Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties: A Novel

by Camille Pagán

  “You’d be weird if you didn’t obsess,” said Laurie. She had a New York accent, and I reminded myself to ask her how she had landed in the Midwest. “I can’t say it goes away, but it gets better.”

  I attempted to smile. “I hope so. He lied to me. He said he had a girlfriend and he was leaving me for her, but turns out they were never serious. He just . . . well, I don’t even know what he was thinking.”

  “That’s messed up,” said Laurie.

  “How are you feeling about all this?” said Bob.

  I considered his question for a moment. “Honestly? It hurts like hell, but I think that’s better than being numb.” I thought about the bar a few blocks from the church, which advertised three-dollar glasses of wine on Tuesdays. “I’m not always great about dealing with my feelings the way I’d like to, but at least I’m not pushing them back below the surface.”

  “I can’t deal with mine,” said one of the older men, whose name was George. “It’s been four years since me and Elise split, and hearing her name still makes me angry. When I ran into her at Costco last year, I told her to stay the hell away from me.”

  This was not reassuring. But that was the thing about support groups: sometimes people said the exact thing you needed to hear, and other times they accidentally shot you with a poison-tipped arrow.

  After the session let out, I skipped refreshments. I was tired, and George’s remarks about not recovering years after his divorce had left me feeling sunken. What if I couldn’t rebound from Adam, either?

  I had just reached the parking lot when Charlie came jogging up behind me. “Maggie!” he said. “Hey. I’m sorry I wasn’t here last week.”

  “Hi, Charlie.” My mood instantly lifted because he had sought me out, but I felt silly about that, too. “No need to apologize.”

  He frowned, and I realized that his eyes were a bit bloodshot. “Well, I said I was going to be here, and I wasn’t, so I’m sorry about that. I had a bad cold. I still kind of do,” he said, motioning to his face. “Anyway, I would have texted you to let you know, but I don’t have your number.”

  I took a deep breath. There was no need for this to be fraught. Unlike Benito, he wasn’t coming on to me. “That’s okay,” I said.

  “But maybe I could get it from you? Maybe we could go out for a drink sometime.”

  Oh. So maybe he was coming on to me. That was as unnerving as it was thrilling. On the one hand, an attractive man was attracted to me. On the other, asking a tattoo artist to ink a design of his choosing across my lower back sounded slightly more intelligent than dating at this juncture in my life.

  But maybe the best way to rebound from Adam was with a rebound lover, I thought suddenly. I could rip the Band-Aid off—and unlike my time with Benito, I would be able to remember it the next day.

  There was one small problem. “I’m not really drinking right now,” I told Charlie.

  His face broke into a smile, and I braced myself for his laughter while frantically scouring my mind for an explanation that didn’t make me sound like I had to use a Breathalyzer in order to start my car. But instead of cracking a joke, he said, “Well, that’s fantastic, because I don’t drink.”

  “So . . . why ask me to get a drink?”

  He shoved his hands in his coat. “Because that’s what people usually do, I guess? I guess there’s always coffee . . .”

  “Or we could do something that doesn’t involve food.” My cheeks burned, because the only nonfood activity that immediately sprang to mind was sex.

  But Charlie just laughed again. “Yes, we could. You free next Monday? This bug I’m fighting should be gone by then.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “Great,” he repeated.

  “Great,” I said, and we both started laughing. Even though I was still nervous, Charlie was so easygoing that I doubted there was much I could say or do that would rub him the wrong way.

  “At least we’re working with the same limited vocabulary,” he said.

  I unlocked my car and opened the door. “Thank God. Anyway, I’m looking forward to Monday. I haven’t met a lot of people in town yet.”

  “I’m looking forward to it, too,” he said, walking backward away from my car.

  I had just started the engine when Charlie knocked on the window, startling me. I rolled the window down and stuck my head out.

  “Uh, we’re back to the same problem we had before—I don’t have your number. Wanna give it to me?” he said.

  I flushed again. “Oh yeah. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. I rattled off my phone number, which he punched into his screen. “I just texted you, so you have my number, too,” he said.

  “Great,” I said, and we smiled at each other. “We’ll figure out details this weekend.”

  I smiled like a fool the whole way home, overcome by the unexpected delight of having something to look forward to.

  An hour before I was supposed to go out with Charlie, Adam called. I was so shocked that it did not occur to me to not pick up. “Adam? Are the kids okay?”

  “Hi, Maggie,” he said. “And no, it’s not about the kids. Is this a bad time?”

  I immediately sensed that there was no emergency at hand, nor was he going to refresh my nonexistent memory of whatever I had said when I drunk-dialed him from Europe. “Why are you calling?”

  “Listen, Maggie—”

  “I no longer go by ‘Listen, Maggie,’” I said, bristling. “You may call me Maggie. Or even better, just don’t call.”

  “List—um. It’s about my mother.”

  I instantly softened. “Rose? Is she okay?” She and I still spoke every few days, but our calls were often far shorter than they used to be, and Rose could not seem to wrap her mind around the fact that I was no longer in Oak Valley.

  “No.”

  I was not used to hearing Adam at a loss for words, so I tried to fill the space for him. “Did she fall? Did she hurt herself?”

  “It’s not that,” he said, his voice faltering. “It’s her Alzheimer’s. It’s getting worse. She saw her specialist the other day—it’s bad.”

  This was not news. Rose was diagnosed the year before Adam left me, and every few months had brought more changes. Adam and I had gone with her to most of her early neurology and gerontology appointments, and each doctor had repeatedly stressed that Alzheimer’s was a progressive disease. Her dementia would likely develop in fits and starts, but there was no possibility of recovery.

  “It’s really serious, Maggie,” said Adam. “And Mom’s refusing to take the medication her neurologist prescribed her. That’s going to mean she’ll have to move out of her apartment a lot faster than she was planning to. She’s going to land herself in the other side of the building within a year,” he said, referring to the section of Mountainview Manor that was a traditional nursing home.

  Rose was the kind of person who would refuse Tylenol for a broken leg. That she didn’t want to take a medication known to provide temporary and potentially nominal benefits without ultimately changing her prognosis was not surprising. “I’m really sorry to hear this, but I’m not sure what you want me to do about it.”

  “You’re a daughter to her, Maggie. She listens to you. She won’t listen to me or Rick, and you know she can’t stand Heather,” he said, referring to Rick’s wife. “I need your help. Mom needs your help.”

  I leaned against the counter and stared out the kitchen window. Not a hundred feet away, a fawn-colored bird of prey landed on the branch of a large evergreen at the edge of the yard. Its eyes darted around for a moment before it took flight and disappeared into the sky. “I’ll give her a call tomorrow,” I said.

  I suppose I was expecting gratitude, maybe even an actual “thank you.” Instead Adam said, “I was hoping you would go see the specialist with her. Maybe together we could talk her into taking the medication.”

  Anger rose like bile from my gut. I knew he was right—if a
nyone could talk Rose into it, it would be me. But I had barely left town; we had just divorced. I was trying to establish a new life without him, and coming home was at odds with my ability to do so. Surely he knew this.

  “Please,” he added. “Mom needs you.”

  “Adam,” I said sternly. “I love your mother. But any responsibility I have toward her is mine to determine.”

  “I need help,” he said softly.

  He should have thought about that back when he started meeting Jillian Smith for coffee. “Don’t we all. I’m trying to move on, and you calling me—”

  “I know, I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I wasn’t finished speaking.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I appreciate your apology, but now I can’t remember what I was saying.”

  “Something about moving on.”

  “Right,” I said, pacing the kitchen. I glanced at the clock over the sink; I was supposed to meet Charlie in twenty minutes. “I have an appointment. So you’ll have to excuse me, as I need to go.”

  “Okay.” He sounded resigned. “Can we talk again sometime soon? Only about Mom—I promise. I could really use your input.”

  The correct answer was no. “Maybe,” I said.

  He exhaled audibly, like I had agreed. Which was probably how it sounded to him. “Thank you.”

  Those two little words were all it took to throw off any civility I had been clinging to. Now Adam thanked me? Preemptively, when I hadn’t done anything yet? Where were his thanks for the years I put in caring for our home and raising our family and supporting his career? Where was his gratitude for how stupidly graceful I had been after he had failed to hold up his end of our deal?

  “Adam,” I said sharply, “please don’t call again. I’ll reach out to you if and when I’m ready.”

  Charlie suggested we meet at the conservatory at the local botanic garden, which was only open until five. I agreed, though I wondered what he did for a living that he was free at three in the afternoon. Perhaps he was a chef or a high school teacher or a psychopath who got off on murdering hapless singles in broad daylight.

  Or maybe he was just like me: unemployed.

  I found him standing in front of a basin of water brimming with lily pads. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a pale blue cashmere sweater. The sweater had a hole in one elbow and another near the collar, but the color was perfect against his skin.

  Charlie broke into a smile when he saw me. “Maggie, hi! I wasn’t sure you would come.”

  “I could say the same for you. Except I was also wondering if you might be a serial killer who cruises divorce support groups to find your next victim.”

  He twisted his face into a mock grimace. “You’re with the FBI, aren’t you?”

  There was something about his banter that pulled me out of my thoughts, and my phone call with Adam moved to the periphery of my mind. “Now why would I actually tell you about my top-secret spy career?” I said.

  “You probably shouldn’t, because I don’t really like talking about work.”

  “No one likes talking about work, but we all do it anyway. You know, the old ‘So what do you do?’”

  He shrugged. “I try never to answer that question unless I’m being threatened.”

  So he probably was unemployed. “Noted. I’ll bring a sharp object next time.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” he said with a laugh.

  We began on the path down the center of the garden. It was a gray, soggy day, but as we emerged from the canopy of palms and vines at the path’s entrance, the glass ceiling intensified the sun’s rays, rendering the greenhouse bright and tropically warm. “This is nice,” I told Charlie.

  “It’s one of my favorite places. I come here a lot, especially during the eight months out of the year that it’s cold.”

  “It feels like that, doesn’t it? But I live . . . I used to live in Chicago,” I said, catching myself. “Which was even worse, with all the wind and lake-effect snow.”

  “Chicago, huh? How did you end up here?”

  As we wandered, I gave him the short version, taking care not to get into too much detail about Adam, whom he had already heard about at the support group; I didn’t want our get-together to turn into another session. In turn, Charlie told me that he had lived in Ann Arbor for four years, having moved to the city from Atlanta for his ex-wife’s job at the university. Before Atlanta, he had lived in Boston; New Orleans; Twin Falls, Idaho; and even Ottawa, for a spell. He had grown up in Kansas, he said, in a town I had never heard of, and had left as soon as he was able.

  “You’ve moved around a lot,” I said.

  He turned and our eyes met. “I like change.”

  “Weird,” I said, and we both laughed. “Do you have children?” I asked.

  “No kids. It wasn’t in the cards.”

  There it was again: that same sadness I had noticed in the parking lot the night we met. I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, so I peered at a tree with bright yellow orchids hanging from its gnarled branches. A carpet of impossibly small leaves was nestled at the tree’s base.

  “Baby’s tears,” said Charlie.

  “Pardon?”

  “That’s what that’s called,” he said, pointing to the swath of green. “Baby’s tears.”

  “Better than adult tears,” I said, and we smiled at each other.

  There was another pond at the opposite end of the greenhouse. When we reached it, we sat on its wide stone rim and watched the large koi swimming about in the shallow water. The fishes’ eyes were bulging, and their mouths gaped at the water’s surface. But their scaled skin, which was orange, white, and black, was brilliant and beautiful, and they were hypnotic as they circled each other.

  After spending a few minutes in a comfortable silence, we stood and circled the gardens again. As we walked, I told Charlie about Zoe and Jack, and he told me about his sister, who had just left a job at a pharmaceutical company a lot like the ones Zoe’s law firm represented. Then I told him about Jean and my trip to Rome, and he offered to take me to a café downtown that had what he described as the best coffee in town.

  It all felt easy and right. But when it was time to go, Charlie went to hug me, and we both lunged in the same direction and ended up bumping shoulders. He pulled back and grinned, which sent a zing through my core.

  “Well, thanks for getting together,” I said, sounding like I had a mouth full of marbles.

  If he noticed my awkwardness, he didn’t let on. “My pleasure,” he said. “See you at group tomorrow?”

  I nodded.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  I was, too. And as I waved goodbye to him from my car, I realized that I would need to be careful with Charlie.

  SEVENTEEN

  Many a time in life I had longed for the luxury of nothing to do. Now I found myself wishing for the opposite. While I was filling the hours as best I could—deep cleaning Jean’s house, dealing with mountains of postdivorce paperwork, and making the mile-long walk to Maizie’s for coffee daily—a job increasingly sounded like a good idea.

  Fortunately, I wasn’t broke; in addition to alimony and half of the savings and retirement Adam and I had accrued over twenty-seven years of marriage, Jean’s generosity meant my overhead was low. But the lessons of my childhood were never far behind me; I knew all too well that cash in hand today could well be lost to the wind tomorrow. Working would give me purpose while upping the odds I would not run out of money.

  I began applying for anything even remotely in my wheelhouse, and my canvassing paid off: at the end of February I received a callback for a community services coordinator position at a local nonprofit called CenterPoint.

  CenterPoint billed itself as a stewardship collaborative that was dedicated to community outreach and pairing donors with family-oriented causes. I had no clue what most of that meant, but the position was a temporary gig with the potential for permanent hire, and they had a
ctually found my résumé promising enough to offer me an interview. I was ecstatic.

  When I arrived at the CenterPoint offices, a man named Adrian Fromm greeted me at the door. Adrian guided me through the lobby, which contained a foosball table and an elaborate coffee station, into a conference room. Though he was barely pushing thirty, he introduced himself as the executive vice president of the foundation, which was only a few years old.

  “So tell me what attracts you to this position, Margaret,” said Adrian, who had taken a seat at the head of the table and indicated I was to sit to his left.

  I perched myself on the edge of the swiveling ergonomic chair he had pointed to. “Please—call me Maggie,” I said, just as I had in the lobby.

  He leaned back. As he crossed his legs, one of his feet emerged from beneath the conference table, clad in a leather loafer that probably cost four times as much as my entire outfit. “Right,” he said. “So. Tell me about you, Maggie.”

  I took a deep breath. I was well aware that having not practiced social work for more than twenty years made me a tough sell, but I reminded myself that this was barely above an entry-level position. Anyway, being called in for an interview meant I had already won half the battle . . . didn’t it? “I worked for Illinois’ Department of Child and Family Services as a caseworker for children across greater Chicago. After DCFS, I worked at Chicago Safety Zone, counseling hundreds of men and women while I was there. It’s my understanding that your foundation directly supports women and families in crisis, which makes it seem an especially good fit for me.”

  He peered at the paper he was holding, which I assumed was a copy of my résumé. “You’ve been out of the field for quite some time.”

  “Yes, I was working with another family—my own,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was a winning way. “Chicago Safety Zone had an extremely high turnover; most of my colleagues came and left in under a year. I was there for four. I bring that level of commitment to everything I do.” It was unfortunate that said commitment was not a guarantee of success (see also: my marriage), but it seemed like the right thing to say.