Class(30)

“There must be something on this menu that isn’t pigeon.”

“Locally sourced rat?” said Karen.

“Ha,” said Allison.

The joke was less funny the second time around.



When Karen got home from dinner, she found Matt sprawled on the living-room sofa watching a basketball game. His dirty socks were in balls beneath the coffee table. His dirty dinner plate was on the coffee table alongside a saucer holding a morass of crumbs and melting butter. “Hey,” she said, wishing he would put the laundry, dirty dishes, and perishables where they belonged—that is, in the hamper, dishwasher, and refrigerator, respectively. Karen worked hard at keeping a comfortable and orderly home, and Matt seemed always to be thwarting her efforts with his indifference, his slovenliness, his failure even to notice when things were amiss. Then again, she was the one who’d just been out to dinner while Matt had stayed home and watched Ruby. And what if Karen was turning into one of those fussy old ladies she’d been so frightened of as a child—the type who’d reprimand you in gift shops and antique stores for touching the merchandise?

“Hey, what’s up?” he said with a brief glance in her direction. “How was your dinner?”

“Fun,” she said, pointedly carrying Matt’s dirty dishes to the sink. Not that he seemed to notice. “Though Allison was doing her usual complaining about how much her fabulous life sucks.”

“That sounds familiar,” he said.

Was he trying to imply that he’d heard all of Karen’s stories before or agreeing that Allison was always complaining? Karen couldn’t tell. Matt had never registered any particular objection to Allison. But he seemed to regard all of Karen’s old friends as types rather than actual people. “Come on, Kev!” he shouted at the TV screen.

Feeling suddenly frustrated, Karen found herself blurting out, “I feel like we’ve hardly spoken lately.”

“Aren’t we speaking right now?” asked Matt.

“Yeah, but I feel like you’re always a million miles away all the time.”

“Hey, you were the one out with friends tonight, not me.”

“I know. It’s just—I don’t know.”

“Sorry if I’ve seemed distracted. Work has been really intense lately.”

“Do you want to plan a date night?”

“Sure.”

“Also, if you want to come to the HK benefit, we have to get a sitter.”

“Of course I’ll come. What night is it again?”

“The eighteenth.”

“Oh, shiiitttt.” Matt hit his forehead with his palm.

“What?” said Karen.

“That’s the night of our dinner with the foundation people,” he said. “They want updating. And I guess we’re also hoping to talk them into replenishing the coffers, so to speak.” Karen didn’t answer. He was telling her this now? “I’m really sorry about that,” Matt continued, sounding genuinely remorseful. But a millisecond later, he was leaning toward the TV, arms outstretched, yelling, “Where’s the fucking defense?” As if the matter of his nonattendance at her biggest work event of the year had already been settled and forgotten about.

Except it hadn’t.

“I also feel like you don’t take what I do seriously,” said Karen. It was less that she believed this to be true than that she didn’t feel like letting Matt off the hook. Not yet. She also wanted his attention.

Finally, he turned away from the screen and squinted at her. “Kar—what in Yahweh’s name are you talking about?”

“I think you think housing is more important than hunger,” she went on, half knowing that her argument verged on the absurd. “Like, you think people can live without enough food but not without roofs over their heads, whereas to me, it actually seems like the other way around.”

“That is such a ridiculous thing to say that I’m not even going to honor it with a response,” he said. “Though I will say this: I’m not the one who came up with the ‘hilarious’”—Matt made quotes in the air—“nickname for the project I’ve devoted the last twelve months of my life to. Honestly, it was funny the first time you called it Poor-coran, but less so the four hundredth.”

Matt’s offense took Karen by surprise. “I was just trying to make you laugh,” she said. “Sorry if it didn’t work.”

“It’s okay,” he said, backing down. “Luckily, I have a thick skin.”

But unlike Matt’s team, Karen wasn’t ready to cede the offense. “If you had a big event, I’d come,” she said.

Matt released a long sigh. “If you really want me to try and reschedule the dinner, I will. But I can’t promise it’ll work. They set it up months ago, and it took like a week to find a date that worked for everyone.”

“I don’t want you to do it unless you want to do it,” said Karen, aware that she sounded juvenile and petulant but feeling that it was somehow merited.

“You know, it’s kind of a big night for me too,” he said.

“What a coincidence.”

Matt grimaced, looked away. Then he turned back to her and said, “Honestly, Karen, you sound like your mother right now. The whole world is allied against you, and you’re going to make everyone feel bad about it. Is that the idea?”