A Slight Change of Plan

by Dee Ernst

  She was right. It was gorgeous. I’d have to get rid of half my furniture—or stash it in the basement—but that broad expanse of copper-colored granite whispered to me, the fireplace actually sang, and the walk-in shower in the master bath winked knowingly. I had never been so seduced in my life.

  So I signed papers for the rest of the day: the contract for buying the new place, the contract for selling the old place, and the membership forms for the on-site health club.

  Then I went home. I pulled up my online profile and hit the button. I was now officially Out in the World.

  Cheryl Drake became my best friend when we were seven years old. When she moved into the house next door, she immediately found the tree fort that the previous neighbors had built for their three sons and called to me as I ate an apple on my back porch steps. I grabbed another apple from the kitchen, climbed the ladder to the top of the tree fort, and sat with her and watched as the movers hauled things from the truck to her new house. In that brief span of time, she told me that she was an only child (like me) and that her mother was a great cook (also like mine), and now that she was living in a house instead of an apartment, she was going to have six dogs, three cats, and a pony. I was instantly jealous, but quickly got over it when she assured me that I could have full access to all the members of her menagerie.

  She then announced that the tree fort was going to be a penthouse apartment from now on, and would I care to be her roommate? I said yes, although I wasn’t sure what a roommate was. This was 1965, remember, and all I knew of life was married couples and their children. I didn’t know that two single girls could live together. Cheryl assigned us each a job. I was a teacher. She would be a nurse. I could set up a schoolroom on my back porch. She could have her hospital on her patio. We could meet for lunch, and visit each other at work. After work, we’d make dinner together, then take care of all the dogs and cats, and ride the pony.

  In one short afternoon, my entire world changed. Because of Cheryl, when Mary Tyler Moore became a sensation on television for being a single woman with a job and her own apartment, it was all old hat to me.

  Cheryl never got six dogs, three cats, or a pony. She did get a puppy for Christmas that year, as well as a baby brother, whom her parents would not trade for a pony no matter how much she begged. When I got my own baby sister, I thought that maybe we could trade them both in, but no luck.

  When my father died, during my freshman year of high school, I had to come home every day after school and watch my baby sister, because my mother had to go to work. So I missed out on lots of things that I should have been enjoying in high school—football games after school, getting drunk in the parking lot of the old movie theater, and smoking pot in the park on sunny afternoons. Luckily, Cheryl sat with me out in the penthouse, and we got drunk and got high, and since I never really cared about football, it wasn’t nearly as awful as it could have been.

  We went in two different directions after high school. Her parents divorced, and she moved to New Mexico with her mother, so when I came home from college during a break, she was no longer right next door. We wrote to each other for a while, and she flew out to spend a week one summer when we were both twenty-one. But after that, life happened. I went to law school, got married, and moved to Rhode Island. She also married and was rumored to be in California somewhere.

  But fate is strange, and at our tenth high school reunion, there she was. She’d divorced her second husband and moved back to New Jersey. Adam had just been offered a job at Morristown Memorial Hospital, so we were also looking to move back. Ta-da! Instant best friends again.

  The best thing about Cheryl is that we don’t live in each other’s back pockets. I see her for lunch about every other week, usually for lunch, occasionally for a long afternoon of shopping. We tell each other pretty much everything. She was the first to hear me say out loud that I thought Adam was having an affair. I was the first to know she was remarrying—a much older gentleman, pretty much for his money and vast Far Hills acreage. I’m also one of the few people who knew how genuinely sad she was when he died.

  We met for lunch that Monday. Cheryl was the exact opposite of me—blond, very curvy, and dressed for complete success. I had not put on a suit in almost a month, since I left my job, and had taken to wearing dressy sweatpants and J. Jill tunics. She was shiny and sleek, where I was fighting back frumpy with lots of silver jewelry and a variety of new haircuts. She was plucked, powdered, and polished. I’d started biting my nails again out of sheer boredom. But we both liked cold white wine for lunch, which was the important thing.

  Cheryl fluttered. Her hands were always in motion, her head was always nodding, and she often tapped her foot for no apparent reason. Time spent with her I considered exercise, because I always came home exhausted from just watching her.

  “And, what’s new?” she began, while reading the menu, sipping her drink, and keeping one eye firmly fixed on her cell phone.

  “I put the house on the market,” I told her. “And I joined a dating site.”

  Her mouth dropped open, and she actually paused for a fraction of a second in surprise. “Really? Which one?”

  “Match Made in Heaven.”

  I could feel the tip of her foot against the table leg. “I’m on Catch a Star. I’m having so much fun.”

  I stared at her. “Really? That’s great, Cheryl. How long has this been going on?”

  She shrugged. “About two months now.”

  “And you never thought to mention it before now?”

  She made a face. “I wasn’t exactly sure if I was doing the right thing. It felt a bit strange at first. But I’m pretty happy with how it’s worked out.”

  “And have you met anybody?”

  She shot me a look. One of those “Are you kidding?” looks. “I’ve met three anybodies.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” I said, and I meant it. Robby had been gone for almost two years, and Cheryl had always been one of those women who needed a man in her life. “Do you think you’ll start to date any of them?”

  “Oh, honey,” she said, waving over the waiter, “I’m dating all of them.”

  I managed to keep my astonishment to myself until after we ordered. Then I zeroed in. “Are you really dating three men at once? Isn’t that a little much, even for you?”

  “Well…” She waggled her head back and forth. “It’s not like I’m full-out dating.”

  “Then what’s it like?”

  “There’s not a lot of face-to-face. We meet for lunch, or drinks, about once a week. Mostly, we tweet and text.”

  I took a gulp of my wine. “Tweet? And text? Is that all?”

  “Well, we’re all very busy. Paul lives in Brooklyn, he’s in real estate, and so he’s always on the go. Marco is a professional musician, and right now he’s performing with a small opera company and in his free time he gives private lessons. Brad lives down the shore. So I just keep them all in my phone, like those little Tamagotchi pets the kids had back in the nineties. I smile and wave, and talk to them, and they talk back. Very sweet.”

  “What about, well, you know. Sex?”

  She made a face. “I’m never having sex again. Seriously. Robby and I had sex once a month for the first few years of our marriage, and when we stopped altogether, I was perfectly happy. Sex was never one of my big things, you know that. Frankly, at this point of my life I’ve pretty much forgotten all about it. That’s what’s so good about this online thing. We never really have to touch.”

  I was trying to absorb this. “Cheryl, what if one of them wants to touch?”

  She looked at me with shaking head and clucking tongue. “That’s why I’m keeping them on the phone instead of in person. Besides, they’re all pretty old. They probably can’t get it up.”

  “But—” I stopped. I knew by now to never judge the rest of the world by anything Cheryl had to say. She’d been living on her own private planet for years, and liked it that way. If I wanted to find out about
online dating, I’d have to look elsewhere.

  To change the subject, I mentioned her grandson. She had one. I did not. I tried not to hold it against her, but it was hard. I had three healthy children, all well into their childbearing years, and none of them had thought to procreate. Jeff is gay, but that was not an obstacle anymore, and I know he had mentioned adoption sometime last year. I had been trying very hard not to pump him for information. Regan was getting married any day, but she had this whole “I need to start my career” thing going on. True, she had spent many years and many dollars going to veterinary school, but you can heal sick puppies at any age, and you’re only fertile for so long. As for Sam, well, I wasn’t sure Sam had even had sex.

  “How’s Tyler?” I asked.

  She beamed. “I spent all morning with him yesterday. I taught him how to say ‘chair’ and ‘taupe.’ ”

  “Interesting choice of words. Are you training him to be an interior designer?”

  “Very funny. So, I guess since you’re selling the house and thinking about dating, you’re going through a midlife thing?”

  I sighed. “Why do people say that? Midlife? Seriously, I’m fifty-five. How many one-hundred-and-ten-year-old people do you know?”

  “Honey, if everyone had a midlife crisis at thirty-five, the world would implode. So, are you going to be having sex?”

  I sighed again. “This menopause thing is killing me. Just when I think my libido has taken a permanent vacation, it comes roaring back, and suddenly I miss sex. God, an orgasm is one of life’s few pleasures that isn’t harmful or illegal.”

  Cheryl arched an eyebrow. “Don’t need a man for one of those,” she said.

  “I know. But I’m tired of naming my vibrators so I have someone to thank.”

  After lunch, she wanted to drive out to Castle Crossings to see my new place, but I had to explain to her—several times—that the old owner was still living there and we couldn’t just walk in and poke around.

  She sighed. “Just as well, I suppose. I have a bra fitting at two thirty.”

  I stared. First at her face, then at her rather amazing boobs. “Bra fitting?”

  “Yes, Kate. I’ve been having bras made for years.”

  “Made? As in, custom built?” Adam had often joked that Cheryl’s bras needed not so much to be sewn as engineered.

  “Yes.” She sounded impatient. “I know that you don’t need to wear one. I can’t tell you how much I envy you that. But when you’re built like me, well, let’s just say that with great breasts comes great responsibility.”

  And on that note, she left.

  I talked to my daughter, Regan, on the phone three times a week. Her idea, not mine. And we usually lunched together at least one day during the week. I went over to her apartment for dinner on the occasional Sunday, and once a month I tried to have a big Saturday-night spaghetti thing, with Regan and her fiancé, Phil; Jeff and Gabe; and whatever friends and/or relations I could gather together. So I knew for a fact that everyone was aware that I had put the house on the market. I mean, didn’t they see the big yellow sign in the front yard? And I talked to Sam about it, because he specifically told me not to get rid of the shoe box that was on the top shelf of his closet, behind his old chemistry textbooks. Of course, after he asked me this, I quickly ran upstairs to see what was so damn important, but the thing was taped with enough duct tape to seal up a submarine, so I let it go.

  And when a very nice day trader and his wife made an offer, and I took it (even though it was a bit less than the asking price), I believe I put the whole thing on Facebook. In fact, I may have even posted a picture of me waving the check in the air and grinning like an idiot. I know that I told everybody when I got a closing date for the new place, because I sent everyone an e-mail asking if they could help me move.

  But, somehow, my children remained oblivious.

  I didn’t know that, of course. I thought the lines of communication were open and flowing. After all, they had plenty to say about me dating again.

  Dating in the digital age was very different from dating in the seventies. For one thing, most of the flirtation was done in front of my computer in my jammies and slippers. I considered that a plus, by the way. I had always hated getting all dressed up, ironing my hair straight, and worrying about falling off my platform shoes just to meet some jerk I would never, ever see again.

  The picture face on the screen had no expectations. He didn’t buy you a drink or two, for instance, then get upset because you wouldn’t blow him in the unisex bathroom. He wouldn’t take you out to dinner because he needed a date for his cousin’s wedding, and he thought you’d look hot in a red minidress and could show up his brother with the pregnant wife. No one asked if I was holding. No one mentioned his waterbed. And no one would ever expect you to wait a few weeks to see whether he was getting back with his old girlfriend or not. No, the face on the screen was very low-maintenance.

  At first, I got a lot of “waves.” That’s online dating–speak for a show of interest. Two gentlemen waved all the way from Florida. Like a long-distance relationship at my age was a good idea. I didn’t wave back. I exchanged two or three messages with a very sophisticated New Yorker, until he mentioned that he still had a wife, and how did I feel about open marriage? He was a little too sophisticated for me.

  Then there was the week of Daves. DaveOne was a banker who had been out of a job since 2009 but still got dressed every day and commuted to New York City, where he’d sneak into museums or stake out his old office building. Why is it that people online tell a stranger things they should seriously never mention to anyone? Ever.

  DaveTwo seemed sweet and funny. We actually got as far as suggesting to meet in person for coffee. Then he asked if he could bring his mother, because she’d gotten used to him living back home and got lonely if he went out without her.

  Oh my.

  DaveThree seemed rich with promise. A lawyer. Widowed. Three kids. I was thinking we had so much in common. But he started sending things to my e-mail address, you know, those rants about politics and such, and although I’m not all that liberal, when he confessed that he rewatched Ronald Reagan’s old State of the Union addresses I had to draw a line.

  My children found this all very entertaining. Sam actually laughed, and he’s not big on spontaneous expressions of delight. Jeff suggested I start a blog, and went ahead and bought the domain name ohbabybaby.com. He promised to give it to me for Mother’s Day. Ha-ha, sweetie.

  Regan got very analytical. She brought a file to lunch filled with articles about dating after “a certain age” and all the pitfalls involved. I read part of her offering with a mixture of amusement and horror, then promised her I would never give a stranger any of my bank account numbers. She seemed unconvinced.

  I was kind of glad the dating thing remained low-key, because I had so much other stuff to do. Although I’m not actually a pack rat, as Laura suggested, I do have a hard time letting go of certain things. But I got very hard-core. I went through four closets of old clothes and gave away anything I hadn’t worn in two years. Or anything that still had shoulder pads. Or was tie-dyed. I did keep my business suits. All of them. They represented not only my career, but a serious financial investment, so I decided they would stay.

  I had to get rid of records. I had LPs dating back to the sixties—did you know that Sally Field released an album as the Flying Nun? Some of these were harder to get rid of than others, but, as Jeff pointed out, I had already downloaded everything of importance into my little MP3 player. Since I could now listen to every Dan Fogelberg song ever recorded without having to get up and flip anything over, out went the vinyl. Books were also a bit of a problem. So I just got rid of all of Adam’s and kept mine.

  I fretted over furniture until I decided to just buy new. I don’t care what kind of shape the living room couch is in—every twenty years, whether you need to or not, you should buy a new one. I sent an e-mail to my kids asking them if there was anything
they wanted me to save. Nobody got back to me, which I thought was a little strange. Were they ignoring my e-mails? Or were they just in denial about my moving?

  I had to drive up to Boston for Sam’s graduation a week before the closing was scheduled, and planned on major shopping on Cape Cod. I would have liked someone to come with me, but both Jeff and Regan were vague. I should have realized something was up, but I was too busy, so I resigned myself to going solo.

  At the end of April, three weeks before Sam’s graduation, I spent a few hours online making a list of all the places on Cape Cod I wanted to visit. Virtual shopping isn’t as emotionally satisfying as real shopping, but it is cheaper. I also found a few painters and a guy to redo the floors of the condo. All without putting on real shoes. God, I love the Internet. Then, because I hadn’t been there in a few weeks, I opened up my profile on the dating site. Three more waves. A retired teacher. A career military guy. And Jake Windom.

  Boy, was God laughing now.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Remember your first true love?

  Not the high school first love, because, really, that was all about angst. Where is he? Will he call? Why was he talking to Jenny? When should I let him take off my bra? Does he really love me? Should we have sex? When? Where? How can I go away on vacation with my family for two weeks and leave him alone when that bitch Cathy just broke up with her boyfriend and has her eye on him?

  And I don’t mean your first sex boyfriend, either. For some smart people, high school boyfriend and first sex boyfriend were one and the same. But for a few late bloomers—like me—first sex boyfriend was in college, and (let’s get real) sex was pretty much the only thing holding you together. Ever remember having a conversation with that guy that lasted longer than five minutes? And that wasn’t about where you were going to be taking your clothes off next?

  No, I mean your first Real True Love. The one you talked to for hours. The one you knitted a sweater for. The one you dreamed of going to Colorado with, where the two of you would build a cabin together and live off the land.