She had been betrayed by it before, but in a much different way. It had been ten years ago, when she was still living with a woman who, like a tide, was wearing her away at the edges. She pretended she was happy, but what she really meant was that she was settled. That this was easier than wondering, again, if there would ever be anyone for her.
Then she had gone to a faculty mixer at the university to celebrate the start of the new year. Her partner didn’t come—she hated these things, where no one seemed to ask the right questions about her and her career designing, as she called them, workable kitchens (but weren’t they all?). So Olive had attended alone, planning to stay just long enough to be seen by the head of the department, and then go home and indulge in a glass of wine or maybe a bottle. But then she noticed a woman at the bar with long hair, so long that it was unfashionable, like a seventies flashback. Like Lady Godiva, Olive thought, as she watched the woman throw back three shots of bourbon and ask the bartender for a fourth.
You okay? Olive asked her.
Yes. On the other hand, Peg replied, the dean of the engineering school is a misogynistic dick.
Olive didn’t answer. She, who had never cheated and had never wanted to, was watching Peg’s lips form the words, mesmerized.
Oh fuck, Peg said. You’re his wife, aren’t you?
Um, nope. Not even close. She moved closed and rested her elbow on the bar. Did you know that drinking doesn’t actually make you forget anything? When you’re blackout drunk, the brain just temporarily loses its ability to make memories.
Does that line ever work? Peg asked.
Don’t know. I’m road testing it.
Peg laughed. So. If I keep up this pace, I might not remember meeting you?
That’s about right.
She pushed away that last shot glass, and held out her hand to introduce herself.
Now, Olive buried her face in her hands. Oh, Jesus. Peg. How would she tell her?
The thought chased itself around and around in her mind, like a squirrel in the eaves. Olive could feel panic closing in on her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes and tried to remind herself that what she was feeling was perfectly normal. The brain could only hold so much; it took roughly ninety minutes to clear its proverbial cache.
On the heels of that came another tidbit of knowledge, one she had often quoted when she handed back the first multiple-choice exam to groans of disappointment. Studies have shown that when presented with a list, the default of the brain is to pick whatever is first.
The same holds true for voting, and ballots.
But sometimes there are no choices, Olive realized.
What does the brain do when you’ve run out of options?
It wasn’t easy to vomit quietly, but the bathroom that Izzy had ducked into was located right off the waiting room. When she finished, she wiped her face with toilet paper and rinsed her mouth out. Then she stood there, taking a moment. The bathroom was decorated like the rest of the building—as if the art had been picked up from garage sales or worse, from the Free boxes of items that didn’t sell. On the wall was a photograph of what looked like the French Riviera, a technically weak oil painting of a sad clown, and a detailed, biologically correct pen-and-ink illustration of a shrimp.
All three of them made her think of Parker.
Last weekend, his parents had come to visit and had taken them out to a meal that cost half of what she made in a week. It was one of those steak and seafood houses where the food was airlifted in from the North Sea or a ranch in New Zealand, where you could keep a private wine cellar with your own special vintage. Parker’s father had ordered a seafood tower for the table that looked like a wedding cake: tiers of oysters and mussels, ribbons of smoked mackerel and bluefish dip, buttons of sweet baby scallops, crowned by a whole lobster. It was dazzling, excessive, and completely out of Izzy’s purview.
Parker’s mother talked about the work she did with the hospital auxiliary, and Parker’s father asked her all sorts of questions, about whether she always wanted to be a nurse and where she went to school. They talked about their recent trip to Paris and asked Izzy if she had ever been there, and when Izzy said no, they said they hoped she and Parker could come along next time. Clearly Parker had told them that she was important to him.
She watched Parker dribble down oysters and use a fish knife and never have to stress about which plate was for the bread and which drinking glass belonged to him, when Izzy still had to stick her hands under the table and form a lowercase b and d with her left and right hands to remind herself. The things that were instinctual to him were foreign to her, and vice versa. She doubted that Parker had ever had to gauge if moldy bread could still be consumed without making him sick. She was certain he had never fished a half-finished sandwich from the trash to eat, or gone into the laundromat to feel in the machines for quarters others left behind.
She could tell he sensed her unease, because every now and then he would reach for her hand and squeeze it underneath the tablecloth. He put a small collection of seafood on her plate, so she wouldn’t have to worry about whether it was completely gauche to pick up a mussel shell with her fingers.
There was no denying that he calmed her. When his thumb rubbed over her knuckles, absentmindedly, she could breathe more easily. She let him coax her into the conversation as if it were a frigid pool.
She got so comfortable that for a moment, she forgot who she had been. Parker’s father told a stupid dad joke, just like the ones her own father used to tell: What do you call it when you feed dynamite to a steer? Abominable. Get it? Say it slowly … Parker’s mother slapped him lightly on the shoulder and rolled her eyes. For God’s sake, Tom, you’ll scare her off. It felt so normal, so similar to her own parents’ behavior, that she made the mistake of thinking she and Parker actually did have common ground.
Laughing, she lifted a shrimp from her plate and took a bite.
It crunched, which was weird, but then lots of food rich people liked was weird: caviar, paté, raw beef. It wasn’t until she noticed Parker’s parents staring at her that she realized her mistake. She’d never had a shrimp in her life—how was she supposed to know to peel the shell?
“Excuse me,” she muttered, and she fled to the ladies’ room.
She hid there, thinking about telling Parker about the pregnancy test she had taken. If he knew she was pregnant, he would never let her go. She was doing what was best for him. Even if he thought Izzy was what he wanted right now, it was only a matter of time before he decided he’d rather be with someone from the same background as him. Someone who’d eaten shrimp before, for God’s sake.
“Iz?” It was Parker’s voice.
“You’re in the ladies’ room,” she said.
“Am I? Damn.” He paused. “You gonna come out?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“No.”
A woman walked into the bathroom and squeaked. “Sorry, can you give us a minute?” Parker asked. Izzy heard the door open, the buzz of the restaurant before it got quiet again. “You know what? I fucking hate shrimp. It’s like eating something prehistoric,” he said. “The point is, I don’t care.”
“I do.” That was it, in a nutshell. “Parker, go back to your parents. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to make this any better.”
“Nothing?” Parker replied.
She heard shuffling and shifting, and then Parker’s hand slipped under the stall door, his fist opening like a blossom to reveal a diamond ring. “Izzy,” he said, “will you marry me?”
—