Nathan Palm receives an email. How are you doing???? The subject says. It’s written by the mother of a family that lives in the neighborhood and whose children also attend the school. She’s one of those involved parents, Nathan thinks, as Marion has mentioned working with her on a few projects. She has a large smile, an excitable manner, and she wears fashionable knit hats. Her husband was an actor, a failing one, who started illustrating children’s books about his dog. The children’s books have become a huge success. The couple is famous for their generosity. The husband, Tom, seems genuinely baffled by the money he makes. He is unfailingly polite, and always defers to Nathan as the real writer. He asks Nathan how his writing is going and shakes his head with wonder at the process of writing poetry, telling Nathan that he couldn’t do that in a million years, it is so beyond him. I just like to draw and tell stupid stories, Tom says, with kind eyes.
Nathan hates this couple, this family, with a wild passion usually reserved for social injustice and grocery stores on the weekends.
In the body of the email, Anna, the wife, invites him and the girls over to dinner with the caveat that if he’s not “up for it,” “no worries,” and that she just wanted him to know that they are “there for him.” The dinner invitation includes offers for both free babysitting (“!!!”) and a glass of wine (“or THREE!!!”).
Anna is being nice; Nathan should be more kind, and the truth is he has been feeling lonely in this house, overwhelmed by it. He needs to be with people again in order to reset. He can sink too deep into his thoughts, and this isn’t good for him, and it isn’t good for Jane. Ginny, he’s not sure. Jane is also deeply in love with Anna and Tom’s daughter, Beatrice, a seventeen-year-old, the babysitter whose services were offered. Jane loves Beatrice in a way that makes Nathan think Jane could be a Secret Service agent; she would happily take a bullet for Beatrice. The pair also have a precocious young son who can be funny, and he sometimes plays with Ginny. Nathan accepts the invitation.
On the night of the dinner, Nathan is wearing a clean shirt and jeans, and Jane has overbaked a batch of chocolate-chip cookies and transferred them into a Tupperware container. Nathan’s got a bottle of wine by the neck in a brown paper bag. Ginny is in her room, listening to loud music, and so Nathan must climb the stairs to fetch her. He opens the door and finds her sitting in front of her computer with poor posture.
“Come on,” he says over the music. “Let’s go.”
Ginny taps the touchpad of her laptop with her thumb impatiently and the bleating singer stops.
“I said let’s go.”
“I don’t want to. I always end up stuck with Ben.”
“You can stay with me. That won’t happen.”
Ginny shakes her head again and returns to the computer screen. Nathan sees she’s reading some blog about celebrities.
“There’s nothing to eat.”
“I don’t feel well.”
“You feel fine. Let’s go.” Nathan suddenly believes his daughter knows about him and Denise. That communicated message is in her poor posture. He says, “Fine. Order a pizza. Feel better.”
Jane and Nathan leave Ginny behind and embark into the night together. The wind is picking up, the eerie vigor of autumn in the air.
On the stoop of the Fishers’, Jane rings the doorbell, and the damn family dog barks and barks and barks. The dog is the subject of Tom’s famed children’s books, a large gray bearded collie named Scooter. Tom takes great pride in this dog, as well as in shoveling snow and overtipping waiters. He’s been there, he says of the waiters, with that half-smile, while wearing a $300 sweater.
Tom opens the door and beams at Nathan and Jane.
“Come in, come in. Anna, they’re here.”
Tom screws up Jane’s hair—she laughs—and squeezes the upper part of Nathan’s arm and then pats it twice. He takes the Tupperware container of cookies from Jane. He asks, “Where is Ginny?” And Nathan makes up a big test for her: “She’s studying hard.” “Good for her,” Tom says. “Good for her.”
Anna rushes out from the kitchen, rubbing her hands dry on a dishtowel. She swings it over her shoulder and leaves it there. The house smells like chicken. The woman: she is allowed to hug, whereas Tom is not. She hugs Nathan first, rocking him in an exaggerated fashion back and forth, lets him go, and does the same with Jane. She is the official tactile greeter of this family. She asks after Ginny, and Tom informs her of the test. Anna also finds this admirable behavior.
“You know,” Anna says theatrically to Jane, “Bea’s upstairs working on her homework, but I bet she would love to be distracted.”
Jane runs up the stairs, almost tripping over her own feet to reach the teenager she adores.
With the child gone, the tone of the greeting drops like a weather event.
“Nathan,” Anna says. “How are you?”
“Oh, you know.”
“Yeah, okay, yeah. Wine?”
Nathan offers the wine in the bag. The couple coos over it for a while, and it’s uncorked and poured. Bland but international music plays on the stereo and the three settle in the living room. Anna curls into a sofa, tucking her socked feet under her thighs, and pulls a wrap over her shoulders. Tom sits but moves, taps his feet, shifts at his end of the sofa. Nathan sits in an armchair and takes too many sips of his red wine too quickly, and feels happy to be there. The living room is warm, and the house is complete. He can hear the children upstairs, and the bright light in the living room is cheerful. Anna has put out a plate of cheese and olives and crackers, and they talk about the block, and it is all subtle and calm. He doesn’t like this couple, but he appreciates their lack of neuroses. Their unhappiness is competently expressed and dealt with. Their needs are usually met.
Anna is telling a story about the co-op, Tom interrupting in a funny manner—“They have us by the balls”—and they make each other laugh, so Nathan laughs too.
They tell a story about their son and the girl who has a crush on him. The son doesn’t understand what’s happening. They tell a story about the daughter, who has been waitlisted at Brown. They talk about their recent renovations and the difficulty and humor of choosing and buying a new toilet. Industrial flushing power is mentioned by Tom, and Anna shushes him comically.