“Of course,” he said, not romantically but matter-of-factly, as if he was almost offended by her asking. But she liked how he said it like that, as if implying, “How could I forget?”
She and John had met as campers when they were nine years old. They were both from Westchester, she from New Rochelle and he from Scarsdale (Scarsdale was only twenty minutes away from New Rochelle but infinitely fancier). He had been a skinny boy with a pale complexion and freckles who bought a cherry Popsicle from the canteen every day after lunch, which turned his lips and tongue a bright red. Before he had braces, he had buckteeth, and he was goofy with his friends, always giggling in a way that felt, before Amy could put words to it, both masculine and feminine. He was great at archery. He called her by her last name, like she was another one of the boys. Amy liked this: She had brothers, and so it made her feel at home, safe. She and John goofed around like this for three summers, and then when they returned for their fourth, when they were twelve, John had sprung four inches, and his voice had changed, taking away any scraps of that latent femininity. Amy’s denim shorts and V-neck T-shirts clung differently, though it took a comment from a girlfriend (“That V is mighty deep, huh, Ame?”) for her to realize she looked any different. She and John kissed under that elm tree that summer. They lost their virginities to each other two summers after that, in the oar house down by the lake, when they were fourteen (it sounded so scarily young now, and she took pause when she thought of her own daughters, thirteen and eighteen, almost nineteen). Amy thought about those times often, how simple it all was, how easily it all came to her.
People, when they heard their story, thought it was romantic. But she often wondered: Did he fall in love with girl me and then fall out of love with adult me? Or is adult me still the same as girl me? Both possibilities were depressing. Though she felt the second was more true and that he was both happy she had not changed and disappointed in her for it.
They had taken some time apart to date other people when they went away to college, but when they graduated, it was clear to the two of them that there was no other person with whom either wanted to spend a comfortable, reasonable life. They never fought, simply because it felt like they never had anything to fight about. John was a kind, moral person; and yes, he was occasionally stubborn about something like what movie they would see on a date or where they would go to dinner, but these were unimportant things: What did it matter where they went to dinner, anyway, so long as they were together? One boy she dated in college was something of the opposite: He let her make all the decisions, always saying something like “lady’s choice” when she asked what they should do that night. Rather than provide her with a sense of autonomy, the pressure of being in charge filled her with dread. She much preferred it when her partner took control.
The break had made her want John more, and him her. Amy knew nothing about the girls he had dated in college, though her imagination of them caused intense amounts of jealousy and desire to build over the years she and John were apart. She had never seen him so excited to rip off her clothes as he was the first time they had sex after they got back together (and to her delight, he did literally rip them, popping a button off her blouse). And so she moved with him to D.C., where they knew no one, for him to attend law school there, and she took a job as a waitress at an upscale oyster bar in Capitol Hill. She was so good at that job; she could have done it forever. She could tell you the difference between each oyster on the menu—of which there were normally around two dozen, depending on the month—and not just which were larger and which were smaller, but she could also extoll the virtues of the sweet and meaty bluepoints or the tender, briny Malpeques. She could carry a tray of four martinis and place each one in front of its respective customer, remembering who had the twist and who had three olives, without so much as spilling a drop. She remembered the names of her regulars, and once they had begun to request her, she remembered the names of the grandchildren they gushed about too. At Christmas, she received store-bought greeting cards with cash inside.
She remembered one night before she was pregnant: It was after a particularly busy shift, and she was sitting at the bar drinking a white wine and organizing her credit-card receipts. There were a couple of older men on the stools around her, and her co-worker and friend Jill was tending bar.
“How’d you do tonight, Miss Fancy Pants?” Jill asked.
Amy tried to give a sly grin, though she was sure it didn’t look as cool as she wanted it to. “I did okay.”
Jill reached across the bar to refill Amy’s glass. Jill was in her forties, with decades of restaurant experience, much like the other bartenders and servers. They’d made fun of Amy at first for being innocent and somewhat prissy—which, until then, she hadn’t realized was the case. She hadn’t known, for instance, that she was expected to roll silverware at the beginning of every shift, and this made the other servers take a slower liking to her than she would have hoped. But she proved herself quickly: She was small and fast; she had killer timing and killer instincts, always seeming to know exactly when that kitchen door was going to swing toward her.
“That husband of yours ever gonna come see you at work?” Jill asked.
“Nah,” Amy said. “He knows this is my thing.” The truth was she’d never invited him, and he’d never asked to come either.
Then law school was over, and Amy got pregnant, and John got a job at a New York law firm, and they bought a house in Westchester, and Amy’s regulars gave her one last card before she left and patted her growing belly on the way out. She never did share the tips with him.
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