Assisted Loving (7 page)
Authors: Bob Morris
B
otox, lipo, cardio, angioplasty. Seventy is the new forty, right? Add to that the boost that dating gets when seniors have cell phones and Internet access, not to mention physical trainers and Viagra, and you get the turbocharged arena my dad's about to enter. Three women for every man! And just because these men are old doesn't mean they're nice. How else would you explain the rash of codgers who divorce their first wives for women half their age? Hard as it is to believe, it was always women whose sex drives were actually stronger than men's in their later years. Now things have changed. In Scottsdale, Arizona, a cyclotron of senior society, one man observed in a newspaper article that the women he knows “wouldn't trade their cat for a man” and added that they aren't looking to get involved “with some randy
eighty-year-old,” at least not on a full-time, intimate basis. Still, with demographics weighted so heavily in favor of men, and with plenty of highly focused women anxious to remarry for their own reasons (money, or the convenience of someone to have on their arm), even a shlump who was not much of a ladies' man in high school can be a total catch in his senior years for no other reason than he is still alive and drives at night.
“Some of the women are total carnivores,” says my aunt Sylvia, who lost my delightful uncle Dan twenty years ago, and has been happily widowed and entirely consumed with her family and her Palm Beach and Vermont lives ever since. “My cousin Raymond is eighty years old. The woman circle around him like vultures. He's a nice-looking man and a good sport who likes a good time, so he's always with another one. When he ended the last relationshipâthis was with a woman ninety years old, mind youâshe passed away a few months later and all her friends said she died of a broken heart. Can you imagine? The whole thing is so ridiculous. Your father has a million things to keep him busy, but he still has to meet someone to love. It's just so funny.”
I wish I could have more of a sense of humor about the whole thing.
But it's just too uncomfortable, so I decide to get a column out of it. Enough people my age are going through something similar. I interview a man who owns New York's oldest dating service. He tells me that children who come to his office to set up their elderly fathers request women of a similar age to their mothers. Then, the fathers call the service (without their children knowing)
and declare that they want young, not old. So the father finds a match, and the kids get jealous, and, of course, issues of inheritance come into play when marriage comes up as a possibility. It's all perilous. “But you just have to pull yourself back,” this dating maven tells me, “and let your dad do his thing and pick who he wants.”
Aunt Sylvia agrees. “You father is his own man, and he needs to meet someone nice and understanding,” she counsels. “But I don't know if he's going to meet who
you
want him to meet.” I tell her he'd better or I'm going to make myself scarce in his life.
“My goodness,” she says. “If you had kids dating, you would be impossible!”
That's exactly what this feels like. I'm playing father to a son, a kid!
“Because,” says a woman I call who wrote a book about second wives, “when he's on a date, he feels young again, as if he's starting a second life. And so does the woman. There's just all this potential ahead of them, a whole new future.”
“Potential for trouble,” I say. “Potential for total disruption.”
“Potential for love and a new life,” she corrects me.
I take a few notes for my column and thank her for her time.
“Wait a minute,” she says. “You know? I think I have someone for him, a friend of my mom's. She plays bridge and winters in Palm Beach, just like your dad.”
“But where does she live up north?”
“She has a place on Fifth Avenue and a condo in Sun Valley, I think.”
Fifth Avenue? Sun Valley? Whoa! I'd love that. But is all this too rich for him? This lady sounds very haute couture, and my dad's so wash-and-wear. I pooh-pooh it.
“I just think he's way too down-market for a woman like that,” I say. “He isn't worldly or cultured. He doesn't even read the
New York Times
unless a neighbor drops it off. He won't be up to the standards of someone so fancy.”
“Come on, Bob, what kind of attitude is that?”
“Defensive pessimism. It won't work.”
“Maybe it will, maybe it won't,” this woman says. “But I'm going to call my mother right now and get a number. Her name's Florence. And, Bob, don't ever say he isn't good enough for anyone. He's your dad. And you love him, don't you?”
I
t's a drizzly May evening. An ash blonde with no body fat named Ann is waiting outside her high-end condominium in one of Long Island's Gold Coast towns. She is worried about the humidity and her hair. She just had a wash and set and hopes this weather doesn't frizz it up too much. She reminds herself not to order ice cream for dessert because she left her Lactaid upstairs. Her heart is beating a little fast, it seems. She's nervous. Scaring up a date isn't easy for a woman her age, and this Joe Morris sounded so pleasant on the phone. His voice was smooth, his demeanor breezy. Geographically suitable, Jewish, a retired judge with two sons who have Ivy League degrees. What would he look like? She was picturing if not a Jewish Robert Goulet, then someone Alan Kingâlike, may he rest in peace. “Tonight, tonight, won't be just any
night,” this Joe Morris had crooned to her on the phone earlier. It wasn't her favorite song or musical (she prefers classical music to show tunes and instrumental to vocal), and certainly it wasn't her idea of suave, but his enthusiasm and spirit were encouraging.
Maybe he could get her to lighten up. That might not be a bad thing.
After waiting fifteen minutes in front of her building, she sees a silver sedan pulls up. It's no knight in shining armor. If she's expecting him to get out of the car and open the door for her (call her old-fashioned, she still thinks it's a nice gesture), she soon realizes it isn't happening and opens the door for herself and says hello. She gets in. Behind the wheel there's a man who looks good for eightyânice head of hair, young faceâbut is still eighty.
Her husband had been eighty when he got sick. For three years she was his nursemaid, companion, and link to the world. Her children were not around. They live on the West Coast so they could only visit every few months. Friends stopped calling. They had their own problems. She didn't keep up with them either. It was enough to keep the house and his medications in order, not to mention all the doctors and hospital visits, a full-time job, like taking care of a baby, only this time there would be no future in it, nothing hopeful. And as her husband's mind and body drifted further and further out, she felt as if she were at sea with him, and each new medical trouble felt like another rogue wave tipping her boat just as it had barely righted itself from the last. He died last year. They were married fifty-five years. She's still not over it. But now she's in a stranger's car on thisâand there is no other word for itâdate.
“I thought we could have Chinese,” he is saying.
“I had Chinese last night,” she replies. “How about Japanese?”
“I don't care for Japanese,” he says. “What about Italian?”
Italian is fattening, and she's on a low-carb diet, but she doesn't want to get into it now. Too early for conflict. She's aware of the fact that she's not the easiest person. Her kids tell her that all the time. She wonders if that's why they've chosen to live so far away. She does wish she could be less specific in her demands. But she knows what she likes, and why is that so wrong? Men that way are considered decisive. Women are considered picky and difficult. It doesn't win points on a first date to be particular.
Why not try to just go with the flow, Ann?
she tells herself.
Because he has the air-conditioning on high in his car, that's why, and it's not just freezing her arms, it's blowing her hair to kingdom come.
“Would you mind turning it off?” she asks.
“I like it on high,” he says. “For my allergies.”
“I prefer to ride without it” is all she can say.
He turns it down to medium. “How's that? Better?”
Barely. And not her idea of accommodating at all. And why would he have the ball game on the radio? And why is he going on about the Mets when he hasn't even asked if she's interested in baseball? What kind of conversation is that for the first few minutes of a first date? Her only response is to clam up. Well, she's never been a bubbly person. But a particularly dark mood starts coming over her now, before they even get out of the car, which is a
mess, and smells rank. At a stoplight at Little Neck Road, when he changes topics from the Mets to bridge, she wonders about the gurgling in her stomach. Is it the reflux? Did she take her Nexium? Is she going to make it through this dinner date without having to keep running to the powder room?
And then she wonders what she's doing here anyway. She doesn't want another man. But without one her social life is so barren. Articles she's been reading in the AARP magazine and Long Island
Newsday
keep suggesting that widows are far more self-sufficient than widowers. But her friends are all in couples. It's awkward, always needing a bridge partner, being the single person at the dinner party. Her kids worry that she's lonely. She tells them she isn't. But in some ways she is. So she tries her luck and puts in a listing and gets this Joe Morris. A total stranger. As he pulls off Northern Boulevard to the restaurantâVilla something or other; not one she'd heard anything good aboutâshe wonders if she should just say she's not feeling well and have him take her home. Dinner ahead looms longer than a High Holiday service.
She endures. As does my father. But just barely, I find out later.
“She was a total dud,” he tells me. “I could have kicked myself for following through with her. From the moment we spoke on the phone, I could tell she wasn't right for me. She sounded so morose about her husband's death. And it's a cardinal rule of dating that you don't talk about your ex right away, whether deceased or divorced.”
I understand. But I also sympathize with her. I mean, I know I'm never my best self on dates. And besides, how do you erase the imprint of decades of marriage?
“She got in the car and immediately started hocking me about the air-conditioning,” he says. “I knew I had a problem personality on my hands.”
So he discards her, like an old plum. And there's not even a moment to sympathize with the poor woman, or give her a second chance, not with all the options he has to choose from. In fact, the moment I threw out the bait for him by responding to those Personals ads, he's gotten very busy, pulling in one thing after another flapping on his hook. Man-eaters. Bottom-feeders. Gefilte fish.
Here's the short list:
Rita is a disappointment to him because she doesn't smile enough. “She's no Dinah Shore,” he says. “If I can't get a smile out of her, there's no point in moving forward.” Selma, who is a little plump for his taste, wants to talk about the
Kama Sutra
and get him to take a workshop in the Poconos. “Attractive but a nut, a Jewish Shirley MacLaine,” he says. Lorna used to be a socialist. “When she told me that, I asked for the check and sent her home.” He does like Shirley, whom I selected for him based on her upright Personals ad and good Manhattan address. But when he tells me she has a rent-controlled studio apartment and has to work two bookkeeping jobs to support herself (at her advanced age?) I don't like it at all. That must mean she isn't very well off. That's no good. Then he cheerfully tells me that her ex-husband had psychiatric problems and that one of her kids is obese and a gun hobbyist. Can you imagine what a Thanksgiving dinner with them would be like? I'm appalled. But Dad just finds her pleasant and pretty. “She's coming out to Great Neck for a second date this week,” he says. “And I'd like you to meet her.” I tell him I don't meet anyone until after the
fifth date. After their third, he's put off when she mocks him for taking cell phone calls over dinner. That's the end of that. He laments to me on the phone each night, telling me he's never going to meet anyone as nice as my mother. I wish he'd go for Roz, whom I found on his Personals page, and actually think is a pretty good package. Roz is from Roslyn and has a degree from Cornell. Roz is slender, according to her profile, easygoing, Jewish-minded, and financially secure. Plus, her son is a doctor. I want my father to go with the lady with the son the doctor! Is that so wrong?
“Yes, she's better educated, Bobby,” he says. “But I don't think we'd mesh.”
“Based on one conversation? What could be so bad?”
“She kept interrupting me, and finishing my sentences. Very hard to take.”
“Oh, come on, Dad. That's no big deal. You do that to me all the time. Why not give her one more try?”
“Because I don't want to.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don't.”
Oh, my God. What am I doing? What is
he
doing? You hear about helicopter parents who hover over every aspect of the lives of their children. Am I becoming a helicopter son? I'm calling him more often now. And paying more attention when he calls. What can I say? I'm dying to know what the story is with this date and that one. Gone are his blathering soliloquies about the rerun he saw on TV. In are the episodic sagas of microwave relationships that heat up and cool off in a secondâSenior
Sex and the City
. Or maybe it's
Desperate House Widows
. There was the nice lady who left him in the parking lot of the Nassau
County Museum of Art after he scolded her for lighting a cigarette. The buxom yenta still so upset about her divorce that she cried on their first date. A former Rockette who drank too much. A retired Gestalt psychiatrist who wanted him to be more forthcoming with his feelings. Lines of them, like planes overhead, waiting to land at LaGuardia. May, Ray, FayâFran, Ann, NanâBunny, Honey, Sunny. His reports are so volatile, so unexpected, so hilariously bizarre that they make dating tales of my friends seem banal. Too bad all his efforts lead to nothing. Dates fizzle before they even start. His is nothing if not a flitty dating scene.
But then, so is mine. A Scott e-mails in late May. He saw my profile online. I'm thrilled. His profile is witty. He's red-haired and ruddy. Beefy but not fat. Outdoorsy yet well read. Rugged yet urbane. He's
perfect
! In the city he lives on a houseboat off Seventy-ninth Street. He has a country place in Vermont and a tractor. We meet for a first drink and have a great time. He goes off to the country for two weeks. My spirits are high for his return. This could finally be the one. We agree on Saturday night for a second date. He e-mails that he'll call to tell me when and where. He never does. I sit in my apartment, heart leaping like a jilted senior on prom weekend each time the phone rings. I'm devastated. Then I get over it. It's not the first time it's happened. And you know what? I'm fine on my own. I'm resigned to sleeping alone. I get my eight hours a night better that way. Nobody to disturb my sleep or be bothered by my snoring.
I tell myself this often and believe it. Or believe that I'm believing it anyway.
But my dad is another story. He believes that the only way to live life is in love, and he won't rest in his quest.
So now I find myself pimping for him wherever I go. If an upstairs neighbor has a widowed mother with a nice figure in Queens, I get her number and pass it on to him. If I meet someone at a party with an aunt who is college-educated and plays duplicate bridge, I make sure Dad knows, and takes it seriously.
Maybe love at his age isn't as hopeless as we think it is.
“It's a little like being a teenager all over again, with nothing but the future ahead,” he says. “Do you know that the other night I had to pick up a date and introduce myself to her daughter? She was looking me over at the front door as if I were a juvenile delinquent. I told her that I'd have her mother in by eleven
P.M
. and not to worry.”
“Like you were taking a date to the prom, Dad? So did you score?”
“She was a very appetizing woman, but her politics were such a turnoff that I couldn't kiss her on the lips good night.”
“So you didn't get any nookie?”
“Bubkes.”
It's a sunny May afternoon, and we are pulling up to Stepping Stone Park in Great Neck. Gardens, fountains, and lawn rolling down to Long Island Sound. The bench he heads for is the closest to the parking lot because his hip won't take him farther.
“Dad, you know that walking is good for your circulation, don't you?”
“Please, Bobby, don't pressure me,” he says, as he lowers himself onto the bench, with a moan and a sigh. “This is fine. We can sit right here and watch the world go by.”
Out of the corner of my eye I see someone, a woman of a certain age, holding the
New York Times
. She is elegantly dressed, from the Izod shift dress to the Belgian loafers. She has big dark sunglasses. Adriatic. Dramatic. If I weren't so crippled with dignity, I'd say hello to her and see if she and Dad might talk to each other. I'm thinking it would be great. He'd be all set, at least for the weekend. But I don't know how to say hello to adorable strangers, never have. My whole life I've agonized, paralyzed with fear as they've passed me by. She's about to do so right now.
But then Dad sits forward and calls out to her, “Isn't it a gorgeous day?”
She stops, removes her sunglasses, looks him over, realizes he is nobody she knows, then nods. The slightest smile lifts her perfectly made-up face.
“Yes, lovely.” She has a European accent and a whispery tone, kind of Zsa Zsa meets Jackie Oâthe soft voice of a woman used to having men lean in to hear her.
“And I see you're reading the
New York Times
?” Oh no. I know what's coming.
“Dad, please don't,” I mutter. But I can't stop him. I can never stop him.
“My son writes for the
Times
.”
“Oh?” she says. “That's terrific. Good for you.”
She's chilly and divine. My head starts projecting a video of their courtship and romance, ending in a life together in a well-appointed Gatsby mansionette on the water.
“Is that a Slavic accent?” Dad asks.