She stared into the mirror. As always these days, she was surprised at what stared back at her.
She remembered an old joke; the girls in school used to mutter it after a date and giggle, "It looks like a penis, only smaller."
Peering into the mirror, she thought: It looks like me, only older.
Caroline Hale Keller flicked the switch on her small makeup mirror and recoiled ever so slightly when the dozen tiny bulbs exploded into a circle of bright light. She forced herself to examine the distorted, close-up image that seemed painted onto the glass. She looked past the elegant cheekbones and perfect features. All she could see were the lines streaming from the corners of her eyes, the slight downward turn at the corners of her lips, the small pockets under the eyes.
She raised her right hand to remove her earrings. Slipping them out of the lobes, her hand loomed in the mirror, and she froze it, kept it hanging in the air, unmoving. Her hands, too, were lined. Those elegant hands of hers were no longer smooth and soft-looking. And her nails, long and unpainted, somehow now looked grotesque to her.
She thought of Jack, driving down later that night. She smiled because she knew he'd time it so he could listen to the Knicks game on the car radio. He loved his Knicks, he really did. Had had season tickets, second row, right under the basket, for years now. He always said that if he had one place he could be anywhere in the world, it would be at the Garden for a Knicks play-off game. He knew some of the players, a lot of the sportswriters, all of the ushers. The restaurant had long been a sports hangout, at least for those athletes and writers and executives who actually knew their food. She couldn't find fault with this passion of his. He worked so hard. So all-consumingly. He needed to relax. The boy in him needed to root for Spree to score his twenty-five points and for Houston to hit his outside jumper. She understood perfectly. And yet…
And yet she wanted him in her bed tonight. And tonight she wanted the man. Not the boy.
She turned her attention back to the mirror. Patted her neck and chin. Pulled the skin on her face back, smoothing it out.
God, men were so lucky. They looked better with age, so many of them, anyway. Salt-and-pepper hair was distinguished, not matronly. Their bodies could remain firm and flat, not turn menopausal. Craggy skin looked good on them. Young women were attracted to them. More than that, would marry them. No wonder so many of them discarded their longtime mates. What did compatibility matter, who cared about a personal history if you could move on to firm skin and upright breasts? It wasn't fair. It wasn't goddamn fair.
She released the skin around her eyes, felt the tautness grow lax. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then another…
She had never thought of herself as vain before.
Of course, she had never thought of herself as many things. As secretive. Duplicitous. Unsure. Frightened.
Dangerous.
But she was all of those things, wasn't she? Maybe she hadn't been. But she was now.
Time was an amazing thing, she decided. It didn't just change the way a thing looked. It changed the very thing itself.
Caroline exhaled in front of the makeup mirror, her breath creating a tiny patch of fog on the glass. She flicked the switch, turning the ring of lights off. She rose, slowly took all her clothes off, and stood naked before the full-length mirror in the bathroom. Her body was good. It was. She weighed exactly what she'd weighed when she first met Jack. Her posture was perfect, erect and strong. Her breasts were small, they'd always been small, and, yes, they were not what they'd once been but they were still fine. She knew she looked damn good for a forty-one-year-old woman with a string of restaurants to run and the pressure of opening a new one.
She just didn't look young.
Stepping into her blue robe, Caroline did not want to go back into the bedroom, instead padded into the den, searched the bookshelves until she found an old mystery, one she thought she'd read before but wasn't absolutely sure. She thought she could flip the pages, without having to think too much, until the sun was up and the new day began.
There were choices she had to make. Decisions she could no longer postpone. She knew that. She'd made some already. Hoped they were the right ones. For the rest, she didn't know how she would choose or what she would decide. She just knew that she had secrets now. Secrets she could never share with anyone. Secrets that, however they developed, would change her life and the lives of those she loved.
Whoever said that with age came wisdom was totally full of shit, she decided. What came with age was doubt. And fear.
Caroline wondered what was going to happen tomorrow.
But it was not tomorrow she was afraid of.
It was the tomorrow after that and the one after that and then all the tomorrows into the future.