The Palace at Calabasas

Let them eat...reality tv stardom.

Fiction

Los Angeles, California, 2004.

The hot, dry winds blew in from the Mojave desert, following the path of the fabled Route 66 and picking up the scent of orange blossoms and night-blooming jasmine on their way to the coast, bringing with them static electricity, chapped lips, and double overhead sized waves. Mary Ann could hear the winds swirl dramatically around her as they arrived at their final destination in Malibu. Not in fancy, beach house Malibu — rather, the oft-forgotten trailer park version of Malibu, primarily populated by graduate students at nearby Pepperdine University. To the passengers of any jumbo jets in the flight path directly above, the trailer park must have looked like a sandbox, filled with tin cans kicked over on their sides. 

 Mary Ann stood in the trailer’s little kitchen, staring out the window at the ocean as thoughts about her future — her job, her marriage, her home — raced through her mind. She and her husband, August, were the stars of a successful reality tv show called The Palace at Calabasas, which premiered in the fall of 2003. They were spending the summer of 2004 on hiatus from filming the show, living in a tiny silver Airstream trailer while their house was undergoing renovations. During this summer hiatus, Mary Ann and August were waiting to hear if the show was going to get renewed, and although the house’s renovations were moving forward, the show’s renewal for filming in the fall wasn’t guaranteed. 

The show’s future was uncertain primarily because the network was concerned about bad publicity. They knew from viewer emails that the everyday people who watched their show considered Mary Ann and August to be self-absorbed and unaware of real people’s problems, especially considering the severe drought that had ravaged California. Everywhere they turned — billboards, television commercials, bus stops — residents were barraged with messages asking them to conserve water. Forgo a green lawn in the spring! Let your cars stay dirty! Take fewer and shorter showers! In theory, all Californians were asked to save water, but in practice, wealthy people, with their large lawns, swimming pools, and multiple cars, contributed to the problem more than the solution, and they certainly contributed to the problem more than the poor and working class did. Mary Ann and August were among those rich people who continued to live their lives as if there weren’t a drought, and, thanks to the tabloids, they knew that many viewers were either jealous of this or resented them for it.

August was primarily to blame for the way they reacted to the drought. Growing up the son of the mayor in Malibu, he’d been in the elite position of not having to be aware of the plight of everyday Americans.  His father’s former constituents were now most often concerned about highly privileged things like the tax for excessive water usage on their expansive lawns or sound ordinances for late-night parties.   The show’s viewership, however, had a sizable base in middle America and the South, where the perspective was different. Even though those states didn’t suffer from the drought, people there undoubtedly knew about it and could clearly see how August and Mary Ann were flouting the guidelines.

***

The largest, and most criticized example, the one that caused a shift in viewers’ perspective on them, was the dolphin tank. Looking back on the day they filmed the episode, Mary Ann should have guessed something unusual was going on by the way the crew was acting. There was an air of anticipation that she had never seen in some of the men she’d come to know over the course of the show filming twenty hours per week in her home. A large fence had been erected on the back half of their property, but because the crew needed space for craft services and meetings, she assumed whatever was behind the fence would stay off-camera. In order to show the most realistic reaction, the producers forbade anyone from telling Mary Ann what was being built, although much to her chagrin, August was heavily involved. The morning that the episode was filmed, August awoke with an uncharacteristic giddiness. 

“This is going to be amazing, babe. This is like, bucket-list level stuff that we’re going to do today,” he said when they were changing into their costumes for the first scene. It always struck Mary Ann as odd that the clothes they were supposed to casually choose to put on (as they would have in real life) were chosen by the producers and, more so, that this fact wasn’t disguised by calling them something other than “costumes.”

When it was finally time to shoot the scene, Mary Ann was blindfolded, so August led her to the back yard. They walked for what she thought was an astonishingly long time, long enough that it occurred to her that they were living on far more acreage than she had realized, and then, suddenly, the blindfold was off. The source of the fishy stench that she couldn’t quite place while the blindfold was on became apparent — August had arranged for a giant (one-and-a-half million gallons worth) water tank to be installed so that he could realize his dream of swimming with dolphins. Shocked, she turned around to see that he was in a full-body wetsuit, ready to dive in.

“Isn’t this insane?” he asked, his eyes lit up with enthusiasm.

Mary Ann was, by this point, acutely aware of the cameras and skilled enough to know that she had to pretend not to be aware of them or honest about her reaction. She was horrified at the excessive expense, the wasted water, and never mind the fact that the Pacific Ocean, filled with dolphins at no additional cost, was a mere nine miles away. 

“Oh my God, it’s amazing!” she said. “Haven’t you always wanted to do this?” And then, because she didn’t know what else she should say upon finding a giant dolphin tank in her backyard, she added, “No one I know has anything like this in Australia.” Later, an intense and petite producer named Jen would cite this moment, non-ironically, as an example of a character arc she could play up, referring to her as “a fish out of water.”

While most of the nightly news coming out of California was about its drought, August had failed to recognize how this would appear. The show producers thought it would be good content, so they let him do it, even going so far as to order the plexiglass tank from the same supplier that Seaworld used. The episode was broadly panned in the tabloids. “Ratings tank!” was a favorite headline of August’s, while Frank, their agent — a loud, enthusiastic, but intense man with a generally good sense of humor — did not find any of them funny, despite his involvement with arranging the water tank.

***

August had always drawn attention to himself, even as a young boy. He had boundless energy, a good sense of humor, and an enthusiastically curious nature, which made him a fun kid to be around. When he was in high school, his father was elected mayor of Malibu and he inherited a halo of fame. Many of the other kids in his school were far more famous themselves or had parents who were, and August’s natural charm and tanned good looks had always allowed him to fit in with a flashy set of friends.

 The day the reality show was pitched to him, August was at an Opening Ceremonies watch party for the 2002 Winter Olympics. The party was held in the Ritz Carlton’s bar in Downtown LA. August and Mary Ann had been invited to tag along by August’s childhood friend Ned, whose college roommate was a sports agent and had connections to fancy parties. After the table had ordered five bottles of Grey Goose vodka and three magnums of champagne, the American delegation of athletes, who as the host nation was the last to enter the stadium, finally appeared onscreen. August kicked off his shoes in excitement, climbed onto the bar, and led the crowd in a poorly sung but very heartfelt rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. Mary Ann begged him to get down, tugging on his socks, but even the bar staff let him go until the song’s conclusion. To assuage her irritation, he attempted to serenade her with “Waltzing Matilda,” but neither he nor the bar’s patrons knew the song well enough to sing it. When it was clear his moment in the spotlight was over, he jumped down, and three people ran over to introduce themselves.

“You are so damn funny!” said a short man in a navy blue pinstripe suit. “Are you in the business?”

“No, dude, I’m not in the business,” August laughed.

The man reached into his navy blue suit for a business card. “I’m Frank Peruzzo. I’d love to represent you. We’re working on an idea and I think you’d be perfect for it.”

“Oh, I’m not an actor,” August said.

“I know, but that’s perfect!” You’ve got such presence, such charisma. We’re not looking for actors. Is that your wife?” he said, pointing at Mary Ann and not waiting for an answer. “Congratulations, she’s a real beauty. Is she an Aussie? We’re looking for real people to star in a new show. You don’t have to act, all you have to do is be yourself. It’s for reality tv. I think it’s really going to be a huge deal. Let’s meet for a drink next week, I’d love to talk you into it.” Frank smiled and pressed his card firmly in August’s hand.

***

A month after the first season of the show wrapped, Mary Ann had gotten a phone call from Jen about the show’s future.

“Mary Ann? We have to talk. Everyone loves the show — loves it, loves you, loves August, loves it all — but some of the advertisers…well, they’re starting to say that they’re…concerned.”

“What do you mean ‘concerned’?” Mary Ann asked.

“So, for example, the water tank thing was bad. This drought is so severe that people can’t wash their cars and have to do laundry on a schedule by zip code, and no one’s seen a green shrub along the 405 in months, but then August has to use all that perfectly good water so he can swim with a dolphin? C’mon Mary Ann, people are angry. Angry and thirsty. You can’t even get a damn drink in this town.”

“That’s not true. I just had a really nice apple martini at Nic’s on Cañon the other day.”

“I meant water, Mary Ann!”

“I prefer champagne. Can’t they drink that?” 

“Do you hear yourself? That cutesy bimbo schtick works great on camera, I mean, definitely keep that up, but for God’s sake I’m telling you, you’re at risk of losing it all — the show, the fame, house, everything.”

Until this point, Mary Ann had not realized that the situation was so dire. She certainly would not have performed the television version of herself if she had, and felt embarrassed that Jen had to be the person to tell her. She corrected her approach and lowered the tone of her voice back to its natural state. “I had no idea, honestly. Why didn’t anyone tell me it was this bad? What are we supposed to do?”

“To be honest at this point, since we’re on hiatus, I don’t think there’s much you can do. We just have to wait for the advertisers to decide and the network to order new episodes. Just try not to get photographed by paparazzi — especially not like washing your car or anything stupid like that. Just be aware.”

 Their agent Frank, however, had been worried about their public perception for months. The week after the water tank episode aired, Frank called Mary Ann to tell her about the bad press, but because she wasn’t ready to hear it, his approach had failed to convey the gravity of the situation. 

“People feel that August, and by association, you, Mary Ann, are…how do I say this gently…grossly out of touch with reality. PETA is picketing outside the goddamn studio! I don’t need those damn PETA people on my ass. I can’t get red paint on my BMW.”

“You’re fine. They only do that to people wearing fur,” she said. “And what do you mean, ‘out of touch with reality?’ It’s a reality show!”

“It doesn’t work like that, sweetheart. Do you know the average annual income of your audience? Do you know how many of them could afford a million gallon lobster tank?!”

“Dolphin tank,” she corrected.

It had been Frank, of course, who’d encouraged August’s dolphin tank idea, one of the many people who had not considered the optics of using over a million of gallons of water for something as indulgent and ridiculous as one’s own personal dolphin pool during a severe drought. 

“Don’t act like that was all my husband’s idea,” she said. “I seem to remember you were very involved with the water tank. Didn’t you say you thought it would be good for ratings?”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Mary Ann,” Frank said. “Sometimes, you gotta try things out first and then see what works. Not every idea works, you know? This is a risky business sometimes. You just can’t make any more fuck ups like that, okay? I’m doing everything I can to sweet talk the network, trust me. Remember, I don’t get paid until you get paid.”

***

The show’s renewal was critical to maintaining the lifestyle she and August had grown accustomed to. Although August’s family was wealthy, he and Mary Ann couldn’t have been able to afford the giant house in Calabasas without the show, nor would they have chosen, necessarily, to live in that particular town. Calabasas, a city in Southern California just northwest of LA, with its expansive home lots, luxury car dealerships, wide streets that served as branches of the 101 freeway, and a high per-capita-celebrity count, was the perfect spot to buy a house for a reality show. The real irony of the place was that the hedges and gated communities were intended to keep residents and their lives private. In reality, they facilitated easy access to the very camera crews and tv productions that opened up the residents’ lives and broadcasted their secrets.

On the days that they were filming, cameras followed the couple around their expansive home and around Calabasas, broadcasting their daily lives on a celebrity-centric cable channel. When the show hit the air, despite the fact that Mary Ann and August had not been famous before, viewers quickly grew to love them and loved watching them interact as newlyweds. Each episode tended to have a theme, whether it was for a particular outing or a theme the producers had created for the week. They had an episode dedicated to their attempt at picking out a mattress, where August embarrassed Mary Ann by jumping on the mattresses in the store and then talking a salesclerk into hiding a pea under a stack of five mattresses and trying to make Mary Ann see if she could feel it beneath her. They filmed an episode that showed them cooking a vegan dinner together, which ignited a debate online over whether honey counted as vegan since using honey didn’t disturb the bees who produced it. (This was a moot point though, because they weren’t vegan; the only reason they were cooking this meal was because the episode was sponsored by a vegan burger manufacturer. Mary Ann wondered if viewers would notice those commercials when the episode aired, as this was a blatant deviation from any concept of their actual reality to anyone who cared to look closely enough.)

There was an early episode that showed Mary Ann trying (and failing, twice) to get her California driver’s license, in which she befriended several teenage girls in line at the DMV. In retrospect, she would realize this marked the point when the producers began portraying her as childlike, and a bit dumb — failing both the written and behind-the-wheel tests didn’t help, but they also told her that she should have fun with the behind-the-wheel test and that taking it too seriously would be boring on camera. On her own terms, she would never have thoughtlessly knocked over a traffic cone and laughed in such a circumstance, but the producers were continually egging her on to do things that would play well to the cameras. She began to notice that all the silly comments she would make throughout filming would end up in the final cut, but none of the informed and rational counterpoints to August’s arguments (like when he said that any kind of animal product was unhealthy to use) ever made it into the show.

When the show first aired, they would host viewing parties for friends and family, but as months passed and her portrayal changed, she became embarrassed at how she was depicted, and then embarrassment subsided to acceptance, made easier (although she felt ashamed to admit this), by the increasing paychecks. She started coming up with her own ideas of ways to be silly on camera and ad-libbing her own dumb blonde jokes. By the end of the season, she had fully morphed herself into the blonde ditz that the producers had envisioned.

August’s and Mary Ann’s relationship had changed over the course of the filming, too. When the show was first pitched to them, they were relatively unknown and living in a cute beach cottage in Malibu, while Mary Ann adjusted to life in America. She still had quite a thick Australian accent, which she would learn to tone down for the show. She felt free to use the colorful Aussie slang and curse words that she would eventually have to stop using once she was on network television. August was curious about how her life had been in Sydney and asked the kinds of deeply intimate questions that, while they were dating, had demonstrated to her that he had a genuine interest in getting to know all about her as a person. Once the cameras were in their lives, August was primarily concerned with making good tv and ratings. He picked a fight on camera with her about Britney Spears’ and Madonna’s make-out moment on the MTV awards, and although she didn’t really have an opinion on the matter, his needling finally prompted her to say that she thought Britney was “a little trashy,” which caused an uproar on a nation-wide radio morning show. She tried to think of a time in their relationship before their reality show when August would have instigated a pointless fight like that. Not until the show. 

***

 Mary Ann would have paced in the trailer if there had been room. Instead, she decided to lie down on the king-sized bed to think. The bed was ludicrously small in the trailer; it touched both sides of the walls and reminded her slightly of a padded cell in a mental hospital. 

She didn’t have any career plans to fall back on if the show got canceled.  Since she was married to August, she could legally stay in the United States, but she didn’t have much to do beyond redecorating the house. Money wasn’t her biggest concern, she knew August’s family would never let them starve, but the show brought her a sense of purpose, connection to her adopted homeland, and of course, fame. She knew from the abundance of washed-up former stars in Calabasas and in Malibu — middle-aged people with obvious plastic surgery (breast implants on the women, facelifts on the men, nose jobs on all of them) wearing flashy jewelry and, for some reason, always rhinestone-emblazoned jeans — that fame was the most fleeting of all the things she stood to lose. And the most humiliating. 

In between filming, or as it’s called in the industry, on hiatus, the network wanted to do more renovations to the house. There were plans to expand the closets to make them big enough for a cameraman, a producer, a lighting engineer, and a boom operator to fit comfortably. Mary Ann’s closets were already filled with the show’s wardrobe, and the clothes were placed there by the stylist to look like Mary Ann had chosen them. If only the people watching in their homes knew that on her own accord, she would never have lined up the Juicy tracksuits by color, all the hoodies facing the same way. Growing up, Mary Ann had never heard of Louis Vuitton, but now, in her closet, were 4 different prints of the same bag — two traditional versions, one with graffiti and one with little cherry prints on them. 

Funding for the show, and by extension, Mary Ann and August’s life, was entirely contingent on the network’s decision to order another season of episodes. For the first few months of filming, Mary Ann wasn’t at all concerned about the possibility of not getting renewed. The show was getting excellent ratings. They were frequently in US Weekly, most often under the “Stars! They’re just like us!” spread of the magazine, featuring shots of Mary Ann coming out of Starbucks with a cake pop or jogging along the beach.  When Mary Ann wore something trendy or different, like pairing a very-LA denim mini skirt with her beloved Australian Ugg boots, the look became a trend. She and August spent their date nights at Malibu Country Mart’s hottest sushi restaurant, Nobu, which nearly doubled the restaurant’s business.  

She had never been very fashion conscious growing up on the beaches outside Sydney, but living in front of cameras changed the way she viewed herself as well as the way she dressed. If she wore a trendy graphic tee shirt on a shopping trip, not only would the shirt be seen in tabloids, but she would be seen as someone who influenced what people bought. It was powerful. It was intoxicating.

***

The house in Calabasas was a two-story McMansion with a double-set staircase in the foyer. A wrap-around driveway with a fountain at its center greeted visitors and set the stage for the over-the-top opulence throughout the house. The kitchen had double sets of ovens and dishwashers — not that they were used often enough to warrant having even a single set of them — and the hallway that led to their dining room was top-to-bottom beveled glass mirrors. There was a Rococo chandelier over the king-sized master bed and, even though it was never on camera, one over the antique clawfoot bathtub, too. “That looks like a deathtrap,” August said when it was installed. “It’s an accident waiting to happen.” Practicality was not what led the team to install the chandelier there; like so many aspects of reality tv, all that mattered was how it looked.

The show’s producers and set designers provided the majority of the design input — Mary Ann wanted marble countertops, but they insisted on travertine because it looks “just as rich on camera at half the price” — but she enjoyed the process of furnishing the house nonetheless.  She chose thick velvet draperies and dining chairs in a distressed, eighteenth-century French style popularized by Laurel & Oak, an upscale furniture store. When she saw a picture of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck in People Magazine coming out of Laurel & Oak with handfuls of fabric swatches, she felt like her choice in home design aesthetic was vindicated.

During the renovation, the front and back gardens were supposed to be drought-friendly because California was always under water conservation alerts, but the producers loved the wide-angle shot of the lawn in the opening sequence of the show, so they decided to keep them. In came the rose bushes, birch trees, Kentucky bluegrass (even though the existing grass had been perfectly fine), and bougainvillea hedges to block off the view of the estate from as much of the street as possible. Mary Ann watched the renovation with a detached curiosity; she didn’t feel true ownership over the house or the decisions being made because whenever she offered an opinion, some producer or assistant, eager to make their mark on such a successful show, would talk over her and argue passionately for some arbitrary element like a planter. She was overruled about the kind of toilet that would be installed in the master bathroom — she wanted a bidet-equipped toilet with a heated seat installed and because it would never be seen on camera, the extra expense wasn’t approved. She felt utterly defeated and stopped trying to have any influence on the house at all. Plus, she knew she’d see the renovations later when the episodes aired anyway. 

The trailer they were living in during the renovation was supposed to be a “luxury trailer,” which struck Mary Ann as a contradiction of terms. The absurdly small living areas, particularly the bathroom, served to remind her how unnecessarily large things were at her Calabasas house. Though she had to admit, this trailer was fancier than the beige, square-shaped ones used by middle-class, middle-aged retired couples on cross-country vacations. The outside was shiny and reminiscent of the 1950s, but the inside was thoroughly modern. There was a flat-screen tv, stainless steel (albeit tiny) appliances, and as if it apologized for the rest of the minuscule, scaled-down aspects of the place, the king-sized bed. Mary Ann spent most of her time in the trailer because she feared being seen by either fans of the show or paparazzi. When the show wasn’t filming or airing, the producers expected her to keep a low profile, as they did not want her to be seen living in a tiny trailer instead of her palatial estate. 

Mary Ann and August were naïve when they agreed to participate in the show and didn’t realize that it would have the power to transform them into celebrities, even by LA standards.  Reality tv was not yet dominating the primetime lineup. According to the network’s focus group research, the audience said that each glimpse into their lives felt salacious and fleeting, despite the show being on every Wednesday night for nearly an hour.

August had grown up used to having influence over people — he had grown up as both the mayor’s son and big man on campus at a small private college. Mary Ann, however, had not. She had grown up in a small town in Australia, a lover of horses, the outdoors, and not much else. School had never been her forte, and after graduation, she hopped from waitressing job to waitressing job. When she met August surfing Bondi Beach one summer, he plucked her out of obscurity and set her on a path to celebrity she never imagined for herself. 

Mary Ann wasn’t used to the type of excess that August had known as a wealthy mayor’s only son, but she knew even August was aware that the dolphin tank stunt was going too far. When you have cameras on you all the time, the pressure to entertain becomes stronger and stronger, particularly when you don’t have talent. Without many discernible skills other than surfing, which offered very little dialogue and wore thin quickly for a drama-hungry audience, August had to resort to stunts like the dolphin tank and, on a special Las Vegas episode, trying to swim in the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel.

When the first, and potentially last, season of the show wrapped, Mary Ann felt relief at not having to perform for the cameras while she was living her daily life. The dumb blonde persona got tiring quickly. Although she kept it up whenever dealing with Jen, Frank, and anyone else associated with the show, it was exhausting to constantly be performing a character that was not her authentic self. 

Returning to her perch in front of the kitchen window, she thought about her life on the show. She had continued her ditzy persona into their marriage, even when the cameras were turned off. In the two years that they had been filming the show, she realized that their marriage had become a plotline instead of an actual relationship. August played the role of her costar, not her husband. She didn’t like who either of them had become.

The tiny door of the trailer opened; August’s large body filled the frame entirely. 

“You know, they’re talking about canceling,” he said, stepping inside. 

“I know.” 

“This can’t be all because of the dolphin tank! The network was totally okay with that! Don’t they test that shit?”

“I don’t know,” said Mary Ann.

“What are we going to do if we lose the show?”

“I didn’t ask for this,” Mary Ann said. Even as she said the words, she was unclear what she was referring to. The energy shift was palpable. August looked startled. 

“I didn’t ask to come here.” She wasn’t sure if she meant the trailer park or California.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“I didn’t ask to have all this influence. Is it my fault if something you decide to do doesn’t sit well with the viewers? Why does anyone care what I wear to Starbucks? Why am I getting yelled at by Jen and Frank? Was I supposed to be a spokeswoman for water conservation?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t know you were this unhappy. I thought you liked all of it — the house, the attention, the fame, the money… you can’t separate those things from the feedback. It may not be what you wanted, but it’s what you got.”

It was in this moment — that glib little statement short enough to be a clip on a show break, the segment before cutting to commercial — that Mary Ann saw how August’s behavior was just a performance. Even without the cameras around, which were surprisingly easy to forget about, especially with them almost ever-present in their home, he was acting as though conversation, this intimate and personal conversation about their life together, was going to be filmed, broadcast, and dissected. She wondered what she really knew about him — most of their relationship before the show had been when they were dating. The show started a few weeks after she moved to LA, and for the first time, she realized she didn’t know what life was like with August without the cameras.

“Nice line,” she said.

“It’s not a line; it’s just how I feel.” 

As if planned by the producers, Mary Ann’s phone rang. It was both Jen and Frank calling on speakerphone. 

“Mary Ann? Are you with August?” Jen asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, well, we have some news for you. We just got off the phone with the network. We basically got our heads chopped off, but we have some news.”

Mary Ann and August looked at each other, each trying to read the expression on the other’s face in anticipation of the news in the last seconds before the fate of the show was made known. 

“Wait!” said August. “Can we call you back?” Without waiting for an answer, his hand reached up and clasped itself around Mary Ann’s phone. He snapped it shut like a startled clamshell, ending the call.

“I have to know how you feel about this before they actually tell us. What do you want to happen?” he asked.

Mary Ann looked at August and then back at the phone. “I think,” she said slowly, “that I want us to have our own life. A real life together, not on camera, not in front of the whole world to see. We’ve never done that.”

“You want it canceled?”

“I want it canceled.” She said this slowly and with a quiet confidence she didn’t know she had until she heard the words come out of her mouth.

“Well, I don’t,” he said.

The phone, still in August’s hand, rang. He opened the phone and turned on the speakerphone function.

Frank’s voice chirped through the phone immediately. “We did it! We basically got our heads chopped off, but we did it! We’re back, baby, we’re back! This next season is gonna be the best one. We’ve already got ideas. We’re bringing in some major PR pros. We had to promise a lot, we pitched it all to the network. We’ll go over all of it with you, but the show is still on, the renovation is still on. Let's do this! Get the hell outta that little trailer park and come up to the house — we’re going to open up some champagne! The French stuff, the good stuff, only the best for you!” Frank’s enthusiasm was still perceptible through the phone even after the words were unintelligible, and his voice faded away as Mary Ann closed the phone.

August and Mary Ann looked at each other. She took a deep breath.

“You win,” she said.

The drive to Calabasas was uncomfortably silent. As they drove up the freeway, Mary Ann looked around at the wheat-colored grasses on the side of the road. Parched and brittle, the landscape looked as dry as a tinderbox ready to ignite. She licked her chapped lips as they pulled into their wraparound driveway.

Frank and Jen were already at the house by then, and they all gathered in the dining room, in front of the wall of mirrors, as Frank opened a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. Mary Ann reached into her purse for her lip balm. She applied it to her mouth, more carefully than necessary for a colorless balm, and studied her face in the mirror for a moment. Carefully, slowly, and deliberately, her face formed a reality tv-perfect smile, ready to take on another season.