“No writing,” he said. “It’s Shabbat.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from exploding at his hypocrisy. Besides, writing wasn’t work; it was my escape. And there were plenty of Saturdays when he caught up on paperwork in his office. He also had no problem with my mother cooking or using electricity. But I exhaled through my nose. “I’ll read a little and maybe take a walk.”
“No walk. You’ll stay home. We’ll tell people you didn’t feel well.”
“Right.”
My mother kissed my cheek, then whispered in my ear, “I’m up to chapter twenty. I stayed up late reading. It’s wonderful, dearest.”
Thus buoyed, I waved goodbye, watched them leave, then retreated to my room to resume work. The book was nearly finished.
But I had only typed two lines when I heard a sound from downstairs. It came again, and I poked my head out of my bedroom door, listening. Someone was knocking at the front door.
Normally, Grace would take care of it, but Daddy felt it was wrong to pay someone on Shabbat, so she didn’t work Saturdays. Sighing, I went downstairs. I didn’t feel like dealing with anyone ill-bred enough to come selling something on Shabbat to a house with a mezuzah, but I wouldn’t be able to focus until the pounding stopped. Even with the radio on.
I flung open the door. “We’re not inter—oh!”
Dan stood on the step, a light rain plastering his hair to his head.
I looked around to make sure no stray neighbors were looking before pulling him inside, where he kissed me against the door.
“What are you doing here?” I asked breathlessly as he released me.
“My mother said you were home. I told the rabbi I had a headache and then came here. I was watching for your parents to leave.”
“You can’t stay. If they catch you here—”
“I won’t,” he said. “But I had to see you. I didn’t want to call.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist, burying my face in his damp shoulder, inhaling his scent, already so familiar. Being with him felt like home.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “What happened?”
“I am now.” I gave him the short version of what had transpired, leading him into the living room to sit.
But he didn’t look happy that I was in the same city as him. “What about us?”
My shoulders sank. That was the problem, wasn’t it? My parents didn’t trust me to go anywhere. They had sent me to Ada thinking it would be even more of a prison than home. And if we told them we were seeing each other, they would trust me less unless it was clear an engagement was imminent. Our behavior at the shul was evidence enough we couldn’t be alone together. And they could never understand that everything had changed between then and now.
“I don’t know.”
“Marilyn, we have to tell them. There’s no other way.”
I shook my head. “Without an engagement, they wouldn’t allow it. Your parents wouldn’t either. The whole congregation would think we were just sleeping together. We’d never live it down.”
“Then we get ‘engaged.’” He made air quotes around the word. “We don’t get married until you’re ready, but we give them enough of what they want to be able to see each other.”
“It won’t work. They’ll start planning the wedding immediately.”
Dan thought for a moment. “We—I—tell them I want you to finish school first. That buys us two years.”
“The whole reason my father is sending me back to school is to meet a husband. He wouldn’t fall for that.”
He looked down at his lap, studying his hands for a long moment. When he lifted his head, something steely had resolved in his face. “Then I’ll go to rabbinical school, like my parents want. Your parents can’t argue against waiting until I can make money to support us.”
“No.”
“Marilyn—”
“I’m not letting you give up your dream just so I can keep mine.”
“You’re more important than photography. I can still take pictures.”
“No. I don’t want to be a rabbi’s wife any more than you want to be a rabbi.”
He reached over and took my hand in his. “I don’t have to finish. It just gives us time.”
I took my hand back. “What if I’m never ready to get married?”
The look in his eyes broke what was left of my heart.
But he pressed on anyway. “Then we break up when you decide. And I’ll take the blame with both families.”
“No.” He opened his mouth to argue, but I took his hand, silencing him. “If it comes to that, I’ll take the blame.”
His eyes widened. “Do you mean—?”
I nodded, defeated. I couldn’t see a scenario in which he changed so much that he asked me to forfeit my writing. And the idea of a long engagement, while difficult to manage with our families, allowed us the freedom to figure out what our lives would look like if we did follow through.
But the corners of Dan’s mouth turned down. “No. Not if you look like that saying yes.”
I moved over until I was sitting on his lap. “Daniel Schwartz, there is no one else on this earth whom I would consider marrying. Now propose to me properly so we can actually see each other and decide what we want to do.”
He pulled my face in and kissed me. “It’s hard to do it properly when you’re sitting on my knee.”
I laughed for the first time since my parents arrived in Avalon. “I suppose we should make a show of it, for my parents. And yours.”
“I don’t care about them. I care about you.” He nudged me and I stood, while he slid off the sofa and knelt in front of me. “Marilyn Kleinman, will you pretend to consent to marry me to appease our parents?”
My eyes narrowed. “Not even engaged yet and the romance is gone.”
He rose, wrapping me in his arms. “Believe me, we’re just getting started.” His face moved closer to mine.
“Yes,” I said. “I can’t promise more than that, but yes.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
I slept fitfully that night. I wasn’t sure I was up for years of pretending. But the engagement, however real or unreal it was, would allow us to see each other. And after losing Ada, the idea of also losing Dan was too much to bear.
Dan was to come the following afternoon. We debated whether he should ask my father first but agreed that he had already secured his approval once and a surprise was better for our purposes. I asked if he was going to tell his parents before he came, but he said no. They would insist on coming with him if he did.
Breakfast was a quiet affair, my father buried in his newspaper, my mother trying to make conversation and receiving one-word answers from both of us until I retreated upstairs to write. I had been admonished the previous afternoon for the sound of typing coming from my room and wound up writing late into the night after my parents went to bed, tiptoeing past their room with my typewriter to the kitchen downstairs, where they wouldn’t hear me. There were maybe two or three chapters left to go, but my characters weren’t quite behaving and didn’t seem to want to leave the world of their novel behind.
Just before lunch, my mother knocked on my door. “I hate to interrupt, but I want more,” she said.
“You finished already?”