“Silent auction 2 is officially closed!” the announcer said. A volunteer came and quickly grabbed all the bid sheets off the table and it was over. We had lost.
I stood there for a moment, smarting in my defeat. I hated losing. And I was even more upset that once again, our romantic weekend away was back to just a wishful thought. I took a swallow of my wine to push down the lump I felt welling up in the back of my throat and saw Alyson walking toward me.
“Hey, Jessica, I’ve been looking for you. I need to talk to you about something.”
“Sure,” I said, figuring she was about to hand me another volunteer task. Please, god, anything but the clean-up committee.
“So. You know Noreen’s accident in your Outback?” she began.
“How can I forget my kids’ first trip to the hospital? Well, their first after being born.” I smiled weakly at my own joke but Alyson didn’t.
“It’s hard for me to tell you this, but . . . last week your nanny Noreen was at our house with Phoebe and Madison for a playdate, and from the top of the stairs I overheard Noreen and Priya talking—and I heard Noreen say she was texting while she was driving, and that’s why she got in the accident.”
“That can’t be,” I said, but felt a shiver up my back.
“I wasn’t sure whether or not to tell you, but I thought if it was me, I would want to know.” Alyson leaned over to give me a hug, transferring the full weight of her secret onto me. “If you need someone to watch Phoebe and Madison while you look for a new nanny,” she whispered, “let me know and maybe we can work it out with Priya.”
I stood there frozen, feeling the grains of sushi rice churning in my stomach. My nanny, texting while driving my kids? I didn’t want to believe it but deep inside I knew it must be true. I should have listened to Aaron, I should have fired Noreen right after the accident. How could I have trusted a twenty-three-year-old liar? Who has been putting my kids in serious danger for the past six months? The enormity of my mistake spread throughout my body like poison and I shuddered, sick with guilt.
We’d have to get rid of her right away. I’d need to take a few days off next week and try to patch babysitting coverage together. Write up a job description and post it on one of those nanny sites and send out an e-mail to the school’s Google group asking if anyone knew of someone looking. A new nanny. Fuck.
I ran back over to the bar to find Aaron. “I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Uhhh, I’m a little busy.” He nodded to the long line and proceeded to spill the cocktail he was pouring all over the table. “Whoops,” he said, tripping over the rubber mat at his feet as he grabbed for a bar towel.
“Come on, you’ve been bartending for almost two hours. It’s not even your shift anymore, it’s enough already!”
“Did we win?”
“Did we what? You mean the inn? No, we didn’t,” I said, suddenly feeling angry to be reminded of losing again.
“That’s too bad. What’d it go for?”
“I don’t know. Six hundred.”
“You should have bid more, it would have been fun.”
“More! You barely wanted to spend four hundred!” I wanted to explode.
“Y’know, the guy running the bar said at the end of the night they sell the extra liquor. We can pick up a few bottles of vodka.” The way he slurred—afewbottlesofvodka—made me realize how far gone he was.
“I don’t care about the freaking vodka, Aaron!” I pictured sharing the news with the auction committee: And what did you buy at the auction, Jessica?
Oh, we grabbed a few bottles of discounted vodka. They’d probably kick Phoebe right out of the school.
“There’s something else I have to tell you—in private.” I took his hand and pulled him into to an area behind the bar where the wine and supplies were stored.
“Mmmm, in private,” he said with a goofy smile. He grabbed my waist and leaned over to try to kiss me. His breath smelled fermented and sour.
“What are you doing?” I pushed him away. “This is serious. We have to fire Noreen! Alyson just told me Noreen was texting while she was driving Phoebe and Madison in the car. You were right—we never should have kept her on after the accident. I can’t believe what an idiot I am.” I looked up to check his reaction but his eyes were caught in a stare about four inches above my head. “Did you even hear a word I said? I was wrong about Noreen and you were right and we have to fire her.”
He draped his arms around me in a sloppy hug. “I forgive you . . . and I won’t say I told you so . . .” His voice trailed off. For a second I thought he might have fallen asleep on my shoulder. He was so drunk I wondered if he would even remember having this conversation. But goddamn it, did he have to say I told you so?
“We should go home,” I said, even though I didn’t want to.
Aaron’s head popped up. “But the party’s barely started.” He held onto my forearm and dragged me toward the empty dance floor.
There was no way I was going to let him embarrass us out there. I diverted him to the side and literally ran into Chris and Tami standing next to the giant cardboard “giving tree,” its branches covered in green construction paper leaves with donation amounts for books and supplies for the school library.
“Hey, dude,” Aaron said to Chris, and as he leaned over to give him an awkward hug, he fell right into the tree, sending it crashing to the ground and scattering its paper leaves everywhere. It was official: the drunk at the party was my husband.
“Anyone have a leaf blower handy?” Aaron joked as he tried to get up and slipped on a piece of paper stuck to his shoe.
I said through my gritted teeth, “We are leaving. Now.”
“I have to take a piss,” he announced loudly, and stumbled away.
I stood there, humiliated, and closed my eyes, hoping someone would gently shake my shoulder, Good morning, sunshine, time for school, and this night would be a calamity way in my future.
I heard Tami direct Chris to follow Aaron. Then she took my hand and led me back to the bar. She cut the line, grabbed a mixed drink off the edge, and handed it to me. I drank it down like water and helped myself to another.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“No,” I replied, feeling more numb than angry. Or maybe the Spanx had finally cut off my entire body’s blood supply.
“Chris’ll get him cleaned up. Happens to the best of us. No worries.”
No worries. As if just like that, with a wave of Tami, presto, they’re gone. As if.
“I can’t stay here,” I said, and as I turned to flee I could feel the dam in the back of my throat give way and I couldn’t help the tears and the words from pouring out. I told her everything: how Aaron hadn’t even wanted to come in the first place tonight, how I had to practically drag him even though I told him how important it was to me and he had no idea how hard I’d worked through months of not sleeping and begging for all these donations but he didn’t seem to care, he didn’t compliment me on my dress and he hadn’t complimented me on anything lately. We’d barely seen each other, we were always working and running and I’d stopped counting how many weeks or months it had been since the last time we tore it up between the sheets. And how our bathroom ceiling was all warped, how the goddamned builder forgot to install a fan and now we had water damage, how he’d started to fix it but he couldn’t come back until the Thursday after next and how were we supposed to take a shower with the ceiling all ripped up? It was a brand-new house, it was supposed to be perfect but it wasn’t, it was far from perfect. I cried about work and Marco and my fucked-up train schedule and how I didn’t know how much longer I could keep it together. And now, on top of everything, I had to find a new nanny.
Tami handed me a tissue and when I looked up, both Ivy and Alyson were huddling with us too.
“I am so sorry, I can’t believe I’m standing here in the middle of the party bawling my eyes out. Carolann is going to hate me for ruining her night.”
“We cle
aned up the tree before she ever saw it,” Alyson said.
“The live auction will begin in five minutes,” the announcer said over the PA.
“Well, this has been fun,” I said, trying to force a smile. “I think it’s time for me to collect my wasted husband and end this fabulous evening.”
“You’re not going home now,” Tami said. “The live auction’s about to start.”
“Sorry, Tami, but I can’t sit through—”
“Come on, Jessica, Aaron will be fine. Don’t let him ruin the night we all worked so hard for. Go splash some cold water on your face and meet us over there.”
“You should stay, Jessica,” Ivy echoed.
They were right: I shouldn’t let Aaron’s bad behavior ruin our night. Plus, I didn’t know if I could muster the strength to load Aaron into the car and deal with him at home.
After the bathroom, Tami waved me over to the semicircle of white folding chairs set up in rows in front of a stage. Ivy moved her purse off a chair for me and Alyson handed me a glass of wine and said, “Now, this is the fun part.”
The lights dimmed and the auctioneer did his best to quiet the crowd.
Carolann made a few welcoming remarks, including a heartfelt thanks to Ivy and me for all of our donations work. Then Jeff took the microphone and thanked Carolann for volunteering as the auction chair and then launched into a long, rambling speech about the importance of our school to the community. It was obvious he was using the stage to posture for the upcoming election. It did not at all seem like the appropriate place or time for his speech. Alyson must have thought the same because she looked royally pissed. Finally, after the head of the school spoke, the auctioneer took his place behind the podium to start the live auction and Carolann slid into an empty seat next to us.
First up was a one-week trip to Disney with a room at the Grand Floridian. “Do I hear $900?” said the auctioneer. The bidding was lightning fast with paddles popping up like whack-a-moles and in less than a minute the trip was sold to bidder 128 for $4,500. Wow. That was some serious moolah.
Carolann was through the moon. “That went for two thousand over value! We are going to have a record year!”
I clapped along with the others, took a sip of my chardonnay, and glanced down at the list of “priceless” items I was never going to be able to buy. Chef’s dinner in your home. Palisades Mall shopping spree. Then Tami pointed to package #5—Weekend getaway in May: Kiawah Island, South Carolina. Three-bedroom beachfront house (sleeps eight), plus spa and pool access at the Sanctuary Resort. Two nights. Value: $2,200.
“You’re coming,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what she meant.
“Last year we all went to South Beach, this year it’s Kiawah. And you’re coming with us for a moms’ weekend away.”
There it was: my coveted invite to the inner circle. The words that, for so many months, I had longed to hear. They looked at me, grinning and expectant, but a voice inside me wondered if the real reason they were asking was out of pity. They must have thought I was about to go off the deep end. “That’s so nice of you to invite me, but I can’t accept . . .”
“You most certainly can. You are wound seriously tight right now. We’ve all been there and we get it, believe me. What you need is a break—a real break.”
“You’ll feel so much better after a couple of days of relaxation—without Aaron, without the kids,” Ivy said. “Last year we had like the best weekend ever. And there’s plenty of room, I looked up the pictures online last week and the house is ginormous.”
“But you do have to come ready to par-tay,” Tami added. “I mean, if you’re up for it.”
I had no idea whether Aaron was free to watch the kids that weekend but there was no way I was going to miss my chance this time to prove I was up for it. Plus, I’d never been to South Carolina.
“Oh, I’m up for it all right,” I said, starting to feel better already. “Thank you, guys. Really. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”
“So with five of us now going, it’ll be more like four, five hundred a person, tops,” Alyson said. “Plus the airfare, but if you have miles, the travel’s free. What’s your paddle number, Jessica?”
Shit—wait—I thought they were inviting me as a guest, not inviting me to bid with them.
Before I could think about backpedaling, the auctioneer announced, “Package #5. Spend a weekend in May, two nights, three days in a beautiful Kiawah Island beach house. Let’s start the bidding at five hundred dollars.”
“Five hundred!” Tami chirped, raising her paddle high in the air.
“Do I hear one thousand? Is that a paddle I see in the back? Lift it higher so I can read the number: paddle 18 for one thousand. Now let’s get it up to fifteen hundred. Do I hear fifteen hundred?”
“Holy shit, he’s going fast,” Tami said, and she raised her paddle. “Fifteen hundred!”
“That’s fifteen hundred dollars, going to help support your kids at Laurel Meadow. Now two thousand, who’s in for two?”
There was a pause and I saw Tami cross her fingers on her lap.
“Only fifteen hundred dollars for a lovely beachfront house on Kiawah Island? World-class golf, tennis, and boating, with access to the legendary Sanctuary Spa. Come on, people, I want to hear two thousand. There it is in the back, two thousand!”
“Who the fuck are these people bidding against us?” Tami said, craning her neck to try to see. “Okay, here it goes, guys.” She raised her paddle and shouted, “Twenty-five hundred!”
“That’s twenty-five hundred right here in the front row! Now three thousand, do I hear three?” He scanned the room with his hand but no one raised a paddle. “Going once at twenty-five hundred . . .”
Tami sat back confidently and whispered, “This trip is ours.”
“Twenty-five hundred once. Twenty-five hundred twice. Last chance for twenty-five hundred. Anyone for twenty-seven fifty?” he tried. Tami smiled and licked her lips, tasting her win.
And then #18 shot up like a dagger. “Three thousand!” a man’s voice shouted.
Tami looked up at the auctioneer in wild disbelief.
“Going once at three thousand for paddle 18. What do you say in the front row? Do I hear four? A weekend in gorgeous Kiawah Island, three thousand going twice . . .”
“Shit, we’re not going to get it,” Tami said with urgency in her voice.
“Let’s all throw in another couple hundred,” Alyson said.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Carolann said. “A couple hundred more each should do it.”
“We already bid on like four other packages,” Ivy said. “Drew’s gonna strangle me!”
“Give me a break, Ivy—in Drew’s world an extra zero or two is barely a rounding error. Okay, Jessica?”
I wasn’t going to be the one to say no.
Tami quickly raised her paddle. “Four thousand!” she called out.
A round of applause rippled through the audience and the auctioneer paused to let the excitement percolate. “That’s four thousand dollars. Outstanding! Now let’s really raise the roof for your kids. Do I hear forty-five hundred? Yes—there it is—paddle 62, a new bidder for forty-five. Now who’s going to get us to five, do I hear five?”
“Five!” Tami yelled without a pause.
Oh my god, we’re up to a thousand dollars a person.
“Fifty-five hundred!” paddle 18 shouted.
Without even a prompt from the auctioneer, Tami stood up and raised her paddle high above her head. She said firmly, “Six. Fucking. Thousand. Dollars.” And with that, she turned around and stared back in the vicinity of the other bidders with a look I would never want to be on the receiving end of.
“Six thousand dollars!” the auctioneer announced, leaving out Tami’s f-bomb. “Six thousand going once. Six thousand going twice.” Not a word from the others. “Last call for Kiawah Island . . . SOLD to the blonde in the front row for six thousand dollars!”
We all jumped
up and hugged like we had just won the jackpot on Family Feud. My glass of wine went flying, drenching the row of parents behind us. So what if it cost over a thousand dollars? So what if Aaron was going to be furious? It felt so good to finally be a winner.
Chapter twelve
The travel planning e-mails started early the following morning and flooded my inbox for the next several weeks leading up to the trip. Seven, twelve, fifteen e-mails a day, reply all, even more including texts. 8am flight out of Newark to Charleston, or what about the 9:45 out of Kennedy? The 7a, definitely the 7!!! Alyson circulated a spreadsheet with a list of endless on-site activities, afternoon tennis clinics, and three-hour kayak excursions in the Kiawah River. The relaxing beach weekend I had envisioned did not at all include a 7:30 a.m. Beach Butt Blaster class.
But I didn’t want to be the spoilsport, and definitely not a lazy one. I wrote back, Sounds good! Up for anything! xoxo, and marveled how we were spending more time planning the trip than we would actually be there for. After the seventeenth e-mail about how many pairs of sandals we were packing (Two. Three. Six including flip-flops!), I was starting to wonder if I could handle three whole days and two nights with this group.
When I told Liza I was having second thoughts about going even though I had spent over a thousand dollars on the trip plus five hundred for the airline tickets, as most of Aaron’s frequent flier miles were on American and we were flying Delta—not to mention the two hundred I paid for my own donated theater tickets, which no one else had bid for—Liza reminded me that first of all, it was essentially a donation to the school. And secondly, it was a weekend on the beach at a five-star resort, not an Outward Bound survival expedition. Not only was I going, I was absolutely required to have my thousand-plus dollars worth of fun. And did I know how lucky I was? A similar trip at her private preschool auction in the city had sold for five times what we had paid.
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