A Fortunate Age

by Joanna Rakoff

  “It’s totally different. English is just impossible.” Her voice began rising. Sadie protested silently. She knew all this, but still, somehow, thought Lil should finish the degree just on principle. She’d come this far. “You have to be so, so good. Or ethnic. I’m, like, this white girl writing on Modernism. No one cares.” She gulped down a slug of water. “And what’s the point? I’d just get a job like this once I was done.”

  “Hmmm.” Sadie kept her lips pressed together. She could hear Tuck in this defeatism and it bothered her. It was fine for Tuck to generally fuck everything up—his manuscript was now nearly eight months late, and unless it was brilliant, she mightn’t be able to push it through—but not to bring Lil down with him. She was sure that he was behind all this. Probably, they needed the money. Leave him, Sadie felt a sudden urge to scream. Just go. Now. But how could she, when she’d withheld the major evidence in her case? If she had told Lil about Tuck and Caitlin right away, immediately, before she could think better of it, would Lil have left him, or merely been furious with Sadie? She truly didn’t know. She tried not to think about the more difficult question: whether Tuck and Caitlin were still sleeping together.

  “You should eat some of this,” said Lil, sighing, spent. She poked, desultorily, at the remains of the pad thai. “Or I’m going to eat it all. I’m starving.”

  “I’m not so hungry,” said Sadie. “I’m a little sick to my stomach.” And then, before she could think better of it, she said those words, relics of so many movies, with the ability to silence a room. “Actually, I’m pregnant.”

  Lil swallowed, her chopsticks frozen in the air. “Oh my God. How?”

  Sadie smiled. “Well—”

  “Was this planned?”

  “No.” Sadie laughed, but Lil just stared at her, stricken. Could she be pregnant, too, Sadie wondered for a moment, and she’s upset that I’ve stolen her thunder? Then, she realized, no, Lil wanted to be pregnant. Of course. And Tuck was probably saying no. He was one of those guys who would say no, no, no, then once the baby arrived go on and on about how perfect it was.

  “How far along are you?”

  “Ten weeks.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to wait until twelve to tell people?” The unmistakable edge of schadenfreude was creeping into Lil’s voice. I was right, thought Sadie. But there was something else, too: like the doctor, Lil just assumed she was happy, she was going to keep it.

  “The doctor said it was okay.” She wasn’t sure where to go, what else to tell her. It was all too messy, too embarrassing, to discuss. Why had she told her? Because it was messy, embarrassing, because she didn’t know what to do. “I just went, actually.”

  “Oh my God,” said Lil again. “Wow.” She shook her head. “So, what does Michael think?”

  “Nothing. I—” Sadie sighed and bit her top lip, a habit her mother was always on her about. “You know I’ve been spending a lot of time with Ed—”

  “Oh my God,” Lil repeated, her jaw flopping open. “Is it?”

  Sadie nodded. “Definitely. Michael’s been in Florida most of the fall.”

  “Yeah. What is he doing there again?”

  “I don’t know.” It was true. He told her almost nothing about his assignments, though Lil and Dave refused to believe this. Beth had read enough spy novels to know it was true. Sadie took a tentative bite of noodles. Telling Lil was a relief. She was no longer completely alone.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Lil, waving a hand in the air. “Oh my God,” she said again. “Ed Slikowski. Have you told him?”

  Sadie shook her head.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will he be happy?”

  “I don’t know.” Sadie ate another bite. Suddenly, the gates had opened. She was ravenous. “I think so. He’s been, you know, saying, ‘Hey, let’s just get married—’”

  Lil snorted. “Have you ever dated anyone who hasn’t said that to you?”

  “Yes—”

  Lil again waved her hand dismissively. “Whatever. So you’re going to tell him and get married?”

  “I guess.”

  “And what are you going to tell Michael?” Lil seemed, now, to be angry at her, as if Sadie’s problem was one she envied.

  “I don’t know. He thinks everything’s fine. Or, I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t.”

  “Sadie,” said Lil. Her mouth settled into an odd smile. “Oh my God. This is crazy.” Sadie nodded. “You and Ed barely know each other—”

  “That’s not really true—”

  “He’s been gone since October. How much could you have seen him?”

  “He came in a lot,” Sadie protested.

  “He didn’t call us—”

  “Well . . .” He’d come in, specifically, to see her. Four times. Taking the red-eye on some no-name airline. Though it had started before he’d left—for San Francisco, to shoot this film he’d written with his friend Jonathan, and then somehow gotten backing for—in much the same way it had started with Michael: a phone call to her office, a few days after Dave’s party. “I kind of want to talk about Tuck’s book,” he’d said. “I’m getting a little nervous about it. I just sort of want to put that all behind me, not have it all dragged out again.” Well, don’t worry, she’d almost said, since it looks like Tuck’s never going to turn it in. “I could take you to lunch. As compensation for listening to me whine.” And so she had found herself at the sushi place on Fiftieth, over by the McGraw-Hill building—Ed with his beard and his faded T-shirt (“Watertown Little League”) pleasantly out of place among the suits—talking about everything but Tuck’s stupid book, which had already taken up way too much of her time and emotional reserves, and thinking, You’re the one who should be writing a book. His pale, pale gaze unsettled her even more so than had Michael’s darker, softer one a year or so before, when they’d met in a similar midtown restaurant; and even as she told herself, Oh no, oh no, he’s not interested in me, this is about the book, she knew that there would be more, that she would follow this where it went (though she hadn’t thought it would go here). The next night, he’d taken her to an opening, crowded and loud, impossible even to see the small photographs that lined the walls. “This is dumb,” he’d said after a minute, putting his arm around her and guiding her out of the gallery, to a dark restaurant down the street. “I have a boyfriend,” she’d told him suddenly. “Right,” he’d said, smiling. “Me.”

  “Where would you guys live?” Lil asked now. This question had, of course, crossed Sadie’s mind, but she’d banished it as too advanced for her current position. Her own apartment, which she loved, was small, the parlor floor of a narrow brownstone, divided into two rooms and a tiny kitchen. And Ed was homeless. During his tenure in New York—three-odd years—he’d sublet a friend’s place on Wyckoff Street, a garretlike chain of slope-ceilinged rooms, just a few blocks from her own place. (“I can’t believe I never ran into you,” she’d said when she discovered this.) There was room in that apartment for a baby, she supposed, but the friend had reclaimed it and Ed had put his few possessions in storage before he left for San Francisco. All fall, he’d stayed with friends in Oakland. Now he was in L.A., at his mom’s in Pasadena—“It’s death”—directing another video, for a band she’d never heard of. He’d be back in two weeks to start editing and was planning, she knew, on staying with her. “We could manage in my place for a while.” She sighed. “I definitely can’t afford something bigger in my neighborhood.”

  “But Ed has money, right?”

  Sadie shook her head. He’d made nothing off of Boom Time, in the end, nothing but his salary. And he’d dipped into his own funds for the movie. How deeply, she didn’t know. But—and this was the thing about Ed—he didn’t care, at all. He just seemed to trust that all would be fine.

  “I guess, my point is, it just seems like a lot, all at once. Like you guys need to see if you’re right for each other, before you have a baby.” Lil
was leaning in toward Sadie now, her eyes widened to dramatic proportions. Sadie knew this face. Lil’s serious face. Her I-know-what’s-best-for-you face. Sadie hated this face.

  “I completely agree. But I don’t know if we have a choice.”

  “You do. I mean—” Lil lowered her voice. “You don’t have to have it.”

  Sadie nodded. “I know.” Tears, unbidden, were rising into her eyes. It was all a bit impossible. She didn’t have to have it, she knew. And yet she couldn’t not have it. “I just. I feel like I do.”

  “You don’t”—Lil grabbed her hand—“it’s just societal pressure. We’re in the middle of a baby boom. Everyone’s having kids. I feel like I want one, even though I know we’re not ready—”

  “Who’s ever ready?” Sadie truly believed this.

  “People who are married.” Lil’s voice had regained its previous sharpness. She gripped Sadie’s fingers harder and rested her elbows on the table. “Settled. Who have enough money.”

  Sadie shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t feel pressured to have it. I feel like I should have it.” She wiped the tears from her eyes and, with a shudder, caught her breath. “It feels like the right thing. Like the right thing to be happening to me now. Like, it’s good.” Lil looked at her, nodding. “Like, I needed something. I’m just”—the tears came again, sending a hot ache through her sinuses—“so sick of everything.” She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief. “I told Ed, months ago, that I broke up with Michael.”

  “Sadie—”

  “I tried to do it and then I just couldn’t. I kept thinking I’d wait until he was in town, then he’d come in for a day and I just couldn’t.”

  “Sadie—” She held her hand up to Lil and shook her head no. She couldn’t stand to hear Lil’s recriminations, nor could she justify herself. She didn’t know why she’d done it, done any of this. Though the usual psychobabble had occurred to her: She’d been an unpopular child, an undesired teen. She’d come into her beauty late. She hated, more than anything, to disappoint those who loved her. But there was, wasn’t there, the possibility that she was morally bankrupt? Or a monster of narcissism, who needed everyone to be in love with her? (She, who’d been so stalwartly alone through college, while her friends twittered over this guy or that one.) She’d done the same thing to Tal, hadn’t she? But then there was simply Michael, that even as she found herself withdrawing from him, saving her thoughts, her stories, for Ed, she still, somehow, desired him: the broad expanse of his chest, the low rasp of his voice, even the way he held himself remote from her. Was this why she’d not told Lil about Tuck’s affair? Because who was she to judge him? Had she not done the same thing? Twice? Was it different because she wasn’t married? Because Tal and Michael had both been out of town? She’d told herself that it was, but she knew, really, that there was no difference. Dishonesty was dishonesty. Cowardice was cowardice. “Everything just feels so pointless,” she heard herself saying, though she’d not actually thought anything like this until the words began coming out of her mouth. “It’s all, like, where are we going to eat for dinner? What movie are we going to see? Do we publish this in the fall or the spring?” She looked down at her plate. “There’s no urgency to anything. No reason for anything.”

  “Until now.” Lil dropped Sadie’s hand and peered, sadly, into her face.

  “Until now.”

  She’d been gone nearly three and a half hours by the time she got back to the blank towers of Rock Center, and her assistant, Shelby, gave her a smug grin. Earlier in the month there had been a round of layoffs—the company had been bought, once again, by an even larger conglomerate—and while the other remaining assistants still appeared shell-shocked and submissive, wandering the hallways like schoolchildren, with manuscripts clutched to their chests, Shelby seemed to take his exemption from the executioner as further proof of his genius. He was a good assistant, Sadie told herself for the millionth time, but a bit of a jerk. “Val’s been looking for you,” he said, handing her a sheaf of pink message slips.

  “Okay,” said Sadie. “I’ll go find her.” This meant the rest of her afternoon would be lost. Once Val pulled you into her office, there was no getting out. There would be no returning the thousand phone calls that needed returning (more now), no looking over the new chapters of that farm book, nor sitting on her small, hard couch and reading the new Peter Koren manuscript (why had Little, Brown not bought it at option? Or had their offer been too low?). She would take it home, as usual. What she wanted, really, was to lie down on that couch and take a nap.

  Shelby shook his head. “She’s in a meeting. She’ll come find you when she’s done.” Ooooh, you’re in trouble, he seemed to be saying. Though this was not necessarily the case. Val sometimes came by to ask Sadie’s advice about yoga classes—she spoke often of her athletic pursuits, though no evidence of such could be seen in her physique—and gifts for her daughter.

  A few minutes later, as Sadie began sifting through the rows and rows of email that had arrived in her absence, Val rapped at her half-open door, her plump face flushed with anxiety. She was dressed, as usual, in a pantsuit, the sleeves of her jacket pulling tightly over her upper arms, and her hair was freshly shaped into dated layers and waves, which crested stiffly above her shoulders. “You have a minute?” she said.

  “Absolutely.” Sadie swiveled her screen toward the wall, so her eye wouldn’t be drawn to the flow into her inbox, and gestured toward the chairs in front of her desk. But Val ignored her and stood, rubbing one leg against the other.

  “What’s going on with that New Economy book?” For a moment, Sadie had no idea what this could be. She did fiction, mainly; the occasional memoir. “Has the guy delivered?” Then, she realized: Tuck. Of course. She’d been expecting this conversation for months. Oh, God, not today, Sadie thought. She calculated the risks of lying, saying he’d turned in the first two chapters (as she’d been begging him to do for months and months). It was unlikely Val would ask to read it—she read nothing—but you never knew.

  “No,” she said, inwardly flinching.

  “Shoot.” Val dropped heavily into one of the two chairs facing Sadie’s desk and crossed her ankle over her thigh, a masculine pose. “Have you read the business section today?”

  “Not yet.” Sadie never read the business section, though she knew she was expected to.

  “First Media sold the magazine.” Val waved her hands around questioningly, then snapped her fingers. “Boom Time. To a private investor.”

  “A private investor?” Sadie was Peregrine enough to know that this was highly unusual.

  “Sort of. That Irina Walker person. Have you read about her?” Sadie shook her head, worried—as always with Val—that she should have. “She’s a socialite.” Val grimaced. “She bought a couple of art magazines last year and now it’s looking like she’s building a little conglomerate. She hired James Stewart as her editorial director.”

  “Wow.”

  “She’s starting a travel magazine. A smart travel magazine.” She tipped her head to her left shoulder and raised her eyebrows, as if to say We both know that’s an oxymoron. “So have you seen any chapters?”

  “No,” said Sadie decisively. She had made her decision—honesty!—and she would stick with it. “But I have the samples.”

  Val shook her head. “It’s late, isn’t it? A year?”

  “No, no, no, no. Much less. It was due in June.”

  “Seven months.” She picked a proposal off Sadie’s desk, glanced at it, and tossed it back. “Eight. Do you think he’s really writing it?”

  “I do.” Sadie hoped this was true.

  “Do you think he’s almost done?”

  “I do.” This, she suspected, was not true.

  “We gotta get this in now. We should be publishing this now.”

  “You’re right.” To Sadie, a story in the business section didn’t constitute a major peg, but there was no point arguing with Val on this. Particula
rly since when last they’d spoken of the book, back in July, Val had said, “Do we really need this? That Yahoo! book is tanking. Maybe we should just cancel the contract.”

  “Put some pressure on. See if he can deliver this week.” It was Thursday, so this seemed unlikely. “We can rush it through. They’re relaunching in June. Jim Lewis is editing. Walker’s got deep pockets.” She nodded significantly. “We can time it to coincide. In September, no one’s gonna care.”

  “Okay.” Sadie nodded. “I’ll call him right now. From what I know of it, he’s really close.”

  “Even if he’s not happy with it. He just needs to turn it in.”

  “Right.”

  Val looked at her watch and uncrossed her legs. “You doing okay?” she asked. “You seem a little tired.”

  “I’ve just been a little overwhelmed. I’ve got a lot on the spring list.”

  “Yeah, there’s a lot going on.” Sadie watched, with relief, as Val stood and started toward the door. “Ed Slikowski?” she said suddenly, turning back toward Sadie, whose heart began to beat sickly in her chest. She knows, she thought. Though how could she? “He’s on board with this? We’re not going to have any legal stuff?”

  “He’s fine with it. He and Tuck are friends. Friendly. Yeah, he’s fine.”

  “What’s he doing now? Did he start another magazine?”

  Sadie shook her head. “He’s making a film. With Jonathan Davis. From the Times.”

  “A film?” Val sometimes had trouble believing in the existence of media other than print. “How did that happen?”