Matthew proposed two weeks after the Hamptons. He kneeled on the wood floor of the restaurant where we’d had our first dinner. The restaurant remembered our preferences and sent out dishes accordingly. There was the assumption that we were the same people, with the same likes and dislikes. Yet when I tried to recall the person I’d been, who’d sat across from him then, I couldn’t remember her. I couldn’t put myself back into her place.
My face grew hot. I wished he would stand up. I hoped no one was paying attention to us, but I knew that everyone was. The space was sparse and everyone—guests, servers, the sommelier—watched with curiosity.
“What are you doing?” I murmured, even as I knew.
He pulled a small box out of his pocket and opened it. Inside was the biggest diamond I’d ever seen close up—not that I had seen many. My mother didn’t wear any jewelry, let alone an engagement ring. The stone shone in the box he held, and I didn’t dare let my gaze linger, as though it might blind me if I looked too long.
My limbs and skin went numb. My vision blurred, like I was looking at the world through water. It was one of my errors, I knew right away. Time had stopped, and I was outside of it. If I could turn every worry over, I might come to the correct decision.
Among the concerns I had, I worried most of all that nothing was as simple as he said. What was uncomplicated for him would not be the same for me. Even this gesture: It was easy for him to act out this grand, timeworn ritual. Could I say yes? When it seemed so impossible. Yet we could be married, the two of us. It could be that easy.
The plain facts were that we loved each other. We understood each other. Was that enough? That I felt, in the crook of his arm, a rightness—a belonging? Wasn’t that everything?
“Okay,” I finally said. Finally—in reality it was seconds. The world returned to its regular speed. It wasn’t even long enough for him to begin to feel nervous about what I might say. He knew I would say yes: How could I have said no?
On my finger, the diamond sparkled in its otherworldly way. We were both carbon, my mother might have said. Yet this shining stone was, somehow, over a billion years old. Being worn by me—even if I wore it my whole life—would only be, for this diamond, an instant in time.
Our server rushed out glasses of champagne. The bubbles leapt, eager, into my face.
I called my parents the next day, while picking dried flowers off Matthew’s orchid. He was making pancakes, and the kitchen smelled of browning butter. With my engagement-ring hand, I clutched the dead heads of flowers. With the other I pressed the phone against my ear.
Matthew’s family had been quick and effusive with congratulations, as one family member after the other phoned to express their delight.
“You have no idea how relieved I am,” Jenna said over the phone. “That it’s you, I mean. Welcome to the family.”
“He left a burner on, heating up an empty frying pan for who knows how many hours,” my mother said.
“What’s he doing now?”
“He fell asleep in front of the TV.”
Matthew slid the coffee mug before me. He recognized the shift in my face and knew who it was I must be talking to. My mother’s voice seemed to come through the phone more hotly than other people’s did. During conversations my ear grew pained and sweaty.
“What do the rich people want this week?” she asked.
I’d begun working for Jenna’s friend Roland. After I told my mother, she’d repeated, incredulously, “A decorator’s assistant.” As though the things that I got up to were so unbelievable to her she’d never even known to imagine them.
We were decorating a midtown hotel. An accent wall would be covered entirely in plants. I stared at my ring as I spoke.
“Sounds like a waste of water,” she said.
“But think of the clean air.”
“That does sound nice.” A pause. “Your dad’s awake.”
“Could you get him on the phone? Could you put it on speakerphone?”
There was a shuffle, and then, my father’s voice: “We’re here.”
“Matthew’s here, too,” I said. He took the dead orchids from me and held them in his fist. With his free hand, he clasped my forearm.
“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Chen,” Matthew said into the phone.
“We’re engaged,” I said.
“Congratulations,” my father said. “How exciting!”
“Yes,” my mother echoed faintly. “Congratulations.”
After we hung up, Matthew threw away the dead flowers he’d relieved me of.
“She didn’t sound happy.”
“She said congratulations,” Matthew said. “How can you tell?”
“I just know,” I said.
I picked the phone up again and held it to my ear.
“Lily?” My mother was surprised to hear from me again.
“Why are you like this?” I willed myself not to cry but couldn’t keep my voice from wavering. “I thought you would be happy for me.”
“I am,” my mother said. “I am happy.” She didn’t sound convincing. “You’re very young. I’m surprised, that’s all.”
“You were young, too.”
My parents had been married in Hong Kong. My mother said she had barely understood the ceremony, in Cantonese. She hadn’t told me much else.
“I was young, too. You’re right,” she agreed.
She said nothing for a long moment.
“I’m happy for you,” she said, finally.
I couldn’t help but think it had the ring of “I love you,” that foreign phrase she’d adopted—that would never be native, or natural, to her.