Happy Birthday: A Novel

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.