A Certain Age (4 page)

The fog was rolling in up the beach, cold and not particularly refreshing: perhaps there was so much garbage in the ocean that the fog was a mere methane or organic by-product from the damp foam cups, used condoms and chicken bones that had congealed together in a natural island of man-made artifacts.

"Hey, Darryl, what have you been up to?" She had known him

since she came to New York, but it had been years since their brief affair.

"I'm here for the weekend, even though this place makes me sick." He suddenly began to cough. She wondered if it was catching.

"Maybe we better go back," she said, looking ahead at the diminished view of the beach, a curving sliver of toast-brown that wound into a cloud of fishy-gray mist. She clutched her arms around her chest.

"Why?" he said. "Are you cold? Do you want me to go get a warmer jacket for you? A sweater?" She shook her head. "It's okay, I don't mind—I could use the exercise." She shook her head adamantly. "Come on, it's not cold out. Walk a little farther. I want to hear all about what
you've
been up to."

"I'm not up to anything!" she said.

"Really? I was just over at the house having coffee with Natalie. She told me you were down here."

"Oh?"

"She also told me she's fixing you up with Charlie Twigall. She called him first thing this morning and invited him to her dinner party. You don't actually like him? He's an idiot. His mother's desperate to get him married off—to the right girl, of course. That means somebody rich, Florence! Rich, from the right background, who will do what she says just like Charlie! Have you ever met his mother? Believe me, you're in for a real treat there!" He was in despair. She had never known him to be jealous before; he couldn't possibly still think there was any hope of her having a relationship with him. "You don't think he's an idiot?"

"He showed me his self-portrait on the bus. He was naked." She knew this would drive Darryl into a frenzy of contempt, particularly if she didn't sound disgusted.

"Jeez! The guy carries around a naked self-portrait of himself to show to women? How pathetic!"

"I think he just got it or something. He's very well-endowed."

"What a jerk!" He kept looking up at her pleadingly, trying to

get her to agree. Again he started to cough, this time so strenuously he practically doubled over.

"What's wrong with you? You should see a doctor."

"Just some sand in my throat. Sorry."

She sighed. "How's work?"

"I have to tell you: This city, it really gets to me. You just see how easily it could happen. I had a family come in yesterday—you know, Fridays I do a clinic at St. Theresa's. This woman was a single mother, two kids. She worked for the phone company. Her husband—boyfriend—whatever—had been abusive. She finally escaped from him, but not before he almost emptied their bank account. So she was living in Flushing; the apartment building caught on fire, everything was a dead loss, and they couldn't live there anymore. For a while they stayed with friends, but that didn't work out. The last of her savings was spent in a few nights in a hotel. So she took the kids and went to a shelter. The first night she got stabbed. So they slept in the park. But she didn't have any place to leave the kids during the day. After a week she hadn't had a shower, she smelled, she didn't have anything to wear to work, nowhere to leave the kids—she got fired. Now she has no savings, no job, she's homeless. You see how easily it can happen, the whole bottom drops out. I mean, a lot of these people, they're not too bright. But others, they're just as smart as you or me. I mean, it could happen to either one of us, you know, if circumstances were slightly different."

"That's awful. But I don't think it could happen to me. I mean, I'm too determined."

"Yeah, I know. You think I'm crazy, you think, why am I working for nothing when I could be a big Wall Street lawyer, huh?"

"I don't know." She shrugged. "I mean, at least I see that the disease of the twentieth century is wanting to be rich. Rich and powerful. You don't get real power as a woman—you still get it by being married to a powerful man. Before, as a woman, you didn't even have that option. You were supposed to be grateful just for

being married off before you got to be a spinster. And once you were married off, if your husband didn't beat you, if you didn't die in childbirth, you were supposed to be satisfied. At least I'm honest enough to see the world for what it is and know what it is I'm going after. Since the disease is here, and it's here to stay, why pretend that what I want is so dishonorable or distasteful?" Darryl looked sour. Once there had been a taboo against mentioning cancer, or menstrual cycles. "Why are you in a bad mood? You should be grateful that I'm being honest with you." She didn't add that she was being honest with him because she wasn't interested.

"Why shouldn't I be in a bad mood? You're no friend to me. Maybe it's true what I'm doing isn't helping anything, but at least I'm trying! You're just like all the other women in New York, wanting to grab whatever material possessions you can! I'm supposed to feel good that you claim to be more honest? It's hopeless—who wants to go on existing in a world composed of people who don't exist?"

"You're saying I don't exist?"

"You're trying not to exist. You might have had a chance of becoming a real human being, but you've devoted yourself to being shallow, superficial and unreal."

Furious, she walked quickly away, looking back only once over her shoulder. She could see him, skinny and slim-hipped, trudging along the top of the beach, already a quarter mile behind. From this distance he looked so boyish he might have been fourteen years old, pale skin, flat stomach—somehow cockily adolescent. Why didn't he do something about it, work out, grow up? He reminded her of one of those overbred, neurasthenic dogs, a greyhound or a saluki, nibbling at its paws and staring nervously into the distance, when what she wanted was a golden retriever or even a German shepherd.

"Wait up, Florence! I just want to know one thing?" By some quirk of nature—the fog or the wind—his voice carried so clearly it might have been whispered in her ear.

"What?"

"Why do you want to be a nonperson? You ever see
Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The Stepford Wives?
Why do you want to join the living dead?"

She pretended she hadn't heard him. Spare me, she thought to herself. Shaking her head, she walked faster down the shore; then, throwing off her windbreaker, she turned and walked straight into the sea. It was freezing cold, and in an explosion of salt and sand, the waves slapped her so ferociously that she was able to swim only a few strokes before getting knocked down.

She was about to go to the outdoor shower to rinse off when she realized she didn't have any towels and headed inside. John, Natalie and their daughter, Claudia, a rather plain child of about eight with a complexion of flour-and-water dough, were seated at the kitchen table in front of the remains of breakfast. "Hello dere!" John shouted. His voice rang falsely in her ears. She tried not to look him in the eyes. "Did you have your breakfast already?"

She sat down. "Not really," she said, looking at the two cold pieces of toast, one of which was burnt.

"Help yourself," Natalie said, pushing the toast in her direction. "Claudia, go get her a knife and a plate."

The child did not move. "That's okay," Florence said. "Just pass me any old knife, I can just butter it on a napkin. I didn't even know you were here, Claudia! Where have you been? I thought you were away at camp."

"She was at tennis camp," Natalie said. "She just got back a couple of days ago. You didn't do very well, though, did you? Guess where she was seeded?" Florence shook her head. "They seed the kids, you know. At the end of two weeks she was ranked last! Ten thousand dollars, and at the end of two weeks she was worse than when she started!"

"Next summer can I go to horseback riding camp instead?"

"I told you, Claudia, I'm not talking about it until January! You're going to have to do something about your grades! The rest of the summer you're going to stay here and study with a tutor."

She turned to Florence. "She's not very smart, and if she were going to be drop-dead gorgeous, she could get away with it, but that's obviously not something we can count on either."

Florence, shocked, looked at John, thinking he would put a stop to Natalie's criticism, but he was reading the sports section of the
Times.
It occurred to her that Natalie's random maliciousness was her attempt at toughening up those around her. She was like a drill sergeant at boot camp: by knocking down the plebes, she would make them fierce and ready for battle. Unfortunately, it wasn't a technique that would work on everybody. Claudia had crumpled—Florence could see she was not going to blossom but would eventually emerge clipped and root-bound like a bonsai tree, hunched and wizened. "And what have you been doing since you got back from camp?" Florence said.

"She's been staying with Jessica Walker—you know, Steve Walker's daughter," Natalie said.

"She's my best friend," Claudia said.

"Steve flew the girls back from camp by private plane," Natalie said. "That Jessica is just amazing. When you see her you can't believe she's the same age as Claudia. She's so poised; I think she's going to be very special."

"Jessica has
three
horses," Claudia said.

"That must be nice," Florence said. "So you got to ride them for a couple of days?"

"The instructor rides Popper: he's dangerous. Jessica rode Comanche: he's a chestnut nine-year-old half-Arab gelding with white socks and a blaze. I had to ride Earwig: he's not fast, he's elderly, but he's very nice. Jessica's going to sell him. I wouldn't want him, though. I'd like my own."

"Why wouldn't you want him?"

"The color," Claudia said.

"What color is he?"

"Flea-bitten."

"That's not a color!" John said. Florence waited for him to commence his animal-like chortling. Apparently he could laugh only at something he himself had said. He stared briefly at Flor-

ence with a glazed expression of smug contentment, like a man who had just acquired a red-figure Greek vase at auction for below estimate. She averted her eyes.

"Daddy!" said Claudia. "It is too. I told you before, 'flea-bitten' means a white horse with red flecks!"

"Are you sure it doesn't mean the horse has fleas?"

"No, Daddy! You're silly!"

"Your own father? Silly? What kind of thing is that to say!"

It was the sort of jovial male-to-female teasing that fathers used in interacting with their daughters. One could not imagine a mother playing a game with her daughter in this fashion. The child was pleased with the flirtation. That her father could be so daffy! Perhaps it was useful training for adult life: like a chimp teaching its offspring to crack a nut, John was teaching Claudia that men were dumb but must be cajoled—coyly—into understanding truth. She had a sudden memory of herself at Claudia's age, feeling that her father must love her far more than her mother—how could her mother not appreciate him? But now she understood no grown-up woman could ever adore a man in that same blind way.

Claudia was ready to continue her wifely parody, but John had lost interest. "I know what I forgot to mention, Nats," he said. "I bumped into Lisa Harrison last week at Joe's cocktail party. She's been seeing Lesley Crouse again."

Natalie put down the paper. "She's been going out with him for years, off and on. She always complained about him."

"All the women he's ever gone out with complained about him. His dick is too big. He hurts them," John said. "Anyway—I don't think I'm supposed to repeat this—she's pregnant."

"Oh, how great!" Florence said. "She must be thrilled. I guess this means I don't have to give up hope yet." But she felt more jealously than pleasure. How come she was only thirty-two and hadn't found anyone, nor had a baby, while someone so much older was able to do so?

"She must be forty-two at least," said Natalie. "She shouldn't go around talking about it—what if she miscarries?"

"She says she wants the baby, but there's no way she's going to marry Lesley," John said. There was a pause.

"I think that's great!" Florence repeated. By plastering the walls with enough platitudes, with enough pleasant-sounding responses, she could conceal her real thoughts. Or perhaps it was simply that the flickering rage in the room could be smothered by niceties. Really, why should she have cared one way or the other? Since they seemed to think their own child was invisible—or didn't exist—her own presence must be far less real.

Natalie glared at her. "I think that's terrible. If she's going to have a baby, she should get married. How terrible, to bring a child into this world with the stigma of illegitimacy. It just wears away at the quality of life. And by the way, sweetie"—she turned to John—"Lesley Crouse doesn't hurt women because his dick is so big. He hurts women because he likes to."

"Oh," said John. "Well. That's something of a relief, I suppose. I must have met at least six of Lesley's old girlfriends who said he hurt them. I always thought it meant his dick was too big." He laughed uproariously and looked at his watch. "I've got to go. I'm meeting Ted Sterns at Mauptauguet."