Elizabeth the First Wife (4 page)

“Do not get sucked in.”

My big sister Bumble was nothing if not cynical and jaded. She prided herself on being the least gullible human being in Southern California. Maybe that's why she went into public relations. Or how she ended up married to a congressman. Those four years she spent at a women's college did wonders for her sense of self. She was only fifteen months older than me, but she thought of herself as light years ahead of me on her life path. Now her goal was to self-actualize me, one pep talk at a time. She'd been trying for some time, with hit-and-miss results.

“He played you once with something we in the business like to call ‘wedding vows,' and now, what? You owe him nothing.” She was so worked up that she almost popped a button on her plum Ryan Roberts jacket, and that would have sent her over the edge. “Mr. Movie Star wants you to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid so
he can win an Oscar? Oh, so he comes running back to his ex-wife. Like you're his rehab minder.”

“I think maybe he respects my professional opinion,” I suggested meekly, as I watched her straighten up my living room with her prototypical efficiency and disregard for my personal wishes. “Plus, I'd have time to work on my book—you know, the one that publisher wanted me to think about.”

“Oh, sure. Great idea. A summer with FX will really clear your head so you can get that book proposal together. The one you've been talking about for three years,” Bumble countered, restacking my coffee-table books with expertise and speed.

“Please stop cleaning my house,” I begged. That did nothing to slow her down. She moved onto rearranging the furniture.

Bumble Lancaster Seymour was a force of nature, the type of operator who could squeeze anything out of you and then make you feel like you have to write her a thank-you note for the privilege.
(Dear Bumble, I know I asked you to stop cleaning my house, but you were right and I was wrong. It does look better your way. With love, your sister Elizabeth
.) Christened Beatrice, she'd never been called by her given name. “Bumble Bea” is what the family called her from the get-go, because she never stopped buzzing about. Eventually, the Bea fell by the wayside, and she's been Bumble since toddlerhood. Though why, at the moment, she was so intent on repositioning the objets d'art on my bookshelves, I wasn't sure.

“Listen, Francis-slash-FX-slash-Icarus broke your heart. He married you and then screwed around with the first co-star he could find.”

“Thanks for not mincing words.”

Bumble carried on, taking out her long-held anger on my pillows, which, frankly, didn't deserve it. “And then he walked away without paying you a dime. Not a dime. Do you think that timing was a coincidence? Don't you think he knew he was about to sign a three-picture deal? The ink was barely dry on your one-page
divorce agreement that was, air quotes, mediated by whom? Some barista in the Village? And the next thing we know, there's FX Fahey walking down the red carpet to a giant payday. He did you wrong, really, really wrong, Elizabeth. I don't know why you care if he has professional success.” During this rant she was refolding our grandmother's antique Hawaiian quilt.

“That was a long time ago, okay? The divorce or how it went down is water under the bridge. Yes, I'm sorry I married him at twenty-two. We never should have gotten married. Then when it ended, it would have just been twentysomethings going through the inevitable post-college breakup. But what happened happened.” That was my story and I was sticking with it.

Bumble artfully placed the quilt over the arm of a mushroom-colored Pottery Barn couch she had helped me select. “How come Gigi left you her house and this great quilt? I think I deserved the quilt.”

“Because I gave Gigi that quilt. I found it at the Rose Bowl flea market. And you got all the artwork.” Dang, the place did look better after Bumble's whirlwind restaging.

“Good point. And now that Helen Frankenthaler is dead, those things are worth a fortune,” she crowed, pausing for dramatic effect. “All I'm saying is don't get sucked in.” The doorbell rang and Bumble squealed a tiny bit. “He's here. Try to impress him.”

Pierce DeVine, nee Paulie DeVito, decorator to the stars, or at least the Pasadena elite and their adult children, could only be described as “gleaming.” Literally, he was the shiniest man I'd ever laid eyes on. His dress shirt was blindingly white, his blue blazer looked like it was sewn on him moments before walking in the door, and his pressed gray flannels must have once belonged to Cary Grant. His tanned complexion said Weekend Home in Montecito, but his blue
eyes showed no signs of the fine lines that normally appear when that is the case. Were his teeth actually sparkling? No wonder Bumble felt the need to redecorate my home before his arrival.

I was not worthy.

Or was I? I could swear the gleaming Pierce DeVine was intrigued, despite the fact that my hideaway lacked the grandeur, formality, and property-tax bill of his usual transformations. He was taking in La Casita de Girasoles, or the Little House of Sunflowers, the moniker my great-grandparents had bestowed upon the home, with some admiration. La Casita was a classic California hacienda-style house, with wood-beamed vaulted ceilings, Saltillo floor tiles, and thick adobe walls that danced with light and shadows. A massive stone fireplace dominated the living room. Handmade square-frame windows and oversize doors drew the eye out to the courtyard, which was anchored by a mature olive tree and my humble breakfast table, where my coffee cup still sat from the morning. I hoped he wouldn't mark me down for my sloppy housekeeping.

“Tell me the story of this home,” Pierce demanded, his manicured hands performing some sort of interior designer sun salutation. He nodded in my direction, summoning speech.

It was a lecture I'd given many times since moving in three years ago, the house inspiring that question from most guests. But I gave him the short version, because doubtless he'd walked into countless other gems in the area. My house had the same back story as scores of homes in the area: Easterners moved to sunny Pasadena in the 1920s; they started a business and it flourished; the money flowed; lovely house was built; life was good until the about late '70s, when smog and crowds took over; original homeowners died and history was up for grabs; some homes survived yuppie remodels with character intact, and others got the popcorn-ceiling treatment.

Luckily, my casita hadn't really changed hands. “The house was built in 1926 by my great-grandparents on my mother's side. According to my grandmother, her parents wanted to build the most
California house they could, to let in sun and clean air. That's why they used a hacienda layout. Very little has been done to this house since 1926.”

“Very little,” Bumble concurred, clearly working up to her rant on my inferior counter space.

I shut her down, “My grandmother Gigi lived in it her whole life. She was the only Bosworth child, married young, had my mother, but then was widowed in World War II and moved back in with her parents. She never remarried and stayed here until her death a few years ago.”

“Some days, that sounds like a good life to me,” Bumble interjected. “Alone but in charge.”

I carried on, “Our grandmother was a great entertainer and patron of the arts. The house was always in use for fundraisers or musicales. People loved coming here. Gigi was legally blind in the last decade of her life, so we literally couldn't change anything about the house for her sake. When she died, she left the house to me.”

“Not that the rest of us minded,” Bumble added, repeating her standard beef about the will's inequity. The truth is, Bumble really didn't mind. She and the Congressman lived in a massive center-hall Colonial in the upstanding Madison Heights neighborhood. But Bumble liked to give the impression that we were the Most Interesting Family in Town, so she carried on for the sake of a controversy. “Elizabeth here was our grandmother's favorite. She lived in the guesthouse for years during grad school. The two of them loved books and plays. She even suffered through the musicales, because who doesn't love the lute? And God knows, when my grandmother lost her sight and her friends started to die off, Elizabeth would sit with her for hours and describe what all the actresses were wearing on
All My Children
. She earned this house in the end.”

“I feel the spirit of your grandmother in this home. And your light shines through as well, Elizabeth. You are a nurturer and an emotional sponge. You soak up the needs of others. So let's take
care of your needs now.” Pierce ran his hands over the adobe walls, caressing each dip. “I hope you know how special this house is. It's like a virgin, touched for the very first time.”

Bumble muffled a laugh and shot a look in my direction. Yes, Bumble, I get the virgin analogy. I‘m like the house.

I turned to face Pierce again, his personal luster diminished slightly with the Madonna quote. But I had to admit that he seemed to really care about my hacienda, so much humbler than the cavernous old Pasadena houses he usually gutted and retiled in white. I started with my modest list. “I don't want to change too much. But the kitchen needs a little work.”

“A little work?” Bumble snorted. “I'd tear the whole thing out, blow out a wall and make this one gigantic entertaining space. Wouldn't you, Pierce?”

Pierce's glass-blue eyes turned cold for an instant. If Bumble hadn't been the wife of a member of the House Ways & Means Committee, she would have been toast. But then his face softened. “You, my dear Bumble, need your home to be a showpiece, because you and your handsome husband thrive at the highest level. You create the noise of life. You're noise creators. But this home is quieter and needs a careful touch. Listen to the silence.” He gestured again, signifying the end of his pontification, and then closed his eyes, presumably to commune with the silence.

As commanded, we listened to the silence, but really, all I could hear was the freeway in the distance, a fact of life in Southern California. I kept my mouth shut for a moment to honor his meditation, then carried on. “Yes, I want to preserve the peacefulness, but I'd really like a dishwasher. And maybe a stove that doesn't have to be lit by hand. And I'd love a prep sink. And if I could get a window over the sink to look out at my garden, that would be enough for me.”

Pierce remained still with his eyes shut, and then they flew open, scaring me a tiny bit. Was he possessed?

“I'll do it.”

Bumble squealed again and gave the Shiny One a hug. “Oh, Pierce, thank you. I know this isn't your usual high-profile project, but I know you're ab-so-lute-ly the only one who can do justice to this house.”

Wait, what had just happened? I thought I got to choose the designer, not vice versa. Once again, I was reminded that my world and Bumble's rarely coincided, even though we lived only one zip code apart. “Um, thank you?”

Pierce DeVine reached for both my hands, “No, thank you. This is a journey we take together.”

I never should have opened the box. Honestly, I should have thrown that box out a long time ago, finally admitting defeat, like I did with my extensive wardrobe of DKNY blazers with shoulder pads. They were never coming back in style and I had to face facts. But I'd gone ahead and opened my Big Box of FX Memories, and now no amount of Meritage was going to wash away the pain.

Inside were flyers from dorm parties, two Eurail passes from our junior year in London, Playbills from productions we had seen together, Soundgarden ticket stubs, coasters from our favorite bars, a mixed CD of quirky love songs by quirky singer-songwriters, actual letters and love poems written by FX, a dried rose from my twenty-first birthday, and Mardi Gras beads. Nothing out of the ordinary, but everything brought back vivid images and intense feelings.