The Last Dreamer

by Barbara Solomon Josselsohn

  “Marc—”

  “You can’t just drop a thousand dollars and run off on a whim. Look, I understand that you want to do something with your life besides just running the house. You’re no Karen Angers, I get that. But I just think there are better ways than doing something so ludicrous.”

  “Marc, it may sound ludicrous to you, and maybe I’d agree if circumstances were different. But for the story and the situation we’re talking about now, I have to take this trip. I guess I’m just asking you to accept this for no other reason than it’s very, very important to me. Can you do that this one time? Because if you had to take a trip and pay for it out of your pocket to help your career, I think I’d go along with it. I really think I would.”

  “Kelly, who’s that?” she heard him yell out in the other direction. She had no idea if he had heard what she’d just said. “I gotta take this call,” he told her when he got back on the phone. “We’ll talk later.”

  He hung up, and she stared at the kitchen countertop. Suddenly the trip that had been so breathtaking less than an hour ago felt inane, frivolous. Why did Marc always have to be so damn oppositional? This was so typical, she thought, these calm, biting questions—Can’t you find trends on the Internet? Who would pay for this trip? You can’t drop a thousand dollars and run off on a whim—that made her feel foolish. What had he asked—was she mocking him, was she testing him? How was he so good at making himself the center of every conversation?

  But then she folded her arms across her chest and lowered herself into a kitchen chair. She was deluding herself. Maybe Marc could be a little harsh sometimes, but his questions weren’t biting, and they weren’t self-centered. They were reasonable. After all, there were plenty of other ways to do research that didn’t involve unreimbursed travel. Even for a book on teen idols, or Jeff’s experience as a teen idol, she could go online and browse videos of Dreamer concerts or episodes of his Guitar Dreams on YouTube. She had already found that snippet from the Jerry Lewis telethon with no trouble at all. And she could interview Jeff and the other guys he located by phone or email. She didn’t have to go to California. Marc was right—the plan was ludicrous. She should just forget it, just call Jeff’s office and tell him she couldn’t get away.

  She got up to make the call, but paused midway to the kitchen. No, she thought—no, she wasn’t going to cave. Wouldn’t that be just like her, like the miserable Iliana she had become over these past several years? Sure, there were other ways to research a book on teen idols. But the truth was, the trip was what felt essential. She had spent years sitting at her dining room table in front of her laptop, researching article ideas and writing up queries, only to watch them fail and then seek to distract herself through an endless parade of chores. What had all that effort gotten her? Disappointment and frustration. She couldn’t keep doing things the same way over and over. It was time to be bold and try something very different. Okay, she liked Jeff Downs. There was no getting around that fact. She liked how charming he was, and she liked the banter between them. She liked how much he seemed to like her. But she wasn’t going out there just to be with him. She didn’t want to have an affair. She loved her husband! What she wanted was to get out of her life for a while, to go back and live out the youthful dreams she once had. It was thrilling to think that she had actually engineered a way to meet the person she had dreamed about when she was young, and that he thought she was smart and talented. Who knew what other dreams she could recapture if she just stayed strong? She wanted to go to LA She wanted so badly to be just that adventurous.

  Taking a deep breath, she went to the computer to find the cheapest possible round-trip flight to Los Angeles. Then she called Rose with her flight information.

  “I’ve made a reservation for you, Iliana, at the Grand Somerset, where Jeff is staying,” Rose said. “He has some appointments late Tuesday, so he said that if it’s okay with you, he’ll meet you in the lobby at nine on Wednesday morning.”

  “Thank you, Rose,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”

  With her plans set, she drafted queries to all of the magazines and websites Julius Criss had suggested, and she added a few of the cool women’s websites she had been following recently: BlogHer.com, HerStories.com, and even ScaryMommy.com, which ran quirky personal-experience stories. She hoped that one editor—one was all she needed—would see the value in her ideas and give her an assignment.

  Over the weekend, Iliana casually mentioned her trip to Marc a few times—“I’m freezing a lasagna for you, just defrost it in the microwave when you get home,” and “I’ll take your shirts in tomorrow, since I won’t be around on Wednesday”—but Marc only shrugged and nodded in response. She knew he was thinking, or hoping, that if he ignored the trip, it would just go away.

  On Sunday evening after dinner, Iliana went upstairs and opened her closet. She knew some working mothers from the kids’ school who traveled on business to the West Coast or even to Europe every month or so and considered it as routine as a trip to the grocery store. She figured that if she were one of these women, she would probably use a quiet night like this to get an early start on packing. She took out her overnight case, which she thought was big enough for what she needed, and was folding her clothes when Marc walked in.

  “So you’re really going?” he asked, sitting on the bed.

  “Yes, I’m going.” She put in a pair of shoes.

  “Which credit card did you use for the flight?”

  “Amex.”

  “Which card are you going to use when you’re out there?”

  “Which do you want me to use?”

  “I don’t know.” He stood up. “My commuter ticket goes on the Amex automatically, but the quarterly bill for train station parking goes on the Visa. You don’t pay the bills, Iliana. You don’t have a clue where we stand with our money.”

  She turned him. “You’re right, I don’t. I guess I abandoned my role in all that when I stopped working. And that’s absurd, I’m not a child. Let’s talk about it when I get home.”

  “That’s not the point—”

  “Then let’s not fight about it,” she said. “Marc, the point is that I’m going to California. I know you don’t understand it, but I have to go. And I know you’re mad, but that’s just the way it has to be. I’m not going to change my mind. It’s that important. And I’m sorry to be putting you through this. But I hope that when I get back, we can both move on and be happy.”

  He shook his head and walked out of the room, but came back in a moment later. “So you’re not happy now, is that it?” he said. “So I’m still ruining your life? Well, let me tell you something, Iliana. Life hasn’t been so great for me either. You know that Cleveland position, the one that Keith Rein got? I got the offer first. And if I had just taken that job, I wouldn’t be dealing with this contract mess I’m in now.”

  “You were offered that job?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you’d have given me the silent treatment. You’d have made me feel all over again that I was making you miserable. You’d have told me I was making you a second-class citizen, by dragging you to a new city just for my job. I heard you in my head and I quashed the whole thing.”

  She threw up her hands in exasperation. “So I ruined your life and you ruined mine. So what’s left for us now?”

  She went to the bed and zipped up her overnight bag, then placed it on the floor. “I’m leaving,” she said.

  She walked out of the room and went downstairs. When she got to the bottom, she sank down on the bottom step. She had meant that she was leaving the room. But for one split second she thought she was telling him that she was leaving for good.

  In the hallway, she reached over to the wall and raised the temperature on the thermostat three degrees. Then she sat back down. The weather had been warmer that weekend. But suddenly she was freezing.

  Chapt
er 15

  Tuesday morning found her in a cab heading toward LaGuardia Airport.

  She had barely slept all night, worrying about the trip: Was the cab coming early enough? Would there be traffic? Or long lines at security that would make her miss her flight? Had she allowed herself enough time? But now that the cab was sailing over the Whitestone Bridge in the gray of morning, and the digital traffic boards indicated a quick shot to the airport despite the wet and slushy roadways, she realized that her nerves had nothing to do with travel at all. Her stomach felt like an elevator that was stuck several inches above the uppermost floor of the building. She felt unsafe, but because she couldn’t pinpoint what exactly the threat was, the sense of physical danger was even more acute. She tried to reassure herself that all was fine. She was in a cab, with her seat belt fastened, driving to LaGuardia, taking a flight to LAX—things that millions of people safely did every day. The only threat, she told herself wryly, was a massive coronary because of how fast her heart was beating.

  At the airport, she pulled herself out of the car. The adrenaline pouring into her bloodstream made her legs feel warm and the bones soft, like they might not support her, so she squeezed her fists twice and began to silently and methodically direct herself through the next steps in her trip. Pay the driver. Grasp the handle of her overnight bag and begin wheeling. Find her gate number. Take off her shoes. Proceed through security. Reclaim her stuff. For a moment she wished it were Thursday morning and the trip was over, that she was arriving home instead of taking off. She felt guilty for leaving her kids, guilty for walking out on Marc to spend two days with another man, guilty for not appreciating the good life she had at home. But then she angrily told herself to get a grip. She had put a lot on the line for this trip, and the last thing in the world she wanted to do was wish it over. Had she forgotten already how difficult the last few months had been? This trip was the best way she had of reclaiming the identity that she longed for, of making some kind of meaningful impact.

  Her seat was next to the window. Opening her shoulder bag, she dug inside for her iPad so she could find something to read. But the sight of the notebooks and pens she had raided from Matthew’s and Dara’s desks made her eyes fill. She had kissed them both on their heads before heading out of the house, and she now pictured the way Dara looked, warm and cozy under her pink comforter. For a moment she wished she were still home, so she could take off her shoes and climb into bed with her, like she used to do when Dara was little. But then she decided there was no way she was going to spend the whole flight missing her kids and crying about it. So she ordered a screwdriver from the flight attendant and let the alcohol put her to sleep.

  At LAX, however, it was a different story. Refreshed from her nap and invigorated by the energy of a busy airport, she wheeled her bag purposefully through the secured area and into the terminal. She had traveled often for Business Times to visit the corporate headquarters of retailers or check out trade shows and preview new product lines in apparel or home furnishings. It had made her feel smart and important, that the magazine thought enough of her to spend a couple of thousand dollars each month sending her to press conferences or product launches, wanting only her written observations and impressions in return. She recalled that feeling now, and it added a confident rhythm to her walk. Looking around at the other business fliers in the terminal, she felt part of an important club—each person a success story who had flown across the country to transform someone or create something. She was excited about seeing Jeff here in LA, about what they would talk about, what he would reveal, what she would discover, and how she could shape it all into something new and salable and irresistible.

  She followed the signs for ground transportation and before long was in a taxi, marveling at how sprawling and powerful the freeway looked, with its green overhead signs and its lanes aligned like racehorse gates, its gray cement barriers and bridges. The New York she had left behind had cramped highways broken up by potholes, and commercial roads that looked narrower than usual because of patches of old, dirty snow along the sides. She had been in LA only once before, when she and her college roommate had traveled here for a vacation after graduation, and they’d been confused by the freeways, the way the exits came on both the left and the right. They frequently ended up in the wrong lanes, getting off the freeway when they didn’t mean to and having to drive around until they found a way back on, and they’d laugh hysterically each time it happened.

  She took off her blazer, straightening out her sleeveless black blouse. She was glad she had decided not to take her winter coat with her. The sky was blue and cloudless, and the sun was strong. She tilted her face to the sun and shook her head. The breeze from the open window mingled with her hair.

  “Hey, California agrees with you.”

  It was finally the next morning, and when she stepped out of the elevator, Jeff was right there in the lobby. He was leaning against a marble column, his legs crossed at the ankles, smiling his trademark smile. He strolled over leisurely, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans, and she savored the last few moments of anticipation until he reached her. It had been a rough night. She had felt lonely and misplaced. To make the time go faster, she had meandered around the hotel bar and gift shop and had run on the treadmill in the fitness center. When it was finally dinnertime, she called for a salad from room service and ate it while watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s on one of the cable networks. She called the house to say a quick goodnight. Marc had barely said hello before giving the phone to the kids. The time change worked in her favor, so she was exhausted by eight o’clock. She fell into a restless sleep.

  But this morning when she woke up, she was excited for what the day held. She realized with a smile that it was just like she used to be every Thursday in middle school, when math class and science class weren’t a bore but a delicious tease, a sweet obstacle she could easily overcome. The periodic tingling in her arms and chest would grow more and more intense as she drew closer to evening and a brand-new episode of Guitar Dreams. It was fun to have that feeling again.

  They stood before each other, and she hesitated, not quite knowing what to do. They were out of the office, out of New York, away from spouses with their own agendas. It was as though they were standing without a script on an empty stage. What were they right now? Business partners, friends, something else? It felt silly to extend her arm for a handshake, as she would to a business colleague she was meeting for the first time or hadn’t seen in a while. She felt paralyzed. Finally, Jeff shook his head, as though willing the awkwardness away. He reached over to hug her.

  She closed her eyes, slipped her arms beneath his, and hugged him back. She could smell the cleanness of his aftershave. She could feel the warmth of his body, a little bit of stubble touching the side of her face, his plaid shirt against the palm of her hand. So many things to take in, and she knew it would be over in an instant. She held on to him for a moment longer than she thought she should, and she felt him holding on, too. She told herself she was trying to seal the perceptions into her memory so she would have them if she needed to use them in her writing, but the truth was, it felt good to hug him.

  Then they separated. He looked more relaxed. “How was your flight?” he asked.

  “Fine. Long,” she answered. “How were your meetings?”

  “Good. Even better than the Bloomingdale’s meeting in New York. Seems there’ll be lots of fleece blankets in Southern California soon. I hear the nights can be bitter cold.” He pretended to shiver.

  “They don’t really need them here, do they?” she asked, as though she had finally gotten a joke.

  “Oh, come on, everyone can use a good blanket.” He gave her a playful push on the shoulder. “I didn’t know you were all into the investigative reporter thing already. You have to give a guy some warning.”

  She smiled. “Got my notepads right in here.” She patted her shoulder bag.

&nb
sp; “Very impressive. Very prepared. But then, I’m prepared, too.” He pointed to a white bag on the concierge counter. “Two coffees, one with milk only. And I was taking a chance here—blueberry muffin?.I seem to remember that you ate blueberry muffins when you took your son to the park years ago.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “I love blueberry muffins.” And she loved that he remembered the story she told him at the restaurant, about taking Matthew to Central Park when he was a baby. It felt rare to have someone pay such close attention to her.

  “Well then, we’re ready to go—oh, except for one more thing.” He leaned in closer. She felt herself instinctively pull back. “You’re flying home tonight, right?”

  “That’s right, the red-eye.”

  He sighed. “I thought so. Look, I was able to arrange a surprise for you, but it’s not going to happen until tonight. Any chance you can stay until tomorrow?”

  Iliana felt her mouth drop open. “I wish I could, I really do—”

  “Come on, if you take a late flight, you’re not going to get home until tomorrow anyway. What’s a few more hours?”

  “It’s just—there’s a meeting I’m supposed to be at tomorrow.”

  “Can’t you cancel it?”

  She had promised Marc she’d be back for the Connors session. It was the linchpin in her case that her trip to Los Angeles wouldn’t inconvenience him or hurt him in any way. But it killed her to say no to Jeff. What kind of a surprise could he have for her? She couldn’t even imagine, and the suspense was as strong as if she were a kid looking at a wrapped birthday present.