Chapter 11

New York

2009

Dave first raised the topic of getting engaged in the summertime, just as I was about to move out of my crowded, girlfriend-filled apartment on the Lower East Side and into a place of my own.

We were out to brunch at our favorite spot, a hole in the wall on the Lower East Side called Mud, loved by New Yorkers for its strong coffee and heaping servings of eggs. Since I was moving in by myself, I think the conversation naturally turned toward when we could see ourselves living together, taking our relationship past the realm of simply dating and into more serious, more grown-up waters. Dave floated the topic of engagement gently across the brunch table, just barely dipping his toe in the water. I remember gulping in a big breath, the alarm probably apparent on my face, as I tried to redirect the conversation.

“You realize you are going to have to let me talk about it at some point?” he said, his eyebrows lifted. “Getting engaged…getting married.” When Dave knows what he wants, he knows. Left up to him, he would have the same meal day after day for lunch—he has never wavered in his loyalty to that turkey sandwich. I am not comparing myself to a turkey sandwich; I am simply making the point that the man knows what he wants and that is that. If I were allowed only one word to describe Dave Levy, it might very well be the word “steadfast.” He had never wavered in his steadfast love for me.

Dave had once referred to me, in a moment of enamored and doting infatuation (sigh, those are the days, aren’t they?), as his “bride,” and I had told him it freaked me out. I felt so young. I felt so immature. I felt hardly ready to be somebody’s bride, let alone wife.

A huge part of my hesitation came from the fact that I felt that we both had a lot of growing up still to do. We had only been out of college a few years. Most of our peers and friends were nowhere near thinking about marriage—most were still very much single. I worried that we were so young, so immature. So unsettled in that massive city and the indeterminate period of our mid-twenties.

To complicate matters further, both Dave and I were unhappy in our day jobs, and that could not help but bleed over into our relationship. Medical school was proving to be the greatest challenge of Dave’s academic life, and he was regularly stressed or exhausted, usually both. Gone were the days of carefree college life, when his biggest stress was an upcoming lacrosse game or a tough organic chemistry test. Now, a few years away from applying to medical residency programs, the stakes were as high as they could be—people’s lives literally hung in the balance—and Dave felt an intense pressure to do well so as to afford himself options in the next step of his training and his career.

I continued to be unhappy in my job in news. It was not the right fit for me, and the longer I stayed, the unhappier I grew. I knew I wanted to quit my job and write novels. I also still clung to a dream I’d long nurtured: at some point, I wanted to live in Paris. But could I make those things happen if I was married to Dave? As a wife, I would have to consider someone else’s interests as equally important to—perhaps sometimes even more important than—my own. Was I ready to do that? Was I ready to be done with “my” turn, to shift gears from self-interest to our interest?

Before I was ready to think about knitting my life with someone else’s, I knew that I had to get myself on firmer ground. For starters, I had to sort out my job situation. I had worked in news for only a few years, but it was long enough for me to determine that journalism was not for me. After several years of writing fiction in my free time, I was more excited about that than ever. I had two completed manuscripts, and I was speaking with several literary agents about representation. I wanted to quit news and give fiction writing a real shot.

I began seriously considering the idea of quitting my job and moving to Paris. I had been invited to France for a cousin’s summer wedding. My aunt Tessa told my mom about an upcoming move she was planning for her family from Geneva to Paris—they had an apartment in Paris that they would not be occupying until the fall. It was available, then, for the spring and summer! The stars seemed to be aligning too perfectly. What about leaving my job in the spring and relocating to Paris for a few months before the summer wedding? I had been saving for such a possible job shift, and, between Aunt Tessa’s generous hosting plus my savings and what I could earn by subletting my New York apartment, I could make it until the fall, when I would need to return to New York and find another way to support myself.

A well-meaning girlfriend reacted to this plan over dinner one night, asking: “Don’t you worry about what would happen to your relationship if you moved to Paris?”

It had not even occurred to me to worry about my relationship. Dave had lived in Guatemala the previous summer as part of a medical internship, and it had been difficult to be apart for months, to be sure (I remember how I would cross the days off the calendar each night, thinking that I was one day closer to having him back), but the distance had never posed any sort of existential threat to our relationship. And this separation would not, either. Dave was my roots. Dave grounded me even as I fantasized about flying far away. I would come back in the fall and Dave would be there; his love was what was allowing me to dream about these dramatic changes.

I realized then that it wasn’t in spite of Dave that I wanted to do these things; it was because of Dave that I could even imagine doing these things. Because of Dave, I felt confident enough to quit my stable job and move to Paris. To try to make my vague and indeterminate career dreams a reality. To risk so much and somehow believe that it would be OK. Dave was the stability that allowed me to feel safe, even as I embraced complete upheaval.

I realized then that although I still had a lot of growing up to do, in everything worthwhile I imagined doing in my life, there wasn’t a single bit of it that did not involve Dave. The thought of Dave not being there was absurd, preposterous. Like not having air. There was no version of life that I wanted to live that did not have Dave in it, right beside me.