How to Be a Grown-up (12 page)

“You look a-mazing,” Claire said delightedly when she picked me up in a cab. She was dressed as a Magritte in a black bodysuit, bowler hat, a Granny Smith apple in one hand, a pipe in the other. She still had a bangin’ bod.
Maybe another reason not to have kids,
I thought as I sucked in against the corset that had fit me rather well in my twenties.

We pulled up outside the MoMA, bypassing the line for their annual Halloween fund-raiser. Inside the ground floor was packed. Pale blue lights flashed in the marble atrium in concert with the throbbing base. The DJ (a Ronson, I think) was lapping the crowd into a frenzy.

“Drink?” Claire offered.

“Yes, please.”

I was enthralled. And overwhelmed. And tired. I couldn’t imagine doing this all again. Pretending my feet weren’t hurting when they were. Pretending the music didn’t grate when it did. Pretending my bare shoulders were impervious to the draft when they weren’t.

I wanted to call Blake to tell him we needed to cut through his anger—and blame—and figure this out. For Wynn and Maya. For me. We
had
to. As I stood there getting jostled, I vowed to find a couples’ therapist he couldn’t resist, make him feel in control, blow him nightly—anything to never have to do this all again.

“Fabulous, right?” Claire asked, handing me a cocktail. “Oh, hello!” she waylaid a stranger to introduce me. “This is Bucky Thorton.” The little bespectacled man blinked in gratitude that Claire knew his name. “He has just helped us acquire the most
fabulous
collection of Russell Wright, very rare stuff.”

Bucky blushed. “Oh, well, now really, I just—”

“Nonsense.” She touched his chest. “You’re a generous spirit with a keen eye. This is my friend, Rory. She loves midcentury modern.”

“I l-love your hat,” he stammered.

“Thank you.” I looked around, taking bets on what would bleed first, my feet or my ears. I had hoped the costumes would be incredibly creative, but the twentysomethings were wearing the inevitable variations on a theme of undies. I felt my phone vibrate and hoped someone’s sleepover had gone pear-shaped so I could excuse myself with dignity. Instead it was a push notification that lamb647 liked my picture on Instagram. I opened it to see which of the portraits of my dynamic duo had won praise.

Only it was Blake. Standing next to boobs. Big boobs. The nipples were hidden behind two half jack-o’-lanterns, but still. Boobs. Big ones. Where was he? What could he be at now, at our age, that looked like a college party? What was happening to us? Oh God, what if I was wrong—what if he wasn’t just taking his professional frustration out on me?

“Is this guy botherin’ you?” A man in his fifties with the build of a defensive lineman stepped between Bucky and Claire.

“Grant, I didn’t expect you tonight.” Claire’s smile stiffened.

“Daughter wanted to come, asked me to buy a table.” He pointed to the Moulin Rouge posse resting their boas over the backs of their chairs. The joke was that any of them would get with Blake in a heartbeat. Two pregnancies weren’t writ large on his body. I shuddered to think what would happen if I wandered over to a table of twentysomething guys and tried to ply my wares.

“This is Rory,” Claire said, her voice getting tighter.

“So, Rory.” He sized me up. “Nice ass. The one pasted on your top—haven’t seen yours. Yet.” He chuckled like Beavis. “How you like my atrium?”

“Um, it’s very open—and tall. Very atrium-like.”

“Claire, I like this one, she’s a pistol.” Just then a server passed with a tray of lemon-drop shots and I downed two. “We on for lunch Thursday? I want to discuss the grout in the sculpture garden. It feels all wrong to me.”

“Of course. Oh, they’re playing my song! Would you excuse us?” Claire pulled me onto the dance floor.

“You missed your calling,” I shouted in her ear, trying to put Blake and his boobs out of my head.

“Oh? This wasn’t it?”

“How much have you parted from Grant?” I asked.

“Twenty-five million.”

“God damn. And you don’t have a dime to show for it.”

“But I
love
the sculpture garden’s new grout.” She raised her hands over her head, and I felt the shots make my edges hot and fuzzy like warm angora.

I thought back to the second half of junior year. I did an exchange program in Florence, where I found a club to go at night. Super-cheesy: you took a slide to get down into it, the whole bit. And they had these red shiny cubes anyone could climb on to dance. And if the men watching liked what you did, they threw money at you—as I discovered one night rocking out to, of all things, “Smells like Teen Spirit.” After that, I went every night like it was my job and ended up paying for a whole backpacking trip through Greece. I was always industrious.

Dancing. That’s what life had been missing. Not the silly, slide-around-the-kitchen-with-Maya kind, but the dirty, deep, out-of-myself kind.

Suddenly the crowd parted a little, and I saw this guy—tall, lanky, wearing a bright green turtleneck and leggings, a vine wrapped around one leg. He bounced over to me in his green Converse.

“Kelly Wearstler?” he asked.

“Jolly Green Giant?” I responded.

And then his hands were on my hips and his lips were brushing my bare shoulder and we were dancing like the MoMA was the staff quarters at Kellerman’s. With thick blond hair and pale blue eyes, he was like Eric Stolz. A young Eric Stolz. God, he was young. And his hands were
everywhere
. Almost. An hour passed, maybe more. “Let’s find a bathroom,” he whispered in my ear, his fingers grazing my bustier. “I want to be inside you.”

Could it be that simple? We hadn’t even kissed. “Wait here.” I stumbled away through the crowd to find Claire.

She was standing by the sushi table talking to a woman dressed as a Mondrian. I strode up to her, hugged her tight—and then tumbled past for the revolving door. “Thank you!” I called as it sprung me onto the deserted red carpet. I slipped off my shoes and ran the six blocks home as if he was chasing me.

Dropping my clothes to the bedroom floor, I let the ashtray clatter on top. Naked, I jumped into bed and flipped the duvet over me—holding myself still, waiting for the lust to abate like the spins. I wanted it to stop.

Stop, stop, “Stop.”

From my tiny clutch bag I heard a buzz.

“You up?” the text asked.

I immediately dialed him back.

“Hey,” Blake said softly, “you’re awake.” He sounded surprised. Good. He’d had me in a near-constant state of surprise for two months.

“Just got in. Those were some amazing boobs.”

“What?”

“We share an Instagram, Blake.”

“Oh—right—sorry, that was Charlie’s girlfriend—that was a goof.” Oh. “How was your night?”

“I went out with Claire. It was Claire-iffic. You?”

“Jack and I went over to Charlie’s for a little bit, but then I came back here. It wasn’t my scene.”

I rolled over on my elbow. “What’s your scene?”

“Watching Maya and Wynn divide their candy. How she tries to hide the Jolly Ranchers from us.” Us.

“I miss you,” I whispered.

“I miss you too.” There was a long pause and I wasn’t sure if he was still there. “I’m sorry I’m so fucked up,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Neither do I, Blake. None of us do.”

“But I—I don’t know if I can be there right now. You make me so mad—”

“Shhh, not tonight,” I soothed like I was rocking one of the kids.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Let’s just stay on the line.”

“Okay.”

We drifted off like that, to the sound of each other’s breath. In the morning the call was disconnected, but I don’t know which of us hung up.

Chapter Eight

The first time I encountered the New York City marathon I’d been living in Manhattan all of four months and was attempting to find my way back to my apartment from a hookup. Waking up in the Bronx, I might as well have been in Shanghai. When I finally spotted the entrance to a subway I was cut off from getting there by a police barricade. Fighting tears, I noticed the tradition of runners writing on their shirts so that bystanders can yell motivation.

“Do it for Aunt Mary!”

“Continua, José!”

“Go, Sammy’s Daddy!”

At a time when I was professionally and personally out of the game, the interaction was a revelation. The runners’ bloodshot eyes flittered to mine and they picked up steam from my encouragement. “Home stretch!” I added. How often do you get to say that and have it be true? And couldn’t we all write the motivation we craved on our shirts?
“Do it for your kids’ tuition, Tom!” “Those heels’ll be off soon, Cheryl!” “He’s going to call, Jane!”

The following fall when Jessica announced that the three of us were doing it she got no resistance from me. In the absence of a direction on any front we would become People Training for the Marathon. Living on a primary diet of Tasti De-Lite, about as hydrated as POWs, with Skechers standing in for gear, we faced an admittedly steep fitness curve. But when that training binder showed up from the New York Road Runners it was like getting a message from God. Pages of guidance! Seemingly achievable goals! A plan with an end date! We labored over workout charts and workout mixes, mused as to what we would write on our shirts, and bought armbands to hold our Sony Sportsmans.

It was a disaster. Jessica had a complete meltdown in a spring snowstorm. I immediately booked a show and could only train sporadically. Claire made it the farthest. Six qualifying races before she broke a bone in her foot.

But what I remember most about the ill-fated endeavor is the extremity of each mental phase of a race. Tedium. Despair. Euphoria. Repeat. It was all about finding that flow. And holding on to the belief that no matter what your body told you, you would make it to the end.

In the days following Halloween, Blake’s silence deepened and the tiny flame of hope I had cupped in my hands against the wind was dying. My lungs were screaming and my feet ached. When was he coming home?

Val became a runner after the divorce and attending the race to support her had always been one of my favorite Turner family traditions. I’d pack a thermos of hot chocolate, and together with the kids we’d head out to cheer on the world.

But this year . . . this year there would be no “together.” Blake would not, he specified in an e-mail, be there on Friday to receive his mother when she arrived at the apartment.

This year, in which I was becoming increasingly desperate, I would be vulnerable.

“Talk to me,” Val instructed, following closely, despite my retreat to the kitchen under the pretense of brewing her tea. I had spent ten years trying to avoid the joint overshare about Blake, but now every molecule was dying for it, like the Dixie cup of water at mile sixteen that would only give me a cramp.
What did she know, why was he like this, where had I failed, when would it be OVER?
Dropping her jacket on a stool, she listened for the sounds of the kids in the living room, politely tearing into the gifts she’d brought them. What child doesn’t thrill for local honey? “Rory?”

“Didn’t Blake tell you?” I asked obliquely.