The Starter Wife Read Online Free PDF Page A

clothes boutique—and they talked about their interests at length in various fashion magazines, where they would be photographed in the glamorous setting of the studio they rarely used, the eponymous boutique they seldom frequented.Their jobs were more like very expensive, well-publicized hobbies.
    Gracie surmised that Hollywood Wives had the highest unemployment rate in the country.
    Let it be said that Gracie hadn’t written anything in a while. “A while” translated into half a decade, give or take a year. She hadn’t been seized with an idea that demands you run to your computer before it recedes into the fabric of what Hollywood people loved to call their “crazy busy” lives. She hadn’t met the boy at the bus stop, so to speak. Gracie had sat in front of her computer many days, jabbing at keys, willing an idea to fall out of the sky and drizzle out through her fingertips.
    At first, Gracie figured it must be the demands of having a baby. She and Kenny had a baby girl almost four years ago, after years of trying. Of course a baby is a distraction. Of course a baby makes life more full, and of course a mother has less time to write than a nonparent.
    But deep down, Gracie knew her dry spell, the endlessdesert of her unproductive days, had a different genesis. It wasn’t pregnancy brain, it wasn’t postpartum, and it wasn’t her beautiful Jaden.
    (Okay, the name. Time to come clean. Jaden was named after Jada Pinkett and Will Smith’s child. Kenny, at the time, was casting a Vietnam War movie that needed a young, black, powerful lead. Will didn’t wind up taking the role, of course, and Gracie in the meantime had a child whose name was looted from movie-star off-spring.)
    Gracie’s well of ideas had run dry. Gracie’s talent, her personality, her gumption, even her anger, were fading. She felt like a pencil drawing that was being slowly, methodically erased.The demands of a life filled with petty concerns—
Why are the tennis court lights on at eight a.m.? The air-conditioning went above 72 degrees in the guesthouse sitting room! We need new flower arrangements twice a week.Why won’t the remote (that cost as much as a new Toyota) turn off the Flat Screen TV in the bar? What is the proper ratio of studio to talent for a dinner party? The orchids in the foyer are dying. Should we serve lamb or salmon at our third dinner party this month? I want a phone on the left side of the master toilet. Who has (imaginary) food allergies? The pool is overflowing. Who doesn’t eat meat? That painting doesn’t work with the new couch. Who doesn’t eat bread? I need another iPod (preprogrammed with Julia Roberts’s favorites). The gardener cut the grass too low. The made-in-Tibet screening-room curtains won’t open
—had devoured not only Gracie’s creativity but, more important, her spirit.
    Gracie’s comatose state was starting to lift as she looked up at the ex-stripper, whose full figure and full attention were on Kenny as she bobbled her head like the dog figurines Gracie would see in the back of the rusty Toyotas owned by the Latina nannies in her neighborhood.
    The Stepford wives had nothing on the Wives Of, Gracie thought ruefully. Amateurs.
    Onion rings that everyone agreed to order but no one would eat, thanks to Zone oppression, arrived at the table. Kenny stood to greet someone famous whom Gracie didn’t recognize—Gracie could tell this person was famous because Kenny had forgotten to introduce his wife. He wasn’t trying to be rude. Kenny had Celebrity Alzheimer’s: His brain went on the blink when approached by a celebrated face. Kenny was blinded by fame, fascinated by those on the lit side of the camera. He would often forget that his civilian wife, who would never be found in the pages of
People’
s 50 Most Beautiful! edition, was standing right next to him.
    Gracie stared at this girl, a petite, anemic, pretty blonde like so many petite, anemic, pretty blondes on screen, and made a game out