Not in and of itself a remarkable event. It happened to other people every day. Surely. But Gus had blithely assumed getting older wouldn’t quite happen to her. After all, she was slim (if not exactly a devotee of exercise), had a thriving career, a chunk of money in the bank (well managed by David Fazio, a top financial adviser Alan Holt had recommended years ago), a closet bursting with pricey clothes (Gus’s signature look was a comfortably elegant collarless silk duster, layered over a smooth shell, with wide-legged silk georgette trousers) and a convertible in her garage, dammit. She listened to Top 40. She used a digital camera. She had an incredibly tiny cell phone. She knew how to send text messages. She still dressed up at Halloween to give out candy. Wasn’t all that enough to keep maturity at bay?
Turning forty-nine had had a jaunty ring to it; fifty felt like she ought to buy a pair of orthopedic shoes. “It’s quite impossible to figure out how to act these days,” she told her producer Porter, who had several years on her. “My mother had settled into being a grandmother at this age. But today some women are still having babies at fifty—babies, Porter!”
“Do you want a baby, Gus?” he’d asked, joking.
“No! What I want is to figure out this disconnect between a number on a piece of paper and how I feel inside,” said Gus. “Do you know that the women from thirtysomething are now fiftysomething? And they’re still young. What about Michelle Pfeiffer? Meryl Streep? Jane Seymour? Oprah? They say fifty is the new thirty.”
“So it should be no problem then,” reasoned Porter. “You look great.”
“And yet it is an issue,” admitted Gus. “I have wrinkles. Real wrinkles, not those little crinkles I used to moan about when I turned forty. Porter, I think fondly about turning forty! I mean, I just can’t stop wondering, How did I get here?”
“Where did the time go?”
“Yes, really. Where did the time go?” asked Gus. “And when do I get to hit ‘pause’?”
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