He shook his head and kissed me. “Now you’re getting the picture.”
“Totally unique.” I smiled. “Totally us.”
“Exactly.”
“So it’s settled. We’ll get married on the sandbar and have our reception on Starlite Island.” I sighed. “Someday.”
He nodded and smiled at me. “Someday, Ans.”
I kissed Jack again, this time deeper, this time letting myself really feel it, that overwhelming joy that here was this man I had loved for a lifetime who would be my happily ever after. He pulled me closer, and it was only then that I felt it in the very marrow of my being, knew once and for all that his nerves and his jumpiness weren’t about the timing of our wedding. I had known this man since I was fifteen years old, and I could tell he was keeping something from me.
I knew all about keeping secrets, had kept the secret that Jack was the biological father of my eldest two daughters since the day they were born. When we discovered my husband Carter’s infertility, when a rare infection from a routine intrauterine insemination had almost killed me, when Carter and I made the life-altering pact to get these children in a very unconventional way, and when I promised him that he would never have to know who the real father was, I had known about keeping secrets then, too.
Carter had eventually discovered that Jack, my first love, was the father of our first two girls. It had broken something inside him, made the pain run deeper, despite the fact that it had soothed me for my babies to be made out of love. I had wondered ever since if the truth had set either of us free. It had felt, instead, like the truth only complicated things, only put a gray haze over our marriage during one of its best times, when Carter and I had conceived our miracle baby, Emerson, all on our own.
Part of me wanted to press Jack now, to push him further into telling me what was on his mind. But the part of me that knew that sometimes the truth does more harm than good just leaned into him, sighed, and remembered that even though I might want to, I would never truly know all of another person. Not my daughters. Not even Jack.
To this day, Jack and I shared a monumental reality, the deep, dark truth that he was the father of my eldest two girls, who knew they were from a sperm donor but had no idea that their sperm donor was the man I almost married before their father. They had no idea that the sperm was donated not through a test tube but through real, true love, the kind that never ends. With that huge thing between us, I always felt I could tell Jack anything, that he could do the same.
As he cleared his throat for no reason, always a dead giveaway that he was hiding something, it scared me to wonder what he felt he had to keep from me. It terrified me to think what in our present could possibly be bigger than the behemoth of our past.
FOUR
emerson: the indomitable murphy women
After about twenty phone calls to Mark’s parents and our best friends and a feverish lovemaking session on the kitchen island, where I tried to ignore the fact that because of whatever mystery illness was haunting me, I would certainly have bruises the next day as a souvenir, I realized I had a wedding to plan. So I walked to my mother’s house, pushing away the doubts I’d had previously, flung the door open dramatically—I mean, I was an actress, after all—and exclaimed, “Get out Grammy’s veil!”
If you ever need to know for sure how you are feeling, just look at your mother’s face. It’s like a mirror. Her mouth said, “Oh, yay! Honey, you are going to look gorgeous.” Her blue eyes, the ones that matched mine perfectly, said,Are you sure this is a good idea?
She shot me the tight-lipped smile I knew well from days of bombed performances that she tried to put a positive spin on. “I am so happy for you, sweetheart, but I know you’ve had your concerns about Mark and the logistics of this relationship. Are you sure about this? Because you don’t have to rush into anything.” She ran her fingers through her layered, shoulder-length hair, and it occurred to me that it was significantly lighter than its usual chestnut. I wondered if it was summer sun or great highlights.
“Really, really sure?” Jack reiterated.
I rolled my eyes. Great. Just because I didn’t have a dad, that didn’t mean I neededJackinterfering in my affairs. I felt guilty almost immediately. Jack was a very nice man. But I kind of wanted him to leave, and I didn’t really want his opinion.
Before I could answer, my sister Sloane’s voice traveled from the kitchen and into the living room, calling, “Mom, do you have any mayonnaise?”
As if my oldest sister, Caroline, could detect someone talking about a fat other than avocado and had to come save the day, she walked through the front door in a maxi dress cinched at her tiny waist, looking as if she’d stepped off the pages of a magazine. “I should certainlyhopenot,” she said by way of greeting. Her long hair was lighter, too, the exact same brown-but-sunkissed shade as Mom’s. That’s when I knew they had gotten their hair done together. I felt a little pang of jealousy that they hadn’t invited me.
Caroline looked at Mom accusatorily. “Why would you have mayonnaise, Mom? Surely you know better than to have that artery-clogging excuse for a condiment.”
Sloane, in a pair of faded sweatpants and one of Adam’s old T-shirts, her noncolored, regular brown hair in a messy bun on top of her head, crossed her arms. She had put back on a little bit of the weight she had lost while Adam was missing in action, and her face had regained that natural, Neutrogena glow it had always had. Having Adam back home had made her look so much healthier. It had also made her brave. Very brave. Brave enough that sometimes she even stood up to Caroline. “Adam and I have started buying the organic kind made with sunflower oil, and I think it’s a healthy fat that way, actually.”
Caroline nodded knowingly, and for a second, I thought she was agreeing with Sloane. Instead, she said, “Ah, yes.” She gestured at Sloane. “I’ve found the person who actually started buying doughnuts when they”—she paused to make air quotes—“took out the trans fat.”
This was totally beside the point, and I knew I shouldn’t say anything. But I couldn’t help myself. “Wait,” I said. “Who was it again who took us all to McDonald’s a couple of months ago?”
Jack was looking helplessly at Mom now, and I wondered if he was rethinking this quest he had undertaken to be with her. I didn’t doubt he loved her, but was she worth all of this? All ofus?
“No, no, you’re right,” Caroline said. “I tell you what: why don’t you get married and have Mark go on a reality show with some slut and then give me a call and let me know how you react. ’K?”
I smirked at her and told myself the lie that every bride has to in order to fling herself down that aisle.My marriage will be different.But I said, “Mark doesn’t even wantmeto be on TV.”
Mom stood up now, too, the four of us in a circle.
“I love Mark,” Caroline said, “and I love you, and I love you two together. But we all know you’ve had your doubts about this relationship...”
“Actually,” I said, “I thought about what my brilliant sister Sloane said the other day at your house, and Mark and I don’t have to have a cookie-cutter marriage. I can be in LA some and here some, and even though he doesn’t want to move, that doesn’t mean he can’t travel back and forth every couple of months for a week or so. I mean, we’ll work it out.”
