Brooks is not having the best time at this party. He tells Vicki that he feels out of place and he wants to address the self-appointed private investigator in the room so he walks over to Meghan and Jim and says as he’d like a moment to speak with them as a couple. (I’d pay to watch him say grace before their couples’ meeting.) They all sit down and Brooks takes the lead and asks Meghan what her motivation is for being so vocally distrustful about his illness.
“It breaches my boundaries,” he tells her about how she has reached out to people from his past, and I’m betting that it does breach some boundaries, but it’s hard to begin any sentence that way when you are so willingly a reality television participant and you have already annihilated your boundaries for a hint of fame.
“I never said that you were faking; I said that there were holes,” Meghan responds.
Meghan maintains her composure and so does Brooks during a conversation that should not be happening anywhere ever.
“I lost my mom. My boyfriend has stage three cancer. Can you give us a flipping break?” asks Vicki and I have to say that the woman’s got a motherflipping point and as all of this is going on, Jim is examining his nails and wondering if his assistant or one of his ex-wives can set up a grooming appointment for him.
Brooks is annoyed that Meghan’s information comes from a psychic and an ex-penned blog and that she’s taking those things to be gospel, but Meghan has moved for a moment beyond the cancer and wants to know if something Tamra told her is true. Did Brooks tell Tamra that Jim told him that only two of their four months of marriage have been happy? (I think Meghan is missing the point here. Anyone who has watched them interact would have bet that there have maybe been two happy days, not two happy months. This is really a compliment, not an insult, my dear.) At any rate, Brooks denies saying such a thing and he tells Meghan to “consider the source,” which is a succinct way of saying, “Tamra is a f*cking bitch who has never liked or trusted me and I’d have muzzled her by now, but the woman who allows me to live in her house said she wants to be friends with Tamra again because she likes to have allies during production time.” Meghan takes his words as meaning that Tamra has no credibility and Vicki would like Meghan to stay the hell out of their lives and nothing is resolved and everyone looks worse than they did before the conversation even started.
Meghan immediately runs over to tell Tamra what was just said about her and Tamra’s eyes go dark and this is it! It’s time for Tamra to have a practice run at her upcoming exorcism and it will happen at this Aires Party, dammit, even as Jim tells his wife, “You have to stop,” and God, I hate agreeing with that guy about anything, but he’s right. Meghan is out of control.
“Where’s Brooks?” Tamra shouts sarcastically and then tells Vicki that she has been his only supporter (for the last few months at least – before that, she publicly called him terrible names, many of which he perhaps deserved). “You said ‘consider the source.’ What the f*ck does that mean?” Tamra asks Brooks, her confrontation mast already fully filled with wind and the kind of confidence that only comes from being a hot grandmother who has already downed three Airestinis.
“It means whatever you want it to mean,” Brooks drawls to her, which is probably a sentence that has worked on desperate or needy women in the past – but Tamra is far more pissed off at the moment than she is desperate or needy for anything besides better friends and she would like a f*cking answer stat or Brooks will not be invited to her baptism. Vicki tries to stop the fight by telling Tamra that she’s acting like a fool and as all this goes on, Meghan watches with her arms folded and a smug smile on her lips and Eddie eats clumsily with chopsticks while Vicki begs Tamra to maintain the kind of decorum neither one has ever once exhibited while conscious.
But at least the Airestinis look delicious, so let’s raise a glass and toast to friendship, loyalty, trust, and a cancer diagnosis nobody much buys anymore. Cheers!
Nell Kalter teaches Film and Media at a school in New York. She is the author of the books THAT YEAR and STUDENT, both available on amazon. Check out her website at nellkalter.com. Her twitter is @nell_kalter.