Joanna Rakoff - A Fortunate Age

“Tal, what—” Sadie began, then stopped herself. Did she really need to ask? When she thought about it, it all made sense. He had always questioned the purpose of everything. She thought back over the years, trying to piece the story together: the ulpan, the retreat, back when she was pregnant with Jack. The note Lil had told them about, saying he’d nearly given up acting. And then mostly silence. Back in college, she thought, he’d railed against his parents’ materialism, their hypocrisy. But they all had, hadn’t they? “We thought,” she said, not knowing where these words would lead. “We thought you were taking a break. From acting. What have—”

“We can talk about it later,” he said. “After.”

“Sadie will have to get home to her children later,” said Tuck, with such venom that the tears she’d been suppressing all afternoon finally rushed into her eyes and down her face. Why did he hate her so?

“Oh my God,” she said, wiping her eyes with a fist. “I can’t believe this. Tuck, don’t do this.”

“What?” said Tuck. “I’m telling the truth.”

“It’s not a big deal,” said Tal. “I’ll give you the sixty-second version, okay?” He glanced in the rearview mirror at Tuck. “I’d been unhappy. I wanted all these things that seemed unattainable, that everyone, my parents, told me I could never have—”

“Fame,” said Tuck

“No,” said Tal. “Not fame .”

“He just wanted to be an actor,” said Sadie loyally, though she wasn’t sure she believed this; there had been something more rapacious in Tal, the thing that had allowed him to succeed where Emily failed.

“Yeh.” Tal shrugged. “And it turned out that I could be. That it was attainable. I’d wanted it for so long, my whole life, and then when I had it, it wasn’t so exciting. You know?”

“Yes,” said Tuck, in a small voice that made Sadie, again, feel sorry for him.

“That’s the rational part,” said Tal, who seemed to be warming to the task of revealing himself. And now, suddenly, she wanted to know, wanted to know everything, every minute he’d spent apart from her. Her mind began racing. Was there a wife somewhere—in Israel? In L.A.?—wearing a wig and a long, heavy skirt? Was there a baby with Tal’s angular face and long arms? And how did he make a living? The Orthodox couldn’t act, could they? Was he Orthodox? What did he mean, the opposite of Lubovitch? Had he just thrown everything away? Oh God, oh God , she thought, I hope not . But then, what difference would it make?

“The irrational part is just that I felt this longing to know ,” Tal was saying.

“To know what?” asked Tuck, leaning forward into the space between the two front seats. “Can I smoke in here?”

“ No ,” said Sadie.

“The prayers that my grandfather knew. Things like that. The truth.”

Ahead of them, on the LIE, traffic had come to a standstill and Sadie groaned.

“Please stop,” she said. She was succumbing, she knew, to temper. As she did more and more these days, though poor Ed bore the brunt of it. “Please just stop talking. Please. I have a headache. I just, I can’t listen anymore.” Her breasts, stuffed inside the wool dress, had turned to rocks. Why had she not simply asked Tal if she could run to the bathroom before they left? The pump, no, was not in her bag, but she could have hand pumped, like the chipper hippies in the Dr. Sears book. “Please,” she said. “Just for a minute.”

Both men wore a similar—and familiar—expression of befuddlement, one she’d seen, occasionally, on Ed’s face lately. Okay, crazy person , they seemed to be saying. But she wasn’t crazy, she was tired, and she didn’t want to hear about Tal’s conversations with God or whatever . This was why she’d cheated on him, why she’d left him, wasn’t it? This hokey earnestness. It was too much. She wanted Tal back the way he was in college, when they’d walked around campus at midnight, the trees a looming canopy above them, and she’d felt so happy and lucky it was all she could do not to hug him with joy, when they were friends, such good friends, and she could talk with him about anything, without fear of judgment, before things had become complicated, before she’d succumbed. She wanted him the way he’d been the summer before Lil’s wedding, when they’d laughed at Dave’s sulks and moods, and spent their evenings drinking wine in one café or another, when he’d been on the verge of breaking through, the two of them giddy with possibility. Was this why she’d fallen, crashingly, in love with him? And had she really left him because she knew him too well, loved him too much, because she’d needed him so terribly? Such an old story. An ancient story. A cliché. Did she love Ed less? Or Michael, whose very name still made her flush with guilt, yes, but also desire? No, probably no. But falling in love at thirty was different, so different, than falling in love at eighteen. It was never the same, was it?

“Please stop,” she said again, almost without thinking, dropping her head into her hands. “Please. I think I’m a little carsick.”

“We’re not getting anywhere anyway,” said Tuck. Off the exit to their right, a neon sign in the shape of a martini blinked erratically. “We could have a drink.” Around them, cars were frantically trying to get across traffic and over to the exit.

To Sadie’s surprise, Tal said, “Sure. Why not,” and scooted the car over a lane, up the exit, and onto some downtown byway that looked as though it had seen better days. Where were they? Babylon? Great Neck? Someplace that had once been a real town, with a barbershop and a grocer and a pharmacy, but was now just a conglomeration of oversized houses on undersized plots serviced by a series of malls and car dealerships. Tal coasted the car down the street until they arrived at the tall sign that had beckoned to Tuck, parking in the decrepit lot beneath it, weeds sprouting from cracks in the gray, pebbly asphalt.

The bar, too, had seen better days. But it was cool and dark, its wood-paneled walls covered with aged photos of smiling celebrities, its chairs filled with florid-faced old men. “Jameson with a soda back,” Tuck told the bartender, a young man with slick, dark hair and the sort of mustache that had gone out of style thirty years prior. “Same,” said Tal.

“Will you, um—” Sadie asked. “Can you—” Tal nodded.

“Okay,” she said nervously. “Could you order me a cup of decaf, if they have it? I’m going to run to the bathroom.”

When she emerged—mildly less uncomfortable—Tuck and Tal had taken their drinks to a small Formica table lit by the red glare of a Budweiser sign and adorned with a set of Heineken coasters. Tuck held a short, unfiltered cigarette between his fingers. “Isn’t that illegal?” Sadie asked, nodding at it.

Tuck shrugged and lit a match. “I thought outside of the city you could smoke.”

“No. Statewide ban.”

“That guy’s smoking.” At a table in the corner, an ancient man sat hunched over a hand-rolled cigarette and a beer.

“Oh.” Sadie looked balefully at her white mug of coffee, which smelled burned, then turned her attention to the faux-wood bowl of miniature pretzels, but could not bring herself to eat even one. They should not be here. They should have waited, patiently, in the punishing traffic, or figured out a new route along the city streets. Now she knew, in a flash, they would never make it to the funeral. Tuck would order scotch after scotch, growing more and more belligerent, until they had to carry him home.

“The truth ,” he said now to Tal. “Don’t you feel weird saying that?”