— How are you doing this? Getting younger? I asked, alarmed.
— Well, thank you, my mother said. — I am using a new moisture cream.
She was scaring me. There was my father, walking around the room, also clocking in at about fifty, his eyes aglow, his stride buoyant, almost a swagger. He had never walked like this at fifty.
I sat down and rubbed my forehead.
— What do you want to do now? my father asked.
I had not thought this far ahead. Here were my parents, sitting on our old lucky couch, and, I thought, veering crazily from decade to decade, while the children ran around the living room and my husband lounged on a chair. It was too much, really.
— I’m making everyone dinner! I said.
The refrigerator was stuffed with foods I had made in preparation. I wanted to make up for thirty years of not having cooked for them. They wandered in.
— What are we having? my father asked.
— Beef Wellington, leek and pumpkin soup, raspberry granita for dessert.
— Is it low-sodium? my father asked.
— Uh, no, I said.
— Oh, he said. — Well, so what! Let’s just celebrate.
They sat patiently and watched as I heated, stirred, poured, etc. The children set the table. The window flushed with the artificial heat. I wanted them to like what I had prepared for them. They waited patiently for their first course. I set the table with the sterling silverware we had received for our wedding. I understood, just then, that I had never set a table with it because no event had seemed important enough.
AFTER ABOUT AN HOUR, THEY WERE READY TO GO BACK TO THE hotel. I drove, hands trembling, afraid to leave them there for the night. They seemed reluctant for me to depart, too. My mother had a sudden, anxious craving for potato chips. My father wanted dental floss. They flipped through the hotel directory, wondering where to get these items. I went to the gift shop downstairs and purchased the chips and dental floss, and then they wanted to shoo me out. They were ready to enjoy their hotel room. I hugged them, feeling their slim shoulders under my hands, and left.
I wondered what age they would wake up in the morning. Sixty? Thirty? One hundred? Did they remember what it was to be forty, fifty? Their faces at that age were a blur to me. What did they look like before I was born?
My car passed the restaurants, businesses, movie theaters of our city. The developments carved out of pine forests, the office buildings, shadowed in the darkness, seemed like they could, at any moment, be stomped by a giant. Our home, bathed in little spotlights, clung to its patch of lawn.
Was this all a joke? What was it?
Hurtling into the house, I found my husband calmly reading a copy of Consumer Reports.
— What are you reading about? I asked.
— There are good deals on lawn mowers, he said.
He sat on the couch, innocent and precious, eating some Cheez-Its, but I was now curdling with dissatisfaction and wanted to pick a fight. In his zeal to find a decent lawn mower, he had forgotten to check the dryer, which had wet clothes in it. Now the clothes smelled like wet dogs.
— I asked you to do this small thing! I burst out.
— No, you didn’t, he said. — Why do I have to be the one to check the dryer?
— Why not you?
— You’re being self-centered.
— No, you.
We sunk into one of those silent, glum familial nights in which every glass we rinsed seemed about to break, every lampshade unfortunate, our breath too loud and alien. We climbed into bed and I felt my husband’s leg, a fine, muscular leg, a leg I knew very well, wrapped around mine, then rubbing against mine, and despite ourselves, our obstinate rightness, of course, all that followed.
This was all I had hoped for, all I thought I would be denied.
Afterward, I lay in bed and wondered how long any of us had to live.
THE NEXT MORNING, I SLID DOWN THE CHUTE OF OUR NORMAL activities — dropping the children off at school, washing the breakfast dishes. I took the day off from work and went to check in on my parents. My breath paused as their hotel room door opened. There they were, in their bright tourist garb, ready for their tour.
— Show us around, my father said.
I drove them around to the important sights in town. This was the museum where I was employed. This was the hospital where the children were born. This was the soccer field where our daughter won an award for best goalie. Here was the elementary school track where our son was first in a race in third grade. Here was the house of Benny Rosenthal, who had the birthday party everyone talked about for weeks, the party to which both children got an invitation. Here was the bar where my husband and I went the first night both our children were off on sleepovers. I went through sites of hope and triumph. Then I wanted to keep going. Here was the Olive Garden where my husband and I ate numerous garlic knots and had a stupid fight over the amount of time each was able to get to the gym. Here was the spot where our son, racing to keep up with Tony Orillo, tripped over a tree root and broke his leg. Here was the spot when that devil girl, Marie Swanson, said to our daughter, “Don’t wear that headband. You copied me.” Here was the corner where I learned the news that the Iraq war had started, the gas station where I got the call that my best friend had died in Tallahassee, the street where I realized that my hip was forever screwed, the field in which we lost our cat. Here was the place where I got the phone call in which you said you were going to visit me.
When we got through that, I just showed them foliage I liked. Here was an important bush. In the winter, it was dotted with pink camellias like knotted satin bows. Here was a sewage drain where orange leaves got clogged but looked pretty in the fall. Here was a stretch of pine trees that had not been knocked down for a housing development.
I kept driving and driving. I had pretty much covered the city, the joys, the defeats, the memorable foliage, and I wondered what was next.
— I think that’s enough, my father said.
— What do you mean, that’s enough? I asked.
— I’ve had it. We should go home.
— What do you mean, you’ve had it? Are you bored?
— What else are we supposed to see?
I didn’t know how to answer that. Everything. I wanted them to see everything they had missed, the events, the recitals, the graduations, all. If they could turn back decades, why couldn’t any of us? But they were not asking to turn back decades. They had probably digested the meal I had made for them, perhaps the last one I would make for them on this soil.
— I want you to want to see more, I said, softly.
I could not help this; I just said it. There was a lot I wanted to say. My father coughed, annoyed.
— I can’t, my father said.
I looked back, and they were themselves again; my father, white hair wispy on his head, beige patches on his forehead, my mother, shoulders stooped, steel hair curled in a perm. They were old, and I was too, frankly, and I was ashamed because I had wanted this — just to see something different.
I drove the car, my palms damp, tight on the wheel. I wanted to apologize, for something — the crooked stubbornness of my existence — but I didn’t.
— Take us back to the hotel, my father said. I drove them back to their hotel, taking the long way, and walked them up to their room. They would be here for about fourteen more hours.