Free The White Rose by Jean Hanff Korelitz Page B

she says flatly, but he shakes his head.
    “I disagree. Or at least, it has just as much chance of lasting as it would if we were both in our twenties.”
    That’s what you think, Marian wants to say.
    “Look, maybe this…this haze we’re in will burn off, but there’s so much between us, of real substance, that when it does”—Oliver, corrects himself—“ if it does. If it did. There would be something different beneath it. I mean, something of value. Something I’d be happy to live with.”
    She looks at him with tenderness. “You shouldn’t be. You deserve more.”
    “Oh. Deserve, ” Oliver says dismissively. “I hate that. Everybody deserves. It doesn’t work like that. We get what we get. Sometimes we get what we go out and make an effort to look for. We don’t get what we deserve. Besides,” he looks at her, “what do you deserve?”
    I’ve had that, she thinks. I’ve had my chance.
    What she wanted back then—and yes, more than likely what she’d deserved—was Marshall, who had paid her the compliment of acknowledging her separateness and refrained from putting her on display. Who had treated her with unassailable courtesy, which included conducting his love affairs at such a remove that they truly did not impinge upon her life. Who had also held her hand during chemotherapy, and had not further punished her for the loss of her reproductive organs by leaving her.
    “I’m satisfied,” Marian hears herself say, and she knows that she is, or at least has been.
    “That’s not enough,” Oliver says.
    She closes her eyes. Darkness. The only sound is the traffic far below, the rustle of her own breath. Go, she thinks. How much more can she take?
    “You’re too extraordinary for that to be enough,” he says.
    “Ah,” Marian says, truly weary. “That’s where you’re wrong. I’m very, very ordinary, and very, very lucky. I’m alive. I’m healthy, so far. I have a stable marriage and wealth and even a career that’s given me great satisfaction. And right now I have this, which I’m loving. But I can’t have it forever and I wish you would stop talking this way because I want to enjoy it now.”
    Oliver leans forward, one arm outstretched. Fingers find her face: chin, jaw, ear. “Why not?” he asks, sincerely questioning. “I don’t understand: Why not forever? Why not take forever if it’s offered? And it is, Marian. We’ll start from here and we’ll just go forward.”
    “I don’t like forward,” she says, losing her reserve. “I don’t like thinking about it, and I certainly won’t be responsible for dragging you down. If you’re so empathetic, if you’re so sure you understand me, why is this so hard for you to get? I’m forty-eight. If this is the best time of my life—and it is, Oliver, in many ways it is—then where do you think we go from here? I’m not going back to my girlish figure, I can tell you that. I’m not going back to wild abandon. I won’t be trekking in Nepal anytime soon, and I’m not going to have any kids. It’s a different country I’m going to, do you get that?” She is louder, more shrill than she can remember being, at least with him. “Oliver,” Marian says sternly. “Enjoy your youth. Enjoy me, by all means, as much as you want and as often as you want. But please don’t humiliate me by trying to make me fit into your life. I won’t fit.”
    “You’re afraid to get old,” he says with unbearable starkness. She herself has managed to avoid the word “old.” “That’s all it is. I don’t get it. I’m not afraid of it.”
    “Well, it’s a long way off for you.” She is harsh.
    “No, I mean I’m not afraid of your getting old. I know you were beautiful as a young woman. You’re beautiful now. I have every reason to believe that when you’re an old woman, you’ll be beautiful then, so what’s the big deal? It’s not why I love you today, so why would it matter in the future?”
    Marian lurches off the couch,