Muffy Winthrop loved her children.
She’d even woken up a little earlier than usual expressly to see their shining faces arrive home from school. Slinking through the marble hallway, away from the master suite, she admired a few portraits she’d commissioned of the beloved family pets last winter. They were stunning works, even though the be-tutued shih tzu was a little on the chubby side. This had been a point of mild outrage for Muffy in the past, but now was a minor irksome detail. She paused a moment to see if any annoyance surfaced from under the leagues of apathy. When none emerged, she decided against downing another Valium and meandered on.
Perfectly manicured toes made no sound as the cold stone rose to meet her feet. The lengthy hallway widened into the delta of a grand staircase that swept downward to an even grander foyer. A pristine alabaster soaked the walls and the floors of marble were as colorless as her country club. The house’s pallor pleased her… or at least the decorator’s tightly-fitted trousers pleased her and that had been all the incentive she’d needed to green light the 4 month and $350,000 redesign.
Standing elegantly at the top of the stairs, Muffy was a queen surveying her land. Diamond clad hands slithered up her silk drenched frame and she noticed, with what coral would register as elation, that her hipbones were protruding a little more than yesterday. Her overly ripe lips attempted a smile.
The quiet pressed against her like a lover. She filled her lungs with it, sucking at the vacant air. Impossibly blue eyes rolled back into her head as she savored the solace that was soon to be broken by the fruit of her loins. The darlings. She’d birthed them through a tastefully drugged C-section almost 13 years before. Twins! Can you imagine?! Such a handful and yet such a blessing.
Stretching her slender arms in the air, she embraced the light streaming through the crystalline chandelier. She knew it was gaudy (her decorator had expressed this in so many indeterminable words), but didn’t care. The light glinting through the drops pleased her to no end and in so much silence one could almost hear the beams dancing with slippered feet upon the—
BAM. A door crashed open and then…
“Shut your beaver, AVA!”
“At least I have a beaver and not a dick, you fucking man.”
Ah. The children were home.
Muffy unclenched her jaw, fists, and pelvic floor respectively, swept a taloned hand through her butter highlights and prepared to glide down the staircase. But as soon as her foot fell upon the top step, a jarring scream erupted from the kitchen below.
“You CUNT!”
Muffy sauntered down the stairs with all the swiftness she could muster and strode lightly into the dining area. There she found her two daughters trying to scalp each other with butter knives.
“Blake. Avery. What is going on here?” Muffy sternly murmured. The din continued unaffected.
“Get the fuck off me you crazy dyke!”
Blake had gotten the upper hand and was wrapping her sister’s hair around her forearm as one might a rope during a particularly nasty game of tug-o-war. She squatted and plopped all of her weight down onto Avery’s squirming back and pressed the edge of the “blade” firmly upon the girl’s forehead.
“Jesus fucking Christ, you’re crazy! GET OFF ME!”
“Not until you fucking pay me! I was saving that shit for this weekend and you flushed it?!”
Blake wrenched her elbow back leaving a faint pink line zigging zags across Avery’s flesh. In response, Avery yowled, bucked, and sent Blake flying backwards on to the smooth stone floor. Blake let out a cry to add to the cacophony of curses spewing from Avery’s foul mouth.
“You fucked up, bitch! You fucked up good! I’m going to MURDER you with your own boot laces you muff munching, orange-is-the-new-black-loving, shit faced whore!”
“You mean I fucked up well, you illiterate cocksucker!”
“BLAKE.” A third voice boomed like cannon fire in the air and the caterwauling was silenced almost as if by magic.
Lupe, the nanny, had entered from the garage carrying the day’s groceries. She was a petite woman with a figure to make lonely housewives kill. Long black hair complimented her flawless caramel skin and immense obsidian eyes that burned like coal. Muffy would’ve hated her, but the numerous SSRI’s mixed with recreational anorexia numbed pretty much anything and who really cares anyway she was the kitten of the is there food?
Lupe stepped slowly toward the two trembling tweens.
“Blake. What did you just call your own flesh and blood?”
“Nothing.”
“Do NOT lie to me, because I can smell it on you.” The words fired from the Latina’s crimson mouth like a singular bullet.
The twins shuffled in place, two dogs cowering with their noses pressed to the soiled carpet. Lupe set the organic, cage-free kale on the counter followed by three bottles of Ketel One and sucked her cheeks in. She spoke slowly and deliberately, making certain that every tongue flick, roll, and wag could be heard.
“I know… that no young lady of mine would ever be caught with such disgusting language on her tongue. You know how I know this?”
Silence.
“I said: you know how I know this?”
Identical whispers. “No, ma’am.”
“I know this, because young ladies of mine would be too afraid of the consequences to ever say something as ignorant as ‘cocksucker’ to their sister. So, since you both are not my young ladies but two little cerdos waddling around with filth covered mouths, you won’t mind me taking away your cellphones.”
1000 shrieking cats lent their voices to the upsurge of tweenrage that threatened to Jericho the whitewashed walls. Muffy drifted back and found herself at the foot of the stairs once more. Blake and Avery were united in a force to rival bulls running through Pamplona and Lupe was helpless against them. The Cuban with a Brazilian had made a fatal mistake and now that the twins were brandishing the same semi-automatic blind hatred, Lupe’s magic was useless. The screeching reached a deafening pitch and desperately Lupe looked up and straight into Muffy’s wan face, beseeching some kind, any kind of assistance.
When it came to parenting, Muffy was a last resort; because, despite having carried the twins to term, Muffy had never expressed any interest in their lives. But as the shrieks of those two little blessings promised to burst eardrums, Lupe hoped to use her peacemaking powers to form a bond of motherhood with her employer. What Lupe didn’t know was that Muffy too had a magical gift.
Slowly, Muffy turned from the imploring eyes of her servant and placed a delicate foot on an icy stair. She floated up the ascent of stonework, past the immortalized canines, into the master suite and finally came to the threshold of the master bath. It was there that she concocted a special potion; a brew to rid her serenity of yowling ingratitude and Latin-American judgment. You see, Muffy had a gift for mixing substances and she’d saved the very last of her favorite bottle of Chateau Margaux ’95 for just an enchanted afternoon.
Two parts red wine and one parts Ambien, the concoction was know in the waspiest circles as the “Mayer Mollifier”.
She held the chalice aloft and recited the appropriate incantation: “Fucking botched vasectomy.”
And like magic, her children disappeared.
Frightening.
ReplyDelete