Joanna Rakoff - A Fortunate Age

“How are you ?” she asked. She did not look beautiful, she knew. Her hair was frizzy and her face splotchy from the cold.

“I’m well,” he told her, with great force, as though he meant it, as though he wasn’t simply making chatter. “I am. Well. I’m doing this play at Circle in the Square. So I’ll be around for a while. Which is great. I’ve been doing all this crap. And you know, I’ve been in Israel.”

“I heard,” she said. “You were doing a film?”

“A couple. Then I stayed on and did an ulpan.”

“You learned Hebrew?” she asked, though of course she knew what an ulpan was. “How was it? Were you there in the fall? Wasn’t it dangerous?”

He smiled, hugely, and shook his head. “No, it was completely fine. I think the newspapers give you a skewed impression.” The familiar slope of his nose, his straight black brows, struck her now as strangely delicate, as young . But then, he was, compared with Michael, or Ed. “It was amazing. You really get why people believe. Jerusalem, it’s like”—he held up his hands, fingers wide—“you feel fully human. You just want to lick the ground.” Her skin tingled at this description. She’d had much the same experience, at sixteen, when she’d spent a summer there. She hadn’t thought of that trip in years. “There’s so much. I got back to L.A. and it was just—I couldn’t cope. It’s like all the clichés are true. Everyone is empty, shallow, and stupid.”

“ Really? ” Ed had said much the same thing to her, repeatedly.

“No,” Tal conceded. “It’s just all anyone talks about is business. Everyone’s trying to make it . It gets kind of sad.” Lately, Sadie had been feeling this way about New York. But she just nodded. “So, I’ll be here through March. Maybe we could get coffee sometime. If you have time. It’s really good to see you.”

“Sure,” she said. “Are you still at your place on Union?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m excited to be back. I met this guy in Jerusalem who’s from South Williamsburg. Isn’t that weird? He’s, like, Satmer, though he kind of doesn’t fit in.” Sadie nodded. Tal had always collected people like this: rebels, outcasts, loners. She supposed he felt like one himself, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him. “Anyway, he’s going to take me all around there. It’s ridiculous that it’s like ten blocks away, but I’ve never been.”

“Me either,” said Sadie. “That’s cool. What play are you doing?” Her heart had started thudding, though, thudding so heavily that her throat seemed to vibrate, turning Tal’s voice into a weird, wordless buzz. She was hot. Too hot. Oh God , she thought. She knew what this meant. Please no , she thought. I am not , she told herself sternly, as she had at lunch, I am not going to throw up .

“—Daniel Sullivan, you know, who directed Proof , so…”

“Wow,” she whispered. Sweat was beginning to bead her forehead.

“How are you?” asked Tal, blinking behind his small, square glasses. He looked, she saw, different, though she couldn’t say how. “I feel like I’ve become this L.A. guy. I’m just like ‘my play blah blah blah and don’t you want to hear more about me.’” Scratching his head, he seemed to notice the protesters for the first time. “Weird,” he said, with a frown. “Anyway, how are you?”

Before she could answer, her phone began to bleat. “Sorry,” she said, unsnapping the front pocket of her bag. Her phone, the beast, was flashing red, its bleat now squawking. “Lil,” she said, trying to smile, though her bile was rising. “I’m sure she’s late.”

She snapped open the silver clamshell. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey is for horses,” came Ed’s low voice.

“ Hey .”

“How’s my baby?” he asked, and her heart leapt—how did he know?—then, of course, she realized he was talking about her .

“I’m well,” she said breathlessly, clumsily trying to unbutton her coat. “I’m quite well.”

But she wasn’t, she wasn’t at all. Another wave of nausea was rolling over her, saliva filling her mouth, her limbs turning liquid. Her stomach flipped over and seemed to throb in on itself, as though, well, as though something was moving inside her. Something is moving , she thought, and an image of the baby came to her—some crossbreed of the aliens on the signs across the street and the fresh pink newborns she’d seen in Brooklyn. Sadie could see her—a girl, it was definitely a girl—curled up in a blue pool, a round blue pool suspended inside her. Another wave arrived and she knew, without a doubt, that she was going to throw up. Coffee , she thought. Without thinking, she ran down the block, her gorge rising sickly, ducked between two cars, and vomited heavily onto the pavement. “Oh my God,” she said, her voice raw, rasping. “Oh my God.” To her right was a shiny black SUV, its tire splattered with her lunch, looking much as it had on the plate. She sat on its front fender, praying she wouldn’t set off the alarm. “Sadie,” she heard Tal shout, through a fog. “Sadie?” Ed called, his voice tinny and distant.

Morning sickness, Lil had told her, was once taken as a sign of a pregnancy’s strength: if you had it, you knew you wouldn’t lose the baby. Her doctor, however, had already told her this wasn’t true. “Old wives’ tale,” she’d scoffed. In Sadie’s right hand, her phone sat limply, moist from sweat, Ed’s voice still emanating faintly from the earpiece. She wiped her mouth with the back of her left hand and fumbled in her old, battered bag for a bottle of water. “Sadie,” called Ed, louder now. “Are you there?” She sighed heavily and shook her head, her curls falling back into place on her collar.

“I’m here,” she said. “I’m here.” Her stomach twisted again, a jerk like a kick, her throat convulsing. The baby , she thought, the baby is already doing what babies do. She’s asking for her father.

For a year now, Emily Kaplan and Curtis Lang had been having an affair. Of course, it wasn’t actually an affair per se since Curtis and his legal wife, Amy, had been separated for more than a year. But Emily, who liked to make everything a big joke, had taken to calling herself “the other woman” and, lately, “Mrs. Robinson.” Amy, apparently, had made some derogatory comment about Emily’s age when Curtis mentioned that he was seeing someone new, and Curtis had repeated this comment to Emily (unwisely, her friends thought), as evidence of Amy’s hypocrisy—she considered herself such a radical, and yet she wasn’t above common pettiness. “She’s ridiculous,” he said, smiling with just his upper lip. If she’s so ridiculous, Emily thought sourly, then why haven’t you divorced her yet?

A year earlier—even a few months earlier—such thoughts wouldn’t have occurred to her. Things had changed for Emily. When she’d met Curtis, she’d been a working actress—with roles, back-to-back, for years—on the brink, she was sure, of breaking through into some sort of success. The play she’d made a splash in the previous year, at a little theater on East Fourth Street, was still headed for Broadway and the director had sworn, and continued to swear as the transfer was endlessly delayed, that he was taking the original cast with him. “This is as much about you as it is about us,” he’d told them, gesturing to the playwright. And it was true. The critics had raved about the “energetic young cast” and Ben Brantley had singled out Emily herself, as “an irresistible redhead with a deadly combination of spot-on comic timing and screen-siren looks.” New York and the Voice had pictured her in a flattering close-up. But none of that mattered in the end. The delays were over, at last, the final backers in place—and they’d decided to recast with “box-office draws.” Emily’s role, the second lead, had gone to a well-known sitcom actress, a redhead like Emily, of anorexic proportions.