December Dates
In 1985 I received a request from a local newspaper: They were having a story issue and would like something from me. So I pondered, and worked up a notion. I believe that my daughters felt that it was entirely predictable, I being an old man who for some reason unfathomable to them still likes to look at young women. I set the date of the action somewhat ahead, as is customary in science-fiction stories, and it has now become dated, as is also customary. But I leave it as it was; let the reader suspend his disbelief just enough to accommodate it.
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It was the evening of the May/December Ball, a week before Christmas 1990. It ran from nine to midnight, and was totally punctual.
Ned met his date at the entrance foyer, as agreed. They picked each other out of the throng by reading each other's name tags. Only when he spotted the one that said Margaret Morrow did he raise his gaze to face-level; he had not wanted to form any prejudicial impressions.
She was lovely, in a formal gown whose light brown hue exactly matched that of her hair and eyes. He was relieved; he had been afraid she would be plain, and this one night that was not what he sought.
"Mrs. Morrow, I am Ned Brown," he said.
"Of course." She took his arm and they moved on to the main chamber, where the music was starting.
They paused at the huge mirror set in the wall opposite the dance floor. "Don't we make a fetching couple!" she exclaimed.
Ned nodded agreement. The mirror showed a man of about 25, tall and well constructed, with a full head of pale brown hair and even teeth. The woman, at this slight distance and changed perspective, was even more attractive than he had judged before, being poised and slender. She smiled, and it was like a flash of sunlight in the chamber.
"Shall we sit for a bit, Mrs. Morrow?" he inquired, glancing at the tables at the edge of the dance floor.
"Meg," she said. "I'm really not married."
He had known that, of course; she was a widow. They sat and talked while couples moved and whirled to the music.
"After a year's correspondence, it's good to meet you," Ned said. "I must say, I really looked forward to this—and would have been more impatient had I realized how lovely you would be."
"Well, you did have my picture," she reminded him.
He laughed. "And you had mine. But it was meaningless."
"But I look like this all the time," she said.
He nodded. "And I look like this all the time, from the inside. But the mirror tells me I am really 60. My doctor tells me I can live another 30 years, if I don't overdo the Mays, but who would want to dance with December?"
"I would," she said.
He took the hint and brought her to the dance floor. The music at the moment was slow, and he liked that, for she was a delight to hold—slow, moving with the limber grace of youth. He was savoring every moment.
In due course they sat again. "I wish this could last forever," Ned said. "But the May only lasts six hours at most, and sometimes only four. There'll be a real scramble at midnight."
"Would it really be so bad if they changed?" Meg inquired.
"I gather you are satisfied with your age and health," Ned said. "That's fine, for you. But in my natural state, I am somewhat stooped, and bald, and I have a paunch, and liver spots on the back of my hands. I did not take care of myself, and I paid the price. I think most of these present are in worse condition than I. For us, these few hours of May—of temporarily restored youth—are the high spots of our declining lives. Without them, life would be a graying morass."
"But your letters suggested that you were wealthy," she said. "You can afford to go Maying any time you want."
"I am wealthy," he agreed. "But we pay another price for May. It takes days to recover completely from the depletion of the body's resources, and if it is done too often, a person's anticipated lifespan is significantly shortened. Youth is not cheap, as you have surely discovered."
"No, I've never done this before," she said.
He glanced at her, surprised. "Never Mayed before?"
She shrugged. "I didn't mean to get into this. I don't have a membership, just a one-shot pass. This is it, for me."
"I'm sorry," he said, embarrassed. "I didn't realize. You never wrote of finances. Had you told me, I would gladly have—"
She shook her head. "No, please, Ned. I never took money from a man, and I'm not about to start. I don't need to be any age but what I am."
"Yes, of course," he agreed, but he was shaken. It had never occurred to him that his correspondent was in a different financial situation. How boorish it must have been of him to even mention the matter.
"Let's dance again," she said, to cut off the silence that had developed. This time it was a fast dance, and she was good at that, too, a pleasure to see as she was moved. Ah, Youth!
he thought. However much Meg denied it, she was taking full advantage of these few hours.
But the awkwardness persisted after the dance. Ned tried to evoke a different mood.
"Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" he asked.
At first she seemed perplexed, then startled. "Me? Where? Why I wasn't—" She broke into embarrassed laughter. "What a question! Let's dance."
Ned was glad to do that, not because he enjoyed dancing—though with his youthful body, he did enjoy it now—but because Meg was such a joy to hold.
So it was they spent the evening and the three hours were over in what seemed more like thirty minutes. Abruptly the ball was over, and the anticipated scramble was on. One man's treatment gave out early, and he suffered the embarrassment of visibly aging in public, his skin passing from robust youthful health to wrinkled pallor, his clothing hanging on his flabby arms while it stretched tightly across his developing paunch. December was reclaiming its own. The others averted their gazes, but the man was plainly mortified, as was his date.
Somehow this reminder of mortality and age made this contact with Meg more precious.
Ned found that he couldn't just let it go. "Meg, we must do this again," he said urgently as they reached the foyer. "How about next week—Christmas Eve?"
"Oh, I couldn't!" she protested, dismayed.
Because she had no additional pass for May. He had forgotten. "I mean December," he said quickly, covering his error. "You and I, as we are. Please, I must see you again!"
She tried to demur, surely ashamed of her appearance as a woman in her sixties, but he insisted, and she had to agree.
"Christmas Eve—December," she said. "I—not in public!"
"I'll come to your house," he said. "A private date, just the two of us, as we are. December."
She nodded wanly as they parted.
Ned made it safely to his hotel room. He had time for a quick shower before his change began; then he lay down and let it proceed while he watched television. The change was hardest on the oldest folk, or those in poor health; Ned remained fairly robust for his age, so could handle it with reasonable dispatch. Nonetheless it was always depressing to return to his real form. It was said that every May/December Membership holder had memorized the legend of Cinderella, and all detested the stroke of midnight, when things reverted to grim normalcy. Certainly this was true for him!
In the morning, bald, stooped, paunchy and with liver spots, plus a few minor complaints he hadn't bothered to mention to lovely Meg, Ned Brown took his flight back to his home city. He knew his depression was part of the body's process of recovery from the strain of temporary youth, but this time it was worse than usual. He asked himself why, and realized that it was because of Meg. As a correspondent of his own generation—actually she was a few years older than he—she had come across as a lovely personality, nicely in tune with his times and his foibles. As a person, artificially youthened, she had been a beautiful woman. Now the two merged in his mental picture of her, the understanding and experience of the old grandmother, with the bounce and spontaneity of the debutante. In short, the ideal woman.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to enjoy perpetual youth with such a woman! But even for three hours it had been a ball, literally. That was of course the appeal of the May/December Society; it gave old people the chance to be young again with those who understood. Truly young people did not understand the preciousness of youth; they squandered it in damaging habits, heedless of the penalty they were bringing on themselves. Exactly as Ned himself had, and Meg. Oh, yes, they understood each other, almost too late! Now they could taste briefly the delights they had frittered away in the past, in retrospect.
But something nagged him. Some subtly wrong response, something she had said, or hadn't said. He couldn't quite pin it down. Plagued by that doubt, Ned did something of which he was not proud. He investigated Margaret Morrow. He had connections that made a private personal inquiry simple; he had to do this routinely in business connections. But he felt that he was in some way betraying her.
In three days he had the report. It was filled with information about her life and family and economic situation, but he skimmed over that. One thing leaped out at him, causing him to sit down hard. That was the word "deceased."
He stared at the report, appalled. Margaret Morrow was dead! She had died December 10, hardly a week before the ball. She had a progressive illness that she thought was under control; evidently she had been too optimistic.
Then with whom had he danced at the May/December Ball? It had to be an impostor!
He verified that there had been no foul play; Mrs. Morrow had died of natural causes, attended by her family. Too bad he had not been notified! Now someone else had used her precious May-pass to take her place. That infuriated him.
No, he realized as he pondered further. Mrs. Morrow had had no further use for that pass, obviously. Perhaps she had given it to a friend, and the friend had garnered what joy of it she could. That was a human failing he could not condemn. It was his own gullibility that angered him; he had never suspected.
Now he had a return date with her. No wonder the impostor had tried to avoid it! Well, he would keep the date, and face her with her deception! That would show her!
But as the time approached, he realized that his righteous ire was fading. What he remembered was the way Meg looked and felt in his arms, her youth and beauty, the way she gazed into his face as he spoke, as if rapt. She had deceived him, true—but she also had given him one excellent evening. If she had borrowed a few hours of youth from a dead friend, at least she had given back a few hours of delight to one who would otherwise have been caught without a date. She had not tried to prolong the relationship or to take anything from him; she had simply completed the date her friend could not.
From that realization his mood swung the other way. That anonymous woman had actually done him a favor! She had brought light into his life, making his date precious. What did it matter who she was? He liked her as she was.
No, he was more foolish than that. He liked her as she had appeared at the ball. As the Mayfly. Liked her very well "There's no fool like an old fool," he muttered.
A relationship was of course impossible. Ned had no hankering for old women, only for that fleeting aspect that this particular woman had shown him. He could turn young as often as his body could tolerate it—every week or so, perhaps—but she could not, because she could not afford the expense. There could be no other dates like the first.
Then he snapped his fingers, making his decision. He could make it partway right! This was Christmas, wasn't it?
He boarded the plane the afternoon of December 24, ready to make the date. But weather intruded, requiring a landing at another city, and a long taxi ride to his destination. Ned fumed, but could do nothing. He arrived at Margaret Morrow's house disheveled and three hours late.
She was there, and she was indeed old, late sixties at least She had tried unsuccessfully to make herself presentable with thick makeup. She had fixed a Christmas dinner, but his lateness had made it somewhat cold and stale. "Oh, this is so awful!" she exclaimed, near tears.
"My fault entirely," he said. "The weather—"
"Yes, of course. I was afraid—I'm sorry you had to go to all this trouble—for this." She spread her arms as if revealing the disaster that was herself.
But Ned insisted on having the meal, and it really wasn't bad when allowance was made.
Meg obviously meant well, but had a problem coping with the situation. She grew increasingly nervous as an hour passed. "You'll be late getting back—you'll miss your flight," she said.
"I have a hotel reservation for the night," he reassured her, but she did not seem relieved.
Ned decided it was time to spring his surprise. "I have a Christmas gift for you," he said, handing her an envelope.
"Oh, I couldn't—there was no need..." she protested.
"Open it."
Nervously she opened it, then gasped. "A May/December Membership!" she exclaimed.
"I want you to have it, so you can be young whenever you want. Don't worry, I can afford it."
She was flustered. "But I couldn't possibly accept—I never asked for..."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not—not what you think. I..."
"I know that Mrs. Morrow died, and that you took her place. The name of the membership has not been filled in. You may enter what is appropriate; they will honor it."
She gazed at him, her eyes tearing. "But why?"
"Because I would like to have more of your company—as you were at the ball. I know this is foolish of me, and certainly you do not have to spend your precious hours of youth with me. I want you to have them anyway."
Her body seemed to be losing its cohesion. "I—that's most generous of you, Ned. But I just can't accept. You see—"
Then she lost her balance, and began to fall. Ned leaped to catch her. "You're fainting; I'll help you to the chair!"
"No, no," she said. "It's just..."
The heavy makeup crumpled and flaked off her face, and her dress became distorted on her body.
"What's happening to you?" Ned cried, alarmed.
"It's—it's the change," she gasped. "I'm reverting. I had the treatment. I meant you to be gone before..."
"A May-December metamorphosis?" he asked. "To what?"
She brushed off her face, and now the features of the young woman he had dated before manifested, smudged by the refuse of her makeup. "To my natural state," she explained. "I am Meg Morrow, your friend's granddaughter, named after her. Margaret was so anxious not to disappoint you at the ball, and when she knew she couldn't make it, I promised her to..."
"Her granddaughter!" Ned exclaimed. "Then you're..."
"Really twenty-two years old," she finished. "I used the pass to get myself made older, so you wouldn't know."
It hit him with unpleasant force. Naturally a beautiful girl her age would not want to spend time with a man his age! She had filled in for her grandmother for one date, but that was it.
He, in his idiocy, had thought there could be more. "I apologize for my misunderstanding,"
Ned said. "I never meant to impose myself..." He shut his mouth and turned away, realizing that he could only make it worse. What a Christmas this was!
"Oh, no, you never imposed," Meg said. "It was so nobody could accuse me of throwing myself at a rich man."
Ned paused. "What? You never—?"
"I read your letters, and they were so warm, and you made my grandmother so happy in her declining days, and young men never did turn me on, they're so immature—but who would believe I liked you for yourself? I mean I'm just a jobless girl who wasn't even born when Kennedy was shot, and—and I just had to get rid of you somehow." She was definitely crying now.
Ned turned back, realizing that though his attempt to give a gift had been misdirected, the reality was much better than the illusion. "Meg, I think we should talk about the New Year."
Then he opened his arms to her.