The After Wife
Page 30
“They really are,” I said.
“How you coming on those files?” he asked me.
“I just started this morning.”
“Maybe you’d get more work done downtown.”
“This is Santa Monica,” I said. “There is no downtown.”
He sighed. In this light, I thought, Detective Ramirez looked a bit like a Latino Bob Hoskins.
Something you don’t know about me?
I’ve always had a secret crush on Bob Hoskins.
24
The Happy Medium
After the shooting incident, life began to settle down. Ellie is happy in school, and has grown about three inches. Her legs remind me of her father’s. Her laugh, I recognize as mine. Recently, she and I witnessed a “NoMo mad mover” crossing San Vicente, a skinny middle-aged woman covered head-to-toe in white, from her visor and face shield, to her tennis shoes, pumping her arms like there was money in it. The two of us burst out laughing; I looked in the rearview mirror and caught my daughter’s eye. An appreciation of the absurd? That, she got from me. Brandon, meanwhile, is close to getting his degree, and already has a job lined up, working with Special Ed kids at the local public school. Aimee is on self-inflicted bedrest; Greta Garbo’s fatal illness in Camille has nothing on her pregnancy. Chloe and Billy are adopting a baby from the Congo, which seems like a bad idea because they’re just getting to know their own children all over again. The good news is, Chloe is no longer adopting dogs. Since she integrated a coyote into a new feeding ground, i.e. NoMo, she’s on the pet adoption shit list. Meanwhile, Billy found a job he loves: teaching both high school math and yoga classes at a Venice charter school. Chloe and Billy are selling their home through Dee Dee, and are moving into a condo in SoMo. They’re putting the kids in public school and are weirdly happy and in love. Dee Dee’s recovered from her ass-hap (mishap), and is in a serious relationship with the ER doctor who patched her glute.
Early this evening, Jay and I had a meeting at Casa Sugar with She-Devil. Remember her? Turns out, she’d been thinking about how to market me since that disastrous network meeting. She couldn’t get me out of her mind—which is both flattering and disturbing. She had Todd the Reality King make the call a couple days ago. (He also made an appointment later this week to communicate with his dead brother, the teenaged skateboarder with the Mega-Death fixation.)
This afternoon, I threw in a little session with She-Devil’s dead grandmother; yes, I can be a show-off. Anyway, She-Devil wants moi to host a show—a lifestyle/communicating-with-the-dead hybrid. She loves Casa Sugar, and thinks we should tape in the house. The network likes that I am “real.” In other words, I’m chubby, at least in the opinion of a TV camera and media execs. Oh, Jay and I are producing.
“I’ve finally gotten over Hidalgo,” Jay said, as we skewered chicken kabobs in the kitchen after our successful meeting. We had planned our first summer barbecue that night. Tom and his daughters were coming over, along with Chloe and her brood, and of course, Aimee and Brandon. I’d even sent along an invite to Detective Ramirez.
“You’ve given up on love completely,” I said, ignoring the gray-haired Malibu stoner sitting on my stool who was trying to get me to light a bud. He died snowboarding, forgetting that it was July.
“Never,” Jay said.
“You’ve fallen in love again?” I asked, repressing a sigh.
“Just wait until you meet Vladimir,” Jay said. “I’ve already proposed. How does Iowa in June sound?”
“It sounds like when Ellie and I are scheduled to go to Greece, remember? For our ‘girls only’ trip?”
“Don’t remind me,” Jay said, pouty. Our conversation was interrupted by pounding.
“Someone’s knocking at my front door, or that’s an especially annoying poltergeist.”
“Door,” Jay clarified.
“Love the wedding idea. It’s good to know bad ideas never get better,” I called out, as I opened the door. A woman, a NoMo Momster, stood there, tiny phone to her ear. “What? You’re kidding me,” she said. “Of course they’re not invited—their kids aren’t even in private school—”
She looked me up and down, then said into the phone, “Hold on a minute—”
“Hi?” she said to me. “I need to speak to the Happy Medium?” Chiseled and hyper, she carried a big Louis Vuitton bag over one sunbaked shoulder. She strode past me and looked around, sort of sniffing the air before turning to stare. “Can you go … get her, please? Does she live here? Am I in the right place?”
I didn’t respond. My breath had caught in my throat.
“Hold on a sec,” she said to her phone, “I’m trying to get an answer here.”
“I don’t do readings after six,” I said, finding my words.
“That’s okay, we’ll make it a short one; I’ve been crazy busy,” she said. “Maria insisted. She said Oprah’s crazy about you. And I said, why not, right? Is there a clean restroom somewhere?”
I pointed down the hallway as Jay came in from the kitchen.
“Who is it?” he asked, as she walked out of view. I went to the window. Parked in my driveway was a black Range Rover.
“No,” I said. “Oh, no.”
“What’s wrong?” Jay asked.
“Jay,” I said. “I need to do this reading. Get her name, please. Just write it down. And then call Detective Ramirez. He should be here in about ten minutes.”
The NoMo Momster came out of the bathroom, wiping her manicured hands. “So. Where is it that you do your little thing?”
The woman who’d killed my husband sat across from me. I didn’t know how I was going to get through this without strangling her.
“Cute backyard,” she said, looking around. “Sweet.”
“Close your eyes,” I said. “Just … give me a moment.”
“Sure,” she said, and closed her eyes. Her wedding ring with its huge rock sickened me. I looked at her fingernails, metallic polish, the perfect length. Her beaded prayer bracelets probably cost a fortune.
John, are you there? Can you see her? Is this the one?
“Is there someone you want to talk to? Someone you feel … I don’t know … guilty about?”
“I’m sorry?” she asked.
“Is there someone specific you want to talk to?” I said. “I mean, talk, I don’t mean, you know, text, while you’re driving, or anything.”
She tilted her head. “What?”
“You know, one of the first dead people I saw was my husband. He’s dead. He died. Recently. Wait. Last year. In September. It was a beautiful morning.”
She listened.
“He was forty-two years old. We have a daughter. She’s four now. She misses her daddy.”
“That’s sad,” the woman said. “How did he die?”
“He was on a bike,” I said.
She opened her eyes.
“Just down the street,” I said. “It was early one Saturday.”
“You know what? I have to go,” she said, gathering her purse and sunglasses.
“I talk to him, my dead husband, John,” I said. “I talk to him, all the time.”
She stopped packing.
“Do you know what he told me?”
“No. Why would I?”
“He told me who ran him down and left him for dead. He told me who did it,” I said. “You know what the best news is? We have a witness.”
She made a break for the kitchen door. I followed her to the front of the house, catching up just in time to see Detective Ramirez outside, checking out the grille on NoMo’s Range Rover. Jay stood next to him, his arms crossed.
I waited at my front door.
“I’d like to take you down to the Santa Monica Police Station for questioning,” Detective Ramirez told Mrs. NoMo, who glanced nervously back at me.
“I’m crazy busy,” she said. “My charity event, Mothers Against Plastics, starts in an hour. There’s no way.”
“I recommend you call your attorney first,�
� Detective Ramirez said.
Minutes later, Ramirez escorted the woman from my property, and another officer came and impounded the Range Rover. Jay stood close to me, his arm tight around my shoulders. I was reminded of how he held me up the morning of John’s death.
Jay held out his hand. “Detective Ramirez gave me something for you,” he said. On his palm was a circle of red yarn strung with colorful beads. I recognized the bracelet. I picked it up.
The beads had letters on them, spelling out … D-A-D-D-Y.
I looked up at Jay, who was crying. “It’s over now, darling,” he said.
I grabbed him and sobbed into his chest. I would never let him go. I cried and cried until I could not cry anymore.
The fog was rolling in.
A coyote yelped.
Wind chimes played a soothing melody.
Somehow, we still managed that night’s barbecue. The kabobs came out perfectly cooked, the breast meat still, miraculously, juicy. Jay had made a deep, citrusy sangria that tasted of sunshine mixed with alcohol, and poured it liberally into jelly jar glasses. We arranged bright flowers throughout the house, and in a vase outside on my new picnic table. Tom had arrived, bearing lemon bars. His three girls played hide-and-seek with Ellie, delighting in her every movement, every word. Spice’s whole body shook with joy as the girls surrounded him, taking turns rubbing his stomach and scratching his back.
For a brief moment, the dead left the living in peace.
For my boys, Thomas and Patrick.
We are in this together.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Thank you to Linda Marrow, my editor, and Libby McGuire, my publisher. I’d also like to thank Kim Hovey, my associate publisher, Susan Corcoran, my publicity director, and Paolo Pepe, my art director. I also very much appreciate the hard work of Dana Isaacson. Thank you to my manager, Stephanie Davis. Thank you to my sisters, Suzanne “Suzy” Levangie Kurtz, Marianne “Mimi” Levangie, and Julianne “Julie” Levangie Purcell. Thank you to my mom and dad, Phillipa Costa Brown and Frank Levangie. Thank you to my nephews and niece, John Henry Kurtz, Jack Grazer, and Frankie, Jonathan, and Angelina Levangie. Thank you to Mark Kriegel. Thank you to my good friends Julie Jaffe, Mimi James (queen of the one-liners), and Yahfatyah Reed. Thank you to my friends on Facebook and Twitter; though I may never meet them, they brighten my days. Thank you to all the mothers, sisters, daughters and grandmothers I’ve met on book tours, in nail salons, on line at the movies, and at my sons’ games for their insights, wisdom, and laughter. And finally, thank you to the widows who’ve been gracious enough to take me on their own journeys of love, loss, and life.
Thank you all.
By Gigi Levangie Grazer
The After Wife
Queen Takes King
The Starter Wife
Maneater
Rescue Me
About the Author
GIGI LEVANGIE GRAZER is the bestselling author of four previous novels, including The Starter Wife, first a miniseries and then a series on the USA Network, and Maneater, now a Lifetime miniseries. Her most recent book, Queen Takes King, is currently under option at Lifetime. Grazer has also written the screenplay for Stepmom, starring Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon, and articles for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Glamour. She lives in Los Angeles with her two children and one miniature dachshund.
www.gigigrazer.com