Perhaps being spoiled in youth is good, as long as the system that creates the spoiling will always function. Besides, if kids worked in ice-cream parlors or as baggers after school, they’d be taking wages from adults trying to support families. Immigrants and the unemployed formed lines for jobs at Burger King. Forty hours per week at the federal minimum wage left a head of household below the poverty line. Margo and her friends talked about the Oscars, celebrity sex scandals and foreign-policy blunders—they didn’t talk about one American in eight being in poverty. There was upside: lots of adults seeking low-wage positions meant pizza delivery would be fast and yardwork cheap.
Awaiting her guests, Margo was on the phone talking to a friend and also intently inspecting her laptop. This is what you would have overheard if you were the nosy sort.
“Okay, January is out. There’s so much picking up from the holidays anyway. You spend a month preparing for something that’s over in thirty minutes, then the kids say, ‘Is that all?’ Let’s look at February. Can’t do the first weekend. The next weekend we’re skiing in Utah depending on depth. Not that weekend either; I’m in San Francisco, then Tom is in London. During the week? Monday nights are my kickboxing class, the teacher is an ex-Marine with ripped abs. Sure you could come along!”
She paused to listen, then resumed: “Tuesday, Tom plays basketball. Wednesday night is PTA. Can’t miss it.” If asked, Margo would have explained that at-home moms needed to be present in force at the PTA to outvote the professional moms. That way the at-homes could deliberately schedule school events in the afternoon, forcing the professional moms to leave work early. The at-home mothers considered it essential to generate guilt in the professional mothers, if only to have a point on which to feel self-righteous. Margo was uneasy with this, but determined to maintain her influence with the PTA. That meant putting up with the bitchy moms—a substantial faction in any affluent community—who spent their days trying to think of something to complain about.
Back to her call: “Thursdays are out, peak homework night. Parents were saying academics weren’t strict enough, teachers took their revenge by assigning more homework because they know the parents are really doing it. Friday nights Tom just collapses. I mix him his martini and he can barely lift it. Microwave martinis? I hadn’t heard. March is tricky, spring sports leagues start. Let’s look at April. No, can’t do that day. I’m meeting with the college admission consultant. Megan is eleven, can’t start too early. May is—damn, can you hold a minute?”
The friend said something. “I hate call-waiting too,” Margo replied. “The only benefit of call-waiting is that you can be rude to two people simultaneously. But that’s productivity, right?”
She took the new call, asking, “Is there a problem?” Margo began to speak very slowly, as if verbally capitalizing words. “On the Alaskan-southwestern pizza, half an order of grilled halibut and one order of twice-marinated grilled carne asada steak.” Everyone said “grilled carne asada steak” though “carne asada” means grilled steak. “No. Not a double order of halibut and two orders of steak, that comes to four orders. Half an order of fish and one order of meat. No, not a double half order of each. Half an—” Switching to a language similar to Spanish, she said, placing emphasis on “supervisor”: “¿May excuzzo, puedo hablar por favor votre supervisor?”
There was a pause as someone else came on the phone. “Yes, we want a half an— You know what? Just substitute the blackened mango trout burritos, okay?”
Margo returned to the first call. “You were surfing with your phone while you waited? That’s great. I can’t watch movies on my phone—my phone is so old-fashioned. Okay, we’re into June. Bad month, end-of-school-year events plus band concerts. Then camp driving starts. June twenty-seventh, we could do a late brunch, say one forty-five, but we’d have to be finished by three. You’re already booked those hours? What about Fourth of July, have you got plans? We could do a picnic, you think? Okay, I’ve put you down for picnic on the Fourth of July. Call me around Valentine’s Day to see if we’re still on. Bye-bye.”
Lillian knocked at the door, and Margo was glad to behold her. Scripture talks of countenance. To Margo, her friend had a countenance to behold, rather than a face to be seen.
Lillian complimented the new furniture, ordered in a custom brocade. Margo mentioned the price and her friend was shocked. “Every month the American Express bill is bigger than the mortgage,” Margo explained.
“According to the newspapers, that makes you a patriot,” Lillian replied.
Lillian had grown up on Long Island, and though her New York twang was lost in years of studying abroad, still called her hometown region long-GUY-land, as if with a liaison. An only child, she came from a forlorn household where almost every night the shouting between her father and mother would begin at nine P.M., as if cued by some unseen, sadistic theatrical director. She learned early to retreat and cower. It was almost worse because the shouting had nothing to do with the child, her parents being so wrapped up in their rituals of grievance against each other, they barely seemed aware Lillian could hear their screamed denigration. Some blame the world for their problems, some blame themselves, others blame whomever is closest. Lillian’s parents fell into the latter category. When she left for college, Lillian did not come home for summers or holidays. After the first year, her parents didn’t ask her to.
She did well in graduate school, then landed a tenure-track teaching job on her first try. It helped to have an obscure specialty, so no one else on the faculty could be sure whether you knew what you were talking about. Initially Lillian was surprised to find herself surrounded by others with stories of terrible growing-up situations. First she thought the other college professors who told tales of woe about childhood merely were engaging in the contest of fashionable gloom that is upper academia. Then Lillian began to realize large numbers of people were unhappy about their childhoods, at least in retrospect. Many felt their one shot at carefree youth had been stolen from them by callous adults, skipping over the fact that the callous adults were in most cases the same people who gave them their one shot at carefree youth by sacrificing their own one shot at carefree middle age.
People who looked back in anger on childhood hailed from all walks of life. But only small numbers—writers, professors, TV personalities—were in positions to make their dissatisfaction known. Eventually Lillian came to feel that many who talked obsessively about childhood disappointments weren’t really choleric about their cold parents or nasty teachers or the cliquish cool kids in high school or the football coach who didn’t let them play or the drama teacher who didn’t cast them in the school show. What they were mad about was life: which starts off without responsibilities or disappointments, then becomes one bummer after another. Realizing this, Lillian henceforth kept her feelings about her early years to herself.
She settled into adulthood reasonably smoothly, other than disliking weekends. Weeknights she enjoyed: on them, she was expected to be concerned about work, and to hit the sack early. Friday and Saturday nights, when you’re supposed to be invited to something and stay out late, Lillian could have done without.
Having mentioned newspapers, Lillian picked up that morning’s from a sideboard. The headlines concerned a political scandal: furious accusations, heated denials, a commission appointed. The whole matter certainly sounded shocking.
“I read the story and by the end wasn’t sure what, exactly, the senator was accused of,” Lillian said.
“Oh, I love political scandals,” Margo declared with an enthusiasm that was genuine. “When I lived in Chicago, there was always a new one. Each day you’d think, ‘It’s finally happened, every possible form of graft has been tried.’ Then you’d wake up the next morning, unfold the paper, and discover some completely new venality. Reassuring, in a way—to realize there would never be any limit to the ability of the human mind to devise ways to cheat.”
“Reporters seem to live for scandals.”
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sp; “Chance to be negative, every journalist’s dream,” Margo said.
“I went out with a reporter once,” Lillian said. Her former boyfriends were a regular topic of conversation, and if there was one who did not deserve to be in the dock at The Hague, Lillian had not gotten to him. “From The Washington Post,” she continued. “He was very aggressive—kept asking about my finances. In restaurants, he looked at other women while he talked to me. Once I asked how he can be so sure of his stories and he said, ‘We always have two sources for every fact we distort.’ I had to point out that he meant report, not distort.’”
“They’re such similar words.”
“Yes, aren’t they.”
The front door opened again and Tom, Ken and Nicole entered. Tom was good-looking and outgoing, never testy, the kind of person who is expected by those around him to do well. He seemed to have something important on his mind even when he did not. Since his youth, when people he knew were unsure on some question or small controversy, they’d say, “Let’s ask Tom.”
Margo always felt better when he was near. She could sense Tom’s presence in the house: not that she’d hear him talking or walking—she’d know. When Tom was out of town she would take one of his T-shirts from the laundry basket, unwashed, and sleep in it, because it smelled like him.
“Even huge as that thing is, you can just nail people at stoplights,” Ken was saying. They were animated and speaking loudly, as if they’d just come from a rock concert or rodeo or similar high-energy event.
“Yeah? Fast?” Tom asked.
“Mojo fast. Plus people get out of your way. I had the dealer install extra-bright high beams and blackout windows to make it look menacing. When you’re in something that big and fast, you cut people off anytime you want.”
“Ken likes to cut people off,” Nicole noted.
“Your SUV sounds great,” Tom said. “But don’t you worry about global warming?”
“Sure—I worry global warming won’t happen fast enough for those lakefront acres I bought in Buffalo to become a play. If the climate warms like they’re predicting, in twenty years Buffalo will have ideal weather. Millionaires will build vacation homes there and sip wine as they watch the sun set behind the abandoned slag towers. I’m on the ground floor of that land rush. Anyway, if I don’t waste gasoline, somebody else will.”
Ken turned to Lillian, who walked the city and bicycled around the campus, but kept a tiny, high-mileage compact of the type that resembles a Flintstones car with a hole at the bottom to pedal using your feet. Lillian used it on weekends and to drive to Margo’s, always feeling a wave of trepidation when she left the downtown streets and joined a freeway to the suburbs, the traffic moving so, so fast.
“Lilly,” Ken told her, “get rid of that hybrid and put yourself in something that seats eight. It’s survival of the fittest out there on the road. If Charles Darwin were here, he would be first in line at the dealership for an SUV, I’m telling you.”
She disliked being addressed as Lilly. “SUVs are irresponsible and dangerous,” she said.
Ken replied, “That’s the whole point!”
Tom kissed Margo, who explained there was a foul-up with the delivery because she was taking a flyer on the new Alaskan-Mexican place. They’d had so much Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex, she wanted to try AK-Mex.
“A Thai-Lebanese tapas restaurant just opened near my apartment,” Lillian said. She often ordered out, believing food tastes better when it’s cooked by someone you have never met. Margo had been in Lillian’s apartment and was worried to discover the refrigerator contained only yogurt and fruit. To Margo, a dwelling should be well stocked with meats, cheeses, pastas, milk, juices, breads, vegetables, beer and whiskey. But then she had children and a husband; Lillian had neither. Besides, there were dozens of restaurants within walking distance of Lillian’s place, and she enjoyed taking her meals out, including breakfast and afternoon tea. Being handed a menu Lillian found to be one of life’s consistent pleasures.
“Who wants wine?” Margo asked, giving Tom a bottle to open. The vintage was recommended by a gourmet magazine. Margo received several, though she’d never subscribed to any. Gourmet magazines just arrive at the house if you’re spending enough. Somehow they know.
“I love those magazines, I always clip the recipes Ken would like,” Nicole said. She was perfectly turned out, and wore high heels even when no one else was present. “I never actually cook the recipes for Ken, but at least I have them.” Her husband laughed in a vigorous way. He liked Nicole to seem flighty. If Nicole had wanted to discuss, say, the state of emergency just declared in Pakistan, that would have upset Ken. Not the subject, rather that Nicole showed an interest in it.
The restaurant called with word the deliveryman would be late. “What assholes,” Ken said.
Tom had put himself through college with numerous odd jobs, including as a pizza driver, and so was offended by this comment. He proposed there should be sympathy for deliverymen—it’s a hard way to make ends meet. “Delivery work is real work,” Tom said. “And the car is your own; if it breaks down, that wipes out a week’s wages.”
“What is hard about sitting on a seat and pressing a pedal?” Ken asked. “The poor of the past did backbreaking labor in the sun. Today a poor person can earn tips driving an air-conditioned car, then stop someplace for a double burger with free extra fries.” Nicole looked on her husband admiringly as he continued, “The land of opportunity! Supersizing, jobs with no immigration status check—just two of the reasons half the world is trying to sneak across our borders.”
Experience had taught that it would be only a matter of moments until Ken began to discourse on government selling out the nation to the Muslims and the gays. Ken, who cheated on his taxes and had never once made the effort to vote, possessed high standards regarding how everyone else should serve the country. Margo changed the subject by asking Tom if the quarterly numbers had come in.
“They were supposed to, but it’s looking like Monday. We’re expecting a big stock-price bump when these numbers are announced.” Corsair had gone public, and Tom exercised the large number of share options granted him years before when the firm was a startup. With the company’s price rising, he thought the timing was right to sell the shares and take his profit. Margo had been urging him to do so.
The unsold shares were a ghostly presence in their lives. As farm wives and husbands argue about what day on which to sell the crop to the co-op, Tom and Margo argued about when to cash out the shares. For two years Margo had wanted to sell, bank whatever money the stock would fetch and solidify the family’s future. She knew that, like the country, they were living well but not saving. Millions of Americans were spending as if tomorrow would never come. Tomorrow has a way of coming.
Tom wanted to bide their time and let the price run up. Now, with the stock market hitting an all-time high, he thought the moment had arrived. Margo was delighted by his decision, just reached, to start selling the shares.
“So the company’s in good shape,” Lillian said.
“Fantastic. Five years ago we had a handful of people working in a converted warehouse with pull-grate elevators. Now we’re a listed company with two hundred and ninety employees in three states and almost $30 billion under management. America—this is the country of up. Living standards, life spans, profits—everything goes up.” Ken was scowling as Tom spoke.
“Skirts certainly go up,” Margo said. “I had Caroline and Megan at the mall after school. It terrifies me how little the high-school girls are wearing, and that’s what Caroline and Megan admire.”
“Up, up, up,” Tom said. “Each generation has more than the generation before, and I don’t think that’s ever going to end. When our parents were young, a bungalow house and a car, that was the American Dream. Now the average home is four bedrooms and the average family has three cars. That’s the average!” Tom was delighted by that statistic. “The only direction this country can go is up.” He put his arms arou
nd Margo. “Starting Monday, I will sell the legal maximum of our shares. You and I and the girls will be set for life.”
“You never know about stock prices,” Ken said. “The market is fickle.” He made the comment sound oily.
“You’re the one who talked me out of selling six months ago!” Tom laughed. “You said I’d do much better to wait a little longer.”
The doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of the deliveryman. Tom paid. Ken opened a second bottle of wine.
“I hope you didn’t tip too much,” Nicole said. She viewed tipping people in everyday circumstances as a complete waste of money: they would never see that deliveryman again; she would never see a waitress or hotel car valet again, so why hand them money? Then at wedding receptions or other society events where her social acquaintances were present she would hand out twenties as if they were gumdrops, waving them first in order to be noticed.
“Tom always tips too much,” said Margo. When they were dating, she wondered if he was trying to impress her. But he kept up tipping too much after marriage. Margo added, “And Tom gives dollar bills to the homeless men who stand at intersections and beg from cars stopped at red lights.”
“Some guy standing at an intersection holding a foam cup, he needs a dollar bill more than I do.”
“But you have to roll down the window,” Margo said. “It’s creepy.”
“In a free country,” Nicole said, “if you don’t have money, you must blame yourself. That’s one of the great things about America.”
Tom had long since stopped trying to reason with Nicole, and so addressed the others: “As long as we are paying a large amount to a distant company, that’s fine. But hand a buck to another human being, that’s strange.”
“When you cash out your shares, why don’t you downshift?” Lillian suggested. “Move to a college town in some leafy place, live on half as much. Sit on the porch and watch the sunset.”
The Leading Indicators Page 3