Old

by Stan Charnofsky

  An old love is venerable, like an old family photo, somewhat faded but not erased. I was happy for Julie. She seemed happy for me.

  So, I take a deep breath and prepare to lay out the latest part of my, sometimes, melodramatic saga, the part that invades the present, explicates my life from an older perspective, and illustrates how some of it is in flux, changing even as I write. My honest expectation is that much of what follows will be something of a surprise, hopefully not as a condemnation, but merely as an “Oh, so that’s what is happening.”

  Here I am at seventy, and, as I mentioned earlier, still vigorous and alert, working full time, engaged in the culture, content as one can be without a special, personal relationship. “Not needy,” is how I like to characterize myself when others ask, yet open to possibilities, even at my advanced years. Yes, I am open to possibilities, but I don’t surf the internet, though I know of several folks who have found companions there. My problem with it is that the amalgamation of traits listed for any one person on those .com sites, do not constitute the gestalt of the person. They are just what they are, discreet aspects of looks, age, profession, professed interests, financial situations. A person—in my case, a woman—is so much more than those individual parts. Whenever I have been attracted to someone, it is the whole portrait that has beckoned, a composite of limitless possibilities.

  I also don’t respond to a friend “fixing me up” with a woman. No one else can adequately gauge what I find attractive, though Zandor comes close.

  So, that leaves me with folks I run into in my work—I can’t get involved with clients or with students—which certainly narrows the field.

  But, all of that doesn’t mean I don’t get smitten by, what the kids these days call, a ‘babe.’ I rarely do anything about it, but on occasion I do get flushed with desire, and the few times when I have approached a woman, since I have been deemed by society as ‘over the hill,’ I have been cordially rebuffed, which could be because the ‘babe’ is anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five years younger. On another occasion or two, a new faculty member, also younger, has actually approached me, but, without the chemistry from my side, has backed off. Relationships do require a mutuality of attraction.

  “Folks,” I say in my stentorian voice, “we will go over the requirements, prerequisites, paperwork, and time frames, then we’ll be happy to answer all your questions.”

  We are in a large meeting room on my campus, engaged in one of four orientation sessions offered each year, held for applicants to our masters’ programs. Five of my colleagues are with me, and there are some sixty potential students in the audience.

  These days, orientations are done by power point, which is a good thing, I suppose, except that obtusely, some faculty member invariably thinks that what is on the screen for all to see needs to be read word for word as well. I’m not a high-tech person, and I sit here bored as hell, certain that most of the students are too. When it comes around to my turn, to speak about my specialty program in psychology, I abandon the screen sequence, step out in front of the dais, and talk in a more personal, off-hand way, as if the folks listening and I are having a genuine conversation. It seems to work, since, when our meeting is over, students crowd around me to follow up with more esoteric questions.

  One by one I respond personally to each questioner, bright-eyed, smiling, hoping to impress me, optimistic about the new adventure about to unfold.

  One woman seems to hover at the back of the group, content to wait until all others have been served. I notice her because she is mature-looking yet youthful, strikingly pretty, with deep greenish eyes, which give off a luminescence that, in some eerie way, is magnetizing.

  At last it is her turn, and, as she steps in front of me, she smiles a radiant smile that shows off perfect teeth, white as new snow on a sun-baked hill. I look at her curiously. She extends her arm and hand, straight, open, ready to be received.

  “Teddy,” she says, “I am delighted to see you again.”

  “Again?” I ask, honestly bewildered.

  She laughs. “You don’t recognize me.”

  “Well I…”

  She grabs my hand with both of hers, shakes it hard and says with a flourish, “I’m Megan.”

  “Megan,” I repeat, in a lame voice.

  It has been at least thirty years. She was almost sixteen when she disappeared. I could surely not be faulted if I didn’t place her. Yet, the eyes, that saucy style, no doubt about it. Megan it is.

  That she identified herself hardly alters my astonishment, nor does it settle my discomfort. What do I do? How do I greet her? What is she doing here? Where has she been all these years? I swear there is an ache in my heart, yet a cozy feeling spreading like soothing steam from a sauna.

  For what seems like five minutes we stare at each other. Then, tentatively, I step toward her and that seems to be all she needs. She throws her arms around my neck and pulls me close.

  Over my shoulder she whispers, “Is it okay for a potential student to hug her potential professor?”

  Unsteady as I feel, I say softly, “Be my guest.”

  She leans back and says, “We have a lot of catching up to do. Are you free for coffee?”

  I can scarcely contain my excitement as I reply, “Oh Megan, of course. The university club is next door.” I pause and, in a moment of responsibility, ask, “Does your mother know where you are?”

  She strikes a whimsical pose: “In due time she will. I know where she is. We have a family cousin named Delbert in Oregon. She knew that when she moved there. He was a favorite of Julie’s and I liked him a lot. I’ve been in touch with him, and he keeps me up on my mother. Without knowing details, I’d say she has lived a confused life. Maybe you’ll catch me up.”

  “Let’s,” I say, guiding her by the elbow, “catch each other up.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “I was married,” she says with a distant look in her eye, “at seventeen. When I bailed from our house, from you and my mom, my aim was to get into a whole new life. You probably didn’t see this, but I was feeling stifled, and not from any deliberate oppression. I’d bet my mom would be amazed to hear this. She thought she and I were close as twin sisters, and that was the problem. She had no idea she was smothering me, so she wouldn’t have understood a revolt on my part. I struggled with what to do for over a year, and finally decided to run. There was this guy in my class who kept telling me about a gathering of folks in the mountains near Temecula. Nowadays they would be called a cult. But they weren’t into drugs or anything, just simplifying life: holistic food, living off the land, communally rearing their children––a lot like the Israeli kibbutz works. Apparently, nobody paid any attention to the fact that this guy in my class dropped out of school about the same time I did. He was pretty new in the neighborhood so he wouldn’t have been missed.”

  I feel a strong protective reaction for Julie and how she suffered, and an instantaneous but fleeting resentment. After all, too many years have passed to hold onto faulting Megan for her teenage perceptions.

  “Your mom was in pain,” I say, “but having Aidan helped keep her focused.”

  “I know. I felt awful about hurting her. In some hard-to-explain way, I was sure she would get past it, settle in, and go on with you and Aidan.”

  She looks at me with a most appealing smile and adds on, “So what happened between you? I thought your marriage was solid.”

  “It’s a complicated story. Your mom had some horrific things happen to her—I mean besides you leaving—and she couldn’t quite handle them. We gave it a good try, but…”

  She interrupts me: “Wait, Ted, we need to get honest here. I smell something nasty in what you’re telling me and I want to know details. But that means I can’t camouflage my history either.”

  I look at her curiously. Even as a teenager, she had the remarkable ability to cut to the heart of an issue. She could see I was omitting something critical. I look away, out the window, at the Jacarandas, bloomin
g in glorious purple, lining the campus pathway, which some administrator decided should be called Jacaranda Way. I look back at Megan.

  “The boy who steered me into the hills near San Diego, well, he and I had been sleeping together, and, when I split, one of the compelling reasons was that I was pregnant.”

  She stops and I wait for more, and when it doesn’t come, I ask, “Boy or girl?”

  “No, I took ill in the camp and by the time they got a doctor up there, I had lost the baby. It was only the second month. They lied about my age so the doctor wouldn’t report the incident.”

  “You always did look older.”

  She smiles and says in a coquettish way, “You always looked younger.”

  “So, did the dude marry you?”

  “Yes, when he realized I was pregnant. He was an unorthodox character, but we got along okay for a while, lived together for five years, first in the mountains, then in a beach community called Del Mar. They have a racetrack there, and at that time you could get shacks near the ocean for modest rent. I worked as a cocktail waitress at the track. Met a lot of famous people, and one was a Hollywood big shot who promised he’d get me an audition. He really wanted to get me into bed. My husband, whose name was Chip, was jealous of any contact I had with men. We didn’t really love each other. We were too young to realize what the damned thing was—love, I mean. He got a job in La Jolla about twenty minutes away, doing some physical stuff at an art emporium, hanging paintings, scrubbing walls, hauling trash, and finally learned to do framing, which got him a raise.

  “Wouldn’t you know it, I was about to tell him I didn’t think it was working between us, when one evening he failed to come home. Sound familiar? I guess when someone knows how to run, the next time is pretty easy.”

  “You were deserted,” I say with a half question in my voice. “And that was the end of Chip? A chip off the old block.”

  Daylight was beginning to fade outside, and the corner of the university club in which we sat was dimming. It felt congruent with our mood, her tale and mine less than uplifting.

  “I filed for divorce about six months later. I was just turning twenty-two. Since there is no fault divorce in California, it went through, though I never found out if the court’s notice ever reached him. Haven’t seen him since.”

  I ponder her tale for a moment, then say, “That was some twenty-five years ago. No new marriage? No children?”

  “I hung around Del Mar for another year, then decided to go to college. Without a high school diploma, I had to go to a community college first for two years, then transferred to the University of California, San Diego, where, get this, I majored in music. Not performing, since I didn’t have high skills with any instrument, but the background part, promotion, recording, managing, that stuff. And, to answer your question, I was in a relationship for about two years with, probably no surprise to you, one of my music professors. He was just getting over a divorce, had a three-year-old daughter he wanted to spend all his time with, and seemed to enjoy me as a passion cookie on the side. I exploded one day and he ran for cover. It was okay. I didn’t love him either—but it was a heady adventure for a mid-twenties babe.”

  She looks at me again, seriously, with something of a grimace, and says, “Enough about me, Ted, what about you? What happened?”

  I sit staring at Megan, trying to absorb the quick synopsis of some thirty years of her life. Her question to me doesn’t register at first. I see she tilts her head and gives me a winsome smile, as if prompting me, as if saying with whimsy, “I’m waiting.”

  “Oh. Well, my story is less peripatetic, in the sense that I stayed in one place for years, though it also has its garish side. Julie and I worked at giving Aidan a nurturing home…”

  She interrupts me: “Aidan. I meant to ask, how is he doing? A grown-up man by now, I’m sure.”

  “Yes, a social worker. Has a splendid girlfriend. Not married. A gentle human being. We have a solid relationship.”

  “I’d love to see him. Maybe someday soon.”

  “Anyway, a troubled man came into our lives, a former classmate of mine who had recently lost his wife, and he wanted therapy from me. But it was unusual in that he also wanted to renew our friendship—which meant, I’m afraid, getting to know Julie as well. She seemed smitten by him, a tortured soul she identified with, both having lost someone. It all turned ugly when he forced himself on Julie—raped her—and disappeared. She couldn’t get over it. The guy was eventually killed in a head-on collision up near Bakersfield, but Julie was never the same. We hung in there for a couple of years, then she decided she had to find a different life elsewhere. I think you know much of the rest. We’ve been divorced now for several years.”

  Megan has a troubled look on her pretty face, and I ask, “What?”

  “Oh Teddy, that is a horrible story. I knew Mom was unhappy and confused, but I didn’t know the background. Delbert in Oregon tells me that the guy she is with is an uncomplicated man, pleasant enough, not deep, not challenging in any way. Probably exactly what she needs.”

  “I’m afraid I no longer know what she needs. My life has gone on and I’ve tried to bury the old hurts.”

  “You say gone on. What about relationships? Did you marry again?”

  “No. Had one or two fairly long involvements, but nothing that lasted. I guess I’m over the hill now.” I say this, I am aware, in a play for some kind of sympathy, though I want desperately not to believe it.

  “You know the adage, ‘When you’re over the hill, you pick up speed.’ And anyway, I seriously doubt that you are.”

  “Are what?”

  “Over the hill. You look to me to be on top of the hill.”

  “Thank you, sweetheart. You say just the right things.”

  Another troubled look spreads across her countenance and she says, “I hope you don’t think I’m gaming you. I find you to be most attractive.” She says this nodding her head, a gratuitous compliment, I feel sure, meant for any older, mature man.

  I smile. Nothing could have elevated my mood more. “Well, you might be a little biased. After all, we do have a caring history.”

  “History. That’s what it is. I haven’t known you for thirty years. I’m learning a lot from talking to you.” She stops, then says, “Maybe I can learn a lot more in the months to come.”

  “Where do you live? Are you near our campus?”

  “Fifteen minutes away. I own a townhouse in Sherman Oaks. Been selling real estate on the side for the last ten years. The music business has its ups and downs, so I needed a supplement.”

  I find myself drawn toward Megan, stirrings from years past replenishing my old fondness for her, this present, grown up, finely sculptured woman a remarkable specimen, how I might have predicted she would turn out when she was sixteen.

  “And now you want to become a therapist.”

  “I want to help people. All the things I’ve done up to now are part of the culture of business. I’d rather be in the culture of social action.”

  I nod with a smile of satisfaction; I love that this amazing woman is at a decision point in her life; I love that she wants to be a helper to others. I am, however, silent, and she peers at me as if scrutinizing my true meaning.

  Finally, she adds, “Like you are.”

  “You are a wonder,” I tell her. “I do hope you join our program and that I get to see you.”

  “Oh, you’ll see me. Though I will have to navigate around my current boyfriend, Celestino. Sometimes he thinks he owns me. It’s the Latino thing, you know, the man has all this freedom and the woman acquiesces.”

  “You…have a boyfriend,” I say, a tone of dismay in my voice.

  “For about a year now. He’s an okay guy, even if he does have an inflated ego. I get some good things from him.”

  “Well,” I say, with phony ebullience, “I’m happy for you, Megan.”

  She touches my arm. “I’m not marrying him. It’s companionship. Being by myself get
s lonely.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say.

  What in hell do I expect? A lovely woman in the prime of her life wouldn’t be alone. Anyway, how foolish of me to have any thoughts about Megan in a personal way. She is my stepdaughter, for crying out loud! She is more than twenty years younger than I. She is a diamond, a rare jewel of a person, and I’m an old academic fart with wild fantasies.

  Damn it all, expectation breeds disappointment. It ought to be enough simply to have her back on the fringes of my crusty old life.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I don’t sleep well this night. Snippets of one of my dreams include Julie and me on a picnic, lounging in a grassy field, sunlight washing the landscape, a sweet zephyr dancing by, Megan peering out from behind a tree as if playing hide and seek. It is a feel-good dream, but it doesn’t last. I turn over in bed, wide-awake, anxious. Thirty years have leapt by.

  I wish I understood why most men my age are content to mellow into a retirement mode, do the grand-parenting thing, without so much as a whimper join AARP, sit at a park bench and play chess with same-age compatriots, go on summer trips with the Elderhostel—while I fume with unrequited passion, clamoring to get more out of life, to get close again to a beautiful woman.

  Am I that much of an anomaly? It’s not, I constantly remind myself, a practical ambition. We don’t always get what we want, even if we pursue it with feverish intensity. To say it crudely, it just ain’t going to happen.

  My friend Zandor calls me at six in the morning. I don’t think he awakens me because I hadn’t done much sleeping. “Hey, old buddy,” he says with a zeal that for some reason annoys me. “At our age, we need to get as many feel-good moments as we can find. I’ve found one for you and me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My wife’s cousin—you may have met him—runs a physical fitness center on Santa Monica Boulevard. Included is a massage parlor. I’ve arranged for you and me to partake of their bounty.”