Younger

by Pamela Redmond Satran

  After our meal, she ordered us a bottle of expensive champagne and raised her glass to me.

  “To my mom,” she said. “The youngest-looking woman in the room.”

  I felt myself blush. “Except for you,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, but I really am young,” Diana said. “Whereas you, you’re in your forties, but anybody would believe you were, I don’t know, twenty-seven, twenty-eight—certainly under thirty.”

  My cheeks were really burning now, but Diana was smiling so innocently I thought she might just be reacting to the way I looked in the candlelight.

  “It’s just that it’s so dark in here,” I said, making myself laugh.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Diana. “Even in, say, the kind of fluorescent lights they have in an office, or in a gym, someone might think you were a lot younger.”

  I froze. Obviously, I was busted.

  “Lindsay,” I breathed.

  “That’s right, Mom,” Diana said, the corners of her mouth twitching. “Really: Krav Maga classes?”

  “She told you about that?”

  Diana nodded. “Martini bars? A boyfriend named Josh who designs video games?”

  That was when my hand jerked out, involuntarily, and I knocked over my champagne glass.

  “Oh, my God. She told you everything.”

  “She couldn’t believe you hadn’t told me yourself! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I tried to smile, but could manage to lift only one side of my mouth. Briefly. “Embarrassed?” I said. “Afraid it would make you hate me?”

  “I could never hate you!” Diana cried, scooting over next to me on the banquette. “You’re my mom! I think that’s the most awesome thing you’ve ever done!”

  “Really?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s inspirational! It makes me want to go out there and do something crazy too.”

  “I hope not too crazy.”

  “Let it go, Mom. I mean, try something different, take some chances. Like I’ve been thinking. I know I’m one semester away from finishing my art history degree, but after my experience in Africa, I think I want to be a nurse.”

  “That’s great,” I told her. “You should go for it.”

  “You really think so? It would mean almost starting all over again, taking all these science and math classes and spending a lot more time in school.”

  “But if that’s what you want to do, it’s worth it.”

  “So you don’t mind having to pay for the extra years of college it’s going to take to get my nursing degree? I can go straight back to NYU, but a lot of my credits aren’t going to count in the nursing school.”

  “Diana,” I said gently. “You’re going to have to talk to your dad about that. I can help you, of course, but the way my alimony is structured, I don’t have enough money to support myself and pay all your expenses at school. Whatever advance they give me for the novel will probably just make it possible for me to finish writing it. Unless…”

  Again, I hesitated, not sure whether I was prepared to go forward.

  “Unless what?” Diana pressed.

  “Unless I sold the house,” I said. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to do that.”

  “Why not?” Diana asked, looking honestly stumped.

  “It’s your childhood home,” I pointed out. “You’ve always said I could never sell that house, that you wanted to bring your own children there for holidays, maybe even take it over one day.”

  “That’s not important anymore,” Diana said. “Once fall comes, I’ll be back in school, and after I graduate, I hope to go back to Africa or South Asia or somewhere like that.”

  My only child, planning to spend her life halfway around the world. There was no reason, then, that I had to keep sitting in New Jersey.

  “I thought you were the one who said you wanted to hold on to that house forever,” Diana said.

  “I did feel that way,” I admitted. “And I love that house. But especially without you there, it wouldn’t feel like my home anymore. I mean, not the home of the person I’ve become.”

  “Because of this guy?” Diana asked. “Do you think if you sold the house you’d move in with him?”

  I shook my head. “We broke up.”

  “But what happened? Lindsay said you two were like totally in love.”

  “Oh, I don’t know…,” I began, prevaricating again.

  And then I’d just had it. I’d had it with myself, still dodging, still denying, still telling lies when the truth was arrayed around me, clear as my upturned champagne glass.

  “I was,” I told my daughter. “I was…I mean, I am in love with him. But I broke up with him because he’s so much younger than me. We want such different things out of life, it would never work out.”

  “What different things do you want?” Diana asked me, deadpan.

  I tried to think. There was Japan. But Josh was going to Japan because he wanted to follow his passion rather than do what was expected of him, and I wanted that for myself now too. And I guessed he was more infatuated with fast convertibles than I was. But other than that, on an everyday basis, we seemed to want just about exactly the same things.

  “It’s not now I’m thinking of,” I told Diana. “Now we agree on nearly everything—I mean, everything important. But eventually he’s going to want kids, a house, all those normal grown-up things, and I’ve already done that. And then it will be a disaster.”

  Diana shook her head and narrowed her eyes the way she did when she wanted to convey that she thought I’d said something especially idiotic.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “You love him, you get along great, but you’re breaking up with him because you might disagree about something ten years from now?”

  “Not about something,” I said. “About the most important thing there is—children. I don’t want him to give that up for me. And I don’t want to get into a relationship that either forces him into a huge sacrifice or leaves me alone and heartbroken in five or ten years.”

  “Oh, so you’ll just leave yourself alone and heartbroken now,” Diana said. “Mom, this doesn’t make sense. I mean, it sounds really noble, but you have to be with him or not be with him because of what’s happening now, not what you think might happen ten years from now! Who knows? You might meet somebody else, some old dude whose kids are also grown up. Or maybe you’ll change your mind and decide you want a baby after all. Or maybe he’ll get killed in a plane crash tomorrow—”

  I groaned aloud. “I wish you hadn’t said that.”

  “I didn’t mean really,” she said, horrified. “It was just a way of saying life is unpredictable—”

  “I know, I know,” I assured her. “It’s just that he’s leaving on a plane for Japan tomorrow morning.”

  “So this is your last chance to see whether you might go forward.”

  Imagining it—all of it: his plane crashing, my rushing to see him one more time, our lurching forward into an unknown future—I knew for certain what I had to do. I had to take the chance that I could make a relationship with Josh. However slim the odds for success, they were better than what I had now: the absolute and unbearable certainty that I would never be with him again.

  Chapter 22

  If Josh had still been in Brooklyn, I would have gone directly to his place from my dinner with Diana. But he was, I knew, somewhere in the wilds of Connecticut with his family, and would be traveling to Newark Airport by himself on the day’s first train.

  When I got home, I went straight to bed, setting my alarm for five, intending to go immediately to sleep. But there was a phone message from Maggie, asking me to call her, no matter how late I got in.

  I guessed what she was going to tell me as soon as I heard her message, had guessed it two weeks ago, at the sidewalk café. And indeed, as soon as she lifted the phone, without even saying hello because she knew that the only person calling at midnight would be me, she said, “I’m pregnant.”

  “T
hat’s awesome!” I cried.

  “You know what,” said Maggie. “For once, that word actually fits.”

  “When?” I asked.

  She chuckled. “That’s one of the beauties of insemination: no guessing about the date. January twenty-ninth.”

  “I’m so happy for you.”

  “There’s more,” Maggie said. “The adoption agency called. They have a baby for me. Well, not precisely a baby: she’s nearly two. But I can pick her up in September.”

  Oh, my God. Not one baby but two. “What are you going to do?” I asked Maggie. All her dreams had been about being the single mom of a single child, not of shepherding an entire brood.

  “I said yes, absolutely,” Maggie said. “I didn’t dare to hope for two, considering how difficult it seemed to get just one. But I’m thrilled.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said. “Diana will help you. She’s planning to be at NYU again in the fall. And Maggie, Gentility wants my novel.”

  “Whoopie!” Maggie cried. “That’s your baby! So are you rich?”

  “Knowing Gentility, it will be a modest advance. I didn’t actually talk to Lindsay. Diana took the call.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Big uh-oh. Lindsay totally spilled the beans. Diana knows everything.”

  “Even about the boy?”

  “Especially about the boy. She thinks I should go to the airport to see him tomorrow.”

  “I think so too,” said Maggie.

  “I think so too,” I agreed. “So I’ve got to go to sleep so I don’t look a hundred and three tomorrow morning.”

  But I couldn’t fall asleep, not for long, anyway. I set my alarm for five, but I got up before it rang, showering and dressing and putting my makeup on carefully. I was almost unbearably nervous, but I didn’t want to spend hours hanging around at the airport before he even got there, so I made myself wait.

  As I waited, though, all sorts of terrible possibilities passed through my mind. What if he’d decided to leave early for Tokyo, or from an airport closer to home, now that he thought I wouldn’t be there? What if his family came with him? What if he was so angry at me that he refused to even talk to me once I got there?

  Any of those things could happen, along with a whole host of dire possibilities I hadn’t even thought of, but I couldn’t let that stop me. This was it, my final chance.

  In the car, to keep my mind off what might happen with Josh, I called Lindsay on my cell. She loved my book, she told me immediately, and she was so sorry for being angry with me about Thad. I’d been right about him all along, he was a total jerk—it turned out that on that business trip to California he’d slept with like three other women. And she hadn’t even seriously considered having sex with that creepy guy from the club!

  She was beginning to think now that maybe I’d been right about everything—that it was the perfect time for her to be out seeing the world, doing adventurous things. My daughter was so lucky to have a wise mom like me.

  “She doesn’t always see it that way,” I laughed. “Plus, I realize now that what happened to me when I was in my twenties doesn’t have much to do with what’s going to happen to you or my daughter.”

  “But we can learn something from your experience; we just don’t want to,” Lindsay said. “We see all the shit you go through—putting up with asshole husbands and bratty kids, losing your careers, getting cellulite—and we need to believe that’s not going to happen to us. Because we’re different.”

  “I guess we need to do the same thing to you,” I told her. “We’re so threatened by how gorgeous and skinny and sexy you are, we need to believe you’re immature and incompetent to make ourselves feel better.”

  “But when I believed you were my age,” Lindsay said, “I thought we were so much alike.”

  “We are alike,” I said. “The only real difference is our ages.”

  It turned out that Mrs. Whitney was sympathetic to my explanation of why I’d sidestepped the age issue at work. But more importantly, she’d loved my book. She thought it would appeal to both younger women and older women, and she knew Lindsay was the perfect person to edit it.

  “That doesn’t mean Thad and Teri are going to be involved with it, too?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.

  Lindsay laughed. “One of the women Thad slept with in California was an author, and she threatened him with a sexual harassment suit. He’s gone. And when Mrs. Whitney insisted on going ahead with your classics ideas even after you left, Teri quit. She’s going to stay home with her kids.”

  “God,” I said. “Maybe I could even come back to work for Gentility.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Lindsay said. “You’ve got a book to finish.”

  Signs for the airport appeared, and promising Lindsay that we’d talk again soon, I hung up and maneuvered toward the parking lot closest to Josh’s airline. I figured I’d arrived about the same time he would, and I hoped to spot him standing on line, wait until he was ready to head to the gate, and talk to him then. My intention wasn’t to stop him from leaving; just to see him, to talk to him, before he did.

  But he wasn’t waiting on line. He wasn’t in the bookstore. He wasn’t drinking a cappuccino or eating a Krispy Kreme.

  His flight was still not for over two hours, I knew. Maybe he was still en route to the airport, his train somehow slower than my car. I should station myself at the door, wait for him to show up.

  But what if he was already here? If he’d already gone through security and passport control, and was inside waiting for his flight to leave? What if he was, in effect, already gone?

  He wasn’t gone, I reminded myself firmly. His flight didn’t leave until eleven-something. And until then, he was somewhere very close.

  I had been hoping not to have to call his cell phone. I didn’t want to give him a chance to reject me by phone before I could even get close enough to see his face, to touch his arm.

  But now it was my only hope. I dialed, and he picked up on the first ring.

  “Thank God,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the airport. Where are you?”

  “I’m at the airport, too.” I looked around. “I don’t see you.”

  He laughed. “I hate you for making me laugh. I’m already through security.”

  My heart dropped. “I have to talk with you.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then, “You broke up with me two weeks ago, Alice. You told me you didn’t want to see me again, ever. What are you going to say now, as I’m about to step on the plane, that would make any difference?”

  “I want to explain,” I said. “I want to tell you the truth. Before you leave, and I never get the chance.”

  He hesitated. “I thought you already told me the truth.”

  “I did,” I promised. “But there’s more.”

  While I waited for him, standing there staring at the open space beside the security machines, I tried to think of something I could say, something I could do, that would make this easier for both of us. But then I realized if there were a simple approach to this relationship, I would have figured it out by now.

  Then I saw his face, serious as he approached the exit, then breaking into a smile as he caught sight of me. He tried to make himself look somber again, but he couldn’t do it.

  He walked right up to me and took me in his arms. I hugged him back hard to let him know how I felt, before my words could screw everything up. When we finally moved apart, he smiled a little and said, “So what’s this other truth that you have to tell me? You’re a hit woman for the Mafia? A Middle Eastern spy?”

  “Nothing that dramatic,” I assured him. “I just realize now that I shouldn’t have broken up with you that day. I wasn’t really trying to protect you, I was trying to protect myself.”

  “From what, Alice? You know how much I love you, how much I want to be with you. I told you I didn’t care about your age, any of that—”

  I put my finger to his lips to stop
him. “I was trying to protect myself from the pain of losing you.”

  He shook his head as if he didn’t understand. “But you weren’t losing me. It was exactly the opposite.”

  “From losing you, ever,” I said. “I figured if I dumped you now, you wouldn’t be able to dump me later.”

  Josh just looked at me. Finally he said, “That’s really screwed up.”

  “I know,” I said. “I know. I’m embarrassed to even tell you. But I had to see you, and I didn’t want to lie about why. I don’t want to lie about anything, ever again.”

  “You really hurt me that day,” he said, “in the park.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, moving to put my arms around him. “Do you think you can forgive me?”

  He pulled away. “I don’t know,” he said, refusing to meet my eye. “I don’t know if I can trust you again.”

  “You can trust me,” I assured him, “from this moment onward.”

  He took a deep sigh and looked toward the ceiling, out the long window where the planes were lined up. “But this is the moment I’m leaving,” he said. “We’re not even going to be together.”

  One option occurred to me as a serious possibility for the first time. “Maybe I could go to Japan,” I said impulsively. “Not this minute, but once you got settled. For a while, I mean. I’ve talked to my daughter about selling the house. And she’s going to school in the fall.”

  But Josh was already shaking his head. “I don’t know,” he said again. “I’m going to need time to think about it. To think about everything.”

  I hung my head. “So that’s it, then,” I said. “You’re leaving, and we’re not going to be together anymore.”

  “I don’t know, Alice!” he cried, flinging his hands out in exasperation. “Maybe if we’re ever going to be together, you’re going to have to just let whatever’s happening at that moment happen and not try to nail down what’s going to happen next.”

  He picked up his pack then and started walking backward. Instinctively, I took a step toward him, but he held up both hands to warn me off. I stopped. But I thought that any second he would stop too, move toward me again, take me in his arms and at least let me feel certain that he still loved me.