Happy Birthday: A Novel

Chapter 11

Jack called Valerie the morning after their dinner at April’s and asked her if she would like to see a movie with him on New Year’s Eve. He wasn’t feeling up to going out again, he admitted, but he had a full-scale movie theater in his apartment, and had an assortment of films currently in the theaters that he thought she might like to see. It sounded like fun to her, and she had nothing else to do. April would be working that night, as she always did, and Valerie didn’t like going out on New Year’s Eve. Staying in and watching a movie with Jack sounded like the perfect way to spend the evening. And he was looking forward to it too. He said he’d have food brought in for them. Something a little more elaborate than April’s this time, just to make the evening more festive. But he told Valerie to relax and come in jeans. They didn’t need to show off, they could just spend a quiet night at home. She loved the idea. She didn’t say anything to April about her plans for that night. It wasn’t a big deal.

When Valerie showed up at his apartment, the nurse he still had to assist him let her in. Jack was on his crutches in the kitchen, organizing dinner, and doing surprisingly well getting around, considering what he’d been through.

He looked up, happy to see her. He had decided to cook for her himself. He had ordered caviar, oysters, and cracked crab, he was making pasta to go with it, and had made a huge salad, which was sitting in a bowl. It looked like a real feast as he poured her a flute of Cristal champagne and handed it to her. He looked pale but well.

“Well, you’ve been busy,” Valerie said, smiling at him. “What can I do to help?” It looked like he’d already done everything. The food was already on platters.

“Your daughter says you’re a menace in the kitchen,” he teased her, and she laughed. “Maybe you’d better just sit down.” He was hobbling around, but managing well despite the crutches, and once in a while, he hopped from place to place on his good leg to take the pressure off the bad one.

“Why don’t you let me do something, at least hand you things if you don’t trust me? You’re going to hurt yourself.” Valerie looked worried about him, and he grinned. He was used to taking care of others, not having women take care of him, but he liked her motherly look of concern, which was new to him.

“I’m fine,” he reassured her. “You can set the table if you want.”

“Ah, now that’s something I’m good at,” she said confidently, as he pointed to a cupboard where the placemats and china were kept. He had assorted colors and motifs, and she picked gray linen mats, and napkins with silver threads in them, and put them on the round glass table at the far end of the kitchen, in front of the view of Central Park. It was a huge room, with a fabulous view, even better than hers. He was a few blocks north of where she lived, but on a much higher floor. He could see east and west to both rivers, and all across Central Park. It was a perfect bachelor pad. He walked her into a wood-paneled office a few minutes later, after she set the table, to show her shelves of trophies and awards covering one wall. He looked like a kid when he proudly pointed at them, and she was bowled over by how many there were.

“The rest of them are in the safe,” he said vaguely, as she looked at them with interest and read what they were for. They covered some of the high points of his career and he assured her there were many more, with a childlike grin. It was kind of a “Look, Ma! See what I did!” She found it both impressive and endearing. She realized that was who he was, a man of major accomplishments, with a boyish heart, and she liked that about him.

“You’re a very important man,” she said, as she turned to smile at him. There was an innocence about him that touched her, even though he was bragging and they both knew it.

“Yes, I am.” He grinned, looking boyish and happy with himself. “But so are you, Ms. Wyatt. You’re as important as I am.”

Their budding friendship was an even match in many ways. He had always gone out with women who were impressed with who he was, but had accomplished nothing much themselves. They were too young to have done anything yet, except in some cases model. That was the problem with going out with very young women. They didn’t provide much of a challenge or bring anything to the table except their looks and their bodies. Valerie was far more interesting, and he didn’t mind the ten-year gap in their age. He didn’t feel as though she were any older, and she didn’t look it. They looked roughly the same age. He wouldn’t have admitted it to her, but he had had his eyes done and got Botox shots too. Maintaining his youthful looks was an important part not only of his career as a sportscaster but of his dating life too. It was one thing to be older than the girls he went out with, but he didn’t want to look it. Or not too old anyway.

He walked Valerie back to the kitchen then, and she finished setting the table. She put silver candlesticks on it, and lit the candles, and selected plates with a wide silver band. Everything he had was elegant but masculine, and of the best quality that was made. While going through the cupboard, she had noticed that his candlesticks and flatware were from Cartier, and the plates were from Tiffany and had been made for him in Paris and had his name on the underside. He was a man who liked expensive things and the best of what life had to offer, and he had style and taste. He had come a long way from his early days as a football player, and had acquired a patina of sophistication, but he still had a natural simple side to him too. It was what women loved about him. He was very smooth but still real.

He hobbled over on his crutches and checked out the table, and nodded with approval. “You set a lovely table. Not everyone can say that Valerie Wyatt set their dinner table. I’m honored,” he said, and she laughed and took another sip of the champagne. She was enjoying her evening with him, and he looked happy to be with her, and very much at ease.

She took the platters he had filled and set them around the table, and a few minutes later he turned down the lights and put on some music, and they sat down. The nurse had disappeared as soon as Valerie arrived, and she realized that she felt completely comfortable with him, which was surprising since they barely knew each other. He was a very pleasant man, and an interesting person of many contrasts. Success hadn’t spoiled him. If anything, it had widened his horizons, and opened his eyes to the finer things in life. He enjoyed what wealth could give him, but he cared about people too. And he talked a lot about his son, who was in college. It was obvious that he was crazy about him, and he said he spent time with him whenever he could.

They talked about art during dinner. He had a good eye for that too, and she had noticed an impressive Diebenkorn painting when she walked in, which she knew was worth a fortune. There were two Ellsworth Kellys in the kitchen, which added color to the room. One was a deep slash of blue, and there was a red one next to it. She liked them both. They chatted easily as they ate dinner. It was a perfect New Year’s Eve for two friends. It was easy more than romantic, which she liked. She had the feeling he was trying to get to know her, not seduce her, which appealed to her. She knew he could have all the women he wanted and didn’t need to add her to the collection, nor would she have wanted to be one of his flock of “girls.”

The food he had set out was delicious, and the pasta he had made was surprisingly good. He had even made the salad dressing himself from scratch. They ate the caviar and oysters, and Valerie helped herself to some of the crab. And then he served her some of the pasta. It was hard to believe that after what they’d both been through recently, they were relaxing in his kitchen now, enjoying the minor luxuries and indulgences of life.

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” he commented. “Ten days ago I was getting shot in the leg by a sniper, and now here we are, as though nothing ever happened, eating oysters and pasta and talking about life.” She glanced over at his crutches as he said it and raised an eyebrow. Getting shot didn’t seem like “nothing” to her. “People have an amazing capacity to bounce back from the worst disasters and tragedies. One minute everything is a shambles, and then it all seems normal again,” he said, looking relaxed. None of the trauma he’d been through showed in his eyes as he smiled.

“I can’t say I feel entirely normal,” Valerie confessed, looking at him in the candlelight. “I’ve had nightmares every night, and I got off very lucky.” They both thought of the assistants and colleagues they had lost, the eleven who had died. And all of them had been traumatized in a major way, including him, whether he acknowledged it or not.

“We were both lucky,” Jack said gently. She was impressed that he felt that way. And their friendship had resulted from that single horrifying event. She still remembered him helping the women out of the building. The sounds and smells of that lobby still haunted her and maybe always would. It was hard to erase it from her mind, although she knew that in time it would fade. But for her, it hadn’t yet. And probably not for him either in spite of what he said. He was just happy to be alive, regardless of the pain in his leg.

He told her funny stories about his days in football then, to distract her. He could see in her eyes that she was still pained by the memories of that terrifying day. At least for him, he had no memories from the time he had been shot. After that everything was a blank. Valerie knew there had been talk of his receiving an award for heroism. The mayor had called him personally to thank him several days before, and Valerie had heard about it at the network too.

He talked about his marriage then, the things he regretted, the things he still missed about it, the moments he had loved. He said that the high point of his life had been when his son, Greg, was born. It touched her to hear that it wasn’t winning the Super Bowl or being inducted into the Hall of Fame. It was when his only child had come into the world. It said something about him that she liked.

“I feel that way about April too.” It would have been the perfect time to tell him that her daughter was having a baby, but she didn’t. Talking about it made her feel old. It was bad enough being sixty and single. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she was going to be a grandmother, or even admit it to herself. She hadn’t made her peace with it yet. Pat seemed more relaxed about it, but he was happily married and a man. And he was undisturbed about his age. Jack and Valerie had that in common, the fact that they were both struggling to accept how old they were and what it meant in their current lives. And both of them worked and lived in a culture based on youth. It wasn’t easy getting older surrounded by people half their age who were itching to step into their shoes, and waiting for them to slip in some way. Valerie was constantly aware of it in her work, and Jack was too. They had more similar experiences, far more than she’d ever had with Pat, or even more recent men in her life. And Jack had nothing in common with the girls he dated. They were just more trophies on his wall. There was rarely one he could even talk to. His only bond with them was sex. And what would happen when that went downhill? He worried about that now.

“My age didn’t use to bother me,” he admitted to her over ice cream he scooped into crystal bowls and set down on the table for them, after she helped him clear the remains of their dinner. “I never thought about it. I was always the youngest guy in the room. And then suddenly one day I realized I wasn’t. All of a sudden, I was the oldest guy in the room, and I was trying to convince myself it couldn’t happen to me. Now all of a sudden I’m fifty. Fifty! And I’m competing on screen, and at the network, and in the bedroom with guys twenty years younger than I am, or half my age. It doesn’t matter that I was a star quarterback, or I have a room full of trophies, or I look good for my age. I still am what I am, and they know it, and so do I. It’s pretty scary, Valerie, don’t you think?” She was smiling at him somewhat ruefully, as they ate their ice cream. It was the most honest he had ever been with anyone about how he felt about it.

“To tell you the truth, Jack, these days fifty sounds pretty goddamn good to me.” As she said it, he laughed. She was candid with him too.

“I guess it depends on your perspective,” he said. It was relaxing and pleasant being with her. He didn’t have to work as hard as he did with younger women. He wasn’t trying to impress her. They could eat in his kitchen in jeans, and speak the truth. She was as successful as he was, or more so, and faced the same problems every day. In some ways, it was a little strange for him being with a woman as important as he was, but there was an equality to it that he liked and had never encountered before, nor sought out. He didn’t have the feeling she was older than he was. He felt like they were equals of the same age. They looked it, and both of them seemed youthful and looked at things in similar ways. The same things were important to them. They loved their children. They had even made some of the same mistakes, in their desperation to get ahead and establish who they were when they were younger. And without even really meaning to, they had become superstars when just being successful and good at what they did would have been enough. Instead, they had overshot the mark by quite a lot. Success was a faucet that was hard to limit or turn off, and so was fame.

“You’re a much bigger star than I am,” Valerie commented, without sounding bothered about it. In some ways she liked it, but Jack denied it vehemently.

“That’s not true. There are plenty of people who don’t know who I am,” he insisted. “You’re a household word. You’re synonymous with elegance and lifestyle in every way. I’m about football and nothing else.”

“Should we argue maybe about who’s the most famous?” she suggested, and then giggled. She sounded like a kid when she did. He was having fun with her. It was the nicest New Year’s Eve he’d had in years.

She mentioned to him too the recent news she’d heard at the network, that he was due to be given a citation for bravery by the mayor. And as soon as she said it, he looked embarrassed and brushed it off, saying that the police department and their SWAT teams deserved it, and he didn’t.

After they’d finished eating, Valerie put the dishes in the sink. She offered to put them in the dishwasher, but he said that someone would be in to do it in the morning, and after they put the leftovers in the fridge, they went upstairs to his study, which had an even more spectacular view. They stood looking at it together for a moment, as the lights sparkled around the skyline of the city, and then Jack pressed a button and blackout shades came down over the windows, so they could watch a movie. He had a screening room too, but said this was more comfortable and cozier. They sat in two big armchairs side by side and he stuck a bag of popcorn in the microwave. He offered her several choices of films, and they picked one that neither of them had seen yet but wanted to. Valerie said she hadn’t been to a movie in months. She never had time. She often worked on her books and shows at night.

“You work too hard,” he reminded her, and she agreed readily. “I play more than you do,” he confessed. “Or at least I used to. I haven’t been out for two months, since Halloween.” He didn’t go into detail about it, and didn’t want to, but she knew something drastic had happened, since she had seen him the day after in the elevator at work, on their birthdays. He had said it was an accident, but she sensed there had been more to it than that. He wouldn’t have admitted it to Valerie, but he had only had sex once since, with one of his more sedate younger dates, but he had been so nervous about injuring himself again that he had barely dared to move, and it hadn’t been good for either of them. He was terrified to rupture the disk, and hadn’t dared to try it since, with anyone. The night before his birthday had changed his life, maybe forever, he was afraid. In an odd way, he and Valerie were at opposite ends of the spectrum, but with the same end result. He had a flock of women around him, she had no one, and in the end, both of them were alone, in all the ways that really mattered. It hadn’t occurred to either of them, but it was true. They were both lonely, in their own way, and worried about the future, although for all intents and purposes, to anyone looking at them from the outside, they had golden lives.

They happily munched the popcorn while watching the film they had selected. It was a romantic comedy about an actor with a million girlfriends who falls in love with his snooty leading lady, who is disgusted by him and wants nothing to do with him. Throughout the film, he tries to convince her that he’s a decent person, while the women he’s been involved with drop in, drop by, run into them, show up, climb in windows naked, and show up at his house, while the leading lady loathes him more and more. Some of the incidents portrayed in the movie were truly funny, and they both laughed loudly. The film particularly resonated for Jack, who could see himself easily in the role of the beleaguered actor if he ever truly fell in love. It was light fare and they both enjoyed it as they guffawed and giggled at the leading man’s discomfort and ate the popcorn. It had a happy ending, of course, which pleased them both. It set just the right tone for their friendly New Year’s Eve as buddies, recovering from their recent trauma, and trying to keep things light.

“I loved it!” Valerie said, looking delighted, as Jack switched some soft lights back on. They were cozy in the big chairs, and he had handed Valerie a cashmere blanket to snuggle under since he liked keeping the apartment cooler than most women liked. She hated to get up, she was happy where she was as he turned on the lights. “I hate sad movies, or violence, or anything about sports,” she said without thinking, and then laughed out loud, and apologized to him.

“Okay, I heard that!” he said, referring to her comment about sports. But it didn’t surprise or offend him. He watched movies with women all the time, and they felt much the way Valerie did. He watched the violent ones on his own, and the guy films about wars and sports. “I like happy movies too. I’m kind of a softie and I like chick flicks with happy endings. Life is tough enough without watching films that depress you for three days after you see them. I hate that stuff,” he said, and he meant it.

“Yeah, me too,” she agreed. “I like thinking that things can turn out okay.”

“What does ‘turning out okay’ mean to you?” he asked with interest. He often asked himself the same question, and had a relatively clear idea of what he wanted out of life. He just hadn’t found it yet, and the goal shifted slightly year by year. His version of a happy ending had been different at thirty and forty than it was now. So was hers.

“Happy, peaceful, no big drama in my life,” she answered his question, looking thoughtful. “Sharing my life with someone, if it’s the right person, not if it isn’t. I don’t want to do that anymore. Good health obviously, but that’s kind of an old fart answer. Mostly just being happy and peaceful, loving someone and being loved by him, and feeling good in your own skin.”

“That sounds about right to me too,” he said, and then he chuckled. “And don’t forget good ratings for our shows, please God.” She laughed in answer.

“Yes, but I have to admit I don’t think about that when I’m making a wish list for my personal life.”

“Do you do that often?” He looked surprised. “Make a wish list for your personal life?”

“Not really. I do it in my head sometimes, when I think about what I want. Most of the time, I just roll along, doing what I have to. I think I do it on my birthday, or on New Year’s, those milestones always get me. I think about what I should have and be doing, but it never matches up, so I try not to anymore. Life never happens on the schedule you want, and I think I’m kind of past all that now anyway.” She looked sad when she said it, but she had felt that way for months now. This last birthday had hit her hard.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He looked puzzled, as though he didn’t understand what she meant. And she took a breath before she answered. They were friends now, and she felt like she could be honest with him. She wasn’t a candidate for romance with him anyway, and she knew he had no interest in that with her, or any woman her age. They were friends, and that was enough.

“Let’s face it, women my age are not a high commodity on the market. Men my age want to go out with women like the ones you go out with. No one’s looking for sixty-year-old women, except maybe ninety-year-old guys. The eighty-year-olds are taking Viagra and looking for twenty-five-year-olds. Most men would rather go out with my daughter than with me. That’s simple fact. Add success and fame to that mix, and what you get is a guy screaming out the door, or who never shows up in the first place. I don’t have a lot of illusions left about it. I used to, but I don’t anymore.”

She didn’t tell him that she hadn’t had a real date in three years and couldn’t remember the last time she’d had sex. It had begun to occur to her that maybe she never would again, which seemed sad to her. But you couldn’t invent a man out of thin air, and no even remotely possible dates had crossed her path in a long time. She had given up on the terrible blind dates people used to fix her up with, with men who were severely damaged, very angry, or had a chip on their shoulder about who she was and what she had accomplished and were sometimes even nasty about it. Meeting them was always depressing and disappointing, so she didn’t bother anymore.

And there was nothing else and hadn’t been in a long time, despite the Botox shots, good haircuts, well-toned body thanks to her trainer, and expensive wardrobe. Old was old, and she was, or so she thought. “I have this psychic I talk to a couple of times a year. He’s been telling me for years now that I’m going to meet a terrific man. I think he says it to give me hope. It never happens, or hasn’t in a hell of a while. I’d been to see him that morning I saw you in the elevator, doubled over with your back.”

“He must have fangs,” Jack teased her, remembering it perfectly, despite the pain he’d been in. She was very striking, and had made an impression on him. “Your face was bleeding.”

She hesitated and then laughed again, not worried about what she said to him. “I had just had Botox shots after I saw him. My dermatologist has fangs, not the psychic.” He was touched that she was so open with him. She was a surprisingly honest woman, given who she was.

“I get them too,” he admitted, equally honest. “So what, if it makes us look good? I don’t usually advertise that, but shit, we both make a living on screen, and with high-definition video now, you need all the help you can get.”

“Isn’t that the truth? You can’t lie to the camera anymore, although God knows I try.” They both laughed at their reciprocal confessions, which didn’t seem so shocking. Even schoolteachers and younger women were getting Botox shots now. It was not just for the very rich or movie stars. “The vanity of it is a little embarrassing, and I think my daughter thinks I’m pretty silly. She doesn’t even wear makeup, probably in reaction to me, but I also make my living, or part of it, based on how I look, and so do you. And it makes me feel better if I look a little younger. It’s not fun or easy getting old.” They both knew that was the truth, and had been wrestling with it for the past two months, each in their own way, since their birthdays.

“You’re not old, Valerie,” he said kindly, and meant it. “We all feel that way past a certain age. It always annoys me that I think I’m falling apart. I hate having my picture taken, and then five years later I see the same picture and think I looked pretty good back then, but like hell now. I don’t know why we’re so obsessed with age in this country, but we are. It’s hard to live up to at any age. I know thirty-year-old women who feel old.

“And I agree with your psychic. I think someone great is going to turn up one of these days. You deserve it. Forget the ninety-year-old guys. And the eighty-year-olds. They give me a run for my money too, if their bank account is bigger than mine. That’s pretty screwed up.” But those were the kind of women he dated, girls who were after money and power, which was why they liked him too. He didn’t kid himself about that. “Have you ever thought about a much younger guy? I mean like thirty-five. A lot of women do that now. I think Demi Moore set the trend. I know a fifty-year-old woman who has a twenty-two-year-old boyfriend. She says she loves it. That’s pretty much what I do. It’s fun a lot of the time.”

Valerie looked at him and shook her head. “I’d feel stupid. I’ve never seen a boy that age who appealed to me. I like grown-ups, and I think that would just make me feel older. I don’t want to sleep with a man young enough to be my child. Besides, I want to share common life experiences, similar points of view and concerns. What do you have in common with someone that age? That’s really about sex, not love. I may be old-fashioned, but I’d like to have both. And if I were going to sacrifice something, it would be sex, not love.” For the moment, she had neither, but she was true to herself and always had been. Jack could sense that about her. She was a woman who knew who she was and what she wanted, what she was willing to sacrifice and what she wasn’t. But it wasn’t easy finding the right person, for anyone. He hadn’t found it either, so he settled for sex and a lot of fun, and a herniated disk when he had a little too much fun.

“I don’t think it’s easy to find someone at any age. Look at all the people in their twenties and thirties trying to find dates through the internet. That tells you something, that it’s not as easy to find people as it used to be. I don’t know why, but I think it’s true. People are better informed, more particular. They know themselves better through therapy. Women don’t just want a guy to pay the bills, and they’re not willing to put up with anything to get it, they want a partner. That narrows the field considerably. And there are always guys like me out there, who throw the balance off, dating twenty-year-olds, which leaves the fifty-year-old women with no one to go out with, except some Neanderthal who’s watching TV and drinking beer, never had therapy, and doesn’t know who the hell he is or care.”

“So what’s the answer?” she asked, looking puzzled. He seemed to understand the problem perfectly, but had no more solutions to the problem than she did.

He grinned, as he switched the music on the stereo to something more lively. “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” he teased. It was five to midnight, almost New Year’s, and the evening had flown by. “I don’t know what the answer is. I suspect you probably find the right person by accident one day. And it’s never who you thought it would be, or what you thought you wanted. Kind of like real estate. I was looking for a brownstone in the East Sixties, and wouldn’t look at anything else. This apartment came on the market, and my realtor dragged me here kicking and screaming. I fell in love with it, and you couldn’t get me out of here now. I think we have to stay open to what comes along. I think that is the real secret to youth and a good life, staying open, interested, excited, learning about life, trying new things, meeting new people. And whatever happens, you have a good time, and if the right person turns up while you’re doing that, terrific. If not, at least you’re having fun. I think it’s when we start to shut down, give up, and limit our options that life starts to be over. I don’t ever want that to happen to me. I want to keep opening new doors till the day I die, whenever that is, whether it’s tomorrow, or when I’m ninety-nine. The day you stop opening doors, and give up on those new opportunities, you might as well be dead. That’s what I believe anyway.”

“I think you’re right,” she said, looking hopeful. She liked the way he looked at things, and his philosophy about life. He was fully alive and excited about whatever he did. It was why he wasn’t sitting there clutching his leg and moaning about the trauma he’d been through and the near-death experience. Instead he was ready to move on, and having a good time with her, getting to know a new person, and making a new friend. She liked the way he thought, and it was an inspiration to her.

Jack looked at his watch then, and flipped on the TV to the ball in Times Square where a crowd of thousands was waiting to see the New Year in. He started counting. They were almost on it. Ten … nine … eight … seven … He was smiling and so was she … and when they reached “One!” he put his arms around her and looked into her eyes.

“Happy New Year, Valerie. I hope it’s a great year for you in every way!” He kissed her lightly on the mouth then, and hugged her.

“You too, Jack,” she said, and meant it as they held each other, as they both thought at the same time that it was already a great year. They were both alive!