“Aging is peculiar,” she said, moving a piece of parsnip around the plate with her fork. “I don’t think you should be lied to about it. You have a moment of relevancy—when the books, clothes, bars, technology—when everything is speaking directly to you, expressing you exactly. You move toward the edge of the circle and then you’re abruptly outside the circle. Now what to do with that? Do you stay, peering backward? Or do you walk away?”
Though kindred souls in many ways, Tess and Simone are sixteen years apart in age. I believe that before Tess came to the restaurant, Simone had been bored, numb. Tess and the project of educating and manipulating her, reawakens parts of Simone – her sense of humor, her maternal instincts – that she hasn’t felt in years. Simone also gets to experience all of Tess’s “firsts” vicariously. I happen to know for a fact that 38 is young but being close with Tess reminds Simone of how much time has gone by, how much of her life she’s already lived. She can’t get back that hopefulness that Tess has, because she knows too much. Simone is in the process of deciding whether she should hold onto aspects of her own wildness, or whether she should move into a different stage of her life. And what will that look like if marriage and children aren’t in her future? Will she stay in the restaurant forever? Tess raises all of these questions in her.
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