Maryland Heights
What does age really mean? In Deborah Kotz's short story, a woman on a hike decides she can not only look back, but look forward.
By Deborah Kotz,
Hey, you! Yeah, you with the shoulder-length blonde hair and ears too big for your head. I see you looking at me. Giving me that slow whistle, soft enough to be mistaken for an exhalation of breath, assessing my sports-bra-supported breasts, lingering a beat too long on my legs. Next time, wear sunglasses. Or at least pull down the brim of your white Nats cap.
I’m flattered, really, that someone young enough to be my son — you look 25, and I’m almost 60 — would be looking at me this way. But please keep me in a wide shot to blur the soggy sheet of my neck and the well-trodden tracks on my forehead.
Better yet, train your eyes on the blaze of yellow leaves dangling precariously on the chestnut oaks. They’ll be gone at the first sign of a strong wind, branches left suddenly bare.
You look as though you recognize me, likely my voice, as I describe to two inquiring strangers what awaits them on the Maryland Heights trail. The couple, maybe a few years older than me, stand straight as the trees and sport walking sticks. They eagerly accept my promises of ever more enticing views of the Potomac River as they ascend. Picture Lana Turner, I tell them, inching up her skirt, until she finally shows enough leg to get the part.
They laugh, and I glance over at you and see the look of confusion on your Gen-Z face.
“For a more modern reference,” I say a bit louder, arms crossed over my chest, “think Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour going from ballgown to miniskirt to crystal bodysuit.”
You smile and tell me she’s too basic and then name a singer I’ve never heard of but pretend to know. The couple moves ahead past the entrance to the trail spearing their walking sticks into the dirt path.
“What songs of hers do you like?” you ask. We are walking now up a wide path cut between the towering trees. Our shoulders nearly touch as you match your pace to mine, and we ascend the gradually increasing slope. I can smell the cedarwood scent of your body spray.
“Huh? Who?”
“Blondshell? You just told me you like her music.”
Not a problem that I have no way of answering this. The past year of Tinder dates has taught me how to deflect and distract when caught in a lie. There’s an eagle soaring above our heads, and I’m about to point it out, which is why I don’t see the rock. Suddenly, I’m airborne, arms out in front, like Superman.
I land with a crash, flat on my belly, inhaling dirt, dried leaves, and boot prints left by previous hikers.
My backpack, partially unzipped before my fall, feels lighter. Its contents have scattered along the trail: newly bruised apple, unspooled dental floss, ace bandage, jumbo-size water bottle, roll of toilet paper, wallet, car keys, lipstick, breath mints, cell phone, battery backup, extra pair of socks, Dr. Scholl’s Blister Cushions, three organic protein bars, my half-filled journal.
“Jesus, lady, you okay?” Your face hovers above mine, pale blue eyes (the right slightly higher than the left) blinking rapidly. I nod and sit up and see you look past me. “That’s a shit ton of stuff for a short hike. Are you planning on spending the night?”
“Is that a proposition?” You blush as I knew you would, and I want to feel bad, but I don’t.
To your credit, you don’t back away but place your hands in mine and pull me up. You let me rest my palm on your shoulder (we’re nearly the same height; tall for a woman, short for a man) as I test the weight on my ankles and knees for any signs of injury.
“You’re a real gentleman. Made me feel light as a feather as if we were in the fluffy dimension.” Now I may have given myself away.
“Fluffy dimension? Wait, I know that voice! Quantum Caliber! Eleanor, the redhead, right?”
“I am working on initiating the anti-gravity layer, but the dimensional shift device won’t engage.” I do my best post-doc physicist voice from the futuristic video game.
“Wow! That’s really her. I had no idea I was hiking with a celebrity.”
Celebrity has-been. My agent told me yesterday my voice had taken on a gravely, breathy quality, and my contract wasn’t being renewed. My 60-year-old larynx could no longer pass for a 20-something scientist’s. This was the last of my contracts. I’d already had a longer career than most, and it was time to retire.
I reveal none of this and plot to make your cheeks burn again as we continue our steep ascent through mud and scattered twigs. We discuss quantum physics and whether wormholes really do exist. You remind me of someone, of course you do. A Tinder date, one of my first, long hair like yours, who was in his late thirties but who thought, based on my profile photo, we were just a few years apart. We slept together, once, and then he ghosted me. I dated a string of men closer to my own age and did my own ghosting. Now I’m off the apps, a mindful celibate, which my therapist says will help me process my divorce.
“We need a little music,” I say, knowing that I’m upping our flirting a notch. “What’s your favorite song by … Blondshell?” I ask. I congratulate myself for remembering her name.
You stop for a moment to scroll through your phone. “Um … Cartoon Earthquake. You heard that one?”
“Not sure. Play it for me.”
You press the screen, hold the phone out in front of you, volume turned up, and sing along to the folksy alt-rock tune in a surprisingly decent voice. I’m able to join you for the second round of chorus singing in my full vibrato, about how if there was a cartoon earthquake, “it’s me you would run after.”
Hikers pass us, one after another, some giving us the thumbs up. You put your free hand on my shoulder, and we slow our pace, your arm draped across my back. We stroll like a couple, heads tucked close, to examine the next song on the Blondshell playlist before we’re rudely interrupted by a pack of bro types, bulging biceps stretching the sleeves of their pastel-colored t-shirts. They race past and hoot at you. One yells out, “Dude! You were supposed to wait for us. Meet us at the top, man.”
You hoot back, quicken your pace, and tell me you need to join your friends and that you think I’m hot for my age and love my pink-washed hair. You can’t wait to tell them who I am.
I’m nearly running now to keep up with you. A thin branch I somehow didn’t see slaps me in the face. I skip in front of you, turn around to face you and run backward a few steps. “It’s not too much? My hair? For someone my age?” I’m breathing hard from the exertion.
“Nah, what are you, 40? If you were 60, maybe.”
I want to grab you and kiss you full on the lips for giving me 20 years back, but you’re waving goodbye before I can continue our encounter just a little longer. I stop to catch my breath and stare at the sweat stains on the back of your retreating mint green t-shirt.
Sweat trickles down my temple into my ear. I think of my friend Ginny in hospice, with advanced Huntington’s. When I visited her last week, I wiped the tiny bubbles of drool from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes softened a bit, in gratitude, I hope, rather than humiliation.
Who will take care of me now that Tom’s gone? Tom never wanted children, and I wanted him above everything else. Ginny, also divorced and childless, has a cadre of friends visiting, even a friend who organizes our visits. As cruel as dying young can be, at least you’re not dying alone.
I reach the peak and stare down at Harpers Ferry, 1400 feet below. The town looks toylike from this height, and I half expect to see a child’s hand pulling a train across the bridge that spans the Potomac. Every few months, I come here to sit on my favorite boulder, easy to climb and flat at the top, and marvel at the sweeping expanse of rolling hills and burbling rivers. Each time the view is different: sunlight casting longer or shorter shadows on the rocks; cloud cover painting everything gray. Today, the autumn oaks take center stage, a canvas of brilliant colors.
Maybe my voice is past its prime, but I haven’t yet become invisible. My sister Monica, a novelist, told me that, at 62, she relishes sitting at a bar by herself and having no one notice her. “People assume I’m just there, like a chair or light fixture, so I can observe them and take notes, without them bothering me.”
Is it weird that I want to be seen? Always? Maybe I’ll become a famous fashionista at 84 like Iris Apfel. All I need is an oversized pair of black-framed glasses.
Or maybe I should seek out those 20-something men I read about in a Cosmo article who are looking for hookups with women old enough to be their grandmother. The 65-year-old writer who found herself propositioned on these dating sites found this “chilling,” but after my brief flirtation with you, I might be ready for a little harmless fun.
Perhaps what I really want is to just slow things down a bit. In Quantum Caliber, my character regularly quoted Einstein’s theories of relativity to help players manipulate time and win their intergalactic wars. Increasing velocity to nearly the speed of light could slow time to a crawl, in our fictional world, a huge advantage when trying to invade an enemy planet. What if I could increase my velocity to the extreme and slow time? Delay the inevitable for a few years? Even just a day?
I rev up to a slow jog, then a run, then sprint down the steep dirt incline. I’m kicking up leaves and worms and decades of soil as I race down from these heights. I feel my left knee twinge with every footfall.
I speed past the blur of you and your gaggle of friends. “Go, Eleanor!” I hear you scream.
Or maybe I just imagined it. Or it’s my knee screaming, Stop! You’re too old for this.
The world around me bursts into a dazzling array of crimson and gold and earth and sky, and I’m breathless but breathing hard and feeling nothing but joy and madness. As I reach the bottom, passing a large wood-framed map by the trail’s entrance, I fling my arms around a tall red oak, tasting its roughness, inhaling its vinegar scent. I close my eyes and hold the hug.
This oak, one of the tallest in this forest, likely stood when the dirt road was constructed 160 years ago. This grande dame, long past its peak, refuses to stop adding a bit of width to its trunk, nourishing new branches, and sprouting tender leaves, blissfully oblivious to its own aging.
Deborah Kotz works in media relations and previously worked as an award-winning health reporter at US News and World Report and the Boston Globe. She has an MFA from the University of Baltimore, and her fiction and poetry have appeared on JewishFiction.net, Judith magazine, and JewishBookCouncil.org. Follow her here on Substack, or Facebook, Instagram, or X.