This Time Tomorrow

Alice wakes up at 5:45am on the day after her 40th birthday in a bedroom that feels, though it doesn’t look, familiar. The picture on her phone is of two children who, she realizes instantly, belong to her and Tommy. Their apartment is enormous and luxurious. Alice’s body is tight from workouts she wouldn’t have done in her alternate life. She wonders if her father is dead, but Tommy mentions that later there’s time for her to visit Leonard. She “meets” her children, four-year-old Leo and three-year-old daughter Dorothy. Their sudden existence makes Alice reflect that she had never explicitly chosen not to have children; she had wanted to and assumed she would have them, but as her twenties and thirties passed by, she began to realize the window had closed. Meanwhile, she thinks, “One of the actors from The Odd Couple had had a baby when he was seventy-nine years old. Men never had to decide a thing” (196).

Alice goes for a run. She runs into a mother from Belvedere, who confirms she’ll be at Alice’s party later that night. Alice runs to Pomander Walk, unsure if Leonard is at home or in the hospital.