We knew you. Before.
Before the promotion, the guy, the condo, the kid. Before the lay off, the IVF. Before the lawsuit, the cancer scare. Before you lost your dad.
And we knew Chicago. Before.
Before it was drowning in debt and draining its taxpayers. Before the drinking water’s chlorine levels were concerning. Before guilty cops started shooting innocent people, and guilty people started shooting innocent cops. Or maybe the city was always this way, but we were oblivious.
Now, we’re not oblivious to anything, besides our own needs. We’ve got companies to run and lives to save, responsibilities that remind us how little our own desires actually matter. But on this night once a month, the eight of us get to be seen–not as HR managers or social workers or lawyers or publicists or anesthesiologists or teachers or sales reps or marketing directors–but as college friends reunited. We call ourselves the Ladies Who Dine.
Tonight, I am not an underpaid English professor or an unattentive wife or a mom with crippling anxiety. I am not a frazzled woman who stands at the kitchen counter in sweaty spandex and scarfs leftover chicken stir fry while simultaneously making Geo a peanut butter sandwich and trying to have an adult conversation with Jamie before the dog whines to go outside. Tonight I get to pretend that I am a Lady–a refined, respected woman of noble birth and social stature who considers each meal a reverent experience.
Kathy always sends the Google invite months in advance and we plug the date into calendars which look as varied as the eight of us on the list. I have to organize preschool pick-up while others juggle tinder dates or therapy sessions, but, somehow, we all find the time. We choose a new restaurant for each outing–tapas in River North, tacos in Lincoln Park. We trade our capris for sundresses, our flats for wedges. Instead of going home to our dogs or babies after work, we take Metras, Ls, and Ubers from all parts of the city. On the ride to the restaurant, we apply lip gloss and vow to return home by 9, to have just one glass of wine. It’s a weeknight after all, and tomorrow’s alarm goes off at 5 am.
At the host stand of a modern West Loop sushi house, I give my fellow Ladies the type of squealy hugs that would normally provoke an eye-roll. Outwardly, we blend in with the other 30-something female diners–blondes and brunettes in summery dresses and sandals. But underneath our outfits, our bodies bear the evidence of our distress. There’s a tree tattoo that branches up Marie’s ribcage honoring her deceased mother. Ann’s back aches from a 24-hour shift at the hospital. Caroline’s stomach is bloated from IVF hormones, while Liz’s has been churning ever since her dad started chemo. Kathy’s waist has slimmed from the stress of her new job, and Nisha’s from pre-wedding starvation. Jessica has her period and is still debating whether she’s happy or sad about not being pregnant. My own torso looks like some surgical experiment gone wrong, the result of a suspicious mole removal, a botched IVF procedure, and a c-section.
I worry about my friends–how they are holding up to life’s surprises–and they worry about me, too, but right now, we’ve got more important concerns: being seated.
It’s a perfect June night, and we’ve got a patio table that overlooks Randolph’s manicured medians and social butterflies. In fact, there are barely any reminders of what this neighborhood looked like before Oprah’s studio and Google moved in. Just one block south, Madison Street was known as Skid Row–a one-and-a-half mile stretch of single occupancy hotels and strip joints, squatters and drifters.
But here tonight, there are hip bars and cute patios as far as the eye can see. Since we occupy one of those patios, we, too, get to be what we rarely are anymore: hip and cute. A decade ago, when we first started exploring the city together, we were always hip and cute, because being hip and cute is easy when nothing bad has happened to you yet. Back then we were Naive Girls, Girls Who Took It All for Granted. We thought we’d always have weekly outings together. We thought we’d meet our soul-mates by 25 and have successful careers by 30. We thought we’d start families when and if we wanted to. We thought our parents would live forever. We thought all cities were eclectic, but not unsafe. We thought we would always enter our office buildings and run marathons without worrying about bombs. Back then we were not Ladies Who Dine, but Girls Who Drank. Dinner was a Lean Cuisine we inhaled in our Lakeview apartments while putting on an H&M dress and too much makeup before going out to flirt for free beer.
We still drink, but now it’s wine and we pay for it ourselves. Tonight we’re so consumed with clinking our glasses and catching up that we don’t look at the menu for the first half hour, and the young waitress feigns patience. We’re giddy as we talk, aglow in the setting sun. Over the hum of passing cars, we ask the surface-level questions: How’s your new job? Your new place? Kathy talks about her latest boyfriend, Ann about her latest vacation. Those of us who don’t have anything new and good to share are quieter than the others.
If the mood is right and the sauvignon blanc is good, as it is this evening, the rest of the world fades into the background, and we see only each other’s faces, upon which the state of our lives is visible. The bumps on Caroline’s normally smooth chin hint that she’s started her IVF hormone injections, and Liz’s gaunt cheeks reveal that her dad’s treatments aren’t working, but both women stay quiet.
We order too much food and another glass of wine. Wafts of ginger and wasabi fill the night air as the waitress approaches with our plates balanced along her arm. We pass the edamame and nigiri bites and dumplings and maki rolls around the table until we’ve all tried everything. In fact, this seems to be the motto of our tribe and our city–try everything in the pursuit of perfection. We’ve tried new work-outs to lose weight, dating sites to meet men, career leaps to get better salaries, parenting books to end tantrums, counseling to control our demons. The city has tried street-cleaning and garden-planting, neighborhood watches and fund-raisers. When those things have failed, we’ve resorted to self destruction–sleep deprivation and pills, blackmail and bribes. We’ve wound up exhausted and depleted. So tonight we want to feel full. We need to feel full. The city needs the revenue and we need the overpriced sushi, the gossip, the buzz, the undivided attention. We need to miss our trains and take later ones. We need to keep our significant others waiting and make our children miss us. Because if we stay long enough at the restaurant, we talk about the other things–the opposite of new and good–the sad and shitty.
After the waitress clears our plates and the other patio patrons leave, Caroline admits that she has started her IVF shots. We put down our wine glasses and lean in to listen. She’s afraid of what happened to her last time–the hyperstimulation that landed her in the hospital with a blood clot and two liters of fluid in her belly.
Having gone through my own IVF horrors, I nod in empathy, but as she finishes sharing, I panic about whether to disclose my own secrets. Part of me doesn’t want to break the spell. As a Lady Who Dines, I’m a poised woman who keeps an air of confidence at all times, not a floundering woman in crisis. If I utter my marital problems or parenting flubs, I could ruin my engaged friends’ visions of contented matrimony or out myself as a flailing parent and receive bad advice from those who don’t have kids yet. But, worst of all: to speak my problems aloud is to fully acknowledge them, and I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
I remain silent while each friend admits her latest struggle:
I’m in debt up to my ears from this wedding. I had my fourth miscarriage last month. My dad’s really sick. It’s not looking good.
Somehow, each admission makes me feel closer to each friend. Though my problems pale in comparison to some of theirs, what’s really at stake in not admitting my troubles is the possibility of being even further disconnected.
I finger my necklace nervously and finally offer my own confession. “Jamie and I are having a hard time right now.”
My friends tilt their heads to listen. Kathy pours more wine into my glass.
“Our first counseling appointment was a disaster,” I say. “It’s like walking into a hospital with a broken leg, and the doctor says, ‘Tell me about the first steps you ever took,’ and you’re like, ‘My fucking shin is poking through the skin. Give some valium and a goddamn cast, you asshole.’”
They all laugh and soon I’m laughing too, despite myself. We hold our stomachs and wipe our eyes. We sigh simultaneously. And that’s when the healing happens, in the aftermath of the laugh, in the silence.
No one talks. No cars go by. The waitress doesn’t check in. We sit with it–the truth of it all. That you do not really know a person or a place until you’ve seen the shiny and the gritty, the displacement and the gentrification. That we got the things we dreamed of at 22, just not all at once, not all for one person, and not without equal amounts of hardship. That Ladies’ night is not real life, but it helps us get through real life.
There are last calls and last trains to catch, the dinner check to pay. It’s always more expensive than we expected, and we all pretend like it’s no big deal even though some of us, despite our outfits or titles, are hoping not to overdraft. Here in the patio, our waitress receives a hundred dollar tip, while back in the kitchen undocumented workers scrub dirty dishes.
Train bells ding and cab lights flicker. We squeeze each other goodbye and go our separate ways–to full bellies and hangovers, hugs from our husbands or turned backs in bed. To our real lives.
Until we meet again.
Nadine Kenney Johnstone‘s infertility memoir, Of This Much I’m Sure, is forthcoming from She Writes Press in April of 2017. She teaches English at Loyola University and received her MFA from Columbia College in Chicago. Her work has been featured in Chicago magazine, The Moth, PANK, and various anthologies, including The Magic of Memoir. Nadine is a writing coach who presents at writing conferences internationally. She lives near Chicago with her family. Follow her at nadinekenneyjohnstone.com.
