“What do you mean?” Ellen said. “You’re still so young.”
“Twenty-five is just a baby in New York,” Sarah agreed. “People settle down way later here. There’s no rush.”
“Well, by Midwest standards I’m basically approaching old-maid territory,” Rae said. “And sorry to break it to you, but the biological clock doesn’t give a damn about New Yorkers’ enlightened lifestyles. Our eggs are still bleeding out every month.”
“Don’t say that,” Ellen said with a shudder as Sarah gagged at the graphic visual.
“It’s just the truth,” Rae said. “Think about it logically.” Usually her analytical mind could talk her out of overreacting, but this time it was doing the opposite. “Let’s work backwards with the math. Women’s biological clocks expire at thirty-five, so I need to have all my kids before then.” She’d seen too many stats about how the probability of pregnancy complications and birth defects increased after thirty-five, and she didn’t trust that she’d be one of the lucky ones.
“I want three kids, spaced at least two years apart, so that means I’ll have my third kid at thirty-five, my second at thirty-three, andmy first at thirty-one.” She was determined to create a big, boisterous family, the kind she’d always longed for as an only child.
“And I want to be married for a bit to build a solid foundation with my husband before our offspring take over our lives,” she went on. This part was particularly important. She’d done the math to figure out that she’d been conceived on her parents’ honeymoon, and she thought this might have been one of the key variables that had doomed them for divorce.
“So that means I’ve got to tie the knotbefore I turn thirty.” The big three-oh, only five years away, loomed large and menacing in her head and in her heart.
She paused for a breath. When it didn’t come, she plowed ahead anyway. “So married at twenty-nine, and build in a year for planning the wedding, so let’s say I get engaged at twenty-eight. And we’d want to live together for a year before getting engaged to validate compatibility, which puts me at twenty-seven, and we have to date two years before that to make sure we’re making rational decisions, not just swept up in the hormones. So that puts me attwenty-five.”
She shuddered, infuriated with herself because she hadn’t thought about this earlier, though she knew she had on some level—she’d just tried her best not to acknowledge it until it came bursting out tonight. “I need to meet my husband ASAP so I can get married before thirty, or it’s all over.”
Ellen and Sarah looked rattled, like Rae’s words struck too close to home, like they too were getting spooked by the cruel truths of womanhood and the shrinking pool of eggs.
“ASAP!” Rae repeated, with the same urgency with which her bosses were always requesting financial models for the deals she worked on.
The penthouse door opened. It was Mina, standing there in jeans and heeled boots, bathrobe nowhere in sight. “So sorry I’m late,” she said, panting from the six flights of stairs. “My Uber driver drove likea grandpa.” She kicked off her shoes and joined them on the floor. “What’d I miss?”
Rae waited for the others to give away her meltdown, but Ellen just said, very casually, “We’re downloading a dating app for Rae to bail her out of her love slump.”
Mina clapped, like this was the best of all possible answers. “Scramblettes to the rescue!”
Rae gave up on the cork. She left the damaged bottle on the floor and lay down on the couch, mismatched socks dangling off the edge. She wrapped her robe tighter, sealing herself in. She felt like she’d been stuck in a calamitous scene from someone else’s memoir, only to turn the page and find out it was her own story, but someone else had written it for her.
Ellen perched herself on the armrest, stroking Rae’s hair. Rae didn’t get much physical touch these days, with the exception of firm handshakes at work and pointy elbows to the ribs on the subway, or on a good day, the grazing of a barista’s hand as he passed Rae the whipped cream–topped cappuccino that had become her daily breakfast.
“I need to close the marriage deal before I’m thirty,” she mumbled so only Ellen could hear. She spent all her time helping close deals at work, locking in mergers and acquisitions. Now it was time to lock in a husband.
“You don’t need to worry about marriage right now,” Ellen said, patting Rae’s head. “You just need to have some fun.”
But Rae wasn’t going to be dissuaded. It had all become horribly transparent. She could see her own future projected forward, out to three decimal points. If current trends continued, she’d become one of those old, bitter women who stuffed her empty life with expensive handbags … a sharp-elbowed, scowl-defaulting New Yorker who wasn’t just immune to frivolities like love, but truly above them.
The timeline was expiring fast. Getting married before thirty was an ambitious goal perhaps, but she was an ambitious person.And it was the only way she could have it all—the stellar job and the stellar family. She couldn’t wait until she rose in her career to find a husband. She had to find him now, or it would be too late.
The pressure of it all was paralyzing. She rolled over on the couch, put on her headphones, set a downer indie song on repeat, and handed Ellen her phone, trusting her to know what to do, or at least know more than she did herself.
Sometime later, Ellen tapped her shoulder until Rae took off her headphones.
“Are you okay with your profile?” Ellen asked.
Rae lowered her eyes to the screen Ellen was showing her. She cringed as she sawRAE, 25on the top of the profile, followed by photos of her smiling stylishly at a party, smiling athletically on a mountaintop, smiling approachably with her golden retriever back in Indiana.
Rae nearly told Ellen to find some other photos—with angles that showed the true width of her nose or how pasty her skin had become from years of rarely seeing the sun except through office windows. But showing her flaws meant losing out to the filtered competition, so she kept quiet.
Underneath the pictures came the quick stats:
Height: 5’4”
Rae experienced another letdown upon realizing she had willfully entered a world so shallow that height was the first attribute listed.
Hometown: Meridian Hills, Indiana
