by Joy Fielding
“Mom, for God’s sake. Is that what’s bothering you? Nobody looks good in those.”
“My bum has completely flattened out and is now circling my knees,” Joan continued, ignoring her daughter’s interruption. “And where’s my waist? I distinctly remember having a waist. Not to mention, my skin’s all wrinkly and covered with these stupid little brown spots. And my legs…I used to have such great legs…”
“You still have great legs.”
“Look at all these little purple veins,” Joan said, standing up and pulling her black slacks down past her hips, letting them drop to her ankles.
“Did you just pull down your pants?” Paige asked.
Joan promptly pulled them back up and flopped back on the sofa. “Sorry, darling. I’m obviously having a moment.”
“It’s quite a moment. Maybe I should call Sam and cancel.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re not canceling any more dates.” Joan gave her daughter’s thigh a reassuring pat. “Did you ever hear from that other guy again?”
Paige shook her head.
“You could text him,” Joan suggested.
“No. I’ve already apologized. If he’s interested, he’ll get in touch. What are you going to do tonight?”
“Well, it’ll probably take me half the night to put on my new moisturizers,” Joan said, only half-joking. “And I was thinking I might go downstairs to the gym, try out those expensive new machines they put in.” She sighed. She hadn’t used the gym since she’d moved in, wasn’t even sure what floor it was on.
“That’s not such a bad idea,” Paige said, pushing herself to her feet and crossing to the doorway. “Nice panties, by the way.”
Joan laughed. “Thank you, darling.”
Paige looked at her mother with worried eyes. “I love you, Mom. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know, Wildflower,” Joan said with a wink. “I love you, too.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It turned out that the gym was located on the second floor.
Joan exited the elevator and followed the winding hallway past the closed doors of the men’s and women’s locker rooms, the pool, and the massage room, where according to the small sign hanging from the doorknob, a massage was currently in progress. “Didn’t even know we had a massage room,” Joan muttered as she proceeded around a curved corner, past the two guest suites, toward the recently renovated gym. Even before she reached it, she could hear the hum of the equipment radiating down the hall. What am I doing? she wondered as she raised her fob to unlock the door. She was seventy years old and hadn’t exercised in years. Nothing she put herself through now was going to make a whit of difference. Her rear end wasn’t going to get any higher or plumper no matter how many squats she did. Her stomach wasn’t getting any flatter no matter how many sit-ups she performed. Her waist wasn’t getting any smaller no matter how many weights she managed to hoist above her head. She should just go back upstairs and moisturize.
Not that almost fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of expensive creams was going to make a difference either. Whatever had possessed her? She’d never been someone to throw money around carelessly. Unlike her late husband, who’d been as profligate as he was generous. Her eyes teared up with the memory of his handsome face. Even days away from death, he was handsome. At least in her eyes. How dare you go and die on me, she thought, hearing the click that unlocked the gym door and pulling it open. She might as well go in and have a look around.
The combination of smells hit her first—the newly installed gray carpet, the machines, the sweat, the Lysol. A white-haired man was doing a gentle jog on the second of four treadmills. He was dressed in blue gym shorts and his white T-shirt was spotted with perspiration. Thin wires connected his earphones to the TV attached to his machine, and he was watching one of the all-news channels. Joan recognized the picture filling the screen as the young woman who’d gone missing the previous week, although she couldn’t remember her name. From what she could gather from the information scrolling across the bottom of the small screen, the girl’s mutilated body had been discovered just hours ago in a landfill on the outskirts of town. There was speculation of a possible serial killer.
Poor girl, Joan thought, her eyes skipping down the row of machines—in addition to the treadmills, there were several elliptical and rowing machines, as well as two medieval-looking contraptions connected to an assortment of weights and pulleys—along the mirrored wall. She caught the reflection of an attractive older woman—still at least a decade younger than me, Joan thought, wistfully—doing a side plank at the far end of the rectangular room, under the supervision of a good-looking young man who was probably her trainer. The man was tall, tanned, and appropriately muscular, with closely cropped dark hair and an engaging smile. The black T-shirt stretching across his expansive chest read INSPIRATION, PERSPIRATION, VALIDATION. Really? Joan wondered. It’s as simple as that?
“Well, hello, Joan,” the woman called, scrambling to her feet and wiping the sweat from her forehead. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How’ve you been?”
Joan fought to remember the woman’s name, but it wouldn’t come. Just another one of the great things about aging—the loss of easy recall. Names, dates, places, all once readily available, now gone. To be replaced by what? Chatter. Noise. Insignificant nonsense. And so arbitrary. Why could she remember the name of Kim Kardashian’s second husband—Kris Humphries, for God’s sake!—and not the name of people she saw regularly? Why did she even know who Kim Kardashian was? “I’m so sorry,” she said, approaching the woman. “I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Give me a minute,” the woman said with a laugh. Then, “It’s Linda.”
Joan smiled, noting that Linda was wearing the latest in workout attire—navy leggings and a tight, hot-pink T-shirt that matched her equally hot-pink sneakers. She felt instantly self-conscious about her own pair of loose-fitting yoga pants, old white T, and dirty white running shoes. “I’m sorry,” she said again.
“Please,” Linda said. “It happens to me all the time.” She checked her watch, then turned to her trainer. “We done here?”
“We are.”
“Good. I’m running a little late. Do you mind if I take off?”
“Pretty sure I can find my way out,” her trainer said.
“Well, nice seeing you again,” Linda said to Joan, wrapping a towel around her neck. “This is Rick, by the way. If you’re ever in the market for a good trainer, he’s your guy.” A second later, she was gone.
Joan noticed that the man on the treadmill had also left the gym during the last few minutes. “I am, actually,” she heard herself say.
Rick was checking his cellphone. “Excuse me?”
“In the market for a good trainer,” Joan explained, although she hadn’t been. “That is, if you’re free…”
“You mean right now?”
“If you’re free,” she said again. What was she thinking? It was Saturday night. He was a good-looking man. Of course he wouldn’t be free.
Rick shrugged, tucking his phone into the back pocket of his black sweatpants. “Well, my girlfriend just canceled on me, so, yes, as a matter of fact, I am free.”
“Oh. Well. Good.”
Neither moved.
“I charge a hundred dollars an hour,” he said.
“Sounds reasonable.” She had no idea if it was reasonable or not, but if she could spend almost fifteen hundred dollars on moisturizers, she could spend another hundred on a trainer.
“Okay. Well, then. Great. Should we get started?” He smiled, an expansive grin that drew his mouth up toward his eyes. “What are your goals?”
“Goals?”
“What you’d like to achieve,” he explained.
“Let’s see,” Joan said, mulling through a variety of options. “I guess I’d like a flatter stomach, a
plumper backside, and a smaller waist.”
Rick paused a moment, his smile wavering. “Would you settle for better shoulders and arms?”
* * *
—
Afterward, they went out for a bite to eat.
“Probably not the healthiest choice,” Joan said, finishing off her third slice of thin-crust margarita pizza, the muscles of her thighs and arms still twitching from the hour-long workout.
“Not the worst choice either,” Rick said, taking a bite of his second. “Pizza’s actually pretty nutritious when you don’t cover it with junk. Although it wouldn’t hurt for you to eat a little slower,” he advised, “take time to digest your food properly.”
“I can’t help it,” Joan said. “I’ve always been a fast eater.”
“Bet you hate red lights,” Rick observed, carefully chewing his food.
Joan laughed. “They make me crazy. How’d you know?”
He just smiled. “You’re pretty intense.”
“I am?”
“That was no easy workout I put you through.”
Joan smiled, feeling quite proud of herself for successfully mastering the series of squats, lifts, and other tortures he’d thrown her way. Pizza had been her reward to herself for not tossing in the towel after the first twenty minutes. “Thanks for joining me tonight,” she said.
“Thanks for inviting me.”
In truth, Joan had been surprised when he’d taken her up on her casual offer. She’d been expecting him to beg off, then disappear as quickly as possible. Did he have a thing for older women? she wondered now. Was he expecting more from the night than a few slices of margarita pizza?
What would she say—what would she do—if he were to suggest going back to her apartment for a little “dessert”?
Her husband had been her only lover for the almost forty years they were married, and they’d gradually developed a form of erotic shorthand. He knew exactly where to touch her, how much pressure to apply, what she liked, and just as important, what she didn’t like. Could she adjust to another pair of hands—a much younger pair of hands—caressing her body?
“You said your girlfriend canceled your date?” she said, trying to stop the sudden flood of images—naked flesh and disparate body parts—somersaulting through her brain.
“Yeah. She has this big test on Monday, so she has to study.”
“Really? What’s she studying?”
He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure.
“You don’t know what she’s studying?”
“To be honest,” he said, then hesitated again, as if deciding whether honest was what he really wanted to be, “she’s in summer school. Finishing off her high school diploma.” He produced a smile that could only be described as sheepish.
“High school? How old is she?” Joan bit down on her tongue. She hadn’t meant to sound so shocked, so judgmental.
Rick took another measured bite of his pizza, chewing it even more deliberately than before. “Nineteen.”
Joan almost burst into tears. I’m pathetic, she thought, her heart starting to race. A foolish old woman who’d let her ego-fueled fantasies trump her common sense. Just because a handsome young man was impressed that she’d managed a few deep knee bends without fainting didn’t mean he wanted to have sex with her. No—the only thing Rick had been interested in tonight was a free meal. She took a deep breath, weighing her next question carefully. “Can I ask you something?”
“I’m thirty-four,” he said.
“That wasn’t my question.”
Rick looked her in the eye. “Sorry. Guess I’m a little defensive on the subject. Some of the guys at the gym razz me about having a girlfriend fifteen years younger than I am.”
“My husband was ten years older than me,” Joan offered. “It was never an issue.” It never was when it was the man who was older, she thought.
Rick smiled. “So, what’s your question?”
It was Joan’s turn to hesitate. “I was just wondering…Do men your age…I mean…this is going to sound silly…”
He waited, cocking his head to one side like an inquisitive puppy.
“Do men your age ever look at women my age…like, you know…”
“You mean sexually?”
“Yes.”
He took a few seconds to consider his answer. “You want me to be honest?”
“Please.”
“No,” he said simply, dropping what was left of the pizza in his hand to his plate.
Joan laughed, wincing with the pain of a sudden, sharp stab to her chest.
“Sorry,” he said, misinterpreting the wince. “I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s not that I don’t find you attractive. You’re a beautiful woman. God knows you’re in great shape,” he rattled on. “But, like I said, I have a girlfriend…”
“Oh, no! Please. I wasn’t trying to come on to you, I swear,” Joan said, feeling beyond mortified. There was another pointed jab to her chest. He was right, she thought. She’d wolfed down her pizza much too fast. “I was just curious, that’s all. And I appreciate your honesty. I really do.” She grimaced with the jolt of yet another sharp pain, a pain that was now spreading to her back and reaching into her jaw.
“Are you okay?” Rick asked, the discomfort in his eyes changing to worry.
Joan reached inside her purse and removed her cellphone, pushing it across the table toward him. “Could you call nine-one-one?” she asked, trying to keep calm. “And then could you call my daughter? Her name’s Paige. She’s in my contacts. Tell her to meet me at Mass General…”
The name of the hospital was the last thing Joan remembered speaking before she lost consciousness.
CHAPTER TWENTY
She was dreaming about her mother.
In her dream, she was a child of five, and her mother was chasing her around the kitchen table with the large wooden spoon she used for baking. The cake batter she’d been preparing to put in the oven was spreading across much of the linoleum floor, the result of Joan having snuck up behind her seconds earlier, shouting “boo!”
Joan felt her lips curve into a smile, recognizing this as a memory rather than a dream, although it was actually her mother’s memory. Still, her mother had told that story so many times, Joan had usurped it as her own. It was the only time her mother had ever struck her, and even though it was more of a tap than an actual slap, and Joan had forgotten about it by nightfall, her mother had felt bad about it for the rest of her life, repeating that story to anyone who’d listen, as if it were a penance.
Mothers are like that, Joan thought. They feel responsible—they feel guilty—about everything.
Joan’s smile was swallowed by a frown. Her mother hadn’t had an easy life. She’d suffered three miscarriages before Joan was born, then two in the years following. Her marriage had been strained, money was always tight, she had a weak heart, and she’d died of a stroke a week before her sixty-fifth birthday. Two years later, Joan’s father had succumbed to a massive heart attack at the age of sixty-eight.
Heart disease obviously ran in the family, which was why Joan had never expected to make it to seventy.
And yet here I am, she thought, sensing movement beside her but refusing to open her eyes, not ready to abandon her mother just yet. She marveled that, at her age, she still thought about her mother almost every day.
Would Paige think about her as often when she was gone? Joan wondered. Or would it be thoughts of her father that constituted the bulk of her reveries?
Not that she begrudged Paige the love she felt for her dad. Not that she could have competed, even if she’d tried. Robert Hamilton had been such an extraordinary man in every respect. As a businessman, a husband, a father, a lover. In all their years together, she’d never been tempted to stray, knowing she already had the best. After he died, she’d ass
umed her romantic life was a thing of the past. She certainly had no desire to marry again. She’d tucked away her libido and carried on.
She hadn’t counted on the loneliness.
Was that what was responsible for her recent behavior? Joining a dating site and, even more bizarre, imagining that a man thirty-six years her junior could be attracted to her? She hadn’t had even one response to her online profile, for heaven’s sake. That should have told her something. And that something was that she was no longer considered desirable. By men of any age.
Who settles for a wrinkly old lady when even the most grizzled, balding, flat-bottomed old man could wrangle a date with an attractive woman half his age? Assuming his wallet was as fat as his belly, she thought, considering, only half-facetiously, whether she should add the word “wealthy” to her profile.
“Mom, are you all right?” Paige asked from somewhere above her head.
Joan pushed herself up in bed, hating the concern she heard in her daughter’s voice. When had their roles reversed? she wondered. When had Paige become the anxious parent, watching her with nervous eyes, arms outstretched to grab her should she stumble and fall? “I’m fine, darling.” She opened her eyes and took a quick glance around her bedroom, trying to decide whether it was day or night. “What time is it?”
“Almost two o’clock. Monday,” Paige added.
“I know it’s Monday. Oh, my goodness.” She’d only meant to take a short nap after lunch, as the doctor had suggested after signing her release from the hospital the previous afternoon.
“You were making faces,” Paige told her.
“I was?”
“What were you thinking about?”
Joan shrugged, pretending not to remember.
“I have to leave in a few minutes,” Paige said. “I have that job interview at three thirty. Do I look all right?”
“You look beautiful. I’ve always loved that suit. And blue is such a nice color on you.”
“Thanks. I shouldn’t be too long.”
