Class(28)

“I wish I had something to tell you,” said Karen. “My life is so boring, it might fall asleep.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” said Allison. “What’s his name?”

“Whose name?”

“The Swedish UNICEF executive you’re sneaking off to the Mandarin Oriental with every Wednesday at three.”

“Ha-ha. What I think you mean is ‘How was the Comfort Inn in Kansas City that you spent last weekend in—alone—while attending a nonprofit development conference?’”

“Okay, you win.”

“In the plus column, a hedge-fund guy I went to college with recently told me I was hot while I was asking for a donation.”

“You see! I told you that you were this close to having an affair.”

“He also told me I was really ugly in college and I looked better without a nose ring.”

“Screw him. I bet you looked adorable. But please tell me there wasn’t a skull dangling off the ring or something.”

“No skull, I promise—just a graceful gold hoop.”

“What do you say we order something to drink?”

“Excellent idea.”

Just then, the waiter arrived. After taking their drink orders, he gave them menus that appeared to be printed on pieces of birch bark. Karen and Allison began to read them. After a few moments, Allison said, “Oh Jesus, did you see the special today? ‘Pan-seared locally sourced pigeon.’ Seriously, this may be the moment when the urban-farming movement went a step too far.”

“Are you f-ing serious?” said Karen, scanning the entrées in search of the offending listing. “That is so disgusting.”

Allison pursed her lips for a moment. Then she burst forth with “Just kidding!”

“You’re so full of it tonight!” Karen cried and tsked before she swatted Allison’s arm across the table.

The waiter came back with their wine, then delivered a four-minute disquisition on the specials. While he rambled on, Karen found her mind wandering. The only words that reached her ears were horseradish crème fra?che and pickled raisins. But when he finally finished, she felt guilty, considering how long it had probably taken him to memorize all the ingredients.

After the waiter had gone, Allison said, “So, what’s the news on your end? How’s Ruby Tuesday?”

“The usual,” said Karen. “You know, needy, demanding, and overbearing, but basically fine. What about yours?”

“Driving me insane,” said Allison. “All I can say is, thank God for the invention of ADHD. Or I guess I should be praising the Lord for Big Pharm. Thanks to Adderall, my kids are actually doing their homework this year, which is more than they did last year. Though what I really wish the pharmaceutical industry would invent is a drug to prevent middle-class white boys from imagining they’re gangster rappers. They could call it You’re-Not-Black-at-All or something.”

For a split second, Karen considered pointing out that Allison’s children were not actually middle class. She decided to let it go in favor of laughing and saying, “Stop! You’re killing me.” Besides, it wasn’t entirely clear that Karen’s child was middle class either.

“Seriously, Lucien goes around saying ‘Yo-yo-yo’ to everyone and telling them they’ve got swag,” said Allison. “To be honest, I don’t even know what swag is—except that I feel fairly sure I don’t have any. Meanwhile, Esme is obsessed with that horrible Australian rapper Iggy Azalea and wants to be a makeup artist when she grows up. For this, we spend a kajillion dollars in tuition per year.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“Hey, there’s always public school!” said Karen.

“Believe me, I’m thinking about it,” said Allison, even though both of them knew she wasn’t doing anything of the kind.

“Not only is it free,” Karen continued, with a perverse desire to bolster Allison’s position, as if trying it on for size, “but you get to send your children to school with tragic ‘ghetto’ kids who are being abused at home and take out their rage issues in the classroom, where they break other kids’ noses for calling them stupid, which is basically what happened in Ruby’s third-grade class last week.” For white liberals like Karen, it had somehow become okay to throw around the g word as an adjective, at least among other white liberals. Surely they’d understand that you were using the word ironically and in quotes; that you were being self-consciously provocative, not condemnatory; and that you were still fully aware of the unspeakable historical precedents, beginning with slavery, that had led to the development of the underclass you were referencing. Besides, calling something ghetto wasn’t racist, went the thinking, because it alluded to a condition, not a people.

Except no sooner had Karen used the word than she felt ashamed. Would she have used the term with a black friend? Probably not.

“Are you serious?” said Allison. Eyes bugging, she lowered her chin and leaned in.

“Dead serious,” said Karen, who sometimes felt as if she were providing Allison with material for her columns that, as a journalist, she should have gone searching for herself. Karen was also aware of playing up her access to the poor, just as Michelle may well have been exaggerating the dysfunction in her own extended family for Karen’s benefit. Just as easily, Karen could have told Allison about how the fifth-grade chess team at Betts had made it to the state championships. But what was the fun in that? “Oh, and the girl who got socked in the face, who was one of the four white girls in the class—and also Ruby’s best friend—just transferred out of the school,” Karen went on. “Which is kind of a bummer. But, whatever.” She shrugged, trying to downplay her investment.