They were my life. A life without them was no life. The other life I was thinking of—that was someone else’s life. How did all this happen, anyway? It was just a birthday wish made by an old woman. A wish that doing it all over again would make things right. There was no way I could continue my life without the people I loved. I would learn from my mistakes. I would make the future right.
I had brought Barbara into this world. To abandon her, even at this late stage, would hurt too much. I love my Barbara. I love her more than she will ever know.
To leave Frida at this point in our lives, even if I did see her from time to time . . . it wouldn’t be the same. We wouldn’t understand each other anymore. Sometime in our lives a pact had been made, and I realized now that I couldn’t break it. We began our lives together. We experienced each decade of our lives as they changed and we changed. How could I not see it through to the end?
I took a deep breath.
I could not run away from the life I had built. It wasn’t right. This was not the second chance at life I was meant to have. I was not meant to have a second life. I just needed to know that the first life was worth it.
I looked over at the clock to see what time it was, hoping that I still had time to get out of there before . . . It was 11:59! And then the clock turned to midnight.
And right then I changed. Again.
It was odd. It wasn’t as if it happened slowly. I felt it in the blink of an eye. One second I was breathing easy; the next second I felt as if a hard shell had suddenly grown on top of my skin.
One day. Twenty-four hours. That was all I wished for on my birthday, and whether I liked it or not, that was what I got. All that thinking that I could stay twenty-nine had been pointless. It was the wish. The wish was being twenty-nine for a day—not a week, and not a lifetime.
One day. And it was all over.
I placed my hand on my neck.
It didn’t feel smooth and supple as it had that day.
Now it felt tough and fatigued.
Every single part of my body ached, but I had to get out of there as carefully as I could, without waking Zachary. I felt like I had run a marathon, but I couldn’t think about the pain at that point. Could you imagine the look on his face if he opened his eyes and saw a seventy-five-year-old woman lying next to him naked?
I slowly turned to sit up and put my feet on the ground. The hardwood floors started to creak as I put my weight on them. I grabbed my lower back to lessen the pain as Zachary rolled to the other side of the bed and began snoring loudly. Thank goodness for his snoring; he wouldn’t hear me. I knew that from my time with Howard. When Howard was in such a deep sleep, I could have banged pots and pans in his ears and he still wouldn’t have woken up. I knew I was safe as long as I heard that deep gruff sound coming from him.
I knelt down and felt around the bed until I located the fabric of my black dress. I crept toward the bathroom, feeling the walls and furniture around me like I was blind. I was blind. Everything was completely blurry around me. Why I didn’t just throw my glasses into my bag, I’ll never know. As I shut the door to the bathroom, I turned on the light and squinted my eyes as I tried to bend down and put on the dress. Oh, my back, my legs, my bunions! I had gone from such an easy pain-free body to feeling like I’d just put on a wetsuit that was three sizes too big.
And then, as if I didn’t have enough trouble, I couldn’t zip the dress. My potbelly was in the way. There was no way I could zip up the dress and move my breasts into the correct position, no matter how many times I tried. I didn’t know whether to be agitated or scared at that point. All I kept thinking was Please don’t let him wake up. Please, please, don’t wake up.
Needless to say, I wasn’t even going to attempt to find my heels.
I tried to look at myself in the mirror, but it was just too blurry for me to see anything. (By the way, that was fine with me. There was nothing to see. It was just the same old me. I was the last person I wanted to see when I looked in the mirror.)
I turned off the bathroom light and found my way toward Zachary’s closet. I grabbed any old pair of pants and a T-shirt off a shelf. Remember, I was doing all of this blind. I wouldn’t know what I grabbed until I got home, just that it had an elastic waist and I wouldn’t need a belt. I felt around the bottom of the closet and came across a pair of sneakers; at least I assumed they were sneakers because I felt laces. It was easy for me to just slip my feet into them, as Zachary’s feet were quite a few sizes bigger than mine.
Don’t even ask me how I found my way toward the door to his apartment and undid the locks. My senses were on their highest alert.
I thought about saying good-bye to Zachary. I wanted to apologize and tell him I wouldn’t be going to Paris with him, or to Italy. He would find someone else to do those things with. I had already done them, anyway. He would find a young woman who respected him and loved him for who he was, that I was sure of. I wondered if he would be hurt when he woke up the next morning and I wasn’t there. Would he call Lucy looking for me? It would bother him for a little while, his heart would be a little broken, but he would get over it. After all, he was young. He had his whole life in front of him. I had already lived my life.
I slowly opened the door. The shoes were so big it took more energy to keep my feet in them than to walk toward the elevator. Thank goodness it was late. Could you imagine the look on anyone’s face if they saw this old woman leaving Zachary’s apartment dressed in his clothes? By the time I got into the elevator, though, I was relieved that I had gotten out of there without being noticed. Now all I wanted to do was get home.
How far was I from home?
I could barely make out the street sign in front of the apartment. If I was seeing correctly, I was only a few blocks away. I couldn’t hear anyone on the streets at all. A big metropolis like Philadelphia, and there was no one on the street. At that point, though, I couldn’t have cared less who saw me. By that point, home was the only thing on my mind. I just wanted to get to the safety of my home. I just wanted to go to bed and stay there. Block after block I walked, squinting my eyes, hearing the trudging sound of the sneakers against the pavement as I made my way down the street. All around me I could see lights from storefronts glowing in reds and yellows and blues. These lights were my only guide. I knew that the big smear of red light on Chestnut Street had to be the sign over the Continental Restaurant. I wasn’t far. I just kept thinking, Just a few more blocks and I’ll be home. Safe.
Only a few hours before I had been happy—more than happy, exhilarated and excited. Now I was sadder than I’d ever been in my entire life. But it was the right thing to do. It was right that I turned back to seventy-five. Still, I was mourning what might have been.
I found my way to Rittenhouse Square, my street, and turned toward my building. I could see a figure standing some ways down.
“Mrs. Jerome?” I heard the voice call out.
I stopped. “Ken?” I squinted my eyes to try to get a better look.
I could see the figure of him walking briskly toward me. When he put his hand on my shoulder, I knew that I was finally home.
“Are you okay, Mrs. Jerome?” he asked me.
“I’m fine,” I told him as we walked toward the door. “Don’t you ever get an hour off from work?” I asked him as he helped me through the door.
“Your family was worried about you, so I gave Carl, the night man, the night off. “I’ve been watching for you all night.”
“Thank you, Ken,” I told him as I heard the elevator door open. “Are they up there?”
“They’re all up there. Mrs. Sustamorn came down a little while ago, but then she went back up. She waited with me for a little bit, but I told her to go back up and try to get some sleep.”
“Thank you for looking out for my family,” I told him as he pressed the elevator button.
“Do you need help up?” he asked.
“Thank you,” I said, jingling my keys. “I can take it from here. You’ve been ver
y kind.”
“You’ve always been pretty nice to me, too, Mrs. J. I’m glad you’re back,” he said kindly as the elevator door shut.
I opened the door to my apartment and saw the fuzzy images of three sleeping bodies spread out on my couches and chairs. I didn’t want to speak to any of them. I just needed to think about what this day meant.
“Gram?” I heard Lucy call softly as I saw one figure rise slowly from a chair.
“Yes,” I called back. “It’s me. I’m going to sleep.”
“Ellie?” I heard Frida call to me as I headed to my bedroom. I turned toward her.
“Your back must be hurting as much as mine is right now, Frida. Go upstairs and get into your own bed.”
I walked into my bedroom and over to my bedside table, where I knew I had left my glasses. I put them on and the world finally came into view.
“Mom?” I heard and I turned to see Barbara standing in my doorway. She was in one of my robes. The belt barely wrapped around her body. Her hair was loose from its usual tied-back look and was hanging straggly around her face. Oddly, she looked better.
“Barbara,” I said and sighed. “Before you start in on me, I’m very tired right now, and I would like to go to sleep.”
“I wasn’t going to start in.” She exhaled and smiled lightly. “I’m just glad you’re home.”
I paused, not knowing what to say. I was forgetting all that we had discussed earlier that evening. “Well, thank you,” I said. “I just need some rest right now.”
“Mom?” she asked, coming toward me.
“What is it?” I asked.
She put her arms around me and gave me a big hug, resting her head on my shoulder. I didn’t want to hug her back. I didn’t want to hug anyone at that moment, but I couldn’t just shoo her away, even though I didn’t want to be touched. I was still wrapped up in my own thoughts, and I wasn’t ready to deal with anything. So I put one arm around her and patted her back for a moment, but she kept hugging me. She wouldn’t stop. So I opened my arms around her and hugged her back. I rested my head on her shoulder and relaxed my body until she was almost holding me up. I realized I needed that hug, and not the other way around.
A moment later we stopped hugging and she smiled at me. I smiled back.
“Barbara, I love you so much,” I told her as I combed the hair hanging in her face behind her ears with my fingers. “You mean more to me than you will ever know.”
“I love you, too, Mom,” she answered.
“I want to talk, I do. I want things to be right between us.”
“So do I, Mom. I don’t know how things got so crazy between us.”
“I know, and I’m sorry for that. Right now, though, I need to rest. Once my head is clear we’ll talk about everything.”
“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?” she asked me.
“No, thank you, sweetheart. I just need some time to think.”
“You’ll call me if you need anything,” she said.
“Yes. I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll shut the door so you won’t be disturbed,” she said, walking out and closing the door lightly behind her.
I walked over to my closet and began to take off Zachary’s clothes. Next to me was my full-length mirror. How I got through the streets looking like I did I’ll never know. Thank goodness Zachary never woke up. Oh, thank goodness! In front of me was an old woman, old and shriveled. I almost forgot who that woman was. I bent down as easily as I could and slipped off Zachary’s shoes, then his sweatpants, then the ratty T-shirt I had thrown on. I felt like I looked, like I had aged almost fifty years. I couldn’t look anymore. I stuffed the outfit deep in the back of my closet, where those dude-ranch blue jeans used to be. I would pick those jeans off my bedroom floor later. All I wanted to do now was get into bed.
I threw on one of my old nightgowns and walked out of my closet and over to my bed.
As I rested my head on the pillow, I looked around the room. Only twenty-four hours earlier, I’d loved that room so much. Now it was everything to do with the past I seemed to be stuck with. I was confused.
Why did I wish to be younger? How would it have answered the one question I needed answered? If Zachary wasn’t the answer, then what was? Who was my soul mate? Was it Howard? I still didn’t know. Did I love him? Did I ever love him?
On my seventy-sixth birthday, should I wish to start my life over at twenty-nine, and not for just one day?
I took off my glasses as I rolled over onto my stomach. I positioned my boobs more comfortably. There was nothing more I needed to see that day.
I leaned over and turned off my light.
And I wished.
I wished that I was content with my life; that even though I didn’t know the answer to my question, that even though I might never know the answer, this pain in my heart would leave.
I wished and wished.
And as I lay there in the dark with my eyes wide open, I thought about it rationally. That’s what a seventy-five-year-old woman does—she rationalizes. After all, she’s used to it after all those years. For the first time in my life, though, I knew that there was no point to wishing or wanting or trying to recapture youth.
It was that simple.
I had to leave Zachary and our life together behind. My second chance at life lay ahead of me, with the family I loved. But a wise and rational woman can also feel sadness and regret.
As much as I tried to rationalize, the sadness kept raging inside of me.
For the rest of my life, I would never be twenty-nine again.
frida’s day after
Frida Freedberg slept like a log.
The next morning she opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling of her bedroom. How comforting it was to see her ceiling. She was back in her own warm bed. She bent her legs and pulled her body in as she wrapped the covers tighter around herself.
She glanced over at her clock and saw that it was half past eleven in the morning. Frida always slept late, but this was much later than usual. She had missed her morning programs, but so be it.
She got out of bed and took a shower. She wasn’t very hungry that morning, so she just made some toast and ate it as quickly as she could.
She had a lot of things to do that day. Well, there was one thing in particular she wanted to do, but it would take a couple of hours to get up the nerve.
She went into her closet and pulled out the pair of blue jeans she never wore, the ones she got with Ellie that time they went to the dude ranch. Frida had chickened out of getting on the horses, so she’d just stayed in her muumuu and sipped iced tea by the pool. The jeans were a little snug, even with her girdle on underneath, but no bother. They would fit as the months went by. They’d even get too big, and she’d have to buy another pair if she stuck to the diet she was planning.
She matched the jeans with one of her dead husband Sol’s old blue oxford shirts. To make the outfit look more feminine, she threw on some long gold chains she hadn’t worn in twenty years, and finished the look off with a pair of gold stud earrings. She put on her sneakers from the day before and was ready to leave the house by noon.
She grabbed her keys, as well as an extra set of keys to leave downstairs with Ken. She took her purse, her checkbook, and her wallet with two forms of ID, checking three times to make sure she had everything.
Frida left the apartment with one hand on her purse and one on the door. Then she checked again to make sure she had her keys and shut the door.
She got in the elevator and pressed the number for Ellie’s floor.
“Ellie?” she called, knocking on her door.
There was no answer.
Frida used Ellie’s keys to open her door. The blankets she and Barbara and Lucy had used were folded and piled on top of one another by the couch, where she remembered putting them before she left the night before. Frida took a look at herself in the Paris mirror in front of the door. It was only for a second, but that was all she
needed to notice how attractive she looked that day.
“Ellie?” Frida whispered as she slowly opened the door to Ellie’s room. The room was dark. The only light coming in was at the sides of Ellie’s blinds. Ellie was lying on her stomach, as she always did when she slept. Her head was facing the opposite direction. She flinched when Frida called her name, but she didn’t turn her head.
“Ellie, it’s past noon. I’m going out to run some errands, and I wanted to see if there was anything you might need,” she whispered.
Ellie didn’t answer her.
“Ellie, is there anything you need?” she whispered again.
“No, that’s okay,” Ellie answered with a slumbering voice.
“I’ll be back to check on you later, okay?”
Ellie grumbled.
Frida locked the door to Ellie’s apartment and took the elevator downstairs.
“Hi, Ken.” She smiled as he opened the door for her.
“Have a good day, Mrs. Freedberg,” he answered lethargically.
“Ken,” she said, stopping before she reached the door. “I just want to thank you for looking out for Mrs. Jerome last night. That was a very kind thing for you to do.”
“Oh, it was all right. I kind of felt responsible for letting that girl up the other day.”
“Well, I want to thank you just as well.” She smiled as she held out her hand.
“I appreciate it.” Ken smiled as he shook her hand, feeling her pass him something in between their connected palms.
“I’ll be back in a little bit,” she said, walking out the door.
Ken watched her leave and then looked into his hand. Frida had slipped him a folded five-dollar bill and an extra set of keys to her apartment.
“Well,” he said, nodding at the bill, “it’s a start.” He laughed as he placed her keys in the closet and pocketed the money.
The first place she went was to the cell phone store she’d passed on Walnut Street many times before. So many times she’d thought about walking in, but today she actually would.
Two hours later, she had her own cell phone. It was a handsome little thing, black with a flip top. She walked back down Walnut Street, memorizing the phone number they had given her. Frida had signed up for a two-year plan so the phone was free, but she also bargained with them for free insurance in case her phone was lost or stolen. What a terrific deal!
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