A Certain Age (40 page)

what she had been sent to hell for? Age seven, killing snails in the garden? Giving too little to a homeless person on the street? Perhaps it was not sending a note to a child in the hospital—or taking sex without love, out of her own fears and insecurities. And if there was no such thing as hell and there really was reincarnation, she would be destined to make—not the same mistakes, but similar ones, like a grade repeated in school, for though she wanted to, she could not understand the point of the lesson.

It was the end of the twentieth century, which was to say anyone robbing widows and orphans could find some justification for their actions. Maybe things had never been any different. Yet one would have expected more signs of evolution in the human race by now.
She
was an orphan, after all—an orphan who had never truly honored her mother and father. But that was not her fault either. Her parents had never existed. They had as little reality as she herself. They were simply a compendium of what was expected, a cocktail composed of what they were supposed to want. Had she really and truly committed a crime other than that of taking a child to the beach when her mother had told her not to go? But to come to such a conclusion was a Pyrrhic victory.

Still she walked, exhausted, on the empty streets. It dawned on her that Darryl was probably the one person she could have asked for money, but the realization had come too late; by now they would have left. In any event, his loyalty, his friendship, had proved more destructive than had he been her enemy.

A woman wearing what appeared to be a fluffy pink bunny suit—more suitable for a two-year-old on Halloween than a forty-year-old woman—was smiling a few feet away. Perhaps she recognized someone behind her; but when Florence turned around she saw the block was empty. Puzzled, Florence studied her more closely. She had a pixie cut of artificially red hair, black tights and pink high-heeled boots. She always wondered what people like that must have seen when they looked at themselves in the mirror. "How are you?" At first Florence didn't have a clue who she was. "Aren't you freezing, honey?" the woman said. "Where's your coat?"

"Excuse me. Do I know you?" It was coming back to her—the woman she had met at Natalie's, who charged two hundred dollars an hour to wave lavender scent in front of rich ladies' noses. But she kept the blank look on her face, as if she didn't remember.

"I'm the aromatherapist. Honey, are you all right? Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Is there something I can do for you? You look so sad . . ."

Natalie's aromatherapist! Had it come to this? Even now she could not reach toward the proferred hand. No better than hanging out with a waitress, or needing an exercise trainer for a friend, or accepting a construction worker as a boyfriend—like some desperate, aging pop star. She opened her handbag and brushed past the woman without speaking, pretending she didn't hear because she was preoccupied with looking for something in her purse.

There was half an old Hershey bar with almonds in the bottom, along with lint and scraps of paper. She tossed the detritus to the ground. A little brush, bristles entwined with blond hairs. A wrapped mint-flavored toothpick. An empty glass vial with green top that once contained crack. A business card from someone she couldn't remember meeting, in film production. In the side pocket she felt a lump. She unzipped it to find a yellow silk bag, Chinese, stuffed with tissue paper. Inside were the woman's valuable jewels, a brooch, a handful of rings, a glittering stone come loose from its mooring.

Peeling the silver foil from the chocolate, she gnawed at the cindery edges as she began to walk into the darkening gloom, toward the mouth of the Hudson and the Statue of Liberty.

Rite

She has been pursuing that accelerating demon, that overgrown T-shirt stenciled illusion, that toothpick whirling on a lost horizon.

He's endowed—brutality,

slim heels—if he entered he'd win, but they won't let him in.

Even on board he sprints around deck so swiftly the captain

can't take hold and quits,

sobbing, stalled. Oh we're all after him— men, women, any age—all

we want is a coupling, to feel

something inalienable—an eyelash, not much. Anyhow it's her turn to drop out

and she hasn't caught up. "Hurry," he says, then

with glottal stop: "It's dime, it's dime." "Oh shut up," she'd reply, if she could, to that bee-thrum

drilled into her ears and brain, her crumbling

constitution: "It's dime, it's dime."

Oh dear tour group it's time to say good-bye to the isle of weeping

beech and dangling moon, firefly with zoom

lens, shingled cottage, the frail, illuminated

room we have visited for so brief a lovely time.

—Phyllis Janowitz

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tama Janowtiz is
the author of six books. Her writing has appeared in numerous periodicals, including
Travel and Leisure,
the
New York Times Sunday Magazine, Vogue, Bon Appétit, The New Yorker,
and
Elle.
She has attended Barnard College, Columbia, Hollins, Yale, and most recently, Union Temple Preschool. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her brutish, handsome husband, malevolent, adorable child, and two six-pound, partially hairless dogs, one of whom is crazy.