A Fortunate Age

by Joanna Rakoff

  “It kind of makes sense,” said Sadie, congratulating herself on her patience. “It’s based on a story he did a few years ago—”

  “A documentary?”

  Sadie shook her head. “A feature. Set in Silicon Valley. Sort of social satire. About a software company—a little company, you know, where all the employees are twenty—that’s taken over by a big multinational.” She paused. “He directed a Lotion video last year.”

  Val shrugged. “Who’s backing it?”

  “I’m not sure.” Sadie knew exactly. She feared appearing to know too much about Ed. And, yet, she also wanted Val to understand that he wasn’t, say, tooling around in his backyard with a video camera.

  “Hmmm.” Val leaned against the doorjamb and folded her arms across her chest. “You think something’s going to happen with it?”

  Sadie nodded. “It’s likely.”

  “Good. I was thinking for a while we were going to have to cancel this one.” She laughed. “’Cause no one cares about Ed Slikowski anymore, right?”

  Sadie sighed. “In a certain realm, they do. Tech people. And they buy books.”

  “Do they?” She tipped her head to the left again and yawned. “Don’t they just buy video games?” Then, with one brisk movement, she stood upright. “Well, let’s just get it in.” Trust me, Sadie thought, no one wants this book done more than me.

  After Val left, Sadie shut the door, settled into her phone posture—chair swiveled to face the window, arm leaning on the short wooden bookcase that adjoined her desk—and began dialing. Tuck didn’t pick up at home, nor did he pick up his cell. On the first, she left a calm, firm message—“I need you to call me back when you get this”—but on the second she abandoned her reserve. “Listen, my boss wants to publish this now. I need to show her some chapters or she’s going to cancel your contract. Which would mean you’d have to pay back the first third of your advance. I need to see something right away. Whatever you have.” Kapklein wasn’t at his desk, either, and his assistant, maddeningly, wouldn’t put her through to his voice mail. “I need to talk to him today, okay?” “Well, I don’t know if he’ll be back—” Sadie slammed down the phone before the girl could finish. This was Kapklein’s fault, too. He was too busy writing his own book—some idiot thing about training to ride the rodeo, which never would have sold if he hadn’t been an agent—to pay any attention to Tuck.

  The question now was whether she should talk to Lil. She’d tried—and largely succeeded—to avoid the subject with her, though Lil, of course, would have been happy to spend hours, days, discussing it. If she told Lil what was going on, Lil would certainly (happily) put pressure on Tuck—even if only to get him to call her back, which would be a start—but Lil would call her every five minutes asking for updates, and weigh in on edits and all sorts of other things that she didn’t know enough about (which was a possibility even if Sadie didn’t bring her in at this particular juncture), and grow bitchy and morose if all didn’t proceed exactly as Lil thought it should, which it most likely would not, since she seemed to think the book would shoot up the bestseller list and make a million dollars and so on. And perhaps it would (though probably not), but Sadie wouldn’t know until she read it.

  Before she could come to a decision, the phone rang and she snatched it up. “Hey,” came Lil’s voice. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Um, nothing,” said Sadie, before she could think better of it. “I’ve got to get some reading done. I’m swamped.”

  “Do you want to meet Beth and Emily for a drink?” She laughed. “And me. Maybe Dave. Emily called him.”

  “Sure,” said Sadie hesitantly, glancing at her couch. It was four o’clock. Could she manage to nap for an hour without Shelby walking in on her?

  “Is six okay?”

  “Six is great.”

  “We were thinking Von.”

  “Von is great.” No, she would say nothing about Tuck. Not now, not later.

  “And I haven’t told them.”

  “Great. Thank you. So, I’ll see you at six.”

  “Okay.” Lil made a clicking, hesitant sound. “Also, I have a question for you. What would you think about—”

  “What?” Sadie was beginning to lose patience.

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay.” Sadie laughed. “Listen, I’d better go. I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  At four thirty, Sadie grabbed her bag and coat and fled, with barely a nod to Shelby—Fuck it, she thought, I’m his boss; if I need to leave, I’ll leave—with a half-formed plan to call Michael from her cell phone—and say what?—then sit down somewhere and read before meeting up with the others. In the elevator, as she wrestled her coat on, she realized she’d left the Koren manuscript sitting on her desk. No, no, she wouldn’t go back. Definitely not. It could wait until the weekend.

  The trains, already, were mobbed and overheated, moisture condensing on the windows. She emerged, sweating through her sweater and coat, at the corner of Houston and Broadway for the second time that day. A horrible corner, where tourists crossed the street in thick, shuffling swarms, headed for the gigantic shoe stores that lined the blocks above and below Houston, or the even more gigantic chain stores between them, the same as those in the suburbs, but somehow made more glamorous, better, by their location. She was surprised—as she always was in the winter months—to find that it was already fully dark, though the air, she thought, was slightly warmer than it had been. Or at least the wind had slowed. It felt good, actually, against her hot cheeks. She unwrapped her scarf and headed south, weaving between the stalled tourists, who lingered in groups, consulting maps or lighting cigarettes.

  At Prince, she headed east, combing the familiar shop windows: the Tibet shop, the shop that sold Tintin paraphernalia, Sigerson Morrison, and the designer consignment shop where all the salesgirls were bored and fussy. When she was a kid, these streets had been filled with bakeries and cheese shops and pizza places and private clubs where men in undershirts played billiard and indoor bocce ball and pinochle. But now everything was chic and spare, all the storefronts lined with steel and glass, their interiors filled with wispy chiffon dresses and slender-heeled shoes, the first signs of spring. At each one, she paused and considered going in, throwing off her heavy coat and pinching skirt and slipping on the layers of pale silk, though they weren’t really her style—too formless, too muddy in color (Rose always cautioned her away from neutrals). And come spring, she might be wearing maternity dresses anyway.

  And on she walked, down Mulberry, past the bakery that kept odd, mysterious hours and the new, overpriced kitchen supply shop, then west on Spring, and south again on Mott. In the window of a shop on Broome, a mannequin stood clad in a long-sleeved maroon dress with a deep V-neck, a broad belt, and a soft, fluttering skirt. That would look good on me, she thought. Then, to her inexplicable dismay, she saw it: a tiny bump protruding below the wide sash. A maternity shop. Cleverly disguised as an elegant little boutique, with exposed brick walls and wide oak plank floors, but a maternity shop nonetheless. Why not, she thought, and sucking in a little breath, she pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside, the heels of her boots clacking ominously on the wood floor.

  Gingerly, she fingered the silks and cottons on the sparse racks that lined the western wall. Opposite, a very pregnant blonde modeled a red sleeveless dress, running her hands up and down her stomach, which was frighteningly vast. “Do you think it’s too big?” she asked the salesperson in an imperious tone that Sadie immediately pegged as uptown.

  “No, definitely not,” came the response. “You want it to be a little loose in the belly. You’ve got three more months.”

  The woman clucked her tongue. “Yeah, I just can’t imagine that I’m going to get any bigger than this. But I guess I will.”

  “You will,” said the salesgirl, in a firm, low voice. She was young and pretty, her dark hair pulled back into a thick ponytail, and slender in the way all New York shopgirls were slender. Sadie s
omehow couldn’t imagine that she’d experienced pregnancy firsthand. “Hello,” she called out to Sadie, as if sensing her skepticism. “All that stuff’s on sale. It’s all samples. There are some amazing deals.”

  “Right,” she said, a self-consciousness creeping up on her. Were they—customer and clerk—wondering what she was doing here, with her near-flat (though not as flat as it had been) stomach? She held up a dress of blue silk charmeuse, a knot of fabric between the breasts from which folds of fabric fell in a sort of ripple. If it weren’t a maternity dress, she would definitely consider it for her cousin Jenny’s wedding in May. But then—Of course, she thought, for the second time that day—by the time that wedding came around she might need a maternity dress. And what about her own wedding? Would she and Ed marry—if she went through with this, the baby? And before or after the baby? Surely, that would be the first question out of her mother’s mouth. Somehow, getting married seemed more terrifying than having a baby. The monstrous planning involved. Her mother’s checklists.

  Across the room, the blonde had changed into a black version of the dress in Sadie’s hands. “That looks great,” said the clerk, tugging at the hem. It did, in fact, with her pale hair and freckly skin.

  “You think?” the woman asked, glancing at Sadie. “It’s so hard for me to tell. I feel huge. My face is all puffy.” She patted her thin cheeks and twisted her torso to see the back of the dress.

  “It looks great,” Sadie confirmed.

  “Thanks.” The woman pulled up the sides of the skirt and watched them float back down. “It’s so hard to tell. It’s like it’s not my body.” Reluctantly, she took her eyes from her own reflection and faced Sadie. “How far along are you? Three months, right?”

  “Yes,” said Sadie, thinking, Close enough.

  “I was totally like you,” the woman said. “I was looking at maternity clothes when I was, like, a day pregnant.” Sadie found herself nodding. She did know, didn’t she, in some weird way? Yes. “I guess it’s like that for a lot of people. Especially when you’ve been trying for a while, like we were.”

  “Yeh,” Sadie agreed.

  “Well, before you know it you’ll look like this,” the woman offered, running her hands over her silk-covered stomach. “And, p.s., all that clothing I bought at first? It’s all too small on me now. It’s like, you have to buy new stuff every six weeks.”

  “You do,” confirmed the salesgirl.

  “Wow,” said Sadie. She was strangely reluctant to end this conversation. Tell me more, she wanted to ask the woman. Who’s your doctor? What’s a nuchal? Did you feel this sick and tired at first? Did you feel like nothing else in the world mattered? Like you could leave your job—your job that you loved—and never come back again? Like you could think of nothing else but this person inside you? Were you afraid that this person would eclipse you, would occlude your very being, that your life would become the baby and nothing else, and that—and this is the most important thing—you wouldn’t mind?

  “Good luck,” the woman chirped, padding back into the dressing room.

  “You, too,” said Sadie.

  Outside, the sky had turned a deeper black. Sadie pulled her coat around her and glanced at her watch. Five thirty. She should start heading up to Bleecker. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to go home and get into her warm bed, never mind that getting there involved the horrible, hot train, with its sickening lurch, never mind the various thoughts and worries that would crowd her head the minute she stepped over the threshold. Sighing, she pulled her gloves back on. She could call Lil back and say she was too tired. No, no, she would go. It would be fun. She had seen no one, really, in months. It would be good.

  She turned back up Mott. At Cafe Gitane, she bought a paper cup of coffee, decaf, and sipped it carefully as she crossed Houston. In the near distance, where Mott came to a dead end, intersecting with Bleecker—the street on which Von lay to the east—she saw figures carrying signs and shouting; among them wandered large persons in fluorescent vests. A protest or strike. With orange-vested cops to keep the peace. There were demonstrations all over lately, as the economy slowed and slowed. So as not to get caught up in the proceedings—her body, now that it was a vessel, struck her as frail—she crossed to the other side of the street. But as she approached Bleecker she saw that the signs were emblazoned with images rather than words, fuzzy red-tinted photographs of large-headed alien-type creatures. “Oh my God,” she said aloud, stopping cold. “No.” And then she started to laugh. The creatures were not, of course, aliens. They were babies. Or, no, fetuses. The protesters were shouting, over and over, “Murderer,” rendering the word nonsensical. This was an antiabortion rally. Antichoice, she corrected herself. In New York? she thought. In the village? Bleecker, at its eastern end, was a posh block lined with quiet, elegant restaurants. As she rounded the corner, she found her answer: Planned Parenthood, the words imprinted in discreet teal script, several feet above the building’s glass doors. Somehow—how?—she’d never noticed.

  A whoop went up from the crowd and she saw a flash of orange pass through the door and barrel its way through the crowd. Escorts, Sadie realized, not cops. Escorts for the women who need to go inside. “Murderer!” a lone female voice screamed. “You’re an evil murderer!” Sadie started. This was too much. The escort, she saw, was emerging from the crowd, a thin, black-haired girl held tight in her large arms. “That’s enough,” the escort shouted. “Enough already.” She hailed a cab and put the girl quickly inside it. Sadie watched as the cab sped away, east, toward the river, the girl’s face—pale, round, sleepy, above a puffy black jacket—staring out the back window.

  Oh God, thought Sadie. This is crazy. Lil, she knew, would say that “fate” had brought her here for a reason. But what reason. To frighten her? Or the opposite? In a movie, a novel, the meaning would be clear. Wind crept icily down the collar of her coat and she tucked her scarf deeper inside, against the heat of her neck, then turned her head up to the sky, which was starless, a faint slice of a moon glinting faintly in the distance, so slim she nearly missed it. Even the moon has deserted me, she thought, smiling at herself. God, Sadie, no one has deserted you. Stop it.

  A moment later, she reached the bar—the voices of the protesters still all too audible—only to find the doors locked. She waved at the bartender, who stood behind the counter, wiping glasses. He waved back and held up six fingers, shouting, “We open at six!” She looked at her watch. Twenty till. “Okay,” mouthed Sadie, flummoxed. She couldn’t stand out here in the cold for twenty minutes, listening to the pro-life fanatics chant their stupid lies—though, in a strange way, she wasn’t sure now that they were actually lies—nor could she walk past them again, out to the shops on Broadway. Okay, she thought, fine, and turned abruptly east, away from the protesters, toward the Bowery, nearly colliding with Tal, who, for a brief moment, looked nearly as surprised as she, his face open and kind, the face she remembered from freshman orientation, when she’d sat next to him at a rap session. But then his features hardened into—there was no denying it—something akin to hatred, revulsion, disgust. He wanted, she could see, to walk right past her, to pretend she didn’t exist, to make her understand that for him, she didn’t exist. And she wanted—it was an almost animal urge—to take him into her arms and make him love her again. How could she go on with Tal—Tal—hating her? She could not.

  “Tal Morgenthal,” she said, forcing herself to smile. This, of course, was what Lil was going to tell her—Tal was in town. Did she mind if he came along? Would she have said No problem? Or, You know, I think I’d better go straight home? “Or, sorry, Tal Morgan.”

  “Just according to SAG,” he said, with a shrug. He wore a blue duffel coat, like a schoolboy. “Would you believe there’s another Tal Morgenthal?”

  “No.” She laughed. This had been an old joke between them. “I wouldn’t.”

  “It’s true,” he said. “How are you?”

  She nodded, unsure how to answ
er this question. “Okay,” she finally said. “I’m okay.”

  “Great,” he said flatly. “You look . . . beautiful. But then”—his tone grew impossibly cool here, and a needle threaded through her stomach—“what else is new, right?”

  “How are you?” she asked. She did not look beautiful, she knew. Her hair was frizzy and her face splotchy from the cold.

  “I’m well,” he told her, with great force, as though he meant it, as though he wasn’t simply making chatter. “I am. Well. I’m doing this play at Circle in the Square. So I’ll be around for a while. Which is great. I’ve been doing all this crap. And you know, I’ve been in Israel.”

  “I heard,” she said. “You were doing a film?”

  “A couple. Then I stayed on and did an ulpan.”

  “You learned Hebrew?” she asked, though of course she knew what an ulpan was. “How was it? Were you there in the fall? Wasn’t it dangerous?”

  He smiled, hugely, and shook his head. “No, it was completely fine. I think the newspapers give you a skewed impression.” The familiar slope of his nose, his straight black brows, struck her now as strangely delicate, as young. But then, he was, compared with Michael, or Ed. “It was amazing. You really get why people believe. Jerusalem, it’s like”—he held up his hands, fingers wide—“you feel fully human. You just want to lick the ground.” Her skin tingled at this description. She’d had much the same experience, at sixteen, when she’d spent a summer there. She hadn’t thought of that trip in years. “There’s so much. I got back to L.A. and it was just—I couldn’t cope. It’s like all the clichés are true. Everyone is empty, shallow, and stupid.”

  “Really?” Ed had said much the same thing to her, repeatedly.

  “No,” Tal conceded. “It’s just all anyone talks about is business. Everyone’s trying to make it. It gets kind of sad.” Lately, Sadie had been feeling this way about New York. But she just nodded. “So, I’ll be here through March. Maybe we could get coffee sometime. If you have time. It’s really good to see you.”