A Fortunate Age

by Joanna Rakoff

Again she began to cry, which felt good, too good, to admit all this, the truth, the actual truth—or a version of it, the darkest slant on it—which she could not, somehow, have told any of her friends, and certainly not her parents. And good, too, to give in to the impulse to cry and scream and say No, no, no, no, everything is not all right—to not be the girl who showed up for work on time, no matter that three miles from her house there’s a mass grave, burning and smoking, no matter that the world appears to be ending and that her work is pointless and soulless—and this, really, was what felt good, to simply not care, not care that she was burdening this man with herself, her sister, her troubles, that she had forced him, awkwardly, to comfort her, and that she had done so, very possibly, because she was utterly, pathetically alone, so alone that the arms of a stranger, wrapped firmly around her, felt, like her tears, better than anything she had felt in a long time.

  “It’s okay,” he said again, and this time she didn’t contradict him. “This is crazy talk. You’re not a failure, not at all. You’ve been doing a great job taking care of her. It’s hard. Look, I know how hard it is. And that stuff with Curtis—” At this, she abruptly pulled away. How strange to hear his name from another man’s mouth. “That’s who we’re talking about, right?” She nodded glumly. “He’s an idiot.” And then, with a gulp, she was laughing. Because he was, wasn’t he? “That whole slacker thing. I mean, come on.” He was laughing, too, but then he wasn’t. “Listen,” he said, “none of this is your fault.”

  “No, it is. You’re right. I didn’t even try to keep her under control. I just wanted her to be happy. Sometimes”—she lowered her voice, and the sobs came again, like hiccups—“sometimes I think I’m just like her.” He pulled her close again and her breath began to come in something less than gulps.

  “Why would you think that?”

  She pulled herself out of his arms and looked straight up into his eyes, which were, she saw, not as dark as she’d thought: a pleasant brown. Hazel, really. “Because of my genes. It’s in our family. Everyone’s crazy. My grandfather killed himself.” His face crumpled and for a moment she thought, strangely, he was going to kiss her. “I keep thinking—it’s like there’s a bomb inside me, ticking, and one day it’s going to go off and I’m going to be like Clara. Every time I lose my temper or can’t sleep or eat chocolate cake for breakfast—”

  “Okay, okay.” He laid a cool hand across her forehead, as if he was trying to gauge her temperature. “I get it. But you’re not like Clara. Or your grandfather.”

  “It’s not just my grandfather. It’s my whole family. And my parents are second cousins, so I’ve got a double dose of it. All the Kaplans marry each other. They’re freaks.”

  “But not you?” he asked. “You didn’t marry a Kaplan?”

  “No.” She laughed. “Oh my God, if you’d met my cousins, you’d never have asked that. They’re like these Range Rover–driving idiots.”

  “Well, if that’s not an option,” he began, twisting his mouth into a broad grin, “why don’t you marry me?”

  “What?” A tissue had found its way into her hands and she was, she suddenly saw, worrying it into moist shreds.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Marry me.”

  “You don’t even know me,” she said slowly. “We just met.”

  “No, we met last year, when you came in with Curtis. I remember the day. You were wearing a blue dress. I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.” Emily flushed. Curtis, in the whole year they’d been together, had only ever told her she looked “nice.” Out of the sides of her eyes—she simply couldn’t look him in the face; this was all too strange and embarrassing—she glanced at Dr. Gitter. “You used to come in and have lunch under the skylights, and I could see your hair from across the atrium. I thought, ‘That’s the girl for me.’ And you always asked Dr. Lang the most intelligent questions.” He looked directly into her face. “I loved the sound of your voice. I thought, ‘There’s no way she’s going to stay with that loser.’ When Dr. Lang told me that you and Curtis had split up, I almost said, ‘I knew it!’ And then, a couple months later, there you were, knocking on the door of her office. I thought, ‘It’s fate!’”

  “I thought,” she said, happy to seize on this small point, “that scientists don’t believe in fate.”

  “Doctors have to believe in fate, otherwise they go crazy.” He sighed and stood up, brushing invisible crumbs off his jeans. “So, whaddaya say? You want to get married? My dad’s a rabbi. He can marry us if you want. Or we can just go to city hall.”

  Again, Emily shook her head. “I don’t”—she was unsure how to respond to all this, where to begin her objections; he had to be kidding and if he wasn’t, well, that was just as strange—“know anything about you. Though you seem to know something about me.”

  He grinned. “Dr. Lang talks a lot. What do you want to know about me?”

  “Have you ever been married?” Emily asked.

  “No.” He laughed. “I’ve pretty much been working night and day since I started med school. And I did everything the hard way: two residencies instead of one. I thought I wanted the excitement of the ER, saving lives and all that. Turned out I was wrong.”

  “I’m not sure I can marry a workaholic,” said Emily, half laughing at the absurdity of this conversation. She knew, of course, that he wasn’t really asking her to marry him, and yet, somehow, she was arguing over the fine points of their arrangement. “Well, you won’t be. It’s all over. As of January, I’m no longer Dr. Lang’s chief resident. You’re looking at plain old Dr. Gitter, assistant professor of psychiatry, Cornell School of Medicine. From now on, it’s banker’s hours for me.” Flummoxed, Emily gnawed a hangnail. “Except,” he added, “when I have late patients.”

  “Right,” she said, laughing. “I’ll miss you. But I can have dinner with friends.”

  “Exactly.” He smiled at her. “I’ll miss you, too. But we can have a glass of wine when I get home, talk about our day.”

  “This is all very, I don’t know, nineteenth century.”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “There were some good marriages in the nineteenth century. I’m way into the Victorians. Dickens, Austen, Trollope. George Eliot. Mrs. Gaskell.”

  “Yeh, me too,” said Emily, though she hadn’t read Trollope or Mrs. Gaskell. She was relieved, for clearly he was dropping the joke, and now she could turn over, go to sleep, and, maybe, never see him again—or maybe not. But then, slowly, he placed her hand on top of his.

  “You know, I’m serious,” he said, still smiling. “And I know you like me.”

  “I—” Emily began, feeling the blood rush again to her face—unattractive red spots would be appearing on her cheeks and forehead within moments—because, oh my God, it was true, so clearly, stupidly, obscenely true that she wasn’t sure how she’d kept herself from admitting it. And hadn’t she known, all along, that he’d had his eye on her? That he would be the resident Dr. Lang would send to her apartment? And the worst was: Hadn’t she, maybe, maybe, pushed things—allowed herself to start crying—because she knew he’d take her into his arms; wasn’t this what shamed her?

  “Why did you think I kept calling you?”

  “I—” But she could offer no answer.

  “Admit it. I’m not so bad.” But Emily, somehow, had lost the ability to speak. She thought she might cry again if she so much as moved her head. “Look, I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of weirdo—”

  “I don’t—” Emily managed, before her throat closed with tears. She swallowed, hard, and smiled. “I don’t. But you’re not really serious.” Her voice sounded hollowed out, a husk of a voice.

  “You know I’m serious,” he told her, sliding her hand on top of one of his. And she did, she supposed, but it was just too strange to contemplate. It was just unfathomable. Not, she suddenly realized, that he really, actually wanted her to marry him, but that her life could change in an instant, that the grim routines of the past fe
w years—her whole adult life—could be erased in a moment, simply by saying yes. And her heart began to beat faster because she knew, she knew that she was going to do this, that anything was possible. And then, with a start, she realized that no, nothing was possible.

  “What about Clara?” she asked. “I can’t just leave her on her own.”

  His face crumpled. “Emily,” he said, “you know she has to be hospitalized. She’s got to finish the ECT. She needs daily therapy.”

  “No,” said Emily. “Not now. She’s doing so well. And she won’t go. She won’t even talk about it.”

  Dr. Gitter shrugged and smiled. “Well, then she can come live with us. I can monitor her—”

  “Oh my God,” Emily broke in, laughing. “You can’t be serious. You want my crazy sister to come live with us? That’s like the plot of a sitcom.”

  “You’re not going to scare me off,” he said. “I’m not afraid. We can find a big enough place—”

  Emily thought of something. “Wait,” she said. “Where? Where do you live? Do you live around here?”

  He nodded. “All the residents do. To maximize sleep. You roll out of bed ten minutes before your shift starts.”

  Grinning, she shook her head gravely. “Well, there’s our problem. I don’t think I can marry someone who lives uptown.”

  “Good,” he said. “I hate it here. My lease is up in January. We’ll move wherever you want.”

  “Brooklyn?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Brooklyn is great.”

  For two weeks, Emily held court on the living room couch. Her friends brought her flowers and cookies and ice cream and containers of noodles from Planet Thailand. One by one, she told them what had transpired. None were surprised to hear she was engaged. She’d always been one to keep things close to the bone. And, after all, none of them had seen her all fall, since Clara’s arrival. They’d assumed she was dating someone new. But they were appalled that she’d been in such dire straits and not let on, even a smidge. “Oh, Emily,” said Sadie, jostling Jack on her lap. Ed was away again, in L.A. doing some retracking. They’d just found out that his film was going to Sundance and Sadie seemed almost manic with excitement. She’d extended her maternity leave for another month, unpaid, but after the New Year she’d have to go back. “Let’s not talk about it,” she told Emily. “I’m pretending it’s not happening.” She kissed Jack on top of his head. “Why didn’t you ask me for help?” she asked. “I wish I could have done something.”

  “Weren’t you exhausted?” asked Beth, who came bearing the not surprising news that she was pregnant, and began crying before Emily even got to the part about dropping the keg. “It’s not fair,” she said, tears rolling out of her large brown eyes. “You shouldn’t always have to carry other people’s burdens.”

  Dave brought a television and a DVD player—“I just got new ones,” he insisted, “they’re really cheap now”—and sat watching John Hughes movies with her all afternoon, gnawing on Twizzlers and shouting “Kiss her! Kiss her already!” at Eric Stoltz and Andrew McCarthy.

  Lil wanted only to talk about Josh and the wedding. Where would it be? And when? Where would they live? Was she really going to quit her job? What would she do? “And what’s going to happen to Clara?” she asked in a low voice. Emily shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess she could come live with us.” Lil looked horrified. “Live with you. You’re kidding.”

  They planned the wedding for the spring, the ceremony at his father’s synagogue, the reception in the backyard of his parents’ house. On the twenty-ninth, they put a down payment on a plain, brick house on Dean Street, cheaply divided into two apartments—Clara could live in the smaller place upstairs, they in the duplex below—a few blocks from Dave in one direction, and Beth and Will and Sam, in the other. “I wish Sadie hadn’t moved,” Emily lamented. “She’s just a few stops away,” said Josh. “And maybe she’ll move back.” Emily worried that Clara would be resistant to leaving Williamsburg, but instead she was excited about the prospect of another renovation. On the thirtieth, Emily’s cast came off and was replaced by a pneumatic shoe. “Let’s celebrate,” Josh said as the hospital’s glass doors parted, silently, and they stepped onto Sixty-eighth Street, Emily leaning on her new cane, which made her feel, really, rather jaunty.

  “Okay, but no dancing, I guess.”

  “Right, no dancing,” he said, hailing a cab. “City hall,” he told the driver. Emily opened her mouth questioningly. “What?” he said. “We can still have the wedding. We need the gifts, right? You get great gifts when you’re the rabbi’s son.”

  Emily laughed. “What’s going on?” He took her hand.

  “We’re going to go get married now, so we can start our life.”

  “But we don’t have rings. Or witnesses. And don’t we have to have blood tests?”

  “No blood tests, not in New York. And we don’t really need rings.”

  At the clerk’s office, they discovered that they did really need rings, as well as a license, after the acquisition of which they would have to wait twenty-four hours before the clerk would perform the actual marriage itself.

  “Should we forget it?” asked Emily. “Just wait until May?”

  “We’re here,” said Josh. “Let’s get the license.”

  The next morning they returned to the clerk’s bereft little antechamber, where Sadie met them, with Jack in his carrier, laughing and drooling, and Dave trailing after them. “Lil and Beth are on their way,” she explained, handing Emily a little bouquet of freesias. “Ed’s stuck at the airport. But he said to call him so he can hear it on the cell.” After, they took a cab to Chinatown and ate soup dumplings and sesame balls, toasting with scratched glasses of Tsing Tao. At three, Josh became all business. “We’re off,” he said. He’d arranged, it seemed, for them to borrow a friend’s cabin up near Great Barrington.

  “Do you think they’ll still have a real wedding?” Lil asked sadly, pulling her coat tight around her. “I think Emily really wanted one.”

  “You mean you really wanted one,” said Sadie, laughing. Jack, perched on her lap, squawked, releasing a fat stream of drool, which Beth reached over and mopped with the restaurant’s stiff napkins.

  “No,” bristled Lil. “Em does.”

  Josh’s friend Craig, a tall oncologist with wire-rimmed glasses and bristly black hair, nodded sagely. “They will, they will. Josh’s mom would die if they didn’t.”

  “Hmmm,” Lil murmured, punching buttons on her cell phone. “Tal,” she said, “you missed out big-time. You need to get back to New York.”

  “Where is he?” asked Sadie as they clambered east on Pell Street, stepping around the clumps of already drunk tourists in oversized parkas.

  “Jerusalem,” Lil told her. “I think.”

  “Again?” asked Sadie.

  “Have you spoken to him?” asked Dave, his jaw tensing.

  Lil shook her head. “Just email. I got a long note”—she grinned—“long for him—a couple of weeks ago. He said he’s taking a break from film stuff. And TV, I guess. It was kind of interesting. He said he doesn’t want to do crap anymore, basically. That he only wants to work on things that he loves, or that are, like, making the world better. Sort of.”

  “What does that mean?” said Dave, though he understood, really. Why, though, had Tal written to Lil about all this, rather than him?

  Lil shrugged. “No more serial-killer films?”

  “No more Robin Williams movies,” said Dave.

  “But, you know, I saw him on an AOL commercial last night,” said Lil. “How can he not have an ethical problem with AOL?”

  “Yeah,” said Dave. “I saw it, too. Fucking sellout.”

  “He shot that years ago,” said Sadie, a slight tremor in her voice. The situation in Israel was so bad right now, though better, maybe, than in the spring, when there’d been that terrible disco bombing, all those students killed. “They’re just recycling it.”

  At the Bowery,
they turned north, not yet ready to part ways. It was nearly dark already and they needed to get home, to change for the evening ahead. They had reservations at Oznot’s, a set menu with oysters and steak that struck them all as wonderfully old-fashioned. Four hours later, they sat at a large table across from the bar, the girls in glittering, shining dresses, not warm enough for the weather, the boys in their usual, drinking some sort of champagne cocktail. They were due, overdue, at a big party in DUMBO, but no one felt much like going.

  “I’m so tired,” said Beth. She was three months along, her stomach protruding already from her pale yellow dress. “It’s driving me crazy. I can’t get anything done.”

  “It gets better,” Sadie told her. “Soon.”

  “Maybe we should get you home,” said Will, pulling her close to him.

  “We could just go back to our place,” Lil suggested, “and drink champagne.” Her friends looked at one another uncomfortably.

  Craig had come along with them, filling Emily’s empty seat, and brought a friend, a short, pleasant-faced surgeon, who filled the seat meant for Josh. “A year ago,” Sadie blurted, “Lil would have been trying to set you up with Emily.”

  “I would have?” Lil shouted. “You would have.”

  Tuck took her arm. “Okay.” He laughed. “Enough champagne for you.”

  “What?” said Lil. “I’m fine.”

  “Me, too,” said Sadie, threading her fingers through Ed’s. It was their first night out together since Jack’s birth. They’d left him, nervously, with a neighbor, a college girl studying early childhood development at Hunter.

  “Let’s toast,” said Ed, raising his glass. His plane had landed just an hour before and he couldn’t stop yawning. “To new friends and old. To their happiness and health.”

  “To Sundance!” cried Sadie.

  “Sadie,” said Ed, ducking his head and tucking her arm under his.

  “Here, here!” the group cried, tinking their glasses. “Here, here!”

  Dave kept his arm raised. “To Emily,” he cried, his voice hard and bright. “Who deserves happiness more than anyone.”