Cape May Read online

  “I’m used to it after all these years. I can reach everything without getting up. You leaving?”

  “Yes. I have to get to work. See if I can retrieve a PowerPoint presentation I somehow misplaced.”

  “Jo, you stink on the computer.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.”

  “You’re smart in many other ways.”

  “Oh shut up.”

  “What time is your bus?”

  “At 2:30. I’ll stay a few hours then walk to the Port Authority.”

  “I’m glad you’re leaving. I need quiet. I have a new client I have to impress.” As he walked her to the front door he said, “Phone?” She nodded. “Phone charger?” She nodded. “Cash?” She nodded. “Credit cards?” She nodded. “Good girl.” He opened the door for her, and Archie, their orange tabby of uncertain age, ran into the hall.

  Joanna said, “Come back, little Archie.” She scooped him up and scratched under his chin. “Where do you think you’re escaping to?” Handing the purring bundle to Brian, she said, “Maybe he wants fresh air and grass.”

  “Yes, Archie, obviously, has always wanted to live the life of a B&B cat.” He let the cat jump out of his arms. “Oh, I forgot to tell you: my sister called. She’s found three assisted living places for my Mom to check out next week.”

  “Awww.”

  “No, Mom’s okay about it. All her friends have moved or died. At least this way she’ll have people to play cards with.”

  “She has a better attitude than I will, I bet.”

  “You have many good years left in you, old girl.” He put his hand on her shoulder and kissed her. As always, even though she didn’t mean to, she pulled away before he did. “Well, I’d better get to work,” he said. “Meeting you in Cape May tomorrow, and looking at places with my Mom next Wednesday, I’m losing too many work days. There will be some late nights for me coming up, that’s for sure.”

  “Good, I’ll be able to watch a romantic movie or two without you complaining through the whole thing.” She took a MetroCard out of her wallet. “Are you still going out to dinner with Frank?”

  “I have to. I canceled on him last time.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll let Frank pick. It’ll be four star, I’m sure. He’s such a foodie.”

  “Good. We’ll need his advice for breakfasts at our inn.”

  ***

  After Joanna pecked Brian goodbye, she reluctantly headed to work. Through a friend, she had gotten a job as an associate managing editor at a medical education company. The work wasn’t easy, and lately she’d made a lot more mistakes. It paid well, but the hours were long, the work detailed and multifaceted, and her heart wasn’t in it. Her boss wasn’t thrilled having her for an employee but didn’t have enough reason to fire her, yet. Her office was small and unimpressive but at least had a window. The second she walked through the door, she got a text message from her sister: “Find a great house.” Cynthia’s voice in her head read it as a command, not a good luck wish. Joanna turned on her computer and began hunting for the missing PowerPoint presentation.

  Susan, Joanna’s recently hired editorial assistant, bounced in. Although certain Susan could’ve found the presentation in minutes, Joanna was too embarrassed to ask. Twenty-three and newly graduated from college with a 4.0 in her double English/Communications major, Susan earned a not-so-whopping $34,500 a year. Joanna wished she had the clout to get the girl a raise. Susan was full of hopeful, helpful energy and enthusiasm and peppermint breath, wore a bright yellow V-neck shirt that was cut too low, a floral-print skirt that was too short, and unintentionally made Joanna feel old and sexless.

  “Are you excited about your romantic weekend?” Susan glanced from the Cape May brochure on Joanna’s desk to a picture of Brian thumbtacked to a bulletin board in back of Joanna’s head. “Your husband is hot.”

  Hot? “I guess he is cute,” Joanna said, throwing the brochure into a drawer, tired of looking at the couple on the cover: young, impossibly good-looking and fit, walking hand in hand on the beach. How many couples, of any age, felt inadequate when looking at these Photoshopped models? The sand and the ocean behind the irritating pair invited, but she and Brian wouldn’t be strolling wearing tiny bathing suits. In reality, she and Brian had never frolicked on a beach in their entire marriage.

  Her phone rang. It was her sister. “I’m faxing you something. It’s a list of questions I found in Real Estate Magazine: ‘What to ask a realtor.’ Get all these questions answered. Make sure you understand what you’re getting into.”

  “I’ll do my best, Cynthia.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need me to come with you? I can get my assistant to run the shop.”

  “No. I want to do it alone this time.” Actually, she would’ve loved assistance, but not from her overbearing sister, who tended to commandeer events, small or large, or her husband, who wasn’t enthusiastic about the project. Joanna had found it impossible on previous house-hunting trips to hear her own thoughts about a town or a house when either of those two joined her.

  Joanna found the presentation in the bowels of her computer and spent the rest of the morning painstakingly going over facts and figures, trying to ignore the truth that she didn’t care about any of it. She entered the latest statistics into a simple chart, using her limited PowerPoint skills. What took her an hour took the other editors, or her assistant, ten minutes. She wasn’t keeping up with the younger people in the office, and they were all younger, much younger, and seemed to learn things instantly, through their pores. A friend had suggested she take a course. She looked into it, and then realized she didn’t want to learn because she had to. Not any more. She wanted to learn because she wanted to. And she wanted a bed and breakfast.

  ***

  Due to a last-minute meeting with her boss that she couldn’t miss, Joanna ended up leaving work later than she had planned. Adrenaline, the kind that felt damaging, the kind filled with spikes, was speeding through her as she raced out of her office and headed west.

  Recently researched statistics floated in her head. Population density of Cape May, New Jersey: approximately thirteen-hundred people per square mile. The corresponding number in New York City, almost twenty-eight thousand. On this fine June day, on the corner of Forty-Second Street and Sixth Avenue, Joanna felt like she was right in the middle of all twenty-eight thousand of them. She stood on the curb, her overnight bag starting to cut into her left shoulder. Her eyes darted from the red light hanging above the street to the red “Don’t Walk” hand on the other side of the lanes of traffic. Her goal, the Port Authority bus terminal —what she jokingly called her Gateway to a Dream—was just a few blocks away. There, the bus to Cape May would be leaving in about half an hour. In New Jersey, the first words of a new chapter of her life might be written.

  But first she’d have to cross this street.

  Yes, New York was one of the greatest cities in the world, undeniably, but right now, Joanna didn’t care about its restaurants, theaters, and museums. She just wanted the light to change.

  At last, the red light turned green, and the red hand switched to a white figure walking. The northern flow of cars, buses, cabs, pedicabs, bikers, and roller bladers halted, and Joanna cautiously stepped off the curb and continued westward with the other pedestrians.

  As she zigged and zagged to avoid the people heading east, her brain spat at her—Why didn’t I take slightly less crowded Forty-First Street? Why didn’t I pack my lighter- weight bag? Why didn’t I wait until tomorrow and drive down the Jersey shore with Brian?

  Joanna lowered the volume of her internal critic, which was always awakened by that spiky adrenaline. She walked quickly, her peripheral vision slow to take in a homeless woman with a crutch. She U-turned and bumped into a teenager with a patchy beard and huge headphones. She said, “Sorry!” even though it was his fault for tailgating. She neared the woman, who was sitting on a plastic crate, holding out a paper cup. The scribbl
ing on the cardboard sign propped up in front of the woman, detailing a hard life and a request for food or money, was full of errors, and Joanna suppressed the urge to whip out her red pen to correct it. Instead, she dug in her pocket for a dollar, accidentally pulling out a $5 bill. About to shove it back into her pocket, she remembered her new credo, her own version of carpe diem: “Change. Improve. Every day,” and pushed the money into the partially crushed cup.

  “Bless you,” said the old woman, a threadbare shawl barely covering her matted hair.

  Joanna tried not to breathe in the rank odor. “You, too. Have a nice day!”

  Was that a stupid thing to say to a hungry homeless person? Joanna continued her walk/run to the Port Authority, saying a silent prayer of gratitude. She was healthy and had high hopes for the rest of her life, starting in less than twenty- eight minutes, when she’d board a bus and travel south on the Garden State Parkway. Approximately one-hundred and eighty miles later she’d be in quaint, quiet (she hoped), Victorian Cape May. Tomorrow Brian would drive down, wanting to avoid any bus at any time, and accompany her when she met with the realtor.

  It took five minutes to reach Times Square. Billboards, neon, construction, and lots of noise. Joanna once loved this area and the excitement, but she was younger then. Now it was an area to rush through. It was so frenzied crossing Seventh Avenue and then Broadway that she didn’t feel her cell phone vibrate the first time. Finding an unoccupied spot against a building, she answered the phone. She knew it was her sister, again.

  “Hello, Cynthia,” she yelled into the phone.

  “I can hardly hear you,” Cynthia snapped. “Why is this city so damn loud?”

  “Well, I am at the Crossroads of the World. It has a right to be loud.”

  “Not when I need to ask you something.”

  “Ask, but yell so I can hear you,” Joanna said, checking her watch again.

  Cynthia loudly whispered, “I can’t. I’m in the shop.” She was standing behind the reproduction Louis XV desk in her antiques store on Madison Avenue. “Are you sure about this realtor? Did you check her credentials?” Cynthia’s disapproval always added up to more than two cents worth of opinion.

  Joanna said, “Yes. Cynthia, I have to go. The bus leaves soon, and I have to get through this wall of tourists.”

  “Keep in touch. You need your older sister now. I can help. I have business savvy. You don’t.”

  As Joanna continued walking, she tried to make sense of the assaulting theme park that the street had become. Funny that she missed the way it used to be. In the seventies and eighties, Forty-Second Street was slummy, with porno shops and bums, and movie theaters you wouldn’t take a kid into. Now it was an outdoor strip mall of chain restaurants and attractions, from Applebee’s and McDonald’s to RiteAid and Duane Reade to Madame Tussauds and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. “Give me a head shop over this anytime,” Joanna thought, laughing to herself, she who had smoked marijuana a grand total of three times.

  By the time she got to the front of the Port Authority building, Joanna was exhausted. Hundreds of people entered the travel hub or exited with luggage and confused looks on their faces. Some people browsed counterfeit merchandise laid out on tables, others glanced at the statue of Ralph Kramden. Her inner core craved quiet.

  Safe inside where it was slightly less crowded, Joanna slowed down and followed signs to her gate. She was winded from walking so fast but she’d made it in time. The huge clock over the archway read 2:17. Nearer her gate, she went into the ladies room, assuming it would be slightly less awful than the one on the bus. She fluffed her hair and checked her general appearance. Her preferably chin-length hair, neater for business and easier to control, was getting a little too long. Time to make an appointment at the salon. It still looked good, though, with waves that, she hoped, softened her aging face. She peered a little closer: yes, maybe that new miracle moisturizer was, indeed, “erasing” some fine lines. Heavens, she hoped so. Although the thought of a face lift made her feel queasy, so did the sags, wrinkles, and other joys of being fifty-nine.

  At the Starbucks near her gate, she bought a cup of peppermint tea. Although there were empty seats at tables, she stood, leaning against a column, having just recently read that sitting too many hours a day was fatal. Tomorrow she’d probably read that drinking hot tea was fatal. Or breathing.

  She drank slowly, trying to calm down her insides, which were still racing from the hectic sprint to the Port Authority. No need to rush to the bus. Her prepurchased ticket guaranteed her a seat and, after all, how many people would be going to New Jersey midday on a Thursday? She glanced at the other customers around her. Would Cape May offer such extraordinary people watching? No. Joanna had done her research—Cape May was almost ninety percent white; New York was thirty-five percent white, almost twenty-seven percent Hispanic, and about a quarter Black. After growing up in multiracial Queens, and living in Manhattan all these years, that disparity was unnerving. She had hopes of making her own inn—IF she bought one—somehow more welcoming to all. The thought of being surrounded by white, middle-aged people for the rest of her life didn’t thrill her. She gulped. That was her, wasn’t it? When and how did that happen? And what came between middle-aged and elderly? Older aged? Ugh. She felt young inside, and still looked pretty good on the outside. Her pale skin kept her out of the sun, which cut down on the wrinkles she might’ve had at her age. A few extra pounds refused to leave her average-sized frame, but she ate carefully and even her older clothes still fit, mostly. Infrequently she went to the gym and more frequently she thanked her slim parents for passing along their DNA.

  A couple, in their late teens or early twenties, sat kissing at a small corner table. Unable to stop herself, she stared at them. When was the last time she and Brian had really kissed? Not just a peck hello or goodbye. A few days, and nights, together away from work, commitments, and routine would do them good.

  Downing the remaining bit of soothing peppermint tea, Joanna listened to a Port Authority loudspeaker announcement in a lyrical Spanish accent: “The 2:30 bus to Atlantic City, with connections to Wildwood and Cape May, is now boarding at gate three nineteen.”

  Over the rim of her paper cup, Joanna risked one last glance at the kissing couple. After peeking (they were still kissing), she gathered her things, tossed the empty cup, and walked to the gate. She was surprised to see a line and, as she climbed aboard the bus, was again surprised to see it almost packed. Apparently one of the Atlantic City hotels was having a special mid-week offer, luring people south to the casinos, hence the crowd. Close to the front of the bus, where she preferred to sit, was an empty aisle seat next to a teenage boy with spiky black hair. The seat was comfortable and she managed to settle in, despite a strange cleaning-fluid smell.

  A raspy smoker’s voice over the bus speakers announced, too loudly, and with an awful accent, “Dis is da tooo-thurdy bus to Alanic Ciddee, wid transfuhs ta Wildwood an’ Cape May.” Her seatmate put in neon green ear buds, which emitted a steady thump thump thump. The engine also made a lot of noise. So much for a few relaxing traveling hours. Joanna pulled out her new notebook. Even if she didn’t move to Cape May, she was keeping a journal about this midlife change, or attempt at change. She loved to write but was usually too tired after work and always too self-critical. She was learning already: her first “Note to Self” was Visitors may crave quiet after a not-so-relaxing bus ride.

  Joanna looked out the window, but the kid with the headphones made a face, as if she was intruding on his space. So instead, she gazed at the rainbow pattern on the back of the headrest on the seat in front.

  She concentrated, and jotted down: “After twenty years of marriage, a woman and her accountant husband contemplate moving from Manhattan to buy and run a B&B, far away from the noise and crowds of the city.”

  Wow. Individual days might be long and draining, but years really did fly by. Twenty years of marriage.

  Her seatmate turned up his volume an
d through the thumping she could hear the screaming of the singer. The bus driver was loudly conversing with a passenger, too. She needed to move away from the noise. She craned her neck and saw, all the way in the back, a few empty seats. Grabbing her overnight bag, she stood up, and carefully inched her way to the back of the bus, hurrying to find a seat. She wanted to sit alone and spread out but there weren’t two empty seats together. The bus made a turn and she almost fell in someone’s lap.

  “Please siddown, ma’am,” came the voice over the speakers. Joanna assumed the driver’s concern for her well-being was rooted in the bus company’s reluctance to be sued.

  There were three empty seats: her prospective trip mates were a sleeping woman, a very large man, and a man who was reading. She decided on the woman, who suddenly snored, so she sat down next to the reader. He didn’t look up or budge an inch.

  She settled in: bag at her feet, notebook on her lap, pencil in her hand…and nothing in her mind. One sentence completed, she was already losing concentration. Was that age? Postmenopause? Disinterest? Or did she just desperately need to relax.

  Too often lately she’d been feeling that, about to turn sixty, “It’s all downhill from here.” Sixty now wasn’t what sixty was for her mother but, most likely, the best of life was over. Maybe her need to move, to start a business, to change everything, was simply a stab at slowing the inevitable

  decline. Maybe she wanted to shake things up with Brian. Things had gotten dull, and she was at least fifty-one percent to blame.

  It was odd, really. She and Brian had started radically. All their friends thought they were crazy for marrying the way they did.

  One night over twenty-five years ago, she went to Brian’s apartment, lonely and desperately needing someone to just hold her. She wasn’t in the mood for anything more, but quid pro quo. An hour later, over scrambled eggs and bagels, Brian had said, “You know, I have more fun with you than anyone else. If we don’t meet anyone…”

  “Oh, please, not one of those we’ll be married soul mates kinda thing,” Joanna said.