A WOMAN in her sixties. Looking at us.
WOMAN … I … the thing is, I’m seeing someone now. That’s the nice thing, the best bit of this is that. I’ve met someone. (Beat.) It’s been a while … I don’t want to say how long, not exactly, but long enough as to make this special. Very special. Quite special, really. Quite. He’s one of the men from my French class—I’ve been taking lessons over the past year and he’s there at the college with me, Monday nights—anyway, that’s how we met. It happened like that. We were seated next to each other and we met. (Beat.) He’s very handsome. Not some unrealistic sort of handsome, not a “movie star” handsome or that kind of thing, not like that … but quite good-looking. Certainly not average. At all. No. People look at him—my classmates and other folks on campus, during our coffee break—they see him and quite a few heads turn in our direction. More than a few, actually. Many. He’s that striking … with his silver hair and a very rugged look; like one of those men they used to have in the cigarette ads back when those kind of things could be shown on billboards and in magazines … that’s what he reminds me of. A man like that. A nice-looking man with a cigarette in his hand. He doesn’t smoke—just to be clear, he’s a non-smoker ever since his wife passed away from cancer, a year and a half ago … she was older but still, it was the lung cancer that took her—but that’s the way he looks. I just wanted to … am I making any kind of sense? I hope so. (Beat.) When I say I’m “seeing” him, I suppose that’s a stretch of my own … whatever that would be … a wish or a hope … my imagination, I guess … but not completely. These thoughts are not completely without merit. No, they are not. Reason being, he recently asked me to accompany him on a trip, a kind of weekend getaway upstate that I’m—I don’t think it’s any secret to say this—I am actually contemplating quite seriously. Why shouldn’t I? I mean, just because I happen to be a little older—and wiser as well, I’m definitely that—I don’t see how come I can’t run off and do something a bit impetuous as well, a bit daring in that way that younger people do. I don’t see it as dangerous, as my son would, I just don’t … if it’s anything, then it’s carefree … that’s the term for it: carefree. I’m making a choice for me, something I want and probably need as well … I need some kind of adventure in my life and I feel like this is it. That this may be the thing that’s calling out for me to do and I won’t be sorry, I won’t be … I’m sure of it. I just am. (Beat.) When I was younger … it must’ve been … oh, how long ago now … probably in my thirties or so … I could’ve been forty, even … if I was then I had just turned, right around my fortieth birthday … I met a man. A wonderful man. He was so lovely, and sweet to me … but I was married at the time, still “attached,” as they say sometimes … I was attached … and I was not available for that kind of thing. For romance. (Beat.) He did kiss me … one time, just the once, at a party in the city—we were living up near White Plains when all this happened, had told ourselves that we needed to be out of New York to raise the kids—we had two children together, my husband and I … my son and a beautiful daughter, Gabby—and I’m not sure … was it New Year’s? Might’ve been, something we were downtown for, could’ve been an office party or whatnot … but obviously, yes, I’d been drinking and it was late … it was some moment like that, an event, where things get the better of you and so it happens. A kiss. One single little kiss that I’ve never forgotten, to this day. (Beat.) And I won’t do that, try and know if the same thing ever happened to my husband, if he knew or ever had a time where he was put in the same situation … I don’t care. I honestly do not. Whatever went on between us—not this man and me, not that, but with my husband and myself, that’s what I’m saying—and there were some awful times later in our lives where we fought over everything … I mean, every little scrap of paper in every shoebox that we ever tucked into the attic … but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a kiss. A tiny moment of tenderness that slipped under the radar … everybody else’s radar, at least … and landed at my feet. Or, well, my mouth I suppose … to be more right … more truthful about it. On my very own lips. (Beat.) On the ride back home that night … usually I would’ve worried that my husband had had too many drinks and that we were going to have an accident or be pulled over on the Sawmill Parkway—practical matters that a wife can catch herself up in if she so chooses—but not this time. I watched the lights of the cars that were coming at us in the darkness, tiny streaks of bright … and it was perfect. If I’d died right then, that very moment, I think that I would’ve been content. Fulfilled. Some part of me would’ve been terrified, no doubt, some realistic portion of me … worried about the children and the bills and such practical matters as those … but as a person, as a woman, I would’ve died completely full. Filled up with love. (Smiles.) And I never even knew his name! That man. Never … not even to this day. (Beat.) I suppose that I could’ve tracked him down … found out if he was a partner at my husband’s firm or that type of thing—mind you, it wasn’t like it is now, today, when you can track down anyone in a minute or two just by getting on the computer, it was nothing like that … you could call someone or look in the phone book or even make an inquiry—a letter to a business or some reliable person—but life contained so much mystery in those days … so much more than now … I miss that … (Beat.) But I never did any of that. Tracked him down. Asked around. Did what I could to find this man … I mean, for what? To kiss him again … to touch him or things like that … to leave my family because of my feelings for a person I didn’t even know the name of? People didn’t do that. Not when I was young. Well, maybe they did … I don’t know … or in stories, but that’s not what I did. I didn’t do that. No. I kissed that man and I went back to my life and I never told anyone about it before now. Just so you know. That’s what I did. That’s what you do … when you have children and a life and responsibilities. (Beat.) And now so many years have passed, my husband is gone—not just gone as in divorced but passed away, several years ago now, a car accident (on the Sawmill Parkway)—and I’m taking classes and living my life and doing my best to stay connected to my children—not just them but their children as well—and I’m about to go away with a man that I hardly know. Have had a handful of cups of coffee with. The friends I’ve asked … told this to … are mixed in how they feel about my decision. Some are excited, some frown and ask questions … others take it upon themselves to go online and check up on this man—so far he seems to stand up to the deepest scrutiny, even a criminal check that someone (whom I won’t mention here) from my women’s bible study did as a “favor” to me. He has a clean bill of health—much to the chagrin of my many friends and neighbors—and I plan to go away with him next weekend. He’s picked a beautiful little bed & breakfast near the Vermont border and I’m very excited about the whole thing … I really am … (Beat.) The only thing … and I probably shouldn’t even mention it, but … I know that it won’t be like it was before. In the past. That other man. From my past. I know that however wonderful our drive up will be, and however many delicious meals we have at their Michelin-rated restaurant there … no matter if we fall in love or find a kind of happiness that can come late in one’s life … some kind of warmth and friendship and security … I’ll never feel what I felt that night in Manhattan. In the arms of a man that I didn’t know. Who kissed me like that moment between us was actually the end of the world. (Beat.) Although now that I think about it, maybe it was … maybe it honestly was. (Beat.) For me, at least …
She stops talking for a moment. Looks at us. Nods. Looks away.
THE END.