The Starter Wife

by Grazer, Gigi Levangie

  Gracie hoisted Jaden out of her stroller, took one look around, and realized that she was back in high school—if her high school had been chock-full of model-tall blondes wearing Ugg boots and white tank tops and Juicys that never looked that good on anyone human. Yes, she knew these women (mothers, in fact!) were people. She knew intellectually that she and they were of the same species, but there was no proof of that fact at first glance. Or even second glance. Gracie spied one mother performing a hatred-inducing flip on the monkey bars and almost coughed up her perfectly good latte all over her daughter’s curls.

  Resigned to bystander status—Gracie would never be able to do any sort of flip anywhere anytime—she sat down on one of the wooden benches surrounding the small park, sipping her latte.

  Gracie watched Jaden, with her curly blond hair and her bright blue eyes and her long legs, blending in with all the other towheaded, blue-eyed, long-legged children with an ease that Gracie had never experienced.

  She didn’t know whether to be proud or frightened.

  MALIBU WAS exactly twenty-five minutes from where Gracie had lived with Kenny in El McMansion. But it may as well have been located in another dimension of time and space.

  Gracie was quickly learning—from her travels in the ’bu, from the Cross Creek Shopping Center with John’s Garden (for sandwiches with sprouts, drinks with sprouts, sprouts with sprouts) to the Psychic Bookstore (there was, like Joan had warned, no other kind) to Howdy’s Mexican food across the street, from Starbucks to PC Greens on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) for organic produce (and if one was very lucky, a glimpse of a shockingly laid-back Sir Anthony Hopkins)—that, as in all of her past love affairs, Malibu was not going to change for her, so she was going to have to change for Malibu.

  Physically, Gracie was going to have to get back into some semblance of shape. In a moment of weakness (there were many throughout the day), Gracie pondered applying to Extreme Makeover, the television show that took normal people with ordinary features and appendages and made them into that girl on Access Hollywood. Even the men, who seemed to hate their “man noses” and their Chia Pet hair, wound up looking like Leeza Gibbons.

  Gracie had decided she was man enough—make that woman enough—to stand naked in front of a mirror and assess all of her recent damage.

  There she was, in all her fifth-decade glory. Her shoulders were beginning to sag forward. Her breasts were still fine. They would be fine ten years after her death. Silicone never dies. But the bottom of her navel seemed to be drooping. And the area below her navel and above her C-section scar (for lack of a better word, her “abdomen”) looked like something she’d seen on the beach when her mother and her aunties would gather in their two-pieces. This was her mother’s stomach. Except her mother had had three children, not one.

  Her legs still looked nice and smooth from the front. Gracie breathed a sigh of relief, her first breath in the last three minutes. Her toes, thankfully, were perfect, each one a pale gem. Men always complimented Gracie on her feet. It occurred to Gracie that perhaps she had only dated freaks.

  Feeling brave, buoyed by the sight of her beautiful feet (wait—were those wrinkles on her toes? When did that degradation occur?), she turned her back to the mirror and looked over her shoulder. Her fist flew to her mouth, stifling a scream.

  “Mommy?!” she heard Jaden outside the door. “Are you breaking down?”

  “Mommy’s fine!” Gracie yelled.

  “Was it a monster?” Jaden said. She was trying to open the handle. “Mommy, you know I’m not scared of monsters.”

  Gracie wrapped herself in her towel and opened the door. “Jaden, honey,” she said, crouching down to look her daughter in the eye. “Worse than a monster. Mommy saw her butt.”

  Her daughter looked at her sideways. “Can I see it?”

  “No,” Gracie said. “I’m putting it away in a safe place.”

  Jaden’s eyes shot around. “Let’s put it under my bed!”

  “Great idea,” Gracie said. “But first I need it to go shopping. Mommy’s will has weakened and Mommy needs to get Ugg boots.”

  Jaden wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like that sound.”

  “They’re called Ugg boots,” Gracie said, “because they’re ugly and they’re boots. And Mommy needs to get a pair. We’re living in Malibu now, Jaden. It’s the law.”

  9

  IT’S A (HOMELESS) MAN’S WORLD

  SIX TWENTY-EIGHT A.M. Samuel Jonas Knight was greeted by the kind of view that shows up regularly on postcards and travel posters but rarely makes an appearance in real life. Except a life like his.

  The sun had begun to cast its spell on the ocean, shooting the first morning rays across the dark waters of Malibu. He never tired of the view. Each morning he would look out, and whether he was tired or anxious or angry, he could stand in the sand and look out and instantly his mood would lift.

  He had been swimming this ocean from this very spot for almost eight years; standing in front of #68 at low tide, he had trouble remembering a missed day. He was seldom sick, an amazing feat given the level of bacteria he’d read about in the waters of Malibu. He’d heard the tale of the Malibu surfer enduring that flesh-eating bacteria at a local hospital; there were more than a few stories about the strain of hepatitis you don’t get from sex or needles; there was the rumor of a mysterious brain tumor found in a fellow early-morning swimmer.

  Nothing in the water, save for a few dolphins, had ever touched him. He unwrapped his towel and let it drape on the railing above the stairs leading to the beach. He took off his T-shirt, an artifact from a Surfrider Foundation celebration given on the beach; immediately his skin chilled, goose bumps rising in formation, like tiny soldiers, in response to the chill. The curly salt-and-pepper hair adorning his wide chest stood on end. Without looking, he slipped off his well-worn huaraches, a throwback to an era in his life he had almost succeeded in forgetting. All that was left on his body were his orange shorts, the color of a lifeguard’s buoy. He tightened the drawstring around his waist, which was tanned a deep brown all year long. He patted his stomach, which was lean and bulky at the same time—a strong torso which enabled him to work long hours if need be, to lift heavy objects, to fix what needed fixing.

  He ran his fingers through the thickness of his black hair and down around his mustache, scraping his beard, then took a final look at the water before walking in and plunging.

  The yellow Labrador that had been sitting beside Sam now serenaded him with his barks before he, too, finally dove in and followed, as though chasing a human ball.

  7:00 PM. There were two things Gracie could count on at this time of the evening, when the skies turned and daylight exploded in a symphony of color. Three things, if one counted her feeling of inadequacy in not being able to capture adequately the disappearance of the sun into the rocky, ragged cliffs of Point Dume. As she watched the sunset, she often thought Van Gogh would have painted the scene perfectly, with the grays and blues and oranges and purples, the brilliant cusp melting slowly on the horizon. Peaceful and violent at once.

  But then she comforted herself with the notion that she had both ears, was not in love with a prostitute (yet), and with any luck would probably not die penniless.

  The two things she could count on were the sunset. And the stout, dark-haired, bearded man. The bearded man made his way through the path to Surfrider Beach every day around this time. He was large and lumbered rather than walked, as though every step were a test and he had to use brute strength to reach his destination, the old telephone pole just this side of lifeguard tower 2. His gait reminded Gracie of heavyweight champions as they lunged down the stairs into the ring, driving heavily forward.

  The bearded man would stop at the pole, facing the gray, dreary, beautiful Pacific. She wondered if it looked the same to him as it did to her—like a woman who lets herself go but can still bring pleasure.

  He would suddenly drop to his knees. And bring his thick hands together in prayer.
Gracie couldn’t see them well but imagined his hands to be hardened by work and an unforgiving life. His clothes were worn; what was left of his hair a confusion.

  She would watch him for long moments as she stirred something in a pot or talked on the phone. Or listened to Jaden singing to herself. Or did nothing at all. She wondered about this man, but mostly she wondered at how a stranger, someone whom she had never met at all, could bring her such solace.

  WIFE NUMBER FOUR

  Is married to a film director known for his soft romantic comedies. She was surprised to come home one day to him wearing not only her La Perla lingerie and her best Manolos but a blond wig she’d saved from a Halloween party.

  She and “Marilyn” go out to lunch several times a week.

  10

  A SEA CHANGE

  “YOU KNOW WHAT makes the Malibu Colony so weird?” Will said. “It’s the only place in the world where you walk into the back of your house. Up is down, down is up—it’s all backwards.”

  Gracie stared at him.

  “Oh my God,” Will said as he fanned his face with his hand. “You would not believe what just happened to me. Seriously, this is life-changing.”

  Will had just walked into the house, wearing oversize sunglasses and a scarf Isadora Duncan would have been honored to have broken her neck with. He and Cricket had demanded that Gracie go with them to Nobu, Malibu’s raw fish answer to Spago, for dinner. Will had heard that Suge Knight was recently spotted there. Much like Patty Hearst, he had a thing for the gangsta set.

  “Did you take a ‘straight’ pill?” Gracie asked, regarding his obsession with all things hip-hop.

  Will twisted his small, turned-up nose. “Eww. Bad picture. Change the channel.” He sat down with a flourish on Joan’s soft white overstuffed couch. Will tended to do everything with a flourish. Gracie wondered for a moment what he was like in bed—was he always this dramatic? She wiped the vision from her head with a mental squeegee.

  “Why is it that every couch in Malibu looks like something out of The Cat in the Hat? It’s Shabby Chic Purgatory,” Will said, looking at her accusingly. “Where all the overstuffed couches go to die.”

  “You’re just jealous of anyone who makes more money at the same profession as you,” Gracie replied.

  “Of course,” Will said, “there’s not enough to go around, I don’t care what anyone says, gazillionaires with bad taste do not grow on trees.”

  “You were about to tell me about your life-changing experience? Or would you rather I slip into a coma while you rant at other successful designers.”

  “I was at Cross Creek, innocently picking up an Ice Blended and I saw”—he put his hand to his chest—“Pamela Anderson Lee Anderson … Lee Anderson Pamela.”

  “No!” Gracie said, more excited than she meant to be. What was it about blond, bosomy celebrities? Could we not get enough? “How did she look?”

  “In a word: You would hate her!” Will said.

  “I knew it!” Gracie said, sitting down next to Will and getting swallowed by a man-eating pillow. “Go on,” she said as she offered him a bowl of M&Ms.

  Will grabbed at them with his soft, childlike hand. “Cocoa butter tan. Not a stitch of makeup. And judging by her Juicys, full-on commando. I heard she waxes from here to Uranus.”

  “If she’s single and out there, I should just retire my vagina.” Gracie asked, “How old do you think she is?”

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “Should we cut her open and count the rings?”

  “Where is Cricket?” Gracie asked, realizing that the third member of The Coven had not shown up, even though she had driven with Will.

  “Oh,” Will said, “I left her outside, crying. Question: Why do you people get married?”

  “Hey,” Gracie said, “you people will be able to get married someday.”

  “Never,” Will said. “I’m praying to the Gay Gods for that constitutional amendment. Why should we suffer like the rest of you? You will never see this girl before a minister reciting ‘love is patient, love is kind,’ et cetera, ad nauseous.”

  Will was not a romantic; he even broke down the word one day for Gracie’s edification.“‘Roman’ and ‘tic,’” he said to Gracie. “One is an ancient Italian, the other is an insect that gives you Lyme disease. I want neither in my life, thank you.”

  They were about to get up from the couch (this took a while—sitting on the couch was like skiing in four feet of powder) when Will looked down at Gracie’s feet.

  “What are those?” he demanded, pointing.

  Gracie looked at her new Ugg boots. “The Pamela wears them,” she protested.

  “I’m not going out with you if you wear those,” he said. “They’re an abomination. You look like an albino Inuit, if there is such a thing.Which there shouldn’t be.”

  “I’m trying to fit in!” Gracie said. “I have to have Uggs! People here practically sleep in them; infants wear them, grandmothers wear them. They’re the official footwear of the city of Malibu!”

  But Will would not budge, so Gracie trudged upstairs and put on a pair of flat-soled metallic sandals.

  “Much better,” he said as they walked outside. “I thought I lost you there for a moment.”

  GRACIE SAT at a round table on the patio outside Nobu with Will and Cricket. Between sobs and passion-fruit martinis, Cricket laid out the map to her marriage, starting with her wedding day, when she knew something was hideously wrong because a crow had landed on the roof of her car that morning and pecked at her windshield, and ending with that very morning, when Cricket and Jorge, who had finally engaged in battle, had fought until three A.M.

  “What was the fight about?” Gracie asked, though she already knew and didn’t want to know more.

  “Married people always fight about three things,” Will said. “It’s money, sex, or sex and money.”

  “Sex. Jorge wants more sex, and I just want to nap,” Cricket said. She turned to Gracie. “You look so beautiful, by the way. What is going on? You never looked this good.”

  Gracie shook her head. “I’d like more sex. Or any sex. I’m getting less sex than I did in the last year of my marriage.”

  “Negative integers. Interesting,” Will commented. “There’s got to be someone in the Colony who fits the Gracie: A-Time-of-Crisis profile.”

  “What profile would that be?” Gracie asked.

  “Male,” Will said. “Human.”

  “Just male?” Gracie asked. “Not even hetero?”

  “Picky, picky, missy miss,” Will said. “Most married men tend to turn out gayish anyway after about ten years.”

  “Jorge would be a great gay man.” Cricket perked up. “He likes shoes. And clean nails.”

  “Well,” Gracie said to Will, “I have to confess, Mother Superior-to-me, I did do a little research.”

  “And?” asked Will, his highlighted eyebrows hitting new heights.

  Gracie had become close with several guards at the front gate, especially her favorite, Lavender. Somehow the guards knew she didn’t belong there—it could have been her earlier lack of Uggs and the confidence that comes from having a body that could withstand a thong in direct sunlight. She knew they didn’t belong there, either. Gracie believed that people who were not invited to the party tend to recognize one another.

  Gracie had strolled over with Jaden one morning after an outing at the park, stopping as she regularly did to talk to Lavender, who was now halfway through Pride and Prejudice for her Women’s Studies class.

  “Whattaya got for me this morning?” Gracie usually asked Lavender. To which Lavender would always say, “I got nothing.”

  This morning was a little different in that Gracie had been doing “directed” research on the Colony. She’d been walking Jaden up and down the private street, studying each house and every car, looking for clues to their inhabitants. Were they male or female, were they single or a couple or a family, summer tenants or landowners? For the first week or so, the o
nly other life form Gracie noticed was 228 and what seemed like a few thousand friendly construction workers and gardeners, who eyed her curiously but not covetously, the new (middle-aged) girl on the block, as she walked past with Jaden in a stroller.

  Then in the last week, which marked the first week in June, there’d been a sea change of activity—black Mercedeses with expensive rims instead of pickup trucks on steroids, Toyota Land Cruisers instead of forklifts. Gracie walked out her door and saw Tom Cruise instead of the telephone repairman; on her bike, she ran into Harrison Ford instead of the plumber.

  The workingman had been replaced by the public man.

  Gracie had decided to make a game out of her personal dilemma as she spent the summer drying out from the hangover of her marriage. She would perform a scientific study in which she herself would be both control group and guinea pig: Could a woman over a certain age in Los Angeles be able to find a (reasonable) date?

  And to that end, she had made a list. Will had told her she needed to be “proactive” in her quest for, if not a new relationship, than a new conversation over a cup of coffee. Gracie agreed, even though she did not see the need to use the term “proactive.” (Why is that a word, anyway? Was “active” not a “proactive” word?)

  Will told her she was getting offtrack, and she needed to get herself off her ass and go out and lasso a man, preferably a surfer with great abs, no work ethic, and a strong desire to screw anything short of a flagpole.

  Back to her “secret” list: Gracie had taken mental notes of the information she’d compiled of the people living in the enclosed neighborhood. She viewed the Colony as her very own petri dish.

  Gracie took the list out of her notebook, which she took to carrying around like Harriet the Spy without the concerned parents (unless one counted Will and Cricket), looking both ways for oncoming eyes before she began to read it to Lavender.