Now I'll Tell You Everything

  “I hope he’ll be happy about it,” I said tentatively.

  “If you’re happy, your father’s happy. So—any thoughts about the date?”

  “Next June, maybe. After I graduate.”

  “That’s exciting! Oh, wait a minute. I hear Ben’s car in the drive. . . .”

  Dad was a little out of breath when he came to the phone. “Al? What’s up, honey? I thought you were in Virginia this weekend.”

  “We are. I just wanted you to be the first to know: Dave and I are engaged.”

  There was complete silence from the other end of the line.

  “We’re planning to get married next June.” And then I added, still waiting for his response, “Just before I start grad school.”

  “Well! Sweetheart!” he said at last. “Congratulations are in order, then! I guess I didn’t realize you two were that serious.” Another pause. “Is this something you’ve been talking about? You’ve taken me by surprise, that’s all.”

  “The engagement was sudden, but we love each other. And Dave needs to know so he can plan. As you know, he’s been job hunting, but he wants to stay in the area until I get my master’s.”

  “Well, well, that sounds sensible. We’ll have lots to talk about the next time you’re home. Love you, Al.”

  “I love you too, Dad.”

  For some reason, I delayed calling Les and Stacy. I didn’t want to tell Stacy until I’d told Les, and there was no guarantee I’d get him if I called. So I tried Elizabeth’s number. She didn’t pick up. I called Pamela.

  “Wow! Alice! That’s so great!” she said. “Where were you when he proposed?”

  “On a hotel balcony in Crystal City, watching the fireworks on the Mall.”

  “Wow!” she said again. “Now, that’s creative! Have you told Liz or Gwen?”

  “They’re next. I’m going to ask my cousin Carol to be my maid of honor, but you and Liz and Gwen are bridesmaids, if you’ll do it.”

  “Of course we will! You know that!” she said.

  Liz had the same response.

  “During the fireworks celebration? Oh, I love it! I’d love to be a bridesmaid. When’s the wedding?”

  “We’re talking about June. I’ve got to call Gwen.”

  Gwen’s response was more like Dad’s. “Really? You’re serious? I knew you guys were in a relationship, but I didn’t know you were talking marriage. You’re still planning to get your master’s?”

  “Oh, definitely. Nothing’s changed there. And, Gwen, you’ll be a bridesmaid, won’t you?”

  “Absolutely. Tell Dave he’s chosen the second most wonderful girl in the world.”

  “Okay . . . Who’s the first?”

  “Me, of course. That’s what I keep telling Austin, anyway.”

  I also invited Val and Abby to be bridesmaids, which made six, counting Carol, and she said to give her a definite date and she’d put it on the calendar.

  “Think you can come up with six groomsmen?” I asked Dave as he drove me back home after the holiday weekend.

  “Hmmm. Let’s see. My best beer buddy, my poker buddy, my wrestling buddy . . . ,” and he kissed me.

  * * *

  Moses Woodword lived in DC, and after our Great Amtrak Adventure out west, he and Liz started going out a lot. As soon as she heard that Dave and I were engaged, she arranged for the four of us to get together, and we spent a long evening at a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Capitol, one of Moe’s favorite spots.

  Liz and Moe were crazy in love—could hardly keep their eyes off each other. She wanted us to get together with Gwen and Austin, too, and I had to tell her that they’d just broken up, surprising us all. Austin had taken a job in North Carolina and decided he was moving on.

  “I wish we could just collect all the people we’ve ever loved and stay together in one big happy family,” Liz said, pulling her sweater around her shoulders as a breeze swept the terrace.

  Moe put one hand over hers. “But the circle keeps growing, and you’d want that, wouldn’t you? Otherwise, I’d never have been a part of it.”

  So true, yet we all had liked Austin.

  “I know,” Liz said. “At least I’ve got you guys. I’m so excited for you, Alice! Tell me how I can help, and I will.”

  * * *

  All I really had to do for Lester’s wedding was show up. But for the bride, or the bride and her stepmom, there’s a to-do list that never stops. The first thing to do was reserve the church, and I was astonished to discover that our date was already taken, unless we wanted to get married in the morning instead of the afternoon. We didn’t. So Sylvia and I made it June 16, after checking with Dave, and the church receptionist pleasantly informed us that we might want to reserve the reception site next, because many of those are booked a year or more in advance, and we were already a month behind. We booked a hotel.

  “If we have to reserve a florist a year in advance, we’re going to have dandelions,” Dad said that night at dinner, and that made us all laugh. You should never get married if you have no sense of humor, I decided.

  Quite naturally, Sylvia wanted to get as many of the arrangements nailed down as possible before they left for France. I hated the feeling that I was on an assembly line, but for her sake, we signed on with a caterer and made a deposit. Then I felt we could coast for a while.

  We all went up to Cumberland to have dinner with Dave’s parents so the four parents could meet each other. Dave’s mom was as thoughtful as he was, and Dave’s dad, though hard of hearing and sometimes misunderstanding what we said, was jovial and made us feel welcome.

  “Well, that’s that,” Dad said on our way home again. “What else is on the list?” Dave had stayed behind to spend the weekend with his parents.

  “The only thing you have to do is get measured for a tux,” Sylvia told him enviously. “The only things Alice and I have to do are to shop for a gown, choose the flowers, buy gifts for the bridesmaids, decide on the menu, the cake, the invitations and favors and bridesmaid dresses and—”

  “Whew!” said Dad. “The sooner we get to France, Sylvia, the better.”

  * * *

  Dave and I house-sat for them while they were away and got the feel of being a married couple. We slept in my old bedroom, now another guest room, and Dave left for his interviews and came back to the house for the night. Usually he picked me up at the Melody Inn, and we ate out or met some friends, but Dave cut the grass for Dad and I cleaned up inside when needed.

  I wouldn’t say that a couple should live together before they marry, but it does alert you to a few things you hadn’t noticed before. When Dave picked up the newspaper, for example, either to read with his morning coffee or after work, he seldom bothered to read the front section or the editorials but went right to the sports or business section, and I realized, thinking back, that whenever our gang, sitting around my dorm room, discussed a political or controversial subject, Dave never, that I could remember, contributed to the conversation.

  I walked to the kitchen doorway, still holding the celery for a salad, and watched him surfing the TV channels, skipping over the evening news and going to ESPN. “I heard on my car radio that there was another uprising in the Mideast,” I said.

  “Yeah?” Dave said, and found the baseball scores he wanted.

  I frowned as I chopped the veggies for the salad. What did I have, a case of the premarriage jitters? Weren’t most guys interested in how the Nationals were doing? He’d come back from an interview that hadn’t gone too well. If it had been me, would I then want to listen to a newscast about revolts and massacres? I don’t think so. . . .

  He nuzzled my neck as we were both waiting for the microwave to ding.

  “Been waiting all day for this,” he murmured.

  “What? The microwave to ding?”

  “No. Nuzzling your neck and what comes after.”

  “Well, that’s something we agree on.”

  He looked at me quizzically. “Meaning . . . uh . . . ??
??

  I tried to make a joke of it. “Just that you don’t seem too interested in what goes on in the rest of the world.”

  Dave pondered that a bit as he took a pot holder and lifted a plate from the microwave.

  “No, I guess you could say I don’t. It’s not that I don’t care what goes on, it’s just that I’ve got all I can handle right here in my own little space. If I can tend my own garden, so to speak, and everyone else tends theirs, we’d get along fine in the world.”

  I gave him my “incredulous, astonished, can’t-believe-this” look.

  “Dave, that’s so simplistic. I mean, the problems are so complex, with so many different countries involved. . . .”

  “Exactly,” he said. “That’s why I keep out of it. Too many folks already putting their oars in the water. Now, turkey tetrazzini, anyone? Courtesy of Stouffer’s?”

  * * *

  We had the house clean and the grass freshly mowed when Dad and Sylvia came home, looking relaxed and delighted with their trip.

  “If you haven’t decided on a honeymoon location, let us suggest Paris,” Dad said. “Absolutely wonderful.”

  “I’m so glad you had a good time, Dad,” I told him. “No big problems here or at the store.” And we all went out to dinner so they could tell us the highlights of their trip.

  * * *

  Dave finally got a job with an insurance company, at a branch office in McLean, and things were different now that he was working and I was back in school. We were used to being together in a crowd, the little group we’d hung around with as undergrads, where we were more or less defined by the group: Dave, the genial guy who pretty much stayed on the sidelines but was up for whatever the gang wanted to do; and Alice, the practical, sometimes funny girl who never met a question she didn’t ask—something like that.

  But now, away from the group, when we were together on weekends—just the two of us—it seemed we didn’t have much to talk about, and this unnerved me. I felt that we should have more. We spent a lot of time talking about where we’d most like to live (somewhere in the DC area), rent or buy (buy), number of children (two or three)—all important topics; our parents got along okay; and Dave said our church was fine with him. But he didn’t seem to care for the same movies I did. Drama bored him. He liked action movies. Big problem or little problem? I liked to talk about what I read in the paper, but if it didn’t affect us directly, Dave wasn’t much interested. Big problem or little problem?

  How did we get so far as a couple and not really know what the other cared about? I wondered. Up until now, I guess, our differences were masked by the crowd, but now they stood out, and they were more at odds than I’d expected. It didn’t seem to bother Dave, but it bothered me. I was rooming with Val again my senior year, so Dave and I often spent weekends at the little apartment he’d rented near work, and if we couldn’t agree on a movie or couldn’t decide between a play and a hockey game, we generally spent the evening in bed. That was fine with Dave, but we couldn’t spend our lives in bed. Sometimes I even wished we’d gone out with the gang instead of opting to be alone together.

  It was hard to concentrate on my coursework. No two people were completely alike, I told myself. Wasn’t this simply the normal give-and-take? Isn’t this what the engagement period was supposed to do—offer a sort of shakedown period when you learned the fine art of compromise?

  In a course I was taking on marriage and family life, the instructor drew two overlapping circles on the blackboard during one of his lectures. Each circle represented the interests and concerns of a spouse—one for the husband, the other for the wife. The larger the area of overlap, where they both shared the same, the greater the compatibility.

  I sat down once and drew those circles. In my own circle I wrote all the things I loved or was interested in: the prospect of being a counselor, children, my family, doing things with friends, theater, animals, hiking, documentaries, human rights groups, peace organizations, sex, Christmas, Greek cuisine. . . . And the next time Dave and I were together, I took out my circles and asked him what he loved most. I was making a chart, I told him. He smiled.

  “Sex,” he said.

  I smiled and wrote that down in the overlapping space.

  “You,” he said, and I blushed as I realized I hadn’t written down his name at all in my circle, so I hastily inserted his name.

  “Watching football on TV,” he said. “Baseball, not so much.”

  I wrote down football in the space that was solely his.

  “The stock market, the promotion I hope to get . . . ,” he went on. “Uh . . . sushi, sailing . . .” He shrugged. “That’s about it, I guess.”

  “Children?” I asked. “I thought we’d discussed this—that we both wanted kids.”

  “Sure, if we have any,” he said. “I’m happy either way.”

  “Animals?”

  “No. No pets.”

  “Movies?”

  “Action movies.”

  “Documentaries?”

  “No.”

  “Live theater?”

  “God, no.”

  “Christmas?”

  “Sure.”

  “Music?” I asked. Even though I was tone-deaf, there was music I loved. “Do you love Gershwin? ‘Summertime’?”

  “I don’t know it.” He was looking at me quizzically.

  “What organizations do you belong to, Dave? I mean, which ones interest you?”

  “You mean like investors’ clubs? I belong to one of those.”

  “Human rights? Environment?”

  “Any organization that wants a buck, no.” He pulled me to him. “Well, I take that back. The Sierra Club. What is this? The third degree?”

  “Just trying to see how well we match up.”

  “The main thing is that we love each other,” Dave told me. “You do your thing, I do mine, we’re both happy.”

  12

  SAYING GOOD-BYE

  Val and Colin had broken up after he graduated, and she was going out with a new guy now. Sometimes, when she wanted to be alone with him in our dorm room, I’d spend the night with Gwen, and I liked that. She was invariably studying, but I’d happily camp out on her floor in my sleeping bag, glad that she didn’t have time for long, heartfelt discussions about my love life.

  I kept myself as busy as possible because the more free time I had, the greater the anxiety grew inside me that I had said yes too soon to Dave, and the heavier his grandmother’s ring felt on my finger.

  I invited him to a congressional debate on campus about immigration, but he turned it down. He wanted me to go to a Capitals game instead, and I finally gave in, but then I was sullen all evening. This wasn’t fair to either of us.

  “Things will get better,” he told me. “Once we’re living together, it will be easier.”

  “You’ll have your actuarial exams,” I said, “and I’ll be doing grad work. If I decide not to do a thesis, I’ll have to take extra courses. I might not be able to get it all done in a year.”

  “But we’ll have each other,” he replied.

  The point was, we “had” each other now, but we weren’t in it one hundred percent. At least I wasn’t. What do I want? I kept asking myself. No two people were exactly alike. Dave was kind, considerate, patient . . . All he wanted in life was to settle down somewhere with me, each of us doing our own thing, raising a family . . . What else was there?

  * * *

  I’d always thought I wanted to be married in my mom’s wedding dress, but for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to go home and get it from the attic. I liked the dress from the pictures I’d seen of it, but I couldn’t seem to make myself take that step.

  Partly, I was working really hard at school. I loved my courses this semester, but the professors expected more of us in our senior year than they ever had. I told myself that I would definitely sit down at Thanksgiving and finish making my wedding plans. In addition to deposits on the hotel and the caterer, Sylvia and I
were deciding on a photographer, and there were dozens of other details to work out—the invitations, the cake, the seating arrangements, the décor, the band, the honeymoon. . . . I had to remind myself that I couldn’t behave like a college girl forever—I would be a married woman soon and had to start thinking like one. But when Thanksgiving came, the wedding stuff just seemed too overwhelming.

  Overwhelming, and the truth was that sometimes I just felt bored with Dave. Maybe it was lack of imagination, I thought, but he never seemed able to think of anything to do besides watching movies, having sex, eating out, and checking the stock market. Sometimes hiking, and I liked those things too. But if our life together was going to be “one happy surprise after another,” it seemed they’d have to come from me.

  I started going back to church on Sundays simply because I longed for people who talked about the same problems I was interested in—world problems, social problems. It was a whole new bunch, of course. The high school kids I had known had either moved away or were now part of the singles group for twenty-somethings, and I wasn’t sure, being engaged, that I belonged there.

  Les and Stacy came for Thanksgiving and were staying till Sunday. Friday morning Dad and Les went shopping for a new computer, and Stacy was still in bed. Sylvia and I were lingering over a late breakfast. I toyed with the sapphire on my finger.

  Outside the windows, the tree branches, bearing only a leaf or two, formed a motionless web across the gray sky. Not a twig stirred, as though my inertia were contagious.

  “So how are the arrangements coming?” Sylvia asked. “Anything I can do?”

  “Not really,” I told her.

  We each picked up our cups in unison and sipped quietly, but Sylvia was the first to put hers down. She sat there in her blue robe, studying me with her blue-green eyes, and said finally, “You’re just not sure about this, are you?”

  I stared at her in surprise. “Of course I’m sure! We’re engaged. I told him . . . I love him . . .” And suddenly I began to cry. “No,” I sobbed. “I’m not sure and I don’t know why. That’s the awful part. I don’t think I’ll ever be sure.”