“Horrible. Just horrible,” we would say, and then we would forget about it.
And then, a month ago, the inevitable happened: Little white invitations bordered with tiny purple flowers arrived, summoning four of Jolie’s city friends to a bridal shower she was hosting at her house. It was being held on a Saturday at one P.M.—only, as Miranda pointed out, the most inconvenient time and the last thing you want to be doing with your Saturday afternoon. Schlepping to Connecticut.
“Jolie called and begged me,” Miranda said. “She said she wanted some of her city friends to come so it wouldn’t be too boring.”
“The kiss of death,” I said.
Still, the four women did agree to go—Miranda, thirty-two, a cable exec; Sarah, thirty-eight, who ran her own PR company; Carrie, thirty-four, some sort of journalist; and Belle, thiry-four, a banker and the only married woman of the group.
OLD GREENWICH, NEW ENEMIES
Of course, Saturday was the most beautiful day of the year so far. Sunny, seventy degrees. When they met up at Grand Central, everyone began complaining immediately about having to be stuck inside Jolie’s house on the most beautiful day of the year, even though, being dyed-in-the-wool city dwellers, none of them ever went outside if they could possibly avoid it.
The trouble began on the train. As usual, Carrie had gone to bed at four in the morning, and she was terribly hung over and kept thinking she was going to puke. Belle got into an argument with the woman in front of her, whose kid kept sticking its head over the top of the seat and sticking his tongue out at her.
Then Sarah revealed that Jolie was in A.A.—had been for three months—which meant there might not be cocktails at the shower.
Carrie and Miranda immediately decided they would get off the train at the next stop and go back to the city, but Belle and Sarah wouldn’t let them; and then Sarah told Carrie that she should probably join A.A. herself.
The train stopped in Old Greenwich, and the four women crammed into the back seat of a white and green cab.
“Why are we doing this?” Sarah asked.
“Because we have to,” Carrie said.
“They just better not have any trendy gardening tools lying around,” said Miranda. “If I see gardening tools, I’m going to scream.”
“If I see kids, I’m going to scream.”
“Look. Grass. Trees. Breathe in the aroma of freshly mown grass,” said Carrie, who had mysteriously begun to feel better. Everyone looked at her suspiciously.
The cab pulled up in front of a white, Colonial-style house whose value had obviously been increased by the addition of a pointy slate roof and balconies off the second floor. The lawn was very green, and the trees that dotted the yard had borders of pink flowers around their bases.
“Oh, what a cute puppy,” Carrie said, as a golden retriever raced barking across the lawn. But as the dog reached the edge of the yard, it was suddenly jerked back, as if yanked by an invisible rope.
Miranda lit up a blue Dunhill. “Invisible electric fencing,” she said. “They all have it. And I bet you anything we’re going to have to hear about it.”
For a moment, the four women stood in the driveway, staring at the dog, who was now sitting, subdued but valiantly wagging its tail, in the middle of the yard.
“Can we go back to the city now, please?” Sarah asked.
Inside the house, half a dozen women were already sitting in the living room, legs crossed, balancing cups of coffee and tea on their knees. A spread was laid out: cucumber sandwiches, quesadillas with salsa. Sitting off to one side, unopened, untouched, was a big bottle of white wine, its sides covered in a film of moisture. The bride-to-be, Lucy, looked somewhat terrified at the city women’s arrival.
There were introductions all around.
A woman named Brigid Chalmers, Hermes from head to toe, was sipping what looked like a bloody mary. “You guys are late. Jolie thought maybe you weren’t coming,” she said, with that particular breezy nastiness that only women can show to one another.
“Well, the train schedule,” Sarah shrugged apologetically.
“Excuse me, but do we know you?” Miranda whispered in Carrie’s ear. That meant as far as Miranda was concerned, it was war with Brigid from now on.
“Is that a bloody mary?” Carrie asked.
Brigid and one of the other women exchanged glances. “Actually, it’s a virgin mary,” she said. Her eyes flickered in Jolie’s direction for a second. “I did all that stuff for years. All that drinking and partying. And then, I don’t know, it just gets boring. You move on to more important things.”
“The only important thing to me right now is vodka,” Carrie said, putting her hands to her head. “I’ve got the worst hangover. If I don’t get some vodka . . .”
“Raleigh!” said one of the women on the couch, bending around to peer into one of the other rooms. “Raleigh! Go outside and play.”