Elizabeth the First Wife (10 page)

When she and Ted were first married, about seven years ago, Bumble fashioned herself after Maria Shriver, the First Lady of California at the time. So many parallels, it was eerie, Bumble used to say. (Him a Republican; her a Democrat. Him a Republican; her with good hair.) But since Arnold and Maria's spectacular marital meltdown, she fashioned herself after Kate Middleton, which seemed a little grandiose. But what did I know about being the adoring spouse?

I was good at being the buffer sister, though. “Hello, Mrs. Martin. It's great to see you! Isn't the house wonderful? I think it's
almost as big as yours, but not as stately! I hate to do this, but I have to steal Bumble away. My mother needs her. Please say hello to Betsy for me. Her Christmas card this year was beautiful. I've never seen white linen on children look so pressed!” I took Bumble by the elbow and led her out toward the gardens to hunt for FX, who had disappeared, and to find out why she had to talk to me.

“Thank you. She was going on and on about getting speed bumps put in on her street. Honestly, what does she think Ted does? Work at the Department of Public Works? The worst part of it is that because she's such a big donor, I'm actually going to have to put in a call about the speed bumps. Let's get a drink. I've talked to enough constituents tonight.”

Bumble was working her way through the crowd with two white wines when I spotted FX on the veranda chatting up Candy McKenna. Do all famous people have some internal GPS that leads them to other famous people?

Truthfully, Candy was only very famous in zip codes 91101 to 91107. She was a disgraced Rose Queen who lost her favored-citizen status when she posed for
Playboy's
Women of the Ivy League issue in the late '80s. An elephant never forgets and neither does a local, so Candy's personal comeback was never as complete as Vanessa Williams's, but her star was on the rise again. Years ago, she'd started a local gossip website called
candysdish.com
, a cleverly written look at the upper crust in Southern California with only a touch of snark. It started off serving, or skewering, the Pasadena community, but she soon wormed her way into Hollywood coverage, making the best use of her good looks, media savvy, and focus on celebrity charity events, as opposed to movie openings and awards shows. Now every big charity event got the candysdish treatment, complete with who was there, what they were wearing, and what was served for dinner,
all wrapped in a big red feel-good bow. Somehow it humanized the celebs, making them seem just like other rich people, and they loved Candy for it.

No doubt, FX was laying the groundwork for the
Dire Necessity
Oscar campaign. I'd come to know Candy a bit through Bumble, and I liked her a lot. She was one of the few people in town who really didn't care what others thought of her.

Personally, my favorite section on
candysdish.com
was called “Why the Sour Face?” It was a delicious weekly roundup of socialites and their husbands caught bickering in public at yet another fundraiser. Each week, Candy and her secret army of cell phone cameras found couples locked in marital death glares. When I was feeling down and out about being single, I'd check “Why the Sour Face?” and gloat over a snapshot of Jennifer Lewis Tanner, my swim-team nemesis, berating her poor (but loaded, both in money and liquor) husband Tim Tanner at the Cloverfield auction after he bid ten thousand dollars for a shih tzu puppy that JLT clearly did not want. Those moments alone in front of my computer on a Saturday night convinced me that single is a very fine status.

Bumble had spotted FX with Candy, too. “He's in good hands. Or so I've heard about Candy,” Bumble quipped as she slugged back some wine. “Watch him.”

“This is a work relationship only. If he wants to be the fourth Mr. Candy McKenna, I have no problem with that. He does look good, doesn't he?”

“He's a movie star. That's his job. But yes, he looks good,” she conceded. “I still don't think it's a good idea.”

“It's your fault. I'm a victim here. You know how much a Pierce DeVine remodel costs. I had to take the work!”

Bumble laughed. “At least you're getting something out of it this time. More than I can say for your marriage. And, speaking of marriage. …”

Here we go. The real reason Bumble wanted to talk to me.

“You know Ted and I have been trying to get pregnant and so far, no luck. Not that it's easy with him being on the other side of the country half the year.”

I had to admit, being married to a congressman was not the slightest bit glamorous. Ted Seymour was a successful real estate developer who wandered into politics without much long-term planning. Good-looking, articulate, and a diplomat to the core, he stepped into a race for Congress when the chosen candidate admitted to hiring illegal immigrants for his cleaning-service empire. (Illegal immigrants cleaning bathrooms? What a shocker!) Enter Ted Seymour, fiscally conservative but socially liberal, just the kind of Republican that Californians liked. He was a single dad raising a young daughter when his campaign hired Bumble to run some fundraisers. She swears the last thing on her mind was any kind of relationship, but I'm pretty sure she gave the Seymour campaign a very low bid for her work to get in front of Ted. He was elected, and six months later, he and Bumble were married.

The honeymoon was short, very short. Bumble immediately became Ted's political surrogate and full-time fundraiser in Pasadena while he commuted back and forth to DC. But the biggest adjustment was becoming a stepmother to then ten-year-old Maddie. Ted could be gone for weeks at a time, and it was Bumble who held down the home front, stepping into the unfamiliar world of school volunteering, parent-teacher conferences, and weekend debate competitions. I give her a lot of credit. Lesser females would have crumbled under the microscope of Pasadena's competitive parenting posse, not to mention the bright lights of politics. Not Bumble. She just got Botox.

But I knew Bumble was lonely, and the stress of infertility was starting to take its toll. (The other day I caught her shoving a Ding Dong in her mouth at a gas station.) So where did I come into their infertility issues? I braced myself for the ask.

“I need you to take Maddie to Ashland with you this summer.
She won't go back to camp. She doesn't want to go on another one of those expensive fake mission programs to Guatemala. And God knows, her mother can't be bothered to forego her
very important
work in Reiki healing at that commune she lives in.” Bumble was not a fan of Maddie's birth mother, a trust-fund hippie who bailed on the family when Maddie was a toddler and moved to Sun Valley. “You know I love Maddie, but I need her out of the house. This is it. I feel like it's our last shot at getting pregnant, and that means Summer Sexapalooza. Ted and I can't do that if Maddie's around.”

Wow, I so did not want to picture Congressman Ted in a “Summer Sexapalooza.” Now that I knew about their plan, I was glad I wasn't going to be around as a witness. Still, I wasn't sure I had the skills to entertain Maddie all summer. “You know I think Maddie's great. She smart and studious, a cool girl. …”

“She could be your intern! She could help you do research for your book. Or help you backstage. Or do whatever interns do. Please, Elizabeth. We'll pay her expenses, even give her a salary that you could say was from you. She likes you and she loves the theater. And if you asked her, it wouldn't seem like it was my idea.”

Bumble was pleading, honestly pleading. I did love Maddie. We always had fun when she spent the weekend when Bumble went off to Washington for a few days. She reminded me of me at seventeen: preferring books to boys and engaged in just enough intellectual snobbery to make her interesting but not standoffish. We'd bonded over Jane Austen novels and Zac Efron movies. Plus, her birth mother's behavior annoyed me beyond belief. How could you walk away from your daughter because you felt “suffocated”? Maybe I could use an intern.

“Okay, I'll ask her to come with me. But understand that I have work to do, so I can't watch her every minute. I can't babysit. And, if she doesn't want to come, I'm out. I'd be happy to have a willing intern, but not forced labor. Only if Maddie really wants to come. Understood?”

“Thank you, Elizabeth.” Bumble hugged me. Then added, “Oh, and if you let Maddie fall for FX, I will kill you.”

The real Bumble was back. “I can't help it if a teenage girl gets a crush on a movie star, okay? But, of course, I'll warn him and keep an eye on her. There will be a lot of attractive actors, so it's not just FX you have to worry about.”

“Oh, that's not Maddie's thing. Really, she's too smart for that.”

Well, she wasn't too smart to devour the
Twilight
books, because we both enjoyed those a few years ago. Bumble was boy crazy by age ten, so a girl like Maddie, who'd never been out with a boy, was a mystery to her. But not to me. I knew Maddie noticed boys, and when one finally noticed her, it would be her undoing.

Bumble took a quick look around the party. We were still alone by the koi pond. “I have one more favor to ask. Do you want a housesitter this summer?”

“I take it you have someone in mind…why, do you have a fertility goddess you want to stash at my place for the Sexapalooza?”

That cracked Bumble up. “No, although not a bad idea. Actually, Ted's chief of staff is moving here for the summer, during the congressional recess.” She lowered her voice dramatically. “He's working on some stuff on the side for Ted. Some fact-finding. It would be great if he had a low-profile place to work out of. That's also free. Like your house.”

“Is Ted involved in some scandal?” I was genuinely concerned now. Bumble usually wasn't so vague.

“No, no. Don't tell anyone, but he's considering a run for the governorship. So Rafa's going to do some temperature-taking, a little listening tour with movers and shakers here to see if Ted can build a coalition and make a run.”

Relief, then curiosity. Being the tennis fan, my ears shot up at the name Rafa. For one crazy moment, I pictured Rafael Nadal sleeping in my bed with nothing on but a headband. The thought gave me great pleasure. Bumble's strange expression pulled me back from the
brink. I recovered, “Governor Ted? And First Lady Bumble. Wow, that's really something. That's huge.”

“I know. But Ted actually cares and thinks he could make a difference. And so do I,” she said. “And I really want to be a First Lady.”

“You would be a great First Lady. To the Governor's Manor born.” I had no doubt about Bumble, but I wanted to flush out a few more details about the housesitter. “So who's Rafa?”

I was pretty sure he was the guy I'd had some disturbing eye contact with on my way into the party. I didn't want to let on that I'd noticed Mr. Blue Suit, or Bumble would have a field day.

Instead, she filled in the blanks with her Wikipedia-like recall, “He was here with Ted earlier, but they left for another event. Let me see, what can I tell you? Late thirties. Very smart, policy-savvy, good social skills. From the Antelope Valley here in California, fifth-generation farming family, they grow plants or trees or something. Ag not really his thing, so Rafa went to Georgetown, poli sci. Worked for both state and national candidates before he and Ted connected at a conference last year. Good match. Rafa gets California, which is not easy to do.”

I had to ask, “Will his whole family be living in my house?”

“He's single, no time for relationships, but he's constantly fighting off the advances of ambitious young women who want to work on the Hill. Or so he claims. I'm not sure he fights them all off.”

An ambitious Republican go-getter with an active social life? Rafa and I had nothing in common. Still, it was Bumble, and I couldn't refuse. “You know, for someone who didn't want me to go to Ashland, you're certainly capitalizing on my absence.”

“Farmer's son. Your garden will never look better,” Bumble promised, as she went off to find Maddie and head home.

Just then, FX and Candy circled around to our part of the grotto. Clearly, the two of them had enjoyed themselves, as they were talking
and laughing easily.
Dear God, don't let Candy have heard us talking about Ted's political aspirations
. Not to worry, as Candy unwrapped her arm from FX's and announced, “Well, Elizabeth, I can see why you married him, and I can guess why you divorced him. How very sophisticated to work together again after all these years. I work with one of my exes, but he's a gay real estate agent, so it's not quite the same.” Candy gave the international sign for kisses to all, turning FX back over to my custody. “He's all yours. Again. Keep me in the loop with the Shakespeare thing.”