“Do you mean Ham?” Liz asked.
“I don’t know what your father’s thinking.”
Liz had been pleased to hear that Mr. Bennet and Lydia had met on more than one occasion for breakfast at the Echo, but as far as she knew, this was the first time since the elopement that he had socialized with Ham.
“What’s the lecture about?” she asked.
“That has nothing to do with anything,” Mrs. Bennet said.
A modicum of research revealed that the two men had heard a professor at the University of Cincinnati speak on law and politics in ancient Greece.
Are u a history buff? Liz texted Ham.
Whatever it takes, Liz, Ham texted back. Whatever it takes :)
USING A SMARTPHONE matchmaking app that hadn’t existed the last time she’d been single, Liz embarked on a series of dates that were neither terrible nor particularly promising. The fifth man she met for a drink turned out to be someone with whom she had gone on one date seven years earlier, though neither of them realized it until they were seated across from each other at a restaurant on East Thirty-sixth Street and had been talking for ten minutes. The man’s name was Eric, and he was now living in the suburbs of New Jersey, divorced, and the father of a five-year-old and a two-year-old.
He was a perfectly pleasant person, but as they spoke, all the things that had bothered her the last time around bothered her again, with only the slightest particulars changed. She hadn’t been aware of storing this list of Deterrents to Dating Eric Zanti in her brain for seven years, but once it got reactivated, there was no denying that it was there: He didn’t read much, he said, because he was too busy. He enjoyed small-game hunting, though on a recent guys’ weekend with his buddies, he’d taken down a 150-inch whitetail deer. He thought his ex-wife spent too much time on Facebook.
In her twenties, Liz had lived with a roommate named Asuka who loathed grocery shopping; she said that looking at all the food in the aisles, thinking of the meals she’d need to fix, day after day and year after year, filled her with despair. Parting ways with Eric outside the restaurant—they kissed on the cheek, and Liz stifled the impulse to make a joke about seeing him again seven years hence—Liz understood Asuka’s despair, except with men instead of food. Even before she returned to her apartment, she had deleted the matchmaking app from her phone.
DURING THE FORTY-EIGHT hours she was in Cincinnati for her parents’ move from the Tudor and the subsequent closing at the title company, Liz looked for Darcy. She looked for him running on Madison Road as she drove back and forth—her own trips were staggered with those of the movers—between the Tudor and the Grasmoor, which was the building where her parents had, after all, decided to live, though they were renting a two-bedroom rather than buying a three-bedroom and using the funds that might have served as the down payment to maintain their country club membership. She looked for Darcy downtown, when she and her father went to the title company’s office (she had never previously encountered Darcy downtown), and while she waited at the Dewey’s in Oakley to pick up a pizza for her parents’ first dinner in their new dwelling. She looked for him on her own run the next day, and it would have been a lie to claim she didn’t consider stopping by his apartment, but it was seven-twenty in the morning and he had a complicated work schedule and a girlfriend. (I’m sure you’ve heard from my brother about him and Caroline.)
Before flying out, Liz met Ham and Lydia for lunch at Teller’s. “I don’t know if Lydia mentioned that I wrote a letter to your mom,” Ham said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t heard back.”
Over pizza the previous night, Liz had inquired about whether her mother had considered breaking the silence between herself and her youngest daughter and her husband. “I certainly haven’t,” Mrs. Bennet had declared.
“I think she still needs time,” Liz said to Ham. “Maybe after they get settled into the new place, she’ll be more receptive. But I’m glad you’re trying.”
“Lizzy, I have a question,” Lydia said. “Have you ever gotten your eyebrows threaded?”
The three of them had stood to leave the restaurant when they saw a middle-aged woman Liz recognized as Gretchen Keefe, who decades earlier had been their teenage babysitter and neighbor on Grandin Road. Gretchen was accompanied by another woman, both of them wearing black leggings, recognizably overpriced hooded sweatshirts, and large diamond rings.
“Hey, guys!” Gretchen said warmly. “Is it true that Mary eloped with a transvestite?”
Liz winced as Ham extended his hand and said with equal warmth, “Actually, I’m transgender, not a transvestite, and married to Lydia here, but nice to meet you. Hamilton Ryan.”