Little Known Facts A Novel - By Christine Sneed Page 0,63
many dings we’ll get on the car in the parking lot, or why we like raspberries more than strawberries. Actually, many things probably are beyond our control, even the people we’ll fall in love with, but I suppose that if a movie star comes calling, you’re more likely to fall in love with him than the guy bagging your groceries. I suppose what I mean is, I could have been smarter, I could have recognized the odds against long-term happiness when I fell for a movie star. The bagger is probably a safer bet, even if he doesn’t earn much of a living, because for one, he doesn’t have anywhere near the same number of sexual options that a movie star does.
There was never a day or night when I felt truly at ease being Renn Ivins’s wife. I think I must have known from day one that it wouldn’t last, in part because he left someone else for me, which I did feel bad about (I’m not the sort of competitive freak show who thrives on stealing other women’s guys), even though I didn’t ever offer to return him to her. If I were a different kind of woman, all along I might have been able to say to myself, “Just have fun and enjoy the ride while it lasts,” but I’m not that kind of woman. I wish I were, but I’m not.
What have you learned about yourself since the divorce?
I knew myself pretty well by the time Renn and I divorced, but I wasn’t particularly thrilled with what I learned during our marriage, namely that I was often very jealous, insecure, needy, angry, vindictive, afraid. I knew that people everywhere were plagued by these same feelings, but it didn’t matter because I was the one feeling them. That’s like saying, “Don’t be afraid of death because we all die.” No kidding, but that doesn’t really make it any better, does it?
What did Renn spend his money on?
1. He spent it on cars. When we were married, he had a Porsche Spyder like the one James Dean died in, a Jaguar, a silver Mercedes convertible, a Lexus, and a Chevy half-ton pickup for when he felt like pretending he knew how to do home-improvement projects like repairing the cedar deck that led from the sliding glass door off the kitchen to the pool. I think he still has most of those cars, or newer models, along with a Smart car (a gift from the manufacturer—I doubt he ever drives it, but his housekeeper apparently does) and a hybrid Ford Escape. He keeps half of these cars in a separate garage that he rents one town over from his house in the Hollywood Hills.
2. He spent it on his kids. He put something like six or seven million dollars X 2 into trusts for his son and daughter, which they couldn’t access until they turned twenty-one, and I think the most they can take out during any one year is two or three hundred thousand, unless Renn gives them permission to take out more. That’s still a lot of money, and with these trusts earning interest and dividends on the bonds and stocks or whatever Renn set up with his broker, Anna and Billy are set for life.
3. He spent it on his first wife. She gets a lot of money from him every year because she has never remarried. Something like two or three million, probably, on top of the twenty million in property and liquid assets that she got at the time of their divorce. She doesn’t need it either, being a doctor who probably earns at least half a million on her own annually.
4. He spent it on food. He goes to the French Laundry up in Napa Valley as often as he can, which is about three or four times a year. He goes to Chez Panisse almost as often, which, like the visit to the French Laundry, requires a flight up to San Francisco and a limo driver or else he rents a car and drives himself and whichever woman is accompanying him. He also has an excellent chef named Spike Light (really) who, since our divorce, cooks his meals whenever he’s in L.A. and not dining out. He took this chef with him from time to time when he was doing shoots in Mexico or other places not too far away, but eventually he had to stop because the chef is married and