“They want you to come, too.”
“No,” I thought, watching her drop her purse on the chair while kicking off her clogs and hugging four-year-old Lilly. I refuse to attend one of her basket parties. She's asking too much, now. I contribute enough.
I load those baskets of various shapes and sizes into the mini-van before she sets out on one of her sales calls, unload them upon her return, even, on rare occasions, buy one to help her meet her monthly sales quota. Going to a basket party was crossing the line, demanding more than should be expected.
Holding the baby, Ellis, I stood in the living room of our comfortable little house in our comfortable little town, determined not to give in to her. I shook my head. “Why must I go?”
Sandy implored. “Oh, please. She said she won't have a party unless you come.”
I hate when she pleads.
“I don't know,” I said.
“Look, honey, it’s not just going to be a bunch of women sitting around looking at baskets. Kelly's having a neighborhood party. There'll be guys and beer there, too.”
“I don't even know these people and you only just met them. This sounds weird.”
“Oh, come on, they're nice people,” she said. “They like me and they want to meet you.”
I started to lose my footing. It was pathetic. “Why do they want to meet me?” My wife shrugged and said with more than a hint of sarcasm: “They like meeting new people, perhaps?”
“Who's going to watch the kids?”
My wife rolled her eyes. “I'll have my mother come over. Pleeeease stop finding reasons not to go. Say yes!”
I looked at Ellis, wondering why I'm seemingly unable to defend myself in these skirmishes. “Oh, ok, I'll go. I still don't know why I have to attend.”
My wife shook her head as she took Ellis from my arms and took Lilly's hand and started upstairs for the pre-bedtime ritual. She muttered, “Oh, honey, I don't know what I'm going to do with you. Please get my baskets out of the van.”
Three weeks later, on a warm Friday evening, I loaded up the Dodge Caravan with her baskets and we set off for the Morgan's home in a new development on the West Shore of the Susquehanna River.
Chard's Retreat was a development of mini-mansions, immensely spacious homes with rooms that echo because owners are too house-poor to afford furniture. This was the late 1990s, the go-go decade. When we bought our little two-story with three bedrooms in the cul-de-sac, we earned salaries that would have allowed us to buy a castle, but my wife intended to quit her job once Lilly was born. We decided to live within our means.
Our decision nevertheless was challenged by Bob the mortgage banker. He urged us throughout the financing process to find a bigger home at more than twice what we intended to borrow. He was relentless about it. “You qualify for a three-hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage, why not?” he insisted.
“Will you be buying the groceries then, Bob?” I said. “Someone will need to, our income will be halved when we start making babies, and as you may know children need to be fed.”
As a money lender, Bob was unimpressed. “Lots of people do it these days,” he said, reassuringly. “Just think about it.”
Kelly and Brock Morgan did, but they managed to furnish their stately-looking home, along a road of stately-looking homes, on their salaries as sales representatives; she for a pharmaceutical company and he for a steel manufacturer.
They also had no children.
Their home, an impressive structure of stone and white stucco, looked European in design with its tiled mansard roof. We mounted the brick porch and rang the door bell, listening to the deep gongs echo inside the house. I was admiring the landscaping around the porch when Brock opened the door.
Young, dark and handsome, he had a toned build. Clearly, he spent every morning at the gym. He was all smiles as he stood in the doorway and greeted us.
“Hi, Sandy,” he said to my wife, giving me a glance and a nod. “Kelly's not home from work yet, but come on in.”
He ushered us into a large, arched-ceiling foyer with a sweeping staircase and granite-tile floor. My wife is always organized and one step ahead of me and everyone else. She declared, “I'm going to start setting up.”
Brock waved casually toward an arched hallway that led to the living room, “Help yourself; I'm getting the beer together.” He finally looked at me, smiled broadly and held out his hand, “Hi, Brock.”
I grabbed his hand – he had a strong grip – and introduced myself. He seemed mildly interested.
“Oh, I'm sorry,” my wife said, absently, as she surveyed the canary yellow living room. “I forgot to introduce you two.”
Brock laughed as he excused himself and disappeared from the foyer behind two large oak doors. Moments later, from somewhere deep inside the house, I heard cubes thudding against plastic and glass bottles boring into ice beds.
I unloaded the van in short time. While Sandy busily arranged her Longaberger baskets and other merchandise around the cavernous living room, I wandered around to admire the well-kept castle.
Wedding photographs on the wall showed Kelly was blond and lovely. She and Brock married two years. They came from well-to-do families. From what the framed photographs on the end tables depicted of their honeymoon, they were the prefect couple.
I was fascinated – and perhaps a little suspicious – that so much of their lives they displayed on the walls in their living room and foyer. It made me wonder whether the photos on the walls at our home said as much or more about us.
“Oh, shoot!”
I turned. My wife searched for something.
“Can you please go out to the van and check the front seat,” she said. “I think I left my order book on the floor.”
I did as she asked and found the order book where she thought it was. I started back up the driveway of the Morgan's residence when a sleek sedan pulled up. An attractive blond in a skirt and blouse hopped out and smiled at me.
“Hi! Are you Tim?” she said, turning to open the back door.
“Kelly?”
She nodded: “Uh, huh.”
The garage door rose and Brock walked out and down the paved driveway. Kelly motioned for him to get whatever was in the back seat. I walked toward the house, watching Brock pull out a huge deli tray as Kelly took her briefcase from the car. She, too, looked like she was at the gym every morning. They were a perfect couple.
Once inside, I began to tell my wife that her hostess had arrived when I heard steps in the foyer and Kelly chirp behind me, “Hi! Sorry I'm late.” She peered around with what looked like an annoyed expression.
“I hope you don't mind,” my wife said. “I wanted to set up before guests arrived.”
“Oh, certainly not,” Kelly said. “I was just wondering if the room was too small.”
My wife assured her that it was, in fact, ideal. The two began chatting excitedly about the evening's event before Kelly hurried upstairs to change, returning in jeans and powder-blue polo shirt.
I was in the large kitchen, sipping a beer Brock gave me, when Kelly entered and said how pleased she was to see me at her party. “I didn't want you to spend Friday night at home and I didn't think it was right for your wife to be out by herself.”
We chatted a little more about her job. Kelly was cute in a naïve way. Brock handed me another beer and, as a gesture, asked me what I did for a living. I started to answer, but he re-directed his attention to greeting arriving guests, mostly the Morgan's neighbor; families with small children Lilly's age.
Seeing children prompted Kelly to ask my wife why we didn't bring our two. “Oh, my God,” I heard my wife say as I stood in the kitchen. “I wouldn't get anything done if I had Lilly and Ellis here. They're still too young.”
Men with big hands tore open giant potato chip bags; soda and beer flowed, children pawed cookies piled high on plates, and a massive sandwich tray arrived to accompany the huge deli tray Kelly had Brock haul in earlier.
My wife came over, kissed me, flicked a finger against my beer bottle, and told me to enjoy myself. She returned to the living room, where women, sipping chardonnay, swarmed over the baskets and merchandise.
I soon found myself on the deck in the backyard talking about mulch – a fresh load was steaming in the yard next door – and craft beer. A discussion ensued on whether Yuengling was micro-brewed until a guy came out of the house drinking a Yuengling lager. We studied the label and determined it was not micro-brewed.
After more beers than I typically drink, I wandered back into the house, through the kitchen and into the foyer. I stood at the living room entrance. My wife, in her short dress and clogs, was bending over the coffee table showing a basket to a woman.
I wanted badly to pinch her behind. Kelly came by, saying innocently enough because I'm sure she thought I was looking at the baskets, “See anything you like?”
My wife turned and smiled, her big hazel eyes beaming at me.
“How you doin' hon?”
I smiled and returned to the deck to admire the other mini-mansions in the neighborhood, their windows aglow in yellows as evening settled like thick mosquito netting. The guys were talking about mulch again, so I opened another beer.
Brock came over. He chatted briefly about his job. I went back inside. Kelly had brewed coffee and the aroma was powerful so I grabbed a cup and went into the dinning room, where my wife sat, busy adding orders, while Kelly and another woman, much older than Kelly or my wife, conversed.
I sat down and noticed my wife had her cell phone out. She looked at me and smiled. “Just called mom, the kids are asleep and everything's fine.” I nodded.
Kelly looked at me. She wore black square-rimmed designer glasses. “Are you having a good time?” I nodded. She turned to my wife. “How did I do?”
My wife finished punching her portable calculator. “So far, five-hundred and eighty-five-dollars so you can get any item costing sixty dollars.”
Kelly looked worried. “Is that enough to get an umbrella basket?”
My wife flipped through her order book until she found the right page and after a quick glance said, “No. That costs eighty-five dollars. However, you can put your hostess dollars toward the purchase.”
“I don't know if I can afford the twenty-five dollars,” Kelly said.
An odd comment, I thought, coming from a woman who owned a mini-mansion.
“Well, look,” my wife said. “You still have people who want to order. I can keep your show open for two more weeks. I think by that time you'll make enough so you can get the umbrella basket. How's that?”
Kelly became excited. “Oooh. I want it for my foyer.” We all nodded and my wife told her the foyer is the perfect place for an umbrella basket. A dark expression spread across Kelly’s face. “Do you think my foyer is, well, too big? Too grand?”
Perplexed faces all around.
“What?” Sandy laughed. She thought Kelly was joking.
Kelly became self-conscious.
“Ok,” she said, lowering her voice. She stole a glance toward the family room, where Brock and the men were watching a basketball game while several of the children ran around screaming in delight. “Can I tell you guys something?”
We nodded. Kelly began a story about the time she and Brock went to dinner on the Friday evening before Mother's Day with one of Brock's sales clients and his wife.
“Now, are any of you in the steel business,” she said, quickly turning to my wife, “I know you're not. Ok. Now, I don't mean to generalize, but some of the people Brock meets in his business are … well … real dregs.”
Kelly recounted how the client and his wife arrived at her home. The foursome had a drink in the canary yellow living room before setting out for the race track to have dinner and watch the horses. At one point in the evening, Brock and the client's wife – described by Kelly as an attractive middle-aged woman in a tight-fitting skirt – went to place bets, leaving her and the husband alone.
“I didn't know what to say to the guy,” she said. “So, I said, ‘what are you doing for your wife on Mother's Day?’” Kelly paused to look at my wife and the other woman at the table. She didn't look at me. “Do you know what he said?”
Everyone shook their head.
“He said, ‘I'm going to bang her brains out.’”
My wife's appalled reaction was swift, “He said what?!”
The older woman at the table said in a soft voice, “My God.”
Kelly nodded. “Uh, huh. So, I said to him, ‘Excuse me, but that's not very polite and I don't appreciate being spoken to in that manner.’”
She looked at my wife and the other woman again.
“You know what he said?”
The women shook their heads.
“‘Well excuse me. I'm sorry I don't have a grand foi ye.’ Can you believe that?”
“Did you tell Brock what the guy said?” I inquired.
“Yes,” she demurred, glancing at my wife. “He didn't believe me.”
“He didn't believe you,” my wife said, incredulous.
“No, not until later; I guess he didn't want to start a confrontation with his client.”
I suggested to Kelly that maybe the client was trying to crudely make a pass, but she shrugged. “I don't know. I just thought he was rude.”
She looked at my wife with a quizzical expression. “What is it, anyway? Foy-er or foy-yeah or however the French say it?”
My wife shrugged. “I don't know, foy-er sounds fine.”
After another cup of coffee, I packed up the van while my wife helped Kelly order an umbrella basket. The night was late. Except for a few stragglers, most of the guests returned to their mini-mansions.
When we arrived home, I stood in the little entrance area linking the living room with the staircase. My wife watched me. “It's a foy-yeah, honey,” she said.
“It's not grand, though.”
“No.”
“Maybe we should get an umbrella basket.”
My wife laughed, kicked off her clogs and started up the staircase. “Oh, honey,” she said. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I could come up and show you.”
She stopped on the stairs, turned, and gave me a tired look. “Tomorrow night. I promise. Tonight, you can get my baskets out of the van.”
Photographer: Eric Pouhier
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