The Starter Wife (28 page)

Suddenly Lou pointed. “Hey, did you see that? A dolphin. Dolphins are good luck.”

18
 
DO YOU FEEL FIREWORKS?

D
ESPITE EVERYTHING
she’d been through in the last couple of months, Gracie had never felt so depressed as she did when she left Lou’s house. And it wasn’t because she thought every single female in sight had a better body than she had, although that would have been enough.

Lou, the one man in the world that she took for being a sane, well-adjusted, upstanding serial monogamist, was just as nutty as the rest of them. That he was willing to create an elaborate hoax by faking his own death so he could attend his own funeral, all the while taking notes on his so-called friends, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he was damaged goods. Lou was just another tragic figure from the Land of Broken Toys.

Gracie meandered down the beach, much like Jaden did when she didn’t want to go home but had no choice in the matter. Was there anything Gracie could do? She’d tried to reason with him. She’d tried yelling at him. She’d pointed out the damage he could be doing to his son.

She’d even informed him, in serious tones, that this endeavor was an incredible turnoff. That she had been this close to sleeping with him. Yes, maybe it wasn’t the ultimate threat—she was not a supermodel; her vagina was not a weapon of mass destruction. But still, she had felt that flicker of something. Was it anticipation? Before meeting the Unknown Suitor, she had forgotten that flicker—her flicker had flicked out.

Nothing could move him. And so she’d left. She hadn’t touched him, she hadn’t kissed his cheek. She’d left not only his physical being but also the promise of more with him. She was done.

This guy was cooked. And Gracie’s track record with men was now officially 0-2.

A strange thought entered Gracie’s mind as she passed the party at the Boners’ and walked up the beach toward the Mexican wedding which had been at Joan’s house. Are firefighters this wacko? What about those guys working construction? Where are the real men?

Another thought entered her mind. The number of men she knew presently and would sleep with had now officially been whittled down to one. And she was determined to sleep with him—before she found out that he, too, was just another wack job.

Otherwise she just might be forced to close up shop for the rest of her life.

J
ADEN SKIPPED HER NAP THAT DAY.
Who could blame her? Who could sleep seated front row center at the largest outdoor concert in town? Gracie, Jaden, and Cricket’s kids stayed inside for the rest of the day, avoiding the heat and listening to Raffi songs (when they could hear him) and watching
Finding Nemo
so many times that even the youngest children had memorized Bruce the Shark’s lines. Cricket, who sounded increasingly “relaxed” as the day went on, interrupted every twenty minutes or so to make sure that all three of her children were still breathing.

Finally, just as the sun went down, the fireworks started. The kids screamed and ran out on the deck and Gracie wrapped Jaden in a blanket and sat on a chaise, her daughter cradled in her arms, watching color after color explode above her head, then disappear into the black water.

Gracie forgot about her marriage; she forgot about her ex-husband. She forgot about her future, about her past. All that existed was this moment. She and the warmth of her drowsy child and the delighted squeals of toddlers and the rhythm of the waves and the people huddled underneath her house and scattered out on the sand. And the explosions, each one more beautiful than the last.

“Okay, God,” Gracie said out loud (though who could hear her over the fireworks?). “I think I’ve found it. This is happiness.”

G
RACIE WAITED
until she had seen the last of the fireworks, the ultimate display of patriotism, red lights bleeding into white bleeding into blue. People clapped and cheered, the loudest being the ones probably newest to this country, the families huddled under her house. And then, just like that, the festivities were over. As people gathered up their blankets and boom boxes, the last of their orange sodas, and their sleeping children and headed for the Surfrider exit, Gracie held her own sleeping child, opened the sliding glass door into the kitchen, bid farewell to Cricket’s nanny and her children and Ana, who had decided to call it a night, and walked upstairs to Jaden’s room.

Gracie was out of breath by the time she made it upstairs. Jaden was not a small child with featherweight bones. The fact was, she was deceptively heavy. She was made of sturdy stock—descendant as she was of people who worked fields long before they worked computers.

Gracie rolled Jaden onto her bed, took off her shoes, and draped her comforter over her body.

She had almost forgotten that by this time Lou would have killed himself.

S
AM KNEW BETTER.
He knew it was a fool’s errand. It must have been the fireworks or the smell of the day—hot dogs, the ocean, sunscreen, bonfires.

Something about this particular Fourth of July brought out a sentiment he usually commandeered with little or no effort—nostalgia.

He was overcome by nostalgia. As he made his way through the July Fourth crowds negotiating their way back to their Toyotas, Hondas, and Saturns, he wondered why.

Why was he feeling this way now, today?

Normally he could pass a mother holding on to a sleeping child, or guiding a toddler by the hand from the beach, without so much as a glance. Their lives had no bearing on his. He had so little in common with the common folk he did not recognize the usual parameters of everyday life. This is my son. This is my daughter. This is my mother. My father. My sister.

He had a sister. She was his first love. His eyes would track her, his mother had told him, from the time he was born. He would only smile for her. His first laugh was at the sight of her face. He loved no one else as much and never would.

His mother told him that she told his sister, his only sibling, to remember his love—because it was the greatest love she had
ever witnessed. To remember the love of her little brother—because no one would ever love her as much in her lifetime.

His mother.

As it turns out, it wasn’t much true. His sister had found a husband, had two daughters of her own-or were they sons? Sam couldn’t remember. There were none of the standard markers that normal people used to define their relationshipsno cards, no phone calls. No “I’ll see you soon.” No “I’ll come up during Christmas.” Nothing.

A
ND IT WAS
his fault. All of it.

He had started doing drugs in high school. His parents had sent him to boarding school in a desperate attempt to separate him from the booming drug scene in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. But it was a tactic as tardy as it was ill conceived. There were more drugs in boarding school than even on the streets of the Castro. And they were within spitting distance—here was an ounce of coke he could score off his roommate, there was the new thrill—heroin—introduced to him by his TA.

Then his father died. But big deal, Sam thought at the time—he hardly knew his father. It’s that “old family” shiteveryone getting by on traditions and gestures and not dealing with reality. Your son is on drugs, deal with it. Your daughter is about to enter an abusive marriage to get out of the house, deal with it.

The war. Did he sign up for it out of spite, or was it reverence for his father’s military background? Sam couldn’t decide, still.

He hadn’t figured it all out. He didn’t know what he was doing. Sam had gotten his ass fried a million ways to Sunday, and he still didn’t know what he was doing.

He was fifty-three years old, and he didn’t have a clue.

His mother must be close to eighty, Sam thought. If she was still alive.

And then, as he walked through the entryway, opening the chain-link fence with his key, he was seized by a thought: Surely his mother would have forgiven him by now.

He walked onto the Colony, bustling with Mercedeses and SUVs, filling up with men, women, and children heading home to Bel Air, to Brentwood, to Beverly Hills. He avoided eye contact. He walked swiftly and quietly. He knew this feeling, he found comfort in its familiarity. He felt like a man about to commit a crime.

I have to kiss that woman, Sam thought. He was thinking of nothing but her mouth.

G
RACIE HAD PU
t Jaden to bed and was downstairs in her kitchen when she heard the doorbell ring. How she heard it was a mystery, even to her—but it showed her how quickly a crowd could dissipate, how swift the ending could be to a chaotic day.

She figured it must be Will—parties were winding down and surely he had either found his Prince Charming or given up.

Gracie padded down the stairs in her bare feet, anxious for the day’s postmortem, in which Will would dissect each party, from the partyers to the libations to the homes themselves.

Gracie opened the door, a smile already alighting on her face. She was ready to laugh.

The porch light fell upon the person standing in front of her in such a way that it formed a halo effect. All she could make out was the outline of a tall, imposing figure with thick,
wavy hair—her eyes focused, separating light from dark, and within moments colors formed: the orange shorts, a white shirt.

This was not her homo friend with his blondish hair and linen.

Images dashed through Gracie’s head—most of them developed from too many afternoons walking on the treadmill and watching Oprah.Would he drag her by the hair and rape her in the living room? Would he chop her body up and toss her fingers into the blender?

How could she have been so stupid as to flirt with a complete stranger? Even if he had, for argument’s sake, saved her wretched life. Just so he could murder her in her best friend’s living room while her child slept upstairs!

“Hello,” he said.

Gracie’s hand had been frozen to the side of the door; she’d been standing just as she had when she opened it. Right then, she decided she was no good in an ominous situation. She should really move to a neighborhood where nothing bad could ever befall her, where no one masturbated on the beach under her window, where seals did not turn up dead on the sand, where shaved—head gang members didn’t gather at four o’clock in the morning.

She would plan to move to the cheap streets.

“Are you all right?” he asked. He rocked back on his heels.

“I’m fine,” Gracie croaked.“I’m just … can I help you?”

She straightened her spine. She didn’t want her posture to scream “victim.” Crime victims had bad posture—this much she’d learned from afternoon television.

“My friend should be here any second,” Gracie continued in a blur of words.“He’s a black belt in … oh, God, what’s the name of that thing where you …”

She made a stance with her knees bent and her hands, fingers together, angled up.

He reached forward with his hands, wrapping his fingers around hers in a move that was both gentle and charged.

Gracie stopped breathing. She was still standing with her knees bent, one leg forward, as though she were about to pounce. But he had his hands around hers. Her mind had stopped computing.

She was really, really not good in ominous situations.

And then, still holding her hands, he took one step forward. And let go of her hands and wrapped his around her face. And kissed her.

Her hands went limp at her sides. Her knees buckled like a schoolgirl in a melodramatic 1930s movie. He was literally holding her up by her jaw.

The kiss lasted almost as long as the last presidential address to the country, Gracie thought, but with more substance.

And Gracie hadn’t stopped thinking the whole time.

This was what was going on in her mind:

“Oh, my GOD! He’s going to strangle me! No, he’s kissing me! We’re … kissing? Oh, my GODGODGODGOD, what a kiss, holy shit, this is some kiss, oh, JESUS, it’s like unbelievable, who kisses like this? This mouth—it’s so warm and soft and it’s like the best pashmina, but not the illegal kind from whatever that country is with all the mountains—ooh, I love that beard—I love that beard—why have I never had a man with a beard?—oh, no, I’m going to have that beard-face thing—that red face—my face will be all burned up by the beard, but damn, this is good—this is an epic moment in my life—there’s barely any tongue, I love that—I don’t like a lot of tongue, frankly—there’s no sloppiness whatsoever, I mean Kenny was always kind of sloppy, who cares about Kenny—
oh, God, I hope he doesn’t want to sleep with me—I have to lose weight—maybe with the lights off that’s okay. But my inner thighs…. What if he has AIDS? He doesn’t have AIDS, of course, he doesn’t have AIDS. Does he have AIDS? No! But still, should I use a condom? Of course I should use a condom—don’t you watch Oprah—I don’t have any condoms—God, I hope he has a condom—oh God, I hope he doesn’t have a condom, if he has a condom that means he’s EXPECTING me to sleep with him—and screw him, I’m not easy—”

The kiss ended in a draw. His hands were still on her face, and whether he knew it or not, his hands were the only thing between Gracie’s body and the floor. They were warm and strong and calloused and they could have held her up forever, as far as Gracie was concerned.