Happy Birthday: A Novel

“Is that what you want? To stay in the business forever? It’s a hell of a fight to stay on top the way she has, and I’m not so sure it’s worth it,” Jack said, as they finished dinner in a cozy restaurant on the Left Bank that April had recommended. Their joint favorite was still the Voltaire, on the quais along the Seine, but that night they hadn’t been able to get a table. Everyone in Paris wanted to go there, and only the cream of “le tout Paris” got in.

“I used to think so,” Valerie said in answer to his question about staying in the business. “What else is there?” And then she corrected herself, “Or what else was there before you? April is all grown up and has her own life, now more so than ever, with a restaurant, a husband, and a baby. What am I supposed to do with the next thirty years, if I’m that lucky? Or even the next ten? I always thought work was the answer. But I thought that when I was thirty too. I guess I’m just a workhorse. But I have to admit, sometimes now I’m not so sure.” She was happy with him, happier than she ever had been, but she also couldn’t give up a career for him, nor would she want to. What if either of them decided to move on, or things didn’t work out for them? It could always happen. Sometimes things changed, even in the best of relationships, and this was just the beginning. She wasn’t willing to put her career on the line for him, and he knew it. She had worked too hard to get there to risk it for any man, and she didn’t think she should. But she was willing to accommodate him to the best of her ability, within the framework of how she worked and lived.

He asked her a surprise question then. It had crossed her mind once or twice, but she didn’t have the answer to that either. “Do you suppose we should think about getting married eventually?” They were both old enough to know what they wanted, and who. She had always thought she wanted to get married again, but now she wasn’t as sure. She loved him, without question, but did they need the papers to go with it? They weren’t going to have children. They both had interesting careers. They loved each other. But just how much did they need to prove? And to whom?

“I don’t know. What do you think?” she said, smiling shyly at him. It was a big subject, and there was still the factor, and always would be, that she was older than he. What if he fell in love with a younger woman one day? She didn’t want the heartbreak of divorce again, especially at her age. Losing him would have devastated her. “I’m of two minds about it. Basically, I believe in the institution and what it stands for. I always did. But at this point in our lives, sometimes I think it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Do we really need the paperwork to tell others what we feel? And it’s like any other contract, the day one of you wants to get out of it, there’s nothing you can do to keep them there. People who want to get out, do, and then it’s a giant mess.” He didn’t disagree.

“I’d get married if it was important to you,” he said generously, and maybe one day it would be, but it wasn’t yet, and she made that clear. “I’m open to it. But I don’t need it myself. And I agree with you about divorce. Mine was pretty nasty. But we’re good friends now. At the time it was a huge battle, over visitation with Greg, the property we had to split up since I had already hit the big time and was making a lot of money by then, and I was really pissed that she wanted out to marry someone else, and had cheated on me with the team doctor. And she was pissed about all the girls I’d cheated on her with. It was a pretty ugly time, and I’m surprised we wound up friends.”

“It was easier for me and Pat,” Valerie admitted. “Neither of us had any money, we were more than willing to share April, and he hadn’t met Maddie yet. He was pretty devastated. He wanted to stay married, mostly because he didn’t want to admit that our marriage was a failure, and I wanted out. I knew it was the wrong situation for me. His academic life and everything that went with it bored me to death. What made sense eight years before that, or we thought so anyway, no longer did. I grew into someone entirely different from the woman he had married. As the Brits say, we were like chalk and cheese. I felt like he was holding me back in my career plans, and he felt like I was dragging him behind the horse by his teeth. We were miserable.” She couldn’t imagine that happening to her and Jack now, they were both grown-ups and had established careers. If anything, they were both slowing down slightly, or said they were willing to, but she wasn’t sure that was true either. They had both been on the fast track for a long time and were used to it. Modifying anything in their public lives wasn’t going to be easy, and for now they didn’t need to. They had no conflicts about each other’s work.