5. We're Just Going To Die
When Tom rang my bell, I was ready. No doubts. I needed no transition. But Tom needed time to catch up. He looked at my outfit, the sort of thing a woman wears when she’s been married 30 years.
“I tried to pick the best looking nightshirt I could find,” I apologized. “These old turquoise sweats don’t help, do they?”
Tom continued staring.
“I wasn’t sure how to dress for the occasion. I doubt if this puts you in the mood.”
“Well, it does lack something,” he said. Then he paused.
“Hello, Linda,” he said gravely, while giving me a slow hug.
“Hi.”
I understood Tom’s demeanor. “Is this the mother of my child?” he probably wondered. Is this the father of my child? I asked myself.
“OK are you ready?” I pushed again, leery of too many such pauses.
“Let’s sit down and talk. I need to unwind.”
“Want some tea?” I finally asked, ever the lousy host.
He sat down at the marble café table in my white kitchen, the overhead light barely doing its job. Ironic. Here I was calling on Tom to help me navigate a bumpy, messy and admittedly ill-conceived life transition. It was only now, when he asked for tea, that I realized that whatever Tom’s rhythm was, it would have to be mine. I was way ahead of him. I had to remind myself that he had simply jumped onto my bandwagon the day before. He hadn’t just seen the salmon swimming upstream in Alaska, my shorthand metaphor for all that brought me to this juncture. For him, this wasn’t yet much more than a momentary hiatus from work on his PhD, his professional preoccupation with the trails over the Sierras.
“You’ve really thought about this?” Tom asked.
“Yes, as much as you can think. Ultimately it’s taking a leap and not thinking, isn’t it?”
“I haven’t told Barbara.”
“No?”
“I feel like I have her blanket permission. I don’t want to upset her with the details.”
“You know this could complicate things in ways none of us can imagine,” I said. “We don’t ever know what’s going to happen,” Tom said. “But you need to understand that my first commitment is to my work and then to Barbara. It’s all up in the air right now and I can’t stop to think about any of it. And I’m applying to jobs out of state. How did I get mixed up in all this? Why don’t I just wait till I’m a professor and find a nubile 25 year old?”
“Because you’ve been postponing all your life.”
Like I was one to talk.
“I do want to be involved.”
“How?”
“I can’t promise you support right now. But, well, I’d like to help pay for college.”
“College? Are you kidding? That’s twenty years from now.”
“I have to get my life together. Start earning a real salary. Everything else will have to follow.”
“Well, how about Lamaze classes and baby sitting for starters?”
“I’d like to.”
“Are you sure you are ready to do this?” I asked.
“It’s a big step.”
“Look, it probably won’t work. It takes months and at my age, longer. And anyway, you know what?”
“What?”
“We’re just going to die.”