What are we talking about in 1996? Leap year; Bob Dole; Braveheart; Chechnya; cloning; a bomb at the Atlanta Olympics; Princess Diana divorcing Prince Charles; Tickle Me Elmo; JonBenét Ramsey; Whitewater; Kofi Annan; Ask Jeeves; the Menendez brothers; Tupac Shakur; mad-cow disease; the Spice Girls; jihad; Dr. Ross and Nurse Hathaway; Alan Greenspan; “Show me the money, Jerry.”
The year 1996 is uneventful for our boy.
So, he thinks, let’s skip to the good stuff.
On the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Mallory is waiting for Jake on the ferry dock. Her hair is longer and blonder; she’s wearing it in braids. She’s wearing her usual cutoff shorts. He would like to rip them off her. Contrary to their established protocol, which allows no displays of affection until they’re safely at home, he takes her face in his hands and lays a kiss on her that leaves them both breathless.
When she breaks away, she grins. A year is too long to live without that smile, he thinks. He wishes he’d brought a camera; he wants to take her picture.
While Mallory fixes the appetizers, Jake goes for a swim, then takes an outdoor shower. There are no men’s board shorts hanging up. That’s two years in a row, which is good news, although he doesn’t like thinking of Mallory alone.
Yes, he does. It’s completely unfair because Jake and Ursula are now living together—meaning that Jake is living in the same apartment that Ursula uses to take a shower and change her clothes before going back to work—but Jake prefers to think of Mallory spending her evenings lying by the fire with only Cat Stevens, a book, and the howling wind for company.
Jake walks into the cottage, towel wrapped around his lower half. Mallory hands him a cold Stella and a cracker slathered with smoked bluefish pâté from Straight Wharf Fish. It is one of the most delicious things Jake has ever tasted.
“If you like it so much,” Mallory says, “we can get you some to take home. It freezes.”
“Or it can be just one of those things I enjoy once a year,” he says.
“Like me,” she says, and she beams. “I’m going to shuck corn and you can play some music. Did I tell you I got a five-CD changer?”
Jake scoops her up and carries her to the bedroom.
“Again?” she shrieks.
Again, again, again; it’s their fourth Labor Day weekend together, and this year, for whatever reason, Jake can’t get enough of her. It would make Mallory uncomfortable, probably, if he told her how often he thinks of her the other 362 days of the year. Some days occasionally, some days frequently, some days constantly.
Once the corn is shucked and the tomatoes sliced and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic, once the burgers are grilled and they each have a drink and are listening to Sheryl Crow and gazing at each other over the light of one votive candle—it’s romantic, Mallory claims, so romantic that Jake can’t see his food—she says, “So, how’s Ursula?”
“Fine,” Jake says. “I don’t know what happened, but she kind of gave up on the engagement talk.”
“She did?” Mallory says.
“No,” Jake admits. “But I bought myself some time by agreeing that we should move in together.”
“Oh,” Mallory says. She stops layering pickles on top of her burger and gives him a direct look. “Did you move into her place or did she move in with you?”
“We got a new place,” Jake says. “That was what she wanted. Fresh start, place of our own. We split the rent.”
“And you can just stay there once you get married,” Mallory says.
Every year, there comes a moment when he wonders if Mallory is going to kick him out. This year, that moment is now.
“I guess that’s the idea,” he says. He swigs some of his beer. He doesn’t like talking about Ursula, though he understands why it’s necessary for Mallory. She likes to do it on Friday night, get it out of the way, get caught up on Jake’s romantic life at home so that it isn’t looming over her head like a thundercloud.
Better to know than to wonder, she says.
Jake isn’t sure he agrees.
“Where does she think you are?” Mallory asks.
“Nantucket,” he says.
“With Coop?”
“I’m not sure I specifically said ‘with Coop.’ I just told her I was coming up to Nantucket for the weekend because I barely got away this summer at all, and also, she thinks it’s a tradition now.”
“It is a tradition now,” Mallory says. And they both sit for a second, Jake fending off guilt because it’s obviously not the kind of tradition that Ursula is imagining. “Does she know it’s my cottage?”
“She’s never asked. I would guess if she was pressed, she would say it was your family’s cottage.”
“But she knows I exist, right?” Mallory says. “She remembers me from the wedding?”
“She might,” Jake says. “I mean, yes, she noticed us dancing at the wedding and she asked about you but she hasn’t mentioned you since then. She hasn’t mentioned you in connection with the cottage.”
Mallory takes a bite of her burger, then butters an ear of corn. She seems put out by this statement, but why?
“It seems so unfair,” Mallory says. “I spend so much time being jealous of her and she doesn’t even know enough to be jealous of me.”
“Well,” Jake says, “if she knew how I felt about you, she’d be very jealous indeed. Does that make you feel better?”
“Yes,” Mallory says, and she blows him a kiss across the dark table.
Jake wakes up alone in the low, wide platform bed. The crisp white sheets have light blue piping; Mallory admitted that she splurged on them at the Lion’s Paw in honor of his visit. There’s a stripe of sunshine peeking through the wooden blinds (also new) that lands directly across Jake’s eyes. He inhales Mallory’s scent from her pillow and stretches.
Jake makes coffee in Mallory’s French press and takes a mug out onto the front porch. He watches the waves fold over themselves again and again and again. It’s hypnotic. There isn’t a soul on the beach in either direction. What’s to stop Jake from running into the ocean naked for the first swim of the day?
Nothing, he supposes. He does it.
As he’s bobbing around in the water, he sees Mallory, home from her run. No braids; her hair is in a ponytail. She pries off each sneaker with the toe of her other foot, peels off her socks, stops to drink some ice water, and bends over to touch her toes. She goes back into the cottage and he hears her voice. She must be calling his name. Is she worried? Does she think he left? No, surely she sees all his things still there.
A second later, she appears back out on the porch. She takes a bite of a peach, sees him swimming, waves.
He waves back.
She lifts her arms over her head and places her right foot alongside her left knee. It’s her yoga tree pose, the one she showed him last night and made him try. (He failed.) He sees her green vine tattoo standing out against the golden skin of her ankle. It feels like he has vines wrapped around his heart.
He’s in love with her, he thinks.
If they count the Fridays and the Mondays, then today is the start of their fourteenth day together, the end of their second week. Is that how long it takes to fall in love?
He swims in and Mallory hoots at his nakedness. She holds out a striped beach towel, which he wraps around his waist. He takes the peach out of her hand, sets it on the little outdoor table, and kisses her, long and deep. When they finally separate, Mallory grins at him. “Good morning!” she says.
“I’m…”—should he tell her? He wants to, but he’s afraid—“…crazy about you.”
“Or just crazy,” she says, and she kisses him again.
He cooks bacon and chops up onion and tomatoes for the omelets. He finds a wedge of Brie and holds the cheese up for Mallory to see. “Okay if I use this?”
“I’m crazy about you too,” she says.
“Is that a yes on the Brie?” he asks.
She shrugs. “Sure.”
Jake sets about beating the eggs and heating the butter in the pan. He turns to the stove and he hears her over by the stereo, the click-click-click of her looking for CDs. She has changed into a sunny yellow bikini and her cutoff shorts. They’re planning on kayaking on the pond and then provisioning for their lobster dinner, as usual. They skipped the Chicken Box last night. Mallory was disappointed by this, he knows, because the Box is part of the tradition. They almost had an argument about it. She accused him of being afraid of bumping into someone from Washington. While it’s true this always lurks in the back of his mind—how would he explain dancing and kissing Mallory if he saw one of Ursula’s coworkers?—the real reason he wanted to stay home was that he didn’t want to share Mallory. He wanted to play with her hair, trace her ribs, listen to her breathe. If that’s not the definition of love, he doesn’t know what is.
Jake folds the omelet over. He gives Mallory the one that is a little superior—with more gooey cheese and more golden-brown onions—and that’s another demonstration of his love. At home, he always takes the better portion because giving it to Ursula would be a waste.
They eat at the table, Mallory moaning over every bite, which drives him mad with desire, although she’s not doing it for effect. She is genuine, and that’s what he appreciates most about her. There is no artifice, no manipulation, no games. Every woman in Jake’s office is reading The Rules, which is, as far as Jake can tell, a guide to ignoring men in order to get them to pursue you. Jake happens to know this strategy works; it’s one reason why he’s still with Ursula.
He can’t love Mallory…because he loves Ursula, though that often feels less like love and more like succumbing to some kind of witchcraft. Jake and Ursula are connected in ten thousand ways: the shared memories, the inside jokes, the secret language, the references that only they understand. Ursula is a connection to his sister; she made Jess smile, made her laugh, made her feel like a normal eleven- or twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl the way no one else could. Jake’s emotions about these memories venture into territory that has no language. He can picture Ursula standing before Jessica’s coffin in her white vestments; her nobility in that moment is something Jake will never forget.
A life without Ursula is impossible to imagine. And yet, what Jake feels for Mallory isn’t merely infatuation. It’s something bigger.
They’re crazy about each other. Crazy about is where they are this year. They’ll leave it at that. For now.
The song changes to “Sunshine,” by World Party. Sunshine, I just can’t get enough of you. Sometimes you just blow my mind. Everything about the moment feels holy: the choice of song, the summer light flooding the room, the harmony of the flavors in the omelets, the deep periwinkle blue of the last hydrangea blooms of the summer, which Mallory placed in the mason jar as she always does. And Mallory herself, across the table, still glowing from her run.
Everything at this moment is so sublime that Jake thinks, Freeze! I want to stay right here forever.
But of course, life doesn’t work that way. The waves fold over themselves again and again and again, and nothing can stop them.
On Sunday, it rains. It’s the first day of rain that Jake has experienced on Nantucket in four years. Mallory goes running anyway and when she comes home, she’s soaked through and her teeth are chattering. Jake wraps her up in a fluffy white bath towel and brings her a mug of the delicious coffee, light and sweet.
“Should I light a fire?” he asks. “Run you a bath?”
“I’m going to climb back into bed,” she says. “You coming?”
It’s raining too hard to drive to Great Point. They lie in bed and read—Mallory insisted he try something called Bridget Jones’s Diary (it’s not bad). When Jake has had enough of Bridget and Daniel and Mark (“It’s a reinterpretation of Pride and Prejudice,” Mallory says. “Right, I know that, obviously,” Jake says, though he hadn’t a clue), he throws the book down and spoons up against Mallory’s warm back, hooks his chin over her shoulder, breathes in the scent of her hair. When he met her, she smelled fruity, but now she smells herby, like clover and sage.
After they make love, Mallory suggests they head into town, to the Camera Shop, to rent the video of Same Time, Next Year. They can pick up the Chinese food on the way home.
Jake’s spirits are leaden. How have they already reached the Sunday-night Chinese food and movie stage? This weekend seems to have moved at double speed. They should have gone to the Chicken Box, maybe. If they’d jammed more activities in, would it have seemed longer?
Mallory misreads his hesitation. “I can go alone if you just want to stay here.”
“No!” he says. He doesn’t want to be without her for even half an hour.
They brazenly hold hands as they walk up the stairs to the Camera Shop. The front of the store is the developing center, and there are greeting cards and picture frames for sale, and as soon as they step inside, they bump into an older gentleman whose face lights up when he sees Mallory.
“Miss Blessing!” he says. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“Dr. Major,” Mallory says. She gives the gentleman a hug and Jake tries to read her face. Who is this? Is it her actual doctor? “This is my friend Jake McCloud. Jake, this is Dr. Major, the high-school principal.”
Handshake. Hello, nice to meet you, do you live on the island? No, I’m just visiting. Oh, from where? Washington, DC. Wonderful, enjoy, I’d better be off, Mrs. Major is eagerly waiting at home, we’ll be watching Braveheart for the third time, I think she’s carrying a torch for Mel Gibson, take care, bye-bye, see you Tuesday, Mallory.
Mallory heads to the back room where Jake can see video boxes lined up on the shelves; he loiters in the front room, looking at disposable cameras. He feels a hand on his arm and turns to see Dr. Major, who bows his head and says in a low voice, “Mallory is a very special young woman and she’s one hell of a teacher.” (Dr. Major wants to add, Treat her right, she deserves the best. Dr. Major has always felt protective of Mallory and this guy should know what a treasure he has.) “You’re one lucky fella.”
“Oh.” Jake swallows. “Yes, I know.”
Mallory appears a few minutes later with a cassette in a white plastic bag. “I didn’t rent it,” she says.
“You didn’t?”
“I bought it!” Mallory says. She notices the bag in his hand. “What did you get?”
As they enter the cottage, they hear the phone ringing.
Mallory says, “That’s probably Apple. I won’t answer. I can worry about school after you leave.” The machine’s message is Mallory’s voice: This is Mallory, I’m either not home or not answering! Leave a message, please, or don’t. Jake brings the disposable camera up to his eye and centers the lens on Mallory standing by the phone. He clicks. He took four pictures of her in profile driving the Blazer and she swatted at him, telling him he needed to let her properly pose. But he doesn’t want her to pose, he wants to capture her in the ordinary moments. He snaps one of her looking down at the answering machine, waiting. But whoever it is hangs up and there’s a loud dial tone.
“Good,” Mallory says. She grins at him. He clicks.
White takeout boxes, fragrant steam, soy sauce, chopsticks—then Mallory presses Play on the VCR and settles next to him on the couch and they’re back at the Sea Shadows Inn in Santa Barbara with George and Doris, who notice each other eating alone in the inn’s restaurant. They raise their glasses to each other and eventually end up sitting side by side in front of the fire. They’re talking, laughing, building the foundation for a relationship that will last one weekend per year for the rest of their lives.
“Fortune cookies!” Mallory says when the movie is over. She throws one at him. He snaps her picture.
Mallory’s fortune: Competence like yours is underrated.
“Between the sheets,” she says.
Jake’s is Go for the gold! You are set to be a champion.
“Between the sheets,” he says.
Mallory gets up. “Let’s go, champ.” She’s standing before him in her cutoffs and an Espresso Café T-shirt, her hair flattened on the side where she was lying on his chest during the movie.
What if he called Ursula and told her he wasn’t coming home? What if he quit his soul-sucking job with PharmX? What if he opts out of the lease for their new apartment on Twenty-Second and L? What if he stays here and finds a job, even if that job is playing guitar at the Brotherhood of Thieves?
“Are you okay?” Mallory asks. “It looks like you’re a thousand miles away.”
“Actually,” he says, “I’m right here.”
They’re kissing on the bed when the phone rings again.
“Apple,” Mallory murmurs. “Ignore it.”
He can feel her tense a little as the message plays. It’s followed by the beep.
“Uh, hi?” a voice says. “I’m looking for Jake McCloud? This is Ursula”—“What the hell?” Jake says. Mallory sits up—“de Gournsey, his girlfriend, and I need to get a hold of him. It’s urgent.”
Ursula’s father has died. He suffered a heart attack in the middle of an orientation event for Notre Dame freshmen, a picnic at the lakes. He was taken by ambulance to St. Joe’s but was pronounced dead on arrival. Ursula tells Jake she’s going to fly to South Bend in the morning and Jake says he’ll meet her there. They hang up, then Jake spends over an hour on the phone with the airline, switching his flight, while Mallory sits on the couch with her face in her hands.
When Jake finally leads her to bed, they lie side by side in the dark. Mallory says, “I’m sure this is the last place you want to be right now. It’s one thing for us to be together when Ursula is happy and preoccupied with work. But it’s another thing for us to be together when she’s dealing with this kind of life-changing loss. You shouldn’t be with me. You should be with her.”
Mallory is right. Dr. de Gournsey—Ralph, or “Ralphie,” as Jake and Ursula had jokingly referred to him since they were thirteen—is dead. Dr. de Gournsey was bald with a slight build, but he had a deep, powerful voice, which made him intimidating. That, and his formidable intelligence. Dr. de Gournsey was an expert on Southeast Asian culture; in the de Gournseys’ living room was a curio cabinet filled with jade and coral figurines that he and Mrs. de Gournsey had collected in their travels to Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines. Over the years, Ralphie had been an ally of Jake’s; both he and Mrs. de Gournsey (Lynette; she insists that Jake call her Lynette) had. The three of them bonded in order to deal with the force that is Ursula.
“Ralph loved model trains,” Jake says. He thinks of Ralph inviting him down to the basement to see the trains for the first time, Christmas of ninth grade. The setup was elaborate, a serpentine track on a custom-made platform with hills and curves and a meticulously detailed Christmas village. Ursula’s brother, Clint, had no interest in the trains, Jake knew, so Jake, hoping to win over Ralph de Gournsey, had been an enthusiastic admirer of his model trains. He wants to explain this to Mallory, but would she care or understand?
She might understand better than he thinks because she says, “Do you want me to sleep in the guest room so you have some space to grapple with this? I feel like such an interloper. I didn’t know him.”
“No, stay here,” Jake says. Part of what he’s feeling is anger and resentment that the timing is so bad—if only this had happened next week, or even tomorrow. But it had happened today, when all he’d wanted was to make love to Mallory one last time—and now the waters are muddy, indeed.
Jake flies to South Bend through Boston and Detroit and he lands there on Monday at four o’clock in the afternoon. He plans on taking a taxi to the de Gournsey house but when he steps off the plane, he sees his father. Alec McCloud opens his arms and Jake steps into them.
“You’re no stranger to grief,” Alec says. “You’ll help her get through this.”
When Jake and his father climb into the car, Alec says, “So Ursula told us you were…on Nantucket? With your friend from Hopkins? What’s his name again?”
“Cooper,” Jake says. “Cooper Blessing.”
“Right,” Alec says. “Ursula said it’s become quite the tradition.”
Jake’s heart feels like it’s being feasted on by jackals. After Jessica died, Jake made a vow to be good for his parents’ sake. They had been through so much; he didn’t want to add to their burden. He would meet or exceed his potential; he would stay out of trouble; he would not lie to them. Jake imagines telling Alec about his relationship with Mallory. Every Labor Day weekend, no matter what. It would be such a relief to tell someone. What would Alec say? What would Jake’s mother say? He’s too ashamed to even venture a guess. He can’t confide in his parents. He can’t confide in anyone.
“Yes,” Jake says. “I go every year. Labor Day.”
Ursula isn’t doing well. When Jake gets to the de Gournsey house, she’s lying facedown on her childhood bed.
“Hey,” Jake says as he eases down next to her. “I’m here.”
She starts sobbing into her pillow, eventually lifting her face to the side like a swimmer taking a breath. Then the words come, making sense but no sense: She’s a terrible daughter, the worst, she’s bossy, ungrateful, domineering, cold, harsh, superior. Both her parents feared her and they should because she’s held them in contempt all her life…until now.
“My father loved me but he didn’t like me,” Ursula says, whimpering. “You told me yourself they said I was gruesomely self-centered. And I was! I am! I am this very instant!”
Jake rubs her back. She’d sounded much stronger over the phone and Jake imagined that when he showed up, she’d be organizing the reception at the University Club, picking hymns for the service, writing an obituary for the South Bend Tribune. A part of Jake suspected that she might even be working.
But now Jake sees he was wrong. Ursula’s armor has been pierced.
They make it through Tuesday in a daze. Friends and neighbors stop by to visit with casseroles, flowers, banana bread, boxes of Chocolate Charlie, books about dealing with grief, and bottles of Jameson, which was Ralph’s favorite, though no one else in the house touches the stuff. Everyone says a variation of the following to Jake and Ursula: You two are so lucky to have each other. Also: When are you getting married?
Wednesday, at the funeral, Jake and his parents sit in the front pew with Ursula, Lynette, and Ursula’s brother, Clint, who has arrived from Argentina in the nick of time with one hell of a beard. Half the faculty of Notre Dame is there; President Malloy gives the eulogy, a soloist from the university choir sings the “Ave Maria.” The Mass is beautiful. Ursula cries through the whole thing. Jake had thought she might speak, but it’s clear that’s just not possible. Ursula is lost and sinking. Jake wonders if this is what he’s been waiting for all these many years: a chance to serve as Ursula’s buoy, a chance to swoop in like Superman and catch her as she plummets.
They both have to get back to work, so they fly to Washington together first thing Thursday morning. It’s only after they take their seats in first class—the gate agent looked at Ursula and gave them a free upgrade—that Ursula turns to Jake and says, “How was Nantucket?”
“Oh,” he says. “It was fine, I guess. With all that happened, I can barely remember.”
“There was a young woman’s voice on the answering machine,” Ursula says. “Who was that?”
“That?” Jake says. “I’m not sure.” He plucks the in-flight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of him in an attempt to seem unconcerned. “Coop’s sister, maybe? It’s a family cottage.”
“Coop’s sister?” Ursula says. “That’s the bridesmaid you danced with at his wedding, right?”
Jake lowers the magazine in mock frustration. “Honestly, Ursula, I don’t remember.”
“Well, was she there?” Ursula asks. “The sister?”
Jake has spent four weekends with Mallory. He’s lucky, he supposes, that he only now has to lie about it. “No, Ursula, like I told you, it’s a guys’ weekend.” He’d told Mallory before he left that he had given Ursula the number for the cottage in case of emergency. Obviously I never thought she’d use it, he said. I’ve known Ursula since she was thirteen and there has never been an emergency she couldn’t handle by herself.
Ursula nods—but does she look wholly convinced? “Okay,” she says.
When Jake unpacks that evening after work, he comes across the disposable camera. The close call on the plane is fresh in his mind and so his first instinct is to throw the damn thing away. He can’t risk doing so here in the apartment, however—even if he buries it in the kitchen trash, there’s a chance Ursula will find it. She’s a bloodhound about certain things. Jake slips it into his briefcase and tells himself he’ll toss it on his way to the office. But the next morning, he passes one trash can, then another, then a dozen more. He can’t throw it away. On his lunch break, he walks ten blocks to a film-developing center on the sketchy edge of Southeast and drops it off. It’ll be ready in three days, the clerk tells him.
He waits a whole week to pick it up, pays eight dollars in cash. Then he takes the packet of pictures to a bar on Thirteenth Street where he’ll see no one he knows and he flips through them; it feels as illicit as looking at pornography, though they’re all just innocent pictures of Mallory. Mallory with her head back, dangling lo mein noodles over her mouth with a pair of chopsticks, Mallory driving the Blazer, Mallory asleep in the moment before he woke her up to take him to the airport.
His intention is to look at the photos, then throw them away—but no, he can’t bring himself to throw them away. He places them back in the envelope and stashes the envelope inside the code-of-conduct pamphlet for employees of PharmX in his bottom desk drawer. The world could end and no one would find them there.
Jake survives one week, then another week—but it is only just that, making it through each day without any major incidents, crises, or upheavals. Technically, it’s still summer, the sidewalks are still hot as a griddle, but kids have gone back to school, and khaki suits and sundresses have been moved to the back of the closet; it’s on to the serious business of autumn. There’s Halloween candy at the Giant and everyone has high hopes for the Redskins.
Ursula seems different. She’s softer, quieter; she snuggles in bed with him now rather than presenting him with her cold back. She speaks to her mother on the phone every few days, just to check in. She comes home from work by eight o’clock, and sometimes even seven thirty. Jake’s only complaint is that she eats even less than she used to. Her suits, which used to make her look trim and sharp, now hang on her like she’s a cardboard form. She’s disappearing.
One day, Cooper calls Jake at the office at a quarter to five, which means he wants to meet for drinks. “Hey, buddy, what’s up? Haven’t heard from you in a while.”
When Jake hears Cooper’s voice, he pulls out the one picture of Mallory that he’s moved from the envelope to his center desk drawer. It’s the one of her dangling the lo mein noodles over her mouth. Mallory is a little awkward in the world, it’s part of her charm, but he loves the way she handles chopsticks, and when he looks at this picture, it feels like the chopsticks are skewering his heart.
“Hit a rough patch,” Jake says. “Ursula’s father died.”
“Oh, man, I’m sorry,” Cooper says. “I was calling to see if you wanted to grab a drink after work, but if you’re not up to it…”
“I’m up to it,” Jake says, surprising himself.
They meet at the Tombs, get a pitcher of beer, a couple shots of Jim Beam, and an order of wings. The normalcy feels good. Alanis Morissette is doing her wailing thing in the background and the usual preppy, well-heeled, after-work crowd drinks, talks, laughs, drinks as though it’s just another day, because for them, it is just another day. Jake studies Cooper across the table. The word that always comes to mind when he thinks of Cooper is sweetheart. He’s more than just a guy’s guy who wants to talk Tiger Woods and Norv Turner; he has depth—and intelligence, compassion, thoughtful opinions. He admits when he’s wrong; he admits when he doesn’t know. This is why their friendship has lasted while so many others have fallen away.
Cooper asks how Ursula is handling things and Jake, who has given his spiel over and over again, goes off script. “Harder than I expected, man. And you know what? It’s kind of restored my faith in her…basic humanity.”
Cooper sips his beer. “I can see what you mean,” he says. “Ursula scares the shit out of me.”
Jake asks about Alison. Are they still together? (Jake knows the answer is no. Mallory told him that Cooper and Alison broke up.)
“No,” Cooper says. “The distance was too much. She was fun, though, and a great rebound after Krystel. And then, just a couple days after Alison and I had the talk, I met Nanette.”
“Nanette?” Jake says. Mallory didn’t mention anything about a Nanette.
“I went to Clyde’s to drown my sorrows,” Cooper says. “And Nanette was my bartender.”
“I thought you said you were staying away from women in the service industry,” Jake says.
“Nanette is different,” Cooper says. “She’s a bartender and a slam poet. Besides, we can’t all meet our soul mates in the eighth grade.”
“Well,” Jake says.
“Seriously,” Cooper says. “Why are you making Ursula wait so long? Just marry her already.”
Jake laughs. “I think we need more shots.”
Jake is drunk when he leaves the Tombs. The Jim Beam in his system acts like steam from the shower that reveals a word written on the bathroom mirror: Propose.
The saleswoman at Market Street Diamonds, Lonnie, wears a lot of makeup—sparkling eye shadow, glistening red lipstick that reminds Jake of a cherry lollipop—and she has a huge head of permed hair that is iridescent with hair spray under the lights. The shop is empty and probably about to close for the day, but Lonnie welcomes Jake in. He’s sure she sees an easy mark: a young guy on a bourbon-fueled mission.
“What kind of engagement ring are you looking for, handsome?” Lonnie asks.
“The kind that looks more expensive than it is,” he says, and she laughs. She asks about his budget and he says five thousand dollars because it sounds like a reasonable round number, and she says she can work with that. She produces one ring after another, from the minuscule to the absurd, displaying them on a black felt cloth. He can’t decide. She asks rapid-fire questions about “the lucky girl,” a term that would surely make Ursula shudder. Jake says, “She’s been my girlfriend for the past fourteen years, on and off, but we’ve both been with other people.”
This ratchets up Lonnie’s enthusiasm. “You were each with other people but you’ve found your way back,” Lonnie says. “Now that is true love.”
It’s a lot more complicated than this, but he won’t get into it with Lonnie.
“She’s an attorney for the SEC.” Jake waits a beat to see if Lonnie is impressed, but she might not know the SEC from the FCC or the EPA. Washington is a town of acronyms. “She’s a serious person. I don’t want anything flashy.”
“Simple,” Lonnie says. “Classic, tasteful. Does she wear other jewelry?”
Well, he says, she’s fond of a gold cross she received from her parents for her confirmation in ninth grade, and she wears the slim gold watch they gave her when she graduated from law school. She has a strand of pearls, Jake says, but her ears aren’t even pierced. He feels like he’s slurring his words, but if Lonnie notices this or the smell of cigarette smoke and cooking grease that followed him out of the Tombs, she doesn’t mention it.
“This,” she says, “is the ring I would recommend. You’d be a fool not to get it. It’s a bit out of your price range—sixty-four hundred—but it’s head and shoulders above the rest of these rings. A carat and a half, clarity at the top of the charts, in a setting of white gold.” She holds the ring out on her outstretched palm.
“Okay,” Jake says, looking at it. “Let’s go with that one, I guess.”
“Don’t sound so excited,” Lonnie says with an exaggerated wink. “Trust me, handsome—Mallory is going to be thrilled with this ring.”
Jake’s head snaps up. “Mallory?”
Lonnie’s eyes grow wide and a bit of glitter under her eye shines like a tear. “Did I get the name wrong? You said Mallory, I thought.” She lays her hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s Ursula,” he says. He’s drunk! He told Lonnie his girlfriend’s name was Mallory! Why did he do that? Probably because he was thinking that when this was all over, he would have to call Mallory, and as soon as she answered the phone, she’d know. She knew before he even left Nantucket, he’s pretty sure. She was silent when she drove him to the airport in the early morning on Monday. When he’d said, “Same time next year?” she’d shrugged.
“No matter what, Mallory Blessing,” he’d said. He kissed her, climbed out of the Blazer, then turned back. “No matter what.”
Jake makes himself focus on Lonnie—eye shadow, hair spray, and all. “My girlfriend’s name is Ursula. Her name. Is Ursula.”
Lonnie doesn’t miss a beat. She snaps the box closed, rings up the purchase, and accepts his credit card. “Ursula is going to be very happy,” she says.
He wonders how to propose. Over a romantic dinner? He can’t imagine Ursula agreeing to go out to dinner when she’s still so sad, and she wouldn’t eat anything anyway. He could take her to one of the monuments tonight—the Lincoln Memorial or the Jefferson. He could lure her on a jog tomorrow and get down on one knee in front of the Reflecting Pool just as the sun is rising and the wavering image of the Washington Monument appears on the surface of the water.
Paris was a missed opportunity, he thinks.
He considers waiting for Thanksgiving, when they’ll be back in South Bend. He can take Ursula to the skating rink on Jefferson, the place where he screwed up his courage to ask her to skate couples. He was so nervous back then that his hand had been sweating inside his glove.
He holds the vision of thirteen-year-old Ursula—still in braces, wearing a turtleneck printed with bicycles under her navy-blue Fair Isle sweater under her navy pea coat, the striped hat with earflaps and strings that ended in pom-poms on her head—as he enters the new apartment. The apartment is so big that if Ursula is in the bedroom, she can’t hear him enter.
The foyer is dark and Jake thinks she must still be at work until he sees her attaché case at the foot of the mail table.
Jake heads down the hall to the bedroom. He’s a man on a mission. He taps on the door, cracks it open. Ursula is lying on the bed in a sleeveless navy dress, the belt of which is pulled to its last hole. She has a washcloth over her eyes.
Jake eases down onto the bed next to her. “You okay?”
She reaches up to remove the washcloth. “Headache.”
Jake holds out the box. “I got you something.”
She blinks, accepts the box, opens it. Her expression reveals nothing—not surprise, not joy, not Well, it’s about time. She takes the ring out and slips it on the fourth finger of her left hand. It’s too big, he can see that, but they can go back to the store and have it sized.
“It’s lovely,” she says. “Thank you.”
“Will you marry me?” Jake asks.
Ursula sinks back onto the pillow and closes her eyes. “Yes,” she says, and all Jake can think is how devastated Lonnie would be if she could see Ursula in this moment.