“You’re serious?” I say, suddenly thinking this isn’t funny anymore.
“Why not?” Teresa says. “Look, my life is good, but there is stuff that could be better, and things that I want to do but don’t ever bother to start. I presume you both have some things you could see improving upon. Why not try together? Why not use each other to get motivated? Maybe God gave us back to each other because we are stronger together, because we have things to do and become that we need each other for. What’s the worst thing that could happen? We’ll hang out a lot; do some things that scare us a little with some good friends at our backs? One or more of us will be a little poorer to the benefit of something good?” Her face suddenly goes from serious to sly. “You ladies chicken? Know you can’t beat me?”
Lynne makes a clucking noise. “I do believe this crazy bitch has just thrown down a gauntlet. It’s like she doesn’t know us at all.” Her mouth twists into an evil grin.
“You people are drunk,” I say, a pit opening up in my stomach.
“Prolly,” Teresa says. “But that sounds like you are a wuss.”
“Well, you know, all that competitive fire went out of her back in the day,” Lynne says wickedly.
“Fuck you both. You’re on.” Good Lord, why did I say that? Because it’s what I would have said twenty years ago. When you are with the people who knew you twenty years ago, a part of you reverts to being that girl. And right now, I wish that girl would shut the hell up.
“Okay, bet. How many things have to be on the list?” Lynne asks.
“We each have to do three things for ourselves, and one from each of the others,” Teresa says. “That is only five things to accomplish in eight months, which should be doable.”
“Okay. If we all get it done before the birthdays, no one has to be out of pocket. Anyone who doesn’t make it in time has to write that check. But we each have to make a list of six things for ourselves, and two things for each other. We each get to pick which of the things from the other girls we have to do, but the other two get to pick from our list the other three things, so that we can’t set ourselves up for easy stuff, and we can’t sabotage each other.” Leave it to Lynne to establish rules and prevent cheating.
“The other two get to vote whether something can get crossed off the list, so there has to be some sort of proof,” I say, head spinning.
“This woman is having Sixteen Candles flashbacks,” Lynne says. “Gonna make us show her someone’s underwear in the bathroom for a dollar.”
“No, that’s a good idea,” Teresa says. “And we have to have a joint birthday party of some kind—that is the deadline for the lists. Checks get written that night.”
“Go get some paper, El, this thing is on,” Lynne says, and in a daze I walk over to the sideboard and get some paper and pens. “You can’t think too much, and you can’t couch this shit in surface crap. We’ll know. Deep-down, serious life goals and dreams and things that need doing, or it won’t be worth it.” She holds out her pinky. Teresa links her forefinger around it and sticks her pinky out. I link it with my forefinger, and Lynne connects us with her forefinger around my pinky.
“Three-way pinky swear,” Lynne says. And we each make eye contact with the two others and shake. And then we start to write.
? ? ?
I wake up shockingly early in light of the fact that the girls didn’t leave till nearly one. I’m also surprisingly not really hungover—just a little dry mouth and the slight twinge of a headache. I get dressed, and Simca and I head out for her morning walk. We get home, and I grab a yogurt and fill her bowl with kibble. And then I look at the sheet of paper on the kitchen counter.
To Do Before Forty—Eloise
1. Find a new hobby that has nothing to do with food or cooking.
2. Create real book proposal for cookbook, and send to at least ten literary agents.
3. Find a new athletic endeavor that doesn’t hurt my knee, but keeps me more active.
From Lynne for Eloise: Do something social out of the house at least once every other week, and at least once a month it must be something with strangers . . . a tour, a class, places to potentially broaden your circle of friends.
I picked that one since her other suggestion was to join some sort of women’s networking group, which sounded awful.
From Teresa for Eloise: Start actively dating . . . at least fifteen real dates total.
Since her other suggestion was to look into maybe freezing my eggs, it was like choosing between root canal surgery and food poisoning, but Marcy keeps telling me how easy it is to get dates these days with all the online options, so I figure I can suck it up and just get through them.
? ? ?
God help me. I push the sheet aside. I can’t even begin to think about what I’ve gotten myself into.
“Simca? Your human is a complete moron.”
And my pup looks up at me as if to say, “Well, duh.”
Five
My girl, it’s too, too wonderful!” Lawrence says, sipping from a mug of Japanese honey ginger tea. “I adore everything about it.” He runs an elegant hand through his thick, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, ice blue eyes twinkling behind glasses with thick black rims.
“Of course you do. Because you know you’ll hear all the downsides of my dating foibles, you evil thing.”
His corgis, Philippe and Liagre, come trotting into the dining room, and as usual, Philippe curls up at Lawrence’s feet and Liagre comes to sit with me. I reach a hand down and scratch between his soft ears. Lawrence’s corgis are of the pale, apricot-colored, stumpy-tailed type so often seen with Queen Elizabeth, while my Simca is a tricolor who never had her tail docked. More of a peasant corgi, if you will. But they are all adorable.
“Well, one must have some small bits of joy in one’s dotage, darling.” He winks. “I can’t say I’ll be disappointed to hear how that part of your challenge is moving along. I’m happy to help, you know, plenty of fix-up opportunities.” He grunts as Philippe insists on being pulled up into his lap. They might look small, but they weigh a ton.
“Yeah, I’m going to have to take you up on that, scarily enough. Because I cannot begin to think about what online dating would even look like.” The idea of dating at all makes my stomach turn over. But at least if Lawrence is fixing me up, there is a bit of safety net. Liagre sighs and rests his head on my foot.
“Done. I will reach into my little black book and you should expect your phone to begin ringing tout de suite! What about the other girls, how do their lists look?”
“Well, Teresa wants to bring a little bit of the fun back to her marriage now that her boys are old enough to fend for themselves most of the time, so one of hers is about doing one thing a month to spice up her marriage. She also wanted to find some stuff outside the home to work on, so she has to volunteer once a month for something, and she has to find a part-time job before the time is up.”