The Suburban You

by Mark Falanga

  You wait for your wife, another activity to which you have grown accustomed. You wait some more. Fifteen minutes later, you begin walking to the Fairchilds' for the second dinner that you will eat that evening.

  Be Deprived of Your Favorite Beverage

  You love fruit juices without sweetener, and purple grape juice is your very favorite, especially when mixed with sparkling water.

  After your first child was born, your wife ceased to buy grape juice for you. She never explains her rationale for this move and she never notifies you of this development. You just notice it after awhile and then you sort of forget about it. What you do realize about this development is that, for whatever reason, your wife does not want grape juice in the house, and you respect her wish.

  You cannot think of any logical reason why your wife has pursued this course of action, but you assume her logic may flow something like this. She may be concerned that if the baby sees you drinking grape juice then he may want some, too, and if he has some he might spill it. If he spills it, he may make a mess and stain something. This is one possible explanation that you have thought of for why your wife does not buy you grape juice anymore.

  The other possibility that you think of, which is a little more abstract but more in line with how your wife thinks, is that life, for your wife, with a baby, is now more work. She has less control over her time. In her mind, she has less time to do things that are for her own enjoyment because she has a baby to take care of. In order for you to share that pain with her, she will deprive you of things that she knows you enjoy, simple things in life, starting with grape juice at home. You think that she will feel better knowing that you are deprived of the things you like. Unfortunately, this principle does not apply to the things that you wish your wife would stop buying, like new towels. Rather, her theory will apply only to the things that you enjoy most in life, like purple grape juice and sex.

  You have the next seven years to dwell on this, because it is that long since you have had grape juice at home. One day, after seven years of grape-juice deprivation and a day after your dinner at the Fairchilds', you see a new sight in your refrigerator: a pitcher of grape juice. You wonder what has prompted your wife's first purchase of this delightful beverage after this seven-year hiatus. Then you recall a conversation that you had when you were over for dinner at the Fairchilds'.

  That evening, you and your friends had a funny conversation about things that your wives deprive you of, things that you really enjoy. The story about grape juice surfaces, although it is not the first example that is brought up to illustrate this phenomenon. Because of this conversation, for the first time in seven years your wife may have realized how irrational her logic was. That is unlikely.

  More likely, you suspect, is that after you tell this grape-juice story your friend's wife said to your wife, but not in front of you, “He is such a nice guy, a great husband, an involved father, a talented coach, and he builds a mean pinewood-derby car. Why don't you just go out and buy the guy some grape juice? It is so much easier than having sex.”

  The next day, you come home and there is a pitcher of grape juice waiting for you in the refrigerator. You do not have sex that night.

  Have an Affair

  You shouldn't really even be writing this story, because you don't know the people involved, you have never met them, nor do you know any of the facts. The reason that you know so much about this story is that for about a year and a half or so, at every single social event that you attend, a story about a woman—let's call her Christine—and a guy you will refer to as her golf instructor, would work its way into every conversation. It is an unusual story, because your suburb is very stable. You do not know any individual who lives in your suburb who has had an affair. You have never had an affair. You think that if this type of thing is going on then it is not talked about, but more than likely it simply does not occur. With one exception.

  For a year and a half you have listened to story after story about a woman you have never met, have never (to your knowledge) seen, and don't even know by name. You listened silently to each and every one of these stories. Christine has been married for many years and has three young elementary-school-aged children. She would take golf lessons, in a foursome, with three other women, all around forty or forty-five years old. Each week, year-round, Christine and her friends would meet with their golf instructor, François, each Tuesday at 10 A.M.

  Christine and her friends would meet with François when her husband—let's call him Bob—was at the office being an accountant, tallying columns of numbers, wishing that he owned a nudist hotel in Southern California or Palm something or other, or whatever it is that accountants do, making a living to pay the mortgage on his overpriced home and to allow his wife the freedom to stay at home with the kids and do things like take golf lessons during the day.

  Christine's golf teacher, François, is French. At age eighteen, he is still a boy in many respects, and he still lives at home with his parents. François forked over an extra $15 to get custom license plates that read GOLFPRO, which is how François likes to think of himself.

  While Christine is taking golf lessons from François with her three friends, she starts liking the part of the lesson where François would reach around her from behind to adjust her grip on the shaft of her driver. Before long, Christine would feel a little moisture between her legs when François came to this part of the lesson. François, noticing a more relaxed expression on Christine when he reached around her, would spend a little more time with her to offer some additional instruction on how firm her grip should be and exactly where her hands should be placed on the shaft of the club to maximize the power in her stroke. François, a very diligent instructor, would make sure Christine started out with the proper grip, which required frequent adjustment throughout the lesson.

  Christine's fellow students started noticing the extra attention that Christine was getting, and enjoying, from François. Before long, Christine's friends booked François for a different time, leaving Christine to go one on one with François, which, as you have heard, they did frequently. Pretty soon, Christine's neighbors began to notice a car parked outside Christine's house at various times, but always after the kids went to school and before they returned home, with license plates that read GOLFPRO. Suspicions were raised, because many people—particularly women—take golf lessons from François and know his famous plates. There was much talk among people in your suburb about this marked car outside Christine's house. Your neighbors had heard the stories that were circulating and started to put one and one together.

  One day, Christine's son came home from first grade and asked his mother why his friends were telling him that his mommy had a boyfriend who played golf. François even showed up at a holiday party that Christine and her husband, Bob, threw at their house. You heard, from those who were in attendance, that Christine paid an inordinate amount of attention to François that night, making many of her guests uncomfortable. Most left early, out of respect for Bob, because they did not want Bob to think that they were condoning Christine's behavior.

  This story has no good ending for anyone.

  Watch Your Neighbors Move

  You live in an upwardly mobile suburb. You can say this because there is evidence all around you. You witness your neighbors buy one house, then trade up to another house just a few blocks away. You observe this house-flipping and you hear about it occasionally because it is the talk at the cocktail parties that you go to. You think that this activity of frequent house-flipping may be disruptive to a family, and these frequent conversations do not really draw you in.

  One day, however, you meet a genuine house-flipper who could write a book on the topic. You meet people who, while it does not appear to be their mission, have sort of assumed house-flipping as a lifestyle. It is not what you would call an intentional activity for these people, more an involuntary activity, where you move and, just as you are settled, you move again. Like other involunt
ary activities, if you don't move you will be uncomfortable, and when you move you are not so aware of what you are doing.

  Like most of the people you have met, you meet the movers through your wife. Your wife becomes friends with your kid's buddy Paul Schiller's mom. And, because your kid's friend's mom has become your wife's friend, then you, being at the tail end of this food chain, will become friends with your kid's friend's dad. When you meet these people, you would not have guessed them to be house-flippers, but they are.

  You first meet the Schiller family when they are 90 percent completed with the renovation of their home. Because you did not know the home before they poured and poured money into it, your frame of reference is what you are told. You have had these discussions many times. People will draw imaginary lines in the air to tell you where old homes ended and new additions begin. They will gesture with two outstretched palms to describe to you where the stairway once was and will point out rooms that are now kitchens and studies that were once living rooms and bedrooms. You feign interest during these house tours but are really hoping that some kid will fall and scream so that you will have a legitimate excuse to break away.

  You know a few of what you would call top-line issues regarding this house renovation. First of all, there were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in change orders. A change order is when you plan to do one thing when you only have drawings, and your contractor gives you a price on that, and then, when you see the home under construction, you have a different idea about what it should look like, resulting in changes and thus, change orders. As you go through this house tour, you hear of one midstream change order after another. These are the changes that a contractor loves, because he knows that he has you. Predictably, a contractor will tell you that the architect should have thought of that earlier, and that in order to do it right it will cost you tens of thousands of dollars more, first to undo what has been done and then to do what will make you happy. Contractors make their money on change orders. The other thing that you conclude about this project is that the addition doubled the size of the preexisting house. There are rooms in this house that even the Schillers do not know what to call or how to use. In this renovation, you have no question that wherever there is grout it is epoxy grout.

  After two years, the project is almost complete and your new friends tell you how much of a living hell the last two years of their life have been. They were quarantined in one section of the house while the contractor took over another. They had one temporary kitchen set up in the dining room before it was moved to the living room. Dishes were washed each night in a small bathroom sink. In the middle of all of this they had a baby. Every day, there are at least five contractors in the house, all day long.

  They are happy now that the house is 90 percent done. Fireplace surrounds, molding, and things like that are the only things remaining to be completed.

  Two months later, you go to the Schillers' house to pick up Paul to take him and your son to a big field to shoot off rockets. As you pull up to the house, you notice a For Sale sign outside. You walk up to the front door and tell your new friend jokingly that someone stuck a For Sale sign on his front lawn. “We're selling,” he announces to you. “I'm a trader,” he states, “and we are ready to trade.” You are astonished.

  Two months later, the house is sold for a record price on this pricey block in this pricey suburb. The Schillers have to move out in forty-five days. You notice the sale price of $2.25 million in your suburban paper, which reports all sales, but after hearing about all those change orders you are not so sure that your friends made money on this trade. You do not ask them to confirm your impression.

  They move into a rental in the part of your suburb where you live, close to the school, the lake, and their former home. It is, at a minimum, a $10,000-per-month proposition. Your new friends decide to settle for a while in this rental while they find something suitable for themselves to buy. They are planning to rent for only a month or two, you are told, but they move their furniture, clothes, toys, sporting equipment, trampoline, bikes, stereos, tableware, TVs, and everything else to the rental and unpack all of it. They want to get their five kids situated in the manner to which they have grown accustomed.

  Four months into the rental, they find the perfect house to buy. It is a house that they will spend $1 million on and it is on a corner lot, like their last home. But there is no way that these new friends of yours can live in that million-dollar house the way it is. It is not suitable, it needs a “ton of work.” They hire an architect, who you guess will charge somewhere around $60,000 to $80,000 to work up a set of drawings and to obtain permits. The architect takes four months to develop these plans. You do the math: architect's fees plus monthly rental plus principal and interest on an $800,000 loan. You figure that without any architect's fees or other incidentals this transition is costing your friends $17,000 to $20,000 per month.

  Because your other friends know that the Schillers are your friends, you field a lot of questions about what these people are doing. “Why don't they move into their new house?” your other friends ask. “Isn't that house good enough for them?” they ask. You respond that you are not so sure what they are doing, and that you think they may not be so sure, either.

  After all that, work never begins on the new million-dollar house; it sits vacant for another six months. Two months later, you see a For Sale sign posted on the lawn of this never-lived-in house. “We are moving to Chappaqua,” your new friends announce to your wife. “We are going out looking for homes this week. Jeff got a new job.”

  They come back and Jill calls your wife. They have found a house, but it needs so much work, she tells your wife. “It is a small house,” she says. Of course it does and of course it is, your wife responds. Two months later your friends pack up and move.

  Six months later, you see in the paper, confirming what you suspected, that the house that your new friends acquired but never moved into has been sold for $200,000 less than what your new friends paid for it. The Fairchilds bought it.

  Three months later, just after the Chappaqua house renovation has wound down, your wife gets a call from Jill. “We are moving back,” she says. “We found a house, but it needs a ton of work.”

  Send and Receive Holiday Cards

  It is the holiday season. Your earliest recollections of the holiday season include the exchanging of Christmas cards among friends and family. You remember your mother and father keeping track of who sent them holiday cards when you were a young child. But, like most people, you assume, they also kept track of who did not send them a holiday card. The people on this list were delegated to friendship purgatory, so to speak, unless they had a death in the family, in which case they were legitimately excused from sending a holiday card that year. This was an important mental list, and so you grew up thinking that there were very few things that were more important than sending holiday cards to your friends and family during the holiday season. Sending holiday cards is a genetic impulse that has been passed along to you.

  It's December 5, and you ask your wife, “Honey, do we have a holiday card yet?” assuming that she has taken care of this detail that, although you have never spoken about it, is a job that you believe to be hers. You are hoping for an answer of yes, but your hopes soon fade.

  As she does every year at this time, she looks at you and asks, “Do we really need to send out a holiday card this year?” You imagine everyone you know walking around with their mental checklist, this blacklist that your parents maintained, and you respond as follows: “What are you talking about? Of course we have to send out a holiday card. It's the holiday season. What can you possibly be thinking?” Reluctantly, she acknowledges that you are right, a rare admission. “What are we going to send out?” she asks. “I don't know,” you respond, but you have noticed since moving to your suburb that every single card you get includes a photograph of kids or of entire families. Each one is elaborate and there is no money spared on t
hese once-a-year greetings. One guy you know, who does not have a wife or kids, sends out a card with a photo of his dog, Bart, on it. “Whatever we do, the card has to have a photo,” you say to your wife.

  You think back to when you were growing up. Most of the cards you received were generic and were simply purchased at a store. The majority of them had a stylized green Christmas tree on the front or some quaint, snow-covered scene. Out of the big stack of cards that came in, only one or two came with photos, and those were always from the people who lived in the largest houses that you had been to, in suburbs that were different from your own.

  You think about it and realize that there has been a cultural shift in card-giving, or, come to think of it, maybe you shifted cultures; you are not so sure which. Now you cannot send or receive a card that does not include a family photo, usually taken in some exotic locale. As if that is not enough, the exact location is usually graphically typeset in a not-to-be-missed place on the card.

  You enjoy sending out funny cards, and you want to come up with something better than the Halloween-themed Christmas card that your wife selected last year. You thought that it was odd to send out a Christmas card with a photo of your son as Frankenstein and your daughter as a fairy princess on it, and, judging from the lack of comments from your friends and family, they did, too. But the reality is that when your wife showed you the Halloween photo that she selected and thought to be the best kid photo out of the five hundred or so pictures that you had of them that year, you rejected it outright when she asked for your opinion. You told her that you thought it was inappropriate to send out a Christmas card with a photo of your kids dressed for Halloween, and suggested that if she wanted your friends and family to see that photo perhaps you could send out a Halloween card next October. This opinion, which you offered to your wife upon her request, like many opinions that you offer, did not matter to her. She liked that Halloween picture and that was the only good photo that you had of the kids, according to her.