by Jenny Han
I felt all the blood rush to my cheeks. Beside me, I could feel rather than hear Jeremiah choke.
My mother’s voice shook as she said shrilly, “I don’t believe this. How many times have we discussed contraception, Isabel?”
I could not have been more mortified. I looked at Mr. Fisher, who was beet red, and then I looked at the waiter, who was pouring water for the table next to ours. Our eyes met. I was pretty sure he’d been in my psychology class. “Mom, I’m not pregnant!”
Earnestly, Jeremiah said, “Laurel, I swear to you it’s nothing like that.”
My mother ignored him. She looked only at me. “Then what is happening here? Where is this coming from?”
My lips felt really dry all of a sudden. Fleetingly, I thought of what had led up to Jeremiah’s proposal, and just as quickly the thought flitted away. None of that mattered anymore. What mattered was that we were in love. I said, “We want to get married, Mom.”
“You’re too young,” she said in a flat voice. “You’re both far too young.”
Jeremiah coughed. “Laur, we love each other, and we want to be together.”
“You are together,” my mother snapped. Then she turned to Mr. Fisher, her eyes narrowed. “Did you know about this?”
“Calm down, Laurel. They’re joking. You were joking, right?”
Jere and I shared a look before he said in a soft voice, “No, we’re not joking.”
My mother swallowed the rest of her champagne, emptying her glass. “You two are not getting married, period. You’re both still in school, for God’s sake. It’s ridiculous.”
Clearing his throat, Mr. Fisher said, “Maybe after you kids both graduate, we can discuss it again.”
“A few years after you graduate,” my mother put in.
“Right,” Mr. Fisher said.
“Dad . . . ,” Jeremiah began.
The server was back at Mr. Fisher’s shoulder before Jeremiah could finish whatever it was he was going to say. He just stood there for a moment looking awkward before asking, “Do you have any questions about the menu? Or, ah, are we just doing appetizers today?”
“We’ll just take the check,” my mother said, tight lipped.
There was all this food on the table and no one was touching it, no one was saying anything. I was right before. This was a mistake, a tactical error of epic proportions. We never should have told them like this. Now they were a team, united against us. We barely got a word in edgewise.
I reached into my purse, and under the tablecloth, I put my engagement ring on. It was the only thing I could think to do. When I reached for my water glass, Jeremiah saw the ring and squeezed my knee again. My mother saw too—her eyes flashed, and she looked away.
Mr. Fisher paid the bill, and for once my mother didn’t argue. We all stood up. Quickly, Steven filled a cloth napkin with shrimp. And then we were leaving, me trailing my mother, Jeremiah following Mr. Fisher. Behind me, I heard Steven whispering to Conrad. “Holy shit, man. This is crazy. Did you know about this?”
I heard Conrad tell him no. Outside, he hugged my mother good-bye and then got in his car and drove away. He didn’t look back once.
When we got to our car, I asked my mother very quietly, “Can I have the keys?”
“What for?”
I wet my lips. “I need to get my book bag out of the trunk. I’m going with Jeremiah, remember?”
I could see my mother struggle to hold her temper. She said, “No, you’re not. You’re coming home with us.”
“But Mom—”
Before I could finish, she’d already handed the keys to Steven and climbed into the passenger seat. She closed the door.
I looked at Jeremiah helplessly. Mr. Fisher was already in his car, and Jeremiah was hanging back, waiting. More than anything, I wished I could leave with him. I was really, really scared to get into the car with my mother.
I was in trouble like I had never known.
“Get in the car, Belly,” Steven said. “Don’t make it worse.”
“You’d better go,” Jeremiah said.
I ran over to him and hugged him tight. “I’ll call you tonight,” he whispered into my hair.
“If I’m still alive,” I whispered back.
Then I walked away from him and climbed into the backseat.
Steven started the car, his napkin a white bundle in his lap. My mother caught my eye in the rearview mirror and said, “You’re returning that ring, Isabel.”
If I backed down now, everything was lost. I had to be strong.
“I’m not returning it,” I said.
chapter twenty-two
My mother and I didn’t speak to each other for a week. I avoided her, and she ignored me. I worked at Behrs, mostly to get out of the house. I ate lunch and dinner there. After my shifts, I went over to Taylor’s, and when I got home, I talked to Jeremiah on the phone. He begged me to at least try to talk to my mother. I knew he was worried that she hated him now, and I assured him that he wasn’t the one she was mad at. That was all me.
One night after a late shift at the restaurant, I was on my way to my room when I stopped short. I heard the muffled sound of my mother crying behind her closed door. I was frozen to the spot, my heart thudding in my chest. Standing outside her door, listening to her weep, I was ready to give it all up. In that moment I would have done anything, said anything, to make her stop crying. In that moment she had me. My hand was on the doorknob, and the words were right there, on the tip of my tongue—Okay, I won’t do it.
But then it got quiet. She’d stopped crying on her own. I waited a little longer, and when I didn’t hear anything more, I let go of the doorknob and went to my room. In the dark I took off my work clothes and got into bed, and I cried too.
I woke up to the smell of my father’s Turkish coffee. For just those few seconds right in between sleep and wakefulness, I was ten again, and my dad still lived with us and the biggest thing I had to worry about was my math homework. I started to fall back to sleep, and then I woke up with a start.
There could only be one reason my dad was here. My mother had told him. I’d wanted to be the one to tell him, to explain. She’d beaten me to it. I was mad, but at the same time I felt glad. Her telling my father meant that she was finally taking this seriously.
After I showered, I headed downstairs. They were sitting in the living room drinking coffee. My dad had on his weekend clothes—jeans and a plaid short-sleeved shirt. And a belt, always a belt.
“Morning,” I said.
“Have a seat,” my mother said, setting her mug down on a coaster.
I sat. My hair was still wet, and I was trying to work my comb through the tangles.
Clearing his throat, my father said, “So, your mother told me what’s going on.”
“Dad, I wanted to tell you myself, I really did. Mom beat me to the punch.” I threw her a pointed look, but she didn’t appear the least bit bothered by it.
“I’m not in favor of this either, Belly. I think you’re too young.” He cleared his throat again. “We’ve discussed it, and if you want to live with Jeremiah in an apartment this fall, we’ll allow it. You’ll have to chip in if it costs more than the dorms, but we’ll pay what we’ve been paying.”
I wasn’t expecting that. A compromise. I was sure it had been my dad’s idea, but I couldn’t take the deal.
“Dad, I don’t just want to live in an apartment with Jeremiah. That’s not why we’re getting married.”
“Then why are you getting married?” my mother asked me.
“We love each other. We’ve thought it through, we really have.”
My mother gestured at my left hand. “Who paid for that ring? I know Jeremiah doesn’t have a job.”
I put my hand in my lap. “He used his credit card,” I said.
“His credit card that Adam pays for. If Jeremiah can’t afford a ring, he has no business buying one.”
“It didn’t cost much.” I had no idea how much the ring had
cost, but the diamond was so little, I figured it couldn’t have been that expensive.
Sighing, my mother glanced over at my father and then back at me. “You might not believe me when I say this, but when your father and I got married, we were very much in love. Very, very much in love. We went into marriage with the best of intentions. But all of that just wasn’t enough to sustain us.”
Their love for each other, Steven and me, our family—none of it was enough to make their marriage work. I knew all of that already.
“Do you regret it?” I asked her.
“Belly, it isn’t as simple as that.”
I interrupted her. “Do you regret our family? Do you regret me and Steven?”
Sighing deeply, she said, “No.”
“Dad, do you?”
“Belly, no. Of course not. That’s not what your mother’s trying to say.”
“Jeremiah and I aren’t you and Mom. We’ve known each other our whole lives.” I tried to appeal to my father. “Dad, your cousin Martha got married young, and she and Bert have been married for, like, thirty years! It can work, I know it can. Jeremiah and I will make it work just like they did. We’re going to be happy. We just want you guys to be happy for us. Please be happy for us.”
My father rubbed his beard in a way I knew well—he was going to defer to my mother the way he always did. Any second, he would look at her with a question in his eyes. It was all up to her now. Actually, it had always been up to her.
We both looked at her. My mother was the judge. That was the way it worked in our family. She closed her eyes briefly and then said, “I can’t support you in this decision, Isabel. If you go forward with this wedding, I won’t support it. I won’t be there.”
It knocked the wind out of me. Even though I was expecting it, her continued disapproval . . . still. Still, I thought she’d come around, at least a little.
“Mom,” I said, my voice breaking, “come on.”
Looking pained, my father said, “Belly, let’s all just think on this some more, okay? This is very sudden for us.”
I ignored him and looked only at my mother. Pleadingly, I said, “Mom? I know you don’t mean that.”
She shook her head. “I do mean it.”
“Mom, you can’t not be at my wedding. That’s crazy.” I tried to sound calm, like I wasn’t on the verge of out-and-out hysteria.
“No, what’s crazy is the idea of a teenager getting married.” She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know what to say to get through to you. How do I get through to you, Isabel?”
“You can’t,” I said.
My mother leaned forward, her eyes fixed on me. “Don’t do this.”
“It’s already decided. I’m marrying Jeremiah.” I stood up jerkily. “If you can’t be happy for me, then maybe—maybe it’s best you don’t come.”
I was already at the staircase when my dad called out, “Belly, wait.”
I stopped, and then I heard my mother say, “Let her go.”
When I was in my room, I called Jeremiah. The first thing he said was, “Do you want me to talk to her?”
“That won’t help. I’m telling you, she’s made up her mind. I know her. She won’t budge. At least not right now.”
He was silent. “Then what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” I started to cry.
“Do you want to postpone the wedding?”
“No!”
“Then what should we do?”
Wiping my face, I said, “I guess just move ahead with the wedding. Start planning.”
As soon as we got off the phone, I started seeing things more clearly. I just needed to separate emotion from reason. Refusing to go to the wedding was my mother’s trump card. It was the only leg she had to stand on. And she was bluffing. She had to be bluffing. No matter how upset or disappointed she was in me, I couldn’t believe that she would miss her only daughter’s wedding. I just couldn’t.
All there was to do now was to steamroll ahead and set this wedding in motion. With or without my mother by my side, this was happening.
chapter twenty-three
I was folding my laundry when Steven knocked on my door later that night. As usual he only gave me a couple of seconds before opening it; he never waited for me to say “come in.” He came into the room and shut the door behind him. Steven stood in my room awkwardly, leaning against the wall, his arms folded against his chest.
“What?” I said. Although I already knew.
“Sooo . . . are you and Jere serious about this?”
I stacked some T-shirts into a pile. “Yes.”
Steven crossed the room and sat at my desk, absorbing my answer for a minute. Then he faced me, straddling the chair, and said, “You realize that’s insane, right? We’re not living in the foothills of West Virginia. There’s no reason you have to get married so young.”
“What do you know about West Virginia?” I scoffed. “You’ve never even been there.”
“That’s besides the point.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is, you guys are too young.”
“Did Mom send you up here to talk to me?”
“No,” he said, and I knew he was lying. “I’m just worried about you.”
I stared him down.
“Okay, yeah, she did,” he admitted. “But I would have come up anyway.”
“You’re not going to change my mind.”
“Listen, nobody knows you two better than me.” He stopped, weighing his words. “I love Jere—he’s like a brother to me. But you’re my little sister. You come first. This whole marriage idea—I’m sorry, but I think it’s stupid. If you guys love each other that much, you can wait a couple of years to be together. And if you can’t, you for sure shouldn’t be getting married.”
I felt both touched and annoyed. Steven never said things like “You come first.” But then he called me stupid, which was more like him.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” I said. I folded then refolded another T-shirt. “Jeremiah wants you and Conrad to be his best men.”
Steven’s face broke into a smile. “He does?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Steven looked really happy, but then he caught me looking at him, and he wiped his smile away. “I don’t think Mom will let me be in the wedding.”
“Steven, you’re twenty-one years old. You can decide that for yourself.”
He frowned. I could tell I’d injured his pride. He said, “Well, I still don’t think it’s your smartest move.”
“Noted,” I said. “I’m still doing it.”
“Oh, man, Mom’s gonna kill me. I was supposed to talk you out of getting married, not get roped into the wedding party,” Steven said, getting up.
I hid my smile. That is, until Steven added, “Con and I had better start planning the bachelor party.”
Quickly, I said, “Jere doesn’t want any of that.”
Steven puffed up his chest. “You don’t get a say in it, Belly. You’re a girl. This is man stuff.”
“Man stuff?”
Grinning, he shut my door.
chapter twenty-four
Despite what I’d said to Steven, I still found myself waiting for my mother. Waiting for her to come around, waiting for her to give in. I didn’t want to start planning the wedding until she said yes. But when days passed and she refused to discuss it, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.
Thank God for Taylor.
She brought over a big white binder with clippings from wedding magazines and checklists and all kinds of stuff. “I was saving this for my wedding, but we can use it for yours, too,” she said.
All I had was one of my mother’s yellow legal pads. I had written WEDDING at the top and made a list of things I needed to do. The list looked pretty skimpy, next to Taylor’s binder.
We were sitting on my bed, papers and bride magazines all around us. Taylor was all business.
She said, “First things
first. We have to find you a dress. August is really, really soon.”
“It doesn’t feel that soon,” I said.
“Well, it is. Two months to plan a wedding is nothing. In weddingspeak that’s, like, tomorrow.”
“Well, I guess since the wedding is going to be simple, the dress should be too,” I said.
Taylor frowned. “How simple?”
“Really simple. As simple as it gets. Nothing poofy or frou frou.”
She nodded to herself. “I can picture it. It’s very Cindy Crawford wedding-on-the-beach, very Carolyn Bessette.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” I said. I had no idea what either of their wedding dresses looked like. I didn’t even know who Carolyn Bessette was. After I had the dress, it would feel more real, I would be able to visualize it happening. Right now it still felt too abstract.
“What about shoes?”
I gave her a look. “Like I’m gonna wear heels on the beach. I can barely walk in heels on level ground.”
Taylor ignored me. “What about my bridesmaid dress?”
I pushed some magazines onto the carpet so I could lie down. I stretched my legs as high as I could and put my feet up on the wall. “I was thinking mustard yellow. Maybe in a satiny kind of material.” Taylor hated mustard yellow.
“Mustard yellow satin,” Taylor repeated, nodding and trying hard to keep the disgust off her face. I could tell she was torn between her vanity and her credo, which was, the Bride is always right. “That could maybe work with Anika’s skin tone. I’m more of a spring, but if I started tanning now, it could work.”
I laughed. “I’m kidding. You can wear whatever you want.”
“Dork!” she said, looking relieved. She slapped my thigh. “You’re so immature! I can’t believe you’re getting married!”
“Me neither.”
“But I guess it makes sense, in a Twilight Zone kind of way. You and Jere have known each other for, like, a grillion years. It’s meant to be.”
“How long is a grillion years?”
“It’s forever.” In the air she spelled out my initials. “B.C. + J.F. forever.”