Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  Newly remodeled, classic mid-century California ranch–style estate in the famed Palisades Riviera. North of Sunset where the wide, sidewalk-free streets are named for the Italian and French Rivieras. Built in 1942 for a legendary movie star, with many original features. Laid out in geometric design as it integrates seamlessly with the natural topography. Peaceful and restrained. You will feel transformed.

  Plans for development into thirty-thousand-square-foot Grecian abode or move in today! Price upon request.

  Never, ever request the price.

  The kitchen door near our garage was usually unlocked. If anyone with bad intentions got past the gate, his aim was to kill you, and good luck behind a locked door.

  Feral eyes lit up my back.

  “Gristle!” I yelled to my invisible, mangy audience. “Don’t waste your time.”

  I tried the kitchen door. Locked! What? I didn’t have a key, there was no key, not even a hidden one. No one used house keys in this neighborhood. We used assistants, nannies, housekeepers, live-in staff, maybe a code. Anything but a simple key.

  I ran across the pebbled (ouchouchouch) drive, around the majestic sycamore tree, great overseer of pebbles, planted as a sapling and nurtured by the movie star’s wife. I hopped to the antique front door that once graced a French village church. Village church doors were a favorite of our designer, who decorated all the “best” homes on the Westside.

  “Poor France,” I’d told Trevor, “filled with doorless churches.”

  The door was locked. I pondered hiking around the back and breaking in when I saw lights coming down the driveway. Trevor was home! Oh no! Maybe he was sick? His archrival producer with a closetful of muumuus ran him over? A disgruntled writer tried to poison him? Was there any other kind of writer? (And what is the opposite of disgruntled? Gruntled?)

  There were a million reasons Trevor didn’t show up to my book party. Not one of which was that he didn’t want to go. Neither did I, so that’s no excuse.

  A miniature white SUV with ADA stickers on the side panel slid down the driveway, headlights ablaze; it looked like a dog crate on wheels.

  “Mrs. Nash?” An extremely average man with a crown of dusty hair and navy windbreaker with an ADA patch plopped out of the driver’s seat. He kept the headlights on. A weapon poked from his waistband. I accessed my depleting memory bank.

  Jerry? He’d soared down the driveway last year when the house alarm was screaming and no one could shut it off.

  Gerry. Not Jerry. Gerry. A G where a J should be, which tips my bad mood.

  “You’re attempting to enter this domicile?” His hand on his Taser holster.

  “Gerry, right? Yes, I don’t know. You were able to use the code?”

  His eyes flicked away, then back. “Factually, yes.”

  “So it’s working again? Do you have a key? I can’t seem to get ahold of anyone.”

  Gerry scratched his chin.

  “Gerry? I’m sorry, but could you?” I rubbed my arms. Even the earthquake wind couldn’t warm me. “I’m freezing. I’m hungry. My feet hurt. I’m cramping. I’m sweating. I’m irritable. I could sob any minute. Are you familiar with perimenopause, Ger?”

  “Perry . . . who?”

  “My daughter’s inside, please.”

  “There’s no easy way of saying this, Mrs. Nash,” Gerry kicked his Skechers at the pebbles.

  “Saying what?” I rubbed my arms furiously, as though trying to light a fire with my body. My teeth started chattering.

  “Okay, here we go.” he sighed. “I’m really sorry, I’ve been told not to allow you in.”

  Gerry the security guard looked away, abashed. I wanted to abash his face in.

  I shook my head. “I don’t . . .”

  I do. I don’t. I did. The three phases of marriage?

  Gerry wiped his nose. “It’s what they call, in the legal profession, leveraging.”

  “Leveraging?” I asked.

  “I went to law school for a year,” Gerry said, “then the meth thing happened . . .”

  He trailed off in a haze of meth regret.

  “Gerry,” I said. “Look at me. My daughter’s asleep in this house. I don’t know what’s going on, but this is not your battle. I climbed over that gate. There’s nothing I can’t do. I am that strong. Now, you can either help me or get out of the way, Gerry. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  He scooted like a crab, blocking me from the French church door.

  I took a step toward him.

  Flash. Buzz. Spark. The smell of barbecuing flesh, like Fraxel but without the Valium. I screamed, then crumpled into the fetal position, my face smacking the ground. Seconds of branding plus electrocution culminating in the most intense pain I’ve ever felt (and I sat through the first cut of Gigli). I spit out pebbles as the sycamore spun above me.

  I’d been tased.

  “What the fuck, Gerry!” I yanked the barbs out of my arm.

  “Whoa!” he said. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! I’ve never tased anyone before. Here, let me help you. I’m so sorry. That must’ve felt awful!”

  I slapped his hands and pushed my body up, panting like a bulldog.

  “I swear to God, Gerry,” I gasped, “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands. When I can stand. And the tree stops spinning.”

  “I was told not to let you in,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Get away from me!” I said, hands on my knees. “You let me in right now, Gerry, or I’ll tell your boss you’re smoking meth on the job.”

  “You saw that?”

  “Open the fucking goddamned door, Gerry!” I yelled. I leaned up against the church door, like Les Misérables without Anne Hathaway’s adorable pixie.

  Then I keeled over and threw up, spraying the pebbles with partially digested mystery appetizers.

  I stumbled into the living room, past the custom-built, brightly lit trophy case, where the Best Picture Oscar was flanked by Emmys and People’s Choice Awards, the ugly stepchild of awards shows. The light never burned out on the trophy case, its gleaming inhabitants polished once a week, then set back on tiny markers, as per photos the staff captured from three different angles. The trophy case would then be locked up, the key itself locked in a small drawer in a cabinet inside Trevor’s home office, across from our living quarters.

  I last held Oscar the night Trevor won. I was wearing red silk and hadn’t eaten solid food in three weeks. I had collarbones, and we were giddy and tearful and hungry. The next morning, Oscar was locked up. I never had a chance to touch him again.

  I tiptoed into the kitchen and flicked on overhead lights. The expansive island greeted me, a thick wooden plank worn at the corners, bearer of a thousand nicks. I loved that island. I’d chopped, minced, and grated on that island. I’d mixed, strained, and whisked on that island. I’d had sex on that island. (Early days.)

  Everything looked normal, if normal were a Martha Stewart Living centerfold. The Gaggenau refrigerator, La Pavoni espresso machine, La Cornue range.

  I couldn’t pronounce my appliances, but I could use them.

  The dictates of Trevor Nash were everywhere, in the smudgeless steel refrigerator, the spotless crystal glasses, the marble floor slick and reflective as a mirror.

  A notepad on the corner of the island. A Montblanc cleaved the words printed at the top. The name of our home. The Capri. After our street. (I’d suggested naming it Howard or Stan. I lost.) The notepads were strategically placed throughout the house in case Trevor had to jot down an idea, phone number, name, vocabulary word, like a bucket for capturing falling stars. Like the trophies, the notepads couldn’t be moved. Trevor would know. He could eyeball a quarter-inch breach. Even the pens were placed precisely, though at a deceptively jaunty angle.

  The pads were replaced as soon as they were down to thirty-two sheets.

  “I can’t use this notepad,” Trevor had said. “Look at it!” He’d waved the notepad next to his side of the bed. “It’s too thin!”
/>   “Just use it up,” I’d said. “No need to waste paper.”

  He’d thrown the notepad against the wall. “What, we can’t afford new notepads now? Are we poor?”

  Things that made Trevor feel poor: thinning notepads, burned toast, his gas gauge at a quarter tank.

  I made a beeline for Pep’s room. Fluffy rug, bubble gum–pink walls that she suddenly wanted painted black (nope). Her bed was empty.

  Bear, that wasn’t a bear but a large, breed-less stuffed dog, was missing, which told me this wasn’t a case of kidnapping as much as nanny-napping. Gabriela had taken her to sleep at her place for the night, I was sure of it. I turned on the light and took a deep breath, Pep’s baby-powder-and-peaches scent hanging in the air like strings of candy just out of reach.

  I’d call Gabriela from the house phone. Christ. I didn’t know her number. I hadn’t memorized a phone number in a decade.

  “Oh, it’s you, Agnes,” someone said. “I thought I heard something.”

  In the mirror, a naked, human salamander curved into the doorway, hands hanging on the door casing above his head, elbows like turrets. Cutting out toast and cream in his coffee, working out every single morning, and using three hours to eat a meal had decreased Trevor’s body fat to “science class skeleton” percentage He looked as much snake as man.

  “Trevor, you scared me!” I said, my throat tightening. “I was a human bonfire! Right outside our house!”

  “Annie Leibovitz wants to do a shirtless photo shoot. Do you think I’m ready?” Trevor ran his hands through his surfer waves, scrunching and twisting until it pleased him.

  “Trevor, pay attention.” I showed him the twin marks on my shoulder. “I got tased right outside our front door!”

  “I always wondered what that felt like,” he said, his expression wandering off. “Was it . . . harrowing?”

  Monday’s vocabulary word. I’d seen the card on his dresser.

  “Is Pep with Gabi?” I asked. “She’s with Gabi, right?”

  “Yeah, I had Gabi take her for a sleepover,” he said. “I thought we’d have dinner together and watch a movie, but she wanted me to stop texting. I need my phone, she knows that. What is wrong with kids?”

  “Trevor, why didn’t you show up to my book party?”

  “Oh yeah, how’d your thing go?” Deflection. Classic Trevor. I had to remember where this fit in The 48 Laws Of Power, the one book found in every spare bathroom west of the 405.

  Conceal Your Intentions?

  “Were you sick?”

  “No,” he said. “Do I look sick?” He checked himself in the mirror, looking for signs of illness. He patted his cheeks, examined the whites of his eyes.

  “I had to answer so many questions tonight about you not showing up. It was so embarrassing.”

  “It’s always about you,” He shook his fist; his dick wobbled. The dick wobbler, a rare Australian bird only found in the bush. Speaking of bush. Where was Trevor’s bush?

  “Well, it is my book,” I said. “Did you . . . are you . . . waxing?”

  “That’s it. I want to go in another direction—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m putting this marriage in turnaround.”

  I felt dizzy. Taser or this conversation?

  “You know, like when I had that cartel project I was really in love with but then we couldn’t get Guillermo to direct and then I kind of fell out of love and I fired everybody?”

  “You’re explaining to me what turnaround means? You’re telling me I’m like a project you don’t want anymore?” I said. “Marriage is a partnership!” I knit my fingers together, my wedding ring winking.

  “I don’t want to marriage anymore,” he said, sounding like a toddler “What can I say? It’s not working for me.”

  Had I become the mother Trevor always hated? Multi-married June Carole Nash’s face knifed into my brain. Junie Nash, I blame you for this. I blame your beautiful narcissistic self. I blame your red lips, the perfect bloom of your pale skin. Your guzzling martinis when Trevor crawled around in dirty diapers. Your sleeping with a married B-movie director, a brief, bumbling union that ended here, right here, in my beautiful daughter’s room, with this pile of mother-obsessed damage.

  “I’m not happy,” Trevor said. “I want to be happy. I really, really want to be happy.” He pounded his thighs with his fists.

  “Stupid people are happy, Trevor,” I said. “You’re not unhappy with me, you just think you are. You’re . . . more or less satisfied!”

  My gravestone would proudly state: Here lies Agnes Murphy Nash, more or less satisfied for her entire life.

  “Happy doesn’t last, Trevor,” I said. “Unhappy? That you can build on!”

  “Look, I talked to Geffen and Katzenberg, I had a conference call with Ari. Everyone thinks I need someone who knows how to market Trevor Nash and, you know, take care of my social schedule,” he said.

  “We’re getting divorced by committee?” I asked, stumped. “Trevor, we have our issues, but I cook for you, I take care of our child, with help, okay, yes, I give you a blow job once a week—without help, as far as I know—I try to be interested in your work every single day.”

  “I shouldn’t have to ask,” he said. “You should be interested in everything I do.”

  I’d split my interest quotient with Pep the day she was born.

  I sat back while Trevor ran his hands through his hair again.

  “Trevor?”

  Petra appeared, wearing pajamas. And they looked like . . . my pajamas. My flannel Christmas pajamas. My favorite flannel Christmas pajamas. The ones with the dogs. You know.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Petra said, not appearing sorry.

  “Petra, what the fuck are you doing here, and why are you wearing my dog pajamas?”

  “These are my dog pajamas,” she said, hugging her sides. “I buy them three years ago.”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure those aren’t mine? I love those pajamas.”

  “Why are you so concerned with material things?” Trevor said. “This is very painful for me. I don’t think you know how hard it is to break up a marriage.”

  “Petra, are you sleeping with my husband?”

  “You know I can’t sleep alone! God!” Trevor yelled as he left the scene of the crime.

  “Petra? Petra is my replacement?” I called after him. “The woman you said smelled like mothballs? The woman who creeped you out with her staring? The woman who doesn’t make soup the way she used to? All you do is complain about her!”

  Petra whimpered.

  “I’m not fucking Petra. What do you think I am?” Trevor yelled from the hallway, popping his head back inside Pep’s bedroom. “Before you, I slept with models and actresses! Supermodels! An Oscar nominee, almost!”

  Petra stifled a cry and turned away. I heard Trevor hop toward the kitchen.

  “Petra, I was worried about your migraine. This is like surround sound betrayal, no, like Lucasfilm THX betrayal!”

  “I work for Trevor,” she said, her eyes moist.

  “And you’re sleeping with him!”

  “On your bed,” she said.

  “On my bed?” I said. “On?”

  “Like this,” she said and mimicked curling up in a ball. “In case Trevor needs water or sleeping pill or thin pillow.”

  “It’s called companion sleeping, okay?” Trevor yelled from the kitchen. “It’s new. My buddy at Google started it. You don’t even know anything.”

  I was staring at Petra. “You know you work for both of us, Petra.”

  “Trevor signs check.”

  She had a point.

  “Ever hear of feminism, Petra? Of women supporting each other? This is why Hillary lost, you know that, right?”

  “Hillary is communist,” she sniffed. “Feminism is not paying bills. Trevor pays bills.”

  “Petra! I need my sleep!” Trevor screeched from the kitchen. “You’re still on the clock!”

  “Is this
why the coffee’s gone to shit?” We’d become squalling adult babies, completely dependent on Petra. Lately, her work had become lax. About a month ago, I walked in as Trevor was shaving in his bathroom and showed him a Loro Piana cashmere sweater, which was now the size of a waffle. Petra had thrown it in the wash with Pep’s towels.

  Petra had joined Equinox, losing her “old country” padding. She had pinwheels in her eyes. I’d wondered if she were popping Adderall or snorting coke. She was watching way too much #RHOBH, sneaking it on her iPad in the office. I was hoping she’d find a boyfriend, someone to wine her, dine her, check her meds.

  I wasn’t talking about Trevor.

  On the rowing machines at Orange Theory, Liz had warned me about the Single White Nanny phenomenon. “If it could happen to Gwen Stefani,” she’d panted, her triceps rippling. “What makes you think you’re so special?”

  “I don’t cost much, in terms of comparative pricing,” I’d said in my defense.

  I pushed past Petra, catching a whiff of my favorite perfume.

  Trevor was in the kitchen, cutting up an apple. He sliced it eight times, each piece even with the next. He placed them on a plate, exactly a quarter-inch space between each slice. Then rearranged.

  “She’s not your replacement,” Trevor said, slipping a slice of apple in his mouth. I stared at the sharp knife he’d been using perhaps a second too long. “I just have to do what’s right for me. That’s what Dr. Erskin said.”

  Dr. Erskin, the resident Hollywood psychiatrist. An actual M.D. (M.D. standing for maximum drugs.)

  “I can’t listen to this anymore.” I rummaged through a kitchen drawer and grabbed my car keys.

  “What are you doing?” He followed me, chewing . . . I counted, an automatic, involuntary response to learned stimulus. I was Pavlov’s wife.

  What other habits had I picked up in the last twelve years?

  #8, #9, #10—

  “Leaving,” I said.

  #12, #13, #14—

  “Leaving where?”

  #18, #19 . . . #22—

  “None of your business!” I said. “You’re the one who wants a divorce!”

  #32, #33 . . . #36 And, swallow.