It'd Be Rude Not To

Everyone is perfect in this town, at least outwardly so. It can be occasionally liberating but more often tends to be unsettling in a way that is difficult to vocalize. Like a chill up the spine or an unyielding stare from a neighborhood alley cat. Still, I do my best to fit in, donning the suburban camouflage that identifies me as a member of the pack when out on the town or, in this case, walking to the neighbors’ house.

Khakis, polo shirt, and stylish but sensible loafers.

The loafers are torture on my large feet, and I find the ornamentation to be unnecessarily delicate. The inert polo shirt is useless aside from its regionally acceptable appearance. It itches, it binds, it offends. My skin seems to recoil every time it comes into contact with it. And yet I wear it anyway because some universal force seems to be intimating that I do not have a choice in the matter.

No complaints about the khakis, though. Top notch all the way. If forced to, I’d have no problem sleeping in them.

I could hear Caroline harrumphing in the bathroom, fussing with the travails of femininity. Hair and makeup, fit and color, belts and brassieres. It would be a miracle if we got through the night without an incident.

I tread carefully in these moments, acutely aware of how easily anger toward a situation can morph into anger toward the person in closest proximity to the angered party. What tortured lives waiters and waitresses must endure.

Without realizing it, I stepped on the one wonky floorboard in the bedroom. The same floorboard I had been promising to fix for the better part of a decade.

“Honestly, Jonathan,” Caroline said from the bathroom, “how hard is it to fix a creaky floor? How many years has it been?”

It was time to swiftly and smoothly direct her ire back onto the original source. There is a subtlety to this. I must address her concern in some way because ignoring things completely will only lead to chaos. But I do so with a soft, firm voice. No emotion. Zero derision. This is nobody’s fault, my voice seems to suggest, just the way things are. Once her complaint is registered and acknowledged, the subject must be changed immediately and with emotion, preferably referencing something we both abhor.

Mutual hatred is what truly keeps marriages alive.

“Tricky business, flooring,” I said. “A lot of factors to consider. Tools and such.”

Wait for it.

“Who eats potato salad, anyway?” I asked. “Moreover, who actually likes potato salad?”

“The entire neighborhood, apparently. God, don’t get me started. A bunch of unrelated ingredients forced together by way of a gelatinous milquetoast condiment. It’s insulting.”

“Like goulash minus the cultural history.”

“Exactly. And it smells like feet. Why does it smell like feet, Jonathan? You’re the food expert.”

“I don’t know about that. But I would imagine it’s the sulfurous odor of the hard-boiled eggs mixed with the warm potatoes. Not to mention the eggs in the mayonnaise. Don’t get me started on the celery and radishes. One of America’s great failures, I would suppose.”

“We’re going to have to eat some, of course,” Caroline said. Equal parts statement and question.

“It’d be rude not to.”

I swooped in just in time to zip up the back of her dress, taking in the unmistakable scent of the woman I could not live without. I kissed her exposed neck lightly, mildly confident that all thoughts of creaking floorboards had been squashed.

“The first time I ever saw potato salad, I was certain I wouldn’t like it,” Caroline said. “My first instinct as a child was right. Why do you suppose that is?”

“Textural inference, I would surmise. It tastes like it looks. Sloppy, unapologetic. Savagely American.”

“Perhaps we were French in another life.”

“Perhaps,” I said, smiling. “À la mode. Hors d’oeuvre. Steak frites.”

“Mmm, yes,” she said as I lightly massaged her shoulders. “Definitely French.”

With eyes locked in the bathroom mirror, a knowing look washed over our faces. Caroline opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out two airline bottles of vodka.

We’re not alcoholics by any means. Vodka in the medicine cabinet simply falls under the auspices of We’re adults and we can do what we want. We wouldn’t find enlightenment or acceptance at the bottom of these bottles, but they would at least get us from here to there with a bit more enthusiasm, which is really the best we could hope for.

Caroline finished her bottle a few seconds after me and tossed it in the garbage.

“Let’s do the damn thing,” she said, kissing me on the cheek.

The door opened before we had a chance to knock.

Clearly our arrival had been eagerly anticipated. The stench of freshly slapped together potato salad rushed past our noses and into the air, adding depth to the unmistakable smells of late summer: smoke and meat, chlorine and corn on the cob, faint odors of jasmine and spent fireworks.

Herb greeted us with a hearty hello while simultaneously placing ice cold beers into our hands, a skill at which he was particularly adept. Caroline and I both put on our best smiles and took a healthy pull of our beers as we waded deeper into the Penneys’ rumpus room. The door closed abruptly behind us, sealing us inside to mingle with the less desirable aromas of suburbia.

Sue waved to us from the dining room, framed by a large sliding glass door and a huge oak table with a comically large bowl of Sue’s specialty playing center stage. The barbecued chicken and asparagus flanked it on each side, relegated to second and third fiddle.

An audible sigh emanated from the depths of Caroline’s chest, and I squeezed her hand firmly to bring her back into the moment. She straightened up and took a few swigs of beer, directing a forced smile in my direction as she squeezed my hand back in acknowledgement.

A moment later, Sue pulled Caroline toward the kitchen as Herb simultaneously led me toward the den.

I couldn’t speak for Caroline, but whenever the Penneys separated the pack like this, I felt as though they were buttering us up for some sort of time-share presentation. Better to address us separately, use the familiarity and camaraderie of gender to cleave us from our wallets.

I locked eyes with Caroline.

We shared a look, some sort of longing for something we were sure would not be found in this house, nor perhaps in this neighborhood. Our eyes remained locked until the lines and barriers that make up a house no longer allowed it.

Herb taught ancient history at the university. He’d attained tenure a few years back and loosened his standards a bit as a result. One of his classes, like mine, had become quite the success among undergrads as a go-to elective that never disappointed. With a name like “Beer and the Ancient Pyramids: You Can’t Have One Without the Other,” I could see why.

He’d become rather obsessed with the subject of beer making and had infected Sue with this same obsession. Together they became the thing. They clung to its history and promoted it to anyone who would listen, anyone who had no choice but to listen in the name of neighborly discourse. I always found myself wondering if they truly enjoyed this propagation of knowledge or if they simply clung to it for fear that there was nothing else about them worth remembering.

Herb’s den was simple enough. A poker table, a transistor radio, and a box of cigars on a bookshelf among other trinkets and pictures that define a quotidian existence.

The art was a different story.

Historical photos. Modern, not ancient. Framed black-and-white photographs depicting the less serious side of war and hatred. The first, a powder monkey, no more than eleven years old, leaning confidently on one of the many cannons on the USS New Hampshire, circa 1864. The second, a 1934 photo of the headquarters of Benito Mussolini and the Italian Fascist Party. A large banner with the word "SI" repeated twelve times across and eleven times down draped over the front of the brick building. In the middle, the protruding papier-mâché-like head of Mussolini, bursting from the building like a mascot on a cereal box.

Go Fascism!, it seemed to say.

On the far wall was the most bizarre and darkly comic of them all: a surreal photo of a KKK carnival, men in full white hooded regalia sitting stoic in the baskets of a Ferris wheel.

I found myself lost in this last photo for quite some time, attempting to resolve this strange amalgamation of antipathy and delight. Were they smiling underneath those hoods? Or were they as joyless as their ridiculous outfits made them look?

Herb hadn’t seemed to notice.

Hops and barley. IPAs and lagers and pilsners. Top-fermented, bottom-fermented. Casks and kegs. I had heard this spiel many times before, so I knew I could go on autopilot a bit until I reached a certain mental bookmark, at which point I would nod or offer a half smile, perhaps look as though I was ruminating on one of his points as I gazed out the window and dreamed of anywhere else but here.

At times I would be expected to volley a number of useless platitudes in his direction.

Good things come to those who wait.

Hard work pays off.

It’s not rocket science.

The customer is always right.

I would get lost in these inert sayings, interchanging one for another, digging deeper into a dark well of banalities until finally Herb seemed pleased with the exchange, his red cheeks glowing with delight and some kind of nutritional imbalance, I figured.

C’est la vie.

I am a collector of things. Nothing in particular. Certainly nothing that would elicit zeal comparable to Herb’s love of a good brew. I could never really settle on one thing. I just always thought I ought to be the kind of man with a collection of some importance. Coins, stamps, quirky treasury bills from remote countries. A collector has topics with which to converse. A built-in backup plan for dull conversation.

Stamps seemed appealing. I could collect these stamps and research the people and things on them. Topical conversation about dignitaries and ballplayers, poets and prophets. I could become my father, armed always with an interesting tidbit.

Good conversation has always felt elusive to me.

I would often look at Herb after these exchanges — I would study his features with rigor and determination — and wonder if this was a man sitting before me or simply a caricature of one.

I’ve yet to settle on a definitive answer.

Why do we do these things? Accept invitations that cause us to recoil in disgust. Is there some vague social currency that we gain or lose in times like these? A civil stock market perhaps, one that ebbs and flows with RSVPs and meet-and-greets and the lending and borrowing of lawnmowers and ladders, flour and sugar.

Cookie exchanges.

Housewarming parties.

Dog-sitting.

A television blared in the background, though no one seemed to be watching it. The white noise of the information age. A commercial. Always a commercial.

“New and Improved Badger Piss Energy Milk!” a cartoon badger screamed through a megaphone. “Drink the Stiiiink!”

No one reacted.

Not Herb, still mid-sentence, still explaining the difference between top and bottom fermentation as if it might matter. Not Sue, laughing a little too loudly in the next room. Not the others, orbiting their conversations with the practiced ease of people who had long since stopped expecting anything from them.

I found myself staring at the screen a second longer than I meant to.

There was something about it.

Not the product. Not the voice.

The way it fit.

Like it had always been there.

I tried, for a moment, to remember when things had started to feel this way.

Not bad.

Just fixed.

As if everything had already happened and we were simply moving through it again, guided by unseen hands toward the same correct stations. Beer in den. Women in kitchen. Men looking at horrible photographs and calling them history. Potato salad at the center of the table, pale and inevitable as a minor god.

Herb said something that required a response.

I nodded.

I think I smiled.

It didn’t feel like either.

From the dining room came the sound of serving utensils moving through something soft. The low murmur of obligation. A laugh, followed by another.

I didn’t need to look to know what they were serving.

I turned anyway.

The table was exactly as it had been. The bowl still holding court at the center, the barbecued chicken and asparagus arranged around it like supporting evidence no one had asked for. Sue stood beside the bowl with a large spoon in her hand. Caroline stood next to her, holding a paper plate.

Nothing had been touched.

Or maybe it had.

It was difficult to tell.

Caroline caught my eye from across the room.

We shared a look.

Not longing this time.

Not quite.

Something quieter.

Something closer to recognition.

Sue lifted the spoon from the bowl. A pale mound of potato salad trembled there, heavy with egg and mayonnaise, flecked with celery, radish, something green that had already surrendered its identity. She deposited it onto Caroline’s plate with a wet, final sound.

“There we go,” Sue said brightly.

Caroline looked at the plate, then at me.

Her face remained perfectly arranged.

I made my way back to her, smiling in a way that suggested nothing at all. Herb came with me, still talking. The room seemed warmer than it had before. Or smaller. Or better sealed.

Sue handed me a plate.

I accepted it.

Her spoon descended once more into the bowl.

“There we go,” she said again.

The potato salad landed on my plate.

A television laugh track erupted from the den, though no comedy appeared to be playing. Herb raised his beer toward no one in particular.

“Cheers,” he said.

Everyone lifted a glass.

Caroline and I lifted ours.

We drank.

The potato salad remained between us, waiting with the patience of a thing that had survived every private objection ever made against it.

“Shall we?” Caroline said.

“It’d be rude not to,” I answered.

I picked up my fork.

So did she.

For one suspended moment, we stood together inside the shape of our lives: the khakis, the loafers, the polite beer, the house that smelled faintly of chlorine and meat, the neighbors watching without seeming to watch, the pale American burden cooling on our plates.

Then Caroline opened her mouth.

I opened mine.

The potato salad tasted exactly the way it always had.