The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

by Kelly Harms

  I quirk my lips. “Well . . .” I have plans with Daniel for next Friday night. And not just any plans. Tickets to see Shakespeare in the Park. “I’m booked next Friday, but otherwise any time after Flywheel is fine.”

  “Great. Keep your evenings clear, then. We’re about to turn up this hashtag momspringa to eleven.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Dear Mom,

  I know I’m supposed to be hand journaling this right now for future discussion, but screw it, this one is email worthy because it’s basically all about you. Basically, and I’m not sure if this is going to make you happy or unhappy, my friends’ parents are talking about you. Actually, they’re not talking about you so much as talking about momspringas. Because do you know what? Momspringas are kind of becoming a thing.

  It started with Trinity. She asked me how your momspringa was going in front of her mom. And her mom wanted to know what we were talking about, so she explained it. And then Trinity’s mom looked it up on social and saw all these people talking about it, like where they’d go if they had one, and how much they’d sleep (what is it with old people and sleep? If you’re tired, just don’t schedule everything at eight a.m. like adults love to do so much, right? Is that rocket science?), and whether the vows of their marriage would still count or if they’d have a hall pass. Some people are saying that only a bad mother would go on momspringa, which is kind of insane when you think about it. A bad mother wouldn’t NEED a momspringa.

  That last part is ugh, but the rest of it, the thought that you’re out creating a movement and getting some of the Country Day moms thinking about something besides how many times their kids should retake the SAT test—that makes me pretty proud of you, Mom. Haters gonna hate, but me and Joe are holding our heads high whenever the subject comes up. When the article actually does come out in Talia’s magazine, I’m going to buy a zillion copies and tell everyone I know you. Unless the article talks about you having a sex life. Then I’m going to die of shame.

  Love,

  Your squeamish daughter, Cori.

  —

  I have always tried to make it a practice to keep what my kids tell me to myself, but I am so proud of Cori’s take on the momspringa that I ask her if I can forward her email to Talia. She texts me an ok emoji, and ten minutes after I hit send, Talia texts me:

  Cool kid you got there.

  Amy:

  Don’t I know it. Believe me when I tell you they are not all like this.

  Talia:

  I certainly wasn’t. Every time some friend’s child makes me wonder if I should have kids, I remind myself what genetics would actually have in store for me: moody, weepy, rebellious.

  Amy:

  Cori is all those things too. And when she is around her diving friends, her desire to fit in is painful to watch. If you ever need birth control, watch a librarian’s kid try to negotiate queen bees on a sports team. Otherwise, though, she’s hard to beat.

  Talia:

  You feeling ok about all this buzz?

  Amy:

  I haven’t really been following it. I always forget Twitter exists.

  Talia:

  Go take a look, while I’m here. Search the hashtag.

  Amy:

  Ok.

  . . .

  Wow. That’s a lot of tweeting.

  Talia:

  You and Matt have touched a nerve.

  Amy:

  I see that. A LOT of people seem to want a momspringa. I’m kind of shocked.

  Talia:

  If you really want to be shocked, google “momspringa + porn”

  Amy:

  I don’t think I could handle that.

  Talia:

  You definitely could not handle that.

  Amy:

  Is this going to sell magazines? That’s the whole point, right? I mean, will it help you with the bigwigs?

  Talia:

  Honestly? Probably not. In two months when the actual article comes out, will people seek it out on newsstands? Will it even still be a trend? If anything comes of this, it’ll be online ad sales. Clicks.

  Amy:

  Clicks. Huh.

  Talia:

  Exactly. Underwhelming. So keep it all in perspective. All the hashtags, all the tweets, the posts and the rants, they’re just clicks. They come, and then they’ll go.

  Amy:

  So what you’re saying is, continue ignoring the hashtag momspringa and enjoy my actual momspringa?

  Talia:

  That’s exactly what I’m saying. Speaking of, don’t you have a date tonight?

  Amy:

  I have three dates in the next two weeks! Plus a friend date with the hot librarian.

  Talia:

  Oh wow. You’re amazing! That’s, like, ninja-level casual dating. Have fun.

  Amy:

  I will! Or at least, I have been so far. I’ll keep you posted.

  Talia:

  Perfect.

  Oh, and Amy? How are your eyebrows?

  Amy:

  They are still attached to my face. Isn’t that good enough?

  Talia:

  Have Matt send me a picture. If they’re holding hands again, you’re going to hear it from me.

  —

  Mario

  Mario is lean and tall. He has the same rumpled look from his pictures in real life, and it’s delicious. When I first walk into the bar we’re meeting at, my brain screams, WAY TOO YOUNG. But when I sit down with him and start talking, I find that I actually start to feel younger too. So this is what John felt with Marika, I think, when Mario not-very-accidentally brushes his hand against my leg. It’s a thrill. We talk about music—something that hasn’t been a big part of my life since the kids were born but that seems to define who Mario is. He names bands as their tracks come up on the bar playlist, and I nod to one I like and say, “Sounds like Talking Heads meets the Pixies,” and it seems to have been the exact right thing to say. We sit closer and closer at the bar. We go to dinner and talk more, loosened up by the premeal beer. He is haughty and bold and unafraid of the world—but also has some sweet idealism and is definitely looking for true love.

  At the end of the night we order Calvados—an affected move from his recent trip to Cannes. The manager sends out quenelles of apple crème fraîche ice cream set into meringue shells that pair perfectly. Mario tells me about his work.

  He’s a chemist working for a nonprofit, and the ink on his PhD is still wet, yet he insists with great authority that he will never go work for Big Pharma no matter what. I think of him in some not-too-distant future, falling in love, finding out she’s pregnant with twins, being all too grateful for a six-figure salary working for the man.

  But I can also see an alternate future where he develops a game-changing new water purifier, opens up the patent, and spends his sabbaticals hiking mountains whose names start with K. Either way, there is no question: Mario is looking for a real girlfriend, and I will not be that woman in any possible future. He invites me back to his place, and I give him a long, passionate kiss, say, “Thank you so much for asking,” and then take myself home alone posthaste.

  Randall

  Randall takes me to a place called Ambrosia, a square Midtown wine bar that seems to be the place for men and women to meet, dislike each other, and then return to their law firms and get back to work.

  He orders us a flight of five glasses of wine the minute we sit down. I cough nervously and warn him that I like all wines that cost more than six dollars a bottle, so the tasting might be wasted on me. He proceeds to walk me through each glass and blow my mind at how different five wines made the same year from the same grape can be. It’s like getting a private master class in wine tasting, and when the bill arrives, he falls on it, saying it’s a business expense. It’s only then that he explains: he is a sommelier at another wine bar, which he tells me is “much cooler.”

  When the lesson is over, I am not sure what’s next. Randall has dazzled me with his breadth of wine
knowledge, passion for sharing it, and just plain good looks. However, he hasn’t asked me a single question about myself. Instead, he’s monopolized the conversation completely. If he likes me, it is entirely based on my appearance, which, makeover or no, is not, let’s just say, a New York nine. So I presume he doesn’t like me.

  But then he asks me if I want to come see the bar where he works, because he “doesn’t want this date to be over.” And I look at him, and shallow though it may be, I don’t want it to end myself. So I agree.

  I only took tiny tastes of the five wines, but still, I am thinking about the high likelihood of his ordering five more, and it makes me feel a bit swampy. I tell him I’d better grab a slice of pizza on the way. We buy big greasy slices of New York pepperoni and walk up Broadway in the lowering sun. We pass Lincoln Center in the golden hour, and the glass of the Met shimmers. The fountain seems higher than I ever saw it. The plaza is empty, so we sit down at the side of the fountain and finish our slices, and I say, “Wine and pepperoni are strange bedfellows.”

  He says, “Let me have a taste,” and I find myself kissing him softly in the square and lingering until the sun finally moves on to light another stage.

  William

  The name of the silver-fox partner at the law firm is William. He skips the meet-at-the-bar step and takes me straight to a hidden-away restaurant tucked just off Central Park West in the high sixties. The place is, by a mile, the fanciest restaurant I’ve ever set foot inside. Gorgeous, elaborate oil paintings are everywhere you look, the white linens and glassware shine for days, a beautiful fiftysomething woman in black seems to hover weightlessly near an ornate podium, and she doesn’t even ask my name—she tells it to me.

  “You must be Amy,” she coaxes, and I nod. “William let us know you were coming. He’ll be along any minute. May I bring you a glass of prosecco?”

  I agree to the prosecco, and my head is already full of tiny bubbles when my date walks in ten minutes later. I start to stand as if he’s a prince, but he instead leans down and puts a kiss on my cheek and sort of herds me back into my chair. He tells me there is nothing so nice as realizing your blind date is even prettier in person than you hoped. He suggests we get the tasting menu and tells me to expect him to spill at least a little soup on his tie. I tell him I’ll spill, too, just to make him feel better, and the ice is broken. By the second course I know that he is still working on his own divorce, that it has him quite shaken up, and that it is his wife who did the leaving. By the second glass of wine, I know he wishes he could get her back. When the server brings our limoncello at the very end of the meal, I find myself confessing that I went through confused feelings about my own marriage earlier this summer and admit that I’ve now got an impossible crush on a friend of mine, Daniel, and then William and I spend a pleasant walk through Central Park’s bridle path talking through the pros and cons of reconciliation with his ex and new relationships going forward. At the Fifty-Ninth Street subway stop, we part with a hug and wish each other the best of luck.

  —

  By the time my night with Daniel comes around, I feel something new built up inside me. Something like confidence. Six blind dates in three weeks will do that to a woman when those blind dates are flattering and fun and utterly harmless.

  Daniel picks me up at the spot where the Museum of Natural History meets Central Park, and we walk from there to a nuevo Latino restaurant across the street chosen for its pink awning and proximity. The place is packed, but there are two seats at the bar opening up, and we slide into them and sit close together and talk about what we are about to see. It’s Julius Caesar. Like most everyone in the world, I have never seen it performed live, but Daniel knows the play inside and out and tells me what to watch for and explains that the man playing Brutus is an EGOT winner. I pretend for a long time to know what that means and then finally admit I don’t. Daniel explains—Emmy, Grammy, Oscars, and Tony award winner—and I tell him I have every intention of winning a Best Audiobook Grammy one day for my poetic rendition of Everybody Poops. He and I talk over the logistics of turning that book into a musical for a while—how else will we get the Tony?—and our passion-fruit-and-rosewater mojitos arrive, and we can’t stop talking long enough to order food. Finally I suggest we order before we miss the show, and he tells me to get whatever I like and share it with him, so I order ceviche and gallitos and a michelada with hot sauce that is so spicy I immediately hand it over to Daniel and replace it with a nice, drinkable sangria blanca.

  Every time we go out, Daniel eats like he’s never seen food before. Tonight I take a unique kind of pleasure in watching him enjoy the hell out of the food I picked out. It makes me think back to the date who ordered my dinner for me—perhaps he got more out of it than I did. Perhaps there is something to be said for bossing people around when you are very good at it.

  But when the bill comes, the tide turns; my dominance is over. Daniel grabs the check and is unwilling to even go dutch. He hands over a credit card and then says something off putting and prehistoric like “Don’t insult me.”

  “Where’s the insult?” I ask him. “We’re friends, right?”

  A little something moves across his face, and I cannot pretend I didn’t see it. “Yes,” he says. “Of course. I’d just like to treat you; that’s all.”

  When the bill is settled, he takes me by the hand, and for a split second I worry—or hope—he might kiss me. Instead he jumps off his barstool and drags me out of the restaurant so we can make it to the Delacorte Theater in time. When we arrive, we have three minutes to spare and are that silly couple that noses in after everyone else has already arrived in a timely fashion and settled in like adults. I gawk at the set, which is a perfect replica of the Belvedere Castle that rises up just behind the theater in Central Park. “Rome looks different than I remembered,” I tell Daniel in a stage whisper, and then the lights go dark and the play begins.

  John and I went to see Shakespeare together from time to time. It was always a very special occasion. We needed babysitters and advance planning and usually coffee at intermission to stay awake for the third act. He’d buy the tickets for my birthday or for our anniversary, a treat for me, a gift, and he would remain quiet throughout the play and seem to enjoy it in the main, and on the drive home he would say, “That was great; we should do that more often,” and then we would never speak of it again. We saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew, and I was always made very happy by these nights out. It is a generous gift to do something you don’t necessarily want to do, at great expense of time and money, because you know it will make someone else very happy. John never once complained about it or even sighed heavily when the Apothecary spoke his already tedious lines too quietly to be understood and too slowly to be merciful.

  So let it be said: this is not my first Shakespeare. And yet, seeing Shakespeare with Daniel is nothing like anything that has come before. Dinner may have been on him, but we are clearly not at the theater solely for my benefit. He is here for his own pleasure, and I sense that if I were not here with him, he could have brought a smelly old homeless man along and enjoyed the play just as much. He sits up in his chair, sometimes even forward. He pokes me with his elbow before a good line, and then afterward too. At one point, like Julia Roberts at the opera in Pretty Woman, he actually clutches his heart.

  When the lights come up at intermission, he seems to notice me sitting there for the first time, as though I just rematerialized after a long absence. “Well! What do you think?” he asks. And then says, before I can answer, “Crazy how much Brutus and Hamlet have in common, right? You’d think Shakespeare was trying to exorcize his own indecisive demons, but then look at his personal life and the theory loses steam.”

  His enthusiasm is contagious. The play isn’t particularly fast paced; I have been taken in by the quality of performance but also couldn’t help noticing as people around us shifted and flipped through their programs and surreptitiously
checked their Apple Watches over the last hour. Daniel is oblivious—the theater and actors are here for his benefit and his alone.

  I say, “I guess that’s more evidence that it was Anne doing the writing, not Will.”

  Daniel laughs and says, “What do you call it when Caesar drops a call in the Holland Tunnel? Motorolus interruptus!”

  We go looking for champagne. We wind around the theater talking nonstop about the acting, the set, and what did it mean when Brutus said the serpent “which hatch-ed, would as his kind grow mischievous and kill him in the shell.”

  “First of all, it’s hatch’d,” says Daniel. He rattles the line back to me in exaggerated iambic pentameter.

  “Fine. Hatcht. Who’s the second ‘him,’ though? I mean, I presume the serpent isn’t killing himself, right?” I ask.

  Daniel laughs at me and then a moment later admits he never thought about it that way.

  “Who is in the shell still, after the serpent hatches?” I ask. “Is Rome in the shell? Rome was pretty well hatch-ed by then.”

  Daniel finds the line online and reads it to me with different emphasis, and we both realize at once that there’s an ideological parenthesis missing in our understanding—Brutus is saying we are the ones who should kill the serpent in his shell, and then we both laugh and say we should probably lose our librarian licenses over this misunderstanding, and we waste so much time over this that the bells ding and we have to turn right around and go back to our seats.

  Then, right away, Caesar is the guest of honor at his own stabbing party, and things get much more interesting. Daniel actually has to stop himself from clapping his hands at the portrayal of Antony as a hard-line American populist, and I am absorbed in the mashed-up world of Central Park/Ancient Rome, and the next three acts fly by in a flash. When the lights on the stage go dark, I blink and turn to Daniel, stunned.

  He looks back at me. He says, “Wow. I forgot you were there,” and my feelings aren’t hurt at all, because I know exactly what he means, and I say, “I forgot I was here too,” and he nods and says, “That’s exactly it.”