Why did Adelle??

Because she couldn't deal with the fact that she wasn't making it in Beverly Hills. She was living in an apartment making ends meet when she thought, naively, that just moving to Beverly Hills would lead her on the road to "success" and happiness. Going to that wealthy family’s home would have made her feel awkward. Her shallowness and insecurity ruined both their Christmas.

I think Adele was bipolar, and this was just an example of a bipolar "crash". In a manic phase she saw herself going to the party, making connections, and becoming popular. Then the day of the party and the prospect of actually having to go triggered the depressive side of bipolar. It may not make sense to normal people, but it's actually typical behavior with bipolars.

I think Adelle freaked out at the last minute and couldn't deal with the pressure.
I get like that sometimes--once I walked to a party of sorts, a 40 minute walk, and at the last minute got scared for pretty much no reason and ran home. She was nervous, I think, and insecure.
And as much as Anne couldn't stand her mother, she either A) didn't want to leave her mom alone on Christmas or B) was so attached/dependant on her that she couldn't bring herself to go on her own.


If you've never tried drugs, don't. And if you have, pray.

Adelle was the one who wanted to go in the first place. Ann gave in and got used to the idea, then committed herself, but with the understanding they would both be going. So when Adelle chickened at the last minute, it was like the floor dropped out.

Adelle lived in a bit of a fantasy world, and thought of Ann more as a sister than a daughter. She didn't see the impact she had on Ann with every little decision, inflection, nuance, etc. She thought Ann was more understanding. (This is a mistake many parents make, and they have to constantly remind themselves that their children do not yet have adult minds. At the same time, they have to constantly try to treat them as adults so that they are careful with their decisions and not resentful of their parents' apparent thoughtlessness and insensitivity.) But Adelle was more of a child in some ways than Ann, so it was hard for her and Ann to see which roles they were playing, and who had the ultimate responsibility, at various moments of their relationship, especially when Adelle would seemingly flip a switch and say, "Guess what; I'm the child now," with no awareness of what she was doing.

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It defintately wasn't because she was being mean or anything! I think it was because when she started thinking about it, she couldn't help but compare her life to the life of the "rich Doctor" family hosting the party, and in her eyes, she came up short.

Don't forget that when the first arrived in Beverly Hills, she stopped to lookat that one house, and pretended that she was married to a Doctor, and her "husband" would be coming in a week or so, and she told the realtor and home owner that she would come back with him to show him the house.

I think she had this idea that when they moved to Beverly Hills, she would immediately attract someone rich, successful, handsome and semi well-known (like the Orthodontist), and be able to quit her "crappy job" and become a "lady of leisure".

In this fantasy, her husband would "bring home the bacon". Meanwhile, she would spend her days lounging by the pool, getting her nails and hair done, planning cocktail parties for her new famous friends and her high-powered husband's business associates, shopping on Rodeo Drive, going to the gym, and probobly giving orders to the "hired help."

Obviously, part of her fantasy was to have her daughter become "somebody" by becoming a child star.

So, when it came time to get ready for the party, as she looked around at the few, meager possessions they owned, and also thought about how it was looking like her fantasy meal ticket, the Orthodonist, was not going to work out, and that they only men that were truly interested in her in Beverly Hills were the same kind of men that they had in the town they left, I think that at that moment she finally had a moment of TRUE clarity where she was finally seeing herself as she really was, and didn't think that would be good enough for Ann's friend's family, since that family really WAS "living the fantasy" that was out of readch for her.

I don't understand why she didn't go. She could have met her sugar daddy at that party.

I think everyone's forgetting about Adele's first husband. He left them in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, which means she woke up the next day to discover she was alone with a kid. Even 10 years later, that's still going to affect her. I think she wanted to go and imagined everything was going to be alright, but then panicked and got upset when it came time to actually get ready and leave the house. Instead of admitting that she's in a fragile state, she tried to cover it up with chores. Many people take their mind off pain by distracting themselves.