I’d been sniffling throughout, but this is where I started full-on sobbing. My friends sat awkwardly for a moment, then Hugo moved closer and tried to put his arm around me. But he was in a chair, while I was at the end of the semicircular booth, so he couldn’t really reach me, and the arm of the chair was getting between us. Finally, he got out of his seat and scooted in beside me, forcing everyone else to squish together when he put his arms around me. I smashed my face into his shoulder and let go.
twenty-six
The fire in the big stone fireplace in the cabin in Maine was roaring. It was the week after Mrs. Whitney’s funeral. I needed to get out of the city and take a big breath after everything that had happened. And I needed to have sex with Hugo. Mrs. Whitney’s cabin seemed like the perfect place to do both.
We took turns driving the old Volvo up through New England. I didn’t let anyone but Maggie know I was leaving town, but on the drive I texted Caitlin.
How’s everything? I wrote.
Good! she wrote back. Ravi’s cooking his way through Sam Sifton and teaching himself Chinese.
Ravi had taken his parental leave to stay home with Eloise while they looked for childcare. Ravi had always enjoyed doing what for other people would be impossible. Maybe he’d found his calling.
I’m on my way to Maine to my new house, I texted Caitlin.
My new house. The home I’d wished for the last time I left.
Yay! Caitlin texted back. Strangely, she seemed more relaxed and warmer to me since I’d left, so maybe this arrangement was better for her, too.
Maggie’s around if you need anything, I wrote.
You’re alone? Caitlin texted back.
I hesitated a moment before I answered, With Hugo.
Caitlin texted back the emoji of the hands clapping, the champagne cork popping, the woman dancing in the red dress, and then many hearts.
We left the Volvo in the usual parking lot and took the last ferry of the day over to the island, the early fall wind biting into our faces. It would start snowing soon; this was the last chance to be here until spring.
The first thing we did was build a big fire, which took about an hour to warm up the place. We ate some soup, still wearing our coats. When dark fell, we lit every candle we could find, which thankfully was not that many. I didn’t really want it to be that bright in there. It was finally getting warm enough to contemplate taking off our clothes. But still I was shivering.
“We don’t have to do this,” Hugo said.
“Oh,” I said. “I think we do.”
We took a step closer to one another.
“We could get into bed and take our clothes off under the covers,” I said.
“I want to see you,” said Hugo.
“That’s kind of my problem.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What if you don’t like the way I look?” I said.
“I will like the way you look.”
I had put on some weight and lost a lot of muscle since I came down from this island six months before. Plus no matter how thin or strong I was, I was still nearly fifty. Getting older made me more secure in a lot of ways, I’d discovered, but not about my body.
“I have a stomach,” I said. “My tits are saggy. I have cellulite all over my thighs.”
He laughed. “Me too,” he said.
He pulled his sweater over his head and started unbuttoning his shirt, moving his shoulders and his hips in some mimicry of a striptease, though he looked more like Elaine dancing on Seinfeld.
When his shirt was off, he held his arms out. “What do you think?” he said.
The only place I had ever seen a man over fifty with his shirt off was at the beach. And Hugo looked… like those guys. His shoulders were a little hunched, the skin on his upper arms loose, his stomach paunchy. His chest hair was completely gray. He’d gotten a running start on his goal of eating whatever he wanted and not worrying about his weight. I reached out and laid my hands on his chest.
“You look beautiful,” I said, and meant it.
He leaned down and kissed me, softly but insistently. The room suddenly grew a lot warmer.
“Okay, now for the big reveal,” he said.
He had to sit down on the edge of the bed to take off his socks and shoes. Then, without ceremony, he unzipped his jeans and tugged them off. He was wearing black boxer briefs.
“Nice underwear,” I said.
“I bought it specially,” he told me.
He pulled the briefs down. His penis jumped out.
“Wow,” I said. It was definitely impressive.
He kicked off the underwear and I moved over next to him. I ran my hands over his ass, then around to the front, trailing my fingers up to the tip of his penis and back down.
“If you keep doing that, this is going to be over really quickly,” he said.
I did not want it to be over quickly. We had waited so long. Which had created a lot of pressure. It was like we were the heroine and hero of a movie, and the whole story had been yearning toward this moment when we were finally together. And it had to be great. Well, in the movie, you didn’t see them worrying about whether it was going to be great, or it not being great—it was always great. They were both so beautiful and they loved each other so much, plus they were movie stars: How could it not be great?
But in life, sometimes you could be with someone very attractive and who you really liked, and at the moment of truth, you might discover that you simply were not compatible in bed.
“You need to either take off your clothes now,” said Hugo, “or you need to get into bed with them on, because any minute now I am going to have snow balls.”
“The last night I was here, I slept with my clothes on,” I said, leading him over to the bed. “Even my coat.”
I remembered how cold it was that night, letting the fire die out for the last time before I rejoined civilization. Excited about everything that lay ahead, but never guessing that six months later, I’d be back here with Hugo Fielding.
“Come on,” he said.
We crawled in together under the huge feather comforter, which was topped with a heavy wool blanket and on top of that, a patchwork quilt. You could barely turn over under the weight of those covers. It was like sleeping under a bear.
Plus it was a double bed. And Hugo was a big guy. We lay there for a minute, pressed together, our arms wrapped around each other. I could feel his heart beating against mine. It took us both a moment to stop quaking from the cold in the room. Although given that I still had all my clothes on, my shivering may have been for another reason.
“Are you a virgin?” Hugo said.
I laughed. “Born again.”
“We could get married first,” he said.
I froze. “What?”
“I want to marry you, Liza. Please marry me. I’d get down on one knee, but then I’d have to let go of you.”
“Don’t let go of me,” I said.
“Is that a yes?”
“Let me think about it,” I said. I kissed him. And then I kissed him some more. “Mmmm, yeah, this is helping me think.”
Soon I was so hot I had to throw off the covers. I struggled to pull my sweater and turtleneck over my head and wiggle out of my pants. I’m not sure how my underwear came off. Once we were kissing, we moved nearly seamlessly (except for the turtleneck) to fucking. And once we were fucking, I was lost in the deliciousness of the physical feeling of that, like eating again at the end of a long diet, like the first warm day of spring, like the embrace that makes you realize how much you’ve missed being touched.
But what I felt with Hugo was like the first warm day of spring after a winter that had lasted three years. A day that was not only warm and sunny, but as vivid and brilliant and beautiful as the best days you’ve ever known. How have I lived without this so long? I wondered. How can I ever bear to stop?
We didn’t stop, not for longer than it took to throw more wood on the fire and cook
up a panful of bacon and take a brisk walk down to the water and back, if only to experience the pleasure of getting warm all over again.
At the end of the week, I checked if he’d been serious about the proposal. He said of course, and I said yes.
I felt something with Hugo that I’d never felt with Josh or with my ex-husband, either, though I didn’t realize it until I was experiencing it. I felt like I was fully inside my body, and no part of me was standing outside judging, directing, criticizing, craving, feeling something different from what I was feeling. Wanting something different from what I had. Being someone different from who I was. There was no shadow me. There was just me. With him.
twenty-seven
Maggie and I invited everyone we’d ever known to our one hundredth birthday party in December, which we held at my new home, the smallest carriage house in Clinton Hill. It was so small, I couldn’t believe they’d actually fit carriages and horses into it. Dogs, maybe? And I was renting it; I hadn’t bought it. But it had a wood-burning fireplace and a spiral staircase that led to a tiny sleeping loft. Mine was the only name on the lease. I owned the cabin in Maine. And I finally had not one but two homes I’d always dreamed of.
Almost everyone showed up, from Maggie’s Nona, who really was one hundred, to my granddaughter, Eloise, nearly six months old and so gorgeously chubby you would never have known she’d been a preemie.
I kissed her delicious little leg, which was dangling from the carrier her dad wore against his chest. She kicked and chortled. Her hair, growing in now, was thick and dark, but in the right light I could pick up an unmistakable glint of red.
“How’s my little munchkin?” I said.
Eloise threw her head back, consumed by laughter.
“Happy birthday, Mom,” my daughter said, giving me a hug.
“Hey, sweetie. Did you get some champagne?”
“Not for me,” Caitlin said.
She and Ravi traded glances.
“We have some news,” Caitlin said, a smile playing at her lips.
“What?”
Eloise was still so tiny, it took me another moment to catch on.
“What?!?” I said again, astonished. “When?”
“August,” Caitlin said. “Fingers crossed I make it that far.”
“I calculated that if we had another baby right away, we could minimize the time I’ll need to defer my fellowship and maximize the financial advantage of me being primary caregiver,” Ravi explained.
I felt a twinge of guilt about Ravi’s deferring his fellowship, but reminded myself that stepping back from his career to care for the baby had been his choice, as it had been mine with Caitlin and not with Eloise. And believing in choice meant you supported it whether someone’s choice conformed to your personal beliefs or not.
“Ravi thinks if we invest everything we would have spent on childcare, we can build up a healthy college fund,” Caitlin said.
“Very smart,” I said. “I’m so thrilled. See you Wednesday?”
Wednesday was my day with Eloise, starting early in the morning and stretching into the evening, when Caitlin and Ravi went out on their date night. Spending that one long day a week with the baby both made me wish I could spend more time with her, and underscored my decision not to.
“Thank you,” said Ravi, who’d been humbled by his tenure as a stay-at-home dad, not necessarily a negative. “We really appreciate it.”
Caitlin and Ravi turned toward another admirer of Eloise’s then, in time for me to see Kelsey slip into the room. She was, I was surprised to note, alone.
“Where’s Josh?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
“I thought you two were coming together,” I said.
She shrugged again. That was when I noticed tears glistening in her eyes. “It looks like we might have broken up,” she said.
“Oh no!” I’d thought Josh and Kelsey were perfect together. “What happened?”
“We love each other,” she said. “But we’re not sure we love each other, if you know what I mean.”
I wasn’t sure I did, but I told her I was sorry to hear that.
“I thought you two would get married and make beautiful babies.”
“I don’t know about the marriage part, but the babies might still be on.”
“What? Really?”
She smiled, nodding. “I haven’t said anything to him because things have been so weird, but I took a test.” She nodded again. “What do you think of the name Hope?”
“Oh, Kelsey!” I gathered her into a hug.
“What are you ladies whispering about now?” It was Stella, but I swear I almost didn’t recognize her. Six months pregnant now, she had gained at least a hundred pounds, but also looked a hundred times happier. She gave both Kelsey and me big kisses on the lips.
Tane stood shyly back, looking ill at ease in his winter clothes. The knit of his sweater parted at the shoulders, and his massive thighs threatened to pop the seams of his chinos. Not that I noticed or anything. He and Stella were living full-time at the Dakota now and were said to be shopping for a place in Montauk. She had, after all, gotten the kids, who were settled in New York City public schools.
“Guess what!” Stella grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me until my teeth rattled. “I’m writing a book!”
“Congratulations,” I said cautiously. Stella’s memoir had incited a bidding war among publishers, one that Empirical had sat out. Stella had pulled down a seven-figure advance, way more money than I hoped to ever earn from writing, even if I lived to be two hundred.
“Writing is hard!” she said. “I would really love your help.”
“My help?” I said. “What kind of help do you need from me?”
“I know exactly what I want to say,” she said. “I just need some help with getting the words down.”
“I’m sure your agent and publisher can help you find a ghostwriter,” I said coolly.
“But I want you,” she said, making a little pout.
“I wish I could,” I said. “I just don’t have the time.”
And I never will.
“Really?” she said, as if that were a totally absurd idea. “What are you up to these days?”
“I’m running the publishing company now, and…” Smiling shyly, I held out my ring finger.
“Wow,” she said. “Is that real?”
“Yes, Hugo and I are engaged.”
She actually looked impressed.
“Hello, darling.” Speak of the devil. Hugo kissed me on the cheek and held out a glass of champagne. His bump was nearly as big as Stella’s. He’d been spending a lot of time cooking since he officially moved into my carriage house. He and Maggie worked side by side on the Sunday dinners now, and it turned out his extra girth not only made him even more attractive to me, but had actually proved to be an advantage in the theater. He was opening in his first play on Broadway next month.
“Do you have one of those for me?” Stella said, gesturing toward the champagne.
“I didn’t think you were drinking,” Hugo said.
“It would be bad luck if I didn’t take a sip for the birthday toast,” Stella said smoothly.
Hugo shrugged and glided away.
“I hear you’re making Younger without me after all,” Stella said.
Mrs. Whitney’s failure to sign and return the contract indeed gave us back the rights. We made a deal with dream producer Darren Star, who was here tonight with dream star Sutton Foster. After officially denying Younger was a memoir for so many months, I was now tripping over myself to let people know Younger was based on a true story, and that the main character was me. I even gave her my real name.
Maggie stepped forward, motioning for me to join her. She slipped her arm around my waist.
“Thank you all for coming to help celebrate Liza’s and my first hundred years,” she said.
A hundred years. That went so fast.
Would I change anything? L
ooking around the room at all the people I loved and who loved me, it was impossible to imagine wanting even a single moment to be different. Everything had to happen exactly the way it did to bring me to this wonderful place.
So all things considered, my first half century had gone perfectly. Given all I’d learned in my first fifty years, the next fifty promised to be even better.
acknowledgments
I was supported through every stage of creating this book by two amazing allies: my agent, Johanna Castillo of Writers House, and my editor, Kate Dresser at Gallery Books. They both contributed the kind of insight, strength, strategy, good sense, and all-around brilliance that writers dream about.
I also owe tremendous gratitude to Darren Star, the genius who swooped from the sky and transformed my novel Younger into a new work of art. Darren, along with the fantastic writers and actors of Younger and TV Land’s Keith Cox, have in every sense made my dreams come true.
To the magical Sutton Foster, the brilliant Hilary Duff, the soulful Debi Mazar, and the dreamboat Nico Tortorella, who brought the major characters from my original book to life so vividly and beautifully: your performances couldn’t help but inspire my vision for the future of Liza, Kelsey, Maggie, and Josh. And to Peter Hermann and Miriam Shor, whose characters were Darren’s brainchildren, I found a way to give you some much-deserved applause, too.
Producers and writers Dottie and Eric Zicklin, Alison Brown, and Ashley Skidmore have built the world of Younger out far beyond the imagination of any one writer, so with Older I had to dive far ahead in time to find a fresh story.
At Gallery Books, along with the brilliant and insightful and kind editor Kate Dresser, I’d like to thank editorial director Aimée Bell, my fairy godmother, as well as Molly Gregory and Lauren Truskowski.
Younger has had a long life, and I have to thank the agents and editors who had a hand in nurturing it along the way: editors Amy Pierpont and Lauren McKenna, agents Deborah Schneider and Melissa Flashman, as well as, on the TV side, Dana Spector at CAA.
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