Younger (22 page)

T
he next New Year's Eve, it was Maggie who wanted to stay home and me who campaigned for us to go out. Last New Year's Eve had been the start of a whole new life for me, and I was almost superstitious about wanting to celebrate the holiday again. Josh had e-mailed me that New Year's was the biggest holiday of the year in Japan, where days' worth of rituals symbolized the making of a fresh start for the incoming year. That seemed right to me. Come and visit, Josh urged. Then you could experience this with me. And we could see what kind of fresh start we might want to make together.

I was tempted. All through last summer, I hadn't heard anything from Josh. But then he'd begun e-mailing, first just to let me know where he was, and that he was doing all right. Then, slowly, we began writing about what had happened between us, and how we each felt about it. And then we moved on to how we were each feeling about our lives now. It was partly the shelter of the e-mail that made me feel freer, as if Josh and I lived only as minds, as spirits, our bodily existence immaterial. And it was partly that I felt, with him, completely known in a physical way—sexually, yes, but also as a human being, all artifice stripped away. There was no point any longer in trying to hide anything from him.

I loved him, he loved me, that was certain. But could we be in love again? I knew we wouldn't be able to answer that question until we got to know each other all over again, in the flesh, as our real selves, with the same depth and passion we'd brought to reconnecting on the virtual plane. And that required time, and proximity, and so was going to have to wait, and might never happen.

In the meantime, it had started to snow, the fat white flakes that had eluded us all through the balmy December and into a springlike Christmas Day now falling fast and hard. A dusting had been predicted, but this, I saw, gazing out the window at the Lower East Side street from where I sat at my computer—I had sold my house and moved into an apartment in Maggie's building—was beginning to look like a blizzard.

It was just as well, then, that Maggie had insisted we celebrate the holiday at home. Her reason had not been the blizzard but her pregnancy and her reluctance to leave Edie, her nearly-two-year-old daughter who'd come from China just three months before. Diana had offered to babysit, but Maggie had said no, Diana should go out with her friends. Besides, Maggie felt she spent enough time away from Edie when she was working—she'd moved her studio and her enormous sculptures with it to a separate space on another floor—and she wanted the little girl to feel as secure as possible before the baby came.

The truth was that Maggie needed to be home with Edie more than Edie needed her to be home. Edie seemed as comfortable with Diana, who'd been babysitting and living most of the time in Maggie's loft, as she was with Maggie. It was Maggie who relished every moment with her little girl.

I heard a key turn in the lock and swung around to see Diana, who'd been upstairs at Maggie's most of the day.

“Maggie asked me to check on dinner,” Diana said. “She wants to know whether there's anything you need, whether she can help in any way. Plus, she said to tell you she's starving.”

Pregnancy had brought on a fierce appetite in Maggie, and her lifelong boyish figure had ballooned so that now she resembled one of her sculpted fertility goddesses.

“Tell her I'll be up in about half an hour,” I said. “She can get the table ready if she wants.”

Diana rolled her eyes. “We tried that,” she said. “Everything we set out, Edie pulled down. She was running around up there brandishing a butter knife.”

I laughed. Edie was adorable, but a handful. It seemed to take the energies of all three of us—me, Maggie, and Diana—to keep up with the toddler. Leaving the building—and worse, climbing back up the five flights of stairs—was like a military operation that required at least three able-bodied adults.

“Was I like that?” Diana asked me. “I mean, I love Edie, but she's so much work! I don't know what we're going to do when the baby comes.”

“Maggie may end up wanting to move to the suburbs yet,” I said.

In fact, Maggie had briefly considered buying my house in the suburbs when she found out she'd be having an instant family. But then we both decided that, however lovely it was, that house came with too much freight, and it would be better for us individually and for our friendship to leave it behind.

“She still swears she won't, but we'll see,” said Diana, letting herself back out of the apartment. “In the meantime, do what you can to hurry that dinner. When I left to come down here, I saw her heading for the ice cream.”

I had been writing, something I did every day now, even Sunday, even Christmas, even New Year's Eve. My first book would be out in time for Mother's Day, and I was starting on something new, already under contract with Gentility. Sighing deeply—I put my work away only with reluctance—I saved the file and got up to check on dinner.

I'd taken over the lease on this apartment at the beginning of September, just before Maggie went to China to get Edie, another time of the year that was prime for fresh starts. I'd moved in all my favorite things from home, finding I could not bear, as I had claimed I would, to get rid of everything. The apartment looked warm and cozy, full of my kilims and hooked rugs, with my cross-stitched bedspread on the bed and my copper pots hanging from the wall in the tiny kitchen. It felt like home, more like home even than the house had felt in those final months, the only thing I really hated to leave in the end my beloved garden. This, I thought now with satisfaction, was exactly where I wanted to be.

I removed the vat of spaghetti sauce made according to my grandmother's secret recipe from where it had been simmering in the oven and put on a huge pot of water to boil. Better to cook the pasta down here, where the boiling water would pose no danger for Edie. I spread oil and chopped garlic on the Italian bread that I'd walked all the way to Little Italy, to one of the few remaining authentic bakeries, to buy, and then wrapped it in foil and popped it in the oven. I took the salad out of the refrigerator and mixed the vinaigrette.

Now all I had to do was wait.

I wandered back to the window, gazing out on the snowy city. So quiet, so beautiful, with the fresh white coating hiding all the grime. It felt almost like being in the country, without the isolation that I realized now was so depressing, once Diana got too old to spend every waking hour wrapped around my body. I'd been so lonely then, I realized, even before Gary left, even before Diana left, so alone by myself, waiting in vain for them to pay attention to me.

Sitting at my desk, I was about to turn off my computer when I decided to check my e-mail one more time. There were two new messages. The first was a brief Happy New Year's wish from Lindsay, who'd gotten a job with the French office of a big publishing house and moved to Paris, leaving my book to an even younger editor who was nevertheless amazingly astute—another reminder to me never to judge a person solely on the basis of her age. Smiling with delight at picturing Lindsay sipping champagne on the Left Bank with her new French boyfriend, whom she was already proclaiming was “the one,” I quickly tapped good New Year's wishes back to her.

The second message was a letter from Josh. It was early morning on New Year's Day in Japan—I'd become accustomed to calculating the time difference, with Tokyo thirteen hours ahead—and so now Josh and I were living in different years.

“Consider this my
nengajo
to you,” he wrote,

I typed a one-word answer: Yes.

 

We had finished eating and had pushed our chairs back from the table, relishing the feeling of fullness. Edie had fallen asleep on my lap, and her warm body, heavy with sleep, made me feel as if I might drift off myself.

“I'll put her down,” Diana said. But she didn't move.

“Wait,” said Maggie. “I don't want to risk waking her up.”

“Yes, leave her,” I said.

I was enjoying the feeling of being pinned beneath this sweet girl, the absolute surrender of it. This was something I hadn't really appreciated about having a small child until I'd passed through it: how much time you were forced to do nothing but sit, holding the child as she ate or slept, watching closely as she played. So many hours spent in a world pleasurably constricted to two, much like the early days of love.

“I could fall asleep right now,” said Maggie. “But then I know in the middle of the night this baby is going to wake me up and I won't be able to go back to sleep. This morning, I had just drifted off again when Edie woke up and started calling, Mama, Mama.” It sounded as if she was complaining, but she had a big grin on her face.

“Well,” Diana said, shifting in her seat. “I told my friends I'd meet them at this club.”

“And I've got to go to bed,” said Maggie.

“Wait, wait!” I said. “It's not even close to midnight yet.”

“I'm never going to make it to midnight,” said Maggie.

“Neither am I,” said Diana.

“Well, at least we have to make our wishes,” I said. “Our New Year's wishes.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “Haven't you learned your lesson on that one?”

“No,” I said. “Actually, I think that worked out rather well in the end. Come on, Diana, you always liked this. What do you want to happen this year?”

“I want…” Diana looked up at Maggie's tin ceiling. “I want to get laid.”

Maggie burst out laughing, but I, despite my best efforts, knew I looked shocked.

“Come on, Mom, don't get all moral on me. I know all about you and your little boy toy.”

“I'm not being moral,” I said, but I heard the priggishness in my voice. “It's just that I only ever hear you talk about nursing, and Africa, and wanting to make a difference in the world.”

“Well, I want those things,” said Diana, “but I want a little action too. No, I'm lying. What I really want is to fall in love. Stars in the sky, the earth moving—that's what I want this year.”

Now that she said it, I realized, it sounded good. I'd had it myself the year before, without even wishing for it, and it
had
been good. Better than good. I wanted my daughter to be as happy.

“Okay,” Maggie said, “if we must, I'm going to wish for a healthy baby and an easy delivery.” She put her hand on her stomach. “Ouch, he's kicking me.”

“He?” said Diana. “Are you telling us something?”

“No,” said Maggie, who'd had all the prenatal tests but had resolutely refused to learn the baby's sex. “I still don't know. But my current vibe is a ‘he.' ”

She put her hand on her stomach again. “Ow,” she said. “He's going crazy tonight.”

“Oh, my God,” I said, suddenly alarmed. “You don't think this could be it, do you?”

I was going to be Maggie's labor coach, and I knew from experience—Diana was born on Thanksgiving—that holidays, when the hospitals were low on staff, could be a scary time to give birth. And then there were the added complications of Diana going out and so not being there to take care of Edie, and the impossibility of getting a cab on New Year's Eve, in a snowstorm, no less.

“No,” said Maggie. “I don't think so. The doctor said the baby's still up under my chin. I'm just tired, is all.”

She worked herself to her feet and stretched, her belly and breasts enormous beneath a purple stretch velvet turtleneck that matched her chaise.

“I'll take Edie now,” said Diana, standing too.

“Wait!” I said. “You haven't heard my wish.”

They both looked at me.

“What is it, Mom?” Diana asked finally.

But I had to tell them the Bottom Line Truth: “I haven't made up my mind yet.”