The Suburban You Read online

  Your wife, who you would say is more than comfortable having attention directed her way and who is very funny when it is, looks genuinely startled and says, “Donna, what is wrong?” She self-inspects, holding her glass away from her, in the air, so that she can see more of herself, expecting to see her left breast exposed, as she scoots away from the table a bit to see what Donna may be seeing. She cannot detect anything unusual or anything out of place. She is puzzled.

  “Diane,” Donna says, “you are drinking from the water pitcher.” Your wife, who is seated next to you, looks at her “glass” and says again, “Donna, what are you talking about?” “That's the water pitcher,” Donna repeats. You and everyone else at the table take stock of this situation, and, sure enough, Donna is right. Your wife, perhaps thinking that she was the honored guest, assumed that she was served water in the extra-big glass, a carafe-sized “glass” that was way bigger than any other glass on the table. The glass that, your wife admits to everyone, was a little awkward to drink from because that funny protrusion, the lip of the pitcher, kept interfering with the smooth transfer of water from this serving container into her mouth.

  Your wife, at this juncture, has two ways in which she could react, but only one comes to her mind. Option one is that she get embarrassed in front of this warm extended family that she is meeting on this occasion for this special Christmas dinner that for the first time opened up this special holiday to nonfamily members. This, of course, is not your confident wife's style. In the nineteen years that you have known your wife, you have never seen her embarrassed in any situation; you do not anticipate this reaction from her today, and you are not let down.

  Option two is that she make a joke of it, which she does well. She tells you all that early on, when she noticed that the largest and most formidable glass at the table was placed before her, she assumed that she was being welcomed into this family as an extra-special guest. She told everyone that she thought it was an Italian tradition, an “Italian custom at Christmas,” she said, a way to welcome nonfamily guests. She told everyone that she was wondering what all of these other glasses were for, given the fact that the one that was placed directly in front of her was so large and had the capacity to hold as much beverage as all the others sitting in front of her combined. She told you that she questioned why anyone would drink from those small glasses when there was such a large glass.

  Everyone laughed and laughed uncontrollably and since then you all have been invited back for Christmas dinner with the Sclafannis each year. Your wife can always find her place setting at this dinner table. It is the one with the really, really large glass of water sitting in front of it.

  Go to a New Year's Party

  It is New Year's, and there are many parties that you are invited to. In some respects, it is a difficult night, because when you RSVP you want to do so in a timely way but you also want to hedge your bets and maintain your flexibility in the event that a better invitation comes along.

  You, of course, are not consulted in this process, as your wife, for this first night of the year, is making the plans without your input, just as she has done all of last year and will do all this year and the next. Why should this first night, you ask, be different than any other night? You know one resolution that your wife is not making this New Year.

  Forty-five minutes before you have to leave the house, your wife informs you that you will be going over to the Girards' that night. You think that this sounds pretty good. You enjoy parties at the Girards'. They are informal and they attract your core group and then some others. You are grateful on this night that your wife has notified you an additional fifteen minutes earlier than she usually does for events of this nature.

  You go to the Girards' and find that a good crowd is there. The energy is good, there are a lot of kids running around, and there are many people from your core group. You can kick back and enjoy it all. Gary always has some good red wine, and on this first night of the New Year you enjoy that. You roam from room to room. You get tired of listening to one guy, who you just met, talk about his job, so you move on with the excuse that you need a refill. You circulate and you think about how you like this style of party more than most others. You are a free agent, you can meander in and out of conversations as you please.

  It is 10:15 and your wife comes over to see how you are doing. You tell her that you think that this is a terrific party and that you are so happy that she selected this party to come to. You tell her that this will be a fun place to be at midnight and that the kids, with many of their friends, are having a blast. To this your wife responds, “Honey, we have to go over to the Jensens' now. We were supposed to be there fifteen minutes ago.” You think that she has had as much wine to drink as you have and that she is goofing you with this news, but then you remember that she does not drink wine and her “Come on, let's get over there now” expression tells you that you are on your way. “The kids can stay,” she tells you. The Jensens' is not a kid party, and that is the first clue that the Jensens' party will be different from the Girards'.

  On the drive over to the Jensens', you ask your wife what this party is all about and you ask why she double-booked on New Year's. Before she gets a chance to answer the question you asked, you are at the front door and Alyssa Jensen opens it for you. You walk in and everyone you see is dressed in ties, sport coats, some suits even, and evening dresses. Everyone is seated at formal place settings. The average age in the living/dining room, where people are seated formally with extensive place settings before them, is at least fifteen years older than the average age of you and your wife, who is five years your junior.

  Alyssa directs you through the dining room, past an entire dining table full of people whom you do not recognize, into the living room, where there are three round tables of about ten people each, whom you do not recognize. She directs you to the center table and points to a place setting with your name on it and then escorts your wife to the opposite side of the table. You are seated between two people you have never seen before, and you are committed. You are no longer free to roam and you are no longer a free agent. Your host, who is really funny, who you would like to be seated with, is sitting at one of the other tables. He is too far away to talk to, and his funny commentary will be out of your audible range. There is wine on each table that you assume came from Russell's wine cellar, and for that you are happy. You know that the wine Russell serves from his cellar is stronger than most others and you hope that trend continues tonight. You fill up your glass to the brim.

  You are next to a man who lives two suburbs away and owns a large contracting business. Having confirmed his hunch that you work for a large real-estate company, he goes on to tell the entire table that fifteen years ago he built out an office for a company that no longer exists in one of the buildings that you manage. He announces to your entire table how unaccommodating your building was to his firm during that project, before you were there, and how terrible it was to do work there. He makes some analogy to the mob after you have stopped listening.

  You detest these comments, in part because you have committed the past ten years of being a corporate executive to making this building one of the most accommodating places of its kind anywhere. His story is stale and is further from the truth now as it was then, but there is no way to convince this man of that fact. He is set in his thinking, is insistent that everyone at your table understand his point of view, and at a New Year's Eve party you do not want to ring in the New Year by defending the building that you manage. You are through listening to this man, but you know now that he will not do work in this office building ever again.

  You turn to your left and start talking with the woman who is seated next to you, who lives in another suburb. She does nothing but complain about her house, how this room is not quite right and how they can never get the water to the right temperature. You tire of listening to this rich person talk of her petty, fabricated hardships. You look to your wife, who realizes, like you
do, that you are into the first of many courses of this dinner. There is no way out.

  A sparkle comes to your wife's eye. Two minutes later, she informs the table that she absolutely must go back to the Girards' and put your five-year-old daughter, who is under the weather, to bed. She leaves. You are flying solo between Mr. Contractor and Mrs. Million-Dollar-House-Is-Not-Quite-Right. Twenty minutes later, the Jensens' phone rings. Alyssa, the hostess, taps you on the shoulder and informs you that you must go home immediately, that your under-the-weather daughter is overly tired and is demanding that she see Daddy.

  You smile inside and look rushed as you leave, like you are on some big, important mission. You get into the suburban cab that you called from the Jensens' and get driven to the Girards' and you are once again a free man, a man of flow, roaming from room to room. That first night, your entire family rings in the New Year together.

  See Holiday Lights in Your Neighborhood

  It is early February. It gets dark at 4:45 P.M. and it is cold. Because it is cold, you run into few of your neighbors except for David Golob, who, over the course of the winter, will tell you on at least sixteen occasions that he loves you. In winter, people move purposefully from their detached garages to their houses. Very few people are out for walks or bike rides. Your suburb is dormant.

  You think back fondly on how warm and cheerful the neighborhood looked just two short months ago. Most of the houses were decorated with colorful holiday lights. Conifer trees on front lawns were wrapped in lights capped with stars, and houses were decorated like wedding cakes, with those new icicle lights that everyone in your suburb seems to prefer now over the older-style, single-strand lights.

  In late December, you spend a lot of time driving around the neighborhood with your family marveling at the decorated houses. Most people in your suburb are fairly moderate in their approach to holiday home decorating. You attribute that to the fact that most people have better things to do with their time than climb ladders in the dead of winter to string lights that usually don't work until you jiggle them just right. To your surprise, professional light decorators, for some reason, have not yet emerged in your suburb. You suspect they will someday.

  You reminisce with your family about how beautiful and warm all those house decorations make your suburb feel, even though they are not nearly as elaborate as they are in a city neighborhood where you take your family each holiday season. In that neighborhood, a place that you refer to as the suburb-in-the-city, a culture has developed that seems to encourage people to go all out with their decorations in a kind of competition. It is February 2 and now all those holiday lights are down. Even the Philips', whom you remember calling last year on the evening of February 11, when you drove by their house after picking up your daughter from a playdate at the Fords' to inform them that Christmas was over.

  You yearn for that season again, the season when all these houses, which now look so bleak, could come to life again with their sparkly, colorful lights. But you come to the sad realization that you have another eleven months before this special time of year rolls around again.

  Wait a minute, not so fast: the night when you see the neighborhood lit up with optimism and life may not be as far away as you think. You remember the Franz house. Of all the neighbors in your suburb, the Franzes take their holiday decorating most seriously. The unconfirmed rumor is that Mr. Franz owns his own electrical-contracting business. That is one plausible reason why this house radiates with lights on every square inch of its surface. Another is that the Franzes moved to your suburb from the suburb-in-the-city and brought their house-decorating culture along with them. This is a house that is always decorated; it is a house that is just a canvas for lights. For the Franzes, every day presents an occasion to have their house decorated so as to delight the neighbors, though you are not so sure that everyone is so delighted, especially their across-the-street neighbors.

  On this particular day, you count the days after the last holiday and before the next one. You recall that, no matter what the evening, the Franzes' home is always lit up. One holiday transitions into another. For any given holiday there are phases of decorations, with the first phase often being more excessive than anything that anyone else in the neighborhood will do. There are usually at least three phases until the final effect of lights and decorations is achieved.

  Before you know it, Christmas turns into a winter-wonderland theme, where Santa, his reindeer, the illuminated snowman, the candy canes, the workshop, the elves, the gifts, and the Noel sign affixed to the roof give way to fully wrapped deciduous trees and a partial house wrap with the words “Happy Winter” emblazoned on the roof, in place of “Noel.” Before you know it, it is mid-January, and not too early to begin thinking about Valentine's Day. The white lights give way to red ones, which cover the house and the trees, and the hedges are wrapped with hearts.

  A week after Valentine's Day, the red lights start turning green. At first you are puzzled, thinking that there is a reversion back to Christmas, before you remember St. Patrick's Day. Over the next week, the red is gone and everything is lit up green. Green shamrocks and illuminated leprechauns are everywhere. You wonder if Franz is an Irish name, which would help explain all this enthusiasm for the good St. Patrick.

  After the seventeenth, big bunnies start populating the lawn and roof. Baskets of Easter eggs, as tall as the first two stories of the house, are placed on the front lawn. The Easter theme then transitions to a May spring theme. Lit-up flowers and vertical rows of white colored lights, which you imagine represent a May shower, decorate the house. But then you remember that the showers are in April—April showers; May flowers, stupid—and you become confused at those vertical strands of white lights, not knowing what they represent.

  It's June, and Flag Day is coming up. Red, white, and blue dominate and you assume the theme will carry the house through to the Fourth of July, but you are wrong. An entirely different red-white-and-blue theme emerges, with lights fanning out as they reach the roofline, representing fireworks. You excitedly await the August transition, but the Franzes have not been successful yet in figuring out how to choreograph their August light theme. Either that or they are on vacation.

  You would think that the savings on the Commonwealth Edison electric bill would extend through mid-September, but you are proven wrong when during the third week of September the first phase of orange lights emerges. Over the next week and a half, pumpkins, witches, goblins, and ghosts crop up in three phases.

  November brings on the turkeys, Pilgrims, and cornucopia filled with inflated corn on the cob as long as the front walk.

  Then the big one, Phase I of Christmas, commences on December 1.

  On this second day of February, when you want to experience the visual warmth of house lights, you pile your family in the car and drive by the Franzes'. You see the hearts and red lights and you think to yourself how glad you are that you did not buy the Metcalfs' house, which is directly across the street.

  Go Black-Light Bowling

  There is a windowless bowling alley in your suburb. The owners, a couple who each time you have seen them are wearing tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirts, fixed it up a bit and put black lights everywhere. There are many kids' birthday parties in this bowling alley, especially for kids who were born in the winter.

  Once a year or so, you get together with a group of your friends to bowl and drink beer. These nights are fun, but it always surprises you that these evenings are initiated and planned by the women in the group, because black lights make anything that is white or brightly colored look like it is glowing. That is the whole idea of black-light bowling; the effect looks cool and it is an effect that most people do not use in their homes, not even the Franzes, who seem to display every kind of light imaginable. The interesting thing about black lights, you learn after attending your first adults' party at the black-light bowling alley, is that the black lights pick up on hair that is dyed blond, but not naturally blond hair. You re
alize for the first time that pretty much every woman in your social circle dyes her hair blond, and you know this because just about every woman's hair glows in this black-light bowling alley. You do not see any guy that you know with glowing hair, not yet, anyway, but just about every woman has it.

  A group of women with glowing hair has formed in a tight conversational circle by Lane 4, and you suspect that they may be discussing how embarrassed they feel because of their glowing hair. Having a sudden interest in bowling on Lane 3, you curiously walk by this recently formed glowing ring of women to see exactly how embarrassed they really are about their hair, only to overhear them making plans for next year's black-light bowling night.

  Go Ice Skating with Your Friends

  You grew up playing hockey, and every boy you knew who skated when you were growing up skated on hockey skates, except three boys named Charlie, Jim, and Ted, who skated on figure skates, and who as adults preferred to be called Charles, James, and Theodore.

  As an ex-hockey player, you have no other choice than to bring your boy up skating with hockey skates. This rule is part of an unspoken code that all hockey players share. Except one, your friend Rick.

  One Saturday, you and your daughter meet Rick, his wife, and their kids at an outdoor rink. Your son is home sick and is bummed out that he is not there with you and you are bummed out that there was no reason to bring him to his swim lesson with Annika today. Like you, Rick played hockey growing up. Like you, hockey was Rick's No. 1 sport, and, unlike you, Rick now plays hockey in a men's league and last year played a game with the New York Rangers, for which you assume he paid a massive sum of money. You suspect that he is a better hockey player than you, but this is something that you will never, ever admit to him.