Younger (9 page)

Lindsay looked at me, both hands now on her hips, as if I had told her I'd recently landed from the planet Xenon.

“But Porter is the perfect catch,” she said finally.

“I can't do it,” I told her, my mind churning in search of an argument-proof excuse. Because…we Xenonians are forbidden to consort with earthlings? “In fact, I have a confession to make. There's another guy.”

“You said you didn't have a boyfriend.”

Now even the truth was getting me in trouble. “He's not really my boyfriend. Just somebody I'm…hooking up with. You know, the alarm guy. Josh.”

Lindsay shook her head, worked her lips. Finally she said, “I don't believe you.”

Without even trying, I'd convinced her I was twenty-whatever years old. That I'd never done anything more involved in my life than backpack through Bulgaria or some similarly unwaxed place. But I couldn't convince her of this.

“It's true,” I said.

She looked at me for a few moments, and then finally she nodded and said, “Okay, prove it.”

“Prove it?” I gave up a forced little laugh. “How am I supposed to prove it?”

She reached into her locker, took out her bag, extracted her phone, and handed it to me.

“Call him,” she said. “Right now. Go ahead.”

I didn't take the phone. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Invite him to dinner on Saturday. At Thad's. That is, if you're really hooking up with him.”

I hesitated, partly because I realized I wasn't really sure what hooking up meant. Dating? Having sex? Pledging eternal conjoinment? Whatever, I decided, if it meant getting out of a blind date with a friend of Thad's.

“All right,” I said finally. “But I have to call him on my phone.”

“Why do you have to call him on your phone?”

Because I don't know his phone number. Because, under the circumstances, it's lucky I remember that at least he programmed his number into my phone, which I retrieved from my bag, trying to think.

“He won't answer if he doesn't know the incoming number,” I told Lindsay, finding Josh in my phone book, holding my breath as I pushed Send. Lindsay stood above me, still naked, her arms crossed over her high little breasts. I listened to the phone ring, and prayed for voice mail.

Instead I heard Josh's voice. “Okay, I understand,” he said.

“This is Alice,” I said. It sounded as if he'd been expecting someone else.

“I know,” he said. “I'm telling you I understand why you blew me off the other night.”

“I couldn't—,” I began.

“I know,” he said.

“I thought about it,” I said truthfully. There was something about him that made me want to tell the truth.

“Favorably?”

I laughed. “At times.”

“It's all right,” he said. On the phone, his voice sounded as warm as his eyes had looked on New Year's Eve. “You're here now.”

“Yes,” I said. “I'm here.”

I sat there with the phone pressed to my ear, staring at the orange metal locker, thinking of him, until Lindsay, whom I'd nearly forgotten was standing above me, cleared her throat.

“My new friend Lindsay from work wants me to invite you to a dinner party on Saturday night,” I said.

“You got a job,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Lindsay began drumming her fingers against her creamy thigh.

“I'll tell you on Saturday,” I said. “If you want. If you're free. Which you're probably not.”

“I'm not,” he said.

“Oh, good,” I said, though I found to my surprise that I was disappointed.

“Good? So you don't really want me to come?”

“I do,” I said. “I thought it might not be your thing.”

Lindsay nudged me in the shin with a pedicured toe, and I turned all the way away from her.

Did people still call something they liked their “thing”? In exactly how many ways was I making an idiot of myself?

“Seeing you is my thing,” he said. “If we could leave the dinner party a little early, I could get to this other place a little late. Do you like rock music?”

I knew the right answer was yes. But I gave him the true answer: “No.”

He laughed. “A friend of mine is in a band that's playing at a club downtown, and I told him I'd go see him. So how about if I go to the dinner party with you, and then you come to the club with me.”

“All right,” I said.

Then I hung up and sat there, so lost in thought I really did lose sight of Lindsay and everything else around me. I had my first date in nearly a quarter of a century.

I
t was when I was getting dressed for Lindsay's dinner party that Diana called. Maggie was reclining on the chaise—trying to “baby,” as she put it, the embryo she hoped had taken hold inside her—flipping through a Japanese style magazine and passing judgment on everything I tried on. Negative judgment. She thought I should wear the old jeans of Diana's I'd grabbed when I left home, but I was afraid Thad would consider them too casual. I couldn't stand Thad, but I still wanted him to think well of me.

“Whatever you wear on bottom,” Maggie said, “the top's got to be really feminine. Lacy.”

“I don't want to look like I'm wearing my underwear.”

Her eyes lit up. “That's a good idea. Why don't you go over and check out what's in my top drawer. I have a couple of amazing lace camisoles.”

I was about to protest when, from my red tent, I heard my cell phone ring. Please let it be Lindsay or Thad canceling the dinner, I thought. Please let it not be Josh, telling me that the longer he's thought about it, the more certain he is that I'm an old lady in disguise.

So sure was I that it would be one of these people that I was stumped when I first heard the trademark crackling line from Africa, as if Diana was calling from several decades as well as several thousand miles away, and my own daughter's voice.

“Mom?” she said. “You sound different.”

“No,” I said. “I'm just…”

Trying to act your age? Getting ready to go out with a man who might have gone to high school with you?

I'd left a message with her field office telling her I'd gone back to work at Gentility and was staying in Manhattan with Maggie, that she should call me on my cell phone in case she needed to reach me. That was all she needed to know.

“You sound different too,” I said, attempting to reclaim my Mom voice.

Then I realized part of the reason I was so surprised that it was Diana on the phone. I was accustomed, whenever my cell phone rang, to calculating the time in Africa to anticipate whether it might be her. And right now, in her time zone, it was the middle of the night.

“Where are you?” I asked, holding my breath, half expecting her, despite the static on the line, to tell me she'd just landed right here in New York. I'd be thrilled, blown away. But I'd also be, I had to admit to myself, a tiny bit disappointed at having to cancel my own party when it was just getting under way.

Diana laughed uneasily. “I'm taking the weekend off, and I spent the night in town,” she said. “With a friend.”

“Oh,” I said. “That's good. That's very good.”

I liked thinking of her in a place with electricity and a toilet and no lions prowling nearby.

“Mom,” she said. “I have to tell you something.”

I held my breath. She sounded nervous, as if I wasn't going to like what she had to say. But she'd already dropped out of school and gone halfway around the world. What could she possibly have to say that was going to make me feel worse?

“I've decided to stay here,” she said in a rush. “At least until the spring.”

“Oh,” I said, relief flooding out of me. “That's great.”

“That's great?” she said. “I thought you'd be mad.”

“Why would I be mad?”

“The whole time I've been here, you've been pressuring me about when I was going to come back. At New Year's, when I told you I was staying longer, you sounded so crushed.”

And so I had. But now, intoxicated with my own experience of adventure and novelty, I felt only ashamed that I'd leaned on her like that. She was at a time in her life where she
should
be going out in the world and doing what she wanted, for as long as she wanted, without any sense of obligation to come home and keep me company. I didn't want her to wait twenty years, as I had, to get a taste of this kind of freedom.

Plus, now that I'd claimed it for myself, renting out the family nest and making myself a new young secret—at least from my daughter—life, I wasn't ready to hand it back.

“Listen,” I said, “I'm sorry for that. I see now how unfair that was. You're doing this really amazing, adventurous thing, and I think you should make the most of it.”

There was a silence so long I finally said, “Diana?” worried that we'd lost our connection.

“I'm here,” she said. “I just can't believe you mean that.”

“I do,” I said firmly. “In fact, I think it makes sense, since you've gone through all the hard work of getting acclimated over there, to stay as long as you're able.”

Another long pause, and then she said, “Really?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

I looked out the open door of the tent to see Maggie, still reclining on the chaise, but pointing at her Dale Evans watch and mouthing something frantic-looking to me.

“Listen, sweetheart,” I said, “I have to run now, but you have a wonderful weekend, okay?”

“Where are you going?” Diana asked.

“To a dinner party here in the city,” I said.

“How's everything going there?”

“Great,” I said, with what I instantly feared might be too much fervor. “I'll e-mail you. And really, don't worry about rushing back. The house is rented out for at least a couple of months. Stay as long as you want.”

And then felt guilty, as soon as I hung up, that it sounded like I didn't want her to come home. Of course I want her to come home, I reassured myself, just not quite yet. Not quite yet.

 

When I finally arrived, huffing and puffing and shiny with sweat from running down the five flights of stairs from Maggie's apartment, through the streets of the Lower East Side to the Second Avenue subway stop, and then eleven blocks up Madison Avenue to Thad's apartment building, Josh was already waiting for me, leaning against its imposing limestone facade. Looking adorable. Wearing torn jeans.

“Oh,” I panted, looking at the skin of his knee poking through the denim.

“Oh,” he said, taking in the black satin pants and black lace blouse and black velvet peacoat I wore, along with a long emerald velvet scarf wound around my neck. On my feet, in anticipation of the long run ahead, I'd worn boots, but I held red satin high-heeled mules in my right hand, a bottle of champagne, now extra-extra-bubbly, in my left.

“You look amazing,” he said. “Maybe I should go home. Put on a suit.”

“Hmmmm,” I said.

“Except I gave all my suits and ties to this group that helps inner-city kids get corporate internships.”

“Oh.”

“I've still got the navy blazer my mom bought me in high school,” he said. “I could wear that.”

“Oh?”

“But I guess it would take me a while to get out to Brooklyn and back.”

“How long?”

“Maybe”—he cast his eyes toward the dark winter sky, calculating—“an hour and a half.”

“It doesn't matter,” I told him, taking his arm and suddenly wishing I'd taken Maggie's advice and worn jeans myself. “I don't think this is going to be your kind of thing anyway. I'm just happy you said you'd come.”

“I'm happy,” he said, “because I'm here with you.”

He was taller than I remembered. As we stood in the lobby of Thad's building, waiting for the elevator, he pulled off his stocking cap, and I felt like running my fingers through his hair. He smiled down at me, and I found myself tongue-tied. Small talk seemed impossible; if I opened my mouth, I felt, I'd start pouring out my heart.

I was relieved to see, when the door opened, that we were the first guests to arrive and that Lindsay was dressed up in something shiny in her usual black, and Thad wasn't—though for Thad that meant he was wearing crested velvet lounging slippers instead of shoes, and a cashmere cardigan instead of a jacket. But at least he was well mannered enough not to comment on Josh's jeans and T-shirt, instead taking his worn leather jacket and offering him a martini. I was relieved when Josh accepted, and then further relieved when Thad's face broke into a smile as Josh specified straight up, with olives, and gin rather than vodka.

“I never did understand this vodka nonsense myself,” Thad said to Josh, ignoring me after issuing his standard hello peck on the cheek. “I thought Lindsay would have everything ready in time for the girls to sit down and have a drink with us, but apparently there's some high-level brouhaha in the kitchen, so you'll have to make do with just me for company until the others arrive.”

I figured that since, in Thad's view, I didn't exist, I was free to leave Josh with a little wave and follow Lindsay into the kitchen. Actually, I didn't quite have a chance to follow her in there: as soon as the guys were out of sight, she grabbed my arm and yanked me into the tiny stainless steel space.

“He's so hot!” she whispered, presumably referring to Josh, not Thad. “Is he, like, some kind of rock star?”

Why would Lindsay think Josh was a rock star? But more urgently, why was every surface of the kitchen covered in debris? There were grocery bags strewn across the counters with food spilling out of them. A dozen tiny plates held a dozen tiny mountains of chopped somethings—onions, mushrooms, parsley. And why did nothing seem to be actually cooking?

“How's it going in here?” I asked.

“Awesome!” Lindsay chirped. “I guess. I mean, I thought everything was under control.” She looked around the kitchen, seeming to notice the jumble of uncooked food for the first time. “But now, I'm not sure—”

And then she burst into tears. I was stunned to see Lindsay, who'd always presented herself as being in utmost control of everything from her job and her relationship to her pubic hair, lose it so instantly and completely.

“Sssssh,” I soothed, moving in, awkwardly at first, but then enfolding the girl in my arms, as I had done countless times with Diana. “It'll be okay.”

“I can't do it,” Lindsay sobbed. “It's a disaster. Thad is going to leave me.”

If only it were that easy, I thought, but what I said was, “Don't be silly, sweetie. I'll help you. What do we have to do?”

Lindsay looked wildly around the room, like a racehorse panicking at finding herself in the starting gate. “I don't know,” she wailed. “Everything!”

“Don't worry,” I said. “Dinner will be on the table in no time. But first things first.”

I ducked out of the tiny kitchen and snagged the bottle of Bombay Sapphire that Thad had left open on the antique sideboard in his dining room, pausing for a moment to marvel that he had a dining room. He probably considered that more essential than a kitchen. Pouring a healthy measure in each of two crystal glasses, I moved back into the kitchen and handed one to Lindsay.

“What's this?” Lindsay said.

“This is courage,” I said, raising her glass as if in a toast. “This is nerve. Now drink up.”

I heard Lindsay sputter as the gin hit her tongue, but I had no problem swallowing my own mouthful. The taste of it was so redolent of a thousand suburban dinner parties that it seemed almost like the magic potion that would transform me back into Super Housewife.

“Okay,” I said, noting with satisfaction that Lindsay had managed to drain her glass as well. “What are we having?”

“Caesar salad,” Lindsay said. “Oh, fuck, I forgot to make the croutons. And pasta. Pasta something or other, with lots of chopped vegetables. The recipe is on the counter there, somewhere under the bags.”

Looking at all the ingredients in such disarray made even me feel overwhelmed.

“Did you consider just making a roast?” I asked.

Lindsay looked horrified. “Oh, no,” she said. “Thad might have liked it, but I'm vegan. And there's at least one other vegetarian, a nondairy, and a raw foodist coming tonight, though he's eating at home before.”

The doorbell rang, sending Lindsay back into panic mode.

“You should be out there with what's-his-name, your rock star,” said Lindsay. “I'm supposed to be taking care of this.”

“Nonsense,” I told her. “You're the hostess. Your job isn't to be a maid or a chef, it's to make your guests feel comfortable.”

Lindsay looked intrigued, if still doubtful.

“Seriously,” I reassured her. “Here. Let's pull some hors d'oeuvres together. Do you have any cheese? Good—your nondairy person can just eat around it. Here, throw some nuts in this bowl. Okay, now take that out and say hello to everyone, and whatever you do, act like everything's all right.”

“What will I say if Thad asks me when dinner's going to be ready?”

“Pretend you didn't hear him and suggest he pour everybody another drink.”

“But an article I read in
Bon Appétit
said—,” Lindsay began.

“Just do it.”