by Jenny Han
“My dad. You know how he is. You can’t take it personally, okay?”
I nodded.
We walked into the restaurant holding hands. Everyone else was already there and seated at a round table.
I sat down, Jeremiah on my left and my brother on my right. I grabbed the bread basket and took a roll. I smeared it with butter before I stuffed most of it into my mouth.
Steven shook his head at me. Pig, he mouthed.
Glaring at him, I said, “I didn’t eat breakfast.”
“I ordered a bunch of appetizers,” Mr. Fisher told me.
“Thanks, Mr. Fisher,” I said, my mouth partly full.
He smiled. “Belly, we’re all adults here. I think you should call me Adam now. No more Mr. Fisher.”
Underneath the table, Jeremiah gave my thigh a squeeze. I almost laughed out loud. Then I had another thought—like, was I going to have to call Mr. Fisher “Dad” after we were married? I would have to talk to Jeremiah about that one.
“I’ll try,” I said. Mr. Fisher looked at me expectantly, and I added, “Adam.”
Steven asked Conrad, “So why don’t you ever leave
California?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, for, like, the first time since you left, practically.” Steven nudged him and lowered his voice. “You got a girl out there?”
“No,” Conrad said. “No girl.”
The champagne arrived then, and when all our glasses were full, Mr. Fisher tapped his knife to his glass. “I’d like to make a toast,” he said.
My mother rolled her eyes just barely. Mr. Fisher was famous for making speeches, but today actually called for one.
“I want to thank everyone for coming together today to celebrate Susannah. It’s a special day, and I’m glad we can share it together.” Mr. Fisher lifted his glass. “To Suz.”
Nodding, my mother said, “To Beck.”
We all clinked glasses and drank, and before I could put mine down, Jeremiah gave me this look like, Get ready, it’s happening.
My stomach lurched. I took another gulp of my champagne and nodded.
“I have something to say,” Jeremiah announced.
While everyone was waiting to hear what it was, I snuck a look over at Conrad. He had his arm draped over the back of Steven’s chair, and they’d been laughing about something. His face was easy and relaxed.
I had this wild impulse to stop Jeremiah, to clap my hand over his mouth and keep him from saying it. Everybody was so happy. This was going to wreck it.
“I’ll just go ahead and warn you—it’s really good news.” Jeremiah flashed a smile at everyone, and I braced myself. He was being too glib, I thought. My mother wouldn’t like that. “I asked Belly to marry me, and she said yes. She said yes! We’re getting married this August!”
It was like the restaurant got really quiet all of a sudden, like all the noise and chatter got sucked out of the room. Everything just stopped. I looked across the table, at my mother. Her face was ashen. Steven choked on the water he was drinking. Coughing, he said, “What the?” And Conrad, his face was completely blank.
It was surreal.
The waiter came by then with the appetizers—calamari and cocktail shrimp and a tower of oysters. “Are you guys ready to order your entrees?” he asked, rearranging the table so there was room for everything.
His voice tight, Mr. Fisher said, “I think we need a few more minutes,” and glanced at my mother.
She looked dazed. She opened, then closed her mouth. Then she looked right at me and asked, “Are you pregnant?”
I felt all the blood rush to my cheeks. Beside me, I could feel rather than hear Jeremiah choke.
My mother’s voice shook as she said shrilly, “I don’t believe this. How many times have we discussed contraception, Isabel?”
I could not have been more mortified. I looked at Mr. Fisher, who was beet red, and then I looked at the waiter, who was pouring water for the table next to ours. Our eyes met. I was pretty sure he’d been in my psychology class. “Mom, I’m not pregnant!”
Earnestly, Jeremiah said, “Laurel, I swear to you it’s nothing like that.”
My mother ignored him. She looked only at me. “Then what is happening here? Where is this coming from?”
My lips felt really dry all of a sudden. Fleetingly, I thought of what had led up to Jeremiah’s proposal, and just as quickly the thought flitted away. None of that mattered anymore. What mattered was that we were in love. I said, “We want to get married, Mom.”
“You’re too young,” she said in a flat voice. “You’re both far too young.”
Jeremiah coughed. “Laur, we love each other, and we want to be together.”
“You are together,” my mother snapped. Then she turned to Mr. Fisher, her eyes narrowed. “Did you know about this?”
“Calm down, Laurel. They’re joking. You were joking, right?”
Jere and I shared a look before he said in a soft voice, “No, we’re not joking.”
My mother swallowed the rest of her champagne, emptying her glass. “You two are not getting married, period. You’re both still in school, for God’s sake. It’s ridiculous.”
Clearing his throat, Mr. Fisher said, “Maybe after you kids both graduate, we can discuss it again.”
“A few years after you graduate,” my mother put in.
“Right,” Mr. Fisher said.
“Dad …,” Jeremiah began.
The server was back at Mr. Fisher’s shoulder before Jeremiah could finish whatever it was he was going to say. He just stood there for a moment looking awkward before asking, “Do you have any questions about the menu? Or, ah, are we just doing appetizers today?”
“We’ll just take the check,” my mother said, tight lipped. There was all this food on the table and no one was touching it, no one was saying anything. I was right before. This was a mistake, a tactical error of epic proportions. We never should have told them like this. Now they were a team, united against us. We barely got a word in edgewise.
I reached into my purse, and under the tablecloth, I put my engagement ring on. It was the only thing I could think to do. When I reached for my water glass, Jeremiah saw the ring and squeezed my knee again. My mother saw too—her eyes flashed, and she looked away.
Mr. Fisher paid the bill, and for once my mother didn’t argue. We all stood up. Quickly, Steven filled a cloth napkin with shrimp. And then we were leaving, me trailing my mother, Jeremiah following Mr. Fisher. Behind me, I heard Steven whispering to Conrad. “Holy shit, man. This is crazy. Did you know about this?”
I heard Conrad tell him no. Outside, he hugged my mother good-bye and then got in his car and drove away. He didn’t look back once.
When we got to our car, I asked my mother very quietly, “Can I have the keys?”
“What for?”
I wet my lips. “I need to get my book bag out of the trunk. I’m going with Jeremiah, remember?”
I could see my mother struggle to hold her temper. She said, “No, you’re not. You’re coming home with us.”
“But Mom—”
Before I could finish, she’d already handed the keys to Steven and climbed into the passenger seat. She closed the door.
I looked at Jeremiah helplessly. Mr. Fisher was already in his car, and Jeremiah was hanging back, waiting. More than anything, I wished I could leave with him. I was really, really scared to get into the car with my mother.
I was in trouble like I had never known.
“Get in the car, Belly,” Steven said. “Don’t make it worse.”
“You’d better go,” Jeremiah said.
I ran over to him and hugged him tight. “I’ll call you tonight,” he whispered into my hair.
“If I’m still alive,” I whispered back.
Then I walked away from him and climbed into the backseat.
Steven started the car, his napkin a white bundle in his lap. My mother caught my eye in the rearview mir
ror and said, “You’re returning that ring, Isabel.”
If I backed down now, everything was lost. I had to be strong.
“I’m not returning it,” I said.
chapter twenty-two
My mother and I didn’t speak to each other for a week. I avoided her, and she ignored me. I worked at Behrs, mostly to get out of the house. I ate lunch and dinner there. After my shifts, I went over to Taylor’s, and when I got home, I talked to Jeremiah on the phone. He begged me to at least try to talk to my mother. I knew he was worried that she hated him now, and I assured him that he wasn’t the one she was mad at. That was all me.
One night after a late shift at the restaurant, I was on my way to my room when I stopped short. I heard the muffled sound of my mother crying behind her closed door. I was frozen to the spot, my heart thudding in my chest. Standing outside her door, listening to her weep, I was ready to give it all up. In that moment I would have done anything, said anything, to make her stop crying. In that moment she had me. My hand was on the door-knob, and the words were right there, on the tip of my tongue—Okay, I won’t do it.
But then it got quiet. She’d stopped crying on her own. I waited a little longer, and when I didn’t hear anything more, I let go of the doorknob and went to my room. In the dark I took off my work clothes and got into bed, and I cried too.
I woke up to the smell of my father’s Turkish coffee. For just those few seconds right in between sleep and wakefulness, I was ten again, and my dad still lived with us and the biggest thing I had to worry about was my math homework. I started to fall back to sleep, and then I woke up with a start.
There could only be one reason my dad was here. My mother had told him. I’d wanted to be the one to tell him, to explain. She’d beaten me to it. I was mad, but at the same time I felt glad. Her telling my father meant that she was finally taking this seriously.
After I showered, I headed downstairs. They were sitting in the living room drinking coffee. My dad had on his weekend clothes—jeans and a plaid short-sleeved shirt. And a belt, always a belt.
“Morning,” I said.
“Have a seat,” my mother said, setting her mug down on a coaster.
I sat. My hair was still wet, and I was trying to work my comb through the tangles.
Clearing his throat, my father said, “So, your mother told me what’s going on.”
“Dad, I wanted to tell you myself, I really did. Mom beat me to the punch.” I threw her a pointed look, but she didn’t appear the least bit bothered by it.
“I’m not in favor of this either, Belly. I think you’re too young.” He cleared his throat again. “We’ve discussed it, and if you want to live with Jeremiah in an apartment this fall, we’ll allow it. You’ll have to chip in if it costs more than the dorms, but we’ll pay what we’ve been paying.”
I wasn’t expecting that. A compromise. I was sure it had been my dad’s idea, but I couldn’t take the deal.
“Dad, I don’t just want to live in an apartment with Jeremiah. That’s not why we’re getting married.”
“Then why are you getting married?” my mother asked me.
“We love each other. We’ve thought it through, we really have.”
My mother gestured at my left hand. “Who paid for that ring? I know Jeremiah doesn’t have a job.”
I put my hand in my lap. “He used his credit card,” I said.
“His credit card that Adam pays for. If Jeremiah can’t afford a ring, he has no business buying one.”
“It didn’t cost much.” I had no idea how much the ring had cost, but the diamond was so little, I figured it couldn’t have been that expensive.
Sighing, my mother glanced over at my father and then back at me. “You might not believe me when I say this, but when your father and I got married, we were very much in love. Very, very much in love. We went into marriage with the best of intentions. But all of that just wasn’t enough to sustain us.”
Their love for each other, Steven and me, our family—none of it was enough to make their marriage work. I knew all of that already.
“Do you regret it?” I asked her.
“Belly, it isn’t as simple as that.”
I interrupted her. “Do you regret our family? Do you regret me and Steven?”
Sighing deeply, she said, “No.”
“Dad, do you?”
“Belly, no. Of course not. That’s not what your mother’s trying to say.”
“Jeremiah and I aren’t you and Mom. We’ve known each other our whole lives.” I tried to appeal to my father. “Dad, your cousin Martha got married young, and she and Bert have been married for, like, thirty years! It can work, I know it can. Jeremiah and I will make it work just like they did. We’re going to be happy. We just want you guys to be happy for us. Please be happy for us.”
My father rubbed his beard in a way I knew well—he was going to defer to my mother the way he always did. Any second, he would look at her with a question in his eyes. It was all up to her now. Actually, it had always been up to her.
We both looked at her. My mother was the judge. That was the way it worked in our family. She closed her eyes briefly and then said, “I can’t support you in this decision, Isabel. If you go forward with this wedding, I won’t support it. I won’t be there.”
It knocked the wind out of me. Even though I was expecting it, her continued disapproval … still. Still, I thought she’d come around, at least a little.
“Mom,” I said, my voice breaking, “come on.”
Looking pained, my father said, “Belly, let’s all just think on this some more, okay? This is very sudden for us.”
I ignored him and looked only at my mother. Pleadingly, I said, “Mom? I know you don’t mean that.”
She shook her head. “I do mean it.”
“Mom, you can’t not be at my wedding. That’s crazy.” I tried to sound calm, like I wasn’t on the verge of out and-out hysteria.
“No, what’s crazy is the idea of a teenager getting married.” She pressed her lips together. “I don’t know what to say to get through to you. How do I get through to you, Isabel?”
“You can’t,” I said.
My mother leaned forward, her eyes fixed on me. “Don’t do this.”
“It’s already decided. I’m marrying Jeremiah.” I stood up jerkily. “If you can’t be happy for me, then maybe—maybe it’s best you don’t come.”
I was already at the staircase when my dad called out, “Belly, wait.”
I stopped, and then I heard my mother say, “Let her go.”
When I was in my room, I called Jeremiah. The first thing he said was, “Do you want me to talk to her?”
“That won’t help. I’m telling you, she’s made up her mind. I know her. She won’t budge. At least not right now.”
He was silent. “Then what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” I started to cry.
“Do you want to postpone the wedding?”
“No!”
“Then what should we do?”
Wiping my face, I said, “I guess just move ahead with the wedding. Start planning.”
As soon as we got off the phone, I started seeing things more clearly. I just needed to separate emotion from reason. Refusing to go to the wedding was my mother’s trump card. It was the only leg she had to stand on. And she was bluffing. She had to be bluffing. No matter how upset or disappointed she was in me, I couldn’t believe that she would miss her only daughter’s wedding. I just couldn’t.
All there was to do now was to steamroll ahead and set this wedding in motion. With or without my mother by my side, this was happening.
chapter twenty-three
I was folding my laundry when Steven knocked on my door later that night. As usual he only gave me a couple of seconds before opening it; he never waited for me to say “come in.” He came into the room and shut the door behind him. Steven stood in my room awkwardly, leaning against the wall, his arms folded agai
nst his chest.
“What?” I said. Although I already knew.
“Sooo … are you and Jere serious about this?”
I stacked some T-shirts into a pile. “Yes.”
Steven crossed the room and sat at my desk, absorbing my answer for a minute. Then he faced me, straddling the chair, and said, “You realize that’s insane, right? We’re not living in the foothills of West Virginia. There’s no reason you have to get married so young.”
“What do you know about West Virginia?” I scoffed. “You’ve never even been there.”
“That’s besides the point.”
“What is your point?”
“My point is, you guys are too young.”
“Did Mom send you up here to talk to me?”
“No,” he said, and I knew he was lying. “I’m just worried about you.”
I stared him down.
“Okay, yeah, she did,” he admitted. “But I would have come up anyway.”
“You’re not going to change my mind.”
“Listen, nobody knows you two better than me.” He stopped, weighing his words. “I love Jere—he’s like a brother to me. But you’re my little sister. You come first. This whole marriage idea—I’m sorry, but I think it’s stupid. If you guys love each other that much, you can wait a couple of years to be together. And if you can’t, you for sure shouldn’t be getting married.”
I felt both touched and annoyed. Steven never said things like “You come first.” But then he called me stupid, which was more like him.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” I said. I folded then refolded another T-shirt. “Jeremiah wants you and Conrad to be his best men.”
Steven’s face broke into a smile. “He does?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Steven looked really happy, but then he caught me looking at him, and he wiped his smile away. “I don’t think Mom will let me be in the wedding.”
“Steven, you’re twenty-one years old. You can decide that for yourself.”
He frowned. I could tell I’d injured his pride. He said, “Well, I still don’t think it’s your smartest move.”
“Noted,” I said. “I’m still doing it.”
