Oliver adds laxatives to the dinner-party dessert

Oliver Rose’s addition of Ex-Lax to the chocolate sauce is a calculated act of sabotage in the Roses’ escalating domestic war. Concealed in the midst of Barbara Rose’s dinner party, the laxative transforms a gathering she has worked to make successful into a humiliating exodus, while Oliver’s later account reveals both the preparation behind the prank and the retaliation it provokes.

Causes and Preparation

The dinner party takes place against a conflict already organized around possessions and control of the house. Oliver has spent an entire night damaging Barbara’s kitchen, convinced that the sabotage would finally put an end to her plans for the elaborate gathering. He believes she has no right to proceed, particularly because she is using money he considers the proceeds of theft from his belongings. He also resents her refusal to pay overdue utility bills. In his accounting, the party itself compounds her defiance.

When the kitchen attack fails to stop the event, Oliver changes tactics. He hides in the sun-room and waits for the moment he considers right, then drops Ex-Lax into the chocolate sauce. He adds an extra piece for good measure. The concealment and timing make the act more than an impulsive quarrel: Oliver plans an intervention that will reach the guests through the food served at Barbara’s party, while keeping his responsibility out of sight at the time.

Barbara has reason to believe the gathering is going well. Guests are talking in separate groups: the men have become absorbed in politics, the women are discussing other matters, and cigars are being passed. The wife of an undersecretary kisses Barbara on the cheek and says she had not known; Barbara takes the lively conversation as a sure sign of a successful party. Against that atmosphere of apparent ease, Oliver’s hidden addition turns hospitality into the means of the attack.

The Party Unravels

The breakdown arrives through a succession of departures and urgent movements rather than a single announcement. Barbara notices the French military attaché frown, whisper to a waiter, and hurry away after the waiter points toward the foyer. The wife of the Greek ambassador rises and looks toward Barbara; Barbara directs her to the first floor. The request and the woman’s unspoken, pleading manner unsettle her, though the full scale of the crisis is only beginning to register.

Then the food editor leaves with unusual speed. At the foyer, Barbara sees his pale, tense face and hears him manage only a request for help before he runs upstairs, saying that someone is in the master bedroom. Knocking sounds from the occupied hall toilet. A Thai ambassador approaches with a pained expression, and Barbara’s attention is pulled in several directions at once. When she calls out that someone is on the third floor, another woman’s voice calls for Jacques from outside the closed toilet door; muffled French invective follows, with one word coming through clearly. Guests converge, voices overlap, and Barbara can no longer keep the gathering’s polite surface intact.

The house itself becomes a mechanism for the confusion: toilets flush, doors open and close, and hurried footsteps pass through it. People brush by Barbara as the front door opens. She apologizes and insists that the disaster was not her doing, but she has become the visible host of a calamity she did not create. The guests’ rush to find facilities, their distressed faces, and their rapid departure make the effects of Oliver’s concealed prank legible without turning the scene into a neat public accusation.

Barbara’s Humiliation and Retaliation

As the party empties, Barbara feels a bubbling sensation in her own body and runs through the kitchen, past startled waiters who are busy cleaning up. She loses any conscious sense of direction before finding herself in the garden, where she squats among azaleas beside the garage wall. There she encounters the Greek ambassador, also caught in the crisis and exposed in the moonlight. His bare bottom and expressionless face become an image of the party’s collapse: the decorum of an official gathering has given way to bodily urgency and shared mortification.

Barbara hides among the azaleas for a long time, inert and paralyzed with embarrassment, watching the house until she is sure everyone has left. Once she stands, embarrassment gives way to anger. She imagines strangling Oliver if he were within reach. Through the garage window she sees his Ferrari beneath its shiny cover. She enters by the garden door, removes the cover slowly, and lifts off the fiberglass top, setting it carefully aside. Oliver had shown her how to do it when he first bought the car and had let her drive it, though she had taken no pleasure in the experience. The knowledge he had shared with her becomes practical in her retaliation.

Exposure and Significance

The following morning, Oliver recognizes that the party attack has drawn an answering blow. He sees the Ferrari and thinks of the fifty thousand dollars lost; although he had gone to the movies and might therefore have avoided witnessing the damage, he doubts that his absence would have saved it. He acknowledges that he had shown Barbara how to operate the car and recognizes her resourcefulness, even as he describes her response as humiliating. His own act, initially experienced as cleverness, has helped provoke the destruction he now mourns.

The episode reverses the roles of host and saboteur. Barbara’s party appears to succeed until Oliver turns its food against its guests; after the gathering is emptied, Barbara uses knowledge Oliver supplied to strike at the possession he values. The prank’s effects are not confined to the couple: their guests, the waiters, and the house’s rooms are drawn into the disorder. In that way, the chocolate sauce becomes an instrument of a conflict that can no longer be kept private. Oliver’s later recollection supplies the concealed cause, while the scene of the party records its public consequences and Barbara’s furious response.