A Fortunate Age

by Joanna Rakoff

  “Hey!” came Sadie’s voice, hollow and distant, with a slight echo. “My long-lost friend. Is this the only way to reach you? You’re never at home.”

  “Hey,” said Lil, stunned with relief. “I was going to call you earlier.”

  Who is it? mouthed Tuck.

  “Really?” said Sadie, her voice rising with curiosity. “Why didn’t you?”

  Tuck’s angry mien was breaking, senselessly, into a smile.

  I love you, he mouthed, and pulled her to him, lifting her off the ground like a child, the cold air slapping against her cheeks. “Hang up,” he shouted.

  “What’s going on?” asked Sadie. “Who is that?”

  “Nothing,” Lil shouted, squealing a bit as Tuck began to spin her around. “No one.”

  five

  Lil and Tuck were having a party. It was to be their first big party in the loft—other than the wedding—which they’d now been living in for the better part of a year and which was, everyone agreed, absolutely made for parties. And now, after five dark months, they had a reason to celebrate: Tuck was writing a book.

  It was Sadie who’d engineered the project from start to finish. One blustery day in March she’d called Lil and said, without her characteristic preliminaries, “Listen, I have an idea.” Why, Sadie posited, didn’t Tuck write a book about Ed Slikowski, or maybe not directly about Ed Slikowski, maybe a kind of first-person narrative nonfiction, six-months-at-the-world’s-hottest-magazine sort of thing. “Kind of Gay Talese–ish.” Sadie, who was still slaving away as an editorial assistant (none of them could understand why she hadn’t been promoted, or jumped to another publisher, or written her own book), could put Tuck in touch with an agent who did that sort of thing. Tuck would have to write a proposal and some sample chapters—that was it—which the agent would then send to editors, one of whom (undoubtedly, Sadie said) would give Tuck a contract. He’d then have a year (or maybe six months, if they wanted to get the thing out quickly to capitalize on Ed’s current, though waning, fame) to write the book itself.

  And—to Lil’s shock—that was exactly what happened. Even more amazing was the fact that Sadie herself was to be Tuck’s editor. Her geriatric boss had allowed Sadie to acquire the book in her own name, which made it her first real acquisition, to use the publishing parlance. So they were celebrating for her, too, really.

  Lil had almost died when she heard the amount of Tuck’s advance: $30,000, but then Tuck’s agent—a pudgy, goggle-eyed fellow who bore the odd name of Kapklein, with whom Sadie had worked, a zillion years ago, at Random House—explained that it was actually pretty modest. And, worse, that Tuck wouldn’t receive a check for that amount at the outset. A third would arrive upon the signing of the contract (still being worked over by Kapklein “so they don’t screw you over”), another third upon the completion of the manuscript, and a final third on publication of the book, with Kapklein’s fifteen percent commission deducted from each installment. But Kapklein wasn’t worried about the small advance, because, he said, Sadie’s house, the elegant, literary division of a huge publishing conglomerate, would lavish Tuck with “real, old-fashioned editorial attention” and the reputation of the publisher would add “luster” to the book, ensuring that it would be reviewed in all the right places, and so on. “And besides,” Kapklein told Tuck and Lil and an uncomfortable Sadie, when they went out for a celebratory drink, “There’s film potential here, too.”

  But the money part didn’t really matter so much. The point was: Tuck was really a writer now. In a year or so, his book would be displayed in the window of the Union Square Barnes & Noble and reviewed in the Times. He’d have no trouble getting freelance work—in fact, magazines would ask him to write for them—and they’d travel around the world, on interesting, important assignments. On the subway, she’d see people bent over Tuck’s book and restrain herself from saying, “That’s my husband.” All of this was more important than their immediate financial crisis, which the first chunk of Tuck’s advance would only barely resolve. And the happy prospect of Tuck’s success went a good ways toward deflecting her worries about her own research, which had been giving her trouble lately, since Tuck had started staying at home.

  In point of fact, it wasn’t the research itself that was giving her trouble. She could happily spend hours poring over source materials. But she seemed to have lost the ability to write, or, rather, to formulate her own ideas. When she sat down at her old enamel desk, her mind went everywhere but to Mina Loy—whom she was writing about for her modern poetry seminar, though in truth she found Loy’s life more interesting than her poetry—and she caught herself examining her cuticles, wondering if she ought to run out and spend seven dollars on a cheap manicure, or what she should wear the following night to one of Sadie’s book parties, or whether she should get her hair trimmed or continue to grow out the last cut, with its overzealous layering. And it wasn’t just her dissertation proposal: she’d taken incompletes in two of her three spring classes, due to the fact that she had been, frighteningly enough, truly unable to write her final papers for them. Her professors had been kind and accommodating, but made it clear that she had to get the papers in soon, and start thinking seriously about her orals.

  The problem was, she thought, as she put wine in the fridge to chill for the party, that Tuck’s unhappiness over these months had cast a pall over their home, which had affected her. But soon he would be productive again—sitting in the study and writing, happily, at his old scarred desk, catty-corner from hers. She would get back to her own work. She would churn out her two papers by the end of June and then start reading for her orals. She still burned with shame about the incompletes and she’d told no one, not even Tuck.

  The party was a success. A horde of Slikowskers—many of them still employed, unhappily, by Boom Time—raced manically around the loft, making blue drinks in the blender, beaming one another software from their Palm Pilots, and crowding, puppylike, around Ed Slikowski himself, who had stationed himself by one of the big front windows. He’d cut his hair and shaved his beard, so that his eyes loomed even larger and paler, sunk deep within the hollows above his cheekbones. “Hello,” she’d cried when he arrived, giving him an awkward hug.

  “Lillian, what’s going on?” he asked, handing her a bottle of champagne.

  “Well, the book, I guess,” she said, as the Slikowskers encroached on them. “I’d better put this in the fridge.”

  “Yeah, it’s great for Tuck,” said Ed. “I feel like hell about what happened. Like I should have protected him more.”

  “No, no,” said Lil, though she did wonder if Ed had done all he could to save Tuck. “It was inevitable, I think.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Ed, shaking his head. “It was. That place is cancer now. It’s really depressing.” He’d left the magazine, just as Beth had predicted, back in April, and done the predictable: traveled through Nepal, then Vietnam, then home to California to visit his mother. “But it was good while it lasted, right?”

  Lil nodded. “It must be hard,” she said, with a sudden flash of insight. “After you created it. To see things change so much. To lose control.”

  Ed shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “But, you know, I was sick of it anyway, really. It’s hard to be the boss. Signing off on every single thing. And all those deadlines.”

  “I know,” murmured Lil, her mind returning uncomfortably to her incompletes. “Let me introduce you to some people . . .”

  Everyone had come out: Her few friends from Columbia—a trio of tiny dark-haired women—smoked fiendishly in a corner, and made husky conversation with Tuck’s friends from Columbia, glowering, bearded men of South Asian and Irish and Soviet-Jewish extraction, in rumpled shirts and khakis, from whose mouths frequently issued terms like “Marxist” and “hegemony” and “fascist” and “post-structural fallacy.” Caitlin and Rob stood by the bar with Tuck’s college friends and a little troupe of publishing people from Tuck’s agency.

  And for the first
time since the wedding the entire group came, all of them bearing news. Emily’s play—the dark, satirical thing she’d done in the fall—had been picked up for a respected off-Broadway theater. Dave’s band was opening for a big band in a few weeks, at Irving Plaza. “Who?” asked Tal. Dave gave them a wry smile.

  “Don’t laugh,” he said, “Reynold Marks.”

  “Reynold Marks,” marveled Tal. “Wow.”

  “Isn’t Reynold Marks, like, a complete tool?” asked Emily.

  “He’s actually really nice,” said Dave, his jaw tensing. “It’s his fans who are tools.”

  “But you’ve only played, like, once,” said Lil, wrinkling her brow, “haven’t you? Have you done other shows and not invited us?”

  Dave shook his head. “He saw us when we played at Mercury Lounge. It’s crazy.”

  “That’s amazing,” said Sadie, with a wide, closemouthed grin. They could see she wanted to say something more.

  “What?” asked Dave, irritably.

  “Nothing,” she said, wrapping her arms around Tal. “Tell them,” she said to him. Tal shook his head. “He’s got the lead in a big movie.”

  “It’s not a big movie,” said Tal, grimacing. “It’s just a movie.”

  “It’s a John Cusack movie,” Sadie explained. “Directed by that guy who did Se7en.”

  “That sounds big,” said Dave.

  “That’s great,” Emily said, but the rest could see she was rattled.

  “It’s stupid,” said Tal, running his hands over his face. He looked, they all thought, tired and distracted.

  “It’s not,” said Sadie, twining her fingers in his. “It’s a thriller. It’s good.”

  “So, you’re, like, going to L.A.?” asked Dave.

  “For this, yeah,” Tal nodded. “In three weeks.” Silently, they were all asking, Will you stay? Will you bring Sadie with you? Or, more accurately, Will Sadie come with you?

  And then Beth, her cheeks flushed, said, “I have news, too.” They all turned to look at her and she awkwardly held out her hand. “I’m getting married.”

  “To Will?” asked Dave.

  Beth’s face paled. “Of course to Will.”

  “But you just met,” said Lil.

  “We met in October,” said Beth, her voice halting and choked. “That was eight months ago.” She took a deep breath. “You and Tuck had only known each other nine months when you got engaged.”

  “You did the calculations,” said Dave, smirking.

  Beth’s face began to crumple, her liquid features drawing closer together, at its center, as if for protection. They had all seen this before. “I knew you wouldn’t be happy,” she sobbed. “I know you don’t like him.” For a moment they watched, in silence, as the tears began to flow, then Tal stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Beth.

  “Beth, don’t be crazy,” he said, in his soft, firm voice.

  “Seriously, we’re thrilled,” Sadie chimed in, rubbing her friend’s back. “Will is great. And he loves you. This is great. Dave was just teasing you.”

  “I was just teasing,” said Dave, with a barely audible sigh.

  And then they were upon her, with a thousand questions: Had they picked a date for the wedding? Had she told her parents? Would Sam come and live with them? Would they stay in Tuck’s old apartment? And, wait, where was Will?

  “He’s in San Jose, reporting on that big merger,” she explained, still hiccuping. “He had to fly out yesterday. He was really sad to miss the party. He’s so happy for Tuck.”

  “You have a kind of bridal glow,” Lil told her, and it was true. Her cheeks were rosy (with blush, but no matter), her lips dewily glossed, her thin, sandy hair piled dramatically atop her head, a smallish diamond glittering on her left hand. Once she recovered from her tears—apologizing, as she always did—she swayed lightly to the music, wound her way back and forth from the kitchen, saying hello to everyone she passed, the skirt of her blue dress swishing around her knees. She sipped scotch from a tumbler, cigarette dangling from her hand, chatting gamely with the various members of Dave’s band, who showed up near ten with a six-pack of Schlitz and prowled the place shyly in a pack, and Kapklein, who peered owlishly at her over the tops of his wire-rim glasses.

  They had all promised Lil that they would stay until midnight when a band—that is, the band, the band that had crashed Lil’s wedding—would play. “They opened for Beulah last night,” Lil confided, “at Bowery Ballroom.”

  “Yeah,” Dave confirmed. “They’re getting a lot of play on college radio.”

  “Do you like them?” asked Lil, in such a way that there was only one appropriate answer.

  “They’re okay,” he conceded. “They’re very tight. I’m just not loving that produced eighties sort of sound.” He shrugged. “But everyone’s doing it. It’s cool.”

  Soon after, Lil began to worry that she wouldn’t be able to make it to midnight, much less beyond. She installed herself on the couch with a glass of wine and one of Kapklein’s colleagues, an extraordinarily tall young man with dun-colored hair, a mildly self-satisfied expression, and the skittish air of a greyhound. His name was Tom Satville and he was quick to tell Lil that he himself was not just an agent, but a writer, too.

  “Iowa,” he explained. “Fiction. I’m finishing up a novel.”

  “Wow,” said Lil. “How do you have time?”

  He took off his glasses, revealing small, round brown eyes, with deep maroon smudges under them. “I don’t sleep much.”

  “Oh.” Lil nodded. “I wish I could do that. I’d get so much more done. Tuck is like you. He can stay up all night working.” In fact, though he often stayed up all night, she wasn’t sure he was actually working. The television often seemed to be on.

  Tom Satville smiled in a way that made her slightly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, you kind of have to be like that these days. The workday is getting longer and longer. We’re just a small agency and nobody leaves before seven. Nobody takes lunch . . .” This was clearly a favorite subject of his.

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s partly what Tuck’s book is about—”

  “That’s what my novel is about, too. It’s set in an office, an ad agency—”

  “At Boom Time, it was, like, the staffers lived there. Tuck kind of loved it, though.”

  “But you didn’t?” he asked in a husky voice, draping his arm across the back of the couch on which they sat. She pulled her skirt down over her knees.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I liked that he loved what he was doing. He was so excited about it.” She remembered those evenings, the previous summer, when he’d call her as he left his office, the sun just setting, the air cooling, and say, “Meet me for dinner.” She’d shower quickly and pull on a sundress, run the ten blocks to Oznot’s, where they’d sit in the garden and drink Lillet—this was why she’d served it at the wedding, because of those happy nights—and eat thin slices of lamb. Each day there’d been a new story, a new triumph, just as when they’d first met, the previous fall, and spent hours at Aggie’s, drinking bourbon and reciting lines of Wright and Lowell and Berryman. That all seemed so long ago, and she and Tuck so young. “I guess I missed him,” she told Tom Satville. “We’d, you know, been in school together. So I’d seen him all day, every day.”

  “And you’re still in school?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” Across the room, Tuck’s friend Gary appeared to be shoving bananas down his pants. “The sad thing is, I’m one of those people who became an English major because I wanted to sit around and read novels. Whereas Tuck loves the hard stuff. He actually gets deconstruction and all that. It was all so easy for him.”

  “Was he bored?” asked Tom Satville, his hand sliding lower, to her shoulder. She’d thought, somehow, that men didn’t hit on married women.

  “Maybe,” said Lil.

  “People like to be challenged,” he told her. “Especially intelligent people.”

  “True.” This explanation pleased her,
as it would allow her to give up her suspicion that Tuck was, simply, a failure, a person who lacked the drive and discipline to finish his degree, who had opted out at the first opportunity. Stop, stop, she told herself. Why would she be thinking this now on the night of his triumph? What was wrong with her? “I think also some people just can’t deal with the hypocrisies of academia. It’s like, they love books so much that dissecting them grows kind of tiresome. Like my friend Sadie.” She pointed across the room, where her friend, in a belted dress of dull gray silk, stood talking to Ed Slikowski, their dark heads bobbing toward each other. “Have you met her?”

  He placed his glasses back on his face and peered toward the kitchen—not the direction she’d pointed—scrutinizing the throng of women attempting to uncork a bottle of champagne. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “She’s Tuck’s editor,” said Lil. “Sadie Peregrine.”

  “Oh, right! Yes. Sadie Peregrine. I’ve never met her, I don’t think—”

  “She was the star of our department—”

  “So you know her from—”

  “Oberlin.” Lil tried to catch Sadie’s eye, but she was nodding enthusiastically at Ed Slikowski. “Everyone thought she would go to grad school. Her thesis won the big award. Her advisor wanted her to send it to The Atlantic.”

  “What did she write on?” Lil hadn’t thought about this in ages. It was so embarrassing, how stupid she’d been, how unsophisticated. She had not been the star, but she could have been, she was sure of it, if she’d had parents like Sadie’s, if she’d gone to Dalton. Her own children—if and when she had them—would be raised in New York, without television; they would go to St. Ann’s, like Dave, where they could take yoga instead of gym.

  “Dawn Powell. The Ohio novels.”