Chapter 6 Jasmine, the Smart One
Jasmine, the Smart One
September, a month before the reunion
“Again?” Jasmine Hahn did not like the whine in her voice, but her husband hadn’t had dinner with the family in more than a week. She adjusted her voice to be (hopefully) husky and seductive. “It’s just that the girls miss you, baby. I miss you.”
“Jasmine, I’ve got a lot on my plate. Do you think money grows on trees? Tell the girls I’m sorry. I’ll stay in the city tonight.” With that, Oscar hung up.
This was not how her life was supposed to be unfolding. She was forty-two years old, had every material thing she could dream of, three healthy children, but here she was, sick with anxiety and worry just the same.
She sat down in the vast living room, which was all white and in desperate need of a makeover. At least, desperate by the standards of Greenwich, Connecticut, where the homes of the one percent were redecorated as often as a person ate, it seemed.
Upstairs, she heard her four-year-old laughing with the nanny/housekeeper, Ellen. At least Lyra was happy. For now.
Shit. Outside, she heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway and the unmistakable growl of Carmen Guerre’s Porsche 911. The car had cost $300,000. Jasmine knew this because Carmen had told her, as in I was surprised it was only $300,000. I thought it would be closer to half a mil.
“Ellen! Someone’s here. Answer the door and tell them I’m sick, okay?” And with that, Jasmine Malinowski Tate Hahn threw herself behind the white couch and lay on the floor.
Forty-two years old and hiding from mean girls.
Again, not exactly living the dream. Nevertheless, it felt like the best way to avoid Carmen Guerre and Michele Taylor, the two bosses of the Garden Club Mafia.
They were here to collect her for an event-planning luncheon at the club, a show of power and rank Jasmine would obviously lose. A knife fight would be more subtle.
This morning, in an attempt to dodge this very moment, Jasmine had texted Carmen, saying she wasn’t feeling well, and while Jasmine’s phone told her the message had been read, it obviously hadn’t been accepted.
The doorbell rang like a funeral bell. She heard Ellen’s footsteps on the stairs. “Ms. Guerre, Ms. Taylor, hello.”
“Where’s Jasmine?” Carmen asked, her voice loud and commanding. “We don’t want to be late.”
“I thought they were renovating this place,” said Michele. “All-white is so ten years ago.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hahn isn’t feeling well,” Ellen said.
“She can’t be sick,” Carmen boomed. “We have a planning luncheon. It’s important.”
“I’m sorry, she’s under the weather,” Ellen repeated. Jasmine would have to slip her some cash for this. Loyalty cost money.
“Mommy!” Lyra cried in delight, her face appearing at the top of the couch. “Are we playing hide-and-seek?”
Jasmine winced. Her four-year-old’s voice was nothing if not loud. “No, honey. I’m sorry.” Lyra’s face fell, and Jasmine felt the familiar arrow of guilt. She stood up and put her hand on her daughter’s head.
“There you are,” said Michele, irritation clear in her nasally voice. “What on earth are you doing?”
“I dropped my watch,” Jasmine said. She pretended to fiddle with her Jaeger-LeCoultre watch, appraised at $32,000 the last time she had gone to the city. “Hello! Sorry to keep you! Lyra, sweetheart, Mommy has to go to a lunch, okay? We can play later.”
“I thought you were sick,” Carmen said triumphantly. She wore a Cartier bracelet that wouldn’t look out of place at the Oscars. At least a quarter mil. Jasmine had gotten good at assessing jewelry lately.
“I wasn’t feeling well this morning,” she said sweetly.
“I was just about to text you that I’d rallied and I’d meet you at the club.
” Lies came so easily to her. After all, she’d been lying most of her adult life.
She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been pretending to be something she wasn’t.
Actually, she could remember. In high school, with the Core Four. A lifetime ago. Back when she’d been voted Most Likely to Own a Private Island, Most Likely to Be a Billionaire and Most Likely to Succeed. Before she’d killed Stafford’s most beloved citizen and lost the only friends she’d ever had.
She straightened her blouse and forced another smile.
She was dressed appropriately—Greenwich Moms dressed appropriately every day.
If Carmen and Michele had been actual friends, she would’ve asked for five minutes and gone upstairs to fix her hair after her couch crouch, but they were already irked.
So instead she kissed Lyra goodbye and headed out into the sunshine toward Carmen’s latest toy.
Michele opened the passenger door and gestured for Jasmine to get in.
She knew her place, and it was, literally and figuratively, in the back seat, her knees up to her chest.
“We’ve got so much to discuss,” Carmen said. “But first, have you heard about Diana and John Carville? They’re divorcing. Apparently, she’s been sleeping with their son’s golf coach.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Michele said. “She barely spoke to John at our Fourth of July bash.”
Jasmine made murmuring sounds, neither supporting nor contradicting the other women’s comments.
No. This was not the life she’d once imagined, even if it looked a lot like it.
She had the big, gracious house (though not all that big by Greenwich standards).
She had three healthy daughters she loved (although her oldest barely spoke to her, and then only to issue demands, her middle daughter was struggling socially and her youngest probably had ADHD).
She was wealthy (except really it was her husband who was wealthy .
. . she was more or less a kept woman with a marriage certificate).
She had lovely clothes and expensive jewelry and a big, safe car.
They took first-class vacations and belonged to a country club.
She played tennis twice a week and had lunch with other Greenwich Moms to compare and contrast and compete.
She’d never been so stressed or worked so hard.
Not because she had a high-powered career, as she once pictured, but because she did not.
She knew the private equity company Oscar ran was in trouble.
He no longer talked about business with her, but he’d said no to redecorating the house, no to a new car, even though hers was ten years old, and no to a summer vacation with the girls.
And for the first time in their seventeen-year marriage, he told her to “stop spending so damn much on yourself.”
Right. Except that was part of her job, wasn’t it?
To fill the role of a wealthy man’s wife.
Each month, she was waxed and highlighted, had her pores cleansed and eyebrows tinted and lashes extended and chemicals injected into her face.
She had to say the right things to the right people and host the right parties and be the perfect guest, because she didn’t belong to this world.
Unlike the Greenwich elite—those with generational wealth, those who’d gone to Miss Porter’s and Concord Academy and spent summers in their second and third homes in Provence or Lake Como or La Jolla or Nantucket—Jasmine could not make a single misstep.
She was on her own, with only Oscar who knew who she had been and had loved her for it.
But her shelf life seemed to have expired, because Oscar was cheating on her.
She was pretending not to know, just being extra cheerful and moisturized and fragrant.
She had a chilled cocktail and lovely dinner waiting for him on the nights he deigned to come home.
She was always available for sex. Always happy.
Always in awe of him. It was exhausting, but she couldn’t flag in her efforts.
She couldn’t lose this life. It wasn’t just the money or her happiness (pause for laughter).
It was security for her girls. An intact family.
A father, because if they got a divorce, Jasmine doubted Oscar would make much time for them.
A divorce would shatter the carefully built lives she’d constructed for her daughters, and that would break her heart.
Also, without Oscar, she’d just be a divorced woman hoping she wouldn’t have to take her ex to court for child support. Once, sure, she’d expected to be successful on her own. She’d been high school valedictorian, gotten a full scholarship to Princeton, landed a job at Goldman Sachs.
But since marrying Oscar and getting pregnant a month later, she hadn’t worked at all.
She was on committees, like all good Greenwich Moms. She volunteered for genteel causes for the less fortunate, as if she were Lady Mary from Downton Abbey.
She lunched and kept fit and maintained herself.
She scheduled her children for the right activities with the right children, bought the right things from the right stores, kissed the right asses.
Exhausting.
“How is Oscar?” Carmen asked, glancing in the rearview mirror through her Chanel sunglasses.
“Oh, he’s wonderful,” Jasmine said, making sure her voice was warm and loving. “Hard at work, as always.”
“Mikhail says he’s been staying in the city a lot,” Carmen said, shooting Michele a look.
“As I said, hard at work. He takes such an interest in every one of his clients. They’re more like friends, honestly.” Also, he has a mistress. “Michele, how’s Liam? Is he going on tour again?” Michele was married to Liam Dockery, the world-famous rock star.
And with that, the subject changed to another world tour, the cities where Michele would join him—“Justin Timberlake will make a guest appearance in Rome, and then we’re all popping over to Verona to stay with Leo.” Leonardo DiCaprio, that was, of course.
Michele and Liam had two private jets. A jet apiece. Carmen and Mikhail had four. Oscar merely leased a private jet (so humiliating!) for $500,000 a year, plus $12,000 an hour in the air.
And he told her to cut back on spending.