The Parties

I've licked off a decent amount of grapefruity white wine that I wiped up with my hand and people are looking at me now. Let them look, I cooked this goddamn swordfish and invited them into my goddamn home and if I want to lick spilled wine off my palm I'll do it. Sarah Wasserman, she's going to have a field day with this one. Come Monday every mom in a three-district radius will be whispering behind my back, texting behind my Subaru. The women here, this dinner group, they'll meet for the book club they think I don't know about. They'll meet at Starbucks to discuss the book, to talk about what meeting places they should have. They're perfectly content with accepting my invitations and sending nothing my way. I'll hear about the parties. The cocktail hours. The social gatherings. These housewives don't know me as well as they think they do.

I remember my parents. Their parties, their cocktail hours, their social gatherings. When they hosted friends I would be almost excited to go to sleep. I'd lie awake in bed and listen to the fury of jazz, the glasses toasting and clinking, the muted laughter of current affairs. Every sound and word was filtered through a hallway, fourteen steps, my middle school mind. They were stories that could be about almost anything. They were about life and love! Music! Theatre and dancing and travels abroad! They were romantic tales, and they were all of them real. And I know now that, yeah, sure, maybe they mentioned a few of those things. But those discussions, more than likely, contained more thoughts on dentists, mortgages, gas mileage, and how all these things applied to the neighbors. What they thought they heard. What they thought was going on. And it's no good. Or, at least, it's not as good as it could be.

The swordfish turned out well. Sarah did bring a delicious pear tart. Pauline will stay after everyone and help me do the dishes, and we'll have a little dishing of our own. This is what it is, and what it is will have to do.