The Starter Wife (49 page)

“Mom!” Clarissa shouted. Her voice was naturally scratchy, like Demi Moore after a week of screaming at assistants. Some found it sexy, some merely annoying. Clarissa picked up the remote control and rewound. She was on her seventh viewing of
The Gay Divorcee;
as far as she could see, the movie was about how tap dancing could lead to wedding bells.

“Wha’?”

Her mother always said “Wha’?” instead of “What?”

“You know what I told you about taking dumps in my fuck-ing bathroom?”

“You should wash out that mouth, that’s wha’.”

“T! T! T! T!
What!”

“Pffft.”

This meant “Shut your mouth, dear daughter, you mean little cunt, or I’ll cut you like a knife.”

The problem was, her mother was hooked on a molten something called “Dieter’s Tea.” It contained an enormous amount of “natural” laxative, enough to clean out a 747 engine. Clarissa drank it once, after a Thanksgiving dinner—she was going to have sex that night with an entertainment attorney with an enormous shlong and bigger Mercedes, and though she loved a heavy meal, especially Thanksgiving dinner, she also loved sex.

She drank it, and almost laid a brick right in the middle of foreplay.

Oral foreplay.

The tea had made her sweat and cramp; she crawled to the bathroom, bent over like a halter-topped Quasimodo. The attorney never called again, except once that next morning, because someone had taken his favorite meditation CD, the one with the stupid monks or something, and he had to ask …

Well, of course Clarissa had taken it. She knew he wasn’t going to call again (there’s always a first time!) and she wanted to punish him.

Oh … what Clarissa learned from the entertainment attorney: Never drink Dieter’s Tea before sex. Never.

Also: Big Mercedes, like the 600 series, drive more smoothly than the small, sporty models.

Her mother was addicted to the hideous brown, bark-tasting liquid; she drank it three times a day. Once, Clarissa had convinced her mother to stop drinking the foul tea; her bowels got so badly backed up, Clarissa had to rush her to the hospital so a dashing Indian intern could stick a long, dark finger up her mother’s tiny, crepey butt.

Clarissa subverted her own rules (don’t date anything that can’t get you into the VIP section of a premiere or table seven at Mr. Chow) and had three dates with the intern until realizing, on the traditional third-date screw, his dick had the circumference of a number two pencil. She was hoping he’d be a “Grower, not a Shower,” to no avail. The shock was so great that Clarissa retired, staying home every night for a month, with only Oreos, Red Bull and vodka, and her Bunny Ears vibrator to keep her company.

Finally, her mother came out of the bathroom to face Clarissa’s grimace, which wasn’t what it used to be, because of the botox.

“Wha’?”

“What?”

“Don’t star—”

Start!
Clarissa screamed in her head. Her mother was Jewish Bolivian, the granddaughter of a Bolivian general, once very beautiful, still petite. Clarissa looked like a Chechen weightlifter downing steroids for breakfast when she stood next to her.

“Mommy, did you read the article?” Clarissa shifted gears smoothly.

“Leave that boy alone.” Not smooth enough.

“So Not Supportive,” Clarissa tried to whine, but she was not a natural; her whine came out more like a Volkswagen engine straining over the Sepulveda Pass.

“He’s not going to marry you.”

“Want a bet?”

“Wha’?”

“Bet.
Bet.
You want to bet.”

“No gambling.”

“Mom, it’s not gambling. Look, he’s having lunch at the Ivy next Tuesday.” Clarissa knew this because, posing as a ditsy secretary who didn’t wish to incur her boss’s wrath, she had called every upscale restaurant on the west side to ask if they had a reservation under “Aaron Mason.”

“I’m not going with you.”

“Yes, you are. I can’t invite my friends. They’re either too hot or they’re too evil—there’d be nothing left of him. He’d be man dust.”

Her mother waved her hand, as she often did when she was agitated.

“Don’t say that, Mom.”

Her mother waved her hand again.

“I’m not going to use him, or ruin him, or whatever it is you think I do to men.” Clarissa uncoiled herself from her red velvet couch, purloined from an ex-boyfriend’s defunct nightclub (from whom she’d learned to always keep chilled vodka on hand). “I just want to meet him.”

Her mother narrowed her eyes and gestured once more.

“Great. I want you to wear the black Armani suit, the silk one with the silver buttons.”

Mom’s hand fluttered up and down.

“It does not make you look fat. You couldn’t look fat if you were fat—Jesus!”

Clarissa rose from the couch and strode to the bar (otherwise known as “the mantel”) in her rented off-Robertson duplex; her apartment was a place where scores of girls like her settled until boys like Aaron (only less rich) married them. Clarissa had stopped counting the girls in her five-square-block neighborhood (Robertson to La Cienega; Beverly to Third) who fit her description when she reached into the thirties: 25-34 (same as the coveted, ideal 9:00
P.M.
Fox TV audience), straight blonde or brown hair (if not naturally straight, blow-dried twice weekly), tallish, but not supermodel tall, drinkers of cappuccino (morning) and vodka (evening), and eaters of … not much. They lived off Daddy and Mommy, though their stipends didn’t cover designer shoes
and
rent
and
subscriptions to forty-eight beauty magazines. And, lastly, they were jobless, or, at the very least, on the verge of being jobless.

And not at all worried about the prospect.

Their signature personality statement was that they never worried. About anything: poverty, war, dinner, children, grandparents, the melting of the polar ice cap.

Clarissa made two Belvedere vodka tonics (filling hers, first, with maraschino cherries—she liked only red drinks) and walked toward her mother, putting her large gold head (a friend once remarked that it belonged on the face of a coin) on her mother’s tiny shoulder.

“Please, Mama.” The clincher.

Her mother patted her head; Clarissa knew she was home free—her mother would never let her down.