“Yeah, why?” Karen said.
“Because of climate change.”
Ed, pleased by his food’s reception, had just finished an extra sidecar of artisanal gin and felt his tongue loosened accordingly. “I call Nat’s generation Generation L,” he pronounced. “As in ‘last.’？”
“Ed, what the hell is wrong with you?” Karen said.
“All I’m saying is that it’s irresponsible to bring a new person into this world,” Ed said.
“Which they didn’t!” Karen said. “No one here brought anyone into this world.”
“I’m still totally fertile,” Dee said as a sidebar, “but I’m with Ed. No more children.”
Oh, the Actor thought.
“Yeah, I’m adopted,” Nat declared to Ed.
The Actor perked up, sensing his rival was about to be taken to task. A silence overtook them, filled by the mad chirping of birds sensing the first tranche of wind descending down the Berkshires. Senderovsky realized that he had not put any music on the handsome red radio.
“？‘Adopted’ means Mommy and Daddy are not my biological parents,” Nat explained. “It means I didn’t come out of Mommy’s stomach.”
“Oh, I know, honey,” Ed said. “I didn’t mean anything. You have great parents. You’re going to live a long time.” He had never used the word “honey” before, either to a child or a grown-up, and its disbursal from his mouth made him feel even more guilty of some unspecified crime.
“Not sure about that, but thanks,” Nat said. Dee and the Actor laughed. Her mother cringed. An adult could say that sentence, but not a child. Just the other day she had said, “I don’t miss the city entirely,” and that last word saddened Masha. Was Nat even experiencing a childhood? Not entirely.
“Hey,” Nat said, “I learned the words to ‘Alouette’ in English, do you want to hear them?”
“Not right now, Nat,” Masha said.
“？‘Lark, nice lark!’？” Nat sang, her pitch perfect. “？‘Lark, I will pluck you. I will pluck your head! I will pluck your head! I will pluck your beak! I will pluck your eyes!’？”
“Okay, enough please,” Masha said. “That’s not a nice song.”
“It is a nice song!” Nat shouted. “It’s French Canadian!”
“Natasha Levin-Senderovsky! Do you want a time-out?”
“For saying it’s French Canadian?”
“Let’s all just relax,” Senderovsky said. The whole dinner was slipping away from him. And after all the money he had spent on the lamb and veal and the mayonnaise hand-whipped by a family across the river.
“You just ate a lamb,” Nat said. “Okay? It had its eyes and head plucked, too. Someone killed it. It was Generation L, too. But you didn’t care, did you?”
“You see what you did?” Karen said to Ed.
“Did what?” Ed said. “You ate the lamb, too!”
“I’m not talking about that,” Karen said. “You upset her with what you said.”
The Actor thought it was time to provide moral context and gravitas. “The bottom line,” he said, “is that Nat is really exceptional. Like that Swedish girl with the Asperger’s.”
“Excuse me?” Masha said.
“Alouette, gentille alouette!” Nat shouted. “Alouette, je te plumerai!”
“Nat, you were told to stop,” Masha said.
“I was singing in French,” Nat said. “That way you won’t have to hear the bad words.”
Karen could see the child’s entire life before her, the rebelliousness, the combativeness, the drug use, the affairs with tall Irishmen with H-1B visas looking for “something different,” the fleeing from parents who had no business overseeing her life. What if she, Karen, stepped in right now and tried to make her adolescence easier? What if she offered herself not as a parental substitute but as a much-older sister? And this time she wouldn’t fail.
“Let’s go upstairs so you can watch BTS in your room,” Masha said. “You’re done eating anyway.”
“No! I want to stay with the grown-ups!”
“I’ll go up with you,” Karen said. “You said you wanted to show me how you play piano.”
“Piano chyeo!” Nat shouted. “That’s in Korean. Tee-bee kkeoh! Not that we have a tee-bee.”
Ed looked at Karen, surprised, as did Masha. In addition to the hold she had on her husband （and Vinod, of course）， Karen was now teaching her daughter another language. There was nothing inherently wrong with that, except maybe she could have consulted her. “If you two want to go play the piano before bedtime, that’s fine,” Masha said, the starkness of her voice matched by the gathering wind. She wanted Karen out of her sight. “But just one song and then off to bed.”