Second Nature by Alice Hoffman Page B

loud.
    By the time Michelle got home, Lydia was up in the bathroom. She smiled at herself in the mirror and began to brush her hair. Her whole life had changed, and you couldn’t even tell by looking at her. She could barely remember who she was before, or what on earth had been important to her. When there was a knock on the door, Lydia’s stomach flipped over. Could it be that she really had a mother and a father and a little sister, who was right now rifling through her jewelry box, searching for dangling earrings and bangle bracelets?
    “I’m in here,” Lydia called. “Stay out.”
    Michelle came in anyway and closed the door behind her. Not a week went by that she didn’t counsel a junior or senior about birth control; she believed she never once made a moral judgment. But this was different. This was her daughter.
    “Mom!” Lydia said. “Can’t you wait?”
    “I want to know who he is,” Michelle said.
    Lydia eyed her mother coolly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
    “The boy,” Michelle said. “Don’t lie to me.”
    Lydia bit her lip. Just thinking about Connor, imagining the goofy look he had on his face the first time she took off her blouse, made her smile. They hadn’t planned to keep their love secret; it had just turned out that way. They didn’t want to be bothered with nosy families and friends. The last person on earth Lydia would consider sharing her news with was her mother.
    “Get that smirk off your face,” Michelle said.
    Before Michelle could stop herself, she smacked Lydia. Lydia’s head reeled back; her blue eyes were wide and they stung. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw the red hand mark on her face.
    “Oh, my God,” Michelle said. “Lydia, I didn’t mean that.”
    They were staring at each other in the mirror. For an instant, Michelle looked so crumpled, so very far away from being young, she hardly recognized herself. Hadn’t she just been the one who was seventeen?
    “Oh, yes you did,” Lydia said. She felt something burst inside her, as if she’d just been granted her freedom. She raised her chin, and her eyes were perfectly clear. “You meant it,” she said.
    That night Lydia didn’t bother climbing out her window. She put on her boots and a heavy sweater and left by the front door. It was after eleven, and Paul had already fallen asleep, but beside him in their bed, Michelle was wide awake, and she heard the door open, then close. She could have jumped out of bed and chased Lydia down the front path; she could have phoned Roy down at the station and had him pick up the boy Lydia was off to meet and give him a good scare. Instead, she kept her head on her pillow and listened to her husband shift in his sleep. She knew then why parents often came to her office distraught, torn apart by what was really only a minor transgression. She knew why she’d been beside herself with worry. There came a moment when quite suddenly a mother realized that a child was no longer hers, and for Michelle that moment had already come and gone. Without bothering to ask, or even give notice, her daughter had just grown up.

FOUR
    OLD DICK HAD LIVED FOR almost a century, but even that wasn’t nearly long enough. Common knowledge would certainly lead anyone to believe that more than thirty thousand mornings and afternoons spent lugging flesh and bones around would tire a man out and leave him begging for eternal rest. This was not true. It was absolute bullshit. At the age of ninety-one, Richard Aaron had never found the earth more beautiful or more distant. Some nights he dreamed he was flying, and in his dreams he reached out his arms. There was so much he wanted. But he was moving far too quickly to walk on the grass or touch the newly spaded dirt or kiss the girl who was waving to him from below, and when he woke up, and discovered his body was old, he swore at his housekeeper, and had the curtains drawn against the sun, and threw his pathetic