29 (28 page)

I have to say that I loved how all of us looked tonight. We
all wore outfits from Lucy’s summer collections. You know, she now also does a line for the over-fifty set. If you had told me one year ago that my Lucy would have two successful clothing lines . . . Well, I would have believed you. And best of all, she gets 75 percent of everything the stores sell!

Did I mention the name of Lucy’s other line?

Ellie.
Just, simply,
Ellie.

I’m so proud of Lucy. She never fails to make my heart sing.

Every now and then Lucy and I will be sitting in my apartment, eating our secret meal—though these days we’re off the cookie-dough ice cream and on to rocky road—and one of us will bring up something from that fateful day. It always ends with one of us regretting not buying the one thing I wanted.

We never got the underwear.

So what happened to Zachary? He went on, like I said he would. He’s dating a very nice girl now, and I’m proud to say that I’m the one who set them up. She’s Elaine Shipley’s granddaughter. I happened to run into Elaine at the pedicurist one day and she was mentioning how good-natured and attractive her granddaughter Claire was, but all these men seemed to just take advantage. I hadn’t seen a picture of Claire; I didn’t need to. I just saw in Elaine’s eyes what I had in my eyes for Lucy. A lot of younger folks think their grandparents just hear that two people are single so we set them up. Hey, kids, the joke’s on you. We’ve got more wisdom than that.

The other week I had Lucy and Johnny and Zachary and Claire over for dinner—I like to give them all a home-cooked meal sometimes. Zachary walked over to the piano, where he saw the picture of Lucy and Ellie Michele. There was a lot of
talking going on around the table. Johnny and Claire were in a heated discussion over something; I don’t know, I wasn’t really listening. My attention had turned to Zachary as he took the picture in his hand and looked at it for a moment. It was just few moments that he had that picture in his hand. He gave a little smile, and then he put it back and looked at the other pictures.

I know he still thinks of her. I think of her, too.

Sometimes he’ll ask me, “By the way, how is Ellie doing?”

“She’s very happy,” I tell him.

You know, life is funny.

The truth is this: in my life, I did the best I could. Are there regrets? Sure, there’re always regrets, but there’re a lot of truly wonderful things that outweigh the regrets.

Those are the things I like to think about now.

If you don’t believe me, look back to when you first met me. Look at all the things I regretted not doing. If you look back at that one day I got to have, you’ll see what I did. I did everything I always wanted to do.

I made a difference in Lucy’s work.

I got to experience Lucy’s world.

I got to learn new things, to see the world in a way I hadn’t seen it in a very long time.

I got to remember what it’s like to feel physically beautiful again.

I got to fall in love one more time, and experience the bliss and heartbreak that come with it.

And if there’s anything I learned from that day it’s that I can still do all of those things, even at seventy-six.

Am I still jealous of Lucy?

In some ways I’ll always be a little envious, but only because of the era in which Lucy gets to experience her age. That’s the one thing I’ll never be able to experience, no matter what age my body looks. My mind is a product of my generation. In my entire day of being twenty-nine, that’s the one thing that never changed. My body was twenty-nine, but other than that, I was still the same person. Lucy’s mind belongs to her generation. That will never change. So really, if I think about it, I’m not jealous. I’m just a proud grandmother.

But through it all, I still had one question in my mind, something I needed to find out. And I did.

I loved Howard Jerome.

I loved him with all my heart.

It’s a nice thing to finally be able to say this without a doubt in the world.

No marriage is perfect, just like no vacation is perfect. Sometimes it rains, sometimes your hotel room faces the parking lot. When you look back on it, though, when you really start to think about it, those are the things that don’t amount to much in the big picture.

So tonight, after the dinner, and after the speeches, Frida and Lucy and Barbara suddenly appeared with a cake for me. It was such a nice surprise, and so unexpected. The cake was from The Swiss Pastry Shop, of course. This time, though, there was only one candle on the cake, which was provided by the restaurant. It wasn’t that Barbara didn’t want to get seventy-six candles. She did, she actually bought them and intended to put all seventy-six on my cake. There was just so much going on what with the engagement party and getting herself and Larry dressed and out
of the house that she simply forgot the candles and left them at home. All of my girlfriends and I had a big laugh about it as we welcomed Barbara to the menopause club.

“I’d let you know where the meetings take place,” I joked as we all broke into hysterics, “but I can’t remember where they are.”

“I hope they’re in the freezer section at Whole Foods!” Barbara joked back as she fanned away yet another hot flash.

As they placed the cake in front of me and everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” I closed my eyes.

“Make a wish!” Frida called out.

“NO!” Lucy shouted. No one understood why, of course, except the two of us. I glanced at her and gave her a sign that she shouldn’t worry. As if a wish on a candle could turn a person’s life back forty-six years.

And as I closed my eyes again, I wished. I wished that the rest of my days will be lived in serenity. I wished the same for those I love.

And that is exactly what I wish for you.

My dear. May you have everything you want in your life. If you should get it all, however, and you still don’t like the outcome, don’t take it as failure. Take it as something to learn from and move on. Believe me, no matter how old you may be, whether you’re twenty-nine or seventy-six, no matter how many years you’ve got left, trust someone who had to learn it the hard way: you’ve still got time to change.

And that, my friend, is my lesson for today.

acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to thank the amazing seventy-something women I interviewed for this book. Your generosity, honesty, and frankness were more than I could ever have asked for. I hope I’ve done you proud in creating a character that captures the best of who you are.

To Trish Todd, whose spot-on edits made me see the light. Thank you so much for all you’ve done, and to everyone at Touchstone/Fireside for all your hard work, for which I am forever grateful. I also want to send my heartfelt thanks to Trish Grader, for bringing me into the fold.

An eternal thank-you to Brian DeFiore, who through the years has gone beyond just being my agent to become my shrink, a shoulder to lean on, chief movie critic, and all-around partner in crime. And thanks of course to Kate Garrick, Melissa Moy, and Adam Schear, who are always so kind and never seem exasperated with all my queries.

To one of my closest friends and my lawyer, Eric Brooks, for threatening to beat up the other kids if they tried to steal my lunch money. Metaphorically, of course.

To my Hollywood agent, Brian Lipson, whom I enjoy
chit-chatting with more than many of my girlfriends. And when it comes to business, you do your job so fabulously well.

As always, I bear a debt of gratitude to Susan Swimmer, Lesley Jane Seymour, Erin Moore, and Allison Dickens. Without you, oh, heavens, I don’t know where I’d be.

I send lots of love to the Berg-Goldsteins, who from the start have treated me like one of their own, and only cringed slightly when I reminded you I might one day be your matriarch.

To my big brothers, David and Michael, and my sister-in-law, Samantha, because when I’m seventy-five, you’ll still be referring to me as “Baby Deans.” To my cousin Michele, who, like me, knows the importance of taking a day. And to my niece Noa, because I am already so proud of who you are.

And finally and most especially to my father, Barry Halpern, and my husband, Jonathan Goldstein, who share the most valuable trait of all. As long as I live, I will never know two men with more love in their hearts for the women in their lives.

TOUCHSTONE

Reading Group Guide

29

Haunted by the death of her husband and the unresolved problems of their marriage, Ellie Jerome makes a wish on her seventy-fifth birthday to be twenty-nine again, just for one day. When she wakes up the next morning and finds that her wish has come true, it turns her whole world upside down. She sets out to have a day without responsibilities or worries in the company of her twenty-five-year-old granddaughter Lucy, never imagining the consequences of her wish.

When Ellie’s daughter, Barbara, and best friend, Frida, find that she has disappeared without explanation, they form an unlikely team determined to find out what is going on. Over the course of one unusual day, the women each come to terms with what it means to be family, and discover that it is never too late to start your life over.

Q
UESTIONS &
T
OPICS FOR
D
ISCUSSION

1. Inspired by the number of candles on her birthday cake, Ellie wishes to be twenty-nine again for a day. What age would you choose to return to and why?

2. Ellie believes that if she can have just one day of her youth back, she can erase her regrets. Do you think it’s possible to make up for such regrets in a day? Do you think Ellie really believes this?

3. Barbara and Frida spend a disastrous day wandering around Philadelphia, trying to find the missing Ellie. When they are reunited with Ellie and Lucy, Lucy tells them that they need to get their own lives. Is it as simple as that? In what ways has Ellie encouraged their dependency on her?

4. Which of the three women do you believe has the biggest changes to make: Barbara, giving up her quest for Ellie’s approval; Ellie, learning to treat Barbara like an adult and not a child; or Frida, learning to assert herself?

5. Lucy is thrilled at the chance to spend a day with her newly young grandmother. Think about your own grandmother—can you imagine doing the same with her? What do you think she would have on her “to do” list?

6. Ellie writes off many of her regrets by saying that was just what you did in her day. Is this an accurate portrayal of her generation, or is she dodging responsibility for her actions?

7. Frida and Ellie have very different outlooks on life and aging. Ellie wants to go back and redo her youth, while Frida believes that “what’s done is done” (p. 186). Have their different marriages influenced their outlooks, or is it a difference in personality? Which do you agree with?

8. Thinking about her marriage to Howard, Ellie ponders which is better: to marry for love or to marry for security. Is this question a product of her upbringing in the 1950s, or is it still relevant for women today?

9. Ellie cares greatly about presentation and image, and has had some cosmetic surgery done. What are your feelings on plastic/cosmetic surgery? Do you plan to take advantage of such procedures as you age?

10. As Ellie’s day comes to a close, she fantasizes about staying young and running away with Zachary, but in the end she chooses her old life.
Did she make the right decision? What would you have done in her place?

11. After finding the cards and notes that Howard saved over the years, Ellie comes to the conclusion that he was her soulmate, despite all his flaws. Is she just resigning herself to the reality of the past, or is the proof of his love for her really enough to make up for his affairs?

12. Ellie notes that being seventy-five gets her special treatment, and that this makes her feel old. Is this truly a bad thing? How does our society treat the elderly, and what needs to change?

A CONVERSATION WITH ADENA HALPERN

What inspired you to write
29
?

I am fascinated by Ellie’s generation of women. They are the women of my mother’s generation who came of age in the 1950s. If they weren’t married by 22, they were considered old maids and they had three choices for an occupation: teacher, nurse, or secretary. As they tell me, “We listened to our mothers and we respected their choices for us.” To me, these women led such glamorous lives. Most of them (those who I knew) didn’t work, they drove fancy cars, and they got their hair done—a lot. This was who I wanted to be when I grew up. It took growing up, however, to realize that what seemed so idyllic on the outside was not always so rosy. Sure, some of them enjoyed their lives, but as I found out, many of them have unfulfilled dreams that leave them with regrets. These are the women who missed out by one generation on all the fruits of the women’s lib movement. It was their story I wanted to tell. What would you do if you could live for one day and were able to live those dreams? Would you do it?

The idea of going back (or forward) in our lives is a popular Hollywood theme
(Big, 13 Going on 30, Freaky Friday,
and
Vice Versa,
for example). Did any of these films influence the development of the novel?