Today I was following a well-dressed woman around the floor as she talked on her cell. It was soon evident that this particular woman was of the horrible variety. She is the center of this story and the reason I began by telling you that A. This story ends badly and B. You won’t feel so bad about it.
I won’t give her a name, because you know her and can name her yourself. You met her at summer camp, or in high school, or maybe even just last week at your kid’s soccer game. You’ve spent many a night unable to sleep, going over what you should have said to her in your head, and sometimes you have even woken in a bad mood thinking about her. Her name is ____ ______. We all know her.
She is the friend who greets you with the question “What are you wearing?” or tells you in the name of honesty that your jokes aren’t really funny. The judgmental type who is quick to point out your flaws. “Overdid it a bit with the tweezers, I see!” she says, laughing as you pull out your compact to examine your eyebrows. It’s strange how a compliment can go in and out of our ears in a moment but an insult can fester in there for days, even years.
She was that girl who was part of your fast-formed friend group on your cross-country teen tour, who stopped you at the entrance to the Ferris wheel at the county fair and shook her little finger at you. “Four per car,” she said. “Sorry—you’re out.” Never to be in again.
She was that girl in tenth grade with the long legs who you were nice to ’cause she was new in town. The one that wrapped those same long legs around the boy you confided in her that you had a crush on.
She was the girl I met my first year in the Bloomingdale’s training program. The one who said she’d formed a knitting club: “Oooh, sorry, Ruthie, I didn’t know you knit.” And then, “Sorry, Ruthie, we all took our boyfriends out for drinks after work and I didn’t think you had anyone special so I didn’t invite you.”
Or the worst: the one who pretends to be your friend to your face but is the first to talk about you behind your back.
Don’t worry—except for the knitting club and the tenth-grade leggy bitch, these didn’t all happen to me. But I am around women all day long, and I hear a lot of stories. A woman in her late twenties came in just last week for some retail therapy. As she browsed, I could tell she needed an ear to bend; you learn the signs. It was a Tuesday. She confided in me that on Tuesdays she usually met with her baby group. She was one of the founding moms, in fact. But soon some social-climber mom had climbed right over her, winning over all the other moms with nothing but a fistful of her husband’s cash. She then changed the group meeting to Wednesdays, knowing it was the only day our girl couldn’t make it, on account of her little Johnny having a lazy eye. Wednesdays were when the lazy-eye group meets. Let me tell you, if I ever met that witchy mom myself, I’d sell her a dress that made her look bad from behind!
Stop and think. Who is your nemesis? Even the most popular, confident, put-together adult can call to mind that one girl who made her feel inadequate. She’ll get hers, you said to yourself, praying that it was true as she walked away from you, leaving you feeling like roadkill to be scraped off the pavement. Well, fill in the blanks, ladies, ’cause today, I promise, she will get hers. Today the roadkiller becomes roadkill.
I followed _____ ______ as she weaved in and out of the dress racks, sometimes stopping to feel a fabric, sometimes to look at a price tag. I knew pretty quickly that she was a mean girl of ultimate proportions. Cruella de Vil on steroids. She was on the phone with her friend, asking for fashion advice. Her cruelty was slow and subtle. It began with, “I need advice because you’re my friend,” so that her victim was all eager and ripe for the zinging. Of course I could hear only one side of the conversation, but in my head I heard both. It went like this:
THE ROADKILL:?Where are you?
_____ ______:?Bergdorf’s [she lied]. In the dress department. I want to wear something new to Celeste’s birthday dinner. What are you wearing?
ROADKILL: Celeste’s dinner? I wasn’t invited…Do you think it’s an oversight? I thought we were close!
_____ ______:?Oh, I’m so sorry I brought it up—I just assumed…Well, I can call her and ask if you want.
ROADKILL: No, don’t. That’s so awkward.
_____ ______:?I’ll just hint at it. I have to ask her something anyway. Call you right back.
Click.
_____ ______ turned to me, holding the Max Hammer dress. “Do you have this in a small. I don’t see a small.”
She was one of those entitled women who assumes that everyone exists only to serve her, so she didn’t bother phrasing her demand as a question.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not sorry at all. “It’s the hottest dress of the season—we only have the two larges left. Try one on.”
“I don’t have time to try one on and I’m not a large!” she ranted. “You would think if it’s the hottest dress you would have more!”