Social Lives (15 page)

“I should hope so.” Jacks was coming alive now. She had to. There was work to be done tonight, whether or not she had the nerve for it.

“Have you heard something? Did they say something about Caitlin?”

“No.” Jacks turned her attention back to the crowd. Where the hell was Barlow? “They really should have called you. Don't they know you're on the membership committee?”

“What would that have to do with anything?”

Jacks looked surprised. It seemed impossible for Rosalyn not to know, and this made Jacks wonder if her friend's ignorance was genuine. “They're applying to the club. The Dawsons are sponsoring them.”

Over the red lips and white face, a delicate manicured hand was drawn, and in that subtle action Jacks caught a rare glimpse of actual unfiltered emotion from Rosalyn Barlow. She hadn't known, and the implications were numerous. The Conrads trying to join
her
club. The club that had been in her family for four generations.

“Rosalyn, I'm sorry,” Jacks said. And she was, truly. “I can't believe I'm the one breaking the news—and tonight of all nights.”

But Rosalyn was gone now, to that bunker deep within herself where she prepared for battle. It had been short-lived, her reprieve from the paranoia, the bliss that the party had inspired. She'd foolishly let her guard down, allowed herself to be in the moment, a good moment that was light and easy.
Stupid
, she thought.
You know better.

“I have to go,” she said, and Jacks could see a plot already brewing to undo the damage that had been done.

Jacks grabbed her arm gently and caught her eye. “I really am sorry.”

“Don't be. I'm grateful for you tonight.”

Rosalyn started to turn her back, but Jacks stopped her one last time. “Have you seen your husband? Maybe David is with him.”

Rosalyn shook her head. “I doubt it. My dear husband is punishing me by hiding in the wine cellar with a cigar.”

“Oh, Ros . . . it's his loss. The party is fabulous.”

She nodded then in complete agreement. “That's something, I guess.”

 

 

 

 

 

S
HE HEARD THEM OUTSIDE
before the door opened, their voices growing louder and louder from down the hall until their words became intelligible.

“I'm just not going to make it with this wig,” Eva Ridley complained as she pushed through the hidden door to the ladies' room with Jacks, who had rushed to catch up with her.

It was more of a lounge, really, than a bathroom. Easily the size of Sara's dining room, it had two enclosed stalls with high-end toilets (the ones with the flusher on the top), gilded toilet paper holders, and walls lined with soft red toile. In the back was a double sink vanity skirted with the same fabric, linen cloths stacked in a hand-carved wooden box, and luxuriously scented soap that somehow managed to fill the air throughout the room. Or maybe they were piping the scent in from some hidden vent. Either way, the smell made you want to stay, linger, and, Sara imagined, gossip. Sitting on the toilet, listening, Sara was suddenly panicked by the choice the situation presented—make her presence known, or remain a fly on the wall.

“Well, that's Rosalyn for you. How's the back?” Jacks asked Eva, turning so her friend could inspect the other side of her costume.

“Fully intact. And mine?”

Jacks peeked her head around Eva. “Good.”

As they proceeded to the vanity to check their makeup, a look passed between them. Then, as if they had read each other's minds, they simultaneously bent over at the waist to peek beneath the stall where Sara was hiding. The black shoes and white stockings gave her away instantly.

“Uh!” Eva said, standing straight again and pulling hairpins from her wig. “I have to take this sucker off.”

“Go ahead. We have plenty of time before the contest.”

“Did you see those manservants? Right out of Chippendale's.”

Spreading her lipstick across her mouth, Jacks let out a sarcastic laugh. “And young enough to be your sons.”

“You are the devil. Pure evil, Jacks Halstead!”

They heard the flush of the toilet, quiet and somehow elegant, then heard the latch pull open. Sara emerged, looking as though she was surprised to find them standing a few yards away.

“Sara Livingston,” Eva exclaimed, turning to face her with a friendly smile. “I'm so glad you made it!”

“Are you having a good time?” Jacks asked, knowing the answer full well from the look on Sara's face.

As for Sara, she decided she was too damned tired to keep up appearances, even assuming she would be able to figure out what appearances a situation like this one called for.

“Actually, I think I screwed up on the costume.”

Both women turned then to fully inspect her clothing. The dress was drab gray, the stockings white, and the shoes—very rounded mary-janes. She wore black-rimmed glasses and had her hair pinned back. Adding to the catastrophe, there was far too little makeup on her face, giving her a pale, gaunt appearance. Overall, she was a party disaster.

Eva sighed. “Well, you have the right country.”

Sara looked surprised. “You know who I am?”

“Of course. Simone de Beauvoir, right?”

“Yes! You really got it, wow, I'm . . .”

“Surprised?”

Sara shrugged, growing slightly embarrassed at her assumption that she possessed superior knowledge.

Returning to her makeup, Jacks smiled slightly. “Eva has a master's in French literature. Summa cum laude, no less, from Yale.”

“Really? That's impressive.” Fully embarrassed now, Sara tried to cover her blunder with compliments.

“Like it does me any good as a housewife,” Eva said dismissively. Still, despite its general uselessness, her degree did make moments like this one just a little bit tasty. “Anyway, it happens every year to somebody. Usually the last-minute invitees who don't get the engraved invitation. Rosalyn's staff can be a bit preoccupied.”

Of course, none of the women really believed this, Eva and Jacks from experience, and Sara from her innate skepticism at all things coincidental.

Eva returned to pulling off her wig, making a little pile of hairpins on the vanity counter. Sara walked to the space between the women and set her handbag down.
Now what?
she thought. She washed her hands with the lovely soap, dried them with a linen cloth, all the while thinking of what to say.

When Eva's wig was done, she shook out her long red hair and ran her hands through it. Then, with her face suddenly flush with excitement, she looked at Sara. “I know,” she said, pulling Sara's arm to turn her sideways.

“Jacks, what do you think—Marie Antoinette just before the guillotine?”

“Oh, good God! That's a dreadful idea. So morbid!”

“We could make it funny. Sara would be the talk of the party!”

That had Sara in a cold sweat. “I don't know. . . .”

“Look,” Eva said, her eyes meeting Sara's dead on. “You can either be an embarrassed feminist intellectual, or a proud queen who laughs in the face of
death
!”

Tilting her eyes as she examined Sara's costume, Jacks shrugged. “Maybe. It
would
be funny.”

“But will Rosalyn think it's funny? I don't want her to think I'm mocking her theme.” In truth, this was the least of her worries. Being the center of attention at this party, of all places, was not something she was prepared to manage.

“Can't be worse than a feminist intellectual.”

Eva was right. Sara would be a screwup tonight whatever she did, and it occurred to her that at the very least, she could please the only two women who seemed willing to be her friends.

“Okay. But how?”

With her hand to her chin in deep contemplation, Eva looked over all three of their costumes.

“Jacks, can we have your shoes? Your dress is to the floor anyway.”

Jacks pulled off her high-heeled Manolos. “They're size nine.”

“I'm a seven,” Sara said.

“We'll stuff some tissues in the toes. Next, you can have my wig. Standard-issue French royalty.”

“Wait—but Jacks will be barefoot, and your hair—”

“Sara, in another hour, everyone will be so shit-faced that half of them will have no shoes, and the other half will have lost their wigs. And believe me, things will go on that will make you think you're back in college at an out-of-control frat party.”

Sara looked at Eva, curious and a bit uneasy. “Even the Barlows?” she asked, trying to picture Rosalyn falling-down drunk.

As they went to work on Sara's new costume, Eva and Jacks both started to laugh.

“Remember the year she convinced Linda Griggs to ride a horse around the room dressed in nothing but a sheet?” Eva was almost howling as she recalled the night.

“And then the horse just stopped in the middle of the room and let out a huge load of shit? How could anyone forget that night?” Jacks was smiling. The real story was, and Eva knew this herself, that Rosalyn had ordered the horse to be brought up from the stables. She'd planned on riding it herself, but before she could stop her, Linda Griggs insisted on being Lady Godiva. And anyone who's ever tried to ride bareback while holding a sheet around their body could fill in the pieces that were missing from Eva's rendition. It was actually a stroke of luck for Linda that the horse had relieved himself on the floor, because that ended up being the punch line that would be retold for years.

“The thing about Rosalyn,” Jacks said, changing the tone of the conversation, “is that she has an uncanny knack for creating the fray while avoiding it herself. It's what makes her parties so exceptional. It's one of the many bricks she's used to build her kingdom, if you know what I mean.”

Sara stood still in front of the mirror as the two women worked on her, thinking about what had been said and not said, but heard just the same. She was beginning to understand, though so much was missing.

“Did her mother throw parties here?”

“God, no. This is all Barlow,” Jacks said. “The Eddings lived a bit closer
to town. They were the fourth generation of Eddings to live in Wilshire, but never really struck oil the way Barlow did. When Rosalyn's mother died, her father remarried instantly and moved to West Palm Beach. The house was sold, the estate settled. Mr. Eddings took it all, though I suppose Rosalyn will get her share when he goes.”

Sara was becoming engrossed in the story, almost to the point of forgetting what the two women were doing to her clothes.

“And this was hardly Mrs. Eddings's style,” Eva continued. “She was old money. Stodgy to the core.”

Jacks was nodding as she remembered the woman. “She was. Never even came to one of Rosalyn's parties. And she rarely broke a smile. I always got the feeling from her that if she ever actually had a real emotion, it would break her into tiny little pieces.”

“That's horrible,” Sara said, her own emotions doing a 180. Poor Rosalyn Barlow.

“And Rosalyn could never get it right when she was alive. If she planted pear trees, they should be apple. If she bought Valentino, it should be Givenchy. Her mother almost had a stroke when Rosalyn married Barlow, in spite of his obvious brilliance and the big job he'd landed. The family breeding just wasn't there. Nearly killed her when he hit the jackpot. The irony of it all.”

Hearing Barlow's name, Jacks felt her face go pale, her hands begin to perspire. She had been distracted, but it was all rushing back to her—the plan she was determined to follow at all costs.

She looked Sara over. “I think it's good,” Jacks said. The panic was full-on. She had to get out of there.

Taking her time, Eva examined their little pet project. With the elegant wig, the shoes, costume jewelry, and makeup, she did indeed look like a queen in peasant's clothing.

“Good, right?” Jacks was gathering her belongings back into her purse.

“Just one last thing.” Reaching now into her bra, Eva pulled out two kidney-shaped gel pads. “Here—put these under your tits.”

Sara could not hide the horror on her face as Eva placed the fake breast inserts into her hands. In the first instance, Eva Ridley had perfect tits, thanks to a very skilled New York City surgeon. And in the second instance—
yuck!

Sensing her hesitation, Eva reached into Sara's dress and put them in herself. “We can all use a little more—especially tonight,” she said, stepping
back to examine her handiwork. “There!” she said. And she was right—the added cleavage did complete the outfit.

“Wow.” Sara was dumbstruck. The fake tits made her look downright glamorous. “I should hate it, but it does look good.”

Eva waved her off. “Why should you hate it?”

Sara shook her head. She hardly had the energy for her own thoughts. “What does this say? What if my daughter has small ones?”