There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then: “I’m happy for you. When can we start planning?”
Tobias and I hadn’t spoken about the wedding. We’d spent the weekend in bed, talking about where we wanted to travel to and what we wanted to do with the apartment—China, get curtains for the bedroom. We hadn’t mentioned summer or winter, a church or outside. It hadn’t even occurred to me to bring it up.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It just happened.”
“Okay, well, text me a pic of the ring immediately.”
Strike two. There was no ring. Tobias had said the proposal had been spontaneous. “But of course I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “I want to spend my life with you, you know that. This isn’t a whim.” But nevertheless he hadn’t purchased a ring. He didn’t have the cash right then anyway.
“We still have to pick it up,” I lied. It wasn’t the first time I had lied to Jessica. But it was maybe the first time I had lied to her about Tobias—and that lie felt bigger. It was a lie about our future, Tobias’s and mine. With this lie—about our wedding, a marriage I did, it turns out, long for—it felt like I’d never stop. That our entire future would be half truths and edits. All my elation from the weekend settled down into my stomach and turned to dread. It jumped around in there like bad oysters.
I arrived at home and there was a note on the door from the super. Someone was coming to check the drain system tomorrow at three—could I be there?
I dropped my bag by the door and flopped onto our chair—the one that had migrated over from the Chelsea apartment. I thought about calling my mom, but she’d want the same details Jessica did, and I didn’t have them. The balloon of happiness I’d experienced at the beach with Tobias had been punctured by the call with Jessica—I didn’t want to relive that.
I called Tobias.
“Hey,” he said. “Is everything okay? I can’t talk.”
I could hear the sounds of production around him. “Of course,” I said. “Yeah.”
“Sabby, what’s wrong?”
“Do you think it’s bad that we didn’t talk about the wedding once this weekend?”
He paused. I could hear the air through his mouth—in and out, in and out. “Are you serious?”
“No,” I said. “Yes. Maybe.”
“Look, I gotta go.” He sounded annoyed. No, he sounded disappointed. Like I had turned out to be just like all the rest of them—all giggling and tulle and baby’s breath and pink ribbon. It made my stomach turn, too.
“All right, I’m sorry, have fun.”
“We okay?” he asked me.
“Great,” I said.
He hung up.
My unease about my call with Jessica grew to anger. As much as I tried to pretend, often unsuccessfully, that Jessica’s disapproval of my life didn’t bother me, it did. I wanted her to understand me the way she used to. I wanted her to make fun of Beth and Jill, not be them. I wanted her to roll her eyes when someone suggested Sumir’s office could be a baby’s room—because babies, really? Didn’t we shudder at the idea? Didn’t we laugh and say we’d never be able to give up booze and sleep? That was us, right?
It’s like all the things she had believed, the deep truths she assigned to the universe, were now girlish fancies, silly dreams she was too mature to entertain. And the crazy thing was we weren’t even thirty yet. This was New York. A baby before thirty was a cause for concern, not celebration. No one gets married at twenty-five. She was the one who had chosen a different path and had to move to another state just so there’d be people who understood her life choices. This wasn’t my fault; it was hers.
I started to get worked up in the chair in our tiny apartment. She judged my life so harshly all the time. I was engaged, and it wasn’t good enough. I was never good enough.
I called her back then. I wanted to yell at her that I didn’t want to do this anymore. That I no longer knew what I had done so wrong, that I was sick of this pretend friendship. That she wasn’t the person I’d signed up to love. That as she felt I wouldn’t grow up with her—that I wouldn’t … what? Move to the suburbs and have a baby next door?—I was sad and angry that she’d left, that she’d so readily and easily and joyfully given up on everything we had been—but her voice mail picked up. Hi, it’s Jessica Bedi. Please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks! Bye!
I hung up. Jessica had even changed her name. She used to be Jessica Kirk; now she was Jessica Bedi. I matched her judgment with my own until I felt bigger, better. All she wanted to talk about was babies and throw pillows, and whether the shade of eggshell she had chosen for her dining room (she had a dining room!) was too blue. She wasn’t even pregnant yet. I explained to myself that she had sold out and was jealous that I was still here, in the city. I ignored the fact that being a New Yorker had never been Jessica’s dream. She had always wanted Sumir like I had always wanted Tobias. Whose fault was it that our realities were so incompatible now?
I remember she called me back an hour later. I picked up. She sounded tired, like she had just woken up. “Sorry I missed you,” she said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I dialed you by accident.”
10:35 P.M.
“ YOU’VE BARELY SAID ANYTHING,” Jessica says to Tobias. I have felt her anxiety building. Since I sat down, really, but particularly after Robert’s confession, her tears about her mother. The table had been in relative silence for the last few minutes in eager anticipation of our desserts, which are still not here.
“I haven’t?”
Jessica shakes her head. “No, you haven’t. You keep reacting to everyone else. I still don’t know what you really think about all of us.”
Conrad raises his eyebrow at me. “You’re a tough critic, Jessica,” he says.
“Understatement,” Tobias says, but he’s smiling.
“Well,” Audrey says. “Maybe she’s right, Tobias. What do you think about all of this?”
“It’s strange.”
“Obviously,” Jessica says, impatient.
“I feel sad,” he says. “Sad that Sabby was in pain, that I couldn’t or didn’t do anything about it. That I died. That wasn’t great.”
He looks up at me, and I see his right eyebrow is raised, as if he’s asking for a smile. I give him one.
“You are the great love of my life,” he says. He puts a hand on my face. His fingertips feel like relief.
“This isn’t what I meant,” Jessica says.
“Jess, stop,” I say.
“No, I won’t. He’s dead, remember?”
Something cold blooms in my veins. “Yes,” I say. I feel a chill and hug my sweater closer. “And I’m trying to fix that.”
“I want Tobias to be alive as much as the next guy,” Jessica says, gesturing idly toward Conrad.
“Thanks,” Tobias tells her. “I think?”
“But,” she says, holding up her hand. “I think it’s a disservice to pretend like everything was always perfect with you guys. It wasn’t. There was so much that didn’t work. You knew it, too. That’s why you wouldn’t go to L.A. with him.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “I had a job, remember? I had a life…”
“Oh, come on! It wasn’t because you were afraid of him cheating on you or your father leaving or any of those bullshit reasons you’ve given. You weren’t sure he was right for you.”
Tobias looks to me, but Jessica keeps talking. “I’m sorry, Sabby, but if we’re going to do this, we should do it right. There isn’t just your side to this story.”
“That’s not true,” I say.
“It is,” Jessica says. “You knew he was an artist. You worried about financial stability. You saw him prioritize photography over everything else. Just admit it.”
“Stop,” Tobias says. He throws his hands in the air. It’s the most animated I’ve seen him all night. “Sabby knew what she meant to me.”