Free 50 by Avery Corman Page B

significant—for the scale of his life. He had his wife, two children, and a dog in the same apartment. People brought in clothes and Marty got the clothes clean. If it all could be so simple.
    Doug spent several hours shopping for a gift for Karen’s 13th birthday, finally selecting a sports watch and a book on the art of Georgia O’Keeffe. She was happy to have the gifts, which cost sixty-five dollars, and he gave them to her at a roller-skating party for her friends, which Susan organized. When Karen next came to his apartment she was wearing a luxurious cable-knit pink cashmere sweater, her birthday gift from Susan. It must have cost two hundred dollars.
    The Christmas school vacation had to be divided between both parents, and Susan phoned to suggest they combine resources for a skiing vacation. She said the children were interested in trying it and she thought that for social reasons, skiing was a sport that should be in their lives. Susan had found a two-week package at a lodge in Sugarbush in Vermont. She would split the cost with Doug and be with Karen and Andy the first week, he would take over the second. So tentative was his commitment to the idea of skiing that if they manufactured disposable ski wear he would have bought it. In a discount sporting-goods store he found a cheap parka and pants. He took a flight to Burlington, where he was going to rent a car for the drive to Sugarbush. The terminal at Burlington was busy with people carrying boots and skis, high school or college students, he could not distinguish between the age groups, and various people who did not look as young, singles, young marrieds. A depressing thought occurred to him while he was standing on the car-rental line. Am I the oldest person in this entire airlines terminal? A few moments later an elderly couple passed with their grandchildren. All right, then. Am I the oldest person going skiing in the entire terminal? On the way out of the building he saw Lars or Sven, in his early 60s, Nordic, trim, in a beautiful ski jacket. Lars or Sven skied expertly when he wasn’t making love to countless women. I have my category now. I am the oldest beginner in this terminal, maybe the world.
    Susan returned to New York and Doug began his week, signing up the following morning for his first class. Karen and Andy helped him with the equipment. He ached just from bending to get his boots on. They guided him over to the class and said they would meet him at lunchtime. A week of skiing and they already belonged on a different part of the mountain. After two hours of hobbling sideways and falling in the snow, Doug discovered a sport he loathed more than jogging. The instructor, a strapping lad named Mark, was very enthusiastic, and by the afternoon session he had Doug falling off the rope tow.
    By the second day he was now doing snowplow turns at a downhill speed not much faster than the rate at which icicles form. The children glided by to offer encouragement, and in order to turn and say hello to them he fell, for about the thirtieth time in two days. The afternoon of the third day he was so tired he had developed his own snowplow wobble. I am a 48-year-old man on a ski slope in Vermont, my nose is running, my feet are cold. I am doing this to compete in some way with my ex-wife, who is not even here and who is probably in a heated room wearing a normal person’s clothes. I am doing this for my children, for their social advancement, and they are already so socially advanced they breeze by me to say hi. The one person I am not doing this for is me. At which point he hit ice, skidded rapidly and out of control, fell, landing on his rear, and as he slid downhill, his el cheapo pants split and were filling up with snow. He saw skiers at the bottom of the hill and beyond them a lodge. He imagined himself going right down the hill on his rear, past the skiers, crashing through the lodge and coming out the other end, bumping into Lars or Sven, who would