Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties: A Novel Read online

  I sighed and sat across from her. “Yes? No? I’m not sure, Zoe. You know I still love your father very much.”

  Her face softened, and she handed me a photo. “That doesn’t mean you should take him back.”

  “You’d really rather see us divorced than me forgive him?” I asked, staring at the photo. In it, Zoe and Jack were floating on inner tubes at the lake where we had vacationed each summer; they must have been about nine and twelve at the time.

  “I guess not,” she admitted. “But I don’t like what he did to you.”

  “That makes two of us. But as of right now, it’s all conjecture on both our parts. Anyway, the whole point of this is to have at least one more Thanksgiving with all four of us together.”

  “Fair enough.” She took the photo from me and put it back into the box. Then she stood. “I hate to say it, but I need to squeeze in an hour of work.”

  “The night before Thanksgiving?” I saw my daughter a total of five days out of any given year. Maybe fewer now that she was a practicing lawyer.

  She pulled at her topknot. “I have to comb through a bunch of files so I can answer a complaint for a partner Friday morning. Come on, Mom. Don’t look at me like that. I won’t be the grunt forever. In another six months there will be new associates to field the worst of it.” Her phone began vibrating on the table. She picked it up, skimmed the text, and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. “See? Even tonight, there’s more to do. But I’ll be back down in a bit, and we can brine the turkey or bake pies or whatever.”

  I was already done with the prep work, and I doubted Zoe would be finished with her files anytime soon. But she was home, and that was what I had wanted. “Okay, sweetheart.”

  She bent to kiss my cheek. “Thanks for understanding. I thought for sure you were going to make a comment.”

  “Me? Never,” I said, arching my eyebrows exaggeratedly.

  She laughed and I joined her, grateful that this hadn’t turned into an argument.

  Zoe paused at the doorway. “Hey, Mom?”

  “Yeah, Zoe?”

  She smiled. “It’s nice to be home.”

  After she went up to her old room, I lay on the sofa, thinking about how I would see Adam in less than twelve hours. It would be our first encounter since the awkward meeting with our lawyers at the end of the summer. The contours of his body were as familiar as my own; his voice was the soundtrack of my life. But as I stared up at a hairline crack in the ceiling, I let myself acknowledge—just for a moment—that I no longer knew the thoughts that were rattling around in his head, if I ever had at all. It was almost impossible to anticipate what the next day would bring. And that was enough to make me wonder whether I was making a colossal mistake.

  The next thing I knew, it was morning and Zoe was standing at the foot of the sofa. “Morning, Mom,” she said.

  “Oh my word,” I said, sitting straight up. I must have fretted myself right into unconsciousness. “I’m so sorry. We were supposed to hang out when you were done with work.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” Zoe handed me a mug of coffee, then turned on the television and plopped down on the other end of the sofa. “I figured you were pretty exhausted, so I put a blanket over you and left you there. I almost didn’t wake you this morning, but I thought you’d want to catch some of the parade.” Watching the parade was what we had always done, even after the kids got older. “You feeling okay?”

  Aside from cottonmouth and an ominous, unspecific feeling of dread, I felt fantastic. “Yes, and thank you for doing that.” I noted that Zoe was clad in workout wear, and judging from her flushed face and damp ponytail, had already gone for a run. Oh, to be young again.

  “Good.” She stretched out her leg and touched my thigh with her socked foot. “I got some bagels. You want one?”

  Any other year I would have been the one to wake early and prepare breakfast. Just last Thanksgiving all four of us squeezed together on the sofa with coffee and the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink muffins the kids loved so we could watch the Macy’s floats and bicker about whether the musical acts were a waste (Jack and I agreed they had to go, whereas Adam and Zoe felt they were cheesy but a necessary tradition). But I would not let myself wallow in nostalgia. I needed to show Adam that the past had passed and we could still start fresh, together. “Bagels sound wonderful,” I told Zoe.

  Jack came loping through the front door just after four. “Mom!” he said, pulling me in for a hug, and although I was pretty sure I smelled marijuana on him, what could I do but embrace my child?

  Rose teetered in behind him in kitten heels and a tweed pantsuit. “Maggie, love,” she said, letting me take her by the arm. “So happy to see you.”

  “Glad to see you, too, Rose,” I said as I looked past her. There was no sign of Adam. “What can I get you to drink?” I asked as I guided her into the living room.

  She sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa. Even at eighty, she could still wrap one thin leg around the other and tuck her ankle behind her opposite foot. “A little brandy, if you have it.”

  “Of course.” Adam had left the bar and all its contents behind. Really, other than toiletries, clothing, and the contents of his home office, he had taken almost nothing with him to his new apartment. This seemed to be another indication that he was on a midlife rumspringa. I had faith that he would find the wider world, however alluring, ultimately less gratifying than the one he had taken leave of.

  I had just walked to the bar when I heard Adam’s voice. “Mom?” he said to Rose. “You doing all right?”

  I swallowed hard and told myself to stay calm. Adam had cried in my arms when his father died, and I had let his tears pool on my shoulder long after I felt them seeping through my shirt. When he had a life-threatening bout of E. coli, I managed to get him off the toilet and to the hospital. And when he accidentally sent a disparaging email about a client to said client—severing a major, much-needed deal in the process—it was me he turned to for assurance that he was neither the first nor the worst person to make such a mistake. I knew just how human he was; there was no reason to be nervous about seeing him.

  But then he appeared in the doorway, and every nerve in my body began to tremble. He was dressed in a deep purple dress shirt I had never seen before and a pair of gray wool slacks. Though the summer tan he’d had when I last saw him was long gone and he looked tired, he was as handsome as he had ever been. When his clear green eyes met mine, I wasn’t sure my knees wouldn’t let out.

  “Hello, Maggie,” he said. He leaned forward to kiss my cheek, and I held my breath as his lips brushed my skin. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving,” I said. I could feel Jack and Rose staring at us. “Thank you for coming.”

  “You look nice,” he said.

  I glanced at my navy dress, which was suddenly worth every dollar of credit card debt. “Thank you.”

  “How have you been?” he asked.

  “Fine.” I could feel myself flushing; this felt almost like a first date. Or, say, an awkward run-in with an ex, though I quickly banished this thought. But Adam didn’t seem unhappy to be here—and that was not nothing. “You?”

  Before he could respond, Zoe appeared from the kitchen and ran over to hug him.

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, and if I wasn’t mistaken, he sounded choked up. Yes, this was what I wanted: for him to have a gut-punch emotional response to being with his whole family again.

  “Glad you’re here, Dad,” Zoe said. “Do you want a drink? Scotch on the rocks?”

  “Sure. Thank you,” said Adam. He looked around the living room. I wondered if he was taking in how little had changed since he had last been here.

  “Mom, a glass of wine?” Zoe asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said, even though a glass of wine sounded better than a bag full of money.

  “Maggie,” said Adam, nodding toward the dining room, “a minute of your time?”

  Like I could say no. I nodded and
followed him into the room, where we stood in front of the windows. Winter had arrived early, and the ground outside was dusted with snow. I decided to be proactive and start the conversation. “Thank you for coming today.”

  He continued to look out the window as he responded. “I’m not sure what your motivation was in inviting me. It’s going to be harder for the kids if we act like things are back to normal before we divorce.”

  But we weren’t going to divorce. He just didn’t realize that yet.

  “You’re here,” I said. The space between my breasts was getting swampy. “Which suggests you didn’t think it was the worst idea.”

  “I’m here because the kids and my mother strong-armed me into it,” he said so evenly he could have been delivering a weather report.

  “I wanted a chance for the four of us to be together—just for one more holiday. Could you give me that?”

  “I—” he said, but just then Zoe appeared.

  “I come bearing gifts,” she said, handing me a glass of wine, even though I had declined, and Adam a tumbler with a generous pour of amber liquid. “Jack and I are putting the food on the table. Join us in a minute?”

  We nodded and smiled at her as if to say, See honey? Everything is just fine. Then we looked at each other, our smiles already flatlined.

  “Adam,” I said, just as he said, “Maggie.”

  I swear I saw a new smile form on his lips—normally this was when I jokingly called him Maggie and he called me Adam—but it was gone as soon as it had appeared. “You go,” he said.

  “No, you.”

  He sighed. “Let’s just make the most of dinner, okay? We’re all here together now, so let’s do our best to enjoy it.”

  Yes, let’s. Let’s enjoy it so much that you remember this wonderful thing you have and realize you can’t just give it up. “That was the whole reason I did this in the first place,” I said quietly, still holding the glass of wine I had no intention of drinking. It would have been so easy to take a sip, but I needed the extra fortitude that would come from surviving this night without my go-to anxiety aid.

  Adam gave me a strange, unreadable look and headed back into the living room.

  Rose seemed to be having a good night. Over appetizers, she told us a story about how she had once served half-cooked chicken to her late husband Richard and his boss, and both men had either not noticed or decided to eat it anyway. As she chatted, I picked at a bacon-wrapped date, which I usually ate by the half dozen. Then Zoe told us about a case she was working on. I stole glances at Adam as I pretended to listen. He seemed fine, if a bit stiff, but he joined in the conversation and even addressed me directly a few times.

  “Sweetheart, any leads on design jobs?” I asked Jack as we began passing the main dishes around the table. He was wearing a flannel shirt and gray jeans that were tight to the point of being a danger to my unborn grandchildren. Attire aside, at twenty-four he looked so much like me it was uncanny. I sometimes wondered how this had affected the way I parented him. Had I favored Jack because he was my male clone, or had I secretly preferred Zoe because she was the spitting image of her father? Would I ever know, let alone adjust my behavior accordingly?

  Jack scrunched up his face. “Oh, I’m, uh—it’s kind of on hold. The skate shop just made me assistant manager. They say I can do their graphics, too.”

  “That’s great,” I told him, even as dollar signs dove off the side of my mental cliff. Jack had studied design in school and claimed he wanted to work in an ad agency. However, he had mostly held menial jobs since moving to New York more than a year ago, and Adam and I had been subsidizing him since. I thought this hindered his ability to grow up; Adam, however, argued that it was our role as parents to make sure he felt secure enough to take risks. Unfortunately, now that Adam and I were separated, Jack’s semi-long-term dependence was a threat to my own financial security. I made a note to tell Adam it was time to reevaluate this plan. “So will you be getting a raise?”

  “Um, no. They can’t pay me more, but it’ll be great exposure.”

  A person could die of exposure, not that I said this to my beloved son.

  “I might even get to run my own store,” he continued. “We were going to open a second spot in Williamsburg, but the market’s way oversaturated, so now we’re looking at Bed-Stuy. It’s practically a done deal.”

  “Practically and done are at direct odds with each other,” said Zoe, who was spooning mashed potatoes onto her plate.

  “Guys,” Adam warned.

  I had just taken a bite of turkey when Jack turned to Adam. “Any news on the job, Dad?”

  “Adam?” said Rose. “What’s this?”

  Adam looked up from his plate. “There’s no real job to speak of, so no—no news.”

  Jack snorted. “Come on, Dad. It’s not like you got fired.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Adam? Is there something you want to tell me?”

  He sighed. “There’s not much to tell, to be honest. I’m just not particularly happy with my career, and I want to do some good in the world.”

  Breaking news this was not; I had been hearing some version of this exact lament since the Reagan era.

  “I have an opportunity to start taking on pro bono work for the Innocence Collaboration,” said Adam, referring to an organization that advocated on behalf of the wrongfully convicted. “My contact said they’re looking for someone like me to join their staff in the fall, so this would be a kind of trial run.” Adam had been interested in the project for years—it was exactly the kind of effort he and I both supported, and we had even once discussed creating our own nonprofit to do this sort of work—so I wanted to be happy for him.

  And yet I couldn’t. Because all I could think was that for all my decades of swearing that we would find a way to make it happen if he wanted to make the leap to a more fulfilling career, another woman had given him the strength to finally jump.

  “I thought you were waiting until retirement,” I said. He had been saving up for retirement since his first law job, with a goal of retiring at sixty; that way, he reasoned, he would still be young enough to do all the things he had been putting off. Like working for the Innocence Collaboration.

  He allowed a small smile to surface. “I think it’s a good time for me to try something new.”

  And how. I glowered at him for making such a terrible Freudian slip when something old was sitting right across from him.

  Adam flushed as he realized his gaffe. “Anyway,” he added quickly, “it’s not going to replace my practice, at least not for now. I’m just going to scale back so I finally have a little free time to pursue other things.”

  Free time? I had carried the wine Zoe poured me to the table, but had not had any of it. Yet out of instinct I reached for the glass and gripped the stem so tight it was a wonder it didn’t snap and slice my fingers open. Adam had been a workaholic as long as I had known him. He studied far more than he needed to in college; in law school, he would have missed his own mother’s birthday if it had interfered with a deadline for the law journal. Even though he didn’t feel passionately about tort law, he still put in more billable hours than any other lawyer we knew.

  I understood that, and I married him anyway. His work ethic reminded me of my mother’s—no matter what they were tasked with, they did it thoroughly and well—and it was one of the things I loved best about him. When I felt neglected, I asked him to make time for the kids and me—and he did. But mostly I let him do his thing, because I was not one of those spouses who expected their husband or wife to become someone else as time went on. That, I believed, was a quick-bake recipe for marital strife.

  But now Adam was prioritizing free time—no doubt so he could spend at least some of it with Jillian Smith, who was overseeing his new career path.

  “People change, Maggie,” he said quietly.

  I put down my glass and held the edge of the table, certain that I was seconds from stroking out. “Do they?” I said. “Or
is that something they tell themselves to feel better?”

  “What’s for dessert?” asked Zoe with false cheer.

  Adam looked at her, relieved. “I brought some chocolates.”

  “Great. And we have pie, of course.” Zoe looked at me. “Mom, want to put coffee on while I get dessert ready?”

  “I’ll help,” said Jack, who stretched his arms over his head but appeared to be in no rush to stand. Then he looked at me. “Mom?” he said quietly, and I understood that he was asking if I was okay.

  I wanted to respond, but I was afraid if I opened my mouth something terrible would fly out. I don’t know what I had expected. Adam had not argued with me or expressed animosity, which was about as much as I could have asked for. But he remained chilly, and fool that I was, I must have been hoping that seeing me would make him—well, thaw.

  Rose suddenly stood from the table. She had only had the one brandy before dinner, but she was wobbling like a Weeble. “Richard,” she said to no one in particular, “I’m tired. Could you please take me home?”

  Adam gave me a knowing look—this was the very sort of incident that led us to take Rose to a neurologist in the first place—and for a moment it was like nothing had changed. He stood and took her arm. “Dad’s not here, Mom,” he said gently.

  She smoothed an invisible wrinkle in her jacket. “Oh yes, yes, I know that, dear,” she said. “You know how I can get.”

  “It’s okay. Would you actually like to go home?”

  Ropes of panic began to tighten around me. Adam had barely been here an hour and a half. He couldn’t leave now—not when things between us were strained. I needed this night to end on a good note. I needed us to end on a good note. Preferably a good thirty to forty years from now, holding hands and lying side by side in bed, our bodies giving up their ghosts at about the same time (I had read this was not uncommon for two people who had spent three-quarters of their lives loving each other).