“Hey,” Max nudged me. “Aren’t you going to take a video?”
Day Seventeen
The boy and his father left on a Tuesday in a beat-up gray van driven by a local taxi guy. It crossed my mind that the van might not make it to NYC, but as usual I was the only person worried about this.
In any case, there was no choice. They needed space for the bike and the tents, and the finished diorama, which Max and the boy cleverly nestled into a cardboard box.
They loaded the van and shut the doors. From the stoop, I watched as the van backed cautiously down the driveway. I waved, but I didn’t linger.
I went straight to my computer where I watched the video I made for the boy.
The video was a revelation. The vacation appeared to be everything Max and I had hoped for. The backyard looked like a real campsite, with two tents and two charcoal grills and a badminton net. There was the boy learning to paddleboard on the bay in front of Kitty’s house with one of the poodles. And there he was in the harbor, having just gotten off the fishing boat, displaying the two large fish he caught. And finally, he’s walking along the side of the playing field to take his trophy from soccer camp.
And through the whole thing you could see the kid was happy. He was laughing, joking. He was having fun.
And there was Max. Dear old Max. He was having a great time, too, standing with his hands proudly on his hips as the boy rode the bike all the way down the street for the first time without training wheels.
I wondered if the kid would remember me. Probably not. But if he does, I’ll be that weird lady whose house he stayed in during that summer when he learned to ride a bike.
Who doesn’t need that person in their life?
I titled the file with the boy’s name—Dagmar—and hit Save.
chapter eight
The Boyfriend Experience
Marilyn and I have boyfriends!
It’s kind of a miracle. Up until we got our MNBs (my new boyfriends) we considered ourselves diehard single girls. We couldn’t imagine being with a man and praised ourselves for not needing one. Sure, sometimes we’d get a little bummed out—are we really going to go to bed alone for the rest of our lives—but then, like good, sensible women, we’d remind ourselves of how lucky we were to have a bed.
And not just a bed but a room of our own in a house of our own.
Since we weren’t counting on a man to come into our future, we weren’t looking. We’d said no to fix ups and didn’t go to bars or restaurants where we could meet men. Mostly we hung out at Kitty’s, entertaining ourselves with stories of how we would renovate our houses if we ever got the money.
Meaning, we had lowered our chances of meeting someone to just about zero.
And that was okay. I’d done a bit of research on the kinds of men who were available, and they didn’t look promising. Especially when it came to age-appropriate men. The problem seemed to be that unlike the cubs, middle-aged men were often still of the mindset that women over fifty weren’t all that appealing. Especially when it was so easy for them to find not just younger women, but women who were eager to begin the reproductive lifestyle all over again with them.
The Hot-Drop
Take, for instance, the “hot-drop.” Unlike men who initiate the sectionorce and often have another relationship teed up, the hot-drop guy finds himself unintentionally single. It could be that his wife has died. Or his wife may have cheated or fallen in love with someone else. She may have simply become bored with him and couldn’t picture spending another day much less another thirty years listening to the same jokes. In any case, he’s single or about to become single, and he won’t be for long.
You see, there is really nothing wrong with the hot-drop. Indeed, it’s the opposite: there is, perhaps, too much right with him. This is what Kitty discovered when she ran into Harold at an art opening.
She hadn’t seen him for years but recognized him immediately. He had a cool downtown haircut, now sprinkled with gray, but his face had hardly aged. And he still had a big job in the art world. When he mentioned that he was sectionorced as well—or about to be—Kitty couldn’t believe her luck. She’d had a little crush on him years ago when they used to be part of the same circle, but had lost touch. And now here they were again.
This time displaying photographs of their children to each other on their phones. Kitty’s daughter was over thirty and married, but Harold’s daughter was a real child, an adorable ten-year-old girl named Agnes. Kitty suddenly felt maternal. She realized she wouldn’t mind remothering such a gorgeous child who was clearly full of personality.
As they left the opening to go have a drink somewhere else, Kitty wondered if her luck was about to change.
Harold certainly seemed interested. At the bar, he kept touching her hand with his fingers when he wanted to make a point and when they kissed goodnight, he gave her an actual kiss on the lips.
That night, as Kitty lay in bed, she had a fantasy that she and Harold would fall in love and get married and that somehow, by doing so, she would be able to leapfrog all of the issues of MAM. Why shouldn’t she be the lucky one? The one who gets through this middle-aged dating thing unscathed by sliding into an even better relationship?
Kitty never heard from Harold, although she texted him three times and called him twice. Six months later, she ran into him again at another art opening. But this time he was with a woman. She, too, had a cool downtown haircut. But she looked young. She didn’t have a line on her face. Kitty decided she couldn’t be more than twenty-five.
And so, when she looked from Harold to the young woman, the words just slipped out of her mouth. “And how do you two know each other?” she asked. “Are you related?” Perhaps, she suggested, Harold was the young woman’s uncle.