Disruption

The restaurant smells of pasta, parmesan cheese, and warm, fresh bread. An unassuming place just off the boulevard, across the street from the dive where we used to go dancing. That dump is still there, and from the window of the restaurant I can see three guys in wind breakers and dirty caps, smoking on the front steps. They look as gray and haggard as this town, as gray and haggard as the sky that sits with heavy determination upon us.

Catherine and Maggie take their seats on either side of me at the small wooden table. It wobbles a bit, and I put my size 10 foot on the pedestal base to hold the table steady. We pile our purses on the one empty chair, slip off our coats. I rest my elbows on the paper placemat that features a murky picture of Italy on the front.

This is nice, Maggie says.

It’s Friday night, and we are three older women gathered around an unsteady table in a family restaurant just off the boulevard. Without warning, we have become the women I’d glanced at years ago and was glad I wasn’t. Was sure I would never be. The waitress—a wiry woman with short blonde hair and dark roots—takes our order for two Diet Cokes and a water. Doesn’t anyone want wine, I ask, but Maggie waves me off, and Catherine explains that she is tired, and so we will sit at this feeble table on a Friday night, the three of us with our benign drinks and our purses collected where we can keep an eye on them.

I sigh, look around.

And here I am, back in the town I left so many years ago. The women on either side of me have never left, still have the same jobs they had when I lived here. They envy me my leaving, romanticize the hardship and sacrifices I made, living in a handful of cities before I finally found the one that felt right to me. A place 250 miles south of here, where people dress differently, respond differently. But the women on either side of me tonight also feel sorry for me, I can tell. They think that I have lost something valuable by moving away from this gray and dirty town. But I’m not sure what that thing is. They hint at it, and try to hide their pity.

Why didn’t you tell us you were coming home? Catherine asks. I had phoned them both this afternoon after arriving for a conference and settling my things into the hotel. I suck in my breath to correct her—this is not my home—but decide against it. She is sincere, loving. And why, she says, leaning across the table to gently pat my hand, are you staying in a hotel? I notice the sign of age on the back of her hand and steal a glance at my own quiet hand receiving her touch. She is only a year older than me.

Earlier at the conference, the plenary speaker talks of disruption, and the role of disruption on learning. She tells the audience about a recent trip to Lebanon, to Syria—of cultures and religions colliding. Of having her own preconceptions disrupted. And she explains how she was energized by that—and I have felt that same thing many, many times. Fought back the fear to allow the disruption to take hold. The speaker goes on to tell us of people who choose not to seek disruption, who choose to navigate only the familiar, only what is safe. Talks about the cognitive flexibility that comes with disruption, and I was very glad to hear her put it that way.

So I have decided to go back to church, Maggie says—and I can tell she’s relieved to have that off her chest. I pull the shades down over my eyes and remember Maggie and me scoffing at religion, at all those rituals. Two Recovering Catholics out dancing in high heels on a Friday night, the boys crackling like Pop Rocks candy around us. Maggie wore Damnation Red nail polish on her fingers, her toes. I wore fishnet stockings brought back from my first trip to London. We laughed at the world, at the boys, at the music—at the possibility of becoming three older women bunched around our Diet Cokes and water on a colorless Friday night.

Good for you, I say, and I think about how cyclical it all is. That desire to turn inward, to look homeward as we age. But I can’t imagine ever pulling up to one of these broken streets with a U-Haul in tow, reclaiming whatever it is that Catherine and Maggie feel I have lost.

The waitress comes back to our table with enormous bowls of steaming pasta and says, as she’s putting down each plate, Can I get you anything else? Her feet are already moving to the next table, because what more could three older women clustered around this decrepit table on a Friday night, possibly want?

My friends wave her off, pick up their forks. Yes, I say, holding up my hand before she can get away. I want a scotch on the rocks. And Catherine and Maggie raise their eyebrows at me; and when the waitress looks at them, they shake their heads, wrinkle their noses. I have never tasted scotch, never ordered one. But tonight I want to. And while I wait for the waitress to come back with my drink, I take my steadying foot off the pedestal base of the table, and think about the long drive home the next day.

***