CHAPTER 32

Getting Engaged

Leda had to quit her job at the coffee shop because of an injury she sustained to her ankles. Three weeks prior she’d noticed that she started to feel a dull ache when she walked. She iced them a few times and tried to rest as much as possible, but the pain persisted. Her doctor suggested she see a podiatrist, who quickly assessed the situation, saying, “You have very flat feet. You need more arch support.”

“Really?” Leda said. “I’ve never had this problem before.”

“Yes,” the podiatrist said. “That’s how it works. You get to a certain age and you start having problems. I’ve seen it happen many times.”

“What about the hills?” Leda asked. “I’ve noticed that it hurts worse when I walk up and down hills. I was thinking maybe I’d hurt myself ’cause I’m not used to walking on hills so much.”

The podiatrist looked at her with a blank expression. “No, I think it’s your low arches. Here—” She leaned over to a drawer and dug out a pack of inserts. “Start with these and see how you’re feeling with them. If they don’t help, you’ll probably need customs.”

Leda looked down at the inserts. “So I just put these in my shoes?”

“Well, that’s the other thing,” the podiatrist said. “I think you need a more supportive shoe. I’m going to write down the name of a few brands that I think will be good for you. There’s a store downtown that specializes in arch support shoes. I think you need to invest in a pair.”

The shoes the doctor recommended turned out to be stark white sneakers that had giant flat soles, not too different of a silhouette from a medical boot.

“I’m going to look like a crazy person,” she said to John. “And I don’t even think I need them. I swear it’s the hills that did this to me.”

The shoes did help her ankles initially, but after a few weeks she started to get worse again. The long days on her feet at the coffee shop were taking their toll, and the doctor told her to rest. The only realistic choice in the circumstance was to quit. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone but a relief to be getting a break from it. It had been so long since she’d been trapped in the house, bored all day, that she didn’t really remember it. She looked forward to lying around and catching up on bad TV. She had plans to organize the hall closet, and of course in the back of her mind she was hoping she’d write more. There was an unwarranted sense of hope.

Leda and John had very often discussed marriage. In her mind she aligned the whole move to California with the intent of having a family. She envisioned herself telling her future children about it, saying, “Mommy loved you so much that she sacrificed for you before you were even born.” It was a nice feeling, thinking that she was already doing something that wasn’t just for herself, already mothering.

She realized too that having John in her life was a blessing. So many of her friends were still single and miserable. They were going on bad dates while she was just steps away from being married and starting a family. It wasn’t always the case, but more often than not, it felt like the holy grail of womanhood.

A month after she quit working at the coffee shop she and John celebrated their fourth anniversary. John made reservations at one of the fancy restaurants they’d been wanting to try. He bought her an expensive bag, and it was warm enough that she could wear a dress to dinner. They ordered a bottle of Champagne to celebrate. Their conversation was, as it always had been, the exchange of best friends. It was perfect.

“When are we gonna get married and have babies?” she asked him.

John rolled his eyes playfully. “You and wanting a baby,” he said. “Is that all you think about?”

“Sometimes.” She thought back on a pair of baby booties she’d seen in the window display at a high-end baby boutique. They were shaped like bees. As she looked through the shop window that day, there seemed no greater aspiration than to make a baby’s feet look like bees. “What about getting married?” she said.

“What about it?” he said, pretending the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

“Stop, you know what I mean.”

“No, you’re right. We should really think about it.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, I mean, it’s been four years. We should really probably be getting engaged.”

Leda felt dizzy with a kind of high that was inexplicable, like someone had snapped Pop Rocks inside of her. It was almost like being turned on, the same sense of urgency and desire, only rather than directed to a person it was directed at the conceptualization of commitment and bridal.

“Are you serious?” she said again.

“Well, don’t you think?”

“Of course I do.”

“Should we go look at rings together or do you want me to surprise you?”

“No, I don’t like surprises. Let’s go look together.”

The next morning she called Anne to tell her the news.

“You actually said that to him?!” Anne said after Leda told her how the conversation had started.

“Yeah, I mean, we always talk about marriage and having kids.”

“I’m, like, shocked. I could never say that to Eric.” Eric was her current boyfriend; he was socially awkward and considerably unattractive. Leda didn’t understand why they were together, really. She felt Anne could do much better.

“Well, John and I just talk about everything.”

“But isn’t it more romantic to wait until he asks you on his own? I mean, this is so planned. It’s almost like you asked him in a way.”

Leda knew that Anne was just being jealous and catty. She tried to be patient of it, since she knew Anne and Eric had been fighting a lot over the last few weeks.

“I don’t think this is less romantic.”

“Not less romantic necessarily, just…like, you just want the guy to come up with it all on his own. I don’t know. If it were me I’d just want it that way.”

“Why? Don’t you want control over your own destiny? Why should getting married be some bullshit thing that the guy comes up with whenever it strikes his fancy? I understand tradition and wanting a man to propose to you and wanting a ring and the whole deal. I get it, and I want a lot of that myself, but at the same time why should I sit there and wait for him to decide everything about my life? Shouldn’t I have just as much say as to when we get married as he does?”

Anne was quiet for a second and Leda worried that maybe she’d gotten too worked up.

“No, I hear you. I guess what I meant is, I wouldn’t have it in me to say anything to a guy about what I want like that.”

The next three weeks Leda spent hours online looking up information about rings. It was such an easy way to pass the time that she didn’t even feel bored being stuck in the house. She and John visited nearly a dozen different jewelry shops looking for a place with the best stones for the best prices. Eventually they decided on a local shop that specialized in wholesale, custom rings. Leda found a band she loved that was simple and classic. The center stone was just over a carat. It was round and sparkling and had the most ideal cut, according to everything she’d read online. John loved it too.

“It looks so perfect on your hand,” he said. “So delicate.”

The salesperson wrote down all the information about the ring so that John would be able to come buy it on his own.

On the drive home Leda felt exhilarated. Everything in her life was coming together. She and John would be getting married soon. She’d have a beautiful ring. It felt like adult life, in the way she had envisioned it when she was very young.

“Do you think you’ll go back and buy it tomorrow?” she asked him.

“I don’t know,” John said.

“But the lady said they can’t hold on to the stone so you shouldn’t wait too long.”

“I just don’t know.”

“About the ring?”

“About getting engaged right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just feel confused. This whole thing has made me really anxious.”

“Anxious about getting married to me?” Leda couldn’t focus on what he was saying. It felt like his words were floating out of him and into the air. Like they were just hanging there in the car, not really leaving and not really staying, just floating in the air beside her. Why aren’t you more upset right now? Why aren’t you sobbing? Don’t you hear what he’s saying? she kept asking herself.

“I’m not sure what I feel, but I know that when I start thinking about getting married I just feel panicked, like I can’t breathe.”

“But you’re the one who wanted to do this.”

“I do want to do this. I’m just saying I feel anxious about it, and whenever I think about it, I just feel like we shouldn’t do it right now.”

“When do you want to do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it’s been four years. I moved out to California for you.”

“I know you did.”

She felt herself start to warm into a kind of anger that she hadn’t known she was capable of. “So while we were ring shopping you were just planning to tell me this in the car the whole time?”

“No, I didn’t plan this at all.”

“So this was just some revelation you had all of a sudden?”

“No, I’ve thought about it before.”

“And you decided to tell me about it in the car on the way from ring shopping?” The thought that they’d just minutes before been discussing diamond clarity seemed violently cruel.

“I didn’t decide anything. I really hadn’t planned on saying anything right now. Honestly, this wasn’t premeditated at all or anything like that.”

“You think that makes it better? That instead of planning out exactly what to say and knowing how you felt and sitting me down in a really thoughtful, caring, thought-out way, that just randomly saying it in the car like it’s no big deal. Like in the same way you’d say ‘Let’s get coffee’ or ‘I need to stop at CVS for…’ ” She tried to think of something you’d stop at CVS for, but for the life of her she couldn’t think of anything. “For some napkins.” Damn it, she thought at her weak example. “You think it’s better that you weren’t planning on ripping my heart out, but really it only just makes you an asshole.”

John was quiet. “I’m so sorry, Leda. I don’t mean to hurt you in any way. I really don’t.”

“Well, how did you think I was going to react?”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“No, obviously you didn’t, because if you had you wouldn’t have had me going around to ring shops for three weeks like a complete delusional idiot.” She looked at him. His sweet, boyish face and bright blue eyes. His lips were the same as they always were. She felt so distant from him then. “It must be convenient to never have to think of anything, and to just do whatever whim strikes you whenever, and to not have to constantly worry about everything. It must be great to be a man,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

They were silent the rest of the ride home. When they pulled up to the apartment, she jumped out of the car before he even shut off the engine. She ran inside. It felt good to run up the stairs. Her knees pulling: straight then bent, straight then bent. Her feet hitting hard against each step. She raced to get her key out before she could even hear John coming up behind her. Usually they went inside together and John would always be the one to unlock the door. There wasn’t any real reason that it happened this way; it was just a routine they had settled into as unconsciously as they’d ended up in California for nearly three years.

Once inside, she went straight to the bedroom and locked herself in. Living together didn’t give her the kind of upper hand that dating did. When they were dating it was easy to use the distance to her advantage during a fight. It allowed for him to miss her in a way that living with him never could. Her mom once told her that she didn’t think living with a man before marriage was a good idea.

“Men take you for granted easily. If you’re just there supporting him and taking care of him, what is his motivation to marry you?” she’d said once.

At the time Leda thought the sentiment archaic. Sure, it may have had its place in a world where women were expected to stay at home and cook meatloaf all day, but not in a modern era where marriage could be just as much of a burden for a woman as it was for a man. Now sitting in the locked bedroom and listening to John open their apartment door, her heart racing in anger and a sad sort of anticipation, she wondered if maybe her mother had been right.

He walked down the hall to the bedroom, each step louder, creating a false sense of urgency. He knocked on the door. “Leda, please,” he said.

She didn’t answer.

He tried to open the door. “Leda, please open the door.”

“I just need some time,” she said. She thought it was the perfect thing to say and was hoping his reaction to her “needing some time” would be to freak out and continue to beg to see her. She wanted him to not be able to bear the thought that she needed some time.

“Okay, I understand that,” he said. Infuriatingly, he had not known what the correct reaction to her needing time was. She waited a few more seconds, hoping that maybe once the time started he wouldn’t be able to take it, but she could hear him walking away down the hall. Idiot, she thought.

Alone in the room, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She went to text Anne but hesitated. She knew that Anne would be happy to hear about her troubles, that she’d take a sort of sick satisfaction in the way that only another girl could. The thought of it angered her, but beyond that she felt that telling Anne would admit to some kind of failure. She decided not to tell her until she was sure that it was definitely not happening, and even then she’d come up with some excuse about it being the money for the ring or something. As a girl, she couldn’t admit to her best friend that she had failed at the fairy tale, especially not when her friend was so jealous. It was complicated, but it was just the way it was.

She opened her computer and went on Facebook, but she couldn’t pay attention to anything she was looking at. “Beach Day #besties,” a girl she vaguely knew from college, had posted a picture of herself and her friend standing arm-in-arm in bikinis. Eat a sandwich, you cunts, Leda thought. She shut the computer and lay back on the bed. I should be crying. Why am I not crying? Cry. Cry! She relived the conversation from the car over in her head. It was awful, but she still didn’t feel like it was really happening. John had never been the kind of guy to be commitment-phobic. It was something that she loved about him. Maybe he just needs to talk. She got up from the bed and went downstairs.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he saw her. “I don’t know what I’m saying right now.”

“Look, I shouldn’t just get so upset.” She sat down beside him on the couch. “We should just talk about this. What is it you’re worrying about?”

“I don’t know what I’m worrying about.” He sighed a heavy sigh and ran his hand through his hair, a gesture he only ever made when they were fighting. “Sometimes I think about getting married and it seems like the best thing ever, and then other times I think about it and I just start panicking.”

“What do you think about when you start panicking?”

“I don’t know. It’s nothing really. It’s more a feeling than a thought.”

“But this is the thing, John. You’ve never been the type of guy to be like this. I’m in total shock over the whole thing.”

“I know. I feel the same way. I don’t know what’s going on with me.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, that’s not helpful. I mean, you need to try a little harder than that.”

“I guess what I keep thinking about is just that I had wanted to do all this stuff before I was supposed to get married that I didn’t get to do yet.”

“Like what?” Leda tried to imagine what he possibly could be talking about. Her mind immediately went to wanting to sleep with more women, even though she knew that wasn’t the case. “Do you mean date other people?” she had to ask him anyway.

“No, of course not, jeez. I just mean, like…”

“What?!” She hadn’t meant to yell, but she felt the anger building up again.

“Well, sometimes I just think I would have liked to travel more.”

“That’s it? We can travel. I’d love to travel.”

“I don’t mean travel exactly. I mean I’d always thought I’d live in different places. I always wanted to live in Colorado for a while.”

“Colorado?”

“Yeah.”

“But we moved to California.”

“I know, but it’s just something I’ve wanted to do.”

“Colorado?” Leda tried to place the concept of Colorado in her mind. It was in the middle of the country, away from the ocean. There were cowboys and Republicans. What John wanted with it all of a sudden she couldn’t understand. His secret ambition felt like a betrayal. It was as if he’d revealed that all along he’d been an anteater. Colorado? she thought. Who are you?

“It’s not about Colorado,” he said.

“Then why are you saying it?”

“Because you asked me to.”

“Okay, but why Colorado? I mean, all along you’ve just been wanting to move to Colorado, and you haven’t said anything for all this time? Why didn’t we just go to Colorado instead of California if that’s the case?”

“It’s really not about Colorado. I’m sorry I said it. I was just using it as an example. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I just feel like I’m not ready.”

“But we’ve always talked about marriage. Do you think that I would have moved across the country with you if we weren’t going to get married?”

“Of course not. I do want to marry you someday.”

“So I’m expected just to wait until you’re ready? Whenever that might be? We’ve been together for four years. We’ve been living together and building a life together. How would marriage be any different from what we’re doing right now?”

“I don’t know, but it just is.” His face looked sad.

“But I love you,” she said.

“I love you too.”

She started to cry. I can’t, I can’t. She tried to catch her breath, but she kept crying harder and harder. All the realness was at once. He hugged her and she wanted to push him off, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said through the tears. “Do you want to break up?”

“Of course not!”

“But you don’t want to marry me.” And she cried even harder at hearing herself say the words out loud.

“I’m so sorry.” He hugged her more. She kept thinking of what it all meant. Things are no longer like they were. He can’t really be my best friend anymore.

“I need a tissue,” she said. She got up from the couch and went to the bathroom. It was nice to get away from John for a few seconds, to be driven by something other than what he was saying, even if it was just her runny nose. They didn’t have any tissues so she used toilet paper. It was the cheapest brand, so it was rough on her skin. I’ll never buy this cheap crap again, she swore to herself, as if the ambition not to buy the cheap crap extended to anything and everything in her life.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were swollen from crying so hard, and her makeup had smeared. It surprised her to see her own face that way; it had been a long time since she’d looked in the mirror after crying. The last time was at the age of fourteen after a girl at school called her bloated. She didn’t look that different than she had then. It was as if she’d been kidding herself all along, thinking that she’d been aging.

She grabbed a wad of toilet paper and went back to face John. When she saw him, she had a fleeting impulse just to look at him and laugh at it all as if it were some kind of big joke. Sometimes when they’d get in a fight the two of them would just start laughing, as if they’d realized how silly and petty they were being at the exact same moment. This felt different. This was like dying. Her mind was racing. I need to fix it—I need to stop it, she thought.

Until this moment she had believed that if any man would ever do what John was doing to her now, she would just walk away. Just like that. Not even a second thought. She remembered her friend Sonja telling her how her boyfriend, Carl, of seven years, still wouldn’t even talk about them getting married.

“Why don’t you just leave him?” Leda said to her once on the phone.

“I don’t know. I really love him, and I really love the apartment,” Sonja said.

She later told John about the conversation. “Can you imagine staying with someone for an apartment? It’s absurd.”

But now, standing here staring at John, still himself, the one she knew, the one she loved, she understood what Sonja meant. You couldn’t undo your life with someone just like that. Loving an apartment was a real thing. She couldn’t just let things change. She needed to put it back together again.

“Look, John, let’s just let things rest for right now with the whole thing and talk about it again in a week.”

“Okay, let’s do that. I’m so sorry.”

He got up and put his arms around her and buried his face in her neck. If only Sonja could see me now, she thought.

The next few days teetered between torture and normalcy. She had said they wouldn’t talk about getting engaged until the week was over, but of course that didn’t happen.

“Don’t you know how horrible it feels to tell someone you want to get married only to have them tell you that they don’t feel the same way? You have all the power in the relationship now. Do you realize that?” she said on Monday.

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is true. I’m completely powerless in this situation. You know I love you and want to marry you, and I don’t have the luxury of knowing you feel the same way.”

“I’m sorry, that’s not my intention.”

John often apologized and said it wasn’t his intention. Every time he did it infuriated her.

“Apologies don’t make it better, John,” she said on Wednesday. “I wish you’d stop saying sorry and just stop making me feel bad.”

Throughout it all, the day-to-day rigors persisted. No matter how bad the fights got, no matter how angry or hurt she felt, at some point they just resumed things as usual. It was too exhausting to keep up such a high level of anger or sadness; she had to just let go of it and move on with the day. They would fight for two hours straight, not resolve anything, and then just clean the bedroom or make dinner. Sometimes she would try to act mad for as long as possible, but realistically it wasn’t practical. There were too many hours to fill not to find temporary relief.

By the end of the week nothing had changed. John vacillated between fear and apology. Leda became more and more desperate at the prospect of their possible demise. Saturday night they decided to go out to dinner.

“I’m really sorry about this last week,” John said as they ate soup.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She really wanted to tell him about the screaming in her head at his millionth “I’m sorry,” but she refrained.

“Don’t be like that.”

“I can’t help it. It kills me.”

“It kills me too.”

“Really? How is that possible?”

“Do you think I thought I wouldn’t be able to get married after all this time?”

“I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know who you are. I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.”

“I guess all I can say is that if you knew how it feels in my head you’d understand why I can’t get married.”

“Can’t get married? You said you just needed some time.”

“You know, honestly, I can’t even say that right now. I’m just freak-
ing out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I feel like my life is ending.”

“Your life is ending because we’d be getting married?”

“I know that’s not the case, but it still feels that way.”

Leda felt like someone kept slapping her in the face over and over again. Her rage and shock and misery and disbelief and confusion and sadness and hurt and everything were hitting her over and over with each word. They were in a restaurant, though, and so she just sat there with soup in front of her, carrot ginger. A taste she would forever associate with nausea.

“What I don’t think you realize, John, is that I gave up my life for you. My life is what ended. I gave up grad school, I gave up my family, I gave up my home. I did that for you. I did that to spend forever with you.”

“I know you did, and I feel terrible about it, but that still doesn’t change anything.”

The moment he said it she knew he was right. No matter what he promised her or what she sacrificed, in the end it didn’t matter. Whatever she labeled it in her mind, whatever she told herself the last four years of her life were, the reality was that her success was completely dependent on him. My life is not really mine, she thought.

“We should go. I can’t just sit here and have dinner and pretend everything is fine. Where’s our waiter?” she said.

They got their food boxed up and John went to go get the car. Her ankle pain had been getting worse, and it was a long walk back to where they’d parked.

She sat alone at the table waiting for him. She thought about her mom and the last time she’d seen her at Christmas. It felt very far away.

“Hey, there.” An older man walked up to the table. He was in a checkered sports jacket with a brightly colored pocket square. His hair was thinning and his eyelids hung with old age. She’d seen him come in a few minutes before with a whole group of old men.

“I just want to tell you that you are beau-ti-ful,” he said.

“Oh, thank you,” she said.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Yeah, he’s getting the car.”

“Of course you do. He is one lucky guy. I would do anything to have a beau-ti-ful girlfriend like yourself. My name is Marv, by the way.” He put out his hand for her to shake.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Leda.” Normally, she hated these kinds of come-ons from dirty old men, but tonight it felt like the greatest victory. It was as if he’d been sent to her as an angel from dirty old man heaven, a representative of the abhorrent male ego.

“What a beau-ti-ful name for a beau-ti-ful girl. Well, you take care there, Leda. And make sure that boyfriend of yours treats you right, okay?”

“I will,” she said.

Marv smiled and walked over to the group of men sitting at a big round table at the back of the restaurant.

“I met a beau-ti-ful girl,” she could hear him say to them.

She told John about it in the car.

“I’m an asshole,” he said.

The next morning as John went out to get them coffee she called her mom. It was something she had been unable to do for fear that her mother would be disappointed in her. Moving across the country for a man’s career and being left out in the cold wasn’t exactly any parent’s dream for their daughter, especially not her mom’s. Her other fear was that her mom would come to dislike John. It was strange, but she felt oddly protective of him and of their love together. She didn’t want her mom to start cursing him out, saying all sorts of unbearable things about him. It was a ridiculous fear, though. Years later she’d look back on it and say, “The one thing I regret about that horrible time is that I didn’t tell my mom sooner.”

“I’m so sorry, honey. What an awful thing to be dealing with,” her mom said. She was calm and her voice was soothing to hear, even in a time when any kind of real comfort seemed implausible. “It’s something all men go through. I really believe that.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, your dad freaked out right before we got married. He told me he wanted to spend a year in India. Can you imagine Dad living in India?”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I was really upset for a while, but then I told him to just go, and of course he didn’t, and the next spring we got married. Men are afraid of things women aren’t. That’s why they’re so oppressive. They’re afraid of our fearlessness.”

“I don’t feel fearless. I feel terrified of losing him.”

“Don’t be terrified. I think he’ll come around, but even if somehow he didn’t, you’ll be fine. You can’t forget that.”

The talk with her mom made her feel better. When John got home they sat outside on the patio and had coffee.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“Not really, but…I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry about what I said last night about not wanting to get married. That’s not how I feel. I was up all night thinking, and I realized that I’m just being crazy. Yes, I’m anxious about the whole thing, but it’s insane for me to be acting on anxiety. And I do want to marry you. Maybe I feel nervous about doing it right now, but that’s just something I need to get over. I owe that to you. You moved out here and everything. You deserve stability.”

“John, even though that’s all true, you still have to want this. I don’t want to be pressuring you into getting engaged. It has to be something you want or it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“It is what I want. I’m going to buy the ring tomorrow.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I’ve decided.” He reached over and grabbed her hand.

Leda felt a huge rush of relief. It was as if the air had been let back into her lungs. I’ll have to call my mom back, she thought.

The next day she spent cleaning the apartment. She wanted things to be perfect for when John got home. He told her he’d surprise her with the actual engagement, so she figured he wouldn’t ask her that night, but it still felt as if they had a lot to celebrate. She wanted to walk down to the market and get something special to make for dinner, but her ankles were too painful so she made spaghetti instead. Most of the day she felt happy, but occasionally she’d remember the things he had said over the past week, and there just was no way to feel good about it. Anne texted her, “How are you?” at around noon. Anne still didn’t know anything, but that didn’t make it any easier to know what to say. Was she happy? Was she miserable? Was there anything besides herself and the spaghetti just boiling the ever-frenzied day away, her frantic thoughts rising with the steam? “I’m pretty good,” she wrote.

At around 5:45 she texted John. “Almost home?” He didn’t answer, but she didn’t think much of it. He must be at the jewelry store by now. She put on a nice dress and did her makeup. The apartment looked as clean as it ever had. She felt like a woman who had won a contest. I’m like that sad makeup girl, she thought. A few weeks back she’d gone on YouTube and stumbled upon a thread of makeup tutorial videos. She hadn’t realized it, but apparently making a makeup tutorial video and posting it on YouTube had become a thing. Many of the videos were by preteen girls who had entirely too much money and not enough adult supervision. How ironic that they choose to give tutorials in what they probably know the least about, Leda thought. After clicking through a few videos, she came across a nineteen-year-old Canadian girl who had amassed a considerable following. She was a very skinny, pretty girl with overdone eyebrows. Most of the comments said things like, “You are so so gorgeous!” or “You should be a model” or “I was feeling pretty today until I saw your video. Stunning!” Almost every single one of her videos had over a million views. She even had a video devoted completely to her hair that she began by saying, “Hi, guys, I decided to do this video because I get thousands of questions about my hair nearly every week.” What must it be like to devote sixteen minutes to explaining your hair? Leda thought. At the bottom of the page was a video titled “Victoria’s Secret Runway Challenge.” It opened with blurred lights and booming electronic dance music. The girl walked through an empty subway stop in red lingerie, her skinny frame emphasizing her youth and need for nourishment. Everyone was oohing and aahing over it, and after reading down a bit Leda figured out that this had been the girl’s audition for some kind of Victoria’s Secret competition open to the public.

“Did she win? She should have!” someone commented.

“No, she couldn’t enter ’cause she’s Canadian. Too bad you have to be American to enter!” someone else responded.

The girl had made an entry video to a contest she couldn’t even enter. Somewhere along the line of millions of views and a video about her hair, she’d lost perspective. Leda had tried to explain the poignancy of it to John. She showed him a few of the girl’s videos, including the audition.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s weird,” he said. “But I don’t really get what you mean.”

“I guess I can’t explain it,” she said. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

He looked back at the video for a second.

“Not really,” he said before turning away.

Seven o’clock rolled around and she still didn’t hear anything from him. The jewelry store was closed by now. She tried calling, but he didn’t pick up. She texted him again. “Where are you? I made dinner. It’s getting cold.” She figured he must be in traffic or that maybe things had taken longer than he expected at the store. I’ll give it another half hour, she thought. She watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Seven thirty came and went. By eight o’clock she was worried. She called her mom.

“John hasn’t come home yet and isn’t answering the phone.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” her mom said.

“I don’t know. This isn’t like him. Maybe I should call the police.”

“I think it’s probably a little early for that. Why don’t you wait a bit longer before really worrying.”

She changed out of her dress and put on PJs. The spaghetti was completely cold, but she didn’t bother to heat it up. She took frantic bites in between checking her phone to see if John had texted. Once it was near ten she called her mom again.

“Mom, I’m freaking out. What if something happened to him? What if he got in a car accident?”

“I honestly don’t think that’s the case. Maybe you should text him that you’re going to call the police if he doesn’t answer.”

An hour after she texted him that she’d call the police, John finally texted. She was still on the phone with her mom when she heard the text.

“I’m fine. Don’t call the police. I’m sorry,” it said.

Leda read it to her mom. Her mom sighed. “I think you should go to bed. I don’t know what bullshit game he’s playing with you right now, but you don’t need to be freaking out all night about this. He’s being an asshole.”

“I just can’t believe he’d do this to me.” She was texting him back as she was still on the phone to her mom.

“What are you doing?” she texted.

“Do you know how horrified I am?” she texted.

“How do I deserve to be going through this right now?” she texted.

“Leda, just go to bed. Do not stay up and wait for him.”

“I might have moved out here for nothing. I might have given up grad school for absolutely nothing. I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot. Loving someone and wanting to build a life with them is what everyone wants. You’re just trying to be happy.”

“I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“That’s why you need to go to bed.”

She tried to follow her mom’s advice. She brushed her teeth and washed her face. She shut off all the lights in the apartment so that he would see from the outside she’d gone to bed. Her hands were shaking so hard that when she tried to plug her phone in to charge it for the night she could hardly manage it. She lay in bed and closed her eyes. What she wanted more than anything was to just instantly fall asleep, to tell her mind to do something, to do what was best for her, and for her mind to just listen. She could hear their neighbor walking around. He was an extremely nerdy guy in his mid-forties who lived alone and masturbated loudly. Generally, John and she were repulsed by him and would complain to each other about how loud he was late at night, but tonight it was oddly comforting to hear him clanging around in his usual oblivious fashion. It was nice to know someone was there even if it really meant nothing at all.

At 2:36 a.m. she could hear John at the door. She told herself she would wait in bed. That no matter what he did or said she wouldn’t respond to him, other than “I think you should sleep on the couch tonight,” but as soon as she heard him coming up the steps, she shot up and ran over, her heart leaping at the thought of him actually being in front of her. Will everything be different now that he’s done this to me?

When the door opened it was immediately apparent where John had been all night. He was drunk. He wavered back and forth in place. His eyes were completely bloodshot.

“What the hell, John?” she asked him.

“You don’t know anything.” His speech was slurred in an almost cliché drunken way. She’d never seen him this drunk before. He hardly ever drank and all of a sudden here was this caricature of drunkenness in front of her. It was disorienting.

“Where the fuck have you been all night?” she said. At this point she knew that there would be no getting through to him, but she still felt she should say something.

“I want to die.”

“You want to die because you don’t want to marry me?”

“I want to die.” He walked past her into the living room and lay down on the floor. She wasn’t sure what to do about it. She grabbed a burrito from the freezer and heated it in the microwave.

“Here,” she said, and tried to hand it to him. “Eat this.”

“No, I want to die. Fuck you.”

She pushed it closer to him. “Eat this and sober up.”

He took the burrito and took a big bite and spat the bite into the air. “No, fuck you.”

“Whatever, I’m going to bed. You’re a fucking asshole.” She threw the burrito into the trash and went upstairs to the bedroom. Now she was angry, and it wasn’t so hard to fall asleep.

The next morning she woke up and tiptoed downstairs. John was asleep on the floor in the same place she’d left him the night before. The bite of burrito was next to his head; other than that the place was spotless, a sad reminder of her misguided hope from the day before. She looked at the clock over the doorway. It was nearly nine. For a second she worried John would be late for work, but then it dawned on her what day it was. The office would be closed for the next two days for fumigation. In happier times she and John had discussed spending the two days off at Lake Tahoe as a sort of mini vacation. How utterly far away that conversation seemed, so remote from reality. To think that I actually thought that there was room for Jet Skiing in my life. She went back upstairs and got dressed as quickly as possible. She put on her clunky arch support sneakers and headed for the door.

“Leda?” she heard John call.

She didn’t answer and unlocked the door.

“Where are you going?” she could hear him say as it shut hard behind her. It was satisfactory to hear the alarm in his voice. Nowhere, you asshole, she thought.

She walked down around the corner to the bakery and ordered herself a hot chocolate and a muffin. The place was mostly empty. She sat by the window and checked her phone. John had texted seven texts and called four times. It was such a wonderful feeling to see her phone ablaze with his desperation. Most of the texts said things like “I’m sorry” and “I’m such a fuckup” and “Please, you have to forgive me.” He also left a heartbreaking voice mail that even in her anger was difficult to listen to. It went:

“Please, Leda [sobs]. I love you so much [more sobs]. You are everything to me. Without you I’m nothing. I don’t want to miss you for the rest of my life [more sobs].”

It was tempting to respond to John, but she promised herself she wouldn’t. She needed a break from everything. She needed for him to know that what he was doing was wrong. She drank half her hot chocolate, finished the muffin, and headed back out on her walk. She didn’t know where she was going exactly, but Noe Valley lent itself to not having anywhere to go, with all its gift stores and little boutiques. Maybe I ended up living here just so that when this horrible, horrible time came I’d have something to do. Maybe it was all leading up to this single moment, she thought. She went into one of the trendy little shops and looked through the knickknacks. A woman with a baby was asking about watches.

“But with the batteries, do I have to change them often? I just want something easy. Something that I don’t have to worry about,” she said.

Leda left and went to a clothing store.

“Can I help you?” the salesgirl asked. She was slender but pear shaped. Her hair was pinned up and she was wearing a dowdy-looking hipster dress, as was the style of the store.

“Um, no, I think I’m just looking for now, thanks,” Leda said.

“Okay, well, if I can help, you let me know.”

I wish to god you could help me, she thought.

She tried on a blouse and a very skimpy tank top. Neither was flattering. I’m like a sad cow, she thought, and left the store.

John called her eighteen more times. She tried to refrain from checking her phone as much as possible, but she would have never thought to silence it. She did want to be alone, but there was a difference between being alone and feeling alone and right now the thin separation of the two was the shoestring of her life.

She stopped in the little Eastern shop that sold mainly jewelry and decorative art. She’d bought a necklace for her mom there at Christmastime, and the woman who owned the shop recognized her.

“Oh, hello,” she said with a thick accent. “I remember you.” She was an older woman who had the propensity for wearing scarves as elegantly as Leda had ever seen anyone wear a scarf.

“Hi!” It was so nice to see someone she knew besides John, even just superficially.

“What can I do for you today? I always remember you. You have such good taste.”

Leda hadn’t planned on buying anything, but the kind lady and the warm smell of incense, combined with her extreme misery, were not conducive to passing on jewelry. She found an amber bracelet in a case by the window.

“Could I take a look at this one?” she asked the lady.

“Yes, of course.” The lady walked over and unlocked the case.

“This is a very beautiful piece. It’s dark amber. Everyone likes the light, but I like the dark.” She put it on Leda’s wrist and clasped it. “It’s perfect for you with your delicate wrist.”

Leda looked at the bracelet. How easy it was to assign importance to it. To say to herself, You’ll buy this bracelet and you’ll be someone who is independent and strong and who wears scarves. You’ll be someone who can leave him.

“I love it. How much is it?”

“It’s one twenty-five.”

“I’ll take it.”

It was nearing noon and she was getting hungry. The thought of sitting alone and eating lunch was depressing, even with her new bracelet. She went into the little used/new bookstore to buy a book to help pass the time during lunch. She was hoping to buy Stag’s Leap; reading a bunch of sad poems about a divorce seemed like exactly what she needed.

“Do you have Sharon Olds’s new book?” she asked the hipster at the register. She’d seen him there before and never cared for him. He was always making pretentious remarks and touching his beard an unreasonable amount.

“Umm, you know, actually we don’t.” He was visibly embarrassed that they didn’t. “I’ll make a note of it, though, ’cause we should.”

“Okay, well, thanks anyway.”

“Yeah, sorry,” he said, touching his beard. He looked as if he wanted to say something else but didn’t.

In the end she decided to buy Goodbye, Columbus. One of her professors had once told her that her writing reminded him of Philip Roth’s. She’d been meaning to read his work for a while, and now seemed like the most opportune time to indulge in the idea that her writing was like his.

She paid for the book and headed across the street to La Boulange. She didn’t much care for the food there, but everywhere else was a place she and John went together, and she didn’t want to deal with it.

There was an empty seat by the window. She sat down with her grilled cheese and Philip Roth. It felt for a second like she had things together in a weird way. Her whole little world barricaded down at the counter. The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses, she read. This doesn’t sound like my writing at all, she thought.

The girl to her right was eating a smelly soup and the old man to her left was reading a newspaper. Her sandwich was too rich. It had Brie on it, which up until this moment she hadn’t realized was a completely unacceptable cheese for a grilled cheese sandwich. She glanced out the window and without meaning to look at anything at all, she saw him. There was no way to miss him; it was like a screaming red bolt in the hazy gray mix of strangers. He was crossing the street. His hair was a mess and he looked like he’d been crying. She watched him enter the little shop she’d only just left. Seconds later he was back out again. Then into the shop next door. He was looking for her.

Her first inclination was to get up and call out to him like she would on any day.

I’m over here. Let’s have a smelly soup together, she’d say.

But it wasn’t any day. He walked up the street in and out of a few more shops before disappearing. She leaned forward in her seat to see if she could still see him, but he was gone.

She spent another twenty minutes or so picking at her sandwich and trying to read before getting up and heading back out. Her intention had been to spend the whole day away from him, but it was only early afternoon and there was already so little left to do.

In the end, though, it wasn’t boredom that sent her home. It was her ankles. They started aching from all the walking she’d been doing. She sat down on a bench for a little while, but it was no use. She was too close to home to call a cab or take a bus. She’d have to ask John to pick her up.

When he came and got her, she knew he wouldn’t be saying anything about not wanting to get married. She knew he’d apologize for last night and probably cry. And he did all those things. He hugged her tight and cried and cried and made all kinds of promises to her about never hurting her again. He said, “I love you so much” and “I can’t lose you, ever.” The rest of the night she iced her ankles and watched Big. Of course she’d seen it many times, but it was great to watch it with John that night. To shut off their minds and laugh at something as familiar and remote as Tom Hanks in 1988 eating baby corn like it was corn on the cob.

The next two weeks John was the sweetest he’d ever been. He told her how much he loved her all the time and brought her cute little thoughtful gifts each day. It was nice at first. They had been fighting for so long that it was great to have a respite from all the worry and sadness, but at a certain point she realized something that she’d never thought was possible: she had started to hate him. He’d come home from work and be funny and sweet and himself the way she always knew him, and she realized she just didn’t care about it anymore. I hate you, she’d think as he’d spread peanut butter on a slice of bread. The things he’d said about not wanting to get married had damaged them. His getting drunk and coming home and falling over and spitting burrito into the air had damaged them. Here she’d been trying so desperately to hold on to what they had, and to make things work, and to keep everything together, but without realizing it, she’d already started to move on. There would be no way to stay even if she wanted to. And that’s when she knew what had to be done.

As far as she was concerned, it was inevitable that John would go back to saying he didn’t want to get married. She knew that nothing had really changed. She knew that all she had to do was wait and before long he’d say something about Colorado or not getting to do the things he wanted or some other miserable bullshit thing that would rip into her and make her feel like death. It was only a matter of time.

And of course she was right. Monday morning she woke up to a text that said, “I’m still really not ready to get married even though I do really love you.” It was simple and to the point. Another girl might have thought it was thoughtful and fair. Another girl might have said to herself that she should give it more time and not push him, but Leda knew she wasn’t that girl. She got up from bed and took a quick shower. She threw on a tank top and a fresh pair of underwear and with easy, fast motions she started packing up a suitcase. At first she was shaking a bit, but after a while it felt cathartic. She moved faster and faster. Folding shirts. Rolling up pants. She knew she couldn’t easily take everything back to Boston with her, but she figured filling two big suitcases would be enough for now. She looked at her bookshelf and pulled off a Miranda July book she’d just started and an Amy Tan book she’d been meaning to read. She didn’t take the Noam Chomsky. After a while her ankles started hurting so she put on her big, clunky support sneakers, and there she was in underwear and support sneakers filling her fragile little life into bags. How easily it all just fits in, she thought. After packing up she had a late lunch and watched TV. She didn’t bother to get dressed. John got home fairly early, but even so she was ready for him. When she heard the sound of the car pulling up, she went to the bedroom and sat on the bed beside her suitcases. John walked in and called out for her. She hadn’t texted him back all day so she knew he’d be worried.

“I’m in here,” she said.

He came into the bedroom and looked at the suitcases. “Leda, what’s going on?” he said. “I’m so sor—”

“Look, John, let me explain something to you. I can’t be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to marry me. Every time you say the stuff you do, it makes me hate you. I want to stay with you. I love you, and I wish I could stay, but I just can’t stay with someone who says stuff like that to me. If you say one more thing about not wanting to marry me, or not being ready, whatever it is that doesn’t equal you and me getting engaged, I will get on the next plane home and you will never hear from me again. I can’t do this. Even if I want to, I can’t, and I won’t.”

“I understand,” he said, and nodded solemnly.

“I hope you do because I mean it. I mean it more than anything I’ve ever meant in my entire life.”

A month later they were engaged. She was happy about it, but it took a long time for him to earn back her trust. He apologized constantly and told her all the time how happy he was with the engagement and what an idiot he’d been, freaking out like that. She never really looked back on that time in their relationship with anything but anger, but as far as the ring was concerned she loved it. It was something she’d picked out. In her mind it represented everything she would and wouldn’t do for their love. It was hers in a way that was strong and striking and so completely her own.

“You picked it out?” Anne said. “Wouldn’t you rather it have been a surprise?”

“Not all surprises are good,” she said. “And besides, I know what I want.”

Six months later they were moving back to Boston. Her ankles finally healed once they were home. It was the hills after all.