hair falls back, and her smile spreads so far across her face it’s inside her ears. She looks like she may faint. The banister is holding her up for dear life.
Marcy’s face is frozen in terror. No. Not terror. Happiness. Terrorized happiness. Her small body’s wobbling. Will all this happiness make her keel over?
“Ehhhhhhhh!” Marcy cries out. Her grotesque smile opens wider and wider, and her eyes bulge out. “Ehhhhhhhh!”
We are happy for Marcy. We are. But now we are worried. Our smiles are plastered to our faces as we watch her meld into the banister.
“You’re getting maaarried!!!” a cousin calls out. Her red nails wave at Marcy, and her gold-and-diamond rings catch the glimmer of the light shining above the picture of a bullfight that’s painted on red velvet.
“Look at all your guests!” shouts her sister-in-law to be.
“Everyone sit!” says her maid of honor, who’d been spending the last few minutes at the banister trying to catch Marcy if she were to fall.
Marcy is walked over to a table by her mother and aunt Tessie, each holding half of her up. They smile at everyone, as if they were in a procession. Marcy remains in shock, until she passes the pile of one hundred beautifully wrapped presents that should cover almost every item on her registry. She is suddenly composed.
“Let’s eat!” announces Marcy, taking her seat in the center.
We watch a moment. Marcy has caught her breath, and so we catch ours. We sit down to eat the guacamole. I take a seat near the gifts. I want to get a good look at what I’m missing.
Seven weeks later I wake up in the middle of the night. I have just turned forty-five and no Martin came and saved me from it. I am still in my apartment, or what I hope is still my apartment. The notice to buy me out of my rent-stabilized lease arrived the day before my birthday. My unemployment claim expired, and my acting prospects quietly disappeared in my forty-fourth year, just to make my forty-fifth as frightening as possible. I never bought that “Forty” was the “NewThirty,” and feel petrified to find out that “Fifty” is the “New Forty.” I am currently boyfriendless and in no shape to date.
Perhaps I should kill myself.
This seems like an interesting idea. I can kill myself tonight and just slip away. What am I supposed to do tomorrow anyway? Gynecologist appointment, gym, audition for a vacuum cleaner commercial… Now might be a good time. I have to slip away one day anyway. At least I’d have the say as to when and how.
I’d no longer have to worry about money. That would be a relief. I wouldn’t be afraid I’d get raped running the reservoir, hit by a car or blown up by a terrorist. I wouldn’t have to keep up with fashion trends, do laundry or search for the perfect haircut. I’d never have to overhear another ridiculous cell phone conversation on the bus, or waste my time running ridiculous errands. I wouldn’t have to wait on hold for a representative to come on the line while simultaneously waiting for AOL to get me online, only to waste more time deleting junk e-mail when I finally got there. Never again would I have to press one for more options, or watch Dubya, looking oh so presidential in jeans and cowboy boots, give another inspiring speech recited off a TelePrompTer. I’d never have to hang around and watch people I love grow sick and die, or witness my young face and body turn old. I’d never get some awful disease, shrivel up in the hospital, and lose my dignity while chin hairs grew unruly and unattended. I wouldn’t have to look for a new agent, and I could finally stop dating.
Good idea. Now. How?
Instantly every idea seems awful. No guns. No razors. No noose and no ovens. The only possibility would be pills, and who am I kidding? I don’t have a prescription and I’m not going to get one, because I’m never going to do this. I don’t want to die. I want to get a great acting job, and fall in love, and get married. I want to honeymoon in Italy, and buy a huge co-op on Central Park West. I want to go to Zabar’s, and eat cherry cheese strudel.
With the exception of the cherry cheese strudel, dying seems easier to accomplish. But if I screwed up, which I would because I don’t want to do it, it would only be interpreted as a call for help. Then I’d have to use the balance of my medical insurance to go to some kind of rehab and therapy, and for sure I would lose my apartment. By the time I got back rents would be even more expensive, even more of the good guys would be taken, and everyone would point at me as the one who tried to off herself. It would probably go on my permanent record. No. It’s easier to take two Tylenol, warm up some hot milk, read a chapter of Heartburn and a few tarot cards until I fall back to sleep.
Forget that. I cannot sleep. I am obsessed. Forty and single. My God, wait, I’m forty-five and single! How did this happen? Oh, so what if I am forty-five and single. So was my mother when she married Henry. No, Millie was just forty. And she was Divorced With Child Single, not Never Been Down That Aisle Single. Still, how much worse is it than when I was thirty and single? Or thirty-five and single? Or fort— Oh… Ohh…
Much worse. Much, much worse.
Decades of people’s good-intentioned sayings flash before me.
“It only takes one.”
“There’s lots of other fish in the sea.”
“When it’s right, you know.”
“You’re next.”
“Every pot has a cover.”
“When it’s your time, it will just happen.”
“Let go and it will come to you.”
“You never know what a day brings.”
“What’s yours is still out there.”
“Trust in the universe. All unfolds according to plan.”
Decades of dates flash before me. I think about those men. What were their names? Oh yeah, I remember…and then there was that completely idiotic…and, OH!!, that was truly…
Hmmm… I can think about that. Those stories. Count them like sheep. Instead of feeling mortified, maybe I can laugh. Embrace it. Rejoice. This is it. This is my life!
Well, I don’t have to go that far, but it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to simply accept it as mine. I’m still here. I’m not dead and I can still date. And maybe it’s really not so horrific. Maybe it’s not such a big deal. Maybe you just have to kiss a lot of frogs.
2
Wake Me When We Get There
Flashback—Easter Week
Brooklyn, NY 1969
My mother took me to my favorite store, The Little Princess, on Queens Boulevard to buy the dress. It was dark-blue velvet with an empire waist, and a white satin ribbon that tied under the breasts, though I didn’t have any yet. I wore it when she married Henry.
It was a nice wedding. I was the flower girl. I walked between the folding chairs, and threw rose petals on the hardwood floors of Rabbi Bernstein’s study. Millie, my mother, thought that was a goyishe thing to do, but I had insisted since they always did it that way on TV. The rabbi forgot to pour the wine into the glass, and Henry pretended to drink it during the prayers so as not to hurt
