it from me / These little victories / Are all a heart needs.
I pretend to look out the window, my vision blurred with tears.
Kenny puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay to cry.”
Dammit. How does he know?
“I felt the sadness in you,” he says. “That’s why I played you that song.”
“How?”
“I’ve been there. Not so long ago.”
Kenny pulls into a beachside parking lot. He snaps a leash onto Barney’s collar and takes me by the elbow and walks us to a podium in the sand. “Nice to see you, Mr. Loggins,” says the maître d’, who’s wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs. He leads us past the line of people waiting for a table and sweeps us into front-row seats. Twenty feet away, the Pacific roars and swallows the beach and spits it out again.
“Kick your shoes off, Meredith,” Kenny says. “Curl your toes in that nice warm sand.”
The waiter appears. He puts a glass of ice water in front of Kenny and a brimming golden margarita in front of me. “They have the best blood-orange margaritas here,” Kenny says.
“You’re not having one?” I want to chug my drink, but I’m attempting grace.
Kenny shakes his head. “I had too much fun in my younger days. My drinking days are done.”
The waiter retur
ns with a brightly painted plate of shrimp tacos, a terra-cotta bowl of guacamole, a Mexican basket of chips. Kenny swallows a taco in two bites.
“You feel like talking about it?” he asks me.
Of course I do. I always feel like talking about it. But never more than in this moment, because I have more than a little bit of a crush on this sweet, handsome man, and because I’m sure this whole day is a dream. So I tell Kenny Loggins my story. And then I look up and somehow I’ve finished my margarita, and Barney’s silky, heavy head is in my lap, and somehow we’ve eaten every bite of food on the table, and somehow, somehow, I feel better.
Kenny asks if I have time for a walk on the beach. I have time for anything he has in mind. He bends to unleash Barney. The dog bounds into the ocean, all clumsiness and wild energy and joy.
“I was married to the love of my life, too,” Kenny says. “Everyone envied what we had. We even wrote a book about lasting love. When she left me for a young piano player, I was one hundred percent sure that I’d never be happy again.”
“And were you?” I ask. “Ever happy again?”
“I’m happy now,” Kenny says. He smiles at me. “Very.”
My heart races. I open my mouth to say, “I’m happy now, too,” but Kenny’s still talking.
“I was onstage giving a concert. Sandra was in the front row. I pulled her onto the stage. We’ve been together ever since.” Kenny flips through his phone, shows me a picture of a young, thin, beautiful blonde.
“She’s gorgeous,” I say around a puckered mouthful of jealousy.
Kenny beams at me, the short gray hairs in his goatee glinting in the afternoon light.
I choke down my disappointment. So this unexpected instant intimacy is not going to come to a love-song conclusion. Still, I had this. This real connection. This magical day.
Barney gallops up to us, matted and panting and drenched. “Watch out,” Kenny says. “He’s going to—”
He does. Barney does what he was born to do, spraying us with seawater and sand. Laughing, Kenny and I brush ourselves off.
“I’m more in love than I’ve ever been,” Kenny says, slipping his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. “Trust me. Someday you will be, too.”
Hope flickers. I don’t want hope. I don’t want Kenny Loggins or my silly groupie fantasies. All I want is my wife.
—
WHO KNEW? Summer is lousy with paid holidays. Since Bellissima had a wildly profitable last quarter, and since Isabel believes in sharing the wealth with those who helped create it, we’re all getting the whole week of July Fourth off with pay.
Never have I been so filled with dread by the prospect of so much paid time alone. I’ve got more me-time than I need at my new digs, a midcentury-modern manse clinging to the side of a Studio City hill. I’m cat- and construction-sitting for Karen, a writer I “met” exchanging witticisms on Twitter, back when I was witty and married and fun.
Karen is having a deck built while she’s away. Demolition started the day before I arrived. The workers’ first move was to remove the steep steps that descended from Karen’s front door to the sidewalk twenty feet below.
Some nights I get home in the dark to find the workers have left me a fully outstretched, shaky twenty-foot ladder. Some mornings I climb down “steps” nailed onto plywood sheets. My route from “home” into the world is a lot like my path through life these days: unpredictable, ever-changing, ranging from difficult to How the hell am I supposed to do this?
—
ON THE EVE of my Independence Day vacation, lying in Karen’s bed wrestling with despair, I call Celia. We talk about what we’ve been talking about since I left Oakland, my wife’s refusal to take my calls or answer my e-mails or texts. And then Celia says something she’s never said before, in a tone she’s never used with me before, not quite cold but not exactly reeking of warmth.
“She’s not doing it to hurt you,” Celia says. “She’s in pain, too, you know.”
My heart thumps. “How do you know she’s in pain?”
Silence.
“Have you talked to her?”
More silence.
“You’ve been talking to her?” My voice catches. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“I love her,” Celia says. “You know that.”
But you’re supposed to love me more, I think. You chose me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, trying not to cry.
“Because I knew you’d react this way.”
“I tell you everything. Are you telling her what I tell you?”
“Of course not.”
“What’s she saying about me?”
More silence. And then Celia says gently, lovingly, “I can’t be friends with both of you if I tell you that.”
“What? You’re going to be friends with her?”
“I’m not sure. She’s clearly ambivalent. But I hope so.”
The room tilts. I’ve never been this drunk.
“I get why this is hard for you, honey,” Celia says. “But try to be a grown-up, okay? I can love both of you.”
“Be a grown-up? Did you really just say that?”
“You’re proving my point.”
In our decades of friendship, Celia and I have never had a fight. I used to get annoyed when she’d invite me over for dinner and take forever to get the meal on the table. I solved the problem by preemptively snacking before I showed up at her place. She used to get mad when I called her too early in the morning. It took years, but she trained me to wait until ten.
“I love you,” I manage, “but I can’t talk about this right now.”
“I understand.”
I don’t want Celia to understand. I want her to apologize and say she’ll never speak to my wife again.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says, and hangs up.
I take an Ambien and pray for quick sleep.
—
THE NEXT MORNING I wake up in Karen’s bed with a crushing load on my chest. The cats? I open my eyes. Leopold and Loeb are glaring at me, as usual, from their towel-draped chair across the room. It must be the weight of my fight with Celia last night.
The blinds are shut tight, but still I know that the sky is cornflower blue, as it always is; the sun is beaming, as it always is. The perfect-weather week snarls at me, teeth sharp, ready to snap. I sit up, determined to push into the day. The cats need food and water, thank God. I pour organic kibble into a bowl set into an elevated contraption that Karen got from her cats’ chiropractor to avoid strain on the kitties’ necks while they eat and drink.
I had a cat when I was eighteen, living with my boyfriend in a Greenwich Village walk-up. She drank milk from a bowl on the floor. If my cat ever had neck pain, I never knew it. But that was a million years ago, before cats had chiropractors and children were allergic to bread. I try to ignore the stench of the cat box. Can’t.
This improves the day’s prospects. There’s something I need to do. I’ll walk to the Petco on Ventura Boulevard, buy kitty litter, and walk back. Depending on the ladder arrangement the carpenter left me last night, my errand could eat up an hour, maybe two.
I need a better time killer. I’ll stop at Crossroads, shop for new old clothes. I’ll go to Trader Joe’s, drink a tiny free cup of their coffee, eat a tiny free sample, pick up a bottle or two of Prosecco for tonight. By the time I get “home,” if I walk slowly enough, half the day will be gone. Celia will call me while I’m walking, or I’ll call her. We’ll make up. I’ll feel better then.
I shrug into my backpack, slither through the front door, blocking the cats’ escape with my feet. I lock the door, accomplishing the freeloader’s mission: keep the cats inside and the burglars out. I climb backward down today’s ladder, a combo package of plywood and rope.
I take a few steps along the sidewalk. Something
’s wrong.
Something’s wrong with the day.
Or something’s wrong with me.
The sun is so hot. My chest hurts.
Maybe I’m having a heart attack. Maybe not.
Why is the light so bright in my eyes?
My chest feels heavy again, the way it did when I woke up.
Ah. Hello, grief.
I start walking again. It’s hard. The heat, the blazing light, the pain in my chest.
You can’t have me, grief. I keep walking, pushing through it.
I wish Patricia and Blue could walk me to the pet store.
I wish Patricia hadn’t died.
I see a yard-sale sign. The yard sales are so much better here, all those rich, trendy L.A. women purging their throwaway designer outfits. I spend three bucks on a polka-dot butter dish, in case I ever have my own refrigerator again, and a pair of sparkly deco chandelier earrings, and a vintage cotton sundress in case I ever have someplace to go. The dress is French, white with lime-green pinstripes, its cotton so fine it makes my fingertips hum. I can’t quite zip it up, but Joanne and I will fix that. I put on the earrings, stuff the dress and the butter dish into my backpack, and continue down the hill.
My new earrings brush against my neck as I walk, almost like a lover’s touch.
But the sun. The glare. The earrings are too heavy. They hurt my ears. I take them off, set my backpack on the ground, toss them into the smallest pocket. I don’t know why I’m keeping them. They won’t hurt any less tomorrow. They’re just another mistake in a long line of mistakes.
Like walking to buy kitty litter. Even if it would fit in my backpack, which it won’t, I couldn’t carry it up this hill. What an idiot I am.
I duck into Trader Joe’s. It’s so cool and so cheerful in here. Hand-lettered chalk signs, flowers, a fragrant grind-your-own coffee stand. I remember when TJ’s first came to Berkeley. My wife and I loved to rail against its existence. Shrink-wrapped kale in the garden bowl of the world! Frozen ethnic foods in a town bursting with cheap ethnic dives! But then one day I snuck into TJ’s and discovered its nut selection, the wonder of its prices. It wasn’t my last clandestine visit. It became a stop on my way home: stopping at TJ’s for my wife’s favorite dark-chocolate-hazelnut bars and my beloved chili-lime cashews, then transferring them, upon my arrival home, into an unlabeled mason jar. Maybe if I’d been less sneaky . . . Maybe that’s why . . .
The New Old Me Page 5
