The Kind of Party That Turns Life on Its Ear

Someone is turning 40.

“Really? Him?” I ask when we get the invite.

“Yes, him,” my wife says.

“I thought he was at least 50,” I say.

Frankly, the birthday boy looks about 30, but what are you going to say? “Hey, the guy looks great for 40”? You’re not going to say that. Once I remarked how good this same guy looked in his driver’s license photo. Felt funny about it for days.

So it’s going to be a big party, the kind you and your wife prepare to attend a week ahead of time, make sure the kids are set and you don’t forget to feed them before you rush out of the door, hard shoes on concrete.

You make extra sure you have the right clothes and that one of you is committed to not drinking too much, a subject of two days of debate.

“You drank last time,” she says.

“No, you drank last time,” I say.

“No, you drank last time,” she says, which is probably true, what with all the pressure I’m under.

Because here’s what my wife does for party clothes: She looks in her closet, screams, then slams the closet door, scaring the cat and making the dog all jumpy till he knocks over a vase, which crashes to the floor like a gunshot, setting off car alarms up and down the street and drawing sheriff’s cars and helicopters.

“What happened?” one of the kids will ask.

“Your mother just looked in her closet,” I’ll explain.

“Oh,” they’ll say, then go back to their e-mail.

Here’s what I do for clothes: I look in the closet, then smile.

It’s a closet alive with color, shades of brown mostly, the color of footballs and baseball infields, cigars and raccoons. Great color, brown. Wore a brown tux to my wedding. Married a brown-eyed girl. Never went too wrong with brown.

“Dad, you dress,” my oldest daughter recently noted, “like a sportswriter from 1985.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“That wasn’t really a compliment,” she said.

“That wasn’t really a thanks,” I said.

It’s going to be a big party, fancy as a wedding, held at Casa Del Something in Santa Monica.

Open bar. Big buffet. Women slender as pencils, some of them famous and drop-dead gorgeous.

There’ll be fancy hors d’oeuvres on silver platters. Giant shrimp, some of them drop-dead gorgeous. Overlooks the ocean, this party. When a guy makes it all the way to 40, you pull out all the stops.

“I was going to wear my black dress,” my wife says.

“You’ll look great,” I say.

“I can’t wear my black dress,” she says.

“Of course you can’t,” I say.

For there is this rumor that one of the other moms might be wearing leather pants. Some of the moms can pull it off, which kind of unnerves the moms who can’t.

“Oh, I’ll probably just wear my leather pants,” the other mom reportedly said a few days before the party, sending shock waves across our oversexed little suburb. Leather? How do you compete with leather? Under their breath, several mothers cursed.

“Whatever you wear will be fine,” I tell my wife.

“No it won’t,” she says.

“Of course it won’t,” I say.

“I’m going shopping,” she says.

And off she goes shopping with our college-student daughter, who’s back in town just to help her mother find something a little hip and sexy.

Remember in the old “Batman” show the sense of doom you felt when the Joker and the Riddler teamed up? That’s how I feel watching these two go off shopping for something hip and sexy.

“Where’s Mommy going?” asks the little girl.

“Hunting,” I say.

They are gone for hours. My wife calls only to ask that we transfer laundry from the washer to the dryer and to be sure the other two kids graduate on time and lead upstanding lives.

“Where’s Mom?” the boy wants to know.

“Probably London,” I say.

“Shopping?” he asks.

“They’ll be home soon,” I lie.

Eventually, the shoppers return. They carry their loot in thick, glossy bags, the kind the expensive stores hand out, with soft rope for handles. Heavy bags worth more than most of my shirts. You could make an entire baseball bat with the wood used in one of these bags. You could probably make a chair. Then you’d at least have something to show for it.

“Did you get leather pants?” I ask.

“You don’t find leather pants in April,” my wife explains.

You don’t? I never realized leather was so seasonal. Seems to me you see it all year long.

“When do you find leather?” I ask.

“December,” she says.

Of course, December. I’ve always associated leather with Christmas. Easter is the lingerie holiday. Christmas is for leather.

So we’re almost ready to head to the party, where I’ll engage in some of the most inane cocktail party chatter you could ever imagine. I’ll speculate about what’s really in California rolls and borrow the old Woody Allen line on sushi, about not eating anything that’s merely unconscious.

At the party, my wife and I will start out together, drift apart, then hook up again at the end, a metaphor for marriage overall. On the way home, she’ll sleep a mother’s sleep.

“Mom’s going to look great,” says our older daughter as she pulls blouses from the shopping bags.

“Who?” I say.

“Mom,” she says.

“Of course,” I say.

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Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.