Elizabeth the First Wife

by Lian Dolan

  The crowd was the typical assortment of designers, money, and media, the sort of people who mixed easily in Pasadena. There was the old guard sporting their Bill Blass jackets over black or white pants, sipping wine and scanning for fellow country clubbers. The designers tended to be younger and hipper, but not so hip that they alienated their clients, who preferred Schumacher to steampunk. And the media was local, chummy, and in the bag for an event like the Showcase House.

  Pierce DeVine was holding court near the deep blue pool; even though I could only see him from behind, I’d recognize the shape of his perfect head anywhere. When I dropped off the signed contract and the first of many checks, he told me he only committed to a guest bathroom in “the House” this year because, and I quote, “Those committee ladies will bleed a designer dry. Let somebody else do the kitchen for free.” (Charity work really brings out the best in people.) Presumably, Pierce used his third eye to sense the presence of a movie star, because he turned, mid-conversation, to acknowledge us with a namaste gesture. I bowed my head in return, before realizing how ridiculous I must have looked.

  I spotted several Divorced Dads in the crowd checking me out with new interest. These were the men my friends had set me up with because, as Shelly Bixby told me, “It’s hard to find someone on the first go-round at your age.” True, Shelly, but I was child-free, which I thought put me in a “more single” category than a man with two kids in grade school. Unfortunately, there weren’t many men in Pasadena who’d had the good sense to divorce before they procreated like I did, so I made a few mistakes before I figured out that dating a divorced dad meant never getting to say, “I don’t care about youth sports.”

  I caught the eye of one ex named Minot Stewart, or as I liked to call him, “the law firm of Minot Stewart.” Minot was, in fact, a lawyer who was also very earnest and in way over his head with his two children on their every other week. His first wife left him for her trainer, which was so ’90s it was almost too pathetic to believe. But he did have excellent manners and a healthy smile, which went a long way in my book. For the first few weeks, it looked like Minot might be one of the few Divorced Dads who could separate dating and parenting. We had a honeymoon period in which he barely mentioned travel-team tryouts or summer-camp plans. My first encounters with his daughters, Zoe and Chloe, were brief, fun, and enjoyable. Look at me, I thought—instant family!

  But then Minot started treating me like a nanny, calling me from work on Friday to pick up his girls and get them to softball because he was “stuck on a phone call.” Or asking me to buy gifts because the girls had to go to a birthday party and I would know what to get the birthday girl better than he would. I ended the relationship after one terrifying Saturday morning at a petting zoo with Zoe and Chloe while Minot “played golf with a client.” (Really, if I wanted to be abandoned on a weekend morning for the golf course, I’d have to sign a prenup first.) I liked kids; I just didn’t want to date them. When I broke it off, his first words were, “Does that mean you can’t cover ballet practice on Thursday?”

  But my loss was kindergarten teacher Suzy Badalian’s gain. She swooped in and snagged Minot on the rebound, scoring a ring the next Christmas. A kindergarten teacher was the perfect choice to schlep his girls to ballet.

  Now, happily married and self-satisfied, Suzy and Minot were trying really hard not look at FX and me as we weaved through the crowd. I busted them with a big wave in their direction.

  My favorite reaction of the night was the neck-craning double take executed by Muffin O’Meara O’Malley, creator of four perfect children and a line of cashmere spa wear (Double O’M) that had just been sold into Neimans. Muffin had graciously set me up with not one but two of her banker husband’s partners, mainly out of pity with a touch of politics. (Her husband wanted a face-to-face with Congressman Ted.) The setups had failed miserably, and the face-to-face had never happened, partly because I was too lazy to follow up with Ted and partly because I wanted to punish Muffin a little bit for taking the lead role in Pippin away from me in eleventh grade. We’d been mutually avoiding each other for months.

  But tonight, Muffin was all graciousness and charm. After recovering from her initial reaction, she rushed over to greet me, bussing me pretentiously on both cheeks, then grabbing FX’s right hand in a double-clutch pump shake. Without letting go, she informed us that she had just returned from London, where everyone was talking about the Washington movie. What one had to do with the other, I wasn’t sure, but FX humbly accepted her praise, then exited to the bar with a gentle bow.

  Muffin forced her death grip on me. “Oh, you bad girl. No wonder it didn’t work out with George or Ramesh. You’ve been recycling, as the kids say.” I was pretty sure the kids didn’t say that, but I smiled conspiratorially. Arriving casually with my famous ex-husband was exactly the sort of personality rehab I needed in this town. I’d gone from Still Single to Still Happening in an instant.

  “That’s me, Elizabeth the Bad Girl. Who doesn’t feel good about recycling? Excuse me, Muffin. I see that Bumble needs an intervention, and that’s what sisters do for each other!” And with that I was off to rescue Bumble, who’d been cornered by one of the Showcase neighbors, who was a large donor to her husband’s campaigns. Her previous career in PR had served her well in her relatively new role as the wife of a congressman. She did a lot of the Stand & Nod and the Smile & Laugh, as well as the Stare in Adoration, all performances she had perfected while representing celebrities. Currently, as Bumble stood listening to helmet-headed Adelaide Martin, she was performing the Agree & Move On, which was executed with lot of nodding and a steady stream of “Uh-hmmns.”

  When she and Ted were first married, about seven years ago, Bumble fashioned herself after Maria Shriver, the First Lady of California at the time. So many parallels, it was eerie, Bumble used to say. (Him a Republican; her a Democrat. Him a Republican; her with good hair.) But since Arnold and Maria’s spectacular marital meltdown, she fashioned herself after Kate Middleton, which seemed a little grandiose. But what did I know about being the adoring spouse?

  I was good at being the buffer sister, though. “Hello, Mrs. Martin. It’s great to see you! Isn’t the house wonderful? I think it’s almost as big as yours, but not as stately! I hate to do this, but I have to steal Bumble away. My mother needs her. Please say hello to Betsy for me. Her Christmas card this year was beautiful. I’ve never seen white linen on children look so pressed!” I took Bumble by the elbow and led her out toward the gardens to hunt for FX, who had disappeared, and to find out why she had to talk to me.

  “Thank you. She was going on and on about getting speed bumps put in on her street. Honestly, what does she think Ted does? Work at the Department of Public Works? The worst part of it is that because she’s such a big donor, I’m actually going to have to put in a call about the speed bumps. Let’s get a drink. I’ve talked to enough constituents tonight.”

  Bumble was working her way through the crowd with two white wines when I spotted FX on the veranda chatting up Candy McKenna. Do all famous people have some internal GPS that leads them to other famous people?

  Truthfully, Candy was only very famous in zip codes 91101 to 91107. She was a disgraced Rose Queen who lost her favored-citizen status when she posed for Playboy’s Women of the Ivy League issue in the late ’80s. An elephant never forgets and neither does a local, so Candy’s personal comeback was never as complete as Vanessa Williams’s, but her star was on the rise again. Years ago, she’d started a local gossip website called candysdish.com, a cleverly written look at the upper crust in Southern California with only a touch of snark. It started off serving, or skewering, the Pasadena community, but she soon wormed her way into Hollywood coverage, making the best use of her good looks, media savvy, and focus on celebrity charity events, as opposed to movie openings and awards shows. Now every big charity event got the candysdish treatment, complete with who was there, what they were wearing, and what was served for dinner, all wrapped in a big
red feel-good bow. Somehow it humanized the celebs, making them seem just like other rich people, and they loved Candy for it.

  No doubt, FX was laying the groundwork for the Dire Necessity Oscar campaign. I’d come to know Candy a bit through Bumble, and I liked her a lot. She was one of the few people in town who really didn’t care what others thought of her.

  Personally, my favorite section on candysdish.com was called “Why the Sour Face?” It was a delicious weekly roundup of socialites and their husbands caught bickering in public at yet another fundraiser. Each week, Candy and her secret army of cell phone cameras found couples locked in marital death glares. When I was feeling down and out about being single, I’d check “Why the Sour Face?” and gloat over a snapshot of Jennifer Lewis Tanner, my swim-team nemesis, berating her poor (but loaded, both in money and liquor) husband Tim Tanner at the Cloverfield auction after he bid ten thousand dollars for a shih tzu puppy that JLT clearly did not want. Those moments alone in front of my computer on a Saturday night convinced me that single is a very fine status.

  Bumble had spotted FX with Candy, too. “He’s in good hands. Or so I’ve heard about Candy,” Bumble quipped as she slugged back some wine. “Watch him.”

  “This is a work relationship only. If he wants to be the fourth Mr. Candy McKenna, I have no problem with that. He does look good, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s a movie star. That’s his job. But yes, he looks good,” she conceded. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “It’s your fault. I’m a victim here. You know how much a Pierce DeVine remodel costs. I had to take the work!”

  Bumble laughed. “At least you’re getting something out of it this time. More than I can say for your marriage. And, speaking of marriage. …”

  Here we go. The real reason Bumble wanted to talk to me.

  “You know Ted and I have been trying to get pregnant and so far, no luck. Not that it’s easy with him being on the other side of the country half the year.”

  I had to admit, being married to a congressman was not the slightest bit glamorous. Ted Seymour was a successful real estate developer who wandered into politics without much long-term planning. Good-looking, articulate, and a diplomat to the core, he stepped into a race for Congress when the chosen candidate admitted to hiring illegal immigrants for his cleaning-service empire. (Illegal immigrants cleaning bathrooms? What a shocker!) Enter Ted Seymour, fiscally conservative but socially liberal, just the kind of Republican that Californians liked. He was a single dad raising a young daughter when his campaign hired Bumble to run some fundraisers. She swears the last thing on her mind was any kind of relationship, but I’m pretty sure she gave the Seymour campaign a very low bid for her work to get in front of Ted. He was elected, and six months later, he and Bumble were married.

  The honeymoon was short, very short. Bumble immediately became Ted’s political surrogate and full-time fundraiser in Pasadena while he commuted back and forth to DC. But the biggest adjustment was becoming a stepmother to then ten-year-old Maddie. Ted could be gone for weeks at a time, and it was Bumble who held down the home front, stepping into the unfamiliar world of school volunteering, parent-teacher conferences, and weekend debate competitions. I give her a lot of credit. Lesser females would have crumbled under the microscope of Pasadena’s competitive parenting posse, not to mention the bright lights of politics. Not Bumble. She just got Botox.

  But I knew Bumble was lonely, and the stress of infertility was starting to take its toll. (The other day I caught her shoving a Ding Dong in her mouth at a gas station.) So where did I come into their infertility issues? I braced myself for the ask.

  “I need you to take Maddie to Ashland with you this summer. She won’t go back to camp. She doesn’t want to go on another one of those expensive fake mission programs to Guatemala. And God knows, her mother can’t be bothered to forego her very important work in Reiki healing at that commune she lives in.” Bumble was not a fan of Maddie’s birth mother, a trust-fund hippie who bailed on the family when Maddie was a toddler and moved to Sun Valley. “You know I love Maddie, but I need her out of the house. This is it. I feel like it’s our last shot at getting pregnant, and that means Summer Sexapalooza. Ted and I can’t do that if Maddie’s around.”

  Wow, I so did not want to picture Congressman Ted in a “Summer Sexapalooza.” Now that I knew about their plan, I was glad I wasn’t going to be around as a witness. Still, I wasn’t sure I had the skills to entertain Maddie all summer. “You know I think Maddie’s great. She smart and studious, a cool girl. …”

  “She could be your intern! She could help you do research for your book. Or help you backstage. Or do whatever interns do. Please, Elizabeth. We’ll pay her expenses, even give her a salary that you could say was from you. She likes you and she loves the theater. And if you asked her, it wouldn’t seem like it was my idea.”

  Bumble was pleading, honestly pleading. I did love Maddie. We always had fun when she spent the weekend when Bumble went off to Washington for a few days. She reminded me of me at seventeen: preferring books to boys and engaged in just enough intellectual snobbery to make her interesting but not standoffish. We’d bonded over Jane Austen novels and Zac Efron movies. Plus, her birth mother’s behavior annoyed me beyond belief. How could you walk away from your daughter because you felt “suffocated”? Maybe I could use an intern.

  “Okay, I’ll ask her to come with me. But understand that I have work to do, so I can’t watch her every minute. I can’t babysit. And, if she doesn’t want to come, I’m out. I’d be happy to have a willing intern, but not forced labor. Only if Maddie really wants to come. Understood?”

  “Thank you, Elizabeth.” Bumble hugged me. Then added, “Oh, and if you let Maddie fall for FX, I will kill you.”

  The real Bumble was back. “I can’t help it if a teenage girl gets a crush on a movie star, okay? But, of course, I’ll warn him and keep an eye on her. There will be a lot of attractive actors, so it’s not just FX you have to worry about.”

  “Oh, that’s not Maddie’s thing. Really, she’s too smart for that.”

  Well, she wasn’t too smart to devour the Twilight books, because we both enjoyed those a few years ago. Bumble was boy crazy by age ten, so a girl like Maddie, who’d never been out with a boy, was a mystery to her. But not to me. I knew Maddie noticed boys, and when one finally noticed her, it would be her undoing.

  Bumble took a quick look around the party. We were still alone by the koi pond. “I have one more favor to ask. Do you want a housesitter this summer?”

  “I take it you have someone in mind…why, do you have a fertility goddess you want to stash at my place for the Sexapalooza?”

  That cracked Bumble up. “No, although not a bad idea. Actually, Ted’s chief of staff is moving here for the summer, during the congressional recess.” She lowered her voice dramatically. “He’s working on some stuff on the side for Ted. Some fact-finding. It would be great if he had a low-profile place to work out of. That’s also free. Like your house.”

  “Is Ted involved in some scandal?” I was genuinely concerned now. Bumble usually wasn’t so vague.

  “No, no. Don’t tell anyone, but he’s considering a run for the governorship. So Rafa’s going to do some temperature-taking, a little listening tour with movers and shakers here to see if Ted can build a coalition and make a run.”

  Relief, then curiosity. Being the tennis fan, my ears shot up at the name Rafa. For one crazy moment, I pictured Rafael Nadal sleeping in my bed with nothing on but a headband. The thought gave me great pleasure. Bumble’s strange expression pulled me back from the brink. I recovered, “Governor Ted? And First Lady Bumble. Wow, that’s really something. That’s huge.”

  “I know. But Ted actually cares and thinks he could make a difference. And so do I,” she said. “And I really want to be a First Lady.”

  “You would be a great First Lady. To the Governor’s Manor born.” I had no doubt about Bumble, but I wanted to
flush out a few more details about the housesitter. “So who’s Rafa?”

  I was pretty sure he was the guy I’d had some disturbing eye contact with on my way into the party. I didn’t want to let on that I’d noticed Mr. Blue Suit, or Bumble would have a field day.

  Instead, she filled in the blanks with her Wikipedia-like recall, “He was here with Ted earlier, but they left for another event. Let me see, what can I tell you? Late thirties. Very smart, policy-savvy, good social skills. From the Antelope Valley here in California, fifth-generation farming family, they grow plants or trees or something. Ag not really his thing, so Rafa went to Georgetown, poli sci. Worked for both state and national candidates before he and Ted connected at a conference last year. Good match. Rafa gets California, which is not easy to do.”

  I had to ask, “Will his whole family be living in my house?”

  “He’s single, no time for relationships, but he’s constantly fighting off the advances of ambitious young women who want to work on the Hill. Or so he claims. I’m not sure he fights them all off.”

  An ambitious Republican go-getter with an active social life? Rafa and I had nothing in common. Still, it was Bumble, and I couldn’t refuse. “You know, for someone who didn’t want me to go to Ashland, you’re certainly capitalizing on my absence.”

  “Farmer’s son. Your garden will never look better,” Bumble promised, as she went off to find Maddie and head home.

  Just then, FX and Candy circled around to our part of the grotto. Clearly, the two of them had enjoyed themselves, as they were talking and laughing easily. Dear God, don’t let Candy have heard us talking about Ted’s political aspirations. Not to worry, as Candy unwrapped her arm from FX’s and announced, “Well, Elizabeth, I can see why you married him, and I can guess why you divorced him. How very sophisticated to work together again after all these years. I work with one of my exes, but he’s a gay real estate agent, so it’s not quite the same.” Candy gave the international sign for kisses to all, turning FX back over to my custody. “He’s all yours. Again. Keep me in the loop with the Shakespeare thing.”