Been There, Married That (ARC)

by Gigi Levangie

  And yet. That spot was not to be denied.

  I heard footsteps and a grunt. Trevor. He’d forgotten something. Trevor tossed his backpack on the chopping block and took a step back as he stared at the spot.

  “Gabi!” he yelled. “There’s a water spot here on the marble! Gabi!”

  I slid out of the kitchen and raced toward the guesthouse to stop Fin. She had to stay. I was beginning to think my sanity depended on it.

  I grabbed Fin as she was packing her stupid duffel bag, a mean thing to say about a duffel bag, but it felt like she’d been camping her whole life.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving,” Fin said, her lower lip pushed out, a flash of her baby pictures. The sweetest baby. Except when she bit me.

  “I can’t stay here and watch you slip away again.”

  “Me?” I said. “I’m slipping away? You’re the one who moves just out of reach of your family. And then, you know, the whole prison thing. That gets old.”

  “You didn’t visit me,” she said.

  “Fin.”

  “You could’ve visited me.”

  “I’m a mom.”

  “I’m your sister,” she said. “What do you think it was like in there? Huh? At a women’s correctional facility? You think it was a good time? You think it was easy?”

  My face flushed with shame. It’s true. Her last stint lasted six months. I didn’t visit her once. I had no excuse. Oh, wait. I had an excuse—the “crazybusy” life I was leading. All that craziness, all that busyness, and what did it all add up to? A lot of Instagram photos of my fabulous life. And my amazing friends.

  Friends who hadn’t called me lately . . .

  Mental note: check Insta-envy. Would middle school never cease? Menopausal adolescents competing with their daughters for estrogen levels and likes.

  #youresopretty

  #ugh

  “I’m sorry,” I said, grabbing her hand. “I can’t imagine what it was like. I’m sure it was awful.”

  “Ah, wasn’t that bad.” Fin sniffed and rubbed her nose.

  “You just said—”

  “Oh my God, there was this girl”—she grinned—“we fought each other, you know. We’d pound the shit out of each other, and then we’d braid each other’s hair and talk about our boyfriends and her kids and such.”

  “You just said you hated prison.”

  “I never said I hated prison.”

  I could hear my teeth grit. Sometimes, talking to Fin was like spitting into a fan.

  “Oh, the food?” she said. No one had asked about the food. “The food was terrible. Don’t get me wrong. I gained ten pounds.” She grabbed her nonexistent waistline. “All that disgusting white bread and cheese.” She sighed. “But once you get past the grub, my ride or die are those girls I met inside. We keep in touch, you know. Better than you and your friends, right?”

  I leaned against the doorjamb and looked over the balcony at the riding ring below. I could smell lavender wafting over the breeze.

  “So you staying or what?” I asked.

  Fin looked away like asking her to stay in this beautiful home on a hill was distasteful.

  “Pep needs you.”

  “Pep? Pep barely says hi to me,” she said. “I hate to break it to you—these Westside kids are really fucked up. I mean, they are going nowhere, sis. And they can’t do time like I did; they’re not cut out for it.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I need you. I can’t trust anyone else. And that is pathetic.”

  I grabbed her duffel bag, and she pulled it back, and soon we were in our backyard of cement and weeds in a tug-of-war.

  “Give it!” I said.

  “No!” Fin yelled back.

  I yanked it back while she kicked at my feet and we both collapsed, and a towel popped out from the opening.

  “You were stealing my towels?”

  Fin held towel up against her cheek and closed her eyes.

  “It’s so soft,” Fin said. “And you have so many of them. It’s like a Bed Bath & Beyond in here.”

  She sank her nose back in the towel.

  I had to learn to be more like Fin—not the “borrowing,” but to enjoy the little things like fresh towels while I still had them.

  The RAPE Luncheon was a big deal, even among the numerous charity events that popped up weekly on the Westside calendar. Even thinking about events made my palms sweat—the details like hair, makeup, how to pose, what to wear, what not to wear, what to say, what not to say. How to talk to human Xanax dispensers. I’m not judging, truly, I’m not (maybe?). Instead of showing up, I usually hid behind checks with at least three zeros. It wasn’t them, I’d told Liz, who could be found under a backyard tent at least once a week. It was me.

  “You have better programming,” I’d told Liz, whose earliest childhood memories were invitation only. “I didn’t know what a seating chart was until my thirties.”

  RAPE stood for Responsive Allied Patient Empowerment, which sounded both important and bureaucratic, and somehow I’d landed on the board. Years ago, I’d been cornered by several Hollywood wives at another luncheon and told it was unheard of that someone of my “stature” wasn’t on a charity board. At first, I was excited, my emotional precursor to dread.

  This would be my first year without my most important event accessory, my wedding ring, entering uncharted waters as a separated woman, the scarlet D pinned to my silk dress.

  “Please tell me we’re sitting together,” I’d said to Liz. “I can’t sit next to anyone else. In fact, can you make sure no one else shows up?”

  “I left a message for Karyn, too,” she said. “She’s renewing her vows. Did you get the invite?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “Renewing her vows . . . Michael’s gay, right?”

  “She’s starting a trend.”

  “She’s a dollar short and a gay late,” I said. “Half the marriages in this town are gay-to-straight.”

  The day was hot and dry, the city in a drought that would never end, much like my divorce. The palms lining Benedict bowed in abeyance to the Santa Ana winds as I navigated my way up into the canyon. I turned up a side street where valet parkers were lined up like toy soldiers, their foreheads slick with sweat. I stole a final look at my face in the rearview mirror. The hot winds had dried out my skin to parchment; if it weren’t for my mother’s Slavic cheekbones and my dad’s jawline, I’d look like the skull emoji. I needed to invest in duct tape.

  A handsome valet knocked on my window. I slicked on more lip gloss for my breakup debut and rolled down the window.

  “How do I look?” I asked the young man.

  “Good!” he said, smiling sweetly.

  “You say that to all the needy women,” I said and handed over my keys.

  * * *

  Liz was nowhere to be seen. I stood in line behind a slew of women with the latest uneven, curled, shoulder-length hairdo. In LA, we birthed, then whipped trends to death, and this was the year of the curly bob. I read up on the hairdresser responsible for the bobopocalypse. He charged $600 a cut, not counting color. His waiting time could stretch as long as two hours, longer if Madonna or Rachel McAdams cut the line. He snipped several heads at once, spending no more than ten minutes on each head. Still, Liz convinced me to get outside my unruly head of hair comfort zone. I called to make an appointment; the nasally receptionist asked for my email.

  I had to fill out a questionnaire first. And attach a recent headshot.

  I had to qualify for this haircut.

  No, really.

  (But I’m the crazy one.)

  I was finally at the front of the line to get my table number.

  “Hi,” I said to the pink-cheeked intern working the table. “Agnes Murphy . . .”

  “Murphy . . . ,” she said, her eyes sliding down the guest list.

  “Nash,” I said. “Look under Nash.”

  I was wearing a slate-gray cotton dress and chunky heels. A Chanel pillow bag over my sh
oulder to block social artillery. I felt myself starting to sweat.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t see it,” she said.

  “Nash or Murphy, sometimes both,” I said. “I’m actually on the invite.” Was I on the invite? I hadn’t looked.

  She checked again, her brow furrowing. “Give me a second?” She smiled. The line was growing behind me.

  “Oh. My. God,” said a woman standing behind me, a wide-brim hat over her pulled face. And that curly bob.

  The pink-cheeked intern conferred with a supervisor toting a clipboard. She mumbled into her walkie-talkie, eyeing me as though I were trying to pole vault over the White House fence

  “Can we just go?” someone else behind me asked.

  “We’re going to miss the first speaker,” someone else said.

  Oh, please, I thought, they make you wait forever for that first speaker. It’s like when people are in such a goddamned hurry to get on a plane. Why?

  “I’m sorry,” Pink Cheeks was saying to me. “You’re not on our list.”

  Someone behind me made a razzie sound. I heard giggling. Shushing.

  “I’m one of the founding members,” I said. “I paid for a ticket.”

  “We don’t have any proof of that,” she said. “Are you sure?”

  “That I’m a founding member?”

  “That your payment went through.”

  “Of course I’m sure,” I said, my face hot. Sweat pooling under my arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “If you could just . . .” She motioned. Move aside.

  The woman with the wide-brim hat smiled at me, her teeth like fangs.

  “This is just a big misunderstanding,” I said. “I’m going to make a phone call.”

  “Sure,” Pink Cheeks said. “If you could just do it over there.”

  I walked to the side, hiding my face in my phone, ringing Liz.

  She didn’t answer. I tried again. Nothing.

  I raced to the valet.

  “Is everything all right?” the valet parker asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I forgot . . .”

  My proper place in this world . . . and an Uzi.

  “My phone!”

  He stared at me, a quizzical look on his smooth face. My phone was in my hand.

  * * *

  I rocketed home to find Coliti-Girl bent over the kitchen island, wielding an automatic tape measure.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked. She jumped, and the measuring tape recoiled like a snake. Thwap.

  “Ow!” she said, shaking her hand, then moved the notepad to the left. “Trevor wanted me to move everything back.”

  She pulled the measuring tape out again, checking the distance between the notepad and the edge of the island.

  “He wants everything measured and in its rightful place by the time he comes home from Argentina,” she said, with a small stamp of her feet.

  “Trevor’s in Argentina?”

  “Oh my God! Don’t tell him I told you, please?”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s my fault; let me help.”

  She looked like she was about to cry, but then she always looked like her dog had just been run over.

  “Sometimes I don’t understand him. But at least I don’t have to clean up semen!” she said, brightening before bounding down the corridor to the master.

  Hollywood sets the low bar for bosses. #dobetter

  Liz called and called, but I’d already Epsom-salt-bathed the toxic luncheon out of my system. I’d lost my luncheon credentials; my Hollywood wife gate pass had been revoked.

  “The welcome mat has been pulled out from under last year’s Louboutins,” I said as Fin and I sipped a heady Bordeaux under the cloud cover.

  “Let’s drink to that,” Fin said, raising her glass.

  “Humiliation?”

  “Freedom!” Fin said. “And to Trevor, for leaving town and forgetting the wine cellar key.” After targeted snooping, Fin had found the key to the wine cellar (using one of my useless credit cards to open Trevor’s office and a nail file to open a desk drawer) and pulled out a bottle of Margaux that’d been waiting patiently to be opened since our wedding.

  Maybe too patiently; the color was off, more brown than ruby. Still.

  She opened the $1,400 bottle of wine before I could stop her by impaling myself on the corkscrew, but I didn’t really want to stop her, now, did I?

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” I said. “All those women staring at me, talking shit.”

  “Of course they were staring,” she said. “I haven’t seen one of them blink since I’ve been here. They probably sleep with their eyes open.”

  Wine flew out of my nose as I snorted.

  “See? You know I’m right.” She sipped. “This grape is a little flat, yeah? I’ve had better.”

  “Your palate’s been damaged by too many orange foods,” I said. “Doritos, Velveeta . . .”

  “Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck beats this slop.”

  “Salad dressing,” I said.

  “Look at you, princess,” she said. “Let’s have a little wine tasting. You won’t be able to tell the difference, I guarantee it.”

  “Bet.”

  “Great,” she said. “I’ll bet you a year’s supply of that guesthouse shampoo you got.”

  “You’re on,” I said.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “We’re settling this once and for all.”

  She grabbed my purse.

  “I’ll give you money,” I said. “You don’t need my purse.”

  “Yeah, I do,” she said. “I need your ID.”

  I just shook my head as she scooted out the door.

  * * *

  Minutes later, I heard a car in the circular driveway. Fin had already returned.

  “What else could she possibly need?” I asked Pep, who was watching television in the living room.

  “She needs a good man,” Pep said.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Auntie Fin,” she said.

  Then someone knocked at the front door.

  * * *

  I opened the door to two men in matching gray suits with weary expressions that I’d come to know after years of being on the wrong end of my sister’s bad judgment.

  “Agnes Murphy?” the older one, white, with a gray mustache to match his suit.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Detective Raskoff; this is Detective Gonzalez,” he said, regarding the olive-skinned, dark-eyed man beside him. They flashed their all-too-familiar badges, and I wanted to shield my eyes.

  I felt my heart beating in my chest. Fin. Had she run over a Botox victim in carpool? Had she shoved a bottle of Two Buck Chuck in her pants and driven off? I flashbacked to all the things she’d shoved in her pants over her long, industrious thieving career. Raisinets. A plum. Stapler. Snickers. A brush. Slim Jims. Lip gloss. Other pants.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked. And then I thought, Is it my husband?

  Was it Trevor? A terrible, yet pain-free accident?

  “We understand you’re in possession of stolen property,” Raskoff said. “We’d like to search the premises.”

  “Stolen excuse me what?” I couldn’t have heard correctly.

  “Stolen property.”

  “I don’t have any stolen property,” I said. I felt my face redden. Since I was a kid, I had a knack of looking guilty, especially when I wasn’t. In fact, whenever Fin told a fib, I looked guilty. I’d never even seen her blush.

  “That’s not what we hear,” he said.

  “Do you have a search warrant?” I crossed my arms. I’d seen the TV shows. I know my rights. I think?

  Pep had sneaked up beside me. “Mom?”

  “It’s nothing, honey,” I said, turning to the officers. “So . . . do you have one of those thingies I just mentioned?”

  “We don’t,” he said. “We’re just asking for your cooperation.”

  “Mom, what’s going on?” Pep asked, her eyes
dancing.

  “Nothing, honey,” I said. “Go back to your YouTube program.”

  “No friggin’ way! It’s boring compared to this,” she said.

  “Go. Now. Penelope,” I said. I never called her Penelope; she held up her hands, then skittered away toward the kitchen.

  “I haven’t stolen anything,” I said to Raskoff.

  “We’re not saying you did,” Raskoff said.

  “Have you?” Gonzalez asked.

  “Missus?” Caster appeared behind me.

  “Caster, can you make sure Pep stays in her room while I talk to these gentlemen?” I said. Trevor’s fingerprints were all over this. Trevor’s fingerprints were all over my unstolen stolen property.

  What on earth was in our house that could be stolen proper—

  Oh.

  Fin’s mother effing Tiffany clock.

  Goddamn it, he wouldn’t.

  He would. Of course he would.

  “That little shit.” I said. How convenient that he had to skip off to Argentina . . .

  “Mrs. Nash? Are you listening?” Raskoff asked.

  “I never should’ve moved the notepads,” I said under my breath as I stepped outside and shut the door behind me.

  13: Caveat Sister

  “Ma’am,” Detective Raskoff said as Detective Gonzalez’s black eyes bored holes in my tipsy defense. Intimidation game off the chain. “We’d like to question your sister.”

  “Who . . . m?”

  “Finley Caroline Murphy,” he said. “The sister who’s on probation.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That sister.”

  “You have another?”

  I wish. “No.”

  “When is she returning?”

  “No idea,” I said, channeling The Wire. I wasn’t about to cooperate with the cops. Not when it came to my sister. They could cuff me, haul me off, tase me (been there, sparked that), and I wouldn’t say shit. Prison rules, bitches! Get to know me!

  Blood is thicker than common sense.

  “We heard she’s living here,” Raskoff said.

  “Now where would you’ve gotten that idea?”

  Raskoff snorted. Gonzalez stare-glared. I wondered if he could read minds. I thought, Fuck you, too, Gonzalez, and hoped he read that.