Joanna Rakoff - A Fortunate Age

Will went into the kitchen and emerged with a bottle of dark liquor in one hand, two unmatched tumblers in the other. “Remy, okay?” She nodded, though she wasn’t sure what it was. She rarely drank; she couldn’t, couldn’t smoke either, due to what her mother half jokingly called her “delicate constitution.” She’d spent her junior year of high school in bed with a bout of mono, like some sort of Victorian spinster. “Sit, sit.” He gestured toward the futon, placing the glasses on the little table and unscrewing the bottle’s cap. She sat, straightening her skirt around her and crossing her legs, fighting the urge to take off her new boots, which were pinching her toes.

“Most of this furniture was Tuck’s actually,” he said, handing her a squat tumbler. “He decided he wanted to start afresh with Lil, so he left it here. He has good taste.” He shrugged. “And I don’t have any. So I’m happy with his hand-me-downs.” He had a habit of pronouncing certain words—clichéd phrases—as though they had quotes around them. Beth was beginning to find this affectation a little annoying, in part because she was so familiar with it. Her friends in grad school had all done the same. This was the fate of academics the world over: to view even the most harmless phrases as dangerous clichés. She was guilty of it herself.

She took a tentative sip of her drink, coughing a little from its fumes, and immediately began to feel warm all over. “You didn’t have any furniture of your own?” He shook his head, swallowing. “Not much. I’m not good with stuff.” For the first time that evening, she felt she had his whole attention—but she was now having trouble focusing on him. To her right, above Will’s head, several rows of mounted shelves held well-thumbed books—she could spot no fiction published since the First World War—in front of which, at various intervals, stood an army of garishly colored children’s toys: a plastic dinosaur, a Kewpie doll, and a Lego tower. After four years around pop culture grad students, this didn’t strike her as all that strange. She knew forty-year-olds with complete collections of original-issue Star Wars action figures or Strawberry Shortcake dolls still in the original packaging.

“You have some toys,” she said, smiling.

“Yes, yes,” he agreed, nodding a bit too energetically. “Yes, I do.”

“Is there a story behind them?”

“Well, yes, yes, there is. They belong to my son, Sam.”

“Oh.” Beth grinned stiffly. “Wow.”

He turned his palms upward, smiling. “I know, it’s rather a shock, isn’t it?”

“No, no, of course not.”

“No, it is, you mustn’t be overly polite about it. I’m the Englishman, right?” he said, smiling broadly—sadly, actually—and his particular beauty hit her with a thud. For a moment, she was certain she’d never been so attracted to a man.

“Okay,” she said, drawing out the word. “I won’t. Promise. No politeness from me. How old is he, Sam?”

“Four,” he said, leaning back on the couch and crossing his legs at the knee. “He started prekindergarten last month. It’s a big deal . He has a backpack.”

“I can imagine,” she said, taking another inventory of the toys on the shelves. There was a Barbie, naked, her long legs jutting from the shelf. No gender hang-ups, Beth thought.

Will followed her glance. “It’s a game we play. He stands on the couch and lines up everything on the shelves. Hours of entertainment.”

Beth nodded, suddenly impatient. “So does Sam have a mother?”

“No,” Will replied. “No, he doesn’t. It’s quite an amazing story. He was hatched from an egg.”

“That is amazing. Does he look at all like, I don’t know, a chicken?”

“No, he’s a perfectly normal little boy. Quite blond, though, now that you mention it, a bit chickenlike, isn’t it? So maybe there is a bit of chicken blood somewhere in there. That would explain the egg thing.”

“So, he doesn’t live with you?”

“Well, it’s funny. We don’t actually have any firm custody arrangements—me and the egg, that is—so, for now, Sam stays here about half the time. Usually on weekends. Which is why I made our assignation ”—a sardonic smile—“for a Wednesday. Otherwise I’d have done the proper thing and asked you out for a Saturday night. But Sam will definitely be with me this Saturday.”

“And the rest of the time he lives with a broken egg.”

Will laughed a true, unguarded laugh, his first of the evening. “Well, yes, that’s actually a pretty accurate description.” He bunched up his mouth, a not unattractive gesture. “Shall I put some music on?” Before she could answer, he’d risen and turned his back to her, shuffling through a pile of CDs on the mounted shelves. “Yes, well. Sam’s mother is actually kind of a nutcase . She is, as you’ve probably guessed, my wife.”

“Your wife?” said Beth, in a voice that sounded, to her, like a squeak.

“Yes. I’d like to say ex-wife, but we’re not quite divorced yet. Almost there, though.”

Beth stared at him.

“I know, I know,” he said. “It’s not some line. We’ve been separated for a long time. Since Sam was a baby.”

Then why aren’t you divorced yet, she wanted to ask, but couldn’t bring herself to, for this would imply that she cared—though, of course, why would he have told her all this, if he didn’t want her to care. But then, he hadn’t. He’d said nothing until there was no way for him not to say something.

“Listen,” he was saying now, “let’s stop talking about this. Why don’t you take off your blouse?”

Beth laughed. “What?”

He looked at her intently for a moment, then glanced down at the jewel case in his hands. “Take your blouse off.”

“Um, Will…” She laughed again.

“Beth.” His back was to her once again. She heard the tray of the CD player slide out and watched him slot in a CD, the silver disc shooting bits of light at her.

A quivery heat, pulsating and uncomfortable, was developing between her legs. He turned and looked at her, crossing his arms across his chest. Unsure exactly of what she planned to do, she rose from the futon. There was no reason to obey him. But was there a reason not to? For a moment she looked at him, then—almost to escape the glare of his eyes—she slowly began to untuck the tails of her shirt, which was black and made of a thin, shiny cotton, in the style of a men’s dress shirt. It, too, was new. She unbuttoned the cuffs, the sleeves falling over her hands, then, gaining speed, unbuttoned the mother-of-pearl discs on the front placket. Will held out his hand and, after a minute, Beth—realizing his meaning—handed over the shirt, which he laid over the almost feminine chair, gingerly, taking care not to crease it. She stood in front of him, her freckled breasts propped up by a plain black cotton bra, a demi cup. He hadn’t pressed play on the CD player, she realized, and the apartment felt strangely silent, no street noise creeping in, no sounds from the apartments above or below. He gestured toward her skirt—her favorite, a velveteen A-line, in brownish maroon, that fell just below her knees—with an open palm. But this seemed too much. Her breasts, she knew, were her best feature. Until recently, she’d liked her thighs, which were long and smooth and white, and her narrow knees and flat calves. But at Sadie’s, as the girls dressed before the wedding, she’d become acutely conscious of their flaccidness. Her friends—who had once scorned exercise and, moreover, the conscious pursuit of thinness; who had taken the Women and Body Image ExCo class—had become sleek, muscled creatures. Emily, in particular, once pleasantly curvy, now had the solid, ridged legs of a chorus girl, though, Beth supposed, she was a chorus girl, of sorts.