1
It was the hot flashes that clued Bethany in first. Up all night, sweating, watching television, and praying to fall back asleep, Bethany was suddenly shot through with a feeling of dread and understanding. Something was wrong, but it shouldn’t have surprised her. In fact, she told herself not to be surprised at all.
Being a woman meant being ever prepared for the mysteries of getting older.
Standing, she went to the window to watch the waves of Nantucket Sound draw across the beach in front of her place, the house she shared with her second husband, Rod, and her three children. She was forty-five years old, a woman with a tremendous career and so many stories of love and loss and joy and failure. She was also—she realized now—entering menopause.
Which was not a tragedy, she reminded herself, although tears filled her eyes that she blinked away.
The following morning, Bethany was in the kitchen early, making breakfast for the kids. Now that she’d discovered the truth of her condition, she was on the path to acceptance.Bethany was a doctor, which meant that there were no great secrets of the human body. Not everyone was allowed to grow old, which meant menopause needed to be celebrated rather than feared. She was going to live a long time, God willing. She had to be ready.
“You seem different, Mom,” Phoebe, her youngest, who was practically a teenager, said as she smeared peanut butter over her toast.
“I am different!” Bethany said, smiling over her coffee. “We’re all different, all the time. Humans have the beautiful capacity to change and change, again and again.”
Phoebe cast a nervous glance over at her older siblings, Maddie and Tommy, who were twins, aged sixteen going on thirty, it felt like. But Tommy was buried in a nearly late homework assignment, and Maddie was texting someone furiously. They didn’t care about the nuances of their mother’s moods.
Bethany drove the kids to school, then continued to the hospital, where she worked primarily as a surgeon. Today’s docket was sparse, which was a blessing. It allowed her to sit in her office and think about her body and its changes. It also gave her time to call her sister Rebecca and tell her, in a voice she hoped sounded excited, “It’s happening. I’m entering menopause.”
Rebecca gushed with goodwill. “It’s going to be wonderful. Women say it’s the best time of their lives.”
Bethany tried to keep up her smile.
“We should celebrate,” Rebecca said. “Wine? Pizza? Cake?”
Bethany laughed. “I can’t say no to any of that. Especially not now. My cravings are all over the place.”
They decided to throw Bethany’s “menopause party” that Saturday evening. Valerie, who’d recently had a baby with her husband, Alex, agreed to come wholeheartedly. At the lastsecond, they decided to invite their mother, Esme, because who knew menopause better than their very own mother? “She can be our guiding light,” Rebecca declared.
Rebecca decided to host the party at her place. Her husband, Ben, was away from the island, and Rebecca’s older children were either away at college or kept to themselves. Bethany sometimes considered how strange it was that her three kids would be moving out soon, leaving her and Rod up to their own devices. She hoped that the freedom would feel invigorating. She hoped that missing them and the love she felt around them wouldn’t kill her.
It was late May, and it was beautiful, sixty-eight degrees. Dressed in a light jacket and a long black linen dress, Bethany entered Rebecca’s house and grimaced. Rebecca hurried over and touched her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“It’s just, you know, my body.” Bethany heaved a sigh as the nausea passed. She hadn’t slept again last night, and everything had the air of being made-up, of being a dream.
Rebecca ushered Bethany back onto the veranda overlooking the pulsating Nantucket Sound. She poured Bethany a glass of wine that, no matter how much Bethany tried to convince herself to, she couldn’t drink. Her stomach sloshed. But she nibbled on the crackers Rebecca had put out, grateful for the salt. Soon, Valerie and Esme arrived, and they swallowed Bethany with hugs.
“I remember when it happened to me,” Esme said gently, her eyes filled with love. “I remember thinking everything was over after that. But in reality, everything was just beginning! Larry and I fell even deeper in love, which was hard to believe at the time. And I felt more passionate about my true love: books and stories and everything at the Sutton Book Club.”
Bethany smiled. She never knew how to feel when her mother talked about her late second husband, Larry, especiallynow that Esme and Bethany’s father, Victor, were back together. Especially now that Esme and Victor had adopted Victor’s ex-client, a thirteen-year-old child named Kade.
But Bethany liked imagining her mother at different phases of her life, phases Bethany hadn’t been privy to, as she’d been living in Savannah, married to a terrible man, and having his children.
Luckily, Maddie, Tommy, and Phoebe were nothing like Nick.
“It’s funny,” Valerie said, sipping her wine, her eyes to the horizon. “I was just talking to a client of mine about menopause. She’s hired me to plan her third wedding. But this time she’s marrying a mega-millionaire, which she’s quite pleased about.”
Bethany, Rebecca, and Esme chuckled.
“I should say so,” Rebecca said. “Onward and upward?”
“The thing is, he’s actually so nice,” Valerie said. “She said he’s the best of the three. You should hear her stories about her exes. They made my blood run cold. Anyway, she’s maybe forty-six? Forty-seven? She thought she was entering menopause. She even threw herself a little party. But while she was celebrating with her friends and sisters, she got really nauseous and threw up. One of her friends made a joke about her being pregnant rather than going through menopause.”
Esme’s jaw dropped. “Don’t tell me…”
Valerie nodded furiously. “I can’t believe it, but yeah. She’s pregnant! Her wedding is coming up. She’ll be about four months along when she walks down the aisle.”
Rebecca cackled. “Wow. Wow!”
