I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(36)

It began:

“Marge, you make the best chicken salad,” one friend of a friend said, as we sat down around the dining table and shook our napkins onto our laps. Mine had a pastoral picnic scene on toile fabric, a Frenchman with a big hat and lace cuffs and a lady with her bosom tucked into a giant dress, both of them peering delightedly into a basket.

“You do,” I said. “This is good.”

Marge: “Well, you know I put grapes in it, that’s the secret.”

Person to Marge’s left: “But do you boil the chicken? Or bake it?”

“Always boil it. Baking comes out too dry.”

“And salt it?”

“Salt the water, not the chicken.”

Okay, I thought. That’s enough about chicken salad.

“How much salt?”

“More than you think. You want to be able to see it in the water.”

“So, a few teaspoons, then?”

“At least.”

“Do you use the light mayonnaise or the regular?”

“I like the light, but not the ‘spread’—you have to get the one that actually says ‘light mayonnaise’ on the front. Don’t get the spread.”

Great, not the spread. Now we’ve had enough chicken-salad talk. Right?

Wrong.

“I’m doing the no-carb thing, though, so can I have that?”

“Mayonnaise? Sure. It’s, what? Oil? Protein?”

“But is milk a carb?”

“Milk? I think so. But there’s no milk in mayonnaise.”

“Mayonnaise is dairy-free?”

Jesus H. Christ on a low-fat Triscuit. I looked down at the picnicking couple on my napkin and wondered whether they had chicken salad in that basket, and if so, whether they were anywhere near this excited about it.

“So you’re saying shred the chicken, don’t chop it?”

“Shred it. Always shred it.”

Me: “Oh my God.”

Marge and the person beside her looked at me. Had I said that out loud? I hadn’t meant to be rude. But whatever mechanism I’d once had inside my brain that allowed me to tolerate small talk had broken. I couldn’t pretend to give a shit about chicken salad any more than I could find the right moment to jump in and add to the conversation or change the subject. And the longer I sat there, frozen, the more irritated I became. I had to concentrate to keep from shaking my head, no no no, to keep from yelling, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP. The conversation shifted from chicken salad to organic soap, then to the best way to cut an apple. Fifteen minutes in, I wanted to scream, “Is anyone having some genuine feelings about something? Does anyone have something fascinating or funny or weird to discuss? Did anyone do anything today?”

John was already in bed when I got home. Taking off my shoes and earrings and flinging them on the floor, I whispered, “What is the point of having people over if you’re just going to sit there and talk about nothing the whole time?”

I raged on. These women were smart, I knew that. They’d grown up various places, gone to different schools, had all sorts of challenging, interesting jobs. They watched the news. We all did. We all existed on the same planet as Beyoncé, Bill Gates, J. K. Rowling, and a million other less famous but still fascinating humans who were doing and thinking and making things. There was endless conversation fodder available to us, but their talk had turned as bland as an unseasoned lump of chicken salad itself. What the hell? Had they all suffered head injuries?

Something had changed these women from how they’d been before to how they were now. I didn’t want to see it, but it was right there: They had become mothers. That was the connection that had brought us together—everyone had kids in preschool. I didn’t know most of these people very well, but I’d known of them for a long time, in that way you’re vaguely familiar with people your same age who live in the same place. I’d seen them over the years going to work, at coffee shops, at concerts, in the airport. Had they always been this obsessed with chicken salad, and were they just now seizing the moment to air their concerns? Or had starting their families caused them to shift their attention exclusively homeward, away from everything else?

No, I thought. I must be wrong. That can’t be it. I don’t want this cliché to be true. It’s too silly and old-fashioned, exactly the kind of stereotype that would get me riled up if someone else said it. This isn’t something I believe. I don’t believe women get less interesting once they have children. I don’t believe being part of a family means you’re not still part of the world. I don’t believe caring about what you put on the table means you don’t care about anything else. I don’t believe any of that, but I’m seeing it, and I hate it. C’MON, gals, I need you to fight this tired old narrative with me. Please don’t sink into the chicken salad. It’s like quicksand!

I delivered this soliloquy with my toothbrush in hand.

John cocked his head, unsure whether or not to laugh.

I heard myself ranting. I sounded insane. Who gets that pissed off about an evening of dinner chitchat? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with talking about chicken salad. Maybe there was something wrong with me.



* * *



Look, I don’t want to have heart-to-hearts with everybody all the time. Anyone with even an ounce of introversion would agree that constant, deep conversation would become exhausting. Small talk has a function: to pass a short span of time with pleasant sounds instead of awkward silence. It would be unsettling and off-putting if someone you didn’t know looked at you over their phone in line at Starbucks and said, out of nowhere, “Greatest joys and deepest disappointments of your past year, go!” or, “Here’s a hilarious yet touching story about my parents that reveals my true apprehensions about growing old.” You shouldn’t do that any more than you should walk into a party and yell, “I’M ALLERGIC TO LATEX—GUESS HOW I KNOW?” or “ONE OF MY NIPPLES IS ALWAYS LOOKING SIDEWAYS.”