Tapestry of Fortunes A Novel - By Elizabeth Berg Page 0,64
get closer, what worries me is what could not happen, how we could both be standing with popped balloons in our hands, planning our exit strategy fifteen minutes after we’ve said hello. Or the other possibility: that one will be disappointed, the other starry-eyed.
The idea of all of this has been so thrilling. But what can happen that will live up to the anticipation? How can we keep from being dismayed by the ways in which we’ve changed? He has told me how he looks, and I know he knows I’m no longer the black-haired girl he once knew. Still, I suspect that in each of our brains, in each of our minds’ eyes, is firmly fixed an image from so long ago that it will be hard to reconcile the differences. Even someone who drives past a house she used to live in and finds it changed feels it in the gut.
A couple of years ago, I came across a set of photos a girlfriend had taken of me to give to the guy du jour. This was a very handsome guy aptly named Ken, if you consider the plastic perfection of Barbie’s boyfriend of the same name. My Ken was going to law school and in possession of some impressive musical talent. He could play guitar like Leo Kottke, he could play piano and the ukulele, and he wrote songs. Unfortunately, that was about it. He was not good in conversation; he had no sense of irony or playfulness; he favored minute planning over spontaneity; he was, as my friend Donna put it, how gray got born. When I defended him to her, she said, “Oh, you just can’t admit you fell for a piece of ass.”
It was true, as it happened, but until I was willing to admit that to myself, I was trying to win him. To that end, Donna took some flattering pictures of me. I thought it was really generous of her, given her opinion of the intended recipient. I gave him the photos, about which he said, “Nice,” and then he tossed them into a drawer with his condoms, which were red, which always used to make me kind of upset.
Last year, I found the negatives for those photos and had prints made, and when I picked them up, the images shocked me. I had been along for the ride, getting older, the changes had come gradually, but when I saw those pictures of me then versus me now, it was devastating. I thought of all I had lost and all that I had yet to lose, I thought of how youth is wasted on the young, and then I came to my senses and sent a donation to Doctors Without Borders and took a walk. But. Dennis will have a photo experience, so to speak, and so will I. And although how we look doesn’t matter nearly so much as what we are, what we are is old enough that there are probably not all that many good years left. So what’s the point?
“Nurse or purse, that’s all a guy would want us for now,” I overheard a woman about my age telling another. I suppose she might be right. And yet some stubborn part of me thinks otherwise. Don’t we all want company in some form, are we not attracted to the idea of a body beside us in a thunderstorm, or another voice to help decide on dinner, to share astonishment at the latest political buffoonery or appreciation for the lush sets on Downton Abbey? Are we not, at our most basic, social animals, people who need other people, whether we want to or not?
But I have that now, in the company of these women I live with. It’s true that we don’t give each other the intimacy of a romantic love, and I guess if I’m honest I have to admit I’m not past wanting that. I guess I want to be like the old couples I sometimes see whose love still burns so bright it makes me stop and stare.
I watch the bowling balls rolling down the alley and the pins flying up in the air and think about how one of the hardest things in life is fessing up to what you want most, because if you do that, and you don’t get it, it’s so hard to be without it. I wonder if most people fully invest in what they care about most. There is a