Heat

I lived in Washington, D.C. just after I graduated from college, in a big old house with four roommates, five cars, six guitars, a motorcycle, and a band. Our house sat at the point of a big triangular block with no neighbors on either side, and we were famous for our parties, some of which are still talked about almost twenty years later, like the night there were so many people on the front porch that it suddenly sunk six inches in a single lurch, or the time a flatbed truck with a crane sat on the street behind us for a week and in the middle of the night we finally succumbed to its lure and, fortified by a bottle of Jagermeister, climbed to the top of the crane.

What I remember most about that house, though, is how hot it was the one summer I lived there. The windows were always open wide and there were 17-year cicadas. Every night before bed I would take a cold shower and lie down, still wet, with the fan at the foot of my bed blowing straight up my body, hoping to fall asleep before I was dry and the cicadas drilled holes into my brain.

I never had air conditioning in Washington, though I did spend a summer seeing a man I should have left in May because his apartment was so delightfully icy.

In Berkeley the kind of heat that makes you yearn for ice cream and frigid movie theaters was cause for celebration, for drinks outside and leisurely evening saunters around the neighborhood.

In Red State, though, summer could be brutal: heavy and wet, the kind of heat that makes it hard to breathe and makes you understand why murder rates go up in July and August. It was particularly brutal the summer M was three. The thermometer hadn’t dipped below 90 in as long as I could remember (memory shrinks in such weather), and M and I hated each other. The pool had grown old, and besides, we were hot again as soon as we left.

So one day I threw all my principles to the wind and decided we were spending the day at the mall. I trumped up some errand and off we went. We shopped, we window shopped, we lunched at the food court, I bought a magazine and sat on a bench while she played for as long as she wanted at the indoor playground. We were cool, we were happy, we loved each other once more. We bowed at the altar of air conditioning

I got pregnant with E the following March. I knew I couldn’t spend a pregnant summer like the one before, so we installed central air in May. Of course it was the coolest, rainiest summer in memory.

In subsequent years, though, I got used to my air conditioning. I’m a bit of a climate Nazi. I don’t turn on the heat till we’re all shivering in sweaters, and I used to put the air on only when summer became unbearable. But slowly I relaxed. If it was humid but not hot, I put on the air. If it was just hot enough that we started to snap at each other, I put on the air. If the air was on, I stayed in, forgoing cool evening breezes on the deck.

Our new house has no air conditioning. Luckily, we still have our fans. There is one in the living room and another in the dining room, both oscillating as I write. M is reading in a cold bath. E is lying on the floor eating frozen peas, still frozen. We spent the early afternoon at the spray park around the corner and later S is taking the girls swimming with his parents. Tonight we’re taking them to my mom’s and escaping to an air-conditioned movie.

I’m not quite sure why it isn’t that bad, though. Perhaps because this is the heat of my childhood, not the wet wool blanket heat of Red State in July. Perhaps because it’s supposed to go away tomorrow. Perhaps because in the city there are spray parks and air-conditioned movies we actually want to see and grandparents. Or perhaps I’m just caught in a romantic delusion and we really need to hie us to Home Depot and lug home some air conditioners. Yeah, I think that’s it.