by Erica Katz
“I’ll make you whatever you like!” my mother called after me. “I just didn’t have the energy to cook another whole meal with thirty people coming tomorrow!”
“I said, I’m just not hungry,” I called over my shoulder. I needed to make an excuse to get back to the city, to civilization, after dinner tomorrow. I could not possibly spend the weekend there. How had I ever spent eighteen years there? The lively conversation between Sam and my parents tapered off to faint whispers, undoubtedly about me. When I logged on to the Klasko system, I had forty-one missed emails, all of them regarding Peter’s deal.
I closed my computer at a decent hour—midnight, I think, though I had forgotten to look at the clock on my screen. Ever since I’d moved out for college, I could never remember which clocks in my parents’ house were set to which time. Some of them hadn’t been turned back an hour for daylight savings, some were set fifteen minutes ahead to encourage my mother to be on time, and some seemed to run slow. When I wrapped up for the evening, all I knew was that it was late enough that Sam had already gone to bed in my old room. I made my way quietly up the staircase in the dark house, avoiding the creaky step with the graceful hop-over I had perfected so beautifully in high school that no amount of beer consumption would cause me to land on it. Nonetheless, my father came out of the master bedroom and met me at the top of the stairs.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Give your ol’ man a sec.” He pointed at the stairs, and I followed him down and toward the kitchen table. “How’re you doing, sweetheart?” He watched me closely, looking protective. The Klasko & Fitch T-shirt I’d given him when I got my offer hung loosely around his neck above the hospital scrub pants he always wore to bed.
“I’m good! I was just stressed that you didn’t have internet.” I looked around the kitchen, at the outdated cabinets and the slightly peeling paint that I had never taken note of before. I suddenly wanted to cry, not so much because those things were there, but because I saw them, and cared about them now. I picked at an imaginary hangnail. “You don’t have to wear that shirt just because it was free.”
My father looked down at his chest. “I don’t wear this because it’s free. I wear it because I’m proud of you.” I really didn’t want to cry, but my eyes welled slightly. “We know you’re working so hard. And stressed.” My dad put his hand on mine. I looked at his thick palm and then up to his warm brown eyes.
My tears spilled out from the outer corners of my eyes and down my face. Was I losing myself to this job?
“I’m just stressed. Not sad,” I attempted to assure him, wiping at my chin and steadying my breath. My palm was dripping wet. Maybe I was sad. “I’m looking forward to not working tomorrow.”
“We love you, and we’re so proud of you. And worried about you! Go get some sleep.” He leaned over and kissed the top of my head, and I ran upstairs again and crawled under the covers beside Sam. The mattress below me felt lumpy and old, and I missed my bed in the city—the one I had picked out with the plush pillow top. I could tell by Sam’s breathing that he was still awake, and I sighed contentedly, indicating that I was on the verge of sleep to end-run any desire he had to talk to me.
“Babe?”
Shit.
“Hi love.” I snuggled up to him, hoping he would appreciate the sweetness in my voice enough to leave me alone. He inhaled deeply. Please don’t start a fight right now. Please. I suddenly remembered I had something to distract him, and hopped out of bed. “I have a surprise!” I turned on a light and riffled through my weekend bag, pulling out a small square baby blue box.
“I almost forgot about it. It’s nothing. It’s small. But I saw them and thought of you.” I handed Sam the Tiffany’s box, and he sat up in bed, confused but smiling, and opened it. His smile faded and his brow furrowed.
“They’re cuff links!” I explained, then added, “They’re returnable.”
Sam plastered a smile on his face and nodded. “I’m not returning them! I love them. Thank you.” I could hear the forced enthusiasm in his tone. My throat closed a bit. He’d never wear cuff links. It was a stupid gift. He never even wore collared shirts. I turned off the light so he wouldn’t see my expression, and stood for a moment with my hand on the switch, allowing my eyes to adjust to the darkness, before making my way to the bed.
It occurred to me, there in the quiet, warm blackness of suburbia, that I was less disappointed by the fact that he didn’t like my gift than by the fact that he wasn’t the type of man who wore cuff links. I knew it was a ridiculous feeling, but I felt it. I wanted him to have important meetings, and to care about looking good for them. And it had nothing to do with success; it had to do with the fact that I was surrounded by people who wore them, who cared to wear them. The start-up and tech worlds frowned upon suits and shoe shines and designer labels and everything I had begun to feel familiar around and drawn toward.
I allowed myself to stand next to the bed a moment longer, then finally crawled in next to him again.
“Thank you for the cuff links,” he tried to reassure me. I put my head on his shoulder. Even if he hated the gift, I was hoping I’d been successful in waylaying a conversation about my recent schedule.
“We have to get better at this,” he whispered.
No such luck.
He stared at the ceiling, with his arm around me, his thumb drawing a circle on my shoulder.
At what? “I know,” I said, even though I didn’t. “I’m so sorry I had to work tonight. But now I’m free tomorrow!” I forced a yawn.
“It’s not fair to me or your family or anybody that you’re in the office so much, and when you’re not in the office, you’re either working or worrying that you should be working.”
It’s fair to my clients. “Sam, this was sort of the deal. Remember? A few years of hard work—”
“This isn’t hard work. This is madness.”
I sat up, my legs still under the covers, and opened my mouth, ready to ask him how he thought we could afford the apartment we lived in or the thousands of dollars he put on my credit card at JackRabbit for marathon gear and renting WeWork meeting space every month. But instead I forced myself to clench, then release, my jaw.
“It’s not madness. It’s BigLaw. It’s what I signed up for. Our relationship just can’t be all about you right now.” The quilt felt heavy around my legs, and I kicked it off onto the floor.
“That’s so unfair, Alex. You know it is. It doesn’t need to be all about me. Nor has it been in the past, for the record. It needs to be half about me. That’s how relationships work.”
“Yes. Agreed. But on average. Not every day. I was patient when you were starting your company, off at tech conferences and meeting with investors seven nights a week. You went on coding binges for days at a time. And I never once complained when we were in Cambridge about cleaning up after you or doing the dishes or cooking dinner every night because we had no money to go out. And all while I was studying my butt off. And do you know why?” He was silent, and I opted to gloss over the fact that I hadn’t complained because I actually hadn’t been unhappy at all. “Because I love you, and people who love each other support each other. And give more when the other person needs more. Because it all evens out over time.”
I put my head back on the pillow, and heard him breathing angrily.
“Jesus, you really argue like a lawyer now.”
I whipped my head around toward him, and then I opened my mouth and closed it. “You’re right, honey. I’ll make sure to tell my clients that I can’t work past five because you need dinner and a foot rub. They’ll understand. And I’ll want to quit as soon as we have kids, so what’s the point of working so hard anyway?”
“Jesus Christ, Alex,” Sam growled, then rolled his body away from me.
I didn’t say anything, and a few minutes later, when I felt Sam’s breathing deepen, I seethed at the fact that he’d been able to drift off in the middle of a fight. I wriggled around next to him in a futile att
empt to make his night as sleepless as I knew mine would be.
Though I’d only had a few hours’ sleep, the soothing morning light helped to calm my frayed nerves. It was Thanksgiving, our families would be together, and we could leave the argument in the past. As I washed my face, feeling ready to accept Sam’s apology, he entered the bathroom across the hall from my room, brushed past me, turned on the shower, and stepped in without a word.
Fine. If this is how he wants it. Fine.
We put on our best faces for our families, circling the same area like two magnetic norths, never drifting too close to one another. I busied myself offering his family beverages, smiling at their stories. Lucas had taken up karate, and I laughed too loudly as he showed me the roundhouse kick he had learned to make, certain nobody in the room noticed the tension.
Our families had met a couple of times over the years, but this was the first holiday we were all spending together, and everybody else seemed to be enjoying one another’s company. It wasn’t surprising—we both came from northeastern suburban households that valued academic achievement. I used to take comfort in the similarities in our backgrounds, but sitting around that table on that Thanksgiving, it struck me that choosing someone so similar to me somehow indicated the narrowness of my worldview. I’d become friends with the son of a diplomat, a woman who’d grown up in Singapore, and some of the highest-powered attorneys in Manhattan. I couldn’t help but imagine their Thanksgiving conversations to be far more interesting and enlightened.
I was snapped out of my thoughts by Sari, Sam’s eight-year-old niece, asking if all twenty-two of us would go around the table and say what we were thankful for and what we wished for the coming year. The request was so sweet that my brain stopped spinning for a moment. I listened to my father say that he was thankful for my mother’s cooking and he wished she’d stop making him diet. My mother was grateful that my father had finally lost ten pounds and had stopped snoring as a result; she wished that meant she’d sleep more in the coming year.
Sam was next. “I’m thankful for Alex, and for how hard she works every day to let me pursue my dream of starting a company.” He put his hand on my knee under the table, and I looked up to see somehow expectant expressions on every face around the table. What were they waiting for? Oh god. Please don’t propose. Please don’t propose. I suddenly felt like I was in a cage, trapped hopelessly and perpetually in the world of chipped paint and crocheted pillows and spotty internet connections. Oh god. Please don’t do this to me.
“That’s it,” Sam said cheerily. “Let’s eat!”
I felt the blood draining from the vein above my right temple and releasing a bit of the pressure. I exhaled slowly, my heart still thudding at warp speed but the tension in my neck dissipating nonetheless.
Everybody continued to stare at Sam, but my father finally broke the silence. “Okay!” he announced, sounding almost reluctant. “I’ll get the bird.” Anxious chatter commenced around the room, and I met Sam’s eyes and forced a smile onto my face. My turn was skipped entirely. I never got my chance to say what I was grateful for or what I wished, which was a good thing because I truly had no idea what I would have said.
When we got back to the city Sunday evening, I waited until Sam was in the bathroom and riffled through his bag. I easily found what I was looking for: a small black velvet box. My stomach churned as I held it up to my face and snapped it open.
The ring was stunning—emerald-cut with tapered baguettes—and I realized that my mother must have helped pick it out. It was huge—and it occurred to me that my father must have helped him buy it.
All the qualities I’d once loved about Sam came to the forefront of my mind. I focused on his kindness, his morality, his honesty. When I didn’t think about the future, I didn’t mind that he had no money and that he very well might never have any. I could care less that he wouldn’t fit in with my Klasko friends and that he hadn’t ever planned a fun dinner out for us. I attempted to steady my racing mind. I closed my eyes as the events from the Thanksgiving meal rushed back in on me, wincing at the memory of those expectant faces.
Why didn’t I want Sam to propose? He was kind. And smart. And we still had great sex. Don’t most girls want to get married?
I didn’t need to analyze my feelings any longer. He hadn’t proposed, and so I didn’t need to think about it right now. I reached for my work phone as though it were a stiff drink and read through my new emails quickly, until I noticed a warm liquid underneath my fingers. I stared down, horrified, at the red streaks on my forearm, just beginning to leak drops of blood, and the bits of skin beneath my fingernails. I considered my arm in detached disbelief for a moment before I made my way to the kitchen to wash up. The sting of the soap was delicious.
* * *
“Holy shit.” Carmen put her hand to her forehead as I finished my story, which I’d rushed through before our morning emails began to pour in on the Monday after Thanksgiving. “This is big.”
“Literally. The ring was huge,” I agreed.
She got up from her chair and began to pace the length of my office, though she was only able to take a few steps before having to double back.
“So, the real question is, do you think you’ll ever want to marry him?”
“Is that really the question? Isn’t the question why I don’t want to marry him right now?”
Carmen stopped and looked at me. “Because you don’t think he’s the one for you. Not now, at least,” she said, a hint of apology for her honesty in her tone. I slumped down in my chair, realizing she was correct. “And the question isn’t whether you love him, because we both know the answer is yes,” she said softly.
She was right, of course. I leaned my head back and stared at the ceiling. “I just don’t know. We used to be so good. I used to want to marry him so badly. Or maybe I liked the comfort of knowing that was the plan. But since I started working here—” I pressed my palms together and then pushed them out from my chest in opposite directions. “But maybe it’s just an adjustment period.”
“Maybe.”
“Sometimes I don’t feel like he fits in this world,” I said, gesturing around my office. “And I think I like this world.”
A metallic ding from my computer reminded me I was due in Peter’s office in five minutes.
“To be continued,” Carmen assured me.
A few days later, I made my way back into my office at five o’clock, seeing it for the first time since I had left to go to back-to-back meetings on the forty-fifth floor that morning. “Jordan called. Three times,” Anna announced from her cubicle. I nodded as I ducked into my office and closed the door behind me.
I dialed his number before even sitting down at my desk.
“How’s your deal with Peter going?” Jordan asked in place of a greeting.
“Good.” I called my computer to life and entered my password, smirking at how territorial he and Matt had become over me. I hoped it meant they’d rank me at the top of their list come Match Day. “What’s up?”
“We’re having a party in my mother’s basement tonight,” Jordan announced.
“What?”
“On the fifty-sixth floor. ‘Mom’s basement’ is the theme of the party. A keg, beer pong, and nineties hip-hop. It’s our last hurrah before they install security cameras tomorrow.”
I thought for a moment about the blasting of the soundtrack to my middle school years in a space that was about to be reserved for corporate lunches and high-stakes conference calls. “Genius. I love this idea.”
“I’m heading up there now! Come.”
“I can’t. I slept here last night. I’m exhausted, and I’m supposed to cook dinner for Sam tonight.” I disliked the words as they rolled off my tongue. I would have rather been upstairs having a few drinks with Biggie and Tupac playing. The idea of sitting quietly at home with Sam, eating a meal I’d prepared and listening to his latest roadblock to funding for his company, seemed impossibly tedious in that momen
t. But I’d promised him I’d be home.
“Invite your boyfriend. We’ll order food at some point, I’m sure.”
I inwardly balked at the image of Sam in ill-fitting jeans and a worn sweater standing next to Jordan in his perfectly tailored suit. They would have absolutely nothing to talk about. “Beer pong in my office is not Sam’s idea of fun.”
“Fine. Not my problem if he doesn’t know what fun is,” Jordan said. “I gotta run. Peter and Matt are already up there with Carmen and like twenty other people.” He let the last sentence sink in, making it clear to me that Carmen would be bonding with the partners who were the gatekeepers to our career, in M&A.
“Carmen’s up there?” I asked, too tired not to take his bait.
He laughed sadistically. “She’s up there securing her spot on the fifty-sixth floor. The whole team is going to be up there as soon as it’s finished.”
“I hate you.”
“You love me. See you up there in ten.” He hung up.
I sent Sam an apologetic text saying that my deal had blown up and I was stuck in the office, promising I’d make it up to him. I pulled at the collar of my shirt and bent my head to see how bad I smelled. I couldn’t recall the last time I had taken the time away from work to shower, but it certainly wasn’t within the past forty-eight hours. I looked at my clock: 8:00 p.m. I closed the door and stripped down, changing into the last of the clean blouses I’d started to keep in my office and stuffing my dirty clothes into the Klasko dry-cleaning bag marked with my employee ID number. I darted out of my office just as the stout man with the thick mustache from Paradigm Cleaning I’d seen on many evenings was finishing his last rounds of the floor.
“Excuse me! Can you add this to the twenty-four-hour service?” I shouted, running after him. He turned to me, scanned me up and down, and dropped his jaw. I straightened my spine, attempting to appear more composed. He continued to look at me with a slightly stupefied glaze over his eyes, and I opted to return to my office with a curt “Thank you.” I threw on my winter coat, fairly certain the unoccupied floor’s heat wouldn’t be turned on yet, and headed to the party.