Elizabeth the First Wife (5 page)

There, too, was the hand-lettered flyer from the production of
The Taming of the Shrew
we performed in the Shakespeare class we took together second semester sophomore year. Elizabeth Lancaster as Kate. Francis Fahey as Petruchio. After so many months of staying up all night writing his history papers while he played Nerf basketball in the hall. After so many months of searching for him every time I walked into the library or a party. After so many months of watching
him be the center of attention and go home with other women. All it took was one scene
(I say it is the moon…)
and Francis Fahey finally fell for me. The night after we performed in front of the class, he pulled a
Say Anything
outside my room, complete with raincoat and Peter Gabriel. (He was from Seattle, after all.) It wasn't original, but I didn't care. I was already in love with him.

If I was the scrapbooking type, I might have stuck all the items in an album entitled: College Kids Fall in Love. But I'm more of the unmarked-box-in-the-closet type, and maybe that's why the FX sighting today had me so unnerved.

I studied the photo of us leaving the courthouse in Lower Manhattan the day we got married. Our friend Margot had captured the event in a series of Polaroids, but the other photos had long since disappeared. (Or maybe I cut them up violently the night FX told me he needed to “experience more to really be an actor.” And by “more” he meant more sex with more women who weren't me.) But on that spectacular New York City October day in 1998, I was deliriously happy. The joy showed on my face in the fading image. I was wearing a long white crocheted dress and pink silk scarf, holding a bouquet of daisies. FX was in a tweed jacket and a purple striped shirt. The skyline in the background, the future in front of us. God, we looked so young.

Why wait, we'd thought. We're in love, and this is forever.

Seventeen months and twenty-six days later, we were divorced. My heart was cleaved in two.

Then the Lancaster clan stepped up. Bumble came to collect my remains from New York and move me home. Sarah practically wrote my grad school applications during all her spare time in med school. My grandmother cleaned out her guesthouse, gave me her old BMW, and signed me up for water aerobics. My father showed up every Friday afternoon, racket in hand, to smack around the tennis ball. Even my mother recognized the fragility of my state; she never once said, “I told you so.”

I wish I could say the first year or two post-FX was a blur, but it wasn't. It was excruciating. Every day took me back to him, to his laugh, to the feel of his skin. It was like full-body plantar fasciitis: Every step felt like I was walking on a million knives. I didn't know heartbreak could hurt everywhere. I had multiple copies of Liz Phair's
Exile in Guyville
and Alanis Morissette's
Jagged Little Pill
for car, home, and office use. But even a daily dozen playings of “You Oughta Know” couldn't quicken the healing.

Then one Friday morning I opened the
L.A. Times
and there it was: the first big article about FX, splashed across the front of the Calendar section on the day of the release of
Icarus: The Beginning
. The writer described FX as “single.” Not “divorced” or even “on the rebound,” just “single.” I didn't even get the ultimate
Hollywood Reporter–style
insult: “Ex-wife is non-pro.” There was no mention of me at all, no mention of us. Like we never happened. I stayed in bed for the weekend, with my grandmother's blessing. On Monday morning, I packed up the stuff and shoved it in a closet and went to work on finishing my PhD in record time.

Eventually, the pain dulled and the embarrassment faded. At some point, I realized I could look at the giant billboards on Sunset with FX's image without retching. I could flip through
US Weekly
at the nail salon and breeze right past the shot of FX and his latest model. Finally, I watched the entire
Icarus
trilogy in a single day, like ripping off a Band-Aid, fast-forwarding through the inevitable scenes where he got the girl.

The first and only time I ran into him after the split was in a completely generic chain restaurant near UCLA, after the third
Icarus
film had made $100 million on its opening weekend. He was getting four carne asada tacos, and I happened to walk in for a chicken bowl. We talked for two hours, until the manager asked us to buy another meal or leave. As we said goodbye, he gave me the patented FX Fahey eyes and said, “I'm sorry, Elizabeth.”

I said, “I forgive you.” And by then, I had.

He called five years ago when his father died of a sudden heart attack. Jack Fahey spent forty-five years at Boeing, working his way up from janitor to supply chain executive. He dropped dead two weeks after his retirement party. FX called and asked if I would go to the funeral with him. He was a wreck. “You knew him, Liz. People in Hollywood, the people I work with, they don't really get normal families. If you're not in the business, you don't really exist. My dad was just my dad. I'm not sure I can handle normal anymore. If you're there, I can do it.”

I almost said yes, but then I came to my senses. I could imagine the look on his mother's face if I returned home with the prodigal son at her darkest hour. It would have been the same look she gave me the one Christmas I spent with the Fahey family in Seattle during that tiny window between our wedding and our divorce. May Fahey loathed me. She cornered me in the pantry of their warm and lovely home after dinner on Christmas Eve and hissed, “How could you? How could you marry my only son and not invite me, his mother, to the wedding?”

I've never felt worse in my entire life. Never. It was as if the folly of the entire marriage was summed up in that one thought. Of course it wouldn't last; his mother wasn't at the wedding.

So I told FX that he had to do the funeral alone. “You know I can't go with you, but you'll be fine, FX. You'll see. You'll get home and you'll be you again.” I meant it. His vulnerability had touched me deeply.

He sent me an e-mail a week later. All it said was: You were right. I could do it. Thanks. Love, Francis.

I still had the e-mail in my inbox.

I pushed the walk down FX Memory Lane aside and worked on dinner.
Focus on the present, Elizabeth
. I chopped my kale with determination, shredding it for a marinated salad. I tossed the greens into a bowl with avocados, mushrooms, sesame oil, and lemon juice,
left it to sit for a half hour, and poured myself another half a glass of wine.

FX was back with another request. Maybe Bumble was right. Why should his lack of confidence be my problem?

As much as I wanted to go for the work, the experience, and the clean Oregon air, letting FX back into my life was not productive. One trip into the past confirmed what I already knew: FX knew how to push all the buttons, good and bad. Especially the good.

I didn't want to risk…well, anything. I had a life, a small and well-ordered life. It suited me. That was enough. I couldn't go to Ashland. No way.

My phone beeped and a text came in from my father: See you for lunch? For a guy who could barely change a lightbulb, his delight in texting amused me. Maybe he loved the efficiency and immediacy, because he was never a big fan of small talk.

I responded: Usual spot. Usual time.

I would let FX twist for a couple of days, then call his agent and decline. There, decision made.

Portia FROM THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

WHO SHE IS:
A rich, intelligent heiress who is forced to auction off her hand in marriage in a bizarre lottery as stipulated by her father's will. She's also a total babe. Lauded as a free spirit who must abide by rigid rules when it comes to finding a husband, and one of the Bard's most complex female characters. In the end, she gets her man, has her day in court, and enjoys the respect of society.

WHAT TO STEAL
FROM PORTIA:

Gracious, quick-witted, and sets high standards for her romantic partners.

Epitomizes independence in her life choices, as much as a girl could in Elizabethan England.

Cross-dresses for good! She impersonates a lawyer's apprentice and saves the life of her beloved's BFF. Both guys owe her big time.

Awesome name.

WHAT TO SKIP:
Scholars think she represents the blunt, barbaric Christian Primitivism of the play.

HISTORICAL NOTE:
Shakespeare created Portia in homage to Queen Elizabeth herself. Also, in letters to his beloved wife, John Adams calls Abigail “Portia.” (In turn, she calls him “Lysander” after the young swain in
Midsummer
, which is kinda creepy.)

BEST QUOTE ON RELATIONSHIPS:
“I am glad this parcel of wooers are so reasonable; for there is not one among them but I dote on his very absence, and I pray God grant them a fair departure.”

WHAT SHE MEANS:
There are tons of fish in the sea. Unfortunately, I don't really care for any of them. I'll wait until the right guy comes along.

PORTIAS OF TODAY:
Arianna Huffington, Ivanka Trump, Martha Stewart, Alicia in
The Good Wife
.