I brought the topic around to Steven. Were they together?
The answer was complicated. Steven was still married, but he didn’t live with his wife anymore, who lived in Denver. In any case, he had out of the blue asked her to come on this trip and she said yes. They were old friends from the 1980s. He was a “great guy” and she’d always “loved him as a person.”
He and Kimberly came into the kitchen to take more vitamins. They talked about the benefits of B12, then suggested we all take a B12 capsule. Kitty and I passed. Kimberly told us this was probably a good idea because we could potentially be in the 5 percent of the population who’re allergic to B12 and will blow up like a balloon upon taking it. Then they reassured us not to worry about them and went back up to their room.
Some time passed. Enough that Kitty and I became curious. “What kind of houseguests go up to their room in the middle of the afternoon and just stay in there?” she asked.
“Maybe they’re having sex.”
I went upstairs to find out.
As I crept down the hall, I heard music and giggling. Their door was open a crack, probably because it didn’t quite shut unless you closed it hard.
I peeked inside. I got a split-second glance of them lying on the bed in their bathing suits laughing at some private joke they found hilariously funny before they spotted me.
“Hello?” Kimberly said.
“Come in,” Steven said, sitting up.
“Yes?” Kimberly asked.
“Um,” I said. It was summer, so I asked the obvious question: “Do you want some corn?”
“Corn?” Kimberly said. She looked at Steven. “I’m so fucking sick of corn. No, I don’t want any more corn.” And then they both laughed.
“What are you, the hall monitor?” Steven said, which made them laugh even harder.
I felt like the teenage geek who’s just stumbled upon the head cheerleader and the quarterback making out. As I took refuge in the kitchen, I wondered if middle-aged dating was going to end up being just like high school.
Was this cycle of mate selection and rejection going to go on forever?
Later I asked Queenie: “If you and your boyfriend broke up, would you try to find someone else?”
“Oh yes,” she said.
“What about if you were sixty?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Seventy?”
“Of course.”
“Eighty?”
“Why not?” Queenie brought up a mutual friend who was eighty-three and had recently found a new boyfriend.
And indeed, why not. In middle-aged dating and beyond, people aren’t partnering up to get a life. They already have a life—children and exes and parents and work—so this time around, a relationship is about enhancing your life. It reminded me of the relationship theory we’d spout to ourselves back in our twenties and thirties: a relationship should be the icing on the cake of your life, not your life.
And now, apparently, this was possible.
“What about you?” Queenie asked. “If you and your MNB broke up, would you try to find someone else?”
I didn’t know the answer to that question. But Marilyn did.
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