The Hot Flash Club

by Nancy Thayer

  An International Festival of Women’s Cinema.

  Museum of Fine Arts.

  Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

  Museum of Science.

  The Alvin Ailey Dance Theater—that would be interesting. Except it would be at night, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about attending theater alone. Might be something she’d have to work up to.

  The Boston Philharmonic had matinees on Friday— well.

  Alice looked at the clock. It was just after nine-thirty. She looked out the window. Sunny day.

  The program was Stravinsky and Prokofiev, composers about whom she knew very little. She’d always preferred jazz to classical. But it wouldn’t kill her to try something new, and how would she know whether or not she liked the music until she heard it?

  She phoned and reserved a ticket at the symphony, but as she showered, her spirits lagged until it was as if she were dragging her own body like a nanny with a recalcitrant child.

  “Buck up!” she commanded herself as she opened the doors to her walk-in closet. All her work suits hung there in a gloomy ensemble of black, gray, brown, like shapeless habits for an order of nuns. Just looking at them made her stomach constrict and her breath go shallow.

  Well, they no longer fit her body or her life!

  She jerked a charcoal crepe suit with its death-grip waistband off the hanger and cast it on the floor. She yanked out a drab olive suit with a skirt that squeezed her stomach like a vise, and tossed it on top of the charcoal. As she added the mouse gray and the dog-shit brown, she sensed a new energy flowing through her. Anything the color of ashes, dusk, dust, clouds, feces, or mud was ripped from its hanger and flung out of her life. Her lungs swelled with power as she tugged and tossed, her chest expanded, and she felt like wings were growing from her back, lifting her into the air. She was becoming weightless!

  Racing into the kitchen, she grabbed a box of clear plastic bags, took them to her closet, and stuffed them with her clothing. Her business shoes, tight and high and pinching, went into the bags with the clothes. She saved one black suit and a pair of black heels, for funerals.

  That finished, she rose and surveyed her closet. She didn’t have a whole lot left.

  Well, she’d just have to go shopping!

  Maybe she’d invite Shirley to come with her.

  Until then, she’d wear her loose batik trousers, a long white shirt, and all her turquoise jewelry. And the bright plastic bracelets.

  The day was cool, but bright with sun. She set out in her low-heeled cork-soled shoes, striding briskly along the pavement, cutting this way and that through the busy streets, until suddenly she realized there was no need to hurry. The thought was so stunning, she stumbled and almost fell down.

  Slowing her pace, she took time to gaze into the windows. She stopped at a bookstore to purchase a paperback novel with a candy box cover, something she’d never permitted herself before in her life, something she’d never before wanted. Before, she’d always read newspapers and Forbes and Money and other journals, to keep up with the business news. Occasionally, on cross-country flights, she’d skimmed the latest paperback thriller, as long as the plot was so fast she was assured she could finish the book in a minimum amount of time. She’d developed a scheme for judging an airplane book before buying it: the amount of white space on the pages. The more white space, the shorter the paragraphs and sentences, the less the book demanded of her. She could whiz through it without a thought.

  What would it be like to read a book she didn’t want to get through, Alice wondered. Perhaps she’d find out with this little pink bit of froth. Certainly she’d give it a try. She settled in at a sidewalk café for lunch, intending to read. But the food—a chicken salad with Asian spices and a glass of cool Chardonnay—was so delicious, and the opportunity to eat at her leisure such a novelty, that she put the book back in her purse and concentrated on taste and smell. It was a pleasure, too, overhearing the conversations going on at the tables near hers. People were discussing clothes, movies, music, parties, vacations, and the occasional love complication, but no one was talking about work, and they were of all different ages, in fact, most of them were under sixty. It brightened her day immensely to know that people could build lives around something other than achievement and the battle for success.

  Still, she was rather dreading the concert, she decided, as she paid her bill and strolled down Huntington Avenue to the brick concert hall. Because she’d never been to a matinee of anything since local productions of The Nutcracker when her boys were young, Alice assumed she would be the youngest person there, surrounded by hordes of doddering little old ladies who would, with much crackling of foil, sneak mints into their mouths throughout the concert.

  She was right. When she picked up her ticket at the window and handed it to the usher, the crowd around her was mostly female, and over fifty, and to make matters worse, their hair was coiffed as stiffly as Nancy Reagan’s, and they wore expensive, plain wool dresses with a modest diamond pin or gold necklaces. They looked as if they’d all just come from having tea with Barbara Bush. In her flowing batik pants, loose white shirt, and plastic bracelets, Alice was like a parrot among pigeons.

  Her seat was in the gallery, toward the side and about halfway back. She slid down the row, found her place, and settled in, pleased by the width of the seat, not so thrilled with the hard wooden bottom.

  A skinny young woman with magenta spiked hair, a tattooed necklace, and shitkicker boots slunk down the row and landed next to Alice. I see, Alice thought, they put all the weirdos in the same place.

  As she bent her head to study her program, she saw, from the corner of her eye, an African-American man in a silk shirt in stained-glass colors coming down the row. He settled next to her, nodded at Alice, then pulled glasses from his pocket, fitted them over his nose, and turned his attention to the program.

  She nodded at him and did the same, but she couldn’t concentrate. It wasn’t every day an attractive African-American man her age just happened along. She glanced sideways, to see whether or not someone—a wife, a girlfriend—was coming to join him. But the woman who came down the aisle and sat next to him was chattering to her teenage daughter and didn’t notice him. Well, then. And he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. My, my.

  He cleared his throat. Alice crossed her legs so that her toe pointed at Spike Hair sitting on her left. Spike Hair took a box of mints from her purse and slipped one into her mouth. The scent drifted tantalizingly into the air, making Alice crave a mint. She forced herself to concentrate on her program until the conductor, a Russian with an unpronounceable name, came onstage and the concert began.

  It was Stravinsky’s Persephone, something Alice had never heard before, and something she decided, as the program continued, she didn’t need to hear ever again. A swarthy tenor and a pale narrator intoned gloomily in French, as did a despondent chorus, about the underworld and spring. As a violin chord pierced the air, a resounding note pinged in Alice’s body.

  Uh-oh. She needed to pee, now. She shouldn’t have had that cup of coffee with lunch, she knew coffee was a diuretic, but it had been such a small cup. She recrossed her legs, hoping the change in position would relieve the pressure.

  The “Melodrama in Three Tableaux” was long. Persephone was abducted. She was sorry The Shades were so sad. Finally, she was reborn, while flutes and harps plucked strings that resonated up and down Alice’s urinary tract.

  At last it ended, and after the applause died down, most of the audience rose to stretch during intermission. Some headed out to the rest rooms, which was exactly where Alice was longing to go. She looked to her left. Spike Hair had fallen into a kind of trance, slumped down, head resting on the seat back, eyes closed, legs in their black jeans intersecting in a kind of cat’s cradle Alice couldn’t possibly step over. To her right, the man was reading his program again.

  He noticed Alice looking at him, and lifted his head, giving her a wonderful smile. “That was pretty
amazing, wasn’t it?”

  “I suppose amazing’s the right word.” Alice paused, wondering whether or not to be honest. She knew she came off pretty strong. But she admitted, “I found it a bit overwhelming.”

  “Like a disturbed hornets’ nest.”

  She laughed. “Like that.” The slight movement of her torso as she shifted in her seat made a heavy weight press on her bladder.

  “My son gave me season tickets,” the man confided. He turned toward her. His face was wide, his hair thick, peppery gray, his eyes dark and large. She wouldn’t call him fat, but portly might work; he clearly enjoyed his food. “I’ve come regularly the past few months, and I’ve enjoyed most of the concerts, plus there’s something about attending a concert of classical music that makes me feel, well, virtuous.”

  Alice smiled. The man was charming, but he was probably also gay, or a serial killer. If there was one thing she knew for sure in this world, it was that Fate didn’t drop an attractive, unattached man almost in your lap every day, or any day. “I know what you mean,” she replied, because she couldn’t just sit there gawking at him. Her bladder tugged on her attention like a spoiled child.

  “I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before,” the man volunteered.

  She was flattered by the implication that he found her remarkable enough to remember. “You’re right. This is the first time I’ve been to a concert in years. I am, um, actually, I’ve recently retired.”

  “Well, congratulations!” He smiled, showing gorgeous white teeth. “You’re about to begin the best period of your life!”

  She squinted at him. “Do you really think so?”

  He leaned toward her, talking eagerly. “Oh, yes, absolutely. Listen, I was a high school teacher all my life, and I loved my work. Then, five years ago, my wife died, and a few months later, I retired. I thought I’d go nuts. I was afraid I’d end up glued to the sofa, watching old movies and eating too much cold pizza.”

  Alice smiled. “I’ve got my own version of that vision.”

  “Well, I confess I did live that way for a few months. It does take you a while, sometimes, to get back on your feet. But I did. I found—”

  “Ssssh!” The woman behind him leaned forward, rapping his shoulder with her program. Only then did Alice realize the conductor had returned to the podium. She exchanged guilty smiles with the man and faced forward, composing herself to listen.

  The Prokofiev ballet music was also turbulent and strenuous, but compelling, with occasional comic moments. For minutes at a time, Alice almost forgot how desperately she needed to pee. She turned, crossed and recrossed her legs, trying to find a position that put the least pressure on her bladder. She didn’t succeed. She clenched her toes and bit her lip. The urgency increased. She felt like she was sitting on a burning blade.

  As the music billowed with complicated chords and tumult, Alice tried to relax into it, letting the swirling sounds carry her back to the Midwest, where the wind blew ferociously and hail pelted the roofs and torrents of rain—no, she mustn’t think about rain. The music thundered to a crescendo. A similar force gathered in Alice’s sinuses. She was going to sneeze. And when she sneezed—

  Desperately, she pressed her fingers against the bridge of her nose. The music continued to swell and crash. The sneeze died, unexploded. The music ended. The audience applauded wildly. Alice was exhausted.

  She planted both feet on the floor, preparing to rise the moment the person on either side did. To her dismay, the conductor strode back onstage, bowed, raised his arms, and turned to conduct an encore.

  Sinking back in her seat, Alice thought of deserts. Beaches—whoops, too close to the ocean. Dust. Dust was good.

  Finally, the encore ended. After another, less enthusiastic round of applause, the audience began to rise and file out of the auditorium.

  When her neighbor stood, she saw that he had broad shoulders and was almost exactly her height. He leaned near, to be heard over the general tumult. “It was nice chatting with you.”

  “Yes. Nice chatting with you, too.” Move, she urged him silently. Go on, you can shove that woman a little, she doesn’t look frail, just sluggish.

  “I wonder, would you like to have a cup of coffee?”

  “Oh. Well. Yes, that would be nice.” He could have asked her if she wanted to go bungee-jumping, and she would have agreed, she could scarcely think, she was becoming nothing but a swollen skin of pressure. At least the row was moving out into the aisle. With each step, Alice’s bladder sensed the proximity of relief, and the strain Alice had thought was already at its maximum increased as they slowly crept, along with the crowd, out of the auditorium. “I need to use the ladies’ room first,” she told him when they finally reached the corridors.

  “I’ll wait here,” he told her.

  She raced away.

  His name was Gideon Banks. They sat across from each other at a nearby Starbucks, where Alice ordered a cup of decaffeinated coffee and he ordered a bran muffin and a glass of orange juice.

  “I’m diabetic,” he explained. “Just got that way two years ago; it’s called late onset diabetes, and I can control it without insulin if I eat right. I apologize for talking about it, I know it’s boring.”

  “No, not at all,” Alice hastened to assure him.

  “It’s one of the reasons I sort of gave up on dating,” Gideon told her. “I mean, you’d think at my age dating would be a relatively simple matter. I’m not looking for a woman to bear my children and share my life, I don’t have to worry about liking my in-laws, because they’re probably all dead by now, the kids are grown up and on their own, I’m over my midlife crisis. But on the other hand, I find I’ve become remarkably entrenched in routines. I have to arrange my life around when I eat, what I eat, the damned exercises I ought to do every day. I also know by now that I don’t enjoy going to bars, I’m never going to learn to dance, or ride a horse, or scuba dive. So I’m a pretty lame date for most women.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that’s not so.” Alice cocked her head as she scrutinized him. He was no Denzel Washington, but then she was no Vanessa Williams. “Most women my age aren’t up for scuba diving.”

  “You’d be surprised. I find your gender much more open to new experiences than mine. Lots of women say there’s just one thing they really want to do while they can—climb Mount Saint Helens or see Australia. I’m happy just where I am.”

  “I’ve never thought about one thing I want to do before I die,” Alice mused. “But then, I thought I’d be working for a few more years.”

  He inquired about her work, listened attentively, and asked intelligent questions. He had gorgeous teeth, and a dimple in his left cheek when he smiled. He’s got to be a serial killer, Alice thought. No way can this man be available. But when they left the café to go their separate ways, Gideon asked for her phone number, and Alice gave it to him.

  Walking back to her condo, Alice found herself humming a few bars from the encore. The resonance of the sound in her throat felt unusual and pleasant. It surely had been a long time since she’d sung. Well, if this was what retirement was going to be like, then she might be able to welcome it. Certainly she’d enjoyed looking at Gideon Banks. She could imagine accompanying him to movies, dinners, other concerts.

  She could even envision—almost—going to bed with the man.

  The thought stunned her so completely, she walked right past her condo and had to retrace her steps.

  36

  Down the stairs of the Eastbrook mansion came Eu-genie Eastbrook in a floor-length gown of apricot silk. Her hair, coiled tightly in a chignon, was as pale as the diamonds glittering from her ears and around her neck. Her hips were as narrow as a boy’s, her breasts as full and high as a nubile girl’s, her stomach flat as a panel of wood. If you didn’t know she was the mother of a woman in her twenties, you wouldn’t be able to guess her age; nothing gave it away, not the line of her jaw, which was firm and lean, not the lids of her eyes, nor the smooth pane o
f her brow. This was a woman from a magazine ad, a television ad, from the movies, this was the model for American women of a certain age, the goal to shoot for, the standard by which to compare.

  And as Faye stood waiting on the first floor, watching Eugenie Eastbrook descend, she was painfully aware of exactly how she measured up. Beneath her practical navy suit, she felt the width of her hips, the slump of her buttocks, the channels of fat on her back, the flesh kimono swinging from her upper arms, not to mention her stomachs.

  But Faye preferred her own body. Her hips had widened from giving birth to Laura. Her weight had accumulated gradually over years of cooking and enjoying delicious food and wine with her family and friends. Her posture and face were marked with grief for the loss of the man who was the love of her life. Why would she want to look as if nothing in life had affected her? Why would anyone? The truth was, Eugenie Eastbrook didn’t look young; she looked fake.

  Nevertheless, Faye proffered the obligatory compliment. “You look beautiful tonight, Mrs. Eastbrook.”

  Mrs. Eastbrook unfolded an indigo pashmina shawl and settled it around her shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, apathy draining her words of any meaning. For Eugenie Eastbrook, Faye’s words were only to be expected, it was what an employee would say, it didn’t signify.

  Dr. Eastbrook came swiftly down the stairs, sleek in his tux, shooting his cuffs to be sure the heavy links were exposed.

  “We’ll be late,” he warned his wife. He didn’t bother to speak to Faye, but strode across the hall, yanking the front door open.

  “Lock up after us and set the alarms,” Eugenie Eastbrook instructed Faye.

  “Of course.”

  “We won’t be back until after midnight, I’m sure. We’ll come in the back way. Don’t wait up.”

  Faye nodded. She shut the heavy door and went to the window to look out. She watched the Eastbrooks settle into the Jaguar and, with a spurt that scattered the white gravel, race away from the house.

  Faye checked her watch.