“What?”
“Will you marry me? You got me in trouble and now you have to marry me.”
Nell came barreling down the stairs. “Jesus Christ! What’s happening? Who’s that? Why is he delivering flowers in the middle of the night?”
“Nell, this is Sam. I, ah, mentioned him. He just asked me to marry him.”
Nell looked not one speck less annoyed. “I thought he broke up with you.”
“I did,” Sam said. “It was the worst mistake of my life.”
“You don’t deserve her,” said my loyal sister. She ruffled her hair. “Well, make a decision because I don’t have to get up for three more hours!”
I said, “I guess it depends on two things. One, how sorry you really are. And two, if I like the ring you pick out.”
“I already have the ring. I’ve been carrying it around for weeks. It was my great-grandmother’s. You can have the stone reset in any way you want.”
“I’ll never get back to sleep now,” Nell said. “Let me have a look at that ring.” It was a yellow diamond set about with pale blue sapphires in the basket-weave style of a hundred years ago. “You might as well get down on one knee. You already dripped all over the hardwood. Thanks a lot. I’m considering buying this house.” She turned to me. “So, Irene?”
“I’m waiting for the other part of this.”
“Reenie, I was afraid. I was afraid of the story you told me but mostly I guess, I was just afraid of the love I felt for you. I’m thirty-three years old and this is the first time I ever considered marrying anyone.”
“This is the first time I ever considered getting married at all.”
“Please give me another chance. Please say you’ll forgive me.”
“I do,” I said. “And I will.”
Sam kissed me once and again. He hugged Nell, and the flowers scattered. One by one, her roommates joined us in the hall, first annoyed, then applauding, except for Leslie, the beautiful and surly psychiatric social worker. She said, “I don’t let strange people into the house. And I would appreciate it if you did not either. That’s how single women get killed.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m engaged now, to this stranger, for the past five minutes. Does that still count as being single?”
Leslie whirled and stomped back upstairs.
Nell then took a hard look at me and said, “That’s my dress.”
We drove up to see my parents, later that day.
On the way, I forced Sam to stop for taco chips. He gave me a quizzical look.
I told him about the dream I’d had, of the freezing shrimp-sized babies, and, as I had feared, he looked appalled. “You’re not, are you? Pregnant? We’re a little too old for that, aren’t we?”
“You mean to have it be a mistake or at all?” I asked him. “Last I heard, I’m in prime time for the next fifteen years or more.”
“To have it be a mistake,” he said. “I think your roomie the social worker would say that is a pretty loaded dream.”
“I agree with that, and pretty fear based. And no, I’m not pregnant.”
“If you were, we’d deal with it,” Sam said. “People always used to. People still do. It’s just not the best way to start things off.” I couldn’t disagree, and my relief was mighty that he hadn’t said any of the repugnant, atavistic things single men even older than he sometimes said, about how they didn’t even know how to take care of themselves, much less a kid... I still wasn’t sure I wanted a child, but I was sure that I didn’t want to be with a man who didn’t want a child—and that didn’t pass the scratch test for common sense even to me.
After I got the taco chips out of the way, I told him, “We don’t have to stay over, but they’ll want us to. We can leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow. I can show you where Felicity lived, at Starbright Ministry.”
“I don’t want to bring Felicity into this, except I do have to call her and try to get a message to her.”
I couldn’t help myself: “Now of all times?” Perversely, I wanted this moment to be a closed circle of just two.
“Yes, now of all times. The last time I spoke to her she told me that you were the dearest and best person she ever knew and I was a fool to let you go.”
