Wife’s bitch sister
“Honey don’t be like that,” Jane, my wife of four years, said as she did her makeup.
I had just told her I wanted to stay home and let her go to her sister’s house by herself.
Her sister hated me.
Her sister looked down on me.
Her sister belittled me.
I hadn’t done anything wrong; it was simply that I was blue-collar, and in Ginny’s eyes, I wasn’t good enough for one of the Keller sisters. The self-proclaimed princesses of Sycamore, Illinois.
It wasn’t as if they came from money. They grew up in a working-class family’s home too. Their father was an electrician, and their mother worked part-time as a bartender.
I was an elevator repairman.
Ginny had married up. Much up, in fact. Her husband Brian was ten years older and a successful lawyer. He was also the Junior Senator from the Land of Lincoln.
I met Jane when I worked on the elevator in which she got stuck in her building. We fell in love and were married within a year. She always said it was my rugged charm that made her fall in love with me. I always told her it was my big dick that she loved. She never denied that.
I complained, “Jane, you know she hates me and will go out of her way to get digs in and take shots at me.”
Jane shrugged, “She’s not that bad. Besides, we haven’t seen the headstone yet.”
Inwardly, I groaned. Her parents died six months earlier in a boating accident. Brian made a big deal out of spending an obscene amount of money on their extravagant grave marker.
“Can’t we just visit the cemetery and stay in a hotel?”
My wife looked at my reflection in the mirror and said flatly, “No.”
I sighed dramatically for effect and grabbed our luggage. We were going for the weekend, yet still had several bags.
She met me in the garage where I finished a cigar while I waited.
“Must you smoke in here, Viv?” She complained for the umpteenth time.
“You won’t let me smoke in the house.”
It was the same excuse I always gave when I smoked in the garage.
“Whatever,” she harrumphed and got into the passenger side of the Porsche SUV she had to have.
While I made good money repairing elevators, she made great money working for a public relations firm. She was building a reputation as a woman who could turn any shitty situation into gold for her clients. It didn’t hurt that she was smoking hot and used her feminine charms to build a client base of the rich and famous.
We lived in the far west suburbs of Chicago and her sister lived in the far north suburbs on the lakefront. It took an hour to get there as we hit no traffic, and the ride was silent.
*****
“Jane!” Ginny shrieked as she opened the door to their large home.
The sisters hugged in the doorway and left me standing behind Jane holding our three bags.
They exchanged small talk for a few minutes and I dropped the bags on the marble floor and kicked off my dress boots.
“Take those to the guest room, Vivian,” Ginny said with a sneer. I hated that she always used my full name.
Yeah, it’s more commonly a woman’s name, but my parents named me after my dad’s favorite guitar player. They were probably stoned when they did it. My folks were potheads.