Waiting for a Party

Claire Meadows, 92, is lying in bed on a Sunday morning, looking forward to the 102nd birthday party of her friend Martin in his retirement home. As she reminiscences about her life, her failed ambition to become a concert pianist, her missed opportunity to have a child, her friends and lovers, mostly dead, she is troubled by the part she played, consciously and deliberately, in the death of her husband. Did she kill him or was it an accident? Or a suicide willingly abetted by her? And what about her feelings of fear and relief when the body was taken away? Widowed, her outlook is changed by a casual sexual encounter and in the years that follow she seems to be catching up on the experience she missed as she was married at twenty-two. Most of her brief liaisons are unsatisfactory until, at a concert, she sits next to a man with an intriguing face. Many years after his death, the memory of that relationship still excites her. When she met her husband, who was more than twenty years her senior, she was lost, or that is what she believed, and for the next thirty years he made all the decisions on her behalf. She had to adjust to his lifestyle and relinquish her musical ambitions. Yet, looking back, she insists that she was happy in her marriage, only to qualify the statements almost immediately. Her memories, are unreliable and sometimes contradictory. She is aware that she has difficulty in distinguishing memory and imagination. However, despite her advanced age, her desire for love and sexual intimacy appear undiminished. She dreams of being sexually desired, while aware that, at ninety-two, the dream is bound to remain just that. Zach, her adopted son, and Gabriel, his partner, both in their early sixties, arrive earlier than planned. There is no party. Martin died that morning. Despite their grief, Claire and the men plan a trip to the Uffizi in Florence. This is a story of a life-enhancing journey from a state of being lost to self-knowledge and contentment.