I watched a raindrop of sweat drip down her face, tracing a white line through her makeup. “Not to get you worried or anything,” she continued, “but labor is like one of them Iraqis torturing you. All three of my kids were like poopin’ frozen turkeys. Not to mention the hem’rhoids. I read on the Internet that I could dab apple cider vinegar on them, but all that did was make me stink like Easter eggs for a week so I don’t recommend it.” That was a hell of a lot of similes in one breath.
She must have weighed 250-plus pounds, but she moved fast, her mouth a blur of candy-pink lipstick and her ass a giant, bobbing red and yellow flowered pillow. As she propelled me toward the house, I was trying to figure out if she meant she smelled like the vinegar you put in with the dye pellets or… I didn’t want to know. She’d guided me halfway up the walk before I could think about asking her who the hell she was.
“I’m Leticia Abigail Lee Dunn. Everybody calls me Letty. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.” Her twang fell heavy into the hot air.
When I looked blank, she said impatiently, “Oh, come on, honey. Wife of Mayor Harry Dunn the fourth, your husband’s new boss. Daughter of William Cartright Lee of the Robert E. Lees. You know the General, don’tcha, honey? We’ve also got a long line of pageant girls in our family, too, but I don’t want to brag.” She gave my arm a squeeze.
“I was fourth runner-up in Miss Texas. Miss Congeniality was outright stolen from me by Miss Haltom City,” she whispered, as if it were a secret.
I nodded mutely, struggling to imagine a crown perched on the top of that teased mountain of bleached-blond hair, happy that I didn’t have to participate for this conversation to go on.
I wondered how she knew so instantly who I was. She swept her hand grandly at the nearby houses. The ripples of fat on her lower arm swung like dimpled bread dough.
“This tract used to be one of our ranches. I think my ancestors would like that it is now home to modern royalty. You aren’t a Democrat, are you? That’s one thing I told the girls, ‘We might have to brainwash the Hillary out of her.’ ” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “We can just walk on in, honey. Caroline is real gracious that way. She’s a bit of a control freak in other matters but you’ll get used to it. Have you filled out an application?”
Application? I risked a breath instead of speaking, hoping that once again she didn’t really want an answer. I needed to prepare myself. A roomful of unknowns churned up my insecurities every time. I liked a script, a purpose, when entering a room.
My best friend in New York, Lucy, is a chameleon like me. Assessing the audience, adapting as necessary. She’s the only other person I’ve ever known intimately who is as deliberate and sneaky about it as I am. I remember our instant connection at a museum gala nine years ago, bonding over a Lucian Freud portrait, a mediocre glass of merlot, and our predilection for dark thinking. I wished Lucy and her biting humor were with me now as I navigated this land of twangy trolls and lemon squares.
Leticia grabbed the knob of the massive arched double door. She hesitated. One of her long pink fingernails tucked back a piece of my hair that I’d purposely styled to fall out of the bun on my head.
“I’ve got a little spray in my purse that will take care of that if you want to scoot off to the bathroom first. Be forewarned, this is a curious bunch. And we’re tight. You’ll need to suck up a little to get in.”
In where? The door? Was she talking about my stomach? Her stomach? Why, why had I said yes to this?
“Hey, y’all!” Leticia bellowed into the house. “I got Emily here. The new chief’s wife.” She swept me across a marble floor, past a jade inlaid mirror in the entryway and a barely glimpsed Miro sketch, down a hall of ancestral pictures in striking, contemporary frames. Twenty feet in, I stopped impulsively to admire the view.
A stunning garden room ran along the entire back side of the house, an atrium of tropical wonders-ferns, banana trees, and hibiscus I’d seen only on the Internet. Thirty or so women crowded around talking and drinking wine, a much more diverse, anorexic, and formal group than I’d expected after encountering Letty. A pale young harpist wrapped in a gauzy dress played Mozart near a banana tree as if she were all alone, or at least wished it. A few of the women paused at our entrance, smiled, then turned back to their conversations.
“Gimme those squares so I can present them to Caroline.” Letty grabbed the plate and abandoned me, parting the crowd like a whale churning through water.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to face two nearly identical women, with taut, Botoxed faces, breasts like tennis balls, $150 haircuts, spray tans, French manicures, white capris, and tight sleeveless tanks that showed off their Pilates regimen. Women who looked older than they were because they worked way too hard at achieving the opposite.
“I’m Red Mercedes,” said the one who appeared the tipsiest. “And this is Beach House.”
“Stop it, that’s not funny if she doesn’t know us. Mary Ann’s had a little bit too much to drink already. It’s an inside joke. I’m Jenny, by the way. We have the same plastic surgeon in Dallas. And he owns a Mercedes convertible and a beach house, which we’re pretty sure we paid for. I can’t believe I’m explaining this. God, you look amazing. Do you even wear foundation? Oh, to have ten years back.”
“Thank you. It’s very nice to meet you.” I felt like curtsying.
Huge diamonds in multiple forms and sizes glinted on their fingers as if they bred at night. These were women who likely graduated out of college sororities straight into marriage, part of the pack of hausfraus I’d dodged this week in the local upscale grocery, Central Market. The women who pretended not to see you as they cut in line at the cheese counter and their Justice- and Abercrombie-clad children demanded Havarti over Gouda.
“Welcome to our butt-hole of a town,” Jenny told me. “The gossip is that your husband is a modern-day gladiator.”
“Did Letty mention she was a pageant girl?” Mary Ann tipped the last sip from her wineglass. And, then, under her breath, “She’s such a bitch.”
I felt like I’d fallen into a Texas rabbit hole. Or maybe a tarantula hole. I’d gotten my first scary look at one of those suckers in the front yard yesterday. The six-year-old boy next door had offered to stick his garden hose in it and blast out the owner, an offer I politely declined.
I was unsure how to respond to this schizophrenic chitchat. Where was my hostess? My eyes flitted around a little desperately.
Mary Ann was rubbing a finger across a tiny red spot on Jenny’s cheek. “Pimple. Not skin cancer,” she slurred.
“I bet you’re looking for a drink,” Jenny announced into the space left by my hesitation. In seconds, the two women had tugged me into the yard that spilled out of the atrium. The architect’s optical illusion with glass and nature made it nearly impossible to tell where the inside stopped and the outside began. That is, until I reached the invisible line, where the air-conditioned breeze evaporated and a stifling wall of summer air took my breath away.
I spied not one, but two outdoor rooms with plush furniture to sink into on either side of a lagoon-like pool. The fire pits glowed, even though it was 95 degrees outside. I smelled an industrial amount of mosquito spray. Chemical misters at work. Not good for Baby.
“So, what can you drink?” Jenny demanded. We moved toward a mini-bar covered with a fake thatched roof, where a tuxedoed young man with a green and yellow tropical bow tie stood, bored and hot. No one else had even ventured out here.