Social Lives (19 page)

Eva was shaking her head from the back of the room as Rosalyn said the name into the mic. “Sara Livingston!” The young woman stumbled forward in Jacks's shoes to accept the award. It was over in an instant, the crowd eager to get outside for the haunted house.

They started to file out—stumble out, if one were really watching them. Eva stayed behind, waiting, observing. When the crowd had thinned, she was finally able to spot Jacks, hanging on her husband's arm as though nothing had happened. Jacks and David Halstead, just another Wilshire couple. The Barlows, the Halsteads, the Ridleys, the Livingstons. Jacks turned then and waved to her, giving her a thumbs-up in recognition of their costume design that had walked off with the blue ribbon. Eva saw her own husband beckoning her into the line, where he was saving their place. Her husband. Her friends. Her life. And now her decision.

Saddled with this new feeling of bewilderment and disorientation, she got a refill and headed toward them.

 

 

 

 

 

T
HERE WERE FIVE THINGS
that Rosalyn knew to accompany an affair. First was a change in the cheating spouse's weight. Adrenaline, fear, excitement, and sexual energy could virtually erase an appetite. Second was a change of hairstyle. It might be length, color, perm, or flat-ironing. Somehow, the hair would change. Third was choice of clothing. Infused with new-found sexuality and perhaps feeling attractive for the first time in years, the cheating spouse started to care again about what he or she put on. Fourth was a new hobby. This was required to provide a cover story for the affair. And fifth was a sudden interest in music, a new band or sound that provided an emotional outlet for the charges the affair had inserted into the spouse's life.

Rosalyn knew this from many sources. She had heard it as a child from the corners of her home, where she would observe her mother undetected.
Number three
, the reserved Mrs. Eddings would say to a friend in their kitchen.
Hair
, she would say. Then she would wait. Nothing would be said for weeks, and she would seem to let it go. Then it would start again.
He didn't have dessert! And he loves bread pudding!
As far as Rosalyn knew, nothing ever came of it. Her parents stayed married for forty-two years.

Some of her friends had not been so fortunate.
He's started listening to
John Mayer. Look at how tight those jeans are!
They would discuss the possibilities, the probabilities. But it was never a coincidence when all five appeared at once.

That Barlow exhibited none of these signs struck her as curious as she stood in the wine cellar holding the two glasses.

They were cleaned and carefully hung by their stems from the mounted rack to the left of the sink. A carafe had also been rinsed and turned upside down on a bar towel to dry. The empty bottle that had contained Barlow's most prized vintage was still wet, still smelling like a divine bouquet as it sat on top of the drying tray. Lifting the bottle, she held it to her nose and breathed in deeply. Then, with her little finger, she pulled a drop of the red liquid from inside its neck and dabbed it onto the tip of her tongue. Within hours, it would smell of rot, taste of vinegar. But at the moment, it was still as precious as it must have been when Barlow and his mystery guest opened it earlier that night.

Idiot.
This was the thought she had in her mind as she searched in vain for the cork. It should have been set down on the counter to dry. Barlow always saved the corks.
Yes
, she began to reason with herself. There was the news about the Conrads trying to join her club and the need to redeem herself with Sara Livingston. But those were not excuses. She had come to the wine cellar to make sure Barlow had not left a cigar burning. That was all. Nothing more sinister had come close to entering her mind. He had been gone a long time, but he had been in a particularly sour mood lately with the Caitlin trouble. And when he had reappeared, he'd been as ornery as ever. Now he was dead drunk, asleep on the chaise in his dressing room, still fully dressed and snoring. There had been no overt signs. But this was a futile defense to the case she was building against herself.

The glasses were the thing that first caught her attention. Strange how that could happen so suddenly. She had peeked her head in, turned on the light, and scanned the room for a burning cigar butt. It was a job she would never entrust to the party staff. The wine in their cellar was far too valuable, and if she were being entirely truthful, part of her had hoped to catch Barlow having done something irresponsible, and dangerous. Her anger toward her husband typically exceeded her arsenal of explanations, and she was always in the market for new ones. Now it looked as though she would have all she would ever need.

She had been drawing back toward the door, her hand resting on the light switch to shut it off, when the image ripped across her eyes. They were Riedel crystal, Sommeliers Series. Their bowls had a thirty-seven-ounce capacity; they stood nearly ten inches tall. They were meant to be grasped from beneath the bowl, with the stem drawn between the ring and middle fingers, to ensure as little contact with human flesh as possible. Human flesh warmed the glass and the wine within it, spoiling the taste. But their size also made them difficult to wash properly, and Barlow was hardly a man for details when it came to such things.

To wash a Riedel on the fly, one had to at least use a soft soapy cloth, gently running it around the bowl and down the stem. They were fragile, and Barlow had broken more than a few. He had come over time to rinse them only, then hang them to dry. And that was just the thing about wineglasses—how they could, in fact, appear clean with only a rinsing. The oily imprints from a human finger somehow hid within the film of water, until the water dried and the glasses were left hanging on the rack, the fingerprints still bonded to them.

Two glasses. Both covered with prints. Rosalyn turned them to the light for a closer look, her mind racing but her body somehow calm. The prints on the glasses were different sizes. A small trace of lipstick clung to one of the lips. It was smeared, and she found herself smiling, almost laughing really, as she pictured Barlow running water over the rims, thinking he was erasing the evidence of his transgression. Had she not told him over and over that the glasses needed more than a rinsing?

Rosalyn sat on the red velvet sofa where her husband had been just hours before. With a steady expression, she let her eyes fall upon it, let her hand run slowly along the center of the cushion next to her. It was five o'clock in the morning. Her head was spinning from exhaustion, from the alcohol, and from the scenes at the party that had just ended moments ago. On and on they had danced, drunk her champagne, and made complete asses of themselves, long after the haunted house was shut down, long after the band had packed up. She could hear the sound of the workers above her, shuffling about to remove the debris. They had used nearly two thousand glasses. Over seven hundred plates had been soiled. There were twenty-eight food tables to be taken down, an ice sculpture to salvage. Bags upon bags of garbage would be collected, napkins and half-eaten appetizers, fruit garnishes from the drinks, and mixing
straws. All of this had to be racked or bagged and packed onto the trucks that waited outside.

She narrowed her eyes as though she might be able to see back through time. Who had been here with her husband? She had told dozens of people where the host of the party was hiding, because they had asked her and because she had found it somewhat cathartic to tell them.
Why is he down there?
Exactly. Why, indeed. The party had been extraordinary and there was no reason for him to be hiding from it that did not make him seem a complete ass. She had shrugged.
You know my husband.
And they had given her sympathetic smiles and gentle pats on the puffy shoulder of her costume.
What a trooper, that Rosalyn Barlow. So much to deal with these days, and still she managed to throw a fabulous party.

They would never really see her, she had come to realize over the years. Her strength and resilience masked the turmoil that was just beneath the surface. How could there not be turmoil? Should she break down, fall to her knees, and plead for their help? Is that what it would take for them to believe she was human? That these things did not break her was no more her fault than any trait a person came to possess. That she didn't curl up into a ball and weep like a little girl didn't mean she was immune to pain. Her mother was dead. She had five children and six estates to manage. Her life was now under a microscope, and even the people she considered her friends—Jacks and Eva aside—were hoping for something good to chew on. If Cait wasn't enough for them, this would certainly do it. Barlow's
affair.

She let the word enter her mind, and she did not chase it away. Instead, she pulled it in and let it grow until it stopped growing. Then she held it, felt it, and, finally, fenced it into a corner. It was real. Barlow had brought another woman to this underground place. He'd given her his greatest wine. Twenty-four thousand dollars' worth of wine. Then he'd rinsed the glasses and hung them on the rack. He'd taken the cork as a memento.

Yes, this is real.

Gathering herself from the red couch, she straightened her costume. They were coming now; the reinforcements were marching in like the good soldiers they were. She turned on the water in the sink and pulled a cloth from one of the drawers beneath it. Using the nonabrasive soap, she made a thick lather and gently ran the cloth around the soiled glasses, removing the fingerprints, the lipstick. All traces of her husband and his new lover. Then
she hung them back to dry properly, rinsed the cloth, and tossed it in the small bin for used rags that the maid would collect on Monday.

It was one more thing, this affair, piled on top of an already heavy load. But this was what separated the strong from the weak, the ones who made it to the summit and the ones who froze to death along the way. She turned off the light and shut the door. Something could be done. Something could always be done. She passed through the long hallways and up the narrow stairs, emerging into the old kitchen fully intact.

“Everything okay down there, Mrs. Barlow?” The manager of the crew was weary, but motivated by the exorbitant amount of money she was about to give him.

Rosalyn sat at the table, pushing aside the assortment of glassware to make room. “Fine,” she answered as she wrote the check. And when she was done, she handed it to the man, thanked him with a warm smile, and walked through her house to the spiral staircase.

Once safely inside her dressing room, she closed the door, noticing right away a barrage of light pouring in from the small oval window. She turned instinctively to see which lights had been left on, which ones she would now have to turn off before they were forgotten in the morning. She held her face closer to the window and looked outside. It was at that moment she felt the floor give way beneath her feet. It was just a shadow at first, the figure that grew nearer as it darted across the lawn, scantily dressed and in a hurry.
Should have remembered the floodlights, darling
, Rosalyn thought as she watched her daughter's desperate attempt to return to the house undetected. That was where it ended, the train of thought the image had provoked. She did not wonder where her daughter had been, what she was returning from, because she didn't need to. She knew all that was needed to understand.

Rosalyn pulled the draperies shut and began to undress. In a neat pile, she laid the pieces of the costume that would have to be returned on Monday, and she busied her mind with similar details and arrangements and other nonsense. Anything to keep her head above ground. She grabbed a pair of jeans from the neatly folded stack of pants lined up within a shelf. Next was an oxford shirt, then a pair of leather loafers. In the bathroom, she ran a brush through her blond hair and quickly rinsed the makeup from her skin. She applied some cream, first under her eyes, then to the rest of her face and neck.

When she was through, she walked to the edge of the master suite and listened
for the footsteps that she knew would be coming, having just turned off her bedroom lights. Soft against the stair runner, an antique she'd purchased in Hong Kong just last year, were the bare feet of her daughter. When they had disappeared, she waited a few seconds more, giving Caitlin time to finish the plan that, Rosalyn imagined, had been carefully constructed over the course of several days. Then she followed her own plan, the one that had been devised in mere seconds, and out of sheer instinct.

Downstairs, she ignored the questions of the various staff, some who were winding down and others who were just getting started, then grabbed her purse and her keys and headed for the door.