This movie had been a favorite of both my mother and mine. She loved the happy ending, and I loved the view of the New York City skyline from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. In all my years in New York, I’d never once walked by the Met fountain without thinking of the opera scene and hearing that bah boom of the music. As a child, my other favorite scene was the moment Cher emerges from the beauty salon, newly youthful with her glorious crown of hair—everything about it jibed perfectly with my girlhood understanding of the world. Beauty and youth equaled love and power (also I appreciated her curls).
The year I turned thirty-seven, the same age as Cher’s Loretta, I had to move out of the apartment in Crown Heights that Maddy, and Mauri, and then Margeaux and I had shared for nearly a decade. One by one they had all left to live with boyfriends, or in Margeaux’s case, her new husband. I was still in my media reporting job, financially stable for the first time and able to find an apartment on my own and foot all the bills.
Pretty quickly I decided there was only one place to be: Brooklyn Heights. For years I’d gone there to wander around under the ancient leafy trees, gaze at the well-kept brownstones, many of which still housed families that had been in them for decades, and walk the Promenade with its staggering view of the Manhattan skyline. It was the neighborhood I walked to when I wanted to fall in love with the city again, or be reminded why I’d fallen in love in the first place. It also represented the city as I had known it as a child, decades before I ever set foot here. It looked like the set of Sesame Street. It was where The Cosby Show was set. It was where Moonstruck was set and filmed.
For three weeks, various brokers took me around, showing me apartments in my price range.
Some of the apartments I saw had obviously been carved out of once grand houses and had slanted floors and kitchens that were awkwardly shoved in corners. Other, slightly larger ones boasted intricate moldings, working fireplaces, and stunning shafts of light, but were so far out of my price range that I’d need a roommate to make the rent. Just for fun, I allowed one broker, an older woman, to show me a one-bedroom located on the street that overlooked the Promenade. I knew before I went that I couldn’t take it; even if I ferociously budgeted and basically never ate or left the house I still would be hard-pressed to pay for it. But I’d walked by it so many times, looking up at the thirties art deco windows, I was dying to see the inside of the building and so I told her I was interested. It was a perfect apartment. Light and airy and spacious, with arched doorways. The bedroom had enormous paned windows facing both east and south, overlooking the trees below. If I moved in here, I thought, that would be it; I’d never leave. Fifty years from now, some concerned neighbor would check in on me and find me dead, probably under a stack of unread New Yorkers and New York Posts. The agent, sensing my interest, gave me a hard sell about how lovely the building superintendent was and how they’d be happy to sign me to a two-year lease. “And don’t worry,” she said, “you obviously won’t be by yourself for long and there’s plenty of room here for someone else.” And then, seeing me hesitate at the price, she brightly suggested that perhaps my parents could help. I stifled a laugh.
Late one evening, a week or so later, as I was beginning to wonder whether I should take the sloped floor with the awkwardly shoved kitchen studio, I got a call from one broker who said that a place was opening up the next day and could I meet him at 7:00 a.m.? He was a young kid, new to New York, clearly tempted into the brokering profession by the promise of large cash commissions (which were about as easy to come by as a prewar, rent-controlled apartment), and now desperate for a deal. I said yes. I needed to secure something soon, and even though he wouldn’t tell me the exact address for fear I’d try to end run him by reaching out to the management company directly, I knew the street he was talking about; it was two blocks from the Promenade, three blocks from five trains, and over-arched by sweeping trees. It was lined with century-old brownstones and one art deco building with a red nautical front door that looked as if it belonged in a 1930s film set on an ocean liner where everyone wears silk and drinks martinis. I had often walked that street just to look at that door. When I arrived he was standing in front of it. The apartment we were seeing was behind the red door, three floors up. I handed all my paperwork over within five minutes of laying my eyes on its tiny dimensions lest I lose it to the next people through. Twenty-four hours later I was notified I’d been found reliable. Or close enough to it—I had to pay an extra half month’s deposit, but I was approved and signed the lease the following day. The teeny, tiny apartment was now mine. At the age of thirty-six and three-quarters I finally had my own “room of one’s own.” Literally in this case. My new apartment was one room and a bathroom. It was 275 square feet altogether, for nearly twice what I’d paid to share three times the space. It was six blocks away from Cher’s house in Moonstruck.
After I moved in, I rewatched the film, eager to match the streets I’d grown up dazzled by on the screen with the ones I was now walking daily. It held up. The makeover scene filled me with that same sense of contentment. But my ears caught something new this time. I rewound it and listened more closely. Then I did it again. There it was: Just as newly beautiful Cher is undergoing her final transformative touches, it’s possible to overhear the hairdresser gossiping plaintively about another client, one who had sadly not seen the light in time: “She came in when she turned forty and her husband left her.”
•
“Maddy wants me to take over the upstairs apartment in their house.”
Mauri and I were sitting at her husband Ben’s Brooklyn wine bar sharing a cheese plate. It was Saturday night at the end of January, and every table was full. Outside the streets were dull with the dirty barren cold that settles in when there’s not enough snow. I’d ridden here on my bike, happy to be out in the night air, wrapped in an old white fur coat I’d purchased on eBay ten years ago for ten dollars that kept me warm in the cutting winter wind.
“That apartment is amazing!” exclaimed Mauri. “I love Red Hook.”
I shrugged. I liked Red Hook, but I had grown to love Brooklyn Heights so much, even if the rent was ridiculous and would likely get more so when my lease renewed in June. “I’ve never seen the upstairs,” I said, “but the rent is five hundred dollars less than I pay.”
Mauri shook her head. “Seriously, I’ve been up there, and the apartment is incredible. And you’d be living with Maddy again.”
It did strike me as rather wild our worlds might retwine again so intimately more than half a decade after they’d separated. “Maybe it’s one of those instances where if you stay in New York long enough the city gives you a bonus and if you’re too stupid to take it you have to leave forever,” I said.
Ben leaned over the bar to peer at my phone, which was open to the Tinder profile of Dan, the guy I’d met for coffee a few days earlier. Within minutes of us sitting down he’d mentioned that he didn’t want kids, and I realized he’d Googled me and read one of my recent articles. Of course, I’d Googled him, too, but I’d only found a scattering of professional details. It was strange to encounter someone who thought they had an inside line on me based on a personal essay. I let it go, though. I was determined to learn how to date. We’d had an easy conversation over cappuccinos. At the end of it, he’d said, “Well, now that we know neither of us is crazy, let’s make a proper date. How about I take you to dinner? I mean, I obviously want to see you again.” It was the “How about I take you to dinner?” part that hooked me. It felt reassuringly old-fashioned.
“Are you sure this guy is real? Or did you make him up?” asked Ben.
“I don’t think so. He’s a stunt coordinator, he’s working on that new Met production everyone’s talking about. He asked if we wanted tickets.”
“He looks like a dancer.” Mauri had come to New York to be a dancer.
“No idea. Maybe a gymnast? He said he once worked in the circus? He also works in film. He has a whole IMDb page.”
She looked at his profile. “He definitely has a dancer’s body.”
Ben, who had seen all manner of disaster come through my phone, leaned over the bar and looked at the pictures.
“So, you went on Tinder and found a straight circus performer, who also does stunts, and knows Shakespeare.” He shook his head. “It’s about time.”
I nodded, grinning. “I think so, too.”
“And you liked him?” asked Mauri, cocking an eyebrow. I’d never known anyone less interested in what someone looked like on paper. This was especially remarkable considering that if Mauri had wanted, she easily could have been the sort of woman who arrived in New York and with very little effort, exclusively dated very wealthy, very powerful men. When I took her to media parties with me, this was the sort that immediately gravitated to her. With a flick of the wrist, it seemed to me, much of the city could have fallen right into her lap. But it never held any appeal for her.
“I mean it was just coffee.” I shrugged. “But it was nice. He seemed nice. Honestly, it felt good to have someone excited about me, who also exists in real life.” I laughed.
“Yes, it is, Glynnis MacNicol.” Mauri had never been impressed by 646. “So, when are you seeing him again?”
“Dinner. Thursday at Franny’s.”
“Good.”
•
Franny’s was a Brooklyn institution. Famous for its pizza and locally sourced meats and cheeses, and always packed. It was a quintessential date spot.
Dan had emailed me three times since our coffee to confirm our date, including an email to wish me a happy weekend. (Mauri: “So sweet!”) It felt a bit much, especially the fact that he’d already started calling me “G” and signing his emails “xod.” But then again, maybe I was just used to so little, I had no sense of what was normal anymore. I let it go. I was in the sweet spot. My grandmother would have said I was being courted. It was nice.
Dan was already at Franny’s when I arrived and waved at me from the bar as he made his way through the crowd. He had on the same baseball cap he’d been wearing when I’d seen him for coffee, and a crisp white shirt, and black pants. He did have an athlete’s body, lean and muscular and completely under his control. He exuded physicality. And he was tall. I had on a black silk shirtdress over tights and a vintage brown and cream striped fur coat that went down to my knees. We looked exactly like two people who were on a first date at Franny’s on a Thursday. On the wall, there was a flyer for Valentine’s Day dinner the following Saturday.
“You look amazing.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek as though we had known each other for much longer than three email exchanges and a thirty-minute cappuccino. I wondered how many of his friends he’d told about this date.
The waitress led us to a table in the corner a little out of the way from the madness of the dining room. I wondered if he’d reserved it especially. He took my coat. We slipped into conversation easily, and not the sort of conversation I had often found myself in with men on first dates, where it was mostly them talking and me nodding along, but actual conversation. He was good at getting information out of me, which, having spent so much time focused on others, felt a little jarring. Like zooming from understudy to starring role in my own life between appetizers and entrées. But I didn’t want to dive into the deep end of my family just yet and so I steered us back to more familiar waters. I asked him where he lived. He said he had an apartment on “The Upper West Side, on Central Park West.”
Right on the Park! Movie work really must pay I thought, imagining a sunny prewar with beamed ceilings.
“It’s rent-controlled, I’ve been there a long time.”
“Ah, the New Yorker’s dream!” I nodded appreciatively. Rent-controls were not easy to come by ever, and they were practically an urban legend these days. “How long have you lived in New York?”
He’d taken off his baseball hat when we sat down and had revealed a perfectly round bald head. It didn’t bother me. He looked a bit like Yul Brynner, the fifties Hollywood star my mother had always had a crush on. I wondered if he was self-conscious about it—it occurred to me that there’d been no pictures without a hat on his Tinder. There was a whole coded language to dating site pictures, I knew—men with animals, men with female friends. Maybe he was just someone who wore a hat. He was handsome, and in better physical shape than nearly every man I knew, let alone for a forty-one-year-old. Even sitting he had that awareness about him that people whose livelihood is their bodies often have, a fluid way of moving and attention to the space around him. I wondered how that awareness would translate in bed. I was curious to find out. He was cutting up the entrée we’d ordered to share and carefully putting pieces on my plate. He’d already told me he loved to cook. I felt a bit like I’d summoned him from thin air during my night of martinis and steak at the bar.
He shrugged. “A long time.”
“What is ‘a long time’?” I was intrigued now. A rent-controlled apartment on the Park was the sort of thing New York real estate time-travel fantasies were made of. You’d have to go back a few decades to land one, or else have inherited it somehow. I was also curious to know where exactly we both stood on the New York City resident spectrum. In addition to everything else, could I have found myself an old-school New Yorker? For a brief period in my early thirties, I had routinely lied about my age, mostly for the fun of seeing what I could get away with. But I’d stopped doing it the moment it required me also to lie about how long I’d lived in New York. I could not be both twenty-eight and have been here for fifteen years, without some further detailed explanation about what high school I’d attended. My friend Kathleen, who had been born and raised in the city, had stopped lying about her age when doing so meant she couldn’t claim the Beastie Boys opening for Madonna at MSG in 1984 had been her first concert. We all have nonnegotiable cornerstones on which we build our identity, and this one was mine.
“I moved here in 1986,” he said.
“Oh, wow. With your parents?”
He shook his head in a way that made me wonder if I’d accidentally stumbled on a sensitive topic. An uncomfortable silence enveloped the table for the first time.
“There’s something you should know,” he finally said. “But I don’t want to tell you. If I tell you, you won’t want to date me anymore.”
He was married. Obviously, that was it. All the energy of the evening seeped out of me like water down a drain. I was so tired of badly behaved married men; the older I got, the more they seemed to be everywhere. Badly behaved married men: the story of being a single woman. Sometimes it felt as if by not being married, I had been inadvertently tasked with the responsibility of keeping all married men from fucking up their lives. Say no and walk away; walk away from the constant drumbeat of flirtation, of flattery, of attention, of propositions, of direct messages and text messages, of admiration and adoration. I’d fallen down once; I never wanted to be that person again.
“What?” I said flatly.
Dan shook his head a second time and looked up at me with a nervous grin. The long tapered hands, that just moments before had been calmly and gracefully cutting up my meal for me, were now fidgeting nervously with the utensils, putting them down on the table and picking them back up again.
“I lied to you but I don’t want to tell you about what.”
What the fuck was this? “Well, if you don’t tell me now, this will definitely be the last time we see each other.” My voice was stern. Another minute and I’d be giving him the count of three. He shifted in his seat.
“The age on my Tinder profile is not my real age.”
I smothered a relieved grin. “Oh. I don’t actually remember what it said.” This was not true: it had said forty-one; internally I shrugged. I wondered briefly if he was going to tell me he was actually younger, like thirty-four.
“It said I was forty-one. But I’m not.”
I could feel the nerves coming off of him in waves. He looked scared.
“How old ar
e you really?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“You have to now. No joke.”
“Guess.”
Oh for Christ’s sake. “No.”
He took a deep, visible breath. Jesus, I thought.
“I’m fifty-nine.”
I was floored. And disbelieving. There was simply no way. “What year were you born in?”
“1955.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“I’ll be sixty in two months.”
SIXTY. Wow. Sixty. Sixty was not nothing. It was definitely not forty-one, or even forty-nine. Sixty was closer to seventy than it was to forty. I was on a date with a sixty-year-old man. I had to contain a laugh. There was always something. But still, he did not look sixty. I did some new calculations. I didn’t want kids. He had a rent-controlled apartment. Did it have to be a big deal? I decided it did not have to be a big deal on this date. All this flew through my head with lightning speed born of years of practice.
“I know it’s a lot. Sixty is old,” he said apologetically, head down.
I shrugged, partly to myself and partly to let him know that it wasn’t the end of the world. I smiled. “You definitely don’t look sixty. Why’d you lie?”
“Some of my women friends said I’d never get a date if I put my real age. They said forty-one was the magic number. It’s just, I’m not interested in casually dating, and I think this is going well, and I didn’t want to lie to you.”
Well, that was something. And maybe he had a point—would I have gone on a date with a sixty-year-old? I might have. I had friends with boyfriends and husbands that age. I remembered the hotel drinks with the married man, when he’d eagerly asked me if I wanted children. And now here was this man, neurotically lying about his age. I’d spent a lot of my life being cautioned to avoid being a certain kind of woman: needy, desperate, hungry for commitment and babies, terrified of my age. Only now was it starting to occur to me that these female clichés had all been created by men, and perhaps, like many writers, they’d simply been describing themselves and projecting their worst characteristics.
No One Tells You This Page 18