My Favorite Midlife Crisis (Yet)

by Toby Devens

  He said, “Don’t,” as I reached the robe. “Let me see you. Please, darling, I need to see you.” I let the robe drop, heard his quick intake of breath. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. And that “beautiful” released me so I could stop fretting about myself and concentrate on him as he slowly, tantalizingly removed his trousers and shirt and stepped over them.

  Simon York à la carte, all muscle, curly chest hair, and burning eyes looked—if this were possible—better than Simon York in his usual state of Savile Row perfection. Think Heathcliff with that quintessential English face, the sensual hint of overbite, the square jaw burnished with five o’clock shadow. Think great English lion. The one the sun never sets on. Think normally sleek silver hair, a tousled mane. Noble features softened by desire.

  And then he laughed, a deep rumble. “Look at what you’ve done to me.” He smiled down on the huge hard-on in full salute. “That’s from you. And for you. Do you want that? I want to give you that.”

  Oh, I know Fleur likes to say, “It ain’t the size of the clapper that makes for the toll of the bell.” And she’s right in principle, but I gasped at the sight of Simon so huge, so ready for me. I went to him. Ran my fingers down his muscled back. Gripped his shoulders and pressed myself to him. Rocked against that urgent hardness and heard his low growl before I slipped my tongue between his teeth.

  He returned my kisses. So deep. So wet. Against his warm flesh, I inhaled Eau de Simon, a wild perfume of citrus aftershave, sweat, and musk. I licked that sweet saltiness, then traced my tongue down his neck and heard his breath go rough. He glided a path along my cleavage, drew wet circles to the left, to the right, put his mouth to one nipple then the other. I moaned my arousal. And as his tongue slid its descent, I swayed and staggered back against the wall, beyond hot, beyond fevered, approaching throwing off sparks.

  And yet I said, “Don’t,” to the top of his head as he sunk to his knees. “Not yet.” Meaning not that I wasn’t moist with eagerness but that what he had in mind was so intimate we needed more time to…

  He looked up at me, his eyes intense. “Please. I want to. You do want me to.”

  I nodded and lost him. Lost myself in him as he worked that devilish tongue. Faint with pleasure, I braced myself against the wall and just…let…it…happen.

  When he came up for air, he murmured, “You taste like honey.” Answering every woman’s question, every woman’s secret fear. “Delicious. God, I want to fuck you.” So said my brilliant British scientist whose usual vocabulary was pristine, and I was putty. Literally, I felt my flesh melt into something yielding, malleable, able to be shaped to any desire. We hit the bed, tumbled onto my six-hundred-count Porthault sheets, and really messed them up.

  Simon, the gynecologist, knew where all the hot spots were buried and precisely what to do when he uncovered them. While the guitar played a frenzied bulería in the background, we strummed each other until we were both taut, ready to snap. So that when finally he entered me, it took only seconds before I crescendoed, soared, spasmed, went off in all directions. Then he drove to his finish, gaze locked on mine, letting me watch those pure gray eyes cloud, then flame as he shuddered.

  Not once in my life, in all the years I’d made love, had I ever seen a man climax eyes wide open. That windows to the soul cliché? Absolutely true. I felt magically connected to him.

  Afterwards, as I lay in his arms, he said, “God, that was lovely, Gwyneth. Everything I’d hoped for. More than. You were wonderful.”

  “You were,” I said, barely breathing.

  He took my hand and kissed its palm. “We were,” he said.

  At sunset, we took our martinis to the deck. While Simon swiped a red pen over his article for Cervix, I stretched out at the other end of the wicker sofa, my feet in his lap, finishing off the previous Sunday’s New York Times crossword. Occasionally, I tapped into his brain for a lost word. From time to time, I stole a glance at him. The sheaf of silver hair falling over his forehead, the twitch of his jaw as he concentrated, the squared shoulders under a gray merino crewneck like the ones the rich kids wore back in college—all this tingled me down to my toes, which he massaged with his free hand.

  In the background Isaac Stern fiddled through the Brandenburg Concertos. “Do you play bridge?” Simon asked, not looking up from his editing.

  “I do. How about chess?” I asked. “Do you play chess?”

  “I do,” he said.

  It was a match made in dork heaven.

  Except that heaven lasts forever, and our weekend was running out. Still, there were many weekends ahead. Why shouldn’t there be? I closed my eyes and stretched the moment the way women do, prematurely. Why couldn’t we go the distance? Why couldn’t we end up as The Drs. York? Writing papers together. Making fantastic love into eternity.

  If not, if Simon and I ended badly, well then, I would have had a wonderful love affair with a brilliant, charming man. More than a fling. Something to remember fondly while rocking on the nursing home porch.

  That’s what I told myself as the flaming sun dipped into the turquoise sea, just like a sappy painting on velvet.

  ***

  “Remember fondly? Oh honeybunch, are you kidding yourself,” Fleur said, chuckling, when I confided that on Sunday night. “Let me tell you, if you and Simon get something going and he breaks up with you, if Simon does you dirty, you’re just another Jerry Springer biker chick wanting to tear his eyeballs out. We’re all primitive creatures when we’re pulling the knife from our guts. Okay, so you had sex. Which you’re not going to talk about because well-brought-up women don’t. Except you weren’t well brought up, so it’s an affectation.”

  “The sex was dynamite,” I said, failing to suppress a smirk.

  Fleur blinked at me as if I were some new specimen of Gwyneth she hadn’t come across before.

  “Listen to you. Dynamite, huh? That’s a surprise. The Brits are not known for sexual proficiency. Brussels sprouts, yes. Sex, no.”

  “Well, he was incredible,” I said. “It’s been years since I had such a big…well, you know…”

  “You had A Big You Know? Then he must be good. Because honestly since menopause, my You Know hasn’t been that big. I think it’s all hormone related. Blood rises to your face for a hot flash instead of settling in the nether regions where it’s needed.”

  “The vast majority of women over fifty report an increase in the intensity of orgasm,” I said.

  “This is your farkuckteh survey again, right? That survey has gotten us all in trouble. I’ll tell you it was a hell of a lot easier back in Jane Austen’s day when fifty-five-year-old ladies put on their lace caps and retired to play whist. Sometimes I wonder if civilization has really made any progress.”

  “Your date last night was lousy, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “the pits.”

  Chapter 27

  I brought back souvenirs from my beach weekend with Simon. Occasionally, the memory of his chiseled profile on the next pillow would surface. Or I’d get ambushed by a flash of him buttering his toast or laughing at something I’d said. These blips of pleasure didn’t interfere with my work, mind you. I saw patients, performed surgeries, watched CNN, ate my yogurt, but occasionally a thought of him jingled the serotonin receptors in my prefrontal cortex and passing a mirror, I’d catch a glimpse of my goofy smile.

  Early in the week, Kat got a second opinion on the best way to treat her tumor that agreed with Abe’s first and now that she knew what had to be done, she just wanted to get it over with.

  Kat’s lumpectomy was really a partial mastectomy and Abe and I had gone toe-to-toe with her insurance company to buy her an extra day in the hospital, after which she’d require some looking after. She intended to stay with Summer and Tim for a few days. The plan was for me to stop in over the weekend to do the post-op care that made Su
mmer blanch when I described it.

  “Well, isn’t she the delicate flower. It doesn’t sound so bad. Hell, I’ll do it if you show me how. You can even go to New York if you want to,” Fleur said.

  Simon had invited me up for the weekend, but under the circumstances, Kat came first.

  “Atta girl,” Fleur cheered. “Friends before lovers. It’s nice to know you’ve still got your priorities straight. And you know, Gwynnie, when the lovers are long gone, the friends are still there for you.”

  “That’s so comforting.” I said it as a joke but, deep down, I meant it.

  Simon was disappointed when I postponed my visit, but he understood. “Of course, you must be there for your chum. You have a good heart to go with the not-so-shoddy brain. In fact, I think you’re quite wonderful. You do know I like you very much, Gwyneth.”

  I swallowed a major lump. “And I like you very much.” We both paused reverently at our display of feeling, and then I added, “God help us both,” which really broke him up.

  ***

  I couldn’t change my two surgeries scheduled for Thursday afternoon and wouldn’t rush them. And although I intended to get to Kat before they wheeled her into the operating room, the pelvis of my second patient, Mrs. Violet Sandler, aged eighty-two, had other ideas. Working around adhesions from her previous procedures was like picking through scotch tape. By the time I reassured the family and stripped off my scrubs, Kat had been in Abe’s hands for more than an hour.

  I made it into the waiting room just as he emerged to tell Summer, “It went the way I like surgeries to go—short and sweet. We won’t get the final pathology results for a few days, but let’s take it one step at a time. Your mom did fine in there.”

  Me, he motioned aside for a more detailed assessment. The bottom line was he had to take more tissue than he’d anticipated, a major chunk, and Kat might want to seriously consider reconstructive surgery. But the prognosis was good: if her luck held, she’d get five weeks of radiation to prevent local recurrence of the cancer, but she shouldn’t need chemo.

  After Fleur went off in search of another Diet Coke and Summer found an alcove to call Tim from her cell phone, I slipped into the recovery room to see the patient. I hadn’t expected her to be awake, but she was—awake and looking beautiful with her crinkly hair spread on the pillow and her face pale but relieved.

  “You did great, kid.” I patted her hand.

  “Yeah, Dr. Sukkar said. So far. Radiation next. Thank God no chemo.” Her eyes shimmered and I knew she was thinking of her mother and sister who’d endured grueling rounds of chemotherapy, Melanie dragging herself to be dripped long after the doctors had given up. “Thank you, God. Thank you, Ethan,” Kat whispered to her intervening angel. After a sip of water, “Summer okay?”

  “Fine. She and Fleur are outside.”

  “Together?” Kat grimaced, as if I’d left Dracula to baby-sit Frankenstein’s monster. “Listen.” She motioned me down to her. “Favor. When you go to feed the cats. In my bedroom, on my dresser”—her voice was hoarse from intubation and she slurred, still thick-tongued—“on top, envelopes. Last-minute notes to my lawyer, others, you...you know, in case, something happened in there.” The OR. “Bury them. In a drawer. Don’t want Summer to see them. Doesn’t need to know her mama’s a wimp.”

  Some wimp. When I stopped by later that afternoon to check on her, Kat was sitting up, legs over the side of the bed, eyes lasering Summer, who leaned against the windowsill, arms folded defensively across her chest. The patient, five hours post-surgery, was chewing her daughter out one decibel level below a shout.

  “No, what you don’t seem to grasp,” Kat curtly nodded an acknowledgement as I entered, “is that at fifty-four I don’t have to justify my actions to anyone. I’m a grown woman, your mother, not the other way around, and you have no right to tell me how to live the rest of my life, however long—or short—that might be.”

  “Mama, please,” Summer said. “Don’t talk like that. Dr. Sukkar told me…”

  “Dr. Sukkar can’t make promises. Life isn’t infinite, Summer. Your father hadn’t so much as a cold in fifteen years. Then he drives to pick up mulch and gets killed in a freak accident. So you have to use whatever life you have because it can end in an instant.” She winced as she snapped her fingers. I moved forward, about to suggest she might want to take it easy, but she waved me away. “If I get a second chance here, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to do what I want to do. And you, my darling daughter, need to back off. Understood?”

  “But that man is so much younger than—”

  “Lee is not the issue here.”

  “Fine.” Summer rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “Summer Germaine!” Kat’s voice rose menacingly.

  “Fine. Yes. Right. Understood, Mama.”

  When I caught up with Fleur later, her response was, “No shit? She really laid the brat out, huh? Here you have a prime example of what does not kill us makes us strong. But does this mean she’s back with Lee?”

  “I asked the same question after Summer took off. Short answer: no. Lee is too young to be saddled by the likes of her. Kat’s words. He’s entitled to kids. Not that she knows if he wants any. And a girlfriend with no cancer history and a perfect set of boobs. Not that she ever discussed her surgery with him. Or even told him she was having surgery.”

  “Don’t you think he’d want to know? I have half a mind to call him,” Fleur continued.

  “Half a mind is right. Do not call Lee. If Kat wanted to, she would have. Stay out of it, Fleur. Just as she told Summer, you can’t live her life for her.”

  “Sure I can. And I’d live it better. With Lee.”

  “Well, obviously she has other plans. If Kat wants it over, it’s over.”

  But maybe not.

  That night, with Mama Cass and Denny purring and scouring my legs, I kept my promise to Kat and hiked up to her bedroom. On the dresser, she’d built a shrine, probably inadvertently, but she was an artist so who knows? I picked up her silver-framed wedding picture and looked at it closely for the first time in thirty years. She and Ethan had been married in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, which they’d tried to turn into Katmandu with incense sticks planted in the spring earth and lanterns strung in the trees, unlit because they couldn’t get a permit from the NYFD. The bride, in a gauzy caftan, appeared light as a dragonfly. The bearded groom looked like the rabbi’s twin. Right after Kat’s sister snapped that picture, a panhandler made his stoned way through the wedding guests, a good omen Kat had said, lifting all-embracing arms. “Faith,” she’d cocked her head toward the rabbi-guru. “Hope,” she’d nodded toward her new husband. “And charity.” We broke into applause and showered the stoned guy with coins. A happy day so long ago.

  Next to the picture, Kat had arranged a vase of flowers—apricot mums from her garden—a small jade Buddha, and the fan of envelopes. One for the lawyer, one for me, one each for Fleur, Summer, and Tim, and one marked in Kat’s Picasso scrawl, “Lee.” I did what she instructed me to do. Buried them deep in a drawer under the bras she’d get to wear again.

  When I arrived home, I found three voice messages.

  Sylvie: “Mr. Harald acted up in the barbershop today. Should I call Mr. Stan and ask him if he can cut Mr. Harald’s hair next time he comes?”

  That one I returned. “No, do not ask Mr. Stan to do anything. I will take Mr. Harald to the barber myself on Friday. Don’t worry, I’ll be able to handle him, Sylvie.” I didn’t have to see her to know, without doubt, she was screwing up her mouth in disbelief.

  The second message was my son Drew informing me he was coming home next month for Thanksgiving, which was a surprise. Drew, who’d always been closer than his twin to my dad, these days avoided occasions where he’d have to confront what was left of his beloved grandpa. Just couldn’t deal with
it. So this seemed like a breakthrough. His cooler medical student brother, Whit, planned to have dinner with his girlfriend’s family in Virginia. And why not, I thought, let somebody have a joyous celebration. We would be a pitiful three at the Waterview table: Drew, the sensitive son, his insensible grandfather, and his not-so-sensible mother.

  The third message featured the amiable growl of Harry Galligan asking how I was doing since it had been a while and, by the way, how was that woman who was having medical problems when we last spoke? Typical Harry. The man deserved better than he’d been getting from me and even in my Simonized state I felt guilty about it. Calculating that I could work my schedule of tending to Kat to free me for a few hours Saturday night, we made a date. It turned out to be a nice evening. No pyrotechnics, but lots of warmth, which I appreciated as the autumn weather turned chill.

  Chapter 28

  The next month zipped by. Now that Ibrahim Sukkar had plucked the family heirloom out of her right breast, Kat’s natural optimism resurfaced. She started her radiation therapy, floating through the sessions on a waft of serenity, visualizing her cancer cells as lotus petals being crushed by Buddhist monks and scattered to the winds. Which was so Kat. I say do whatever works for you, even the alternative stuff as long as it doesn’t lure you from top grade western medicine, even if the vote’s not in on imagining your way to good health.

  Fleur, in her own spurt of energy, ran through four of Hannah Pechter’s video studs: one schmuck, two schlemiels, and a schlimazel. But there was a mensch on the horizon. She penciled in Victor, the Chinese-cooking high-end raincoat salesman, for the following week.

  At the office, it was obvious Bethany McGowan had taken Seymour’s discarding of her very hard. Back to her pre-affair bluestocking fashion style—flat shoes and Puritan blouses buttoned so tight and high up her neck that I feared for her carotid artery—she sulked and skulked around, growing thinner and more dispirited daily, while Seymour—like a vampire sucking every ounce of joy from her soul—grew fatter and more beamish. I kept my eye on Mindy, the new hire, for signs she was being illicitly boinked, but Seymour seemed to have learned at least one of two important lessons: don’t play around in the office or if you do, don’t get caught.