Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  “Where would one find such a book?” I asked, trying to defuse the situation.

  “What the fuck’s with this guy?” Trevor said to Markie, spittle forming on his lower lip. “Is he fucking lecturing me?”

  “Of course not!” Markie said. “You don’t have to read her book. Gio, come on, he doesn’t have to read his wife’s book, right, honey?” He looked at me. Honey.

  “No. He totally didn’t have to,” I said, excited and horrified at the same time. “I wouldn’t expect it. He’s very busy.”

  “You know what, Metz?” Trevor said. “I don’t want you to direct shit for me.” He pushed himself away from the table.

  “Good!” Gio said. “Because everything you touch is boiled shit.”

  “You fat-ass has-been!” Trevor said.

  “You desiccated shmuck!” Gio said.

  “Come on, you’re my favorite geniuses!” Markie pleaded. “You two kings work this out; this is nothing.” I could see the light in his eyes dim as his commission slipped away . . .

  “You’ll never work in this town again!” Trevor yelled. “Count on that, you blubbery motherfucker!”

  “Ha! I’ve heard that from smarter people than you,” Gio said. “That’s exactly what David Fucking Putnam said, and we know where he is today!” Gio pushed himself away from the table, stood, and turned to me.

  “It’s been a pleasure,” he said, and he kissed the back of my hand.

  His hand was warm and soft, and I wanted to curl up and take a nap in it.

  Then he barged out of the restaurant like a bull in a tapas shop.

  “What a fucking complete asshole,” Trevor said. “And he got big, didn’t he, he really got huge.” Everyone was huge compared to Trevor.

  “What did happen to David Putnam?” Markie asked.

  “He’s not fat,” I said. “He’s dense.” Trevor shot me his death stare.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Markie said, shaking his head, then, “Hey, what do you think of Antoine Fuqua?”

  Trevor lit up, and I tried to forget Gio’s words. Maybe I was living in a bubble, and maybe my husband didn’t read my books, but I was still more or less satisfied. More or less happy. And isn’t that all we can ask?

  #livingthedream

  I sucked down the rest of the margarita.

  8: Nuts

  “Hey, come see Pep’s painting of you.” Trevor jostled me awake, backlit by the bleached early-morning sun. I blinked, willing my eyes open. Was I dreaming? What time . . . ?

  “For Mother’s Day,” he added.

  “Pep is painting again? What time is it?” I rolled over to check my phone. 6:10. Today was a Sunday? Yes. Because (vegan/paleo/gluten-free) buffet dinner and science presentation at the TV legend’s house Saturday night. The legendary producer keeps trying to raise the local IQ; he keeps failing. He doesn’t know he’s failing. Hollywood is obsessed with rubbing up against smart people, but no one cares about his guest speaker heart specialists, Oxford lecturers, and Nobel Prize winners. They care about hearing themselves ask self-important questions like obnoxious fifth graders, then beating the crowd to the valet to Narcos binge in their Hastens beds.

  “Mother’s Day isn’t for another couple of weeks,” I said.

  Pep used to draw all the time. From the first time she could hold a crayon, forget reading and games and naptime. Just stick a pencil in her hand and she’d draw anywhere. On paper, on her walls, her pillowcases. In elementary school, she carried paintbrushes and a little sketchpad everywhere. I don’t remember the last time I saw her with a brush, and I hate myself for not asking her. Why don’t you paint anymore?

  “C’mon, she’s so excited,” he said.

  I planted my feet on the floor and smiled.

  “This painting had better be really special, like a Mike Kelly or a Ruscha, something we can sell when she goes to college and tuition’s a million dollars a year.”

  “She worked really hard,” he said, holding my hand, with a sweetness and eagerness that I’d missed. We padded outside, hand in hand, into the silvery morning, across the grass to the guesthouse where Pep had moved her mini–art studio after “making a mess” on a Tibetan rug (as per the Old Trevor). The sun spiraled out over the horizon. I breathed in the fresh air, minted with ocean and grass, a heady, perfectly Southern Californian scent.

  Oh. There it was. Happiness.

  “I’ll make you the perfect espresso,” I said, hugging Trevor’s arm, “and your favorite protein pancakes. It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

  Maybe Pep would smile again, maybe she’d go back to being carefree Pep, the girl who laughed all the time, freewheeling with that toothy smile and squinty brown eyes.

  Everything is going to be great.

  Trevor opened the door to the guesthouse. I smelled a familiar perfume, one I recognized as friendly. I heard breathing. I felt a presence, then several presences. My eyes adjusted to the dimness, backlit by emerging sunlight. I teased out several figures seated on the long couch. A few more on chairs. I smelled coffee. Someone had stopped for coffee before they arrived here at our guesthouse.

  Was Trevor having a meeting? Trevor often held meetings in the guesthouse. I glanced back at him, in his jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt. Okay. That makes sense, then, that Trevor would’ve seen Pep’s painting and, you know, gotten all excited and had to, simply had to, wake me up.

  “Hi,” I said. Trevor was standing behind me, silent. “Is this some sort of meet—”

  I dropped a syllable as I started to focus.

  “Dad?”

  My dad was seated in a chair next to the couch, elbows on his knees, clutching a folded-up newspaper.

  “Hi, honey,” he said. Dad never called me honey. We weren’t a honey family. Not honey, not sweetie, sweetheart, sugar, doll. He called me by my name. Sometimes by my first and last name, if circumstances were dire.

  “Juliette?” The perfume.

  “Hi, doll,” she said. I couldn’t see, but I was sure she was wearing a see-through blouse. What was she doing here? Had she been up all night?

  “Trevor?” I turned to look at him. “What’s going on?” I gripped my heart. “Is something wrong with Pep?”

  “No, she’s fine; she’s asleep,” Trevor said, shaking his head and then nodding toward another figure in the room. “You tell her?”

  A black man who, I could swear, played a doctor on a TV show leaned out of his comfortable chair and stood. “Agnes, can I call you Aggie?”

  “Why?” He was at least six foot five. I strained my neck looking up at him.

  “My name is Barnaby,” he said, sliding his long arm around my shoulder. He had a deep baritone, a lovely spicy scent but phony displays of affection (my bullshit meter blared honk, honk, honk) set me off. I swiped away my eye boogers and ran my fingers through my hair. Yes, I was sure of it, he was an actor. Not famous, but not unfamous. Law and Order special guest star famous.

  “May I call you Barbie?” I asked.

  “I’m here to help you,” Barnaby said.

  “Barnaby?”

  “Yes?”

  “You have a pirate’s name,” I said.

  “My father’s name, my great-grandfather’s name,” he said. “It’s a slave name.”

  “Cool, okay,” I said

  Barnaby cleared his throat. “Why don’t you have a seat, Agnes?”

  I sank into the couch next to Juliette.

  “What the hell is going on?” I harsh whispered.

  “Everything’s fine,” Juliette whispered back, her breath smelling of clove cigarettes like a dissolute French painter-prostitute. “Is he married?”

  “So, Agnes . . .” Barnaby leaned forward in the velvet chair at the head of the low table and clasped his hands together. A gold band glinted against his macadamia skin. He had the best seat in the room, the power seat; Trevor’s seat. I wondered how Trevor felt about it. He appeared diminished next to Barnaby, but then, so would the Rock.

  “We’re here
because we care about you,” Barnaby said.

  “Oh my God! I’ve been hoodwinked!” Without so much as a wink.

  I glared at Trevor, my mouth hanging open in disbelief. “Trevor, what have you done?”

  Trevor opened his mouth to speak, then blew out air. Barnaby chimed in, but his voice didn’t sound like a chime; he tromboned in. “Agnes, calm down. We just want to talk to you.”

  “You know what happens when you tell a woman to calm down, Barnaby?” I asked.

  “What?” Barnaby asked.

  “Nothing!” I yelled.

  “This is only a talk,” Trevor said. “With the people who really care about you. That’s all.”

  “Grab your popcorn!” I said. “I’m being interventioned, I mean, intervened. Are you trying to intervention me, intervene me?”

  “You’re upset,” Dr. Obvious Macadamia said.

  “I’m the only person in this city who isn’t an addict!” I said. “Unless this is the opposite of an intervention and you all got together to congratulate me on being so fucking not-addicted. Unaddicted. Nonaddicted.”

  Fin stumbled through the door.

  “Hey, late, that motherfucking carburetor,” she said, clomping in.

  “I’m being intervened by my drug dealer sister?”

  “Woo, so this is morning,” Fin said, bounced, ushering in competing scents—tobacco and sweat and horses. Somehow, the odors made her even more alluring; if I smelled like Fin, I’d be as alluring as a rodent. “I had to see this for myself. What’d I miss?”

  “Fin!” Dad barked. “Sit! Goddamn it! Sit!”

  “Fin is at my intervention? Juliette’s here? I guess you didn’t check bags,” I said. “Should we all wait for John Belushi to show up?”

  “That’s not fair,” Juliette said. “I’m not addicted. I can stop at any time.”

  “Stop what?” Barnaby asked.

  “Take your pick,” I said. “What, pray tell, do I need to intervene? Perimenopause? Carbs? Writing? You people don’t want me to write anymore? I can’t blame you.”

  Trevor sprang to his feet and thrust a sandwich bag filled with almonds in my face. “What do you call this?” he demanded, shaking the bag. My stomach growled; Pavlov’s unconditioned stimulus: roasted almonds in olive oil and sea salt.

  “An excellent source of protein?” I asked.

  He tossed the bag on the coffee table as though he’d discovered dirty needles in my Bottega.

  “You’re intervening a healthy snack?” I asked, looking around the room.

  “You have lost a lot of weight, Agnes,” Juliette said. “It’s like you’re starving yourself. You were way, way heavier years ago.”

  Barnaby whistled.

  “I was pregnant years ago, Juliette.”

  “Adderall, Agnes?” Barnaby asked.

  “I’m the only mom in LA who’s not on Adderall!” I said. “They steal it from their kids who really just need to play outside. Right, Juliette?”

  “Adderall helps Annabelle focus,” Juliette said.

  “She’s three.”

  “That’s why we split it.”

  We all looked at her.

  “I’ll deal with you next,” Barnaby promised.

  “Aggie, I’m worried about you,” Trevor said. “I want you to be healthy. I want you to be healthy for Pep. Think of Pep.”

  “You’re so full of it. This is all a ploy,” I said. “This is some Pocket Machiavelli Sun Tzu shit.” I had a flash of realization. “You’re going to use this for custody!”

  “No!” Trevor said. “My God. Can you just listen for once?”

  “Agnes,” Barnaby said, “I promise this will be painless. You may even enjoy the process. Everyone here loves you very much. We all care about you deeply.”

  “Okay, cool it, brother,” Fin said. “The Murphys don’t talk that way.”

  “Fin, you think I need an intervention?” I asked. “You?”

  “Hell no, but Trevor called me; he sounded worried,” Fin said. “If anything happened to you, it’s just me and Daddio.”

  “I would never do that to you,” I said.

  “Hey, now,” Dad said. “I used to change your diapers, young lady.”

  “Who wants to begin?” Barnaby asked.

  “I’ll start,” Dad said. He stood up, put on his reading glasses, pulled out a many-times-folded piece of paper, origami but without the swan. We waited while he unfolded and cleared his throat. A minute passed.

  “To my first daughter, Agnes,” he finally read. “Don’t worry about the weight; for Christ’s sake keep some meat on your bones.” He folded it back up carefully and sat down.

  “That’s it?”

  “I’m not a doctor,” my dad said, shrugging.

  I shook my head, speechless. Fin raised her hand.

  “Fin, come on,” I said. “You? You can’t believe this shit.”

  “Young lady,” my dad said. “You’re not too old for a spanking.”

  “Sorry, Dad,” I said.

  “I need a job,” Fin said. “My parole officer’s on my back. I figured I could network at your intervention.” She studied the participants. “Anyone here looking for a driver? Babysitter?”

  “I could use a driver,” Juliette said. “I keep running into things.”

  “So will you go?” Trevor asked.

  “Trevor,” Barnaby said, cautioning him, “let’s not be hasty. This has to be Agnes’s decision. Agnes?”

  “Where am I to go for my imaginary eating disorder? An imaginary rehab?”

  Barnaby slid a brochure across the coffee table. I picked it up and riffled through it. Arizona sunshine, swimming pools, cacti, Jacuzzi, award-winning chef, adobe villas, massage therapy . . .

  Fin grabbed it from me. “Shit, this is rehab? I’ll go! Hey, you think they have job openings?”

  Barnaby and I discussed terms while Trevor sat there like a nervous child.

  “So it’s like a spa,” I said.

  “Very much like a spa,” he said. “It’s a recovery home for people, who, let’s say, could use a little vacation from their day-to-day lives. It’s a place to go to get rid of everyday toxins—maybe people who have a little too much to drink on the weekends, or their partying has gotten out of hand.”

  “A spa weekend,” I murmured. In my mind, I was already stretched out on a chaise.

  “Your husband leased a jet all set to whisk you off. All you need to do is pack.”

  “A jet? For me?”

  Trevor never spent that kind of money on me—not his own money, not unless the studio was paying for it. I wondered what kind of jet he leased. Like, one that would actually fly?

  “How long would I have to stay?” I could use a change of scenery, a couple of days away from the dead zone. “I don’t want to leave Pep for more than a weekend. That’s it. Just two, three nights max.”

  “Entirely up to you,” Barnaby said. “But the longer you’re there, the more help you’ll receive. And the more help you receive, the better you’ll be for Pip.”

  “Pep,” I said.

  I took a deep breath. Here I was, a healthy, sober person considering a stint in rehab. As a human being, this sounded insane. But I wasn’t a normal human being. I was a writer. And to a writer, it sounded . . . irresistible. What happens when a nonaddict goes to rehab? Why, this story would write itself . . .

  “When do I leave?” I asked.

  “I wish I were going,” Fin said, sitting on a bench in my closet, whipping through the brochure. “Look at that, eggs fucking Benedict. I would’ve said yes to rehab a long time ago if it looked like this.”

  “Trevor was on vacation from our marriage,” I said. “Maybe I need a little vacation from my marriage.”

  “No booze, no drugs, no phones.” Juliette said. “Honestly, sounds like jail with good mattresses.”

  “You can have drugs in jail,” Fin said.

  “Wait. No phones?” I asked. “How do I call Pep?”

  “It’s
only a couple of days,” Fin said, looking through my shoes. “Don’t worry about her. I got this covered.”

  “Oh! You can smoke there,” Juliette said. “So good. Smoking helped me lose baby weight.”

  “You used a surrogate,” I said. “And I don’t smoke.”

  “Once those meth heads start drying out, you’ll start needing a cigarette,” Fin said. “Hey, can I have these boots? They’d be great for barrel racing.”

  “Take ’em,” I said.

  “Do you want to take a pill before you go?” Juliette asked, shaking a prescription bottle. “For the plane?”

  “I’ll take what she’s not taking,” Fin said, grabbing Juliette’s bottle and sticking it in her jeans. “I can sell these, top dollar.”

  “I need those; I just had my labia trimmed.”

  “And I’m the one going away,” I said.

  * * *

  “So what was your drug of choice?” I asked Barnaby as we cruised at thirty thousand feet. “Since you know mine. A delicious, protein-filled snack.”

  “Crack,” Barnaby said. His face went slack, his eyes starry. He smiled dreamily.

  I looked out at the checkerboard desert and thought, Get yourself a man who looks at you the way Barnaby looks at a crack pipe.

  We landed in Tucson after having enjoyed a smooth two-hour ride, a seafood platter, and Barnaby’s rehababble. I thought about Dad, who’d tapped my shoulder with his rolled-up newspaper before he chugged off in the old Jeep he’d parked on the street so he wouldn’t leak oil on the slate driveway.

  “I keep calling you, Dad,” I’d said. “If you wanted to see me, we could’ve just had breakfast.”

  “The stock market’s been real jumpy,” he said, patting me again with The LA Times. “Be good.”

  “Where I’m going?” I called after him, before following Barnaby into the black SUV. “I don’t have a choice.”

  On the way to the front office, Barnaby and I walked past the swimming pool, where several body-positive girls in bikinis floated and chirped and sunned themselves on deck chairs.

  “Who are they?” I asked. They seemed to be grouped by BMI.

  “Eating disorders,” Barnaby said. “Anorexia, bulimia . . .”