The Hazards of Good Breeding by Jessica Shattuck Page B

unorthodox.
    â€œWhat would we do without you?” Faith says for what must be the thirty-seventh time. “It was so good of you to drive us here.” The conversation since they left BCD has been like air traffic control—both tense and incredibly boring.
    â€œMom,” Caroline says. “Okay. We’re here.”
    Faith seems unfazed by her daughter’s exasperation.
    â€œNo problem,” Rock says. He had no choice; Jack took off in the car Caroline drove over.
    The day has definitely not gone as Rock planned. Or at least it has not gone as he imagined. He would never have sat through the full hour of manipulative historical docudrama acted out by preadolescents if he had not thought he could lure Caroline out to Singing Beach afterward, or to Somerville to go record shopping. Instead, here he is, three hours later, sitting at the Garden picking at a possibly botulism-ridden tuna salad beamed in from Mars.
    In his new role as Dunlap family chauffeur, Rock has subjected the entire family to the gritty seats and sour milk smell of his shit-brown Toyota. He has also made fifteen minutes of awkward conversation with his old sixth-grade teacher and twice been mistaken for one of the Dunlap twins and slapped violently on the back by their thuggish, middle-aged ex-golf partners. Possibly worst of all, he has had to endure being featured in his stepmother-to-be’s condescending, ten-minute-long treatise about the modest aspirations of college graduates today, which she delivered to an audience of the pretentious, cool-guy filmmaker “friend” of hers—whom Rock suspects she’s sleeping with, Caroline—and a panicked-looking, obviously inattentive Faith Dunlap.
    Before Bensen’s Organic closed down last week to make room for the expansion of InfoGraphix, its more successful next-door neighbor on Route 2, Rock would be working his shift, heaping dung onto the compost pile or tending to hydroponic tomatoes. While he was never “taken by the possibilities of all this environmentally conscious sustainable agriculture stuff,” as his father likes to spin the job to his friends (presumably to validate the four years of liberal arts education and twelve years of private schooling he paid for), Rock has always enjoyed manual labor. And right now he would give his left arm to be doing even the worst of his Bensen’s responsibilities—hosing down the petting-zoo pigs or mucking out the duck pond. Even listening to Linda Bensen go on about the restorative powers of moonstones and bladderwort would be better than this.
    â€œThe rolls?” Caroline is saying, and Rock realizes it is the second time she has asked him. She looks so pretty sitting there with her pink T-shirt and shakily parted hair—her thin browned forearms resting on the table.
    â€œRight-io.” It comes out too loud and Rock nearly upsets his water glass reaching them to her.
    â€œSo has Stephan been filming your rehearsals also?” Caroline asks Eliot.
    Stephan, pronounced Ste-fahn with a pretentious soft ph and long ah . Rock notes. So she is on a first-name basis with this film guy, who, Rock is sure, is already boffing his soon-to-be stepmother.
    Eliot shakes his head. They have been in the restaurant for fifteen minutes and he has not yet spoken. With the remnants of his makeup—the fluorescent afterglow of wiped-off lipstick, eyeliner, and a bluish cloud of whatever was used to darken his almost invisible eyebrows—he looks like a child porn star.
    â€œWhat sort of movie is he making?” Faith asks. “Maybe you’ll be famous, Eliot.”
    Eliot shrugs without looking at his mother.
    â€œ The Last of the WASPS—from Puritans to Preppies , or something,” Caroline quotes. “How does Denise know him anyway?” she asks Rock.
    â€œFrom her days as an exotic dancer.” Rock puts his fork down.
    â€œRight.” Caroline says giving him a fake