by Nancy Thayer
“It’s temporary,” she told him as he looked around. “Just until I decide where I want to live the rest of my life.”
Roger studied her books and bits of art while she poured them both brandies. When she sat on her sofa, he sat, to her surprise, next to her. Putting one arm up on the sofa behind her back, he leaned toward her and clicked his glass against hers. “Here’s to the rest of our lives,” he toasted.
“Chin-chin,” Faye responded.
Roger tossed back his drink, set it on the coffee table, and moved closer to Faye. He took her glass from her hand, set it on the table, and pulled Faye against him. Slowly, with great deliberation, he kissed her.
Stunned, she allowed herself to be kissed. His lips were warm and soft, his breath a mixture of coffee and brandy. Hey! She wanted to scream. I thought you think I’m fat! At least he’s not complaining about his ex-wife, another part of her brain pointed out.
He continued his kiss, and now he brought his hand to rest just against her collarbone. Faye tried to move away—this kiss was a little intense for a first date.
“Roger,” she said, but her word was muffled against his mouth.
Slowly he lowered his hand to rest on her breast.
Faye pulled back. “Roger. Please. I—”
“Don’t stop now, baby,” Roger murmured, pressing his lips against hers.
Oh, Lord, this man had more personalities than Sally Field in Sybil, Faye thought. With both hands, she shoved Roger away.
He kept his hand on her breast. In fact, he moved his hand lower and pinched her nipple.
“Don’t tell me you don’t want this,” he said.
She grabbed his wrist and removed his hand. “I don’t want this,” she said firmly.
“Sure you do,” Roger assured her, and dove toward her for another kiss.
“Roger, stop this, please,” Faye said in frustration. “We hardly know one another!”
“Oh, don’t be a tease.” Roger grabbed her hand and put it on his erection. “Look what I’ve got for you.”
His erection squirmed against her hand like a live gerbil. Slightly fascinated—it had been a long time since she’d touched a man’s penis—but more angry, she wrenched her hand from his. A hot flash—a searing volcanic explosion—tore through her body, making her legs weak, her mind blank. Awkwardly she pushed herself up off the sofa.
“I think you should go now.”
He rose, too. “Oh, come on now, Faye.” He looked amused. “We’re adults, after all. We’ve had a nice evening together, haven’t we? Didn’t you enjoy your nice meal and the concert?”
Before he could say another word, Faye snatched her purse, took out a fifty-dollar bill, and thrust it at him. “Here. My share.”
“Fine.” With two fingers, he took the bill from her hand. “I thought someone like you might be grateful to have a little romance in your life, but if you say no, I’m not going to force you. Good night, Faye.”
Faye bolted her door behind him and collapsed on her sofa, so overwhelmed with conflicting emotions she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
——————————
On a Friday night in early February, after The Haven board meeting, Alice, Marilyn, and Faye joined Shirley in her condo for drinks and dinner, then relaxed over coffee while Faye entertained them with a detailed account of her date with Roger.
Because Shirley was director of the spa, she’d chosen the condo on the top floor, at the opposite end of the offices, so she’d have the illusion of distance between her private life and work. The rooms of the various condos were of similar sizes and shapes, since they’d been created from the classrooms for which the building was originally built, but Shirley’s space had an ambience like no one else’s. The walls, painted lavender, were hung with eagle feathers, dried roots, and paintings of naked goddesses.
Marilyn said, “I’m so sorry, Faye. I had no idea Roger was such a boor.”
“No problem,” Faye assured her. “He wasn’t a monster. And he phoned to ask me out again, which made me feel that even if I’m fat, at least I’m not a dog. I declined, however.”
“Good for you for trying,” Shirley said. “We’ve got to take some risks now and then if we don’t want to curl up like dust bunnies in the corners of our lives.”
“Hear, hear,” Alice agreed.
“Anyway,” Faye continued, “his insults only reinforced my determination to make some changes. I started dieting after the first of the year, and I’ve lost four pounds!”
“I’m impressed!” Alice said. “How’d you do it?”
“Basically, I torture myself,” Faye admitted. “No fats. No sweets. Just fish, chicken, veggies, and fruits. Plus, I’ve started using the stationary bike down in the workout room, three times a week.”
“And you’ve only lost four pounds in one month?” Marilyn asked.
Faye nodded. “It’s the whole metabolism thing. I could probably survive on air and lettuce.”
“It’s the whole depressing over-sixty thing,” Alice said.
“Sixty isn’t depressing!” Shirley contended hotly.
“Oh, come on,” Alice snorted. “Get real.”
Shirley stood firm. “Getting older doesn’t have to mean getting tired, bored, and lethargic! People of our generation live differently from the way our parents did. We’re more active—I’m speaking in general, here—we’re more willing to try new things, learn computers, learn tai chi, whatever—and as long as we keep active, we can have a couple of decades of great-quality life!”
“Yeah,” Alice said, “except we still look old.”
“Not necessarily,” Shirley shot back. “If we control our weight—”
“No matter what we do,” Alice argued, “we still have creepy old veins sticking up like worms on our hands and bulging out of our foreheads! And fat? My naked backside would give Stephen King nightmares! Plus, get real, Shirley, most of us have some complication like arthritis, like I do, or mild incontinence. Something.”
“I’m not saying we can look like we’re twenty,” Shirley began.
Alice interrupted. “Twenty, hell, I can’t even look like fifty!”
“I don’t mind looking my age,” Faye began.
“Well, I do!” Alice snapped. “I think it really sucks that older men look sexy enough to attract young women, but older women have trouble getting dates. Mother Nature is such a bitch! Do men have periods? No! Do they have to worry about getting pregnant when they have sex? No. Do they have to swell up and lumber around for nine months and then go through hellish labor to have a child? No. Are their bodies stretched and sagging from having children? No. Men can make more babies after fifty, and they can still look sexy enough after fifty for a woman to want to have their babies! Who dreamed this system up, anyway!”
“But you know what, Alice,” Faye said, “I’m still glad I’m female. If I could have chosen, at any time in my life, I would have chosen to be a woman.”
Alice frowned. “I have to think about that.”
“I’d choose to be a woman,” Marilyn said, “especially because I got to have a child. I liked being pregnant. I loved giving birth. I loved nursing my son and caring for him. I know Theodore didn’t receive half the pleasure of parenting that I did.”
“Yes, well, Theodore’s an asshole, let’s not forget that,” Alice reminded her. “I think some men can enjoy fatherhood as much as women do motherhood.”
“Not to change the subject, but he called me, by the way,” Marilyn announced.
“Who?” Shirley asked.
“Theodore,” Marilyn told her. “Ever since he left me for Michelle, and then Michelle dumped him, he phones every few months. He says he misses me, and I’m sure he does. I used to be his general factotum, taking care of his every need.”
“Another reason I’d choose to be a woman,” Faye said. “Women know how to make their homes into comfortable nests for body and soul. Most men don’t.”
“True,” Mari
lyn agreed. “Theodore told me he missed living with me, and I don’t doubt it for a minute. I kept his house clean, cooked delicious, nutritious meals, and I gave him oral sex whenever he wanted it. He actually had the audacity to say he misses ‘making love’ to me.”
“Girl,” Alice said, “I hope you told him you weren’t biting on that limp old lure.”
Shirley said thoughtfully, “As you all know, I didn’t get to have children. And I’d still vote to be female.”
“Why?” Alice asked.
Shirley counted on her fingers. “I think we have more fun. I think we have a stronger connection to the earth. Statistically, more men commit suicide than women. Their testosterone causes them to be more combative than women. Women can have multiple orgasms. Women live longer than men. Plus,” she added with a grin, “men don’t enjoy shopping as much as women.”
“Men are less significant creatures,” Marilyn added. “For the species to continue, we need lots of females and, theoretically, only one male.”
“Yeah,” Alice said wryly, “and every male dreams of being that one.”
“So, Alice, what about you?” Faye asked. “If you had to choose, which would it be, male or female?”
“I suppose it depends on what stage of my life I was at. When I was young, first working for TransContinent, I’d have switched genders in a minute. It was just too hard back then, being a female in a male-dominant world. I’d love to know how far I would have gotten, given my same performance, if only I’d been a man. Besides, ever since I was a little girl, I always wanted to pee standing up.”
Marilyn laughed. “I did, too! I wanted to write my name in the snow like my brother!”
“When I was three years old,” Shirley told them, “my mother found me standing by the toilet squeezing my bare foot. I didn’t have a brother, but I’d been at a friend’s house that day, and I saw her older brother standing at the toilet. I thought he took his big toe out of his pants to pee with, and I was trying to do the same thing.”
“Isn’t peeing a male territorial thing?” Faye asked. “Marking their space?”
“Well, that would explain why guys don’t care when they spray the walls and floor,” Alice said. “Women think they’re slobs. Men think they’re conquerors.”
Faye sighed. “You know? Women are all Meryl Streep, living in a Beavis and Butt-head world.”
Shirley held out her hand like a stop sign. “Okay, enough about that. How are the new kids doing? I mean Carolyn, Julia, Beth, and, um, the older one?”
Faye supplied the name. “Polly.”
“Right. Polly. Do you think they bonded?”
“I’m sure they did,” Alice said. “On the Friday nights we don’t have our board meetings, I’ve been using the Jacuzzi, and right after yoga class they all come in together, yakking sixty miles an hour.”
“Cool!” Shirley said. “Good for us! We’ll have to keep our eyes open for others who might need to have a little club.”
“I’d like to bring up some spa business,” Faye announced. “I’d like the spa to hold an art exhibit in May. I’ve had so many students doing really great work in my art classes. It would be nice for them to be able to show their work off.”
“Good idea!” Shirley said. “Maybe Justin’s poetry class could read some of their work?”
“Yes, that would be fun,” Faye agreed. “We’d have some munchies, wine, maybe a little music . . .”
“Yeah.” Alice nodded her head enthusiastically. “We could write the costs off as advertising. We could have the spa open for tours, have Star available to discuss her yoga—”
“A spring fling kind of thing!” Shirley took out her lavender notebook. “Okay! Let’s make plans.”
24
Monday morning, Polly sat at the dining-room table in front of her sewing machine, mounds of fabric piled on either side. Claudia didn’t rise until nearly noon these days. Polly woke at six, dressed, and tiptoed down the stairs, and had a good chunk of quiet time for her work.
She’d adjusted fairly easily to life here, except she missed Roy Orbison terribly. Claudia wouldn’t allow animals in her house, so Polly had taken him to a neighbor’s to live. Ten-year-old Willy Peck loved the dog and enjoyed getting paid for the pleasure of caring for him. Polly had left her dog with the Pecks before, so she knew Roy Orbison would be fine. He was even allowed to sleep with Willy.
It was Polly who slept alone, who longed for his comforting companionship, his nose on her foot as she sewed or read.
She’d just finished the final alterations to a handsome linen suit when the buzzer from the intercom Polly had set up sounded.
Polly pressed the TALK button. “Good morning, Claudia. I’ll be right up.”
First she went into the kitchen to start the water heating for tea. Then she climbed the stairs and waited outside Claudia’s bedroom. A moment later, Claudia opened the door and stood before Polly, dressed immaculately in wool and pearls, hose and high heels.
“Good morning.” She made it sound like a command.
“Good morning, Claudia.” Polly went to the stairs and down a couple of steps. This was the routine they had established. Claudia did not want to be assisted as she climbed up or down the stairs. She wanted Polly to be just beneath her, to catch her in case she fell; she had admitted to a slight weakness in her legs.
As always, Polly was humbled by the ease of motion she took for granted as she watched Claudia move stiffly, with obvious effort, the few feet across the hall to the top of the steps. Today the odd smell Polly had noticed before was stronger, clearer, and a lightbulb blinked on in Polly’s head: was Claudia becoming incontinent?
Claudia put one skeletal hand on the banister. Carefully she set one foot on the first step down, testing to be sure it held her weight. This was the major effort of Claudia’s days, this and climbing back up the stairs at night. Satisfied that her leg would hold her, Claudia brought her other foot down one stair. As she did, her wool skirt slithered down her wasted hips and fell in a puddle around her ankles, leaving Polly staring at Claudia’s ivory silk slip.
“Oh, dear!” Polly bent forward, grabbing the skirt and pulling it up to Claudia’s waist. “Claudia, you’ve lost so much weight!”
“I wore this skirt in college.” Claudia clutched the waistband with her free hand. “It’s the smallest size I have.”
“I’m too fat and you’re too thin!” Polly babbled, trying to make light of Claudia’s emaciated frame. “What a shame I can’t run a line between your body and mine and siphon some of my fat off into you!”
Claudia made a prune face. “What a distasteful idea.”
“Yes, well, I can alter your skirts for you if you’d like, or I’ll run out and buy you some new things after we’ve got you settled. In the meantime, I’ll fetch some safety pins and we’ll fasten you back together.”
“Never mind the safety pins. I’ll keep hold of my skirt. I want to go downstairs.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go.” Polly backed down the stairs, one step at a time, and Claudia came forward, with painful slowness.
Once they were in the living room, Claudia lowered herself onto her chaise. Polly gently laid a plaid blanket over her legs, then fetched Claudia’s tea and breakfast, which she ate with infinite slowness while watching television. It was time for Polly to go out on her round of errands. Pad and pen in hand, she stationed herself on a chair near Claudia.
“Now,” Polly said, “tell me where you’d like me to buy your skirts, and how many you’d like and what colors? Or, if you’d like, I could buy just one, and we could order some from a catalog.”
“Brooks Brothers.” Claudia set her teacup into the saucer with a slightly trembling hand, as if even that delicate object were heavy for her now. “One skirt will do fine. Brown or gray.”
“Okay. Good. And I’ll pick up some groceries. Anything you’re hungry for? Chocolate? Pickled ginger?”
“I’m ill, Polly, not pregnant. No, chocolate doesn’t ap
peal to me. Nothing appeals to me.”
“How about some pâté?” Polly tried to tempt Claudia with the most fattening foods; she ate so little these days that every bite needed to be loaded with calories. “And a lamb shank for dinner?”
“That will be fine.” Claudia shifted slightly on her chaise.
“Um, Claudia, I’m wondering . . .” How to approach this in a dignified manner? “I’m wondering whether or not you’re becoming—just slightly—um, incontinent?”
Claudia glowered. “Absolutely not!”
Polly persisted. “It’s not so unusual for women over forty to have this little problem occasionally. I mean, I do, whenever I laugh or sneeze. I wear pads—”
“I really do not need to hear the details of your personal hygiene.”
“Of course not, but my point is that many women—”
“I will not wear diapers!”
“No, no, I didn’t say diapers. I said pads. Like sanitary napkins. They’re very light and slender, and they come with strips now that attach to your panties. I tell you what, I’ll buy a package and if you want to try them, you can.”
Claudia presented Polly with a dark, enigmatic glare. Placing the smallest crust of croissant on her tongue, she gazed into space, as if she’d taken a psychedelic. After a while, she said, “Have you spoken with Carolyn Sperry today?”
By now, Polly was used to Claudia’s hairpin conversational curves. “No, not yet. We’ll meet at the spa after yoga on Friday night.”
“I see.” Claudia hesitated, studying her rings, sliding them up and down her fleshless fingers. They were too large for her now, so she sat with her hands curled to keep the rings from falling off. Addressing the ruby on her right hand, she said, “While we’re on the subject of physical functions, I suppose I should mention a slight problem I’m having in my elimination system.”
Polly waited for clarification.
Claudia turned her rings in silence.
Okay, Polly thought. A little challenge for her skills of interpretation. “Elimination. Um—are you constipated, perhaps?” When Claudia didn’t flinch, offended, Polly ventured further. “I remember Dr. Monroe mentioned that one of the possible consequences of your illness might be constipation. If that’s becoming a problem, there are lots of solutions. Laxatives by mouth, and suppositories.”
