Last night our friends from the suburbs came to dinner. They brought their two daughters, eight and six. Before they came, I warned my friends - both former city-dwellers - that our apartment is no place for children. We don't have a TV or central air, I told them. And if they got really desperate, I said, we don't even have a yard to play in.
He said not to worry about it, they'd be fine. In his voice I could detect a trace malicious pleasure. His spoiled suburban spawn would be roughing it in our old, steamy, low-tech West Village apartment, and it would be good for them.
And so it was that yesterday was the very hottest day of the year, and the most humid. Almost as hot and humid as the first and last time I ran in a 5K race, but that's another story.
Greg and his family arrive at five. The girls are already pissed. They know about the situation and hate me before I even open the door. They're quiet girls but brimming with contempt. They take a slight interest in Eden - they give her her a present, some books - but they have no use for me in my little white summer dress and sweaty face.
I put out carrots, celery and dill sauce, grapes, crackers and cheese. They tolerate this pathetic display for five minutes. Then Colette, the six-year old, tells Greg she needs to talk to him alone. He excuses himself and goes out into the hallway with her. He reports back that she wanted to know when they were going to leave. He reaches into his wife's purse and pulls out three DVDs, including Uncle Buck, and sends them upstairs to watch. (Even though we don't have television, we do have a monitor on which to watch DVDs. It's in our bedroom, along with the air conditioning.) I imagine them sitting stiffly on our bed, half-watching the movie, looking all around them in horror, cringing at our dreary, book-lined bedroom and wondering how in god's name people live like this, and vowing never, ever, to leave Long Island again.
Meanwhile, the adults are downstairs swilling wine and getting ready to eat. For reasons I only vaguely understand, I had decided to make steak. It was a bizarre choice, especially because I had invited my friend Aliza as well, and she doesn't eat red meat at all (I had gotten some chicken for her, though, and there was salad and corn). We don't have a grill, so I had to broil the steaks, making the kitchen and dining room ten degrees hotter than it was outside, and twenty percent more humid. We're well into our corn and wine when the doorbell rings; it's our guests' Danish exchange student and her American friend. More bodies, more heat, more irritability.
We make requisite small talk with the 17-year old exchange student: what is it like in your country? Does it get this hot there? Do you know Bjork? Oh, she isn't? She's from Iceland? Oh. What's the difference again? You speak English very well!
Then the little girls come downstairs. Already, they're bored, bored, bored with Uncle Buck and they want to go home. They're sullen. They're hungry. They don't want steak and they definitely don't want salad, but one of them deigns to gnaw on half an ear of corn, beaucoups butter. Greg and Barbara promise them McDonald's for the way home. They already had pizza today so McDonald's it will be. I rummage around in cupboards and the fridge and offer them all kinds of stuff: watermelon, NO. Peanut butter chocolate chip protein bar, NO. Crackers, NO. Cheese sticks, NO. Finally, I find half a bag of gourmet potato chips and show it to them as if it's a 1934 bottle of Chateau Lafitte. Colette, suspicious but hungry enough to give it a try, tentatively dips her hand in the bag. She eats a chip. She approves; she eats another. The older sister Natasha follows suit. I stand there with them in the hallway, holding the bag, while they poke their hands in and out like little robots, munching and glowering at me.
And then they leave. Aliza had left an hour earlier, said she was going to see a movie about Iraq playing at the Film Forum. But the family leaves, the girls all giddy about being in an air-conditioned Lexus SUV for an hour and a half while scarfing their Quarter Pounders and fries. Peter and I clean up. We each lost a few pounds last night.
I really enjoyed spending time with Greg and Barbara, who are both lovely and funny and easy-going.
Will Eden be weird if she doesn't watch any TV? Will she be weird if she develops conversation skills by the age of seven? Will she be weird if she's never tasted Chicken McNuggets or a Big Mac? Will the other kids laugh at her and make fun because she likes books? All I know is, in the suburbs, Peter and I would be failures.
