Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development Page 4

  Gina helpfully adds, “If I recall, the problem was more that you got hammered and forgot to start dinner. Those cocktails were delicious, though.” I mixed equal parts of passion fruit juice, elderflower liqueur, Prosecco, and Stoli Razberi and all the girls slammed them like Gatorade on a hot day. [Primarily because I forgot to tell everyone I included a bottle of vodka.] Eventually Fletch had to step in to work the grill because he thought we were all so soaked in alcohol that we’d ignite if we got too close.

  You see, I’ve become a bit of a mixologist—or, according to Fletch, I’m the Queen of the Girl Drunk Drinks. When we started dating, I drank Johnnie Walker Black and soda. Now when we go out, I’m all, “What do you have with lychee nuts in it?” To me? This is not a bad thing. I mean, I don’t do shots anymore because I hate how they make me feel in the morning. Coincidentally, this is also why I no longer eat Lucky Charms for dinner. Much as I enjoyed both acts, I haven’t the liver or the stomach of a college kid anymore.

  Stacey waves away my protests. “When we get home, I’ll send you my Thanksgiving time and action plan. My plan contains everything you need to do from start to finish, so the whole thing is foolproof. No worries.”

  “Does this mean we’re having Thanksgiving at your house, Jen?” Gina asks.

  “Um…” I stammer.

  “Yes,” Stacey replies. “This year Jen learns to flip the script. Now, I think we have some shopping to do.”

  Within a few hours, my Thanksgiving Day goes from nonexistent to hosting a dinner for twelve.

  Holy crap.

  Later in the evening, I receive Stacey’s time and action plan. I sit here at my desk blinking at it, overwhelmed by its precision. Not only does this multiple-paged tome contain an entire menu complete with recipes, but there’s a whole shopping list divided by department and the time action plan breaks out my week in fifteen-minute increments, beginning on Monday.

  This is a masterpiece of planning and precision.

  To the extent that it’s freaking me out.

  I e-mail Stacey the following: “Somewhere in Connecticut, a chill just raced down Martha Stewart’s back.”

  She responds: “Poor Martha. Sadly, she is not chilled at all. 1) No Jew could ever out-Thanksgiving a WASP like her and 2) I don’t forge my own silverware or weave my own tablecloth, which just makes me lazy. Go over with Fletch, and make your own menu. You can then delete items off the shopping list for the stuff you aren’t making, and add anything new that you need. (Check your herbs and spices, since I have a good stock of those and they aren’t on my shopping list.) Once you have the menu set, we can make an equipment list.”

  Equipment list?

  I am so over my head right now.

  Things begin to go off the rails before I can even get to step one on Monday. Between finishing edits for My Fair Lazy and driving downtown for an interview for a syndicated columnist position with Tribune Media Services, I lose the whole day. I’m officially in panic mode despite having three whole days before the dinner.

  “Thanksgiving is ruined!” I wail.

  “Nothing is ruined. The world’s not going to end because you couldn’t get to the cranberry sauce or pickled carrots today. Just relax, you can do this,” Stacey assures me. Well, of course she’s calm—she’s not even making dinner. Her extended family switches off holidays, so this year, all she’s got to do is cook soup.

  Stacey talks me off the ledge and even promises to spend the day with me on Wednesday helping to prep.

  She doesn’t know it yet, but her reward for helping will be watching Twilight with me on DVD. [No good deed goes unpunished, eh?]

  I lose another entire goddamned day to edits, despite my trying to rush. So if you run across errors in My Fair Lazy—and you will—please cut me some slack because Stacey’s time and action plan says nothing about budgeting a day for rewrites.

  Fletch is delighted with the idea of a houseful of guests. He’s way more excited than I am, actually, likely because he doesn’t grasp the enormity of the work in front of us. He’s making himself useful and he’s even added his own steps to the time action plan, including:

  Steam clean the rug

  Finish wiring project

  Polish floor

  Pick up turkey

  Iron linens

  Secure weapons [It’s probably a good thing we didn’t have access to any kind of weapons (other than salmonella) during old family holidays.]

  Because of other priorities, we don’t get to WFM until Tuesday afternoon. The minute I see cops directing traffic in and out of the garage, I know we’re in trouble.

  “I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn’t even know it yet,” Fletch quotes from Apocalypse Now as he tries to navigate past a hybrid that seems to be entirely held together by bumper sticks mocking my every belief. And yet this parking lot chaos is nothing compared to what we find inside.

  Ever seen those photos of the two hundred thousand Chinese people at the beach in Qingdao during a heat wave? And there’s not a single grain of sand that isn’t covered by a Chinese dude in a Speedo and a Chairman Mao haircut? And you can’t tell where the ocean of people stop and the ocean proper begins because it’s such a mass of humanity? And you could literally stick out your elbows and be carried into the sea by fellow sunbathers?

  That’s exactly what the produce department is like here tonight. For a minute I think we’re going to have to skip the mashed potatoes when the crowd sweeps me over to the onions, but I manage to swim my way back upstream to the tubers.

  “This may have been a mistake,” Fletch notes, after we’re wedged into a corner by the Manchego display when hipsters flood the wine bar. I see my favorite cheese monger struggling to keep his head above water as shoppers swarm ten-deep around the counter. I catch his eye as he mouths, “Help.”

  “You think so?” I respond.

  And that’s when the after-work crowd arrives.

  Two hours and a river of blood, sweat, and tears later, we’re done shopping. Those who’ve never lived through the repugnance of war can’t possibly comprehend what we went through, so let me sum it up—we were in the shit. We had only two ways home: death, or victory. Francis Ford Coppola would win another Academy Award were he to make a movie about our experience.

  On the way back to the house, we pledge to never speak about the experience again in an effort to keep the post-traumatic stress at bay. If we don’t, someday you’ll see us at the entrance to the expressway holding signs saying Kingsbury Whole Foods Thanksgiving Vet.

  We discover our next problem once we arrive home.

  “What is all this?” Fletch asks, staring at the boxes currently filling the entire fridge.

  “Tracey can’t cook so she sent over some pies as her contribution,” I reply. “FedEx delivered them earlier today.”

  “How many pies are there?” He leans deeper in the fridge and begins to count. “Seven? We have seven pies! For nine adults and three children. Does that seem right to you?”

  “Why, is that not enough? I’m also making a cake.”

  The expression he’s wearing tells me everything I need to know about my ability to do dessert math. We pack all the boxes back into the dry ice they arrived in, then place them in coolers on the back deck, with zip ties adding an extra measure of security against rats. In holidays past, my mother used to store all our leftovers on the hood of the car in the garage, so my dad’s vehicle always had little dings on it from the Pyrex bowls of unwanted fat-free stuffing. Fletch threatens me with an untimely death if I try to do the same to his car, so deck it is.

  I still make a cake, though, because you just never know.

  Stacey’s been here next to me, working through lunch and now dinner. We’ve been ass-deep in pans and pies and potato peels and plungers. [Here’s a fun fact—don’t put potato peels in the garbage disposal unless you like having mung water back into every sink on the first floor after they’ve already been cleaned in anticipation of the big da
y. Also, invest in a wet-dry vac. Trust me on this one.]

  “It’s so hard. Why is it so hard?” I cry as I use a floury hand to wipe my sweaty brow.

  Stacey, covered in bread crumbs and homemade cream of mushroom soup splatters, is almost too shell-shocked to answer. She rocks a little when she finally replies. “Time and action plan meant for many days, not one day. Not one day. Never one day.”

  “Maybe we should have some pie to help us along?” I suggest.

  “No pie. Just finish. Just finish. See vampires. Just finish.”

  I hug her briefly before continuing to peel my butternut squash over the open garbage can. Peels are falling all over the previously clean floor and at this point, I don’t care.

  I just want to be done.

  I just want to sit down.

  I just want to share the magic of Twilight with Stacey.

  I just want us to watch Bella make out with her creepy, stalker boyfriend who, really, should be arrested on statch charges because she’s seventeen and he’s what, at least a hundred years old?

  I just want her to roll her eyes with me over the wooden performances and stilted dialogue, despite still secretly wanting to hug myself afterward because I love all of it so much.

  And as soon as the butternut soup is set to simmer, we can do this. Fletch has the DVD cued up and everything.

  We still have to get through peeling and de-seeding the mountain of squash before we can sauté the chunks with onion and butter. After everything softens up, we have to use an immersion blender to break the squash into small bits and mix it with the pumpkin, and then we’ll make it extra creamy and smooth via chinois strainer before we can add the cream and nutmeg.

  I steal little bites of everything during the cooking process and am confident that this dish is going to kick off the dinner in the most delicious fashion possible.

  We need to let the soup cool before we put it away, and now the plan is to grab something to drink and finally get off our feet.

  “Stace, you want some wine? I have an open bottle of some decent Chardonnay.”

  “If I have one glass, I’ll pass out and die. How about some water?”

  I go over to the cabinet next to the stove to retrieve a glass. Because we’ve been extremely conscientious about not having to work around dirty dishes, we’ve been vigilant about unloading the dishwasher and thus, our undersized glass cabinet is stacked a bit too tightly.

  It’s stacked so tightly, in fact, that when I open it, one of my favorite juice glasses falls out and breaks on the countertop.

  Right next to the uncovered pot of soup.

  And when I say “break,” I don’t mean a couple of big chunks that could be reassembled. I mean, smashed, pulverized, exploded, stomped on like a Jewish wedding and tempering joy by flinging tiny bits of juice glass to the four corners of the kitchen.

  “Do you think the soup’s okay?” I ask. “Like, if we strained it?”

  She mournfully shakes her head. “Oh, honey, no. That juice glass didn’t just break; it detonated. That soup was a shopkeeper’s window and the glass was an SA storm trooper. That was Kristallnacht. Serve the soup to your guests and you’re going to kill them and their families will sue and then you’ll really hate this holiday.”

  All of which means if I want to serve soup tomorrow, I’ve got to go back to Whole Foods for more butternut squash. Tonight. The evening before Thanksgiving.

  The horror… the horror…

  We don’t have enough room at the big table for everyone, so I have to annex the table in the kitchen for the kids. Growing up, I was always stuck at the kids’ table and it sucked so I wanted to make sure this wasn’t the case for our young guests. I decorate the table with tons of candies and little games and flowers. I’ve made it so appealing that I kind of want to sit there.

  We ironed all the linens earlier in the week, and I started to set the table days ahead of time until I found cats sitting in the soup bowls. I chased them away thinking, I wonder if Martha Stewart has to put up with this shit? I had to unset and wash everything and we don’t redo it until this afternoon once we put the cats away.

  It’s five o’clock and the guests should begin to arrive any minute.

  After what feels like forty-eight hours of hard labor, I’m ready for this.

  Okay, fine, I have mashed potatoes in my hair, the sink is stacked to the ceiling with dishes, and Maisy just barfed up shrimp tails on the living room rug, but the liquor’s chilled and I’m happy.

  The next six hours are a blur of good food, great wine, and loosened belts. There’s football and Bond flicks playing on televisions throughout the house and although there’s a little shouting, it’s only so everyone can hear each other over all the laughter.

  There’s enough pie left over to send every family home with one, and, due to Stacey’s meticulous planning, we stocked up on GladWare so we could make sure everyone has leftovers on the day after Thanksgiving. Even though it takes us two days to finally get every dish washed and stored, the effort has been worth it.

  This Thanksgiving has been the best holiday ever and the beginning of a new set of traditions.

  The script has been flipped.

  Reluctant Adult Lesson Learned:

  Forgive the cliché, but friends are truly the family you choose.

  C·H·A·P·T·E·R F·O·U·R

  Lucky Nineteen

  Eighteen places.

  Since I graduated from high school and moved out of my family’s house, I’ve lived eighteen different places. That means I’ve moved eighteen times in twenty-five years. Gypsies don’t move that much, nor do carnies, nomads, or Deadheads. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

  That’s eighteen bedrooms.

  Eighteen bathrooms.

  Eighteen rounds of scouring stoves and wiping cabinets so I can get back my security deposit. No wonder I’ve had such a hard time trying to grow up. How the hell am I supposed to establish roots and mature when I move on to the next joint every 1.38 years? That’s barely enough time to have my magazine subscriptions forwarded!

  However, that’s all about to change because Fletch and I are planning to buy a home!

  For the past year and a half, our intention has been to buy the place we’ve been renting in the city because it’s nicely sized, it boasts lovely finishes, and is Stacey-adjacent. Also? We’re already here and the notion of boxing up all my shit one more time makes me weak in the knees.

  Of course, now that we’ve finally saved up enough for a down payment, we wonder if we really want to do business with our landlord. Our country’s stringent libel laws prevent me from coming right out and calling him the dirtbag I believe him to be, so I’ll share a few recent incidents so you may draw your own conclusion.

  For example, not long ago we found a big orange violation sticker on our front gate saying that our water was going to be shut off if we didn’t cough up the five hundred dollars we owed in past-due bills immediately.

  Um… we’re renters. According to the standard City of Chicago lease, we don’t have a water bill. That’s not our responsibility. And if we did have a water bill—which we don’t—how could it be five hundred dollars?! The average city water/sewage bill runs about fifteen dollars/month. [Not that I would advise it, but this is when it’s fortuitous to have ACCIDENTALLY opened someone else’s mail so you know this kind of shit.] At five hundred dollars, that would mean the water bill hadn’t been paid even once since this house was built almost three years ago.

  After forty-five minutes spent on hold with the Chicago Department of Water Management… bingo. Confirmation. That’s three years of unpaid bills and we’ve only been here half that amount of time.

  I quickly take care of what’s past due and deduct the amount off our rent because if I leave it for the landlord—for simplicity’s sake, let’s call him Dick—it will never get done. How do I know?

  Because the same damn thing happened with our electricity.

  Dick isn’t your p
rototypical slumlord, which is why all of this is so frustrating. He’s an Ivy League grad with an assload of higher education degrees and he really should know better. In fact, he’s a professional real estate speculator, so none of what happens next should be new to him.

  When we moved in here in October of 2008, I attempted to establish electric service in my name. When I hadn’t received a bill in December, I started calling ComEd because I worried when we did finally receive one, it would be so huge I couldn’t pay it. As I’m fully versed in what it’s like to live without power, I’m anxious to make sure nothing like this ever happens again, so I call around for answers.

  Turns out our place had never passed the final electrical inspection after being built because some junction box was placed in the wrong area. Until the house passed city inspection, a meter couldn’t be installed and thus an account couldn’t be established. The house had essentially been siphoning energy for free since it was built.

  Yes. Let that sink in for a moment.

  Stealing from the electrical grid.

  Is that not some Dr. Evil/supervillain shit or what?

  According to ComEd, they’d sent many, many letters to Dick trying to right this egregious wrong to no avail. We called him and he promised to take care of everything.

  “Taking care of everything” resulted in Dick doing, well, dick for three months, as well as the first of the big orange cutoff stickers slapped on our front gate. Do you know how frustrating it is to finally have yourself together enough to keep the lights on only to almost lose them because of the guy whose mortgage we pay? ARGH.

  From start to finish, the process of establishing an electric bill in my name took eight months. Oh, and when Dick’s moronic subcontractors finally moved the box to pass inspection, they cut the line to our alarm system. So, unbeknownst to us, from April until November our expensive radio-controlled system that we installed and paid for didn’t work. We found this out only when a battery needed to be changed and our landlord claimed he “couldn’t remember” the name of the alarm contractor who originally wired the house. Fortunately, we still had his card.