My Ex-Life: A Novel

by Stephen McCauley

  “Aha. I knew it.”

  “He has a kitchen store and a husband.”

  “A married shopkeeper? How wonderful. I’m sure there’s a private storage area behind the cash register. You’ll have to tell me everything once you’ve sealed the deal.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath on that. I’ve got too much to do around here to chase down distractions.”

  “The whole trip is a distraction, David. When are you coming back?”

  “Saturday, supposedly, but I’m beginning to wonder. There’s a lot to do here, and I haven’t even started working with the daughter. Julie stands to lose everything she cares about unless I can help her pull a few things together. In the meantime, I’m getting worried about the Palace.” (Michael’s name for the carriage house.) “Renata is trying to hustle me out, and I’m afraid she might go in and riffle through my things.”

  “I see, I see. And find the porn and sex toys?”

  “The file cabinets in my dining room. They’ve got tons of information about clients’ grades and test scores and psychological profiles. Most tantalizing to her, there are financial records. I wouldn’t put it past her to start collecting phone numbers.”

  “Surely you locked everything.”

  “If you think that would stop her, you don’t much about Renata.”

  “I know we’ve met three times, and she still has no idea who I am.”

  Michael was easily wounded by perceived slights.

  “I must have told her where you live,” David said. Like men who literally don’t see older women, Renata had a blind spot for anyone who was connected to unappealing housing. “You’d be doing me a huge favor if you moved in while I’m out here. Refuse to let her in if she knocks or brings my ex and his meal ticket around.”

  “How is he affording it, anyway? I thought doctors were supposed to be swamped with malpractice insurance bills.”

  “Rumor has it he invented a piece of metal that’s used in open-heart surgery and he earns royalties every time someone’s chest is sawed open. Rumor also has it he’s a genius with investing, although his arrangement with Soren calls that into question. Will you help me out?”

  “Leave the Penthouse with a suitcase and a bag of groceries? I don’t know. What’s in it for me?”

  David had been prepared for this reluctance. If he was going to be away from San Francisco for longer than he’d planned, and it was becoming clear that he was, he didn’t want his place sitting empty. The idea of Renata and possibly Soren and company wandering through was disturbing. And recent revelations about Renata’s machinations made the idea of her breaking into his files entirely plausible.

  “I’m going to tell you a secret,” David said. “If you use a photo of the Palace on your Grindr profile, you can pretty much have your pick of anyone you want. If you can’t be young and beautiful—and we both know that, at this point, those are off the table for us—the next best thing is to show off valuable real estate. How do you think I got Soren? Just remain vague on ownership and let them in through the kitchen so they can see the expensive espresso machine. I drink tea, but I got it to impress my clients.”

  “I don’t know how to use it.”

  “It won’t come to that.”

  There was a promising silence in which David knew Michael was weighing the pros and cons.

  “You do realize I’ll go through all your drawers looking for incriminating evidence.”

  “It’s not called incriminating evidence anymore, Michael. It’s called social media. And you’re welcome to search anything you like. Do you think you could move in today?”

  “If it’s really that urgent, I suppose so. The kitchen door, you said?”

  David was relieved as soon as they hung up. Now he had to persuade Julie to let him stay on so he could cancel his return flight.

  16

  Julie was happy that school was ending in a few days. She’d be able to concentrate on getting her money together for the house, talk to the benefits people at school about her retirement account, and oversee Mandy’s progress. And then there was the weather. The grounds and facilities at Crawford School were famously beautiful, but the buildings were not much better air-conditioned than her own house. David hadn’t complained, but the Cabinet Room was especially problematic. It would be wrong to seal off its one window with an air-conditioning unit, and the room was so tiny, it would get too cold too quickly anyway. David had bought a vintage fan for the night table and claimed it was comfortable. She had AC in her own window, but in solidarity, she’d decided not to use it.

  She’d opened all the other windows and was lying on her bed, trying to catch an early-evening breeze as the tide was turning. She was tempted to go out to the backyard and take a hit of pot. That always made the heat seem tropical and languid instead of insufferable and polluted, and the sky outside her window was a majestic blend of magenta and ocher. But that would mean walking down two flights of stairs and then climbing back up, and she didn’t have the energy for that.

  As she was driving home from work, she’d made a stop in Essex and dropped off the box of her mother’s jewelry with a woman who ran estate sales. Julie had met Pamela Kern a dozen or more times at sales she was running in nearby towns, and they’d struck up a friendship, albeit one that had proved to be site-specific. The time they’d met for dinner had been awkward; Pamela was a picky eater with multiple food intolerances and allergies that she seemed, based on her behavior, to blame on the waitstaff. She’d made an ambiguously derogatory comment about Elizabeth Warren and had given Julie the name of a man who came to your house to detail-clean your car. So much for a friendship.

  But she had integrity about her work and knew every dealer in furniture, jewelry, rare books, and ephemera in New England. As Julie opened the lined box for her, she felt as if she was displaying buried treasure. A trace of her mother’s perfume (“Jicky by Guerlain, dear, the first modern perfume. Cheap scent is for amateurs”) wafted into the room, so faint more than a decade after her death, Pamela might not have noticed it, but to Julie it was instantly recognizable. She felt as if her mother had caught her doing the one thing she’d promised her she would never do.

  Julie didn’t wear jewelry (or perfume, cheap or otherwise) and found these rings and diamond watches and encrusted broaches gaudy and even embarrassing. They recalled her mother’s fondness for status and her attention to style, things Julie had rejected early on. Her mother had worn these to faculty parties and when she spoke at academic conferences, all to make sure no one mistook her for another dowdy professor. Some of the pieces her mother had inherited looked almost Victorian in their ornate opulence, but most of the bracelets and rings her father had bought were sleek, influenced by the Art Deco design aesthetic her mother had worshipped, even though her subject was Renaissance poetry.

  Pamela had held up a silver pendant covered in stones that somehow evoked both New York in the 1930s and Tamara de Lempicka’s Paris and eyed it lustfully. “This jewelry is wonderful. Are you sure you want to part with it?”

  “It took me a lot longer to bring the stuff in than I thought it would, but now I’m sure.”

  “It’s hard because you loved her so much.” Pamela nodded, no doubt having been through all this before with many other people.

  “No,” Julie said. “Because I didn’t. I promised her I’d never sell it, and because we didn’t like each other all that much, I know she wouldn’t forgive me. But I’ve hit a few speed bumps I didn’t foresee. When it comes to things I want to hang on to, this is low on the list.”

  Pamela looked at her pointedly. “What’s high on the list?”

  “My daughter and my house.”

  Pamela had cataloged everything, given Julie a receipt, and promised she’d have an estimate for her. “Probably in a couple of weeks,” she said. “Three at the most. I’ll get multiple estimates from a range of specialists. It will take a while to authenticate some of it.”

  Julie had been hoping to he
ar sooner than that, but it was important not to seem desperate, especially when you were. “Any guesses on value?”

  Pamela had winked in a way that seemed carefully rehearsed. “I’ve learned to never guess.”

  The one saving grace of the day was that a few minutes earlier, she’d received a text message from Raymond Cross, her clarinetist, as Amira would say, even though he wasn’t hers and didn’t play the clarinet. Hope it’s cooler by the ocean than it is here. That had been all, but it had been enough to lift her spirits. Briefly.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs and David appeared in her doorway, smiling in that way he often did—not to express his own happiness, she’d come to realize, so much as to encourage hers.

  He entered the room and sat on the foot of her bed. “It’s warm up here,” he said. “Why don’t you turn on the air conditioner?”

  “I don’t like it all that much. It’s like sleeping in a refrigerator, when you think about it. You should use it for your room.”

  “I’m happy with the fan.”

  “I’ll take you at your word,” she said. “Even though I don’t believe you. I got a call from the older woman who’s coming for a few weeks. She’s arriving tonight, and she asked if she could get a cab at the train station. I told her I’d pick her up. Hold dinner until I get back?”

  “Unless you’re planning to charge her, I wouldn’t admit to Sandra you’re offering shuttle service now. Want me to come with you, in case she turns out to be a killer?”

  “I’d love that. A little welcoming committee. I feel bad for her, and I have no idea why. Today was the first time we actually spoke.”

  “Speaking of train stations…” David showed her the paperback book he’d been holding against his leg. “I started rereading it.” He opened to the first page and read aloud the first loopy sentence.

  “‘Brisk feet!’” Julie cried.

  “Exactly,” David said. “I had the same reaction.”

  “I missed Lucia,” she said. “She’s so horrible and endearing. Where did you get it?”

  “Mandy has been reading them. She put this on my bed. A small, sweet thing to have done.”

  Julie was mortified to learn that she’d missed this about Mandy. It made her wonder what else she was missing, for surely there had to be something.

  “Read on,” Julie said.

  By the end of the second page, he’d stretched himself out at the opposite end of the bed with his free hand casually massaging her foot. The cozy, hilariously nasty world of the novel was just as it had been when they’d left it thirty years ago, just as it had been when it was written. Reentering it now made Julie immensely happy, even if more aware of how much had changed in her own life. When, after ten minutes, he stopped, she asked him to please read to the end of the chapter. She knew something amusing was going to happen with the guru, but she couldn’t remember what, and David’s voice had lulled her into the happy dream world of the past—both the characters’ and theirs.

  “We can get to it later,” he said. “I came up to ask a favor. And don’t say no or yes before you give it some thought.”

  She studied his face for a moment. He had an eager look, and she knew that what he was about to ask wasn’t so much a favor as permission to do her one.

  “I need to be out of San Francisco for a little longer than I thought. It’s all about the place I’m living. If I could stay here for an extra week or two, it would be a big help to me.”

  What he meant, obviously, was that it would be a big help to her. If his place was being sold, he’d be better off there, looking for somewhere else to live. Still, he’d been in Beauport four days, and she hated thinking that his time with them was running out already.

  “I’d only agree if you move upstairs to a bigger room when one opens up,” she said.

  “Out of the question. I love that room, and since I’ve spent the last thirty-six hours fixing it up, there’s no way I’d move. Do we have a deal?”

  “As long as you don’t try to pay.”

  “I don’t like the room that much, believe me.”

  She felt her back starting to sweat. The longer he stayed in Beauport, the more likely it was that “things would come up,” and more specifically, one thing.

  “I know you’re staying partly because you feel bad about everything that happened all those years ago,” she said. “But we both made mistakes.”

  “I know that,” he said.

  No, she thought. Not really.

  He got up off the bed and turned on the air conditioner. “And you don’t have to leave this off just because I don’t have one in my room. And don’t look so surprised—I know you better than you think.”

  But she knew that that wasn’t true either.

  17

  Julie recognized Mrs. Grayson as soon as she stepped off the train, even though she’d had no idea what, precisely, to expect. The daily commuters were confidently and purposefully returning home, while she was arriving like a well-fed refugee. She was a short pillow of a woman wearing a flowered dress and, despite the temperature, a cardigan draped over her shoulders. Probably in her eighties, although it was hard to tell with someone like this, someone who seemed to be out of another era and had probably looked exactly the same since turning fifty.

  “That must be her,” she said to David.

  Beauport was the last stop on this line, and as the train emptied out, the conductor set Mrs. Grayson’s suitcase on the ground and handed her a shopping bag with a hideous yellow stuffed animal sticking out.

  “I’m surprised she’s not wearing white gloves,” David said.

  “Don’t tease. Poor thing. Those shoes.” They were an ecru variation on nurse’s shoes, and one look at them told Julie she’d bought them from a catalog that targeted the elderly with cheaply made, overpriced clothing and accessories whose main virtue was the ease of getting in and out of them. She looked so out of place and so alone, Julie strode down the platform and, without thinking, put her arms around her.

  “Mrs. Grayson, welcome. I’m Julie Fiske. We’re so happy you’re here. I hope you’re going to like your room.”

  She appeared slightly disoriented by all the attention, but recovered quickly. Her face was powdered but damp, and there was a little smudge of makeup on her collar. “You were awfully nice to meet me. It’s been a long day, but I could have taken a cab to the house.”

  “I think it’s best to be met. And we’re only a couple of minutes from here.” She took the handle of Mrs. Grayson’s suitcase and wheeled it behind her as they walked toward David. “We were happy to come. This is David, a friend of mine.”

  “Do you have everything?” David asked.

  “I travel light. A good thing since I had to wait at the train station in Boston for almost two hours.”

  As they were getting into the car, outrage boiled up in Julie. Mrs. Grayson’s son and daughter-in-law—baby or no baby—should have been here or, for that matter, gone to Logan to meet her plane. Given their impressive address, they could have sprung for a driver from the airport if they were too busy. Julie asked her if she was planning to have dinner with her son that night.

  “No, no. They’re too busy feeding the baby and getting him to sleep. I’m here to help if they need me, not get in their way. They said they’d call in the morning and arrange a good time for me to come in the afternoon.”

  Julie looked at David, but he was focused on the road. She could tell from the traces of a smile around his eyes he was planning something critical to say once they were alone, but she wouldn’t have it. It wasn’t as if she’d been such an attentive daughter herself, but then, her mother had been the opposite of this gentle, gracious woman. “In that case, I hope you’ll have dinner with us,” she said. “David always makes more than enough.” It wouldn’t do to explain her relationship to David; Julie was sure she’d wouldn’t understand or, if she did, approve.

  She appeared to be embarrassed by the invitation. “You’re kind, but I
couldn’t. I bought a cheese sandwich at the station, and I’ll have that in my room.”

  Another heartbreakingly lonely scene appeared in Julie’s mind. Couldn’t she at least have bought herself roast beef? The only consolation was that she’d given her the Room in Back Room, the best in the house.

  “Isn’t it lovely,” she said as Julie showed her in and put her suitcase on a footstool beside the bed. “So many lovely knickknacks.”

  When Julie walked into the kitchen to help David cook, she said, “I can tell from the look on your face you’ve been practicing an ironic southern accent, but don’t try it or I’ll start to cry.”

  “But I have her down so well,” he said. “I was hoping to conduct the entire dinner conversation in her style.”

  “No. It will make me miserable.”

  “In that case, I’ll wait. Is this your first crush on one of the paying guests?”

  “I plead the Fifth.”

  18

  It was obvious to Mandy that Elaine Guild hated her and regretted hiring her at Beachy Keen. She had a million variations on disapproving glances and sighs, and she used them daily. She was practically frantic about making sure that Mandy was busy all the time, even though it wasn’t clear what she herself was doing in her crowded little office all day except complaining to assorted friends on the phone.

  Yesterday, Elaine had brought in a feather duster and a big piece of orange felt-like material that Mandy had seen advertised on infomercials. “When it’s not busy,” Elaine had said, “you should be dusting the merchandise. And carefully, Mandy. It’s fragile.”

  Somehow, none of this would have bothered her as much if Elaine had at least been old, but she’d seen her license lying on her desk, and she was thirty-nine. Not young, but too young to be such a crank.

  Mandy had been working at the store for over a week, and so far it had never been busy, which meant she could look forward to spending massive amounts of time doing what she was doing right now—walking around waving the feather duster, pretending to keep the shelves clean.