by Jana Casale
“He’s always been nice to me,” Leda said. She didn’t feel it was right not to defend him.
Zeke shrugged. “I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I just know how things are with him, and you should know about it so you don’t waste your time.”
She didn’t know what to say in response.
“Come on,” he said. “We should go back now. It’s been a while.”
The next time Leda saw Allen at work everything was the same. He was goofing off and telling jokes. He didn’t mention not showing up the other day or being sick. But as the day wore on Leda couldn’t get what Zeke said out of her mind. She felt guarded with Allen in a way she never had before. Everything he did or said she thought about with a certain level of scrutiny that was logically unwarranted.
“I think I might go to Yosemite this weekend,” he said.
“Oh, that’s cool,” she said.
“Yeah, I like going alone and just getting lost somewhere. I always go off the main paths and try to get away from it all. It keeps you grounded and centered, you know?”
“Sure,” she said. You sound like a total fucking idiot. You’ll probably get eaten by a mountain lion and the poor mountain lion will end up getting shot by the police because you’re such a fucking idiot.
In the weeks that followed, Zeke’s warning persisted. She tried to forget about it. She missed the free and fun times. She missed singing “Waffles and Espresso Will Get to You.” But it was impossible. Now she noticed so many inconsistencies in Allen’s character that she had never seen before. He was late almost every shift. He missed shifts regularly and never called in. If he made someone the wrong drink and realized it, he’d still try to pass it off on them without them noticing. In an odd way she started to hate him for all these little things, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to stop being his friend. Instead she just let things get slowly distant enough where she could maintain the lightheartedness without letting herself be invested. She and Zeke became closer too. He had a car and often offered her a ride home. At first she hid her friendship with Zeke from Allen, but in time she didn’t care and was open about it. Allen didn’t seem as bothered by it as she would have thought. It was strange how things could mold and change and she was a part of it, and yet at the same time just a witness to it all. As if her life at work were some organically living thing that she huddled in the lungs of, rising and falling with its breath but unable to alter its rhythm. She’d explain it like this:
“In the end I really wasn’t friends with either of them. Sure, Zeke and I got closer, and I respected him immensely, but we just weren’t the type of people to really be friends. We didn’t get along like that. Zeke was right about Allen, though. I found out soon after I’d quit that he’d been stealing money from the cash register. Tina fired him, but to her credit she kept the whole thing hush-hush, which probably saved him some considerable jail time. I’m not sure where he is now, but I know he left California. Anyway, it didn’t really matter. I quit the job and that was that. I didn’t really think about those people anymore. It almost feels like it never happened. I was grateful then, though. It got me out of the house and it kept me sane.”
CHAPTER 32
Getting Engaged
Leda had to quit her job at the coffee shop because of an injury she sustained to her ankles. Three weeks prior she’d noticed that she started to feel a dull ache when she walked. She iced them a few times and tried to rest as much as possible, but the pain persisted. Her doctor suggested she see a podiatrist, who quickly assessed the situation, saying, “You have very flat feet. You need more arch support.”
“Really?” Leda said. “I’ve never had this problem before.”
“Yes,” the podiatrist said. “That’s how it works. You get to a certain age and you start having problems. I’ve seen it happen many times.”
“What about the hills?” Leda asked. “I’ve noticed that it hurts worse when I walk up and down hills. I was thinking maybe I’d hurt myself ’cause I’m not used to walking on hills so much.”
The podiatrist looked at her with a blank expression. “No, I think it’s your low arches. Here—” She leaned over to a drawer and dug out a pack of inserts. “Start with these and see how you’re feeling with them. If they don’t help, you’ll probably need customs.”
Leda looked down at the inserts. “So I just put these in my shoes?”
“Well, that’s the other thing,” the podiatrist said. “I think you need a more supportive shoe. I’m going to write down the name of a few brands that I think will be good for you. There’s a store downtown that specializes in arch support shoes. I think you need to invest in a pair.”
The shoes the doctor recommended turned out to be stark white sneakers that had giant flat soles, not too different of a silhouette from a medical boot.
“I’m going to look like a crazy person,” she said to John. “And I don’t even think I need them. I swear it’s the hills that did this to me.”
The shoes did help her ankles initially, but after a few weeks she started to get worse again. The long days on her feet at the coffee shop were taking their toll, and the doctor told her to rest. The only realistic choice in the circumstance was to quit. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone but a relief to be getting a break from it. It had been so long since she’d been trapped in the house, bored all day, that she didn’t really remember it. She looked forward to lying around and catching up on bad TV. She had plans to organize the hall closet, and of course in the back of her mind she was hoping she’d write more. There was an unwarranted sense of hope.
Leda and John had very often discussed marriage. In her mind she aligned the whole move to California with the intent of having a family. She envisioned herself telling her future children about it, saying, “Mommy loved you so much that she sacrificed for you before you were even born.” It was a nice feeling, thinking that she was already doing something that wasn’t just for herself, already mothering.
She realized too that having John in her life was a blessing. So many of her friends were still single and miserable. They were going on bad dates while she was just steps away from being married and starting a family. It wasn’t always the case, but more often than not, it felt like the holy grail of womanhood.
A month after she quit working at the coffee shop she and John celebrated their fourth anniversary. John made reservations at one of the fancy restaurants they’d been wanting to try. He bought her an expensive bag, and it was warm enough that she could wear a dress to dinner. They ordered a bottle of Champagne to celebrate. Their conversation was, as it always had been, the exchange of best friends. It was perfect.
“When are we gonna get married and have babies?” she asked him.
John rolled his eyes playfully. “You and wanting a baby,” he said. “Is that all you think about?”
“Sometimes.” She thought back on a pair of baby booties she’d seen in the window display at a high-end baby boutique. They were shaped like bees. As she looked through the shop window that day, there seemed no greater aspiration than to make a baby’s feet look like bees. “What about getting married?” she said.
“What about it?” he said, pretending the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
“Stop, you know what I mean.”
“No, you’re right. We should really think about it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, I mean, it’s been four years. We should really probably be getting engaged.”
Leda felt dizzy with a kind of high that was inexplicable, like someone had snapped Pop Rocks inside of her. It was almost like being turned on, the same sense of urgency and desire, only rather than directed to a person it was directed at the conceptualization of commitment and bridal.
“Are you serious?” she said again.
“Well, don’t you think?”
“Of course I do
.”
“Should we go look at rings together or do you want me to surprise you?”
“No, I don’t like surprises. Let’s go look together.”
The next morning she called Anne to tell her the news.
“You actually said that to him?!” Anne said after Leda told her how the conversation had started.
“Yeah, I mean, we always talk about marriage and having kids.”
“I’m, like, shocked. I could never say that to Eric.” Eric was her current boyfriend; he was socially awkward and considerably unattractive. Leda didn’t understand why they were together, really. She felt Anne could do much better.
“Well, John and I just talk about everything.”
“But isn’t it more romantic to wait until he asks you on his own? I mean, this is so planned. It’s almost like you asked him in a way.”
Leda knew that Anne was just being jealous and catty. She tried to be patient of it, since she knew Anne and Eric had been fighting a lot over the last few weeks.
“I don’t think this is less romantic.”
“Not less romantic necessarily, just…like, you just want the guy to come up with it all on his own. I don’t know. If it were me I’d just want it that way.”
“Why? Don’t you want control over your own destiny? Why should getting married be some bullshit thing that the guy comes up with whenever it strikes his fancy? I understand tradition and wanting a man to propose to you and wanting a ring and the whole deal. I get it, and I want a lot of that myself, but at the same time why should I sit there and wait for him to decide everything about my life? Shouldn’t I have just as much say as to when we get married as he does?”
Anne was quiet for a second and Leda worried that maybe she’d gotten too worked up.
“No, I hear you. I guess what I meant is, I wouldn’t have it in me to say anything to a guy about what I want like that.”
The next three weeks Leda spent hours online looking up information about rings. It was such an easy way to pass the time that she didn’t even feel bored being stuck in the house. She and John visited nearly a dozen different jewelry shops looking for a place with the best stones for the best prices. Eventually they decided on a local shop that specialized in wholesale, custom rings. Leda found a band she loved that was simple and classic. The center stone was just over a carat. It was round and sparkling and had the most ideal cut, according to everything she’d read online. John loved it too.
“It looks so perfect on your hand,” he said. “So delicate.”
The salesperson wrote down all the information about the ring so that John would be able to come buy it on his own.
On the drive home Leda felt exhilarated. Everything in her life was coming together. She and John would be getting married soon. She’d have a beautiful ring. It felt like adult life, in the way she had envisioned it when she was very young.
“Do you think you’ll go back and buy it tomorrow?” she asked him.
“I don’t know,” John said.
“But the lady said they can’t hold on to the stone so you shouldn’t wait too long.”
“I just don’t know.”
“About the ring?”
“About getting engaged right now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just feel confused. This whole thing has made me really anxious.”
“Anxious about getting married to me?” Leda couldn’t focus on what he was saying. It felt like his words were floating out of him and into the air. Like they were just hanging there in the car, not really leaving and not really staying, just floating in the air beside her. Why aren’t you more upset right now? Why aren’t you sobbing? Don’t you hear what he’s saying? she kept asking herself.
“I’m not sure what I feel, but I know that when I start thinking about getting married I just feel panicked, like I can’t breathe.”
“But you’re the one who wanted to do this.”
“I do want to do this. I’m just saying I feel anxious about it, and whenever I think about it, I just feel like we shouldn’t do it right now.”
“When do you want to do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it’s been four years. I moved out to California for you.”
“I know you did.”
She felt herself start to warm into a kind of anger that she hadn’t known she was capable of. “So while we were ring shopping you were just planning to tell me this in the car the whole time?”
“No, I didn’t plan this at all.”
“So this was just some revelation you had all of a sudden?”
“No, I’ve thought about it before.”
“And you decided to tell me about it in the car on the way from ring shopping?” The thought that they’d just minutes before been discussing diamond clarity seemed violently cruel.
“I didn’t decide anything. I really hadn’t planned on saying anything right now. Honestly, this wasn’t premeditated at all or anything like that.”
“You think that makes it better? That instead of planning out exactly what to say and knowing how you felt and sitting me down in a really thoughtful, caring, thought-out way, that just randomly saying it in the car like it’s no big deal. Like in the same way you’d say ‘Let’s get coffee’ or ‘I need to stop at CVS for…’ ” She tried to think of something you’d stop at CVS for, but for the life of her she couldn’t think of anything. “For some napkins.” Damn it, she thought at her weak example. “You think it’s better that you weren’t planning on ripping my heart out, but really it only just makes you an asshole.”
John was quiet. “I’m so sorry, Leda. I don’t mean to hurt you in any way. I really don’t.”
“Well, how did you think I was going to react?”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“No, obviously you didn’t, because if you had you wouldn’t have had me going around to ring shops for three weeks like a complete delusional idiot.” She looked at him. His sweet, boyish face and bright blue eyes. His lips were the same as they always were. She felt so distant from him then. “It must be convenient to never have to think of anything, and to just do whatever whim strikes you whenever, and to not have to constantly worry about everything. It must be great to be a man,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
They were silent the rest of the ride home. When they pulled up to the apartment, she jumped out of the car before he even shut off the engine. She ran inside. It felt good to run up the stairs. Her knees pulling: straight then bent, straight then bent. Her feet hitting hard against each step. She raced to get her key out before she could even hear John coming up behind her. Usually they went inside together and John would always be the one to unlock the door. There wasn’t any real reason that it happened this way; it was just a routine they had settled into as unconsciously as they’d ended up in California for nearly three years.
Once inside, she went straight to the bedroom and locked herself in. Living together didn’t give her the kind of upper hand that dating did. When they were dating it was easy to use the distance to her advantage during a fight. It allowed for him to miss her in a way that living with him never could. Her mom once told her that she didn’t think living with a man before marriage was a good idea.
“Men take you for granted easily. If you’re just there supporting him and taking care of him, what is his motivation to marry you?” she’d said once.
At the time Leda thought the sentiment archaic. Sure, it may have had its place in a world where women were expected to stay at home and cook meatloaf all day, but not in a modern era where marriage could be just as much of a burden for a woman as it was for a man. Now sitting in the locked bedroom and listening to John open their apartment door, her heart racing in anger and a sad sort of anticipation, she wondered if maybe her mother had been ri
ght.
He walked down the hall to the bedroom, each step louder, creating a false sense of urgency. He knocked on the door. “Leda, please,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
He tried to open the door. “Leda, please open the door.”
“I just need some time,” she said. She thought it was the perfect thing to say and was hoping his reaction to her “needing some time” would be to freak out and continue to beg to see her. She wanted him to not be able to bear the thought that she needed some time.
“Okay, I understand that,” he said. Infuriatingly, he had not known what the correct reaction to her needing time was. She waited a few more seconds, hoping that maybe once the time started he wouldn’t be able to take it, but she could hear him walking away down the hall. Idiot, she thought.
Alone in the room, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She went to text Anne but hesitated. She knew that Anne would be happy to hear about her troubles, that she’d take a sort of sick satisfaction in the way that only another girl could. The thought of it angered her, but beyond that she felt that telling Anne would admit to some kind of failure. She decided not to tell her until she was sure that it was definitely not happening, and even then she’d come up with some excuse about it being the money for the ring or something. As a girl, she couldn’t admit to her best friend that she had failed at the fairy tale, especially not when her friend was so jealous. It was complicated, but it was just the way it was.
She opened her computer and went on Facebook, but she couldn’t pay attention to anything she was looking at. “Beach Day #besties,” a girl she vaguely knew from college, had posted a picture of herself and her friend standing arm-in-arm in bikinis. Eat a sandwich, you cunts, Leda thought. She shut the computer and lay back on the bed. I should be crying. Why am I not crying? Cry. Cry! She relived the conversation from the car over in her head. It was awful, but she still didn’t feel like it was really happening. John had never been the kind of guy to be commitment-phobic. It was something that she loved about him. Maybe he just needs to talk. She got up from the bed and went downstairs.
