Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out (25 page)

“But Bitsy McEwan’s here,” Becky said, nodding toward a tall, blonde woman in the center of the room.

“So?”

“So, it was her husband who was sneaking into Blake’s office.  Maybe she knows something about ISC.”

I studied Bitsy, who was holding a glass of champagne in her slender hand and gesturing to one of the waitstaff.  “Somehow I don’t see that coming up in casual conversation.”

“You never know,” said Becky, draining her champagne and scanning the room.  “Oh, look.  There’s your mother-in-law.”  I followed her gaze to Prue, who was holding court with a gaggle of satin-clad women a few tables over.  “Oooh.  Are those shrimp toasts over there? I’m getting one.  Do you think they’ll have crab cakes?”

“How do you stay so skinny?” I asked.

“Good genes,” she said, grabbing my arm and looking completely at home.  I envied her.  “Let’s go forage for hors d’oeuvres.  And where’s that guy with the champagne?”

We stationed ourselves near the kitchen, where we could snag things off the trays as they came through.  Although Becky looked right at home, selecting tidbits off the trays that whisked by and washing them down with generous sips of champagne, I felt like an alien in the fashionable crowd that ebbed and flowed around us.  I had always wondered who bought the tiny, sparkly dresses displayed in the front windows of the Arboretum stores.  Likewise the gigantic diamonds, some of which looked to be in the five- to ten-pound range.  Now I knew. “I bet they take their engagement rings off before they get on the scales,” I said to Becky through a mouthful of shrimp. 

“Can you imagine wearing a rock like that?” she asked, nodding toward a particularly massive specimen perched on the scrawny, taloned hand of a redhead.

“I bet it comes in handy as a weapon.”

“Yeah.  You could knock a guy out with that.” 

I reached for another glass of champagne with a conspicuously unmanicured hand, and was onto the third flute of bubbly and my fourth shrimp toast when Becky and I drifted into Bitsy McEwan’s orbit.  “Now’s your chance,” Becky whispered, and nudged me toward her.

“What do I say?”

“You’ll think of something.” 

I gulped down the rest of my champagne. 

Bitsy McEwan was perfectly dressed in a silver and lavender cocktail gown that made her china-white skin glow.  Her pale blue eyes settled on me as I approached, Becky a couple of steps behind me.

“Margie! How lovely that you could come.”  Her eyes registered Becky.  “And who is this?”

“Bitsy, this is Becky.  She’s a good friend of mine.  Becky, this is Bitsy McEwan.”

She extended a pale hand.  “Becky! So pleased to meet you.”  She narrowed her eyes.  “I believe I’ve seen you in the shop before, haven’t I?”

Becky smiled.  “I’ve been in from time to time.”

“Well, lovely to see you.  And is that Donna Karan you’re wearing? Stunning, simply stunning on you.  If you’re interested, I’m always looking for models.  Not for this year, of course, but maybe next.”  Bitsy turned to the woman next to her.  “This is Maria, my store manager.  Much more than that, really. She handles all the operations for me.” 

Maria held out a slender hand.  “Nice to meet you.”  Her skin was cool and dry to the touch, and she didn’t look a day over twenty-five.  Her ruby-red dress clung to her curves, and I felt a twinge of envy at her shiny black hair and smooth, dusky skin.  If one of Bitsy’s gowns could make me look half as good as Maria, I’d buy it in a second.

“We’re really looking forward to seeing this year’s collection,” Becky said.

Bitsy glanced at me.  “I’m surprised, actually.  I never thought Margie cared much for clothes.”  I felt a flush suffuse my neck, moving up toward my cheeks.  She smiled.  “But you look stunning tonight, dear.  I’m surprised you could make it, with Blake working so many hours.  Did you get a babysitter?”

“No, he took a few hours out.”  Becky nudged me with a sharp elbow.  I plowed ahead.  “He tells me Herb has been helping out with one of his clients—International Shipping Company?”

Maria took a step toward her employer, whose blue eyes shifted from my face to scan the room behind me.  “Yes, yes,” Bitsy said.  “Of course, Herb and I never talk business.  Now, I hate to run, but will you excuse me? I have a couple of things to take care of before the show begins…”

She slipped past us gracefully, Maria in her wake, and glided toward the stage.

Becky eyed me critically.  “Smooth.”

“Well, what was I supposed to do?”

Becky stared at Bitsy’s receding back.  “She disappeared in a hurry, didn’t she? Well, I’m sure you’ll get another chance.  In the meantime, I’m going to go and see if I can find another one of those shrimp toasts.”

 I was considering a fourth glass of champagne—after all, I wasn’t driving—when Bitsy took the podium and invited everyone to sit down to dinner.  I parted ways reluctantly with Becky—“if she gives you a dildo, I want to see it”—and headed toward my mother-in-law’s table.

Prudence’s eyes widened as I sat down.  “Darling, you look marvelous.  What did you do to yourself?”

“Becky and I went out shopping,” I said, wishing I had gone for the fourth glass.

“She’s a miracle worker,” Prudence breathed.  Mercifully, Prudence’s best friend Miriam took her seat at that moment and related a juicy tidbit of gossip, and soon the table was oohing and aahing over somebody’s poor choice of shoes and digging into Caesar salads adorned with little shrimps.  No crab cakes, unfortunately.

The conversation ranged from personal hygiene to personal trainers as we plodded through the menu.  Some kind of greenish sorbet followed the salad, and after a hiatus of about twenty minutes, during which I considered cutting my wrists with a butter knife, we moved on to overcooked lemon sole and wilted broccoli.  The meal culminated in a discussion of mildly revolting pedicure stories and a slice of my least favorite dessert, Italian Cream Cake.

Finally, the lights dimmed, and for the first time in my life, I found myself looking forward to seeing what next year’s fashion forecast would hold.

TWENTY

 “Couture with a Conscience” is the only fashion show I’ve ever attended, so I wouldn’t know what to compare it to, but the concoctions that paraded down the stage during the next several minutes were unlike anything I’d ever seen a grown woman wear.  I stared open-mouthed at the ragged bits of fabric that clung to the young models’ bony bodies, trying to figure out how the outfits on the stage had evolved from the country-club style of their creator.  Some of the dresses were so small and so sheer you had to squint to see them, and the overall effect was something like Oliver Twist meets Gypsy Rose Lee.

From the lackluster applause that followed the scrawny women back up the catwalk, it occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one struggling to make the connection.  I leaned over to my mother-in-law as a skeletal model in a scrap of distressed fabric sashayed onto the stage.  “Is this what all of her dresses look like?”

“No,” she whispered back.  “She’s doing a few avant-garde things to break into the New York market.  I think Maria helped her with the new line.  We’ll see some traditional things in a minute, I’m guessing.”

She was right.  A few minutes later, I found myself wondering if Bitsy McEwan was suffering from a split personality.  The next “collection” featured a lineup of dresses that Scarlett O’Hara—and Cassandra Starr—would have died for.  Sequins, glittery beads, feathers, and lots of plunging necklines were the order of the day for the Tara collection.  The applause picked up measurably, and murmurs of approval echoed from the silk-clad walls.  My eyes had begun to glaze over when a particularly sparkly creation hit the runway—“the Ariel”, purred the announcer.  I could see why: the glittery blue-green dress looked just like a mermaid’s tail.  By the time we got to business wear, I was about to slump into my Italian Cream Cake. 

Finally the last model exited the runway, and Bitsy McEwan herself took the stage to a roar of applause.  The ladies might not have been crazy about the New Horizons collection, but the Tara line had won them over.

“Thank you ladies, all of you, for attending this year’s ‘Couture with a Conscience’ show.  We raised over a half million dollars for the Children’s Fund last year, and it’s all thanks to your support.”  She smiled broadly as the ladies gave her a big round of applause. 

“And of course,” she continued, “a big thank you to everyone who made ‘Couture with a Conscience’ possible, particularly Maria Espinosa.”  She gestured toward the lovely raven-haired woman who had accompanied her earlier.   She sat at a front row table.  A spotlight lit up her red dress, and she dipped her head in acknowledgement as Bitsy continued.  “Not only does she keep the day-to-day operations going, but her cutting-edge style helped me create the New Horizons line, which will debut in New York this fall.”  Feeble applause followed this declaration, but both Bitsy and Maria kept smiling.  “I hope you enjoyed yourselves,” Bitsy continued.  “Feel free to mingle for as long as you like, and I look forward to seeing everyone at the shop.”

I glanced at my watch as everyone rose from their tables and stretched.  I wasn’t too interested in mingling. What I really wanted to do was go home and go to sleep.  But I still had to help with the cleanup.

“No dildos?” Becky asked when we reconvened.

“No, but she did offer to take the kids tomorrow.”

“What time?”

“Ten.”

“What time’s the funeral?”

“Noon.”

“Then come over as soon as she gets there.  We don’t have a lot of time to get you ready.”

“Thanks,” I said, as we walked toward the kitchen.  “Want to help me wash dishes?”

She made a sour face and gestured at her dress.  “In Donna Karan?”

“Don’t worry,” I laughed.  “Why don’t you hang out or go to the bar?  I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Thanks,” she said.  “See if you can find anything else out.”

“I will,” I promised, and followed the white-jacketed serving staff into the kitchen. 

Fortunately, the hotel staff was taking care of the dishwashing.  An efficient-looking brunette set me to work returning the stacks of plates and glasses to their carrying cases. 

“I haven’t seen you around before,” said Doris, the short fiftyish woman who was partnered with me.  “Are you new?”

“Oh, my mother-in-law is a member, and Bitsy asked me the other day if I could help out.”

Doris sighed.  “She’s such a noble woman.  She puts all of her time and effort into the design studio, and it’s all for the children…”  She closed up a box and opened a new one.  “I thought tonight’s designs were wonderful.  Didn’t you just
love
that blue tulle? And the one with all the sequins, that looked like a mermaid—
fabulous
.”  Doris was wearing a green satin gown she proudly told me was from the previous year’s McEwan collection.  Either she had bought it a size too small or she had grown in the past year, because pink flesh oozed over the low-cut bodice, and the seams were stretched to capacity.

I loaded another stack of Junior League-monogrammed plates into a box.  “I’ve never bought a McEwan design before,” I said, “although I did like a few of the ones I saw this evening.”

Doris squinted at me.  “I think that blue tulle would look marvelous on you.  You should go try it on! Used to be you had to have them ordered special, but now she’s got all the sizes in the shop.”

I closed up another box.  “How long has Bitsy been designing clothes?”

“I think she’s been doing it for forever, really, but the shop just opened up two or three years ago.  It didn’t work too well at first—like I said, they didn’t ever have much in stock—but about a year or so ago, she really got it going.”  Doris bent to retrieve another box, and I winced, expecting a seam to pop.  Regardless of how you felt about the design, the McEwan dress sure took top marks for endurance.  Doris stood up and huffed a couple of times before she continued.  “Now she’s got loads of clothes, and she’s even taking some of the collection to New York. I heard she’s even thinking of doing a Couture with a Conscience show in Paris next year.  Paris.  Can you imagine?”

I closed up another box, but it seemed like the stack of clean dishes was growing faster than our ability to box them up.  “Why didn’t they just use the hotel dishes?” I asked.

“Oh, Bitsy’s
such
a perfectionist. She ordered these for all functions just a few years ago.  I love the little crest, don’t you? Makes it
so
special.”

“Still,” I said, “if all the profits are going to charity, wouldn’t it be cheaper just to use standard issue dishes?”

Doris blinked at me.  “The shop raised more than half a million dollars for charity last year.  Mrs. McEwan knows
exactly
what she’s doing.”

I shook my head in wonder.  With dresses going for two thousand dollars a pop, I guess it made sense.

“And she could be making that kind of money for
herself
,”  Doris continued, her pink-painted lips a tight line.  “But instead it’s all going to charity.  She’s a great lady.”

We closed up another box and lapsed into silence for the next few minutes.  The slingbacks Becky had picked out for me were digging into my heels, and my bladder was sending up distress signals.  “I’ll be back in a minute, Doris.”

I stepped out of the noisy, steamy kitchen into the ballroom.  The staff was pushing the tables to the edges of the room, and Prudence was directing a few women who were loading the tablecloths into plastic bags.  “Light starch,” she said, “and make sure you fold them immediately, so they don’t get wrinkled.”  Thank God I hadn’t gotten laundry duty.  With Snookums hanging out next to the washer and dryer, chances were the tablecloths would come back looking like lace designed by a pack of angry squirrels.

As I headed for the bathroom, I noticed Bitsy and Maria Espinosa, deep in conversation, walking.  I hustled across the room as they disappeared into a corridor.  As I sidled up to the hallway, Bitsy said, “Let’s go in here.”  I glanced around the corner just in time to see a door on the righthand side swing shut.