Better Late
an excerpt

While I simultaneously dress and conclude my unceremonious packing, my mind does not fully engage in the rote multitask but instead drifts back to Tuesday.

Just four days ago.

For a moment I stop what I am doing and let sink into my still-astonished heart all that has transpired in four short days. Four days ago I arrived in New York to promote my second book, my notoriously numbers-driven publisher having arranged a somewhat glitzy prelude to a four-month tour of the road for signings and readings and promotional appearances. A classic late bloomer, I was enjoying a success I was convinced had been a fluke.

Any day now they'll figure out I'm untalented and unoriginal and they'll send me packing, I thought nine or ten times a day. But so far it hadn't happened and I was resolved to continue doing what I was doing until the proverbial well ran dry. Lord knows I've nothing else to do.

Having flown east from my home in Chicago, I had landed at LaGuardia on a blustery fall morning to be met by an appropriately bookish representative of my publisher and whisked by limo to lunch at The Four Seasons. Unaccustomed to the glamour and hype of promoting a book, I decided to behave totally out of character and listen more than I talked.

Over a midday meal so elegant that it could only be classified as the hautest of haute cuisine, my editor, Roxanne Sand, rhapsodized over the cautiously positive reviews my sophomore literary offering had garnered thus far. Ever the shrewd pragmatist, she advised me in detail of all we hoped to accomplish with the ambitious itinerary that would have me on the road until my birthday in March, with a few days off at Thanksgiving and a week for Christmas.

Twenty-six months of widowhood had settled over me with less difficulty than I might have anticipated had someone bidden me twenty-seven months ago to gaze four weeks -- not to mention four months -- into the future. I had enjoyed a long and successful, if rather standard-issue, marriage. Jack had been my friend, my lover, my provider -- although in some ways he had also qualified as my most dedicated antagonist. The dichotomous nature of our relationship (which was not without its own brand of conflicted passion) had been a source of frustration as much as of love and joy. Although I missed him terribly at times, it had not been unthinkable to close the door on the past and move on. When he was laid to rest on a hot summer day -- the kind of bright day he would have loved to use for golf or boating -- into the grave he was obliged to occupy I had also laid to rest much of the angst and turmoil that had beset our union. I was not bitter, but neither had I grieved one day longer than was necessary. At least that was what I told myself.

It helped that I was still young and healthy and had a substantial capacity for enjoyment of life, and that six months before being forced to face the prospect of living the rest of my days as a single woman, I had realized my lifelong dream of becoming a published author. Things had gone better than expected. The first book had spent several weeks on The New York Times bestseller list (albeit not far from the bottom), and I had received a hefty advance to write two more novels. Book two had been written and had recently debuted, and was the reason I was in New York. The third book was a work in progress, something for which I had to find time although my life seemed to get more hectic by the minute.

After taking several weeks to sort through my late husband's papers, and after selling my home and divesting myself of all but a few tangible possessions that tethered me to the past by the cord of memory, I had daringly moved twelve hundred miles across the country and settled in Chicago. Since living there briefly as a child, and despite its famously harsh climate, I had never stopped longing for the energy of the quintessential Midwestern metropolis. Our only child, a son named Ian, had married a year after his father's death and lived in Denver with his bride. I saw him when I could.

The highrise condo I purchased in Lake Point Tower on Chicago's lakefront (hence the name) was the second of my near-lifelong dreams to implausibly come true. I never tired of the views from my aerie twenty floors above street level. Water, sky, sparkling industrious city of big shoulders ... it was exciting and ever-changing, provocative and breathtaking. It was also lonely. I had few friends; everyone had long ago paired off or grouped off, or was simply otherwise occupied. My profession tended to be a solitary one. I sat for many hours a day, often for many days on end, at my desk overlooking the sometimes placid blue-white, sometimes thrashing teal-gray, sometimes writhing gunmetal waters of Lake Michigan. I rarely saw anything identifiable on its level horizon ... or on mine.

Because I had time to devote only to myself, and because among my building's numerous amenities was a well-outfitted workout facility, the twenty pounds I had struggled for years to lose had melted effortlessly off my frame ... along with five more. It probably helped that, after the funeral, it had taken me over a year to regain anything resembling a normal appetite. I thought it poignantly ironic that, for the first time since before Ian was born, now that I was single and had no one to appreciate it, I possessed a truly fit and lean figure. At times when I trudged the treadmill, labored at resistance training, swam laps in the indoor pool, and pretzeled myself performing Pilates and yoga, I wondered why I bothered. It did not appear likely that anyone would ever see me with my clothes off again. It would have to be enough that I looked good with them on. When my appetite finally returned it did so with a vengeance, but I played ruthless sentry to every bite of food seeking admittance to my mouth. As a result and to my utter amazement each and every time I passed a mirror, for the first time since eighth grade I was a perfect size four.

Apart from the fact that I detested flying and was not overly fond of travel in general -- mainly because I tended to be sedentary and unadventurous -- I was not dreading the imminent four-month book tour. At last, something had materialized on my horizon. It would be good for me to be on the move, out and among people. I may not have welcomed, but I knew I needed, both the stimulation and the accountability of keeping to a tight schedule. Plus which, it would be profitable to meet other writers and, ideally, many readers. I even welcomed the fatigue I knew it would induce.

At home, many was the night I slept little if at all. Many was the morning I watched the sun wash the skyline's steel behemoths with tender shades of salmon and yellow, giving way to garish white by the time I had finished my first cup of coffee. It would be good to be so tired that, even lodged in a succession of unfamiliar hotel rooms, I could finally sleep. That at least was my fervent hope.

What sometimes kept me in my bed all day, unable to function even while cruelly denying me the comfort of sleep within its soft confines, was the sure conviction that the years behind me had been the good ones and I hadn't even known it. That my years of being a vital, inquisitive, hopeful, romantic woman with love -- any kind of love at all -- in her life, were gone. The truth was, I felt dead inside. I kept waiting to feel alive again but the feeling did not come. Jack was gone; Ian no longer needed me. I was the shredded remainder of an empty nest. Despite my up-and-coming career, I felt like a walking embodiment of the dreaded cliche: a middle-aged widow whose only identity had been in her marriage. The notoriously feminine feminist had been wrong when she had said that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Although I could not speak to the perambulatory requirements of marine life, I knew one thing well: I was not cut out to be alone.

* * * * *

"Tonight I'm throwing a cocktail party at my apartment and it's sort of in your honor," Roxanne announced shrilly, the unexpected declaration providing me a sharpish segue from past to present. "I've invited simply everyone and you'll be available for signing their copies of your book, of course." With her fork she jabbed the rarefied air of 57 between bites of grilled tiger prawns with pineapple basmati rice, and somewhat noisy slurps of Perrier.

"It's a good thing I brought a few cocktail dresses along," I remarked, marveling at each sumptuous bite of my perfectly grilled New York steak with pont neuf potatoes and peppercorn sauce, paired with a salad of organic greens, pecans, and sundried cherries in a truffle vinaigrette -- all carefully chosen from the smaller-portioned "tasting menu." I refused to say the word "diet" but it seemed that's all I did.

The impressive dining venue was a feast for the eyes as well as the palate. Even as I placed each ambrosial morsel on my grateful tongue, my eyes could not help but stray from the uber-artistic lighting scheme to the improbably oversized driftwood sculpture anchoring one end of the room, and back again to my ultra-chic fellow power-lunchers. A woman ten feet from me was wearing so many diamonds, she literally coruscated. The only thing missing was a tiara.