Contents
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EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT GARY GOLDSTEIN
Praise for The Last Birthday Party
“A novel so real I kept expecting one of the characters to text me. A poignant, honest look at a single cataclysmic event and the changes, the growth, and the recoveries that follow. You will think about The Last Birthday Party long after the final page.”
- W. Bruce Cameron, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Dog’s Purpose
“With wry humor and compassion, Gary Goldstein has written a vividly drawn portrait of a year in the life of a 50-year-old man navigating the ups and downs of midlife romance, family dynamics, and professional challenges. A great read.”
- Peter Lefcourt, author of The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story
“Gary Goldstein is a consummate storyteller, a master at combining humor with depth. In this delightful book, we really care about his characters as we try to anticipate what’s coming next. It’s a page turner with surprises around every corner. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a story that is warm, uplifting, and rewarding.”
- Andrea Cagan, author of Diana Ross: Secrets of a Sparrow and A Friendly Guide to Writing and Ghostwriting
“Goldstein’s crackling wit makes his debut novel an absolute joy. His characters are wonderfully drawn; by the end they feel like old friends. Come for the frothy plot and zippy writing, stay for the heartfelt storytelling and deliciously satisfying ending. A refreshing and uplifting read, highly recommend!”
- Susan Walter, author of Good as Dead
“A wonderful read: fun, insightful, and surprising right up to the last page. I found the inner life of our protagonist not only entertaining but thought provoking. Do not miss this party!”
- Robin Riker, author of A Survivor’s Guide to Hollywood
“The adjectives ‘hilarious’ and ‘painful’ have never been so seamlessly married as they are in the pages of Gary Goldstein’s new novel, The Last Birthday Party, an achingly funny love letter to ‘midlife’ in all its anxiety, anguish, and awe. I loved it.”
- David Dean Bottrell, author of Working Actor
“Screenwriter Gary Goldstein has created a beleaguered protagonist worth rooting for in his debut novel, and surrounded him with a charming ensemble cast worthy of your favorite rom-com. The Last Birthday Party is a party you don’t want to miss, a twisty journey with surprises and setbacks—and a second chance at love tantalizingly out of reach.”
- Ken Pisani, author of Thurber Prize for American Humor finalist AMP’D.
“Engaging and engrossing, I couldn’t put it down.”
- Jane Porter, New York Times bestselling author of Flirting with Forty and The Good Woman
“Wonderfully written, with characters I wanted as friends. This story is a reminder that when times are hard the best thing in the world can be right around the corner.”
- Ruth Clampett, USA Today bestselling author of Animate Me
“A breath of fresh air from L.A.! Goldstein has created a wholly relatable cast of characters who are wise and good while at the same time facing their flaws and missteps. We follow the two principal characters on their journey to self-knowledge and, hopefully, to a second chance at happiness. L.A., too, is a charming character in this delightful paean to the City of Angels.”
- Jean P. Moore, author of the award-winning Tilda’s Promise
“Who says there are no second acts in American life? Brisk, funny, and wise, with a keen eye for the absurdities of L.A. living, in a city of constant reinvention, Gary Goldstein has written a warm, appealing, and heartfelt coming-of-middle-age story.”
- Mark Sarvas, American Book Award-winning author of Memento Park
The Last Birthday Party. Copyright © 2021, by Gary Goldstein.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, events and organizations are fictitious or products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to actual persons, events or locations are coincidental.
Hadleigh House Publishing
Minneapolis, MN
www.hadleighhouse.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, permitted by law. For information contact Hadleigh House Publishing, Minneapolis, MN.
Cover design by Alisha Perkins
ISBN-978-1-7357738-1-0
ISBN-978-1-7357738-2-7 (ebook)
LCCN: 2021903652
“Roll With the Changes”
(Kevin Cronin)
© 1978 Fate Music (Administered by Songs of Mojo, LLC)
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
For Bill,
who never threw me a birthday party I didn’t want.
So if you’re tired of the same old story
Oh, turn some pages …
- REO Speedwagon
CHAPTER
1
Jeremy knew the birthday party was a bad idea. He just didn’t know how bad.
First of all, fifty did not seem like something to celebrate. Endure, maybe. Elude, definitely. Lie about, well, Jeremy wasn’t big on lying. “It’s easier just to tell the truth,” he’d contend whenever Cassie wanted to concoct some excuse for, say, begging off dinner with the neighbors. But lie about this? Maybe, yeah. Either way, throwing a party and inviting most everyone they knew seemed like asking for trouble.
“Did anyone ever tell you you’re a stick-in-the-mud?” Cassie asked when he swatted away her notion of a “Jeremy’s turning the big five-o” bash, well-meaning as it may ha
ve been. (It wasn’t, actually, it was something completely else—which he would soon find out.)
“No, babe, only you,” Jeremy responded, attempting to sound light and unbothered, which, it may go without saying, he did not.
But really, what did his wife expect? She was the one who liked being the center of attention, not him. She was the one who was always first to sing karaoke at any party while he’d rather hide behind the drapes or under a table. She was the one who would wave into the TV cameras if they were walking past a movie premiere (this was L.A., after all), while he would suddenly have to tie his shoe. She was the one who would talk in her outside voice when she wanted to prove a point indoors (like restaurant or movie theater indoors), while Jeremy would have used ASL to argue if he only knew how to sign. He was also the first to admit Cassie was who you wanted on your side in a fight.
Maybe she wanted a birthday party. Maybe she wanted to celebrate the smack-dab middle of her own life; middle, that is, if one were going to live to be a hundred, which, at that moment, just sounded exhausting. The only problem: Cassie was going to be forty-nine, and who throws a birthday party with all the trimmings for turning forty-nine? In truth, Cassie would have—would have every year—if Jeremy would’ve let her. Also in truth, he was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud.
But not enough, apparently, because Cassie convinced him to have a party, convinced him fifty was a milestone to be commemorated, not ignored. And, much as he may want to let the day come and go without anyone knowing how old he was—and was it really that old in the scheme of things?—Cassie reminded him that no one’s age was a secret anymore.
Cassie also promised she wouldn’t go overboard, just close friends and family, their backyard, a Sunday afternoon if Saturday night felt too serious. Hell, she’d even cook instead of cater so Jeremy wouldn’t worry about the money. To which Jeremy thought, as he always did, well, somebody has to worry. But he didn’t say it because, y’know, stick, mud.
Still, something felt off about the whole thing. And if Jeremy learned anything in his, yikes, forty-nine years and forty-seven weeks, it was to trust his instincts. First thought that flies into your head about something: Pay attention. Listen. Act. He was rarely wrong about those pesky red flags, those instant warning signs that went right to his stomach. But he was also happy to admit if he was wrong, relieved when the shit didn’t hit the fan—or at least didn’t hit it as hard as he expected.
This was not one of those times.
First of all, Saturday night won out, with Cassie deeming the event “too special for a Sunday,” steamrollering her original selling points and boxing in Jeremy, who decided not to put on the gloves for that one.
Second, “close friends and family” somehow morphed into everyone Jeremy and Cassie had ever met, or at least that’s how it felt to someone (like Jeremy) who didn’t want a party to begin with. Who was there? Joyce, Jeremy’s mom (dad: dead, more later), still a force of nature at eighty-four; his and Cassie’s son, Matty, and Matty’s new boyfriend, Sven (or was it Lars?); Cassie’s parents, the cranky Rhea and contrary Henry (Cassie’s adjectives, not Jeremy’s, he rather liked them. “You didn’t grow up with them,” Cassie would counter); Jeremy’s editor, Lucien, and Lucien’s third wife, Bonita; Cassie’s lawyer buddies Ella and Sunil and Ella’s wife, Jasmine; Cassie’s best friend since high school, Valeria, and her husband Norm, who was, one could say, Jeremy’s best friend by marriage—or default—though, strangely, the four rarely did anything together; and Cassie and Jeremy’s new next-door neighbors, Katie and Crash (real name: Cyrus. Wouldn’t you change it, too?), who were young enough to be their children (well, if Cassie got pregnant in high school).
Oh, and about fifty other people, which was around forty-five more than Jeremy would have liked—and forty-five fewer than Cassie would have liked, so, in her mind, she had compromised. “Is everyone’s marriage such a tug-of-war?” wondered the rope-burned Jeremy. Cassie never had to ask; she knew the answer was an unequivocal yes and so be it.
Without Jeremy’s knowledge (Cassie knew he’d balk and she was right), invites went out to second-tier friends and neighbors, random cousins and coworkers, and assorted acquaintances (yoga classmates for Cassie, fellow film critics for Jeremy). Looking around the party, Jeremy could swear he didn’t know—or didn’t want to know—three-quarters of them.
Needless to say, Cassie didn’t cook that night. Bristol Farms did. And delivered, set up, served, and bartended. (Maybe the bartender, a tattooed hunk with a heavy hand, was a separate line item. Jeremy never got to ask.) And the gathering, which nominally began in their backyard, soon swelled, spread, and snaked throughout the house.
There was music—a deejay friend of Matty’s did the honors and appropriately played a lot of early MTV hits—but, to Jeremy and, it should be said, only Jeremy, it all seemed ridiculously over the top. That night, he felt way older than his fifty years, especially when he realized his mother spent about quadruple the time on the makeshift dance floor as he did. The good news: there was no karaoke.
Jeremy, despite the two-drink limit he’d self-imposed ages ago following an incident involving mescal shooters and a reunion of his writing students, kept topping off his wine glass all night. This, Jeremy later learned, did not make him the most amenable host, even if he did manage to banter with lots of people, most of whom wanted to know if he’d seen any good movies lately, perhaps his least favorite question: he’d instantly blank on every recent film title as if his reviews had been written in disappearing ink.
The other prevailing question that night was, “Are you okay?” which any remotely self-conscious person can tell you is a surefire road to feeling not okay. Somewhere along the way it also occurred to the birthday boy that he and his wife had not spoken to each other the entire night and, when they finally did interact, it didn’t go well. Something about Jeremy seeming ungrateful, which, he’d be the first to tell you—and not proudly, mind you—he was.
What kind of asshole doesn’t appreciate the kind of effort put out on his behalf whether he wanted a party or not? That might have remained an existential—and, let’s face it, totally fair—question had Cassie not verbalized it just so the second the last guest exited their backyard. By then, it was also a contest as to which of the lovebirds had drunk more that night, with Cassie, as usual, holding her liquor better than Jeremy by a tipsy mile. This didn’t make for the most coherent or effective arguing, which may be why Jeremy, to this day, remains kinda hazy about their fight.
Had he known how pivotal it would be, he might have struggled to pay more attention to her words, instead of stumbling back into the house, locking the den door behind him, dropping onto the couch, and passing out into a dead man’s sleep.
The next morning, Cassie was gone.
CHAPTER
2
Not like gone to the store or to yoga or to the office for a Sunday emergency, but clothes gone, jewelry gone, photos gone, and French press and milk frother (really?) gone. This, of course, took Jeremy awhile to realize, much less process, arising as he did at an ungodly late 10 a.m. and frankly surprised to find he was still in his party clothes. His body felt like he’d been hit by a truck, but, it turned out, that truck was idling beyond the den door, waiting to finish him off altogether.
The kitchen looked exceptionally clean, given the mountain of celebration-centric pots, pans, dishes, glasses, serving trays, and utensils that, if Jeremy remembered correctly, needed washing the night before. He didn’t immediately spot the missing coffee maker and milk frother. Though he did peek into the refrigerator and thought there wasn’t much food left given how much there seemed to be last night and that he needed to ask Cassie what the final Bristol Farms bill was, and weren’t those sushi platters, which had been polished off before he ever got to them, a little extravagant?
Padding down the narrow rear hallway of the Laurel Canyon bungalow he and Cassie had bought in
their third year of marriage using the proceeds from the one screenplay Jeremy ever sold as a down payment, it struck him how quiet it was, not even the usual hardwood floor creaks heralding his arrival into the master bedroom.
“Cassie? Cas-sie?” He knocked on the closed bathroom door, called for her again, but there was silence. Jeremy gently opened the door. Nothing to see but his electric shaver still recharging where he’d plugged it in the afternoon before. It didn’t yet hit him that a circle of water on the shower shelf remained where Cassie’s bottle of tea tree oil shampoo normally stood.
He walked back into the bedroom and that’s where he saw it, taped to the full-length mirror on the walk-in closet door: a note in Cassie’s loopy, slightly exaggerated script:
I love you but I can’t live with you. We are not good for each other anymore. Do not call or text or try to find me. I’m sorry and I hope you are too.
Jeremy peered at the message as if its words might rearrange themselves to say something far more innocuous. But they stubbornly hung there like little stick pins ready to gouge out his eyes should he get any closer.
I’m sorry and I hope you are too. Tug-of-war. He reflexively backed away and let this terrible and not so entirely shocking news wash over him.
The party.
Shards of their argument began to ricochet around his cobwebby head, adjectives like “selfish” and “dismissive” and “impossible” echoing about, though Jeremy couldn’t be sure who said what. They were, after all, words that could apply to either one of them. Still, given that he was the one left sitting there alone, it was a good bet he was the recipient of said invectives. Deservedly so, he might add. But enough to drive Cassie to simply up and leave?
Jeremy fell back onto the pillows, the pillows he and Cassie shared on the bed they’d shared for years and years, he on the right side, she on the left, never once switching sides, seemingly happy in their prescribed spaces. Happy? More like habitually content, how’s that? Not good enough, clearly. He stretched his legs, threw the down comforter, that heavy-ass monster, over his chilled body and huddled into its warmth. His teeth chattered like he’d been dipped in ice and, for a flash, Jeremy felt like his heart might actually stop. But the feeling passed as quickly as it appeared and, as he tried to conjure up more of his dreamlike battle with Cassie, he once again gave in to sleep.
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