“Are all the rooms here this nice?”
Cassie, fifty-three, only had a second while her daughter was at ceramics.
“No, I had it redecorated. It’s part of a . . . never mind.” The room wasn’t the point. I described my situation, Audra, the fork, the urgency.
“So this is all based on one fun night?”
“No, the night with Audra was just the breaking point,” I said. “I think I’ve been conforming this whole time.”
“Sure,” Cassie said, “we all have to conform a bit. Compromise.”
I opened my mouth to ask if compromise was really the same thing as conform—
“Okay, here’s my take,” she said. “Just ride it out. A lot of women destroy their lives in their forties and then one day they wake up with no periods and no partner and only themselves to blame.”
That had the ring of truth to it.
“So, you think I should just smooth things over?”
“I know that’s not the hip thing to say, but yes.”
“I don’t know if I”—I gasped—“can physically do that. Swallow my desires like that.”
Cassie sighed.
“Remember the Simone de Beauvoir quote,” she said, “ ‘You can’t have everything you want but you can want everything you want.’ ”
“And what is it you want?” I whispered, leaning toward her.
She shook her head.
“Just hold it together for a few years and you’ll thank me when you come out the other side.”
Want without having. Hold it together, I typed in my notes, trying to remember the other times people had said, You’ll thank me later—did I ever thank them later?
