A Fortunate Age

by Joanna Rakoff

  “Harper’s, The Economist, The Nation, The New Republic,” Sadie told him, ticking the names off on her fingers. “The American Prospect, The Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, The Utne Reader, The Atlantic, though she won’t read their fiction. She hates short stories. Um. A bunch of Jewish magazines, like Hadassah and The Jewish Week. Commentary. Though she doesn’t agree at all with their politics. And she’s always complaining that they’re boring.”

  “So she’s kind of a public intellectual?” Satville asked, sending Tal into a spasm of silent laughter.

  “Um, not really,” Sadie told him. “She’s more of a completionist. She also reads Ladies’ Home Journal and Better Homes and Gardens and all that. She clips recipes for me.”

  “There are more, Sades,” Lil insisted.

  “Really?” asked Sadie. She was hungry and if she and Tal were going to go their separate ways this evening, if she wouldn’t see him until the following night, then she’d rather get their parting over with. “I suppose Time,” she added. “And sometimes Newsweek. And, of course, the Times magazine. And she’s probably the only person who reads those local neighborhood magazines. Quest. East Side Spirit or whatever it’s called. And New York. She actually loves New York.”

  “The New Yorker?” suggested Tom Satville.

  “No. Not anymore. She canceled her subscription.”

  “Really?” Tom Satville appeared shocked. “That seems odd.”

  “She says it became just like People after Tina Brown took over. She’s really down on the rise of celebrity culture.”

  “She should talk to Ed Slikowski!” cried Lil, so loudly that Sadie worried that Ed could hear her. “That’s his thing, too.” The four of them turned to look at Ed, who was still at the front of the loft, cornered by Caitlin Green-Gold. To his left, Sadie spotted Beth walking through the front door, trailed by Dave.

  “Hey.” Sadie turned to Tal. “Where are they going?”

  “Let’s go see,” he said, taking her hand. “We’ll be back,” he called to Lil and Tom Satville.

  It’s time to leave, Sadie thought. She was bored and tired and hungry. Bean, Sadie thought, I’ll get Beth and we can go to Bean. The room, now, was filled with strangers—friends, perhaps, of the band? After several wrong turns, Sadie and Tal arrived at the front of the loft, its door propped open by a cement brick, where Dave and Beth sat on the front step. Dave jumped up as soon as he saw them. “You wanna head?” he asked Tal.

  “Sure, if you’re ready,” said Tal, squeezing Sadie’s hand.

  “Have fun,” she told them. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Tal nodded and kissed her quickly on the cheek, his gaze already off down the street.

  For a moment, she and Beth watched them walk away, Dave lighting a cigarette, their lanky frames oddly similar when lit by the yellow glow of Bushwick’s old streetlights.

  “What do you say we go get some dinner?” Sadie asked Beth.

  “That sounds great,” she said. “Let me just run to the bathroom, okay?”

  Sadie nodded. “I’ll go find Lil and say good-bye.”

  Inside, the girls fought their way through the crowd, which seemed to grow thicker and wilder by the minute. Midway through, Sadie realized that she’d lost Beth, and that Lil was nowhere in sight. Left alone in the middle of the large room, Sadie surveyed the company. An unusually large number of guests wore glasses. Is our entire generation going blind? she wondered, irritated. What a lazy metaphor. She, at least, seemed to be. For weeks, she’d been plagued with headaches, like a needle inserted into the back of her head. She’d mentioned it to Tal on Wednesday and he’d suggested she get her eyes checked. “That’s how I knew I needed glasses,” he’d said. He wore contacts now. “Oh, no, I don’t think that’s it,” she’d said. “I have perfect vision.” But the very next day, after work, they’d gone to a French movie on Court Street—she’d insisted on doing something to celebrate—and spent the whole two hours scrambling to read the strangely fuzzy subtitles. Glasses, she thought, bleh. She knew that is was “cool” now to wear glasses—so cool that (could it be?) perhaps some of the glasses that surrounded her were props—but she somehow couldn’t rid herself of her mother’s Eisenhower-era admonition against them. For women, of course. For men, they posed no threat to desirability. This was Number 367—or perhaps 54—of Rose Peregrine’s Rules for the Upkeep of the Modern Female, which began with the obvious (sweaters should only be cashmere; fur coats, mink or sable), delved into the practical (tweezers should always be slant-edged), before devolving into extreme esoterica. Sadie, unlike Lil, had a limited appetite for down-to-the-stitches descriptions of calfskin wallets with brass clasps and leather linings (“Anything else just falls apart”), or the appropriate colors—black, brown, bone, or, on occasion, navy blue (provided one owned corresponding shoes)—and styles for handbags, which had to have a strap of at least an inch in width and should never extend below one’s waist; legs must never be shaved, only waxed (“it just grows back thicker!”); hair must never be colored at home (“you’ll ruin it!”), only at “the hairdresser’s”; skirts that ended above the knee and patent-leather shoes were suitable only for prepubescent girls (“you don’t want to look like a streetwalker!”); and faces should only—only!—be cleansed with cold cream.

  The older she grew, the more Sadie found herself unconsciously following Rose’s strictures, even as she became increasingly frustrated with Rose’s adherence to them, particularly those that veered away from the areas of women’s ablutions. Rose would not, for example, eat with her coat on, or while walking down the street, or at any sort of bar, or at a cafeteria-style establishment, or, God forbid, from a tray. She had no tolerance for plastic cutlery and refused to drink water from a bottle, much less to buy water in a bottle (“We’re not in Mexico!”), but believed flocked paper luncheon napkins to be a wonderful modern contrivance. Her views on what constituted “food” did not include the cuisines of Thailand, India, Japan, Malaysia, Spain, the islands of the Caribbean (which she also refused to visit, saying this region had “no culture”), or the nations of Latin America, excepting Argentina, which was “European, actually” and “has a very large Jewish population, you know.” Her mother, she thought lately, was becoming a character.

  To her right, Caitlin Green’s husband—yet another pale, skinny man, with slitted brown eyes and black hair sticking up in messy, greasy spears—was feverishly explaining the object of some foundation he worked for or with or maybe had started himself (she knew she’d heard about it from Lil but couldn’t recall the specifics). He wore an oversized sweatshirt, the hood pulled up over his head, though the loft was quite warm. “There are all these kids who inherit money, you see,” he said now to the people assembled around him. Then he caught her eye and smiled. “Trust funds, stocks, property, huge companies, whatever. And they don’t know what to do with it. They don’t come from a culture of philanthropy. Their parents are these conservative fucks. So they inherit these portfolios with all these completely felonious investments: De Beers, Nike, McDonald’s, the Gap, Marriott. We show them how they can take that money and reinvest it in environmentally conscious, nonracist companies with safe and fair business practices. But mostly we show them how to responsibly give it all away.”

  “Why should they give it all away?” asked a small woman with streaky blonde bangs and penciled-in brows, who Sadie realized was Taylor—the groupie who’d caught the bouquet at Lil’s wedding. “It’s their money,” said Taylor defensively, as though the man were threatening to take away her own fortune. “I don’t get it.”

  “Why should they keep it?” asked Caitlin Green’s husband, as Sadie struggled to think of his name. “So they can buy yachts and Gucci bags? So they can widen the gap between the rich and the poor that’s destroying this country? Why not start a foundation? Or do something cool with it?”

  “Are there really that many people inheriting millions of dollars?” asked Taylor.

  “More than you’d thi
nk. I bet you know tons of people who have independent incomes, but you just don’t realize it, because they don’t flaunt it. Half the artists in Williamsburg—more than half—have trust funds. Painting is expensive. The studio space. The supplies.”

  “Really?” asked Taylor. “Like who? Who has a trust fund? People here? Like Lil?”

  “Like her.” He jerked his thumb at Sadie, who froze, her mouth automatically forming a polite smile. “She works in publishing, right, but the interest from her trust really pays the rent. No one can actually live on an editorial assistant’s salary. Anyone who works in publishing for more than a year has an independent income.”

  Sadie’s face went hot. She tucked her hair behind her ears and tried to avoid the gaze of the small crowd that was now appraising her, scrutinizing her person for signs of immense wealth. Seeing the look on Sadie’s face, he grinned. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m the same as you. You just gotta start giving it away.”

  “If I gave it away,” said Sadie tightly, “I’d have nothing to live on.”

  Lil, she thought. What is wrong with her? Why had she ever told her—how did Lil get such things out of a person?—that the interest from her trust “really paid the rent.” Meaning, of course, that her salary was tiny and were it not for her small trust, she would have had to either move back home (which was not a possibility) or find a different sort of job (working at her dad’s hedge fund? My God) or simply never spend any money at all on anything but rent and food, which was impossible, as Lil knew all too well, for without certain strategic checks from Lil’s father and Tuck’s mother, Sadie knew, she and Tuck would have long been out of this loft. But that sort of help, presumably, wasn’t worth mentioning to Caitlin’s husband. No, of course not. What Lil, surely, didn’t realize—because why would Sadie tell her the banal details?—was that in Sadie’s first year, as an assistant, she’d made just $300 per week, after taxes. The rent on her little, unremarkable apartment was $750/month—more than half her salary—and it was one of the cheapest things she could find at the time (though Emily had lucked into that place in Williamsburg for $550, abandoned by a boyfriend, but she had no kitchen sink and the landlord had almost killed her).

  Caitlin’s husband had departed, thankfully, and been replaced by a troupe of sideburned men in black, chunky glasses discussing a new restaurant on Clinton Street. “The menu is market-driven,” said one. Market-driven, she thought, is an economic term. Sighing heavily, she wiggled her toes in her sandals, and pulled a cigarette from a bowl on Lil’s little end table, and lit it with a kitchen match. She only smoked in desperate social situations, which this seemed to be turning into. Without Tal, she felt strangely lost, and she’d been waiting for Beth for quite some time now. The band was testing their amps or whatever, which meant it had to be getting late. “Check, check,” echoed through the room, followed by a long squawk. The guests, as one, put their hands to their ears and folded their heads into their necks, like turtles. Time to go, thought Sadie, and began picking her way to the back of the loft, where she found Beth half crushed against the bedroom door, a panicked expression wrinkling her round face.

  “My bags are in there,” she whispered.

  Sadie looked at her uncomprehendingly. “Is the door locked?” she asked.

  Beth shook her head and pointed at the door. “Listen,” she said, and Sadie held her ear to the door, feeling, really, a bit ridiculous.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she said.

  “They must have just stopped,” Beth said, shrugging. “There are people in there. Arguing.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Sadie, rolling her eyes. Sadie herself never brought a bag to parties, in part to avoid situations like these. She carried money and a MetroCard in the pocket of her dress. On the train over she’d read a manuscript, which she’d stowed on the bookshelf above the couch. “Let’s just go in.” She was beginning to feel queasy with drink—and, she supposed, cigarette—and almost desperate for food. Perhaps, she thought, they should go somewhere closer than Bean. That Thai place on Metropolitan. Or the old red sauce joint over on Devoe.

  But Beth gave her a pleading look. “I feel weird.”

  “Okay,” sighed Sadie, dropping her cigarette into a beer can. “I’ll go in. Is it your black bag? With the scalloped edge?”

  Beth nodded. “And two shopping bags. One from Daffy’s. One from, um, Barneys.” Sadie raised her eyebrows.

  “Barneys? What did you get at Barney’s?”

  Beth flushed. “Nothing,” she said. “I’ll tell you after. Something for the wedding.”

  The wedding? thought Sadie. They’ve been engaged for like five minutes.

  “All right,” she told Beth, in a more gentle tone. “I’ll be right back.”

  She opened the door a crack, stuck her face in, and glanced around. The room was lit only by rows of candles in long glass jars, which lined the room’s two window ledges, a beautiful effect, really. On the floor lay a jumble of belongings: messenger bags, paperback books, thin summer sweaters, large leather satchels propped up against the baseboard, spilling books, lipsticks, pens and pencils, errant tissues made ghostly in the flickering light. In the far corner, she spotted Beth’s bag, its lacy edges outlined against the white wall. Closing the door behind her, she made her way across the room, grabbed the thing and its companions, then headed back out. Midway through the room, she saw them—the lovers or fighters or whoever they were—out of the corner of her eye. They were staring at her, frozen, backed up against the closet doors on the other side of the room, liked trapped animals. Slowly the faces swam into focus: a woman with wide, sleep-starved eyes and long dark hair. Caitlin Green and her awful husband. Of course, Sadie thought sourly, they’re just the sort of people to take over a room at a party, without regard for anyone else’s needs, and cause some sort of scene. She nodded in their direction, then turned her eyes back to the door. The hesitant glow of the candles suited Caitlin’s husband. He looked almost handsome, his hair mussed and falling over his face, the bones and hollows of his cheeks exaggerated by shadows, the sweatshirt no longer hiding his chest, which appeared broader without the heavy folds of cloth covering it. Sadie felt vaguely disappointed. How could a normal man have married the odious Caitlin Green?

  “Mission accomplished,” she told Beth, grinning, when she emerged into the brightness of the loft’s main room.

  “Oh my God, thank you,” said Beth, with an embarrassed smile. “I was thinking I should just leave it and pick it up tomorrow, but my keys are in there.”

  “Let’s go find Lil and make our excuses,” said Sadie. “I’m starving.”

  “Where’s Emily?” Beth shouted as they made their way back through the throng, which was growing by the minute. “Do you think she wants to come along?” But the crowd was so thick now they could barely make their way through it. These were strangers, surely, Sadie thought, for they were treating the loft as if it were a club: throwing cigarettes and beer bottles on the floor, saying “Where’s the booze in this place?” and “Whose crib is this?” Sadie grabbed Beth’s hand, so as not to lose her, for she could see Lil now, toward the front of the loft, sitting on the back of a sofa, blowing cigarette smoke through the bars of the front window—but she was blocked on all sides by the broad, T-shirted backs of sweaty men, laughing and gesticulating. “Excuse me,” Sadie said ineffectually. Behind her Beth murmured, “I hate this.”

  And then, like a gift, a hand reached out from her left and pulled her through the wall of men. “Hey, hey, Sophie,” called the voice attached to the hand. And she turned, uncomfortably, to face it. “Sophie, hey.” She found herself peering into a pair of bloodshot eyes, framed by the black hood of a zip-up sweatshirt. Caitlin’s husband, holding a cigar—no, no, a giant joint, which he would probably call a “spliff”—in the hand not attached to her arm. Sadie’s mind raced. She whipped her head around so as not to lose sight of Beth.

  “Sadie,” she said, her throat closing in on
her. She did not want to speak to this person. “I’m afraid my name is Sadie.”

  “Right, sorry,” the man said. “We haven’t been introduced, really. I’m Rob.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rob,” she recited, by rote, shaking his hand.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about before,” he said. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you.” She laughed forcibly.

  “Oh, please, don’t worry at all. It’s fine. Very nice to meet you.” She gave him a little nod—what Emily called her “bow”—and turned to catch up with Beth. How had that man, the husband, managed to get to the middle of the room before she did? Because he’s a weasel, she thought. He tunneled his way out.

  Eventually, she emerged by the loft’s front door, where Beth was shaking hands with Tom Satville—she had found another route out, clearly—who smiled at her with a familiarly odious mixture of condescension and attraction. “Hello, again,” she said, smiling in a forbidding way, so as to preclude any further conversation. “Lil, it’s time for us to make our excuses. This was lovely.”

  “It was,” said Beth.

  “You’re going to miss the band,” cried Lil. “They’re so good.”

  “Next time,” said Sadie, hugging Lil.

  As she and Beth stepped outside into the cooler air, Sadie remembered. “Shoot,” she said. “My manuscript. I left it on the bookshelf. I’ll just run in and get it.”

  “I’ll wait here,” said Beth. “I can’t go back in there.” Sadie skipped in, waving at friends and acquaintances, as she pushed her way through them. “You’re back,” said Lil, with a tired smile. She was nestled in the corner of the couch by the window, alone, her feet tucked under her, like a little girl.

  “I forgot my manuscript.” Sadie slipped off her sandals, stepped onto the couch, and reached her hand up on top of the tall bookshelf. From her perch, she saw the whole party—like a tableau—the swelling crowd, the little clusters of like-minded sorts within it, girls in bright dresses, their bare arms shimmering. Men bobbing their heads and laughing, handsome, their faces arranged in expressions of intelligence and concern. Their clothing was meant to be ironic—large-collared button-downs from the 1970s, slogan-splattered T-shirts from the 1980s—as though they were holding on to some bits of their childhood as armor against the brash and brutal era in which they’d become adults. The girls, too, wore puff-skirted dresses from the 1950s and 1960s. She felt an urge to draw some sort of attention to herself, to grab one of the glasses that littered the bookshelves and clink it, telling everyone here to . . . what? “Check, check,” came at her again, a deep baritone from the back of the loft. She looked over at the band and saw, some feet to their left, the door to the bedroom open. Out of it came a thin, dark-haired girl—Caitlin Green—and a moment later, a dark-haired man. The man’s hair was shot through with gray. Tuck Hayes. No, Sadie corrected herself, Tuck Roth-Hayes.