Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  “Huh, okay,” she said finally. “May I ask you a question?”

  “Will it hurt?”

  She leaned back in her chair. It squeaked, piercing the air, a giggling rebuke. “Why did you sign this?” Squeak.

  I felt my face burn. “It seemed pretty standard,” I said.

  “Standard for what?” She smiled. I saw pity and admonishment in her smile lines. I felt like one of her grandchildren (or schnauzers) trekking mud into the kitchen.

  “My lawyer said it was a standard agreement.”

  “Let’s see . . .” She peered over her glasses at what I assumed was the signature page. “Corwin C. Brown.”

  “Yes,” I said, picturing a weasel with a tropical tie and chapped lips. “Trevor found him for me. I didn’t know anyone.”

  “How kind,” she said dryly. “We have our work cut out for us.”

  “So you’ll take my case?” Beat. “Is that what I call this? A case?”

  “Who’s opposing counsel?” she asked.

  “Ulger Blecks.”

  She whistled.

  “Why is it everyone whistles when they hear his name? Is he a dog?”

  “A pit bull that frightens rabies.”

  “You’re scaring me,” I said.

  “You should be a little scared,” she said. “It’ll help you be aware of your environment. And aware of what you’re signing when you sign a legal document.” She waved the prenup, its pages giving off a slight breeze.

  “A little scared calls for a lot of wine,” I said.

  “Wait on that. I need you to bring all your calendars for the last ten years to the office. I want you to go through everything in detail. Every meeting, every conversation you can remember having with your husband that counteracts this prenup.”

  My knees started shaking.

  “Custody of Pep,” I said. I cleared my throat. “That’s all I want. Our daughter. She’s at a vulnerable age. I can see her going either way, influencer or pediatrician.”

  “What’s an influencer?”

  “You’re so lucky,” I said.

  “Can you afford to support Pep on your own?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “In the manner to which she’s used?” Anne clarified.

  My heart sank. I calculated how much I’d spent on my dad and Fin and the relatively meager figure left in my accounts. Strange to be living rich and cash poor. But so was half of Bel Air. I knew people driving Rolls-Royces who’d quietly sold off their furniture and lived in twenty thousand square feet of echoes. Broke broke broke broke broke broke . . .

  Hard to feel sorry for them, but still.

  Nope. Still hard.

  “I can’t afford all those bathrooms. I can’t even use all those bathrooms. And housekeepers. And Postmates. Pep’s just discovered Postmates. It’s like buying a car every month, but instead it’s tacos.”

  Anne stood and smiled. “Keep that sense of humor,” she said, holding out her hand. “You’re going to need it.”

  “Of course I’ll keep it,” I said, shaking her hand. “Unless you think I can sell it.”

  I was halfway to the elevators when my phone buzzed.

  Dad. I answered and stepped into an empty elevator.

  “Hello? Daddy?”

  Static static static.

  “Dad, I’ll call you back! I can’t hear you; I’m in an elevator—”

  His voice popping in and out.

  “Son of a bitch . . .”

  A man in a pin-striped suit, wearing a Rolex and lugging a bulging briefcase, hopped into the elevator. He smelled like ill-gotten gain. I squeezed into a corner, making plenty of space for him.

  “Daddy, what’re you talking about? What’s going on?”

  “You didn’t tell me you were getting a divorce—”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you,” I said. “It’s no big deal. Lots of people get divorced . . . hello?”

  Static static.

  “I’ll call you back,” I said, hanging up.

  Pinstripe eyed me with a hint of appraisal. “Who do you have?” He took a card out of his breast pocket.

  “Sorry?”

  “Who’s representing you?”

  The card twisted in Pinstripe’s fingers. He was wearing his college ring on his pinkie.

  “Anne Barrows.”

  His trimmed eyebrows knitted together. I could practically hear him pulling up a face from his mental roster.

  “Who does he have?”

  The elevator doors opened.

  “Ulger Blecks.”

  Pinstripe whistled, shoved his card back in his vest pocket, then skipped out.

  “What is with the whistling?” I called out as I hustled out of the elevator.

  My phone was buzzing again.

  “Dad.”

  “Sitting at Starbucks with Shu minding my own goddamn business. Squirrelly guy tells me you’re getting divorced. Son of a bitch, he’s lucky I didn’t punch his lights out.”

  My dad still talks about the cauliflower ears he dished out back in Boston as a Golden Gloves champ. Six decades ago.

  “Well, I am getting divorced,” I said.

  “Does this have something to do with Easter?”

  “Strangely enough, yes.”

  “Damn. I told Shu you could get her into a movie,” he said. “She’s a terrific actress. Very talented. And so smart. She speaks at least four, maybe five, languages.”

  “Dad,” I said. “I have to go.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Don’t worry, kiddo, I’m on your side. I’m sticking with you.”

  My phone buzzed. Another call. A New York number.

  “Great. Thanks. Talk to you later, Dad,” I said.

  “Be good.” I’d have to be good, extra good, for the next two to four years or however long a Hollywood divorce takes.

  I picked up the new call as I made my way through the lobby.

  “I heard the news,” Waverly said, sounding dour. I mean, dourer than usual. Funeral for golden retriever puppies dour. “Who’s his lawyer?”

  “Ulger Blecks.”

  She whistled.

  “I can’t with the whistling,” I said.

  “It’ll be fine,” Waverly said in a tone that said nothing would ever be fine again. “I hope you’re in full hair and makeup.”

  “Never.”

  “From now on, you don’t go out without full hair and makeup. Like I told Demi, appearance is everything.”

  “I want you to be seen,” Waverly said, guiding me through the lobby of the Sofitel in West Hollywood for a swag party for a video game awards show sponsored by a Tokyo-based bitcoin. (Come get us, aliens.) A swag party is where they give people who already have too much, things they don’t need. “You need to socialize, to network, to show everyone you’re not just Trevor’s wife.”

  “I’m not Trevor’s wife,” I said.

  “You must play a winning psychological battle,” she said. “Michelle, Nicole, Jennifer—they were dining al fresco at the Ivy before the ink was dry on the filings. I did that. That was all me.”

  Waverly explained the three-point plan that helped her through her own twelve-year divorce. I know it sounds crazy to be taking advice from anyone who drew out a divorce way past the presidential term limit, but I wasn’t exactly at my most rational. I wanted to whip through this divorce in a few months and have a peaceful Thanksgiving together like a normal dysfunctional, functional family.

  “You need to:

  1. Socialize.

  2. Strategize.

  3. Pulverize.”

  The biggest piece of advice, however, was one I knew I couldn’t master.

  “Never let them see you sweat,” I repeated.

  “Unless you’re on a hike. I had Nicole hiking the second the order came down. All me.”

  “I can hike,” I said.

  “What’s your divorce brand?” Waverly asked as we walked through the lobby, past photographers and Euro hipsters.

>   “What do you mean?”

  “Are you a Ben-Jen?” she asked. “They go to church together. Sweet. A Gwyneth-Chris—they dine together. Vegan, of course. In my opinion, those two waited too long for public dining; they should’ve called me before People got ahold of the story. How about Angie-Brad; I’m helping them with an US piece. You need a brand.”

  “How about packaging my divorce as an unconscious uncoupling? Not as photogenic Gwyneth’s, of course. But hear me out. I get divorced while on propofol.”

  We stepped into an elevator with awkward millennial actors I didn’t recognize but who seemed terrified of eye contact. Meanwhile, I couldn’t pick them out of a lineup with a gluten-free bagel to my head.

  “YouTube,” Waverly whispered in my ear. “Five million followers.”

  We hit the penthouse, and the agitated YouTube stars scurried away as our senses were hammered by electronic disco music. Waverly yanked me to the side for one more bon mot.

  “Think catastrophically,” she said. “Plan accordingly.”

  “People get divorced every day,” I said, swallowing my fear and my gum.

  “Splitting up is bigger than getting married. You were married for over a decade; you’ll be divorced for life,” she said. “We could push an Ava Gardner–Frank Sinatra angle.”

  We gave our names at the door and were ushered inside. The penthouse was packed with mid-level celebrities, none of whom would ever grace the Oscar stage except, maybe, to sweep it. I could see the top of the Beverly Center from the floor-to-ceiling windows and edges of Cedars Sinai. I thought about the postnatal suite at Cedars where I’d recovered from my emergency C-section; the room had been filled with flowers and gifts. Trevor had ordered truffle linguine from a nearby Italian restaurant, and we sang to our new Pep all night long.

  “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine . . .”

  Sigh.

  Waverly handed me a large shopping bag. “Take these,” she said, tossing eye shadow and lipsticks in my bag.

  Swag stations were set up, giving away, among other goodies, Samsung phones and hover boards.

  “Is this the flammable suite?” I asked.

  A Kirsten Dunst lookalike screamed as she ran her hover board into a couch.

  Waverly tossed cellulite cream and Moroccan hair gel in my bag.

  “Cellulite cream doesn’t work,” I said. “Unless you eat it and throw up.”

  She grabbed two hover boards and handed me one.

  “I don’t want a hover board,” I said.

  “My son wants two,” she said.

  “Smile,” a photographer I recognized from my event-filled almost-former life called to us. She paused before recording our names into her camera.

  “What are you going by now, hon?” she asked me.

  “She’s going by her name,” Waverly said. “Agnes Murphy Nash.”

  Waverly filled my bag and hers with combustible phones and makeup and nail polish and costume jewelry, and then we left, each of us with a hover board under our arm. We waited outside the elevators as I wrestled with my booty.

  The elevator doors opened, and my husband-ish stepped out.

  “Trevor?”

  “Smile,” the photographer said as she snapped photos.

  We stood there, me trying to balance my goody bag and the hover board and Trevor trying to balance his smile with transparent irritation.

  Petra appeared, holding out a swag bag for Trevor.

  “A-nus,” Petra said, “what a surprise.”

  “Lady MacSlavic,” I replied. “This is Waver—”

  I turned. Waverly, all six feet and hover board and musk, had vanished.

  I turned back. Trevor shook his head and strode past me into the suite. Petra followed, then stopped next to me and smiled.

  “I’m pregnant,” Petra said, then pranced off behind Trevor.

  “She beat the Hollywood land-speed record for nanny pregnancies,” I said, waiting with Waverly in a line outside valet parking. “I’ve been Stefani’ed.”

  “Gwen Stefani’s nanny was never impregnated,” Waverly said. “Gwen’s lovely, by the way.”

  “Is she a client?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “What’s with nannies getting impregnated by their employers? I never hear about Hollywood wives getting knocked up by their gardeners. Where’d you go, by the way?”

  “I don’t want Trevor to know I’m working for you,” Waverly said. “I’m staying in Steven’s guesthouse.”

  “Steven . . . ?” There was only one Steven (allowed) in town.

  “Yes, that Steven,” she said. “I don’t want any problems.”

  “What are you doing for . . . that Steven?”

  “I can’t say. You’ll read about it in the trades.”

  I watched scurrying valet parkers pick off smooth, fancy, shiny cars. Centerfold and World Cup–ready Brazilians had cornered the market on valet parking, and I hoped to be lucky enough to marry one of them someday and have a beautiful child and have my future nanny have a beautiful child by my valet parker husband as well.

  “She’s lying, by the way,” Waverly said as she slipped into the back of an Uber Black. “He’d never impregnate staff.”

  “Of course she’s lying,” Liz said. I called her immediately from the car. “I don’t need a psychic—”

  “Cognitive.” Liz was a little miffed that I hadn’t been to her psychic yet. She had about five of them lined up for various catastrophes.

  “Whatever,” Liz said. “—to tell me that. Reminds me of the director’s mistress who needed a million-dollar ‘faux-bortion.’”

  “Those cost as much as raising a kid.”

  My phone beeped. My lawyer, Anne. Her receptionist was on the line.

  “Hi, dear,” she said, and I loved her for mothering me. I’m sure all the clients felt the same. “Congrats. You have your first mediation scheduled.”

  “What do I wear?”

  She paused. “Something to make him regret the day he walked out.”

  I thought for a moment.

  “I’ll wear a coat of hundred-dollar bills.”

  * * *

  Mediation was scheduled at the Blecks Holstein Castle offices on Rodeo in a building decorated Southwestern Gucci style, which is to say it managed to look ugly, dated, and expensive. I followed Anne into a conference room where we’d be meeting with a retired judge experienced in mediating divorce. I’d spent the last week combing through calendars for the last eleven years and calculating the amount of time I’d spent with Pep as opposed to Trevor. The percentages were divided as follows: Me: 63 percent, Gabriela and Her Sisters (like Hannah and Her Sisters without the white upper-class whinging): 35 percent, Trevor 2–11 percent, partially by accident. Once we got the custody arrangements out of the way, I’d leave the financials up to the divorce gods. And hope for the best.

  Like a roof over my head.

  “Primary custody,” I said to Anne as we sat alone in that bare conference room. “Those two little words. Repeat after me—”

  “Agnes, I know you feel that way,” she patted my hand, then pushed back her bangs. “We’re going to try our best.”

  “No trying, only doing,” I said. “Right?”

  “California is a fifty-fifty custody state,” she said. “Unless there are extenuating circumstances . . .”

  I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. The door swung open, and the skeleton in my high school biology class with gray sideburns popped in and rubbed his bony hands together.

  “Hey, so here’s how we’re going to do this,” our mediator said as he jumped into a seat across from us. Spry, this man. “I get a wish list, basically, of everything you’d like in the divorce.”

  “We have our list ready,” Anne said, and she slid a piece of paper over. He donned a pair of reading glasses over his sharp nose. We’d been reasonable. I stay at the house until we sell, or at least three months, while I find a new place. Primary custody of Pep. No alimony
.

  That was it.

  “This is it?” he asked. He sounded disappointed.

  “What else did you expect?” I asked. “Am I divorcing wrong?”

  “Agnes wants as peaceful a parting as possible,” Anne said.

  “An alliterative adieu” I said.

  “I’m a bit thrown off. I thought you’d want to draw this out,” he said, looking at me. “Most women do. It’s a form of attention. You walk down the halls of your lawyer’s office, everyone’s happy to see you, right, honey?”

  I heard Anne growl, but this poster child for Viagra had already launched from his seat. He was the type of man who medaled at the Senior Olympics.

  “I’ll run this by them,” he said as he hopped to the door. “You’re being unreasonably reasonable!”

  “That’s me. When I’m not basking in divorce lawyers’ attention.”

  He tilted his head. “I’m pretty sure we can have this wrapped up today.”

  The door closed.

  “Let’s get this over with and get away from Bobby Riggs,” I said. “You want to have lunch? I’m paying.”

  She smiled. “You’re always paying.”

  “Touché!”

  I gulped my water and contemplated the rest of my afternoon, secure in the dream that my divorce would turn out to be a piece of cake.

  The door opened.

  Mr. Senior Olympics stepped inside, looking deflated.

  “He walked out,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I read your husband your list,” he said. “I said it was reasonable. And that we could wrap this up ASAP. And he . . . walked out.”

  Of course he did. Any negotiation was a loss. Trevor needed to fight, to punish, to emerge victorious, standing atop the heap of divorce booty holding my blow dryer aloft.

  The dryer he’d manage to wrest from me in the divorce.

  (I wish I’d kept a receipt for that blow dryer.)

  “Good luck,” Mr. Senior Olympics said, shaking his head as Anne and I gathered our things. “You’re going to need it.”

  “So what do I do now?” I asked. “Besides head to the roof and jump onto the hood of an Arab prince’s illegally parked Lamborghini?”

  “We wait,” she said. “In the meantime, relax. If we have a big battle ahead; you need to be healthy and present for your daughter.”