by Meghan Daum
But there was more to it than the cost of living, more to it than the male-to-female ratio and lack of chivalry from men who slept on Smurf sheets. Though I couldn’t put my finger on it (and, indeed, would never be able to articulate whatever “it” was, even years later) my reasons for wanting to go to Prairie City, for needing, as I was now convinced, to go to Prairie City, had something to do with my relationship to what I could only describe as “real life.” Even in childhood, which I’d spent in a middle-class suburb of Philadelphia, I’d had the distinct feeling that nothing that surrounded me, not the boxy Cape Cod houses of my street, not the multiplex at the mall where my friends and I had skulked around on weekends, certainly not the chemically maintained grass of my parents’ small backyard, was ever quite the stuff of “real life.” There was a neither-here-nor-there quality to my existence. We were neither rich nor poor, neither city dwellers nor country dwellers, neither athletes nor intellectuals (we played a bit of tennis, but not enough to ever join a racket club). My parents had been old when they’d had me, my sister already at Penn State by the time I was three. Though they’d never have admitted it, I was an accident and, as if rising to the occasion, they delayed their retirements until I got through Smith, after which they promptly moved to Florida. After that, I’d scarcely seen my family again. In keeping with the overall impermeability of my life, this was neither a loss nor a relief, just the way things were. My sister got married and then eventually divorced somewhere near Pittsburgh. My parents retreated into a world of halfhearted tennis and early cocktails. And I had moved to New York, a world that, despite its endless opportunities to experience “real life,” I had managed to make as trivial and petty as the social politics of my own high school. As hard as I’d tried to enter the “real world,” I was still eating from plastic containers and reporting on thong underwear. Though I considered myself semi-intellectual, I was also semiattractive, semisuccessful, and semihappy. Not a bad state of affairs, when you thought about it. But in Prairie City (though I still hadn’t fully admitted this to myself) there seemed the possibility of being (or at least appearing) very intellectual, very attractive, very successful, and, if not very happy, at least in possession of a bigger apartment. And if it didn’t work out that way—and no doubt it wouldn’t—I could always come back. Except for the small matter of my job.
I looked out my window at the building across the alleyway. Though it was just past 4:00 A.M., the sounds of shouting and the occasional ring of a telephone still punctuated the night. In one apartment, where the lights were on, a couple was unfolding a futon in their one-room apartment. I watched them throw books on the floor, pull out the frame to where it rammed up against their dining table. The air was muggy and they took their clothes off with the curtains open; it was too hot to bother with privacy this time of year. I watched them shut down the computer and climb into bed. There was a tiny television set on their night table and on top of it a towering stack of papers. The man reached up to turn off the light and the papers fell to the floor. I heard the echo of his “shit” across the courtyard as the window went dark.
Then it all came to me. The key to what I wanted, the way to get out without really leaving. Like a math formula passed under the desk by a much smarter student, I now had every thing I needed, and it was so much simpler than I’d ever imagined. I turned on the computer and began to type.
To: Faye Figaro
From: Lucinda Trout
Re: Idea for Segment Series
My trip to the midwestern town of Prairie City, where I conducted a number of probing interviews with methamphetamine addicts, proved useful in more ways than just producing the meth story (which, btw, I have no doubt will be emotionally resonant and really groundbreaking). While in Prairie City, which is a town of just under 100,000, smack in the middle of the country, where the flat prairie stretches out to meet an endless sky, I had a startling and potentially ratings-boosting revelation: this place represents the American Dream. Far from the cramped quarters and moral compromises of New York, a town like Prairie City, with its surprisingly diverse population and plethora of old farmhouses that sit on acres of natural grassland, is precisely the kind of setting New Yorkers imagine when they think about “escaping New York.”
So, in keeping with Up Early’s new initiative to expand coverage into national issues, I propose a yearlong series that allows New Yorkers to live out this fantasy without actually having to do it themselves. I propose that I, as Lifestyle correspondent, move to Prairie City for one year and produce weekly dispatches that show New Yorkers exactly what it’s like to trade apartment life for a farmhouse, Chinese takeout for steak flanks, and rude drivers for friendly farmers on tractors who wave as they drive past. I could also feature interviews with quirky locals, such as, for example, a farmer who is a champion ballroom dancer, a ranch hand who writes poetry, or a garbage man whose larger goal in life is to conserve energy by installing (for free) solar panels in people’s houses. Slice of life stories aside, however, the real essence of this series is that it taps directly into New Yorkers’ concerns over the idea of “quality of life.” New Yorkers think they don’t have it (or must pay a lot for it). In Prairie City, quality of life flows like water. What does “quality of life” really mean? What does it say about our identity as New Yorkers? Our identity as Americans? After all, more and more people are leaving the big city for places like Prairie City. Is it a trend?
I will be the one to bring Prairie City into the homes of New Yorkers. I will be the guinea pig for their escape fantasies.
And they’ll be able to see it only on Up Early. If this doesn’t appeal to you, I’d be happy to pursue the cell phone rage story we discussed at last week’s meeting.
So jazzed now by my trance that I could feel actual sparks in my body, I skimmed my memo, found it to be frighteningly brilliant, and e-mailed it to Faye, even though she wouldn’t get it until she arrived at the office, which was never before 11:00 A.M. I didn’t bother unpacking the rest of my clothes.
At noon the next day, Faye called me into her office. Two grande cappuccinos were sitting on her desk and her temporary assistant was trying to pour packets of Equal in them without knocking anything off.
“Is this your resignation?” Faye asked.
“Faye,” I said, “you may think I’m kidding but this is potentially huge. There is a wide, wide market for this kind of thing. Because what I’m tapping into is not only a fantasy; it’s an anxiety, a crisis. It’s a conflict. And because so many people feel it, it’s a trend.”
“It’s a trend to move to some backwater shit hole?” Faye said. “Where everyone’s a drug addict? Plus they’re fat. I saw the footage from the meth story.”
“Those were average-sized women!” I said. “Besides, that was just one marginalized group. But get this, there are just as many men as women there. Not like here. And I met some cool lesbians.”
“There are lesbians in the Midwest?” Faye asked. Her eyebrow, tweezed to the width of an extrafine pen, arched slightly. She picked up one of her cappuccinos and the lid fell off. Foam rolled onto her hand and dribbled on her desk. “Fuck!” she yelled.
“Look, just try it,” I said. “Send the memo upstairs to see what they say.”
“They’ll never go for it,” she said. “We’re supposed to pay you to do a couple stories a month about fat people? There’s no way it’s a weekly thing, Lucinda. There’s a reason Roseanne’s show got canceled, although in talking to her I see she had a real vision. It was quite scatological really. She’s coming out to the Hamptons this weekend.”
“Well,” I said—was it time to resort to begging?—“you could keep me on, like, as a freelancer. You wouldn’t have to pay me quite as much. The cost of living there being, you know, lower.”
Faye looked startled. “Well, obviously we’d pay you less,” she said. “Obviously.”
“I mean, not that much less,” I said. “I mean, I’d be constantly researching stories.”
/> “I’ll send this upstairs,” Faye said. “But you really do appear to be having some sort of crisis. And I would encourage you to get into therapy rather than working it out on company time. In the meantime I want you to do a story on jungle gym safety. John McEnroe’s kid fell off some climbing thing in Central Park. He’s pissed. I think he might talk. And can you bring me a paper towel?”
FOUR HOURS LATER, fate stepped in. Because fate is what steps in when you take charge of your fate. Or something like that.
“Lucinda!”
When I walked into Faye’s office, Bonnie Crawley and Samantha Frank were sitting on the love seat drinking bottled water and looking vaguely disgusted. They shushed each other when I came in.
“Well, you got your wish,” Faye said. “They accepted your resignation. I mean your proposal.”
“Are you serious?” I yelped.
“What? Now you changed your mind?” Faye said.
“No!” I said. “No, I think this is great. This is going to be a great series. And of course I’ll still come back for meetings whenever possible.”
“Don’t bet on it,” said Faye. “They want to do it, but the budget is tight. Now, Samantha had an idea for the name of the series and Upstairs likes it so we’re going to go with it.”
“I thought it should be called ‘The Quality of Life Report,’” said Samantha. “It’s sort of the lifestyle equivalent to barometric pressure. It goes up and down. You’ve got good days and bad days. Except here, ‘quality of life’ refers to the larger concept of the good life, the life New Yorkers feel deprived of. As Faye pointed out in her memo.”
“That was my memo,” I said.
“You’re brave, Lucinda,” Bonnie said. “But that’s the whole point, right? Courage. Risk taking. Kudos, I say! At any rate it’ll be great to have you stationed in a remote.”
“’Cause it will add some freshness,” Samantha said. “Not that we won’t totally miss you and be sad.”
“I have to meet my trainer,” said Bonnie.
The hosts departed. Faye sat back in her chair. “Okay, here’s the thing, Lucinda,” she said. “If you want to do this, you’re going to have to, like, give a little.”
“Yes.”
“I mean, like cooperate.”
“With?”
“The budget,” she said. “We’re going to have to pay for editing facilities and a cameraman from a local station out there. Your salary is going to be, like, cut back a little.”
“To what?”
“To adjust to your lowered living expenses.”
“Well, sure, of course. But I still have student loans and every thing.”
“Is that my problem?” Faye hissed.
“What am I going to be paid?” I asked.
“You’re going to be paid by the segment,” Faye said. “Per segment. But look at it this way, if you do forty-five segments you get paid for all forty-five. It’s ipso facto.”
“Do you mean quid pro quo?”
“Don’t be uppity.”
“And what do I get paid per segment?” I asked.
“A thousand dollars,” Faye said. “But we’re going to cover an HMO. So that’s really a pretty good deal when you think about it.”
“A thousand dollars?” I said. I felt sick. “Well, then, I’m going to do a story a week, right?”
“Whatever we work out,” she said. “Come on, what does it cost to rent an apartment there, a couple hundred a month?”
“Well . . .”
“I have a doctor’s appointment,” Faye said, looking at her watch. “Or a lunch. I have something. You should be happy. You got your way. They want you on site by the end of the month.”
“Wow, okay.”
“Just don’t get fat!”
* * *
SO THE AMERICAN DREAM BEGAN. At least my version of it, which didn’t stir up a lot of envy.
“I’ll come visit you,” said Samantha Frank, who had never even come to my apartment when I lived ten blocks away from her on the Upper West Side.
“I’ll come visit you,” said Daphne. “Maybe, anyway.”
“I’ll come visit you,” said Elena, who, since turning thirty a few years earlier, had gotten LASIK eye surgery and braces put on the backs of her teeth, which caused her to lisp. “But not until you get indoor plumbing.”
Elena and I were having coffee at The One, a café near Elena’s yoga studio whose main attraction was that it had binders filled with profiles of single people looking for dates. Elena was sweaty from a yoga class and her curly black hair was springing out from under a floppy hat she’d purchased in an effort to copy Jennifer Aniston on Friends. She’d bought one for me, too, but it just gave me a kind of Peppermint Patty appearance, which Elena had pointed out and suggested I use to land a well-heeled lesbian who might give me room and board for a while. Elena was usually looking for a boyfriend, but since she felt she was above actually filling out a form she went to The One only to scrutinize the bios of the other women. “Just sizing up the competition,” she always said.
“Look, this twit thinks it’s worth mentioning that she prefers Hatha yoga over Ashtanga,” Elena said, slurping her soy latte through the rubber bands behind her molars. “Translation: lard ass!”
“I find it interesting that you only ever read the women’s profiles when you come here,” I said.
“The men have atrocious handwriting,” she said. “And if I hear of one more software consultant who aspires to write for The Simpsons I’ll buy him a one-way ticket to L.A. Why won’t they grow up?”
“That’s exactly why I’m moving to Prairie City!” I said. “I mean, not exactly. But it’ll be a perk. Not having to deal with the backward baseball cap set.”
“Yeah, you’ll just have to deal with the chewing tobacco set. You’ll have to deal with wannabe truck drivers,” Elena lisped. “Can you imagine? Single male, age thirty, works as bricklayer but dreams of long-haul trucking career and possible membership in North American Man Boy Love Association!”
“Maybe I can date one of my movers,” I said.
“Lucinda,” Elena said, “you better tell your movers to wait in front of your house for the first night. Because that’s how long it’s going to take you to realize you’re coming right back to New York! I mean, it’s one thing to go to Nepal, like Daphne. But this is beyond the third world. I mean, they don’t even do Backroads Adventure trips there!”
MY PARENTS, FOR THEIR PART, thought I was going to graduate school. Since their associations with the Midwest were almost completely limited to Big Ten universities, they could not imagine anyone moving there for any other purpose.
“I’m doing an extended assignment for the show,” I said to my mother on the phone. “It has nothing to do with getting a master’s degree.”
“But maybe you could at least take some classes,” she said. “It will give you something to do. It’s also a good way to meet people.”
My mother had a long-held belief that the reason I was relegated to the thong underwear beat was that I lacked a postcollegiate education. She was under the impression that senior-level news anchors—even those on Entertainment Tonight—held Ph.D.s. She also felt that the reason I was never able to upgrade beyond a studio apartment was that I couldn’t type sixty words per minute.
“If I have to take a class it’ll be a driving class,” I said. “I haven’t driven a car in eight years.”
“Well, honey, I wish we hadn’t sold the station wagon.”
ON THE EVE OF MY DEPARTURE, I lay in a sleeping bag on the floor of my studio and cried for exactly seventeen minutes. Small apartments have a way of looking so much better when they’re completely empty and something about the echoing space that now surrounded me, the white walls with marks where the pictures had been, the naked oak floors, the curtainless window that now offered a direct view to the apartment across the courtyard, where a woman was stirring something on the stove while talking on the telephone, knocked the wind out of me lik
e I’d fallen hard off a bicycle. During the month that I’d spent preparing to move to Prairie City, I’d maintained an alarming composure, not allowing myself to second-guess a decision that the whole world was waiting for me to second-guess and then, with my tail between my legs and a few self-deprecating comments to save face, totally renege on. Now, the tears came like a train that was creeping into the station weeks behind schedule. As sincere as they were, they were also perfunctory and I gasped through the sobs until I began to feel like I was wasting time. The movers had come only that day, the last possible day they could come. There had been a delay because my furniture, being a partial load, needed to go on a truck with several other loads and they couldn’t find a truck that was going anywhere near Prairie City. When they finally found a truck they claimed it was too big to turn the corner from Broadway to West Ninety-fourth Street and they had to bring in a smaller truck and then transfer my stuff to the bigger truck. Though I barely had twelve hours left, I still had to take every thing out of the medicine cabinet and either throw it away or pack it into one of the three duffel bags I was carrying with me. I still had to take a bunch of canned foods out of the cupboards and put them on the steps of the church down the street. It was already getting dark. So I stopped crying. The nighttime summer air sat motionless outside the window; there was no breeze to bring it in. Car alarms and sirens hummed outside as they had every night of the last nine years. Yuri’s phone rang upstairs. The elevator clanked through the building. Doors slammed shut. Someone outside yelled an obscenity. Someone else laughed. A garbage truck went by. The apartment looked so big without the furniture. It occurred to me that maybe I just should have lived in it unfurnished.
