I'm So Happy for You (14 page)

Dear Tenants,

You are hereby notified that your tenancy of the premises is terminated on December 15, 2005 (last day of rental period) and
on that day you will be required to surrender possession of the premises to the Landlord. Judicial proceedings may be instituted
for your eviction if you do not surrender possession of these premises on or before the date above.…

Wendy couldn’t believe what she was reading. If she understood correctly, she and Adam—never mind Barney and his metal chairs—were
being thrown out of their apartment in less than four weeks. Last she’d checked, their landlord was a crabby old lady in a
floral housecoat named Bedonna Rodriguez. According to the letter, however, the building was now owned not by a person but
by an entity called Turnkey Holdings. No doubt the place would be torn down to make way for some shoddy condo development
with rows of air conditioners bulging from its facade. Wendy had seen other houses on the block fall victim to the same fate.
Surely we have legal rights,
she thought. Then she recalled that their lease had expired the previous summer, and no one had asked them to sign a new
one. Nor had they thought to ask for one. “Forget the Visa bill,” she said, her eyes scrolling down the length of the document.
“We’re being thrown out of our apartment.”

“What?” Adam grabbed the letter out of her hand.

“I can’t believe it.” Wendy shook her head in despair as she sank onto the sofa and covered her eyes with her palms.

“This is bullshit,” said Adam, scanning the letter himself. “I’m calling a lawyer.”

“Lawyers cost money we don’t have.”

“We’ll find one who’s willing to work on contingency. My dad’s a lawyer. He’ll help us.” It was as if Adam had temporarily
forgotten that his father had just woken up from a coma. “I mean, when he’s better,” he said.

“But they want us out by December fifteenth,” said Wendy. “That’s less than a month away. There’s no time.” It was at moments
such as these that Wendy wished she had a husband who would at least impersonate the Man of the Family—that is, promise to
find a new and better roof to cover their heads (and maybe even go back to work, if that was what it took).

But after a few moments’ thought, all the Man of Wendy’s Family could come up with was: “This place is a dump, anyway.” He
squatted before Polly, rolled her head in his hands, and said, “Come on, lil’ girl, let’s go out for some fresh air.” He grabbed
her leash, then his keys. Then he disappeared back outside.

Despite everything, Wendy couldn’t wait for him to get back.

Wendy had never been crazy about their apartment. She held the puke green linoleum kitchen counters in special contempt. But
it had wood floors and decent light. It was relatively quiet. Plus, their bedroom looked out over a sweet urban garden.

Her attachment to the place increased exponentially after she began to comb through real estate ads for the first time in
four years. Since she and Adam had last looked, prices seemed to have increased by 50 percent. A one-bedroom in Sunset Park,
a working-class neighborhood to the south of the South Slope, now rented for what she and Adam were currently paying to live
in their two-bedroom. Of course, she and Adam didn’t technically need a second bedroom. Adam could always set up his study
in the living room or bedroom. But what if Wendy finally got pregnant? Then what?

Wendy was at her office the next morning, pretending to edit an angry screed on the administration’s domestic surveillance
programs titled “Send Bush to Gitmo”—while actually scanning the “no fee” apartment postings on Craigslist—when the following
email arrived:

Wen

So you’re not going to believe this but it looks like you and I are going to be neighbors again after all these years!!! Yes
Jonathan and I are moving to Brooklyn believe me I’m in shock too basically what happened is that we made this total low-ball
bid on this brownstone in Cobble Hill right near Cobble Hill Park and we never thought they’d take it so we didn’t even bother
telling anyone about it but what do you know our broker called us yesterday and said that the other offer had fallen through
(the people couldn’t get a mortgage or something) and the owners were willing to accept ours!! Anyway the house needs some
work (bathrooms kitchen etc.) but the proportions are amazing it’s 23 feet wide with a 14 foot high ceiling in the parlor
plus it has these completely gorgeous carved marble mantels in every room I just feel so incredibly blessed I only wish we
could afford it (ha) but really we’re going to be so poor in the next few years it’s not even funny seriously if you see me
on the West Side Highway at three a.m. wearing hot pants and a bra you’ll know why Speaking of career stuff can’t remember
if I told you that Jonathan is going back to the private sector? In any case he’s starting at Skadden in September in the
white collar crime division (someone has to pay for the reno) Anyway hope you guys are well BTW am so beyond thrilled for
Adam his father really is a hero xxoo Daf

p.s. Assume you’re going back up to Boston for Turkey day? J and I are flying back to Michigan so he can finally yikes “meet
the family” (wish me luck)

The fluorescent light over Wendy’s cubicle was suddenly blinding to the point of intolerable. She leaned back in her desk
chair and closed her eyes. She hated the way that Daphne omitted all traces of proper punctuation in her emails. “Wendy,”
someone was saying behind her head. She immediately recognized the voice as belonging to Lincoln. But in that moment, she
felt indifferent to his authority. “It’s not a good time,” she said without turning around. She couldn’t believe those words
had come out of her mouth; what had she done?

“As Her Royal Highness wishes.” Lincoln sniffed before walking away.

Maybe she would lose her job, too, Wendy thought, as she listened to Lincoln’s Doc Martens fade into the background. Then
she could feel even sorrier for herself than she already felt, if such an emotion was possible. Ever since Wendy had moved
to the borough ten years earlier, she’d been fantasizing about buying one of its stately nineteenth-century row houses. And
now Daphne, who’d been to Brooklyn maybe five times in ten years, was about to become the proud owner of one—even as she had
the audacity to cry poor.

At the same time, Wendy loathed herself for feeling the way she did. Envy was a bulldozer emotion; it had a way of wiping
out all other impulses in favor of a single picture of want. As she closed Daphne’s message, Wendy tried to clear the slate.
She told herself that she and Adam had a deeper and more meaningful relationship than Daphne and Jonathan would ever have,
no matter how many square feet they occupied. Moreover, the puniness of her and Adam’s bank account freed them of the disfiguring
illness that lately seemed to have infiltrated even their left-leaning social circle: realestateitis. Wendy would go to dinner
parties and find that there was only one conversation at the table that animated the guests other than the war in Iraq: the
rapid appreciation of their New York City condos, co-ops, and town houses.

“Well, Katie bought her place in ninety-seven for four hundred thousand, and she just had it reappraised for one point six,”
they’d say. And “We’re not feeling like quite as big suckers as we did when we bought the place, because the apartment over
us just sold for three hundred thousand more than we paid, and it barely had plumbing!” And “The sad thing is, pretty soon
the only people who are going to be able to afford this neighborhood are corporate lawyers and Wall Street people. I mean,
it’s great to see all the empty lots cleaned up. And it’s definitely a lot safer at night. But it still makes me sad.”

Wendy was sad too, heartbroken even. But there was no need to lament your ceiling height—or even have the requisite “mixed
feelings” over gentrification—when you didn’t own the floor beneath it. Besides, compared with the borough’s vast swaths of
poverty and hopelessness, she and Adam were downright privileged, Wendy reminded herself. With his education and experience,
Adam was sure to find a job as soon as he deigned to reenter the workforce. In the meantime, there was fruit in the fruit
bowl, milk in the refrigerator, and a Marc Jacobs coat hanging on the coat tree (even if, technically, it hadn’t yet been
paid for).

And it was a luxury, Wendy knew, to work at a magazine of politics. (She could have been processing dry-cleaning tickets;
she could have gotten hit by a bus.) There were also parents in the background who, at least on Adam’s side, would never let
them go hungry. Wendy assumed as much, even if, to her private chagrin, Phyllis and Ron had yet to offer them a down payment
on an apartment of their own. That said, someday she and Adam might inherit the equivalent of one, possibly even more. Not
that they’d ever discussed the matter. Even in the most intimate marriages, Wendy had learned, there were certain subjects
that were taboo for a spouse ever to mention—i.e., when your parents die, how much do you think we’ll get?

But Wendy’s attempt to console herself failed. Because wherever you were on the socioeconomic spectrum, it never felt like
you had enough. You still needed an extra million (or two or three) to become the person you were supposed to be, the person
you saw others becoming. Just as those people who were ahead of you were clearly cheating you out of your rightful due in
a ruthless zero-sum game. That was how the city increasingly made Wendy feel. She felt an unbridgeable chasm opening up between
herself and Daphne. But it wasn’t even about Jonathan—not directly. It was about money: stupid, magical, filthy, actually
quite useful money.

When Wendy and Daphne were first starting out in the city after college, money hadn’t seemed to matter. At least, it had been
easier to pretend that it hadn’t—back when they’d all occupied the same low-level media jobs, shared the same dingy tenement
walk-ups, worn the same ripped jeans and holey sweaters, dated the same pretentious slackers. (Daphne’s were always taller
and better looking, but still.) It had been sex that merited fascination and envy. Sex and beauty. Money couldn’t buy either
one. It hadn’t been any easier back then. Maybe it had even been harder. At the very least, it had taken more energy to get
dressed in the morning, since every new day carried with it the promise of unforeseen frisson for which one naturally wanted
to look one’s best.

But it had been different. More nerve-racking. More exciting, too. Back then, you got the feeling that your luck could change
at any moment. Now the parameters of your life felt already drawn, your epitaph lapidary.

It had also been easier to imagine then that Wendy and Daphne and their circle of friends were all actors in the same existential
play in which the material world figured if at all as a mere backdrop to their anomie. That had been the fantasy. Only Daphne
had ever come close to embodying it. Only Daphne had been light and floaty and fucked up in just the right way. Only Daphne
had seemed sufficiently divorced from pedestrian needs. Only Daphne, with her skinny legs and runny eyeliner, had ever looked
the part. (She always looked a little dazed and, at the same time, just this side of haughty.)

She’d acted the part, too. Only Daphne had had the nerve to get by without a job. Only Daphne had tried heroin. (When Wendy
looked back, she thought of all the stupid things she’d
never
done.)

The irony was that it was Wendy—progeny of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, graduate of Hunter High School, patron of the Peculiar
Pub before she was eighteen—who was native to the city, and Daphne who hailed from the sticks. Yet, after college, it had
been Daphne who had been Wendy’s ticket around town. No one ever turned Daphne away from anything, even as Daphne herself
often went under cover as one of her fabricated personae.

One time, she’d been “Donna,” a “stripper in New Jersey.”

Another time, at a book party they’d crashed at Pravda, a trendy Russian-themed bar in NoHo, Daphne had introduced herself
to a group of suit-jacketed men as “Jackie,” a “colorist” at a hair salon uptown.

To Wendy’s amazement, none of them had called Daphne’s bluff. “Huh,” they’d said, and “Really,” their eyes flickering behind
their glasses like bulbs that hadn’t been screwed in tightly enough. “And what’s that like?”

“It’s just a job.” Daphne had shrugged. “You know.”

“Just a job,” the suited men had muttered, moving in closer, later staggering away as if wounded.

Afterward, Daphne had laughed and laughed. Doubled over, she’d asked Wendy, “Ohmygod, did you see the face of that guy with
the beard? He was trying to act all respectful and politically correct, like I was going to be offended if he asked me what
I was doing at a party for a fucking biography of J. P. Morgan!”

“That was too funny,” Wendy had told her.

Too funny for me,
she later thought. Looking back, it seemed to Wendy that all the best punch lines had belonged to Daphne. The joke hadn’t
ended there. It turned out that most of Wendy’s friends, Daphne included, had upper-middle-class parents in the background
who, one day, as their off-spring approached thirty, had appeared as if from nowhere with down payments and extra sets of
keys. Slowly, the talk had turned from William Burroughs’s
Naked Lunch
to kitchen countertops on which to serve lunch (i.e., the merits of granite versus Corian). Until one day, all anyone seemed
to care about (Wendy included, but still) was real estate and babies, the latter having become just another necessary acquisition—along
with Oeuf cribs and Bugaboo strollers, Wüsthof knives and Waterworks showerheads—in the pursuit of the perfect bourgeois home.

Or was Wendy being unfair? Maybe her close friends were more complicated than that, Daphne included. Besides, until recently,
Daphne’s disastrous love life had still been her main preoccupation. And wasn’t it Daphne’s right to make a home? Or was there,
just maybe, another way of doing so? Was acquisition necessarily synonymous with maturity? Wendy wrote back: