Sabotage

By Rebecca Erpf

Page 1 of 2 

Jenny sits next to her bathtub on the cold marble floor, bare legs stretching out from beneath a full-skirted cocktail dress. Her shaky voice echoes off the walls of the empty master bathroom. Smile. Breathe. You can do this. It’s all under control. You are totally in control.

Only thirty minutes left until the party is supposed to start. The party that she is supposed to host. The party that she has to host, at this point—too late to back out now.

She pictures the fully stocked bar set up in the corner of her and Todd’s formal sitting room, packed full with the holy trinity of alcohol for Todd’s circle of doctor friends and their socialite wives: vodka, champagne, and scotch. Would one drink before the guests start arriving really be that big of a deal? But Sweetie told her no. One of her golden rules of successful hostessing: stay stone sober and encourage all your guests to get sloshed. Sweetie’s rules. Maybe I should start making a list, Jenny thinks.

Catherine “Sweetie” Samuels: President of the Garden Club and the Darkbranch Country Club “Wi-nots.” Head of Richfield Academy’s Parent’s Corp, and hostess of the annual regionally infamous “Harvest Ball.” A professionally unemployed-workaholic wife and mother, married to the Chief of Surgery at Richfield Medical Center. And also, as-of-recently, even though she is almost twenty years Jenny’s senior, Sweetie has become Jenny’s self-proclaimed “new best friend.” They met at tennis practice three months before, after Jenny had officially settled into Todd’s house, their house now. Todd is the Head of Radiology at RMC, and fully immersed in Richfield’s medical social circle, whose queen everyone knows to be Sweetie Samuels herself.

This party was Sweetie’s idea. A way for Jenny to “throw her hat in the ring” of Richfield society. Thirty of Richfield’s most prestigious couples are scheduled to start arriving at Jenny and Todd’s house in less than twenty minutes. Jenny had to study the guest list like college cram sheet that morning, just so she could remember all the names. And they definitely didn’t make it easy for her, with odd, over-hyphenated names like Sedberry, Edith-Anne, Beauregard, Ashton-Leigh. She’s on familiar terms with some of the women already, from around town and from Sweetie’s Thursday night women’s only “Wi-not” meetings, where they participate in informal wine and cheese tastings and gossip about all the society wives who aren’t in attendance.

The Wi-not meetings are also where Jenny met Susu, Helena, and Carol Lynn—Sweetie’s entourage of best friends. Jenny had carefully studied their colorful cocktail dresses, their shiny professionally styled hair, and their never ending rotation of high heeled Christian Louboutin shoes. She definitely isn’t above conforming to her surroundings as the need arises, especially since, at thirty years old, she is the youngest member of Todd’s circle. Todd is in his mid-forties, Jenny his second wife. She has been constantly paranoid about avoiding the gold-digger label ever since their discreet elopement in Fiji. Since returning and being thrust into Todd’s pre-existing social network, Jenny’s never been more aware of her necklines, or her manners. Todd tells her all the time that all she has to do is be herself, don’t worry so much about what the other women think, but she’s not so sure. When she was “chosen” by the famous Sweetie Samuels she had felt a small sigh of relief, but she still can’t help on occasion sitting up at nights frantically chewing her nails next to a snoring Todd, worrying whether she is just some sort of cruel joke in Sweetie’s circle. Sweetie always seems so genuine, though. So eager to help her.

Jenny looks down at the sleeveless purple and white Diane von Furstenberg dress Sweetie gave her as a gift two days before. She had told her it was the perfect hostess dress. Jenny’s job as a paralegal at Barbaro&Webb downtown (where she had originally met Todd while he was handling a malpractice lawsuit for RMC the year before) had kept her wardrobe consistently business casual, so she was relieved when Sweetie offered to help. Never before had one of her friends offered her an entire designer dress just for a token gift, but she figured things like that probably just come with the territory, and she was not quite thrown-off enough to refuse. What is that old adage? Never look a rich friend in the mouth?

Ding!

Oh Shit, the first arrival.

As Jenny rises up on one palm and peels herself off the cold marble, she has a brief urge to change back into her sweats and tell Todd she’s sick. Handle all the guests for me, will you honey?

“Todd! People are here!” she yells up the stairs instead as she teeters in her five inch ostrich print heels into the foyer.

“Just me!!” Sweetie coos as Jenny swings open the door. “Don’t shit your pants just yet, honey!” she giggles as she flips up the edges of her shoulder length jet black hair with her free hand. Her other hand is occupied with the two bottles of Moet Rose champagne balanced between her fingers. She raises her arm and Jenny grabs the bottles, just as Sweetie swings a hand around and smacks her on the hip.

“You ready for the sharks, honey?”

“What the hell did you get me into, Sweetie? I’m not ready. I just realized my cocktail napkins clash with the decoration! And I forgot to turn the A.C. down this morning, its going to be too hot!”

“Devil!” Sweetie spits out through a sly smirk. “Cancel it all! Todd!,” she turns and cups her hands up the spiral stairway. “Todd honey, go back to work, party’s ruined!”

“Don’t mock me,” Jenny laughs. “You did this to me.”

Ten minutes later the doorbell rings. Three more minutes and it rings again. Before long the guests are streaming in, the noise steadily rising over the hum of the Jim Brickman album playing on the house’s surround sound speaker system.

“I should have hired someone to play, instead of just putting a stupid C.D. on,” Jenny whispers to Todd forty minutes into the party, breezing up next to him and the group of doctors who have gathered around the bar, all with small glasses of scotch on the rocks swirling rhythmically in their hands—the usual soundtrack for their golf/ college basketball/ state of the economy party conversations.

He tells her to stop worrying, that she’s ruining the party for herself. She glares up at him, trying to mimic the dagger stare that she always sees Sweetie shooting her meek, bespectacled husband Stew. She noticed early on in her initiation into Todd’s circle that all of the wives seemed to treat their husbands like incompetent children. The entire executive and resident staff of a nationally ranked hospital and trauma center, and their wives seemed to trust them with little more than tying their own shoes. Jenny couldn’t see herself ever fitting that same role of domineering wife, but she regularly wonders about Todd’s first wife. Had she been a Sweetie clone like Helena, Susu, and Carol Lynn? Todd didn’t seem to be the type, like the soft spoken Stew Samuels, to be drawn to such an alpha woman. Jenny’s “predecessor,” Kimber, had been part of Sweetie’s entourage, once upon a time, before she picked up and moved to Charleston with her and Todd’s two pre-teen daughters. Kimber’s name was rarely spoken by Sweetie’s group anymore, though. Whether out of respect or due to the fact that they had no need for her anymore after finding an easy replacement in Jenny, she couldn’t know for sure.

The only details Jenny was able to uncover about the elusive first wife Kimber was that first, she was extremely involved in all the social activities of Richfield Country Club, Richfield Academy, and Richfield Medical Center (a detail Todd revealed, his voice dripping with disgust at the over-involvement he claimed had ironically caused Kimber’s neglect for their relationship and family). Second, the fact that Kimber had “A-ma-zing style”—a tidbit eagerly shared by Helena, followed up by Oh, honey, but not nearly as edgy and modern as your style. She was more classic, you know? And third, that Kimber had given up a career as a surgeon herself in order to get married and have children. According to one of the other doctor’s wives who cornered Jenny at a recent Wi-not meeting, Kimber only had her intern exam to pass before becoming a full fledged resident at RMC when she met Todd and quit the job completely. Apparently, shortly after that was when she started running with Sweetie’s crowd.

Standing in the middle of her party, hands on her hips whispering to Todd, Jenny begins to feel the tingle of curious eyes on her back and she lifts her mouth into a smile despite the stress of her words. “You don’t understand,” she huffs at Todd through her teeth. “It makes me look like I have no idea what I am doing here to have the stereo on instead of live music at a party this big.”

“Jen, please don’t worry, hosting cocktail parties is not rocket science, no matter what Sweetie Samuels has told you otherwise.”

Just then Helena rushes up behind her.

“Jenny!” she barks. Her chocolate brown bob brushes back and forth like a tassel as she shakes her head. “I don’t want to worry you at your party and all, but I didn’t know what to do!”

Todd turns to leave with a joking tilt of his head, squeezing Jenny’s shoulder as he steps away back toward the bar.

“What’s wrong?” Jenny asks as she turns toward Helena.

“There’s only one tray of stuffed mushrooms left.”

Jenny raises her eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s such a big deal, we have-”

“No” Helena cuts her off, one red manicured nail shooting up between them. “I mean, that’s it. All the hors d'oeuvres are gone.” Helena’s round eyes are open wide, her pink lips drawn into a tight little line. “Honey, did you not plan for enough?” she adds softly.

“What? There’s no way!” Jenny sets her glass down on the edge of the bar and rushes into the kitchen, Helena scrambling behind her. She stalks past the tiled island and reaches one hand out to rip open the door to the fresh food closet. Two hours before the shelves had been lined with platters freshly delivered from Le Dupone’s Gourmet Deli. She feels her chest contract as she looks at the now empty closet.

“Ma’am?”

Jenny pokes her head back out the door. One of the three hired waiters is standing there, staring at her.

“Ma’am,” he says again. “We tried to find you. The hors d'oeuvres have all been served. We are just wondering if you have other plans? We are under the impression that we need to be here until ten?”

“What did you do with all of the platters? Did you not time them going out like I asked you?” Jenny raises a hand to her throbbing head. Helena is still standing behind her, one red heeled foot crossed uneasily over the other.

“Yes, ma’am, we did. I don’t know what could have happened.”

As they continue to argue about the timing of the hors d'oeuvre service, Jenny spots Carol Lynn tiptoeing up behind them. Mid-sentence, she turns to face her. Carol Lynn’s hands are clasped tightly behind her back, tugging at the end of her long blonde ponytail. Hair extensions, Jenny had learned from Sweetie immediately after she introduced them at Jenny’s first Wi-not meeting two and a half months ago.

“What’s wrong?” Jenny asks, looking into Carol Lynn’s squinted eyes.

“Umm, well, the doors to the wash rooms are all locked, I was just wondering if you meant for them to be?”

“What? No,” Jenny nearly squeals. “They were unlocked just a minute ago! I know I saw Jacqueline Shell go into the downstairs hallway bathroom! I remember because I almost gagged!” Helena giggles. Jacqueline Shell is the much younger wife of RMC’s eighty two year old former Chief of Surgery and Jenny’s prototype for how to avoid being labeled as a gold digging trophy wife. She has found it easiest to distance herself from Jacqueline by joining in on the trash talk whenever possible.

“Well, they’re all locked now, hon!” Carol Lynn sighs. Jenny rushes off to find Todd. She has no idea where the key to the bathrooms is, if there even is one. The house is actually his, he was in the process of having it custom built and decorated when he and Jenny started dating. She suspects it was really meant for him and Kimber, but she could never bring herself to ask for the truth. 

“What? I didn’t even know the bathrooms had locks,” Todd smiles after Jenny delivers the news.

Jenny sighs, trying her hardest to look stern and in control.

“What?” he asks again, looking helplessly into her stony eyes. “I don’t know, Jen. I don’t know what to tell you!”

Just then Brickman’s piano starts screeching. The C.D. is skipping.

“Holy shit,” Jenny whines. She turns and walks, as slowly as she can manage in her panicked state, into the den where the stereo equipment is stored. She turns the corner and stops short as she sees Sweetie, with her back turned, fiddling with one hand among the stereo knobs, the other hand balancing an almost full champagne flute. 

“Sweetie!” Jenny says. Sweetie jumps, swinging around and sloshing her glass of champagne dangerously over the white Berber carpet. She stammers a little, her eyes open wide. She says she’s trying to fix the c.d. She heard it skipping.

“Are you drunk, Sweetie?” Jenny asks, smiling.

A shadow crosses Sweetie’s face. No, she insists. She shakes her head. “How could you ask me that,” she says with pursed lips. “You know how I feel about getting drunk at social functions.” Sweetie has emphasized many times already in their brief friendship how uncouth she believes it is to get drunk in public. Not appropriate, she has insisted. Not classy. Apparently she doesn’t consider other people’s assumptions to be a problem, however, because Jenny’s already noticed that Sweetie can rarely be spotted without a drink in her hand at any social event.

Sabotage

continues >>  1  2