Harriet is floundering. She’s in her early forties, her kids have gone to college, her marriage feels empty, her cable TV cooking show has lost its sense of inspiration, and she longs to leave the West Coast for New York. Then one day she meets Lydia, a gorgeous woman in her late twenties. Lydia reminds her so much of herself a decade or so past, and her husband, who hardly likes anything, likes Lydia as well. It slowly dawns on Harriet that Lydia could be the answer to everything that’s ailing her. All she needs to do is turn Lydia into “the new me.”
Praise for The New Me:

“…Mary Marcus expertly illuminates the world of a lived marriage in this inspired novel…A real treat.”

“…highy entertaining…astute observations on aging, marriage, and parenthood…”

an excerpt from

The New Me

by Mary Marcus

Copyright © 2014 by Mary Marcus and published here with her permission

One

Last night I walked by my old house, something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. Since I’m the same old me, driving the same old beat-up Volvo, I parked a few blocks away and set out on foot. I told myself it was just the house I wanted to see, not really them. Next week is Easter and Passover. Days are longer now. When flowers bloom all year long, it’s hard to appreciate spring. But spring it is. LA style. The air smelled incredibly sweet.

Everything about my old house looked the same. It’s a comfortable Spanish two-story built in the twenties, one that’s much nicer inside than out. What’s weird is there was not a single potted plant outside the front door. I was counting on pots of daffodils and hyacinths, maybe some kind of spring wreath on the front door. Lights were on in the living room; one of the narrow front windows was cracked open.

When I lived there I used to crack a window to let out the cooking odors, particularly if I was cooking fish. I’m not nearly so fussy in these past months that I’ve been living alone. My standards were higher with Jules and the boys around. I used to be quite neat. Now days can go by where I don’t make the bed; I never would have done that before.

I stood for a bit just taking in the place, feeling apprehensive. What if they saw me? Parked there in the driveway, just like always, was Jules’ shiny Beemer with a metal chock wedged up against the back wheel so Jules won’t have to go nuts thinking it might roll down the driveway and go crashing into the house across the way. When I was in the kitchen cooking or upstairs late at night, waiting for him to arrive, the sound of the chock scraping across concrete would alert me he was home.

Seeing the Beemer parked there was like seeing Jules himself. Being Jules, he doesn’t believe in burglar alarms—according to him, just another thing to break—so I knew it was safe to run my fingers across its shiny white body, so smooth and impeccably clean. Like Jules’ body in fact. Touching it gave me a rush. Lydia’s car was also on the street—only Jules gets the small driveway—it gave me less of a shock to see her car, perhaps because it’s not as familiar. She’s still driving her bright blue Mazda with a Write Like A Girl sticker on the back bumper. Its roof was splattered with those berries—we used to call them shitting berries—back when the boys lived there with me, when we were a family. I could never figure out why they didn’t fall on Jules’ Beemer. Because Lydia is much like I am in certain ways, she probably just nonchalantly brushes them off with a paper towel. Completely opposite of the fit Jules would have if one single berry dared to land on his roof.

As I stood in the dark on the sidewalk, I still must have been in denial. But I inched in a little bit closer, because I was hoping for a glimpse of my cat Pasha. Like housecats everywhere, he spends most of his waking time staring out of windows. And indeed before long I saw a curved form on the window ledge, and in the shadowy gloom, the green glow of Pasha’s eyes. He was perched there looking out, taking everything in, but not making a sound. I felt like meowing as I used to and announcing, “Pasha! Pasha it’s me, I’m home!” I wondered too, if it was really Pasha, but of course it had to be. I would have heard if he had died.

Pasha is perfectly beautiful with gorgeous markings. When I lived there he was fat. As I stood there in the dark, I forgave him all his catty sins and fervently wished I had taken him with me. By the time I moved out, Jules and Lydia were so eager to be alone and rid of me they would have given me Pasha. It’s too late, of course, to get him back. Unless I sneak in there and steal him, which is a thought, but by now Jules must have changed the locks. That would have been the first thing he did once they got me out of the house.

Pasha was never that affectionate but he was my son Dan’s cat, then my cat, and if not the flesh of my flesh than certainly the fur of my flesh. If I was away from the house too long, particularly in those last years, I’d think, I can’t keep poor Pasha waiting another minute; he’ll miss me too much. Does Pasha miss me now? Right away he angled in on Lydia, circling her ankles, marking her with his handsome head. She seemed part of us right away.

“Lifeboat material!” Jules proclaimed after the first time she came to our house for dinner. And as I mentioned, faithless Pasha flirted with her shamelessly. “Lifeboat material” is Jules’ highest compliment . . . it means someone possesses a skill that would be useful to Jules in a life or death situation. Most of us dream of desert islands and what we’ll take there. But Jules sees only disaster, hence the lifeboat. With my former husband it is black or white, life or death. Never paradise with a favorite book or piece of music. Just life and death.

Pasha arched his back. There’s a pose in yoga called the cat stretch and that’s exactly what he’s doing. Lydia has a naturally flexible spine; I noticed that right away at yoga class, though a rank beginner she was excellent at the cat stretch. Funny, because Lydia and Pasha are quite a bit alike. Just like Lydia and I are alike in certain ways. Both are graceful, decorative, radiate an air of content, and are sneaky. Just for the record, I’m graceful and I’m decorative, certainly when I was her age, but never content. Not when I lived there, never for long. And admittedly, I’m sneaky too. Which is why, of course, I was on the outside looking in and not inside where they are.

Odd, how sound travels. I thought I heard cutlery against plates. Which meant that Jules and Lydia were having dinner . . . to my taste, a little late. But I never said Lydia was exactly like me, just enough like me to make us all feel completely comfortable. Jules most of all. Pasha was no longer at the front window. No doubt, he was heading for the warmer dining room and the smell of food. I was hungry suddenly, wondering what they were having. I rarely eat dinner these days, just a bite of this or that, a banana and a couple of crackers, some store-bought soup. I always fantasized about getting to eat exactly what I want when I want to, but missing a meal is never as satisfying as the fantasy that you get to. You find that out rather quickly.

I wonder if Lydia shares food with Pasha. When she makes herself a tuna sandwich, does she section off a chunk without mayonnaise for his little blue and white dish? And shrimp? Jules and Pasha both adore shrimp. Or does Lydia just throw him the scraps as most people do? Dear Pasha! When the twins grew up, I used to sing the same little songs to him I once sang to my boys when they were toddlers in their tub. I do hope Lydia shares food with him. She probably did in the beginning to copy me. If you do something for a little while, often it becomes a habit. Indeed, I was aware from the beginning how Lydia studied the way I did things. At first, I thought, out of deep sympathy and liking for me, the older, more sophisticated woman. And then after she fell in love with Jules, she studied me—she naturally would do better! Maybe in a certain sense I was her role model for a time, her mentor. Me, a role model? Then again, from what she told me, I was much better than her own mother. I found her a husband, didn’t I?

At first it was enough for me to stand on the sidewalk in front of the living room windows. But soon curiosity got the upper hand. Growing bolder, I quietly approached the dining room windows at the side of the house. Now, I was no longer a casual nobody walking down the street, but something of a Peeping Tom. In my case, a Peeping Harriet. It’s not the house after all, or Pasha, it’s them I wanted to see!

Just as this came to me, I was enveloped in a velvety silence. Like a good sauce, silence has a certain texture. Not a single car engine could be heard, so rare in LA, particularly in the densely populated communities near the beach. Now another chill passed down my spine . . . goose bumps on my arms. I heard a laugh I have no trouble recognizing as Lydia’s. Voice recognition must be like taste recognition. You hear the sound; you put the taste on your tongue. That’s lemon, that’s Lydia. There were months when I knew her well, and yes, I studied her, just as she studied me. I would know her laugh anywhere. All this time with Jules and she can still laugh? Lydia is lifeboat material. I moved quickly along the side of the house toward that low, delightful laugh. Standing a little away, I stared in the window. I don’t consciously want her to see me, but I couldn’t seem to budge; in fact, I stood like an old tree with roots digging deep into the ground. At that moment, it would have taken a bolt of lightning to budge me.

There she was! Young, gorgeous, raven-haired Lydia. She was sitting at my old kitchen table with her smartphone up to her ear, the characteristic pose of the twenty-first century. Will art reflecting our time capture this? I’m old enough to remember not only the good old days when the landline reigned supreme, but a time when people walking down the street having one-way conversations were headed for a rendezvous with the nut house, not a dinner date.

Even from out there, I could see the place was a mess. My old dining table was a junk heap. When I lived there, a platter with seasonal fruit adorned the center. I never let newspapers or books pile up. Most of the time, there were flowers. And not just any old flowers, ones carefully bought at the farmers’ market from the organic vendor who didn’t use sprays. I liked the look of a single flower stem pushed into an amber vanilla bottle; these I scattered about. I had so many of them left over from all my baking. If I didn’t have flowers, I stuck my homegrown herbs in. What a hausfrau I was. A real balabusta, Jules would laughingly call me. Every lifeboat needs a balabusta.

There was a movie playing on the flat screen mounted on the wall. Lydia’s wide, luminous eyes were following its every move—like my boys, she’s a genius at multi-tasking. Talk, watch, eat, stare at the computer screen, and up at the television screen, probably she’s got a remote in hand too. Lydia’s a screenwriter, so she was no doubt watching carefully as she ate takeout from different containers. The cutlery sound on plates must have been coming from another house, or I was having an auditory hallucination, or perhaps a little reunion with the old sounds that used to emanate from in there. Memories linger, why not sounds and smells too?

And where was Jules? Still working late? Even with this young hot thing waiting for him at home? And when he did come home, was it takeout (Lydia would say takeaway) now that the balabusta had been thrown off the lifeboat?

My eyes traveled to the corner of the kitchen near the red wall phone and the gleaming Sub-Zero. I knew it was there, but I couldn’t really make out the big color glossy of him. He took it himself, standing by the Harley with helmet in hand, a roguish smile on his handsome face. So Jules! Yes, he must have ridden the Harley to work. That’s why the Beemer was parked in the driveway; he’d taken the darker, far more dangerous sibling to work. Jules’ Harley, purchased in my last year there, was the penultimate irreconcilable difference. As much as he loved the Harley, that’s how much I hated the shiny gleaming thing and refused to ever ride on it. Lydia, being young and bold and all too eager to put her arms around my husband and to press her high, firm breasts onto him, went riding right away. She even got herself a leather jacket. Or perhaps it was Jules who got her the leather jacket, now that I think of it. He offered to buy me one, “go to Beverly Hills, woman, and charge it to me!” Jules almost never said, “charge it to me!” But I didn’t take him up on his offer.

“I’m not the black leather jacket type,” I told him.

Did I hear the roar of a distant motorcycle coming my way? Or was it just the engine of my memory? I didn’t want to be caught there, what would I say? I’m a ghost?

If he caught me, he probably wouldn’t be surprised. I can hear him say, “You can go home, now, Harriet, end of conversation!”

In fact, that’s exactly what I decided to do, go home, such as it was. But as I walked the familiar suburban streets that suddenly didn’t feel so familiar anymore, I couldn’t find my car. I guess I was in more or less a state of shock seeing the old place, and seeing her in my place. And like it or not, I found myself back with Jules in our New York apartment in the old, old days.

“Harriet, I’ve told you a million times, there’s nothing I can do about it! End of conversation!”

“Who are you, the speech police? Now you can talk. Now you can’t talk?”

“Lower your voice, the neighbors can hear you. You’ll wake up the babies.”

“I will not wake up the babies, they sleep like rocks!”

“A man can’t get any peace and quiet in his own home. I had a horrible day. I’m sick of New York. I’m sick of shooting commercials. I’m sick of the subway. If I get this movie, we’re moving to California.”


“If we move to California, I’ll lose all my customers.”


“You’ll make new ones.”


“What if I don’t? What if I’m just stuck with the babies in the I Love Lucy hotel waiting for you to come home—I don’t even have a driver’s license anymore.”

“Harriet, for the love of God, give it a rest. What happened to you? You used to be so skinny and sweet?”

“Are you calling me fat?”


“Who said anything about fat?”


“You said I used to be so skinny and sweet!”

“You were.”


“And what am I now, fat and mean?”


“Lower your voice!”


“My voice is low; I’m just expressing my consternation.”


“You’re so negative!”


“No, I’m not, I’m worried!”


“Shooting movies would be so much better than shooting commercials. Don’t you want me to be happy?”

“Of course I want you to be happy.”


“Good, that means we have to stick together.”

And stick together we did. For years and years. Even if Jules didn’t exactly fulfill his adhesive part of the bargain and was away on location when the boys took their first steps; when their bottom teeth grew in on the same night. When Dan got beaten up at school when he was five, it was my friend Lisa and I who taught him how to punch back.

“Where’s Daddy?” the boys cried. “How come he’s never home?”

Just when we were giving up hope, Jules would magically appear. There he would be with a big smile on his face, carrying tricycles for the boys, then bicycles. He taught each one to drive the stick shift, just like he taught me when we finally gave up our apartment in New York and moved to California the year the boys turned six.

Two

I can’t seem to come back to the present. It’s probably all the endless things I must do in the next days before I board the plane for New York. My mind wants to escape. It seems vitally important to know exactly when this whole thing started. First it was Lydia and me. Then it became Lydia and me and Jules. Two’s company and three’s a crowd, especially when there are urges. It didn’t take long for Mother Nature to bring Lydia and Jules together and push me away. Have I mentioned I was the one who found Lydia? I was the one who brought the biological time bomb into the house. Lydia made no secret of the fact that she was longing for a house and a husband and a baby. When I brought her home that first day, she even looked around and said, “You’ve got it all! Everything I’d sell my soul for. I bet your husband is even handsome!”

Ticktock, ticktock, the time bomb was ticking away as relentlessly as the big kitchen clock that hung on the wall.

With the brilliant clarity of hindsight, I can see the fulcrum point of change occurred not after my boys went to college but right before. I was slicing onions when I started to cry on the set of my show, Healthy Harriet, which tapes at six in the morning, two days a week.

“My boys are leaving home. Empty-nest soup is what I’ll be making for Jules and me. Where did the time go? How many meals have I made in eighteen years? I tried to calculate the other day.”

I remember putting down my chopping blade. Mine was a middling- to low-rated show. I was a worker, not a star, and certainly not one with an attitude. I make healthy food, which in case anyone is interested, is not sexy and no one cares about it. I cracked a few jokes; I smiled for the camera. I was lucky I had a show at all and didn’t have to do catering. It was totally unlike me to start to cry in the middle of chopping. And I mean sobbing, with tears running down my cheeks. A startled technician ran to the set with a tissue. Then I composed myself. Which, being me, was much easier to do than showing my real feelings. I even managed to smile.

“Forget the empty nest; let’s try this another way…”

So we did another take and I made no mention of the empty nest.

“The secret to a good vegetarian soup is caramelized onion. . . .” I went about browning some onions in the trusty frying pan I used on the set.

“I use olive oil with just a speck of butter—a speck is quite healthy actually, lots of vitamin E.”

The camera came in close on me and the onions sizzling nicely in the pan.

“How long does it take to caramelize onions? Well I think of it as a road trip with young children: When are we going to get there? Are they brown yet?”

This produced a few twitters of laughter from the crew; they were generally very kind to me when I tried to work in a little humor.

Later at home, I was still convulsed with sadness. I felt like someone had socked me in the solar plexus. Not that I had time to be sad. There was so much to do before all of us boarded the plane the next day. We were going to drop Sam first in New York, and stay overnight at Jules’ mother’s apartment in the city. Then Jules and I were flying with Dan to Chicago the day after that. It was the first time in years and years our family was actually going to do something together away from home.

I ran up the stairs, stood in front of Sam’s door, and knocked.

“Sam?”

Inside, I knew, my beautiful Sam would be lying in his bed, zonked out at eleven something in the morning with his earphones on. Nothing much packed or organized, every single solitary thing left to the last moment.

I shrieked, “Sammy, open up or you’re busted!”

“Okay, you can come in.”

I entered and looked around. The suitcases weren’t even opened. I wasn’t going to get in a fight with Sam on his last offcial day at home. Besides, I rarely fought with Sam. He was too charming and manipulative to fight with me.

“Your hair looks nice, Ma.”

I smiled, though I knew I was getting played. “You’re only being sweet because you’re high. It’s eleven in the morning and you’re in bed high. This does not bode well for your future!”

Sam sat up and pulled at the top sheet to cover himself. He already had a few hairs on his chest. Sam with hair on his chest did not seem possible. But I had felt this way when those first dark, wispy hairs began to sprout on both twins’ upper lips, and now I was used to their shaving. God protect us, the old saying goes, from what we can grow used to.

“It’s your fault. I’m rebelling against all your healthy food and clean living!”

“You’re nowhere near packed. Do you want me to help you? If you don’t want me, Valentina would be happy to. Just get up and get dressed for heaven’s sake!”

Sam plugged his earphones back in. “Cool it, Ma. It’s all good. It’s all okay.”

“But you’ve got so much to do.”

“End of conversation, Harriet!”

Sam said this laughingly, because “end of conversation” was a joke around our house. We were always imitating Jules behind his back, my boys and I.

I turned, left his room, and went to stand in front of Dan’s door.

Dan was born first, and on the surface he’s a lot less of a mess than his twin brother. His room was spectacularly tidy for a teenager, or anybody of any age for that matter. I knew when Dan let me in I’d see everything was organized and ready to go. Dan couldn’t wait to get out of the house. And though it pains me to admit this, I was even a little glad at the prospect myself.

I could smell the cigarette smoke from where I stood. I imagined Dan walking to the window where the screen was open and putting out his lit cigarette. Whenever I walked by the side of the house under his window, it smelled like a humidor.

“Okay, you can come in now.”

I walked in and smiled, trying to be casual and friendly. I was always trying to be casual and friendly with Dan, and we both knew I was faking it. What I really wanted to do was throw a fit and scream, “What the fuck happened to us, Dan? What the fuck happened to you? You’re a stuffed shirt with no sense of humor and I wasn’t such a horrible mother for you to hate me so much.”

I looked around at his room, which already seemed to be empty. Everything was packed, tidied, and in order. It reminded me of a smoking room at a hotel.

“I know you don’t need help packing. But is there anything else I can do?”

“No. End of conversation!”

There was no laugh in his voice. Dan was seriously channeling Jules. Perhaps even beating out his father’s cold, confident way of cutting off any possible flow of information or feeling—never mind love.

And also channeling that what-the-fuck look I knew so well.

“I’m your mom; I’m just trying to get close before you go.”

Dan looked me squarely in the face, some- thing he wasn’t in the habit of doing.

“You might as well know this now. If I don’t like it at school, I’m enlisting. Understand? With my grades, I can go in as an officer.”

This was the first I’d heard of this wretched idea. Though the minute he told me, I could actually see it in my mind’s eye: my stern, unhappy boy—the more sensitive of the twins, who used to write the most beautiful poetry when he was a little boy—morph into some four-star general with medals on his chest. Yes, I could even hear him calling out, “Atten-tun!”

I suppose my face must have shown my devastation. Dan surprised me by acting like a human being for the first time in months.

“I didn’t say I was doing it. I’m just saying it’s a possibility.”

For the second time that day I started to cry. Me, who had not shed a tear in years. “Killing people is the end of possibility. And the food sucks.”

“Just fucking leave me alone and leave my room!”

I turned and left. What I wanted to do was flip him off. What I ended up doing was saluting him. Then I closed the door and stood cringing in the doorway.

Downstairs, Valentina, my darling housekeeper, was sedulously mincing ginger with the small Global, her favorite knife. She was doing such a good job; the ginger was almost in paste form.

Valentina is young, not quite thirty, and beautiful, with thick dark hair and gorgeous eyes. She came to me when she was eighteen, just after Angel was born.

When Jules’ mother came for her yearly visit to the coast to see Jules and his half brother Freeman, she would invariably chide me with, “What were thinking when you hired her, Harriet?”

“Jules isn’t interested in Valentina, Gloria.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know.”

“But how can you be sure?”

Jules always hid his toothbrush before Valentina arrived. He didn’t like her changing “our bed” and made me swear I would do it myself. He didn’t want her folding his socks, his underwear, and he didn’t want her going in his closet. Though she never said so, I thought the feeling was mutual: natural born enemies.

“That’s some of the best looking minced ginger I’ve ever seen,” I told her truthfully. “You could be a professional sous-chef.”

I sat down at the kitchen table.

“Sam’s stoned and Dan’s threatening to enlist in the military.”

“They trying to be men, Harriet.”

I felt like crying again. In fact, I put my head down on the table.

“I lost them both somewhere between kindergarten and condoms. Sam worries me a lot less than Dan even though he seems to be high all the time, at least he appears to be having fun.”

“I know what you mean.”

Paranoid suddenly, I picked my head up. “Do you know something I don’t know?”

Valentina shook her head. “What you need me to do?”

“Sit down,” I told her, “talk to me. Have a cup of tea. We haven’t visited in a while. How’s Angel? How’s Jesus?”

Valentina settled herself in.

“Jesus has work this week.”

Valentina hastily crossed herself and began to finger the crucifix around her neck. My high school years were spent at a convent so I did the same, minus the cross fondling, thinking that apart from the pedophile priests and the no birth control, how enormously comforting it must be to be Catholic. The rosaries, the beautiful cathedrals, the release of confession.

“Angel didn’t do so good in summer school. They putting him back.”

I felt a huge rush of guilt wrap its way around my ribcage, where the empty-nest pain now seemed to have taken up permanent residence.

My sons had money behind them, health care, and were headed to nationally ranked colleges. What was going to happen to Angel in free clinics and the shitty schools I never had to subject the twins to?

Just then the wall phone rang.

It was Jules. He sounded desperately rushed— ‘Only five seconds’ before he had to go back on the set. The gist of it was, though he felt really terrible, and was thinking he better go back to therapy because he didn’t know how he got in these situations, disappointing people, he couldn’t take the boys to school tomorrow. Something about the airdate, something about the network, something about the director who was thirteen years old and was a total fucking moron—on a good day! I’d heard this tale in many different variations over the years and I was always surprised anew, as though it was the first time it had happened.

Apparently Jules had just phoned the boys himself. Dan first, because everybody always puts Dan first. If you don’t, he accuses you of never putting him first.

“Did you tell Gloria?”

“No,” Jules panted, “I don’t have time. The director’s coming in five minutes. You’ll have to tell her for me.”

“So I have to stay with your mother myself?”

“Harriet, I’ll make it up to you, I swear it!”

I banged down the phone. Furious. How many times did I bang the phone down furious? I never learned to step away. To take a deep breath or to ask myself what’s really going on here? I was furious. And I stayed furious. And furious people don’t do anything but rage, get over it, and then rage again.

Valentina was looking at me pityingly.

“They moved the airdate on the show Jules is shooting. He’s not coming with us.”

“They never do what they say.”

“Jesus does what you say. He respects you.”

“I train him to be scared, Harriet. You can’t train Jules. He too stubborn. He won’t listen. He only thinking about Jules.”

Still livid, I closed my eyes, “I just don’t get it….”

“Harriet,” Valentina whispered.

“Yes, Valentina?”

“He only thinking about Jules.”

Later that day, I knocked at Dan’s door again. “Come in,” he called out, as if it was a stranger outside, not me.

“So I guess you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“About your Dad?”

“It wasn’t news to me. You always act surprised. I never thought Dad was going to come to begin with. He always craps out at the last moment.”

“You and I will take Sam to school. We’ll stay at Gloria’s. Then I’ll take you to school. We’ll have a great time! There’s eight zillion restaurants we can go to.”

“I’m going by myself. I planned to go by myself all along. I knew he wouldn’t come.”

Just then Dan’s phone went off. Dan’s signal was a dirge, depressing and atonal, as if he was never going to hear good news. Where on earth had he located such a horrible ringtone?

“Hey, Dad.”

My son listened, then nodded. I saw him smile for the first time in a long time.

“That’s great! Hey thanks, Pop.”

Dan tapped his phone. Then Sam burst in.

“Did Dad call you?”

“Affirmative.”

I looked from one happy son to the other.

“What’s going on?”

“You two are staying put. The old man is going to give us the money he would have spent on meals and plane fare.”

I had wondered about the plane fare. Jules must have paid the extra bucks for flight insurance knowing he would probably crap out. I was fuming, thinking that he had better not have cancelled my seat.

“I’m still coming!” I told my boys.

Sam came over and put his arm around me. The left one with the giant tattoo of a German Shepherd head on his outer, very pumped up bicep.

“Why a German Shepherd?” I had asked him when he showed the horrible thing to me—and went on to tell me he had put it on his/ our charge card.

“I always wanted a dog.”

Another thing to feel guilty about.

“Mom, if Dad isn’t coming, neither are you. We need the extra money. You know how cheap Jules is.”

I looked from one beaming countenance to the other. I guess I knew then they didn’t really care if I came to college to set up their rooms. Sure, they would put up with me, but it’s freedom they wanted, freedom of course with their bills paid. I could relate to that, isn’t that what we all want, after all?

“Last chance!” I was teasing, of course, but some of me was serious. “So I guess you’d rather have the money, huh?”

Sam nodded sheepishly. Dan to his credit managed to look sheepish as well. I could tell they were excited beneath their kind show of good manners. Because it was written all over both my boys’ faces: Fucking A, baby! Free at last!

“Okay, okay!” I said finally. “So be it!”

The next day, Dan and I drove Sam to the airport. We parked the car in the lot, and as I was preparing to take him in, Sam hugged me and told me he loved me, but not to come in. Dan helped him with his luggage and I stayed in the car lot with the empty-nest pain throbbing in my gut.

The day after that, Dan ordered a taxi to pick him up at home because he refused to go through the guilt trip (his choice of words) I was sure to lay on him at the airport. He didn’t hug me or tell me that he loved me. He just looked miserable. But I could see it had something to do with the trouble he was having making this big separation. I helped him schlep the suitcases to the taxi. Only then, before he slipped in the door, did he turn, meet my eyes for a moment, and give me a little wave of the hand. It wasn’t a cheerful windshield wiper wave of the boy who wanted his freedom—but a sad little flutter of his long, thin fingers, like a bird struggling off the ground, unable to fly.

After he left, I spent hours walking from room to room in my house, looking around. I took down all the schedules and crap that was cluttering the Sub-Zero and gave it a good polish. How grown up it looked, how sophisticated. I even took down all the tiny little magnets I liked so much and that Jules hated and was always having a fit about.

“What if one falls in our food? What if Pasha eats one? I want you to buy magnets the size of silver dollars. Someone could die from one of these!”

Life and death. Black and white. At five, instead of starting dinner for me and the boys, I slung my mat bag over my shoulder and headed to yoga. I could even walk because I had the time. On the walk home, I picked up some take-out sushi, since I assumed Jules would be eating on the set with the ‘thirteen-year-old moron director’ and the rest of the motley crew who never went home to dinner either.

I felt wonderfully wicked eating the sushi in front of the TV set all by myself, with just Pasha to share with. I was pleased I had the foresight to ask for plenty of extra ginger, which I didn’t have to share with the cat. Eating in front of the TV is strictly taboo at my house. As is order-in pizza, order-in anything for that matter, as well as junk food, soda, the list goes on and on. No wonder the boys were happy to be away from me! I was such a rigid stick-in-the-mud.

In their earlier years, before all the big, ugly reports came out about MacDonald’s and Burger King and the quality of the meat they were purveying, I used to take them once a month to the fast food restaurant of their choice and even join them. Now, of course, since they are skinny and healthy and don’t have any fillings, I feel justified in my actions and glad that I stopped giving in even once a month.

The trumpets for Masterpiece Theatre were doing their thing when I heard the scrape of Jules’ chock outside the window sometime later.

Pasha thumped down and went to greet Jules as he always did.

“Hi,” I called out, “you’re home early.”

“We wrapped early.”

“Oh,” I said.

“You eat?”

“Yes.”

“Anything left for me?”

“I had takeout.”

“Takeout? Standards are slipping around here.”

I didn’t say anything. I continued to stare at the screen. For the record, I didn’t have the remotest idea what I was watching. I was so overwhelmed with all sorts of new sensations—sensations that seemed to be streaming through me as though I was in a sci-fi movie with colorful lights and laser beams.

“Harriet? What’s going on?”

Again I didn’t answer. Or jump to attention (my default position) to show Jules that the balabusta was in the lifeboat, ready to do her thing. And, in fact, in one part of my mind, I could already see the little ad hoc feast I would assemble in less than half an hour, as I had hundreds of times before. Tomatoes were still in season and we had them. There were onions, garlic, and mushrooms, and wedges of two kinds of grating cheese. Not to mention jars of my own preserved peppers ready to dump over rice or pasta. And fresh herbs to garnish with. Of course there was plenty of frozen stuff ready to nuke. But Jules didn’t like nuked food.

Still, I didn’t budge.

I was exquisitely aware of the tremendous amount of effort it took not to jump up and head for the kitchen, peppy as Pavlov’s dog. I sat perfectly still, taking the smallest little breaths in and out of my nose, only just enough to get air in. By now the special effects had worn off. And I was starting to feel like a political prisoner hiding in a closet, terrified that any second the authorities would discover I was here and haul me away.

I mention terror because it was a form of fear. And not of Jules, really—I guess I thought I knew Jules inside and out, like that prisoner knows the inside of the closet—I was afraid of myself and what was happening to me. This new-found stubbornness was alien; I had no idea these feelings resided in me. Feelings that didn’t make me comfortable at all.

Nevertheless, I continued to sit there watching the screen. The room was quiet, just the British-y voices of the show hosts on the screen. It was unheard of for me to be watching TV at such an hour. Or any hour, come to that. I was always trying to go to sleep early so I could wake up at 4:00 for my show.

Jules sat down. He put his arm around me and started kissing my neck. Soon I was underneath him on the living room couch.

“We haven’t fucked on the couch in eighteen years.” He said this aloud, in the kind of voice you use when you know no one can overhear. “In fact, I think we should have another kid. It’s lonely around here; I feel old!”