She decided to ask before it got worse. She decided to ask before she fell in love and had to worry about hurting him or hurting her. She decided it was better to know than to wonder, to hope if there wasn’t any. She decided Jill was obnoxious but possibly right.
“I’m not saying now,” Katie told me in rehearsals, pretending I was him. “I’m not saying soon. I’m not saying you even have to decide now. I’m not saying I’ll even ask you to in the future. I’m saying if. I’m saying if we fell in love and if we wanted to be together forever and if we wanted to make a life and a family together, would you be willing to convert? I’m saying if I loved you and you loved me, in a few years, would you be willing to become a Mormon?”
“Um . . . I don’t know,” I hedged, trying to channel Ethan. “It’s a little soon. I can’t know the answers to those questions right now. But I do like you a lot. I like where this is going. I know that I would like to do things to make you happy and that if you were that important to me and it were that important to you, I’d probably make it happen.”
But that’s because I was only practice Ethan. Real Ethan said no. Real Ethan said that though he more or less believed in God, he adamantly, vehemently, viscerally did not believe in religion. He said that converting so someone wouldn’t dump you was disingenuous, offensive even to true believers with purer intentions. He said if she loved him, she wouldn’t ask him to do something he didn’t believe in. Converting was only suiting up for battle but was followed, he said, by the war—going to church every week and giving up things he loved and didn’t think were wrong and building a life among people she liked so little she was willing to date a heathen like him. He said love me for who I am, or you don’t love me at all.
“These are all reasonable points,” said Jill.
“Why do you want to be so mean to me?” said Katie tearfully.
“I’m not being mean. I’m being truthful. This is how any normal person would respond. If he had said otherwise, then I would have been worried. What kind of reasonable person says, ‘Yeah, sure, we’ve been on three dates. Let’s talk conversion’? Ask Janey.”
I looked hard at the floor.
“He said he would never ask me to give up my religion, just to practice it on my own. He said I should extend him the same courtesy. I said families don’t operate on a ‘live and let live’ mentality. I said I couldn’t be married to a non-Mormon.”
“What did he say?”
“He said let’s still be friends.”
Jill laughed and Katie looked like she was considering strangulation.
“Actually I think it’s sweet he even considered what you were saying,” said Jill. “Most people would have freaked out that you even broached the subject after date three. It’s better that you know.”
Katie looked miserable.
“So he’s not the one.” I clapped, aiming for casual. I knew that being “not the one” was not a matter of failure on the part of either of them, just fate, and not a failure of fate, just a delay, and not really a delay as there is a time for every season under heaven. In any case, this situation—dates going nowhere—was not usually cause for alarm.
“I guess that’s it. Not the one.” She didn’t sound sure.
“Let’s make a list for him,” Jill offered gamely.
Usually, there was a long, entirely quantifiable list of reasons why each guy was not the one. She actually wrote them down so that she could compare notes with the other women in her ward for whom he was also not the one (the vast majority) and to advise the one for whom he potentially was. They weren’t bad qualities per se. They were just bad for her. They would be someone else’s dream. So the list did not say things like “Chris: bad conversationalist, bad taste in music, not smart, not well read, boring.” Rather they said, “Chris: talks a lot about football, obsessed with becoming a dentist, likes Led Zeppelin, favorite author—Sports Illustrated.” Doom for Katie. Perfect, as it turned out a week and a half later, for Gracie, a high school senior in Katie’s ward, cheerleader, Seahawks fan, Zeppelin diehard, and in possession of some regrettable teeth.
“Ethan: historian,” I began.
“Taunts you with dairy-based ice cream,” supplied Jill.
“Sucks at mini golf,” I said helpfully.
“Not a Mormon,” said Jill.
“Not the one,” Katie sighed. “Except Ethan doesn’t need a list. He’s not going to be my problem to pass on. I don’t know anyone who would date him. Problem is there’s another list. Ethan: smart, funny, enlightened, feminist, liberal, academic. Hard to find all that at church.”
“Ethan: you weren’t that attached yet anyway,” Jill pointed out.
“No,” said Katie, “but I really wanted to be. I’m ready.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said.
“No, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. It doesn’t happen until you’re ready, but when you get ready and you least expect it, that’s when it happens.”
“You are expecting it,” said Jill.
“Oh my gosh I’m not,” Katie said vehemently. “At this point, I’d be positively shocked.” A lie. I knew what she meant, but dead scared something won’t happen is not the same as actually believing that it isn’t about to.
“Maybe you aren’t really ready,” said Jill.
“Of course I’m ready. I want this so much. My body is ready. Marriage and family is the divine plan. It’s what everyone around me is doing. We’re almost done with classes. I want it so badly.”
“Which is not the same as being ready,” Jill pointed out quietly, so quietly that Katie looked up suddenly, realizing it wasn’t idle musing.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe you aren’t ready. You have to want it less. You have to be able to stand on your own. You have to know that you’ll be okay without a husband. You have to want something else—something just for you, just about you—more.”
“Thanks,” said Katie. “I took Intro to Women’s Studies. But that was really helpful.”
Upstairs, Atlas started crying.
“You don’t get things just because you want them. Just because you want them doesn’t mean you’re ready for them. Love and real relationships are a huge responsibility,” said Jill.
“Really?” said Katie. “Like motherhood?”
“Whatever.” Jill was tired of this conversation. She got up to leave the room, not mad, just bored of the petty direction Katie was about to take this. Or maybe going to get Atlas. I don’t know.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Katie. “We weren’t talking about you, were we? Because you get what you want, ready or not. You don’t even have to try for it. You just think about having a baby, and boom—you’ve got it. And you don’t have to be ready for the responsibility because everyone around you ruins their lives to pick up the miles and miles and miles of your slack.”
“Oh fuck you, Katie,” snapped Jill. Atlas was screaming. I was glued in place. Katie looked like she’d been slapped so seldom did anyone curse in her presence. “I didn’t mean to ruin your life. I made do with a less than perfect situation. I picked the least bad of a bunch of bad options . . .”
“Gee, I’m so sorry I couldn’t be a better father for you.”
“. . . whereas you want to sit in this living room and plan out your whole perfect life without any sense at all of what the world is like out there. It’s a pathetic fantasy. You’re not ready for real life—you wouldn’t even recognize it. You’re that idiot walking across the heath in the rain hoping you’ll faint and someone handsome will come rescue you when really you’re just going to catch cold and die.”
“Yeah, it’s too bad I don’t have your sense of the real world. I see how as a young, single mother you’re working two jobs and spending a fortune on daycare and barely making ends meet. I see how you were so ready for the responsibility of the world that your baby’s father wanted to stay with you.”
“Daniel wanted to stay with me,” Jill whispered, practically ice.
“Oh yes, I see him right here.” Katie was yelling. So was Atlas.
“Daniel left Atlas, not me,” Jill spat.
Katie shrugged. “If that’s what you have to tell yourself. I don’t see him around though. Haven’t heard from him. Doesn’t seem to be missing either one of you a whole lot.”
“You are a bitch, Katie,” Jill told her bitterly. “If it makes you feel better, you can knock me about Atlas. You can knock me about Daniel. But at least I’ve loved. And been loved. Maybe I haven’t handled this perfectly, but I’ve handled it. Maybe I haven’t done it by myself, but who ever said you were supposed handle all the shit by yourself? Isn’t that why you want a husband so badly? This is what you have friends for. I wouldn’t even hesitate—I wouldn’t even have thought twice had it been you asking me. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. But I think it’s you who’s disappointed you.” She stormed upstairs, but then we heard her cooing to Atlas, heard his sobs subside.
Katie paced around the room seething and muttering. “Where does she get off telling me about marriage and family and children? She is the last person qualified to give advice about love and relationships. I do everything for her, and she never does anything for me. Fantasy? She’s the one living a fantasy.” Et cetera. Finally, she turned to me. “What’s your problem?” she snapped. “You think you just get to sit there and not say anything? You think you’re so much better than we are?”
During all of it, I’d been pressing myself deeper and deeper into the corner of the sofa. Uncle Claude was curled into a tight ball in the corner too, head tucked under her tail. We do not do conflict, the dog and I. I don’t yell. At anyone. Ever. It has literally driven people to drink so frustrated are they that, no matter what, I will not rise to yelling. And I don’t like other people yelling either. When they do it on TV, I turn it off. When they do it in my presence, I leave the room. And when I can’t leave the room, I try to disappear into the sofa. “I don’t have anything to say,” I stammered quietly.
“Fine,” said Katie. “Me neither.” And left the room too. So it was just me, sitting in the dark. Upstairs, Jill and Katie cooled off, felt better. Downstairs, I felt hot and much, much worse.
In the morning, Katie came downstairs early with a puffy-eyed Atlas and turned on the TV, plopping down onto the sofa and waking me up.
“You didn’t sleep here?” she asked despite a good deal of evidence to the contrary.
“Apparently,” I said, groggy and untrusting, wondering about her mood this morning, resentful that I had to live with such mean, spiteful people. She was puffy eyed too, so I supposed I had to cut her some slack.
“I’ve decided it’s okay,” she announced, not sorry for waking me up, not sorry for yelling all night. “I will stay friends with Ethan. I don’t have to date him to be friends with him. He doesn’t have to convert to be friends with me. That way I get all the benefits of hanging out with a guy I like who’s smart and funny and interested in the things I’m interested in, and so if I have to date guys who lack some of those things, I still have a complete set. I just have to split it up between a few different people. Like Jill. She couldn’t find all things daddy in one person. So she had Daniel for sex and sperm and you and me for childcare and support.”
She sounded unconvinced. But not half as much as I was. “What makes you think Ethan’s going to consent to being half a boyfriend?” I said.
“He was the one who said let’s be friends.”
“That’s just something people say, Katie. They don’t mean it.”
“Who wouldn’t want to be friends with me? With all of us?”
“Lot of work,” I said.
“I already e-mailed him to invite him for dinner over here tomorrow night. Sort of a peace offering.”
“Who’s going to make dinner?” I asked as dryly as I could manage, not because I wondered—I knew—but because, you know, it’s nice to be asked.
“You’re the cook,” she said because it was true and because she didn’t get it. And, in fairness, because I discourage other people from cooking. Which, also in fairness, is because they aren’t very good at it.