The work wife, p.2
The Work Wife, page 2
“Holly, we need to leave in five minutes,” Erin said.
“Oh!” Holly said, hand to her breastbone. She hadn’t heard Erin come in. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Only a minute or two. I’ll knock louder next time.”
Ted had asked, fifteen years ago, if she was sure about Erin, the first assistant they hired to be hers, not theirs. From now on, they would have his and hers chiefs of staff. Holly liked that hers would be close to her age, that she didn’t fit the mold of the assistants Ted usually chose. Erin wasn’t strident or intellectually superior; she was a wraith, a poet with a degree in library science and not the least bit ambitious. Holly had even thought, briefly, that they would be friends—although that was before she understood about money, that you could never fully discount the effect of it on your relationships, no matter how much of it you gave away or to whom. Erin worked for Holly, not the other way around, so confidences would only ever flow in one direction. No matter how much Holly had tried over the years to pump Erin for information—about men, her friends, her sisters, other poets—or how many secrets Holly had shared—about the bass player she’d dated in college, the funny things Ted muttered in his sleep (Land ho! he’d yelped once and then hugged his pillow), which actors at the Golden Globes were sloppy drunk before the show even began and who iced out who during the commercial breaks—Erin never fully let her guard down with Holly. On the other hand, she never tried to make things all about herself either. She was at the estate every morning by 8:00 a.m. and often stayed until eight or nine at night, even when she was pregnant. Still, there were moments when Erin’s ability to disappear into the background was a little bit creepy.
“We need to tie a bell around your neck,” Holly said. And then she laughed and hugged her to show there were no hard feelings.
“I have your speech,” Erin said, opening up her leather portfolio to show Holly the crisp pages. “And we’ll review the details for tonight on the ride over.”
“Okay. I’ll meet you at the car. Just give me a minute.”
Holly grabbed her purse and went up to the third floor. A faint ache settled in her chest when she saw Zoe’s empty bed. For months, Holly had been looking forward to the end of June, when the kids would be out of school, and there’d be no more ballet rehearsals or climate change group projects for Zoe, no more soccer practice or debate meets for Flynn, no more field trip chaperoning or bake sale shifts for her, and their overplanned lives could relax into the kind of aimless summers she’d enjoyed as a kid in the mountains. Sleeping on the back porch, climbing trees barefoot, nothing but marmalade sandwiches and her imagination to fuel her. But at the last minute, Zoe decided she just had to join her friends at Camp Spruce in Maine for six action-packed weeks of Zumba and organic gardening, aquaplaning and riflery with the other nine-year-olds. She’d been gone a week already, and in just a few hours, Flynn would be gone on his fishing trip with three boys from the Harvard-Westlake Upper School. Holly and Ted would be all alone, rattling around this huge house just the two of them and their staff of thirty. With their children around them, they did well together, but sometimes it seemed as if they were the furniture the kids jumped on. Left to their own devices, there might be nothing to do but sag in empty rooms. Holly picked the blanket off the floor in Flynn’s room—her son slept as wildly as his dad did—and covered his lanky, spread-eagled form. She tucked him in and mussed his hair a bit, hoping he would wake so she could give the adolescent stink of him a kiss. But all he did was roll over.
Downstairs in the garage, Erin and James were waiting.
“Hi, James,” Holly said.
“Good morning,” he said, opening the back door of the Tesla for her, the window down and the air conditioner already running, just like Ilya would’ve done if he hadn’t gone home to Sochi for the month. One was an African American former football player and the other was a scrawny Russian Jew, and it didn’t matter which one of them was driving, that’s how well they knew the family’s preferences and routines. Holly suddenly felt a little sleepy and thought maybe she’d shut her eyes on the ride to Stabler Studios.
“Could you please grab one of the pillows from the back, James?” she asked. He could put on NPR, that always sent her off. Holly could even stretch out on the third row under a blanket, the way some of her friends had to do when they went for lipo or met with their surrogates. But then Holly saw Zanne striding across the driveway like some sort of punk sheriff, and her hopes fell. That’s right, they had to go over the details for the Bump to Pump party tonight.
Zanne was one of Ted’s, you could see it from outer space. Not so much the way she dressed (Bikini Kill T-shirt, black jeans, motorcycle boots, leather cuffs stacked up her wrist) or the way she styled her hair (short, spiky, jet black). If she never opened her mouth, you might even think Zanne was pretty, with those liquid blue eyes of hers. No, it was the giant chip on her shoulder that marked her as his, the permanent, scrutinizing scowl that screamed I have something to prove and Don’t you dare underestimate me. Holly found it exhausting, being surrounded every day by all these type As running around the estate in a hot panic. There was some kind of trauma in Zanne’s past, Holly was sure of it. There usually was with Ted’s, some damage that drove a young swing or researcher to succeed, until one day it broke them and someone found them curled up in a ball under their desk. But Zanne seemed to be quite competent, and she hadn’t broken yet. If it was up to Ted, she’d be running the place soon.
Zanne climbed into the way back, foiling Holly’s dreams of sleep. James appeared with the pillow, but she shook her head and he took it away. Holly buckled herself into one of the two captain’s chairs, her mood soured. James tapped a button and the door dropped down from above, enfolding her inside the egg of the car, a hatched chick in reverse.
As James backed out of the garage, Erin cleared her throat the way she did before any new agenda item she was uncertain of, the cue that they were about to begin.
Zanne dove right in. “We’re up to one hundred fifty RSVPs—with the VIP favors list, close to two hundred. Another two hundred on the backup list.”
“Four hundred people!” Holly said. “I don’t want four hundred people in my home. Last year there were fifty of us at Kathy Jahan’s, tops.”
Kathy Jahan’s husband was at Sony. They lived in Bel Air in an Italianate villa that used to belong to Sophia Loren. Kathy was very elegant and her parties were very elegant and very boring, no matter what people said about the canapés. And that cheesy pianist she always hired! He reminded Holly of the music teacher who used to play at the food court at Christmastime. Holly was determined to prove to the board that if they wanted to bring in more money, then their fundraisers had to be unforgettable. Everyone knew that happy people dug deeper and gave more. Already the list of sponsors, all looking for a little of that Stabler shine in a difficult year publicity-wise, was longer than they could fit on the invitation. But Holly couldn’t turn the estate into Grand Central Terminal. Ted would never forgive her.
“We can cap attendance at two hundred, that’s no problem,” Zanne said. “The party planners will be here at ten, the caterers at noon. The gate opens at four thirty, and guests arrive at five.”
“And the animals?” Holly asked. “When do they get here?”
Erin and Zanne exchanged a quick look.
“The giraffe?” she pressed, as if they could’ve forgotten. Honestly, sometimes the staff were more evasive than the children were.
“We decided the giraffe would be overkill, remember?” Erin said.
“That’s not what I said. I said, if we’re going to do a nursery theme, we have to really sell it. Maybe not the elephants—I do not want their poop all over the lawn—but, you know, a couple of monkeys would be fun. And a giraffe. I distinctly remember saying we need Sophie the giraffe.”
It couldn’t be that hard to make a jungle nursery come to life. This was LA. Telegenic animals-for-hire abounded. Whatever the problem was, the staff would deal with it if Holly just stuck to her guns.
“Actually, maybe we do need an elephant, too. Just one. A baby. A baby elephant would be adorable. And we’ll station somebody next to it. They’ll have to clean up any poop right away.”
“No problem,” Erin said. “We’ll circle back with the animal handlers.”
They got on the 405 and headed north to the Valley. The drive to Burbank was anything but convenient. It was no wonder Ted hardly went into the office anymore. Part of the reason Holly wanted to host the party at home this year was so she wouldn’t have to leave the West side.
She’d never wanted to live in LA. Even as a child, this city couldn’t seem to deliver on its promise. A two-hour drive from Frazier Park and when you got there, to the tar pits or the concert hall, you could have been anywhere. The drive to Disneyland was almost twice that, and it wasn’t even Disney World. New York was the city that captured Holly’s imagination. Day or night, twinkly or gritty, there was no mistaking the place, no matter how often location scouts tried to pass off the streets of Toronto or Chicago for the Financial District. She’d been sure when she left home for art school that it would only be a matter of time before she had her own live/work space in Williamsburg or Bushwick. And yet here she was in 2019, almost forty years old, and she’d never lived anywhere but Southern California. Whenever they visited New York, she felt different, as if there were hundreds of decisions she could still make with her life—ride the subway, shave her hair off, move to Berlin, take a lover, wheatpaste her drawings on all the sidewalk sheds. She should have pressed Ted harder when Flynn was a baby. They could have bought a town house in Brooklyn Heights or maybe London. He could’ve directed plays while she worked in her studio. She’d take the kids with her to check out the galleries in Chelsea, and they wouldn’t complain. They’d understand something about their mother that they never got the chance to here in LA, something that eluded her too, what actually made her tick. But Ted was adamant. He was born and raised in Manhattan, and he was done with it. Fine to visit, but he didn’t want to make a life there.
On the Sepulveda Pass, traffic came to a standstill.
“Let’s run through the rest,” Holly said. She was still responsible for putting on a successful party tonight, and the business with the giraffe was worrying. Themes were tricky. If you didn’t push them all the way, almost to the point of madness, they fell apart under their own weight. Bump to Pump served low-income mothers—providing them with prenatal care, financial literacy workshops, donated breast pumps and gently used strollers and cribs—so a children’s nursery theme was the obvious choice. Holly couldn’t believe no one had done it yet. But it could go very wrong, very quickly.
“We’ll have bumper cars in the driveway,” Zanne said. “People will race each other around the fountain.”
“That’s the Bump. Where’s the Pump?”
“We’re setting up a train track around the pool,” Erin said. “Guests can ride a pump car around it.”
“I’m still not sure about this one. Will people know what a pump car is?” Holly asked.
“They’ll pump a bar up and down like a seesaw to make the car go. It’ll make sense when you see it,” Zanne said, as if she were stupid. Holly could hear the unspoken literally in the sentence.
“Well, I’d never heard of one before. And I think I’m a good barometer of what the average person is going to get or not.” It was the one lever she could pull with the staff. She didn’t go to an Ivy League school like they all did. She didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in her mouth either. Neither had Ted, exactly, but he had the trust fund from his father and Frances had been a literary agent at a time when it was possible to afford a two-bedroom prewar in a doorman building on that salary. Holly’s mother had been a teacher, her father a plumber. She went to public school and shopped at Marshalls once a year for back-to-school. She made sure the staff knew these things about her, and they were all liberal enough to be chastened whenever she played the Small Town, USA card.
“There was a pump car in Blazing Saddles, Holly,” Erin said in that comforting voice of hers. She could have had a secret life making ASMR recordings, and it wouldn’t have surprised Holly one bit. “And in one of the Coen brothers’ movies—the one with George Clooney.”
“Oh,” Holly said. She’d never watched Blazing Saddles, but George Clooney was good, everyone saw his movies.
“And Mad Max. And Buster Keaton,” Zanne said.
“Okay, I guess it’s fine. Maybe if we make a sign for it. Something old-timey—you know, Ride Ye Olde Pump Car. I’ll let you guys brain that out. What are we doing for music?”
“We know you didn’t want a band,” Erin said.
“You can’t talk when they’re playing, and unless it’s, like, Coldplay or John Legend, what’s the point?” Holly said.
“Right, so we put together a playlist of songs with the word baby in the title.”
“Cute. Make sure they’re upbeat, though. Food?”
“For the passed hors d’oeuvres, elevated takes on a kid’s menu—truffle grilled cheese bites, pigs in a blanket in puff pastry, mini lamb cheeseburgers, cake pops. And at the self-serve stations, we’ll have sticky buns in toy ovens, pickle platters, and an ice cream sundae bar.”
Holly nodded, good, good. “And what are the servers wearing?”
“There’ll be a ring master, a trapeze artist, human cannonballs, and—” Erin checked her notes.
“Mimes,” Zanne added.
“Ugh,” Holly said.
“Ugh?” Erin asked.
“Ugh,” Holly repeated. “It’s so...”
“Siegfried and Roy?” Zanne said.
“Yes.” She’d taken the words right out of her mouth. Holly hated it when Zanne of all people read her mind.
Erin pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and stared into the middistance. “Hmmm.”
“The original idea was a jungle-styled nursery,” Zanne said. “Maybe we go back to that.”
“The servers could wear animal print shirts. Zebra and tiger stripes, giraffe and leopard spots,” Erin said.
“Too literal,” Zanne said. Holly nodded. “More like...the man with the yellow hat.”
“Yes!” Holly clapped her hands. “I like that.”
“Sure, we could do one of those,” Erin said.
“No, they all wear it,” Holly said. “It works better if all the servers are wearing the same thing. Can’t you just picture it? Fifty waiters—or however many there are—passing around...” She snapped her fingers.
“Moscow mules?” Erin said. “It doesn’t really go with the theme, but you said everyone would want one.”
“Right! Fifty men and women in yellow hats passing out drinks, and then you have a monkey for Curious George, and now Sophie the Giraffe works, and we’ll get a crown for the elephant so he’s Babar. Oh, it’s perfect.”
“It’s a pretty specific costume,” Zanne said. “I don’t know if we can get fifty with this much notice.”
Holly wasn’t twenty-two anymore. She wasn’t that girl from the mountains who went along with everyone, who let people tell her something couldn’t be done, only to watch it be done for Ted. No, the hard part was getting to the good idea, and she’d done that. The staff could take care of the rest.
“Sure you can,” she said. “Yellow pants, yellow shirt, boots. Doesn’t sound that hard to me. Talk to the costume department. Are we good here? I need to study my speech. Oh, and Zanne, have someone look at the Wi-Fi in the gym. It kept cutting out during my workout. If we can get a signal strong enough for Ted to make a movie, I should be able to watch one while I ride.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Zanne said, looking at her notebook. She wrote everything down and underlined it twice. Holly took the leather portfolio Erin handed her, opened it in her lap, and settled in to prepare for the day ahead.
3
Phoebe
Phoebe had laughed when the location of the Producers Guild breakfast was announced. Of course, the conference would be held at Stabler Studios this year, the year she finally had a finished film to sell. Of course, Ted’s shadow would loom over her career, as it always had. But she wasn’t laughing now, on her way in a Lyft from the airport. Her mouth was dry and she felt cold all over. It had been one thing deciding to go, clicking the button on the website that said register here; it was another thing entirely to speed along the freeway while the miles between her and Ted evaporated.
“You still doing this?” her husband Malcolm asked every time they reviewed their budget with the line item for her PGA dues—$425 a year ever since The Starfighter 2, when she’d qualified for membership—and she would nod. She paid double that to the teachers union, and all it got her was crappy health insurance, 3 percent cash back on her Visa card, and collective bargaining rights, the abstract weight of which felt more tangible at least after the strike this spring. Malcolm didn’t force her to explain what exactly this $425 entitled her to, other than a seat at a breakfast she had no reason to attend because she didn’t make movies anymore. For years after she left LA, she wrote only for The River, a theater collective in the East Bay that operated so far beneath the towering shadow of Berkeley Rep that it had guaranteed Phoebe both creative freedom and near anonymity. From September to June she was an English teacher, and in the summers, she taught precocious children how to become Brad Bird or Hayao Miyazaki in just eight weeks. Paying her PGA dues every year was like reading her horoscope on her birthday, an act of superstition more than faith in the outcome.
Malcolm had offered to come with her to LA, but she’d told him not to worry. It would be a quick trip, twenty-four hours, all work. The last time she’d left, more than a decade ago with another failed pitch behind her, she’d sat in seat 9c with her headphones on, waiting for the ocean sounds blasting in her ears to soothe the panic in her gut, to displace the irrational feeling that she’d dodged a bullet, and she’d promised herself: “You’re done. You never have to come to this fucking town again.” And yet here she was. The producing conference was this morning, there were dozens of networking parties tonight, and if she was very, very lucky, she’d be home tomorrow with a line on a distribution deal.
