Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis [74]
And then talk turned to Buckley, which was really the only reason the four couples were sitting at the round table below the dimmed lights in the austere and barren dining room in the Allen home—all of our kids attended the school. We were reminded that it was parent/teacher night tomorrow, and would we be there? Oh yes, Jayne and I assured the table, we would. (I shuddered at what the consequences would have been if I had said, “Under no circumstances are we attending the Buckley parent/teacher thing.”) The conversation leaned toward the shallow endowment, the deep denial, the value distinctions, the grand connections, that large donation, the right circumstances—big and personal topics that demanded specifics and examples but there was just enough anonymity hovering over them to make everyone feel comfortable. I had never been to a dinner party where all talk revolved around children and since I was basically the new dad I couldn’t grasp the emotional undertow and anxiety pulsing below the casual chatter—and there was something off about the obsession with their children that bordered on the fanatical. It wasn’t that they weren’t concerned about their kids, but they wanted something back, they wanted a return on their investment—this need was almost religious. It was exhausting to listen to and it was all so corrupt because it wasn’t making for happier children. What happened to just wanting your kids to be content and cool? What happened to telling them the world sucks? What happened to getting slapped around a little? These parents were scientists and were no longer raising their kids instinctually—everyone had read a book or watched a video or skimmed the Net to figure out what to do. I actually heard the word “portal” used as a metaphor for “nursery school” (courtesy of Sheila Huntington) and there were five-year-olds with bodyguards (Adam Gardner’s daughter). There were kids experiencing dizzy spells due to the pressure of elementary school and who were in alternative therapies, and there were ten-year-old boys with eating disorders caused by unrealistic body images. There were waiting lists filled with the names of nine-year-olds for acupuncture sessions with Dr. Wolper. I found out that one of the children in Robby’s class had drunk a small bottle of Clorox. And then it was: cutting the pasta from the school lunch program, and the nutritionist who catered the bar mitzvah, and the Pilates class for two-year-olds, the sixth-grader who needed the sports bra, the little boy who tugged at his mother in the upscale supermarket and asked, “Does this have carbs in it?” A conversation began about the connection between wheezing and dairy products. After that: a bogus debate about echinacea. The concussions, the snakebite, the neck brace, the need for bulletproof classroom windows—it all kept coming, things that to me seemed futuristic and pointless and hollow. But Jayne was nodding in agreement and listening thoughtfully and making helpful comments and I suddenly realized that the more famous Jayne became—and the more people expected from her—the more she seemed like a politician. When Nadine gripped my arm and asked me what my feelings were about a topic I hadn’t been following I offered vague generalities about the despair in book publishing. When this didn’t get any kind of reaction