The Dirt Field

Paul and I went to a dinner party in my parents’ neighborhood last evening to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. While we had a thoroughly wonderful time, there was one person whose presence was as enjoyable as a festering wound. I’ll call her Face Lift, because, well, that was quite clearly what she had done last month. I’m sorry, but when the skin on your arms is jiggly and wrinkly, while the skin on your face looks like a linebacker stuffed in a toddler’s sweater, there really is no pretending.

Face Lift is artificial and condescending, and manages to work into normal conversation the extraordinary price of all of her possessions and the fact that she and her husband just purchased another yacht/house/racehorse. For example, I complimented her watch, and asked her if it was made by Coach. She smiled haughtily and snidely replied, “Oh, no, I got this in Nice. I like it because nobody else has it.”

At one point when I was chatting with Paul, Face Lift came up to us and interrupted our conversation, saying, “So this is your husband? I’ve never met him! He wasn’t at the Superbowl party!” Paul responded by explaining that he was not a fan of football, to which she replied that she wasn’t either, and that she just went for the commercials and the drinks. I jokingly added that I too had only gone for the drinks.

Then she laughed and snorted, “Oh, I forgot you’re a [my last name].”

I smiled politely, resisting the overwhelming urge to stab her.

This insult was coming from the same woman who practically needs to distill moonshine in her bathtub just to support her habit. And besides, who can blame my family for drinking around her? This woman could singlehandedly lead an entire meeting of AA-ers to leap desperately off the wagon just by talking to them for five minutes.

When my father arrived a short while later, I cornered him to explain Face Lift’s latest transgression. No stranger to her unpleasantness, my father smiled when I called her something unkind and unprintable and said sweetly, “I’ll drink to that.”