The Engagements

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  The last report she ever helped to write for HRN was about diamonds. She was three months pregnant with Ava when their research team went to the Central African Republic and the Congo. Kate had planned to accompany them, but her doctor advised against it, and Dan flat-out refused to let her go. She could tell it was the start of a new phase in her life, one she wasn’t entirely sure she felt ready for.

  A decade earlier, people in the West had begun to hear about blood diamonds. It was estimated that as many as 14 percent of the diamonds sold in America came from brutal wars in Africa that had left millions dead.

  Even though it had long been this way, Westerners were suddenly horrified. They didn’t want to think of child soldiers with their hands hacked off in connection with their precious diamond rings. So forty-five nations got together and signed on to the Kimberley Process. Kimberley diamonds came complete with a certificate that guaranteed they were not mined in a country at war. On the surface, it seemed like a good solution. But HRN and other groups like them had their doubts.

  The head researcher on the trip was a guy named Albert Foster. He had a weathered, lined face that made him look much older than his fifty-three years. He was the type of person who could handle things like this, and one day after he returned to New York he gave Kate the gruesome facts without so much as a grimace: he spoke of the children in the streets, dying from AIDS, grabbing their crotches when he walked by, as they learned to do—an indication that they would trade sex for food, for anything.

  Kate wrote down everything he said, feeling useless. She should have been there herself. She thought of her own child, not yet born, yet already guaranteed so much more from life.

  “Is Kimberley working at all?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Put it this way: The Central African Republic has mines that could only ever possibly produce five hundred thousand carats each year. But annually, almost a million carats claiming to be from the CAR are certified. They just get them in the Congo, where they’re considered dirty. Take them over the border, and they’re magically clean.”

  “And people buy them, knowing this is the case?”

  “Absolutely. Once the stones get to wherever they’re going to be cut and polished, De Beers is quick to mix them in with diamonds from everywhere else.”

  “So no one will ever know if they’re buying a blood diamond.”

  “Exactly. And most people like to tell themselves they’re not. Sometimes I think Kimberley’s really just a marketing tool to help assuage everyone’s guilt.”

  Kate knew from other reports they had done that the minerals used to make laptops and cell phones were just as bad, but they somehow seemed less corrupt to her—at least they weren’t meant to symbolize love. She found it harder than ever to let go after that meeting. She read everything she could on the topic. When she saw a woman wearing diamonds on the street or at the movies, she wanted to pull her aside and start reciting all the awful statistics.

  A few months later, HRN did a press briefing on the resulting report, and her boss Ellen and the other women from the office looked sheepish for once, instead of self-righteous. Ellen turned her engagement ring around so that the stone was hidden in her palm.

  The morning of the wedding, May drank two cups of black coffee to protest the fact that Kate only had soy milk, then went upstairs to take a shower, leaving Kate in the kitchen with their mother and the four kids.

  Kate ran her hand through Ava’s hair.

  “Are you excited for the wedding tonight, lovey?” she asked.

  “Yes! How late can I stay up?”

  They had discussed it a hundred times already, but it was Ava’s favorite part: “As late as you can keep your eyes open.”

  Her mother glanced up from her newspaper. “You’re going to regret that.”

  “It’s a special occasion.”

  “When do I get to put on my dress?” Ava said.

  “I’m going to pick it up from Uncle Jeff and Uncle Toby in a while,” Kate said. “And I’ve got to bring them their rings.”

  “Ooh, let me see,” her mother said. “Are they gorgeous? I’m sure they are. Jeff has such great taste.”

  Kate shrugged.

  “You know,” Mona said, dragging out the syllables so that it almost sounded as if she were singing, “there are a lot of awful jobs out there, far worse than digging in a mine. Without diamonds, those people in Africa would have absolutely no industry at all.”

  Kate shook her head in disbelief. “First off, mining is one of the most dangerous professions of all time, with some of the most horrible health risks. Second, do you realize that the policies in the South African diamond mines basically created apartheid there? Black miners were locked up at night. Made to get naked and have every inch of their bodies searched after work, because it was just assumed they would steal. None of that happened to white workers. A black person had to carry all sorts of identification. Any old white person could ask to see it anytime, and if a worker didn’t have it on him then and there, he got put in prison. Any white person!”

  Her mother sighed. “I just wanted to see your cousin’s rings, Kate, not get a history lesson.” She turned back to her paper.

  “Sorry.”

  The red bag was on the windowsill over the sink, where Kate often stood, peeling vegetables as she watched Ava play out in the yard. She pushed the lace curtain aside now and took hold of the bag. It felt lighter than she remembered.

  She glanced inside: only one velvet box where before there had been two. Her heart thumped.

  Without a word, she slipped outside and checked the car—nothing. She went to the hall closet and slid her hand into the pocket of every coat, even the ones she hadn’t worn in years. She was almost positive that she had seen two rings before leaving the jewelry store. But then, she had closed the boxes so fast. Could it have been an optical illusion? No, no, she was sure there were two.

  Returning to the kitchen, she wondered how long it would be before her mother left the room. She wanted to ask the children about it, out of earshot of the other adults. After fifteen minutes, no one had budged. May’s three were playing their handheld video games at the table; her mother hadn’t made it past the Arts & Leisure section; and Ava in her booster seat was basking in the presence of her family, who to her mind were all there to watch her walk down the aisle in a pink party dress.

  Kate was bursting with curiosity. Finally, as calmly as she could muster, she asked, “Kids, did any of you touch this bag?”

  All four of them shook their heads.

  “Are you sure? You’re not in trouble if you did. I’m just looking for something. Ava, are you sure?”

  “I’m sure, Mama.”

  “Crap,” Kate said. She went to the window, squeezed her eyes shut, and lifted the curtain once more. Dear Universe: If you’ll just let the ring be there when I open my eyes, I’ll be forever grateful. Really, no questions asked. The fact that it wasn’t there twenty minutes ago will be totally irrelevant.

  She opened her eyes. The only thing on the sill was a wrinkled tomato that she should have thrown out two days earlier.

  “What? What is it?” her mother said.

  “Toby’s and Jeff’s rings were both in this bag,” Kate said. “Now there’s only one of them in here.”

  Her mother put a hand over her heart.

  “You look like you’re about to say the Pledge of Allegiance,” Kate said.

  “You lost one of their rings?”

  “No. I misplaced it, that’s all. Help me look. I’m supposed to meet them in half an hour.”

  “Kate! You did this on purpose.”

  “Okay, how is that helping?”

  “You were just saying how much you hate diamonds. Plus, everyone knows you don’t want Jeffrey to get married.”

  “Be that as it may, Mother, I would not purposely lose his wedding ring to stop him.”

  “Oh, just like how you didn’t purposely dye your hair blue the night before y
our admissions interview at Lanebrook Academy?”

  “I was fourteen. Aren’t you ever going to let that go?”

  “I happen to think it’s relevant.”

  Kate felt panicked now, her whole body rattling with nervous energy.

  “Dan!” she shouted. “Dan! I need you!”

  Just the sound of his socks on the staircase was a comfort. He appeared in the kitchen a moment later in his pajama pants and plain white undershirt. At thirty-five, with shaggy brown hair and dimples, Dan could still pass for a college kid. Sometimes she wondered if he’d ever stop looking like a baby, or if he’d have the same sweet face even when they were ninety years old.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I can’t find one of Toby’s and Jeff’s rings.”

  “Shit. Whose is it?”

  “They’re both the same.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Uncle Dan said the s-word!” Max shouted, suddenly coming to life. “That’s a five-dollar word!”

  “Put it on my tab, bud,” Dan said. “So. If I were a wedding ring, where would I be? Did you check your coat pocket?”

  “Yup.”

  “I don’t want a wedding ring, I want a wedding tiara,” said May’s only daughter, Olivia. She was five years old, and obsessed with all things princess.

  “You have to have a ring, dummy,” said Max. “Everyone gets a ring.”

  Forty minutes later, Kate got into the driver’s seat and buckled up, plugging the address of the Birchland Inn into her GPS. She was terrible with directions. Until they moved upstate, she had driven maybe twice a year, but now it was a daily occurrence. She still wasn’t totally comfortable, especially when Ava was in the backseat, asking her why you needed a key to start the engine, why the car was blue, why fish lived in the sea, why the sky got dark at night.

  The radio was switched to NPR. Kate turned it off, grateful for the silence. They had searched the entire house and all the cars—even her sister’s—but they still hadn’t found the ring. She pictured it everywhere, like a mirage in the desert; she could see it in the dish on the nightstand where Dan kept his pocket change, and on the edge of the bathroom sink, where she sometimes left her watch. But when she checked each spot, she found nothing out of the ordinary there.

  She had moved now from panic to acceptance. It was what it was. If they never found the ring, she’d just take a couple thousand dollars out of Ava’s college fund and buy Jeff a new one. She laughed out loud at the absurdity of this—were there even a couple thousand extra dollars in the bank?

  They had put nearly every penny they had into the house. She mostly thought it was worth it, though sometimes she suspected that homeownership was just another way in which a capitalist society took hold of your life and refused to let go. What did it mean to own the house? They could plant flowers and tear down cabinets without consulting a landlord. So what? They could take pride in owning something. Why?

  They lived in Brooklyn until Ava was one, on the fourth floor of an apartment building that had once been full of crackheads and squatters, two blocks from the Gowanus Canal. In the evenings, they strolled along Union Street, past the Hess station and the diner and the mural dedicated to a boy named Raul Vasquez, who had been gunned down on that spot in the mid-nineties. Every year on his birthday, someone placed flowers against the wall.

  The neighborhood was safer by the time they arrived, though it still felt gritty. The block between Third and Nevins consisted of nothing but casket warehouses. The men who worked there couldn’t be nicer or more friendly, a fact that amused Kate somehow. Perhaps it was the constant reminder that life is precious that made them so jolly; whatever the case, they always waved or made a joke when she and Dan said hello.

  Dan had once seen them carrying a plain wooden casket from a truck, not yet adorned with any fabric or cushioning. The word HEAD was stamped at one end.

  “So that’s what it all comes down to,” he said glumly when he arrived home.

  Kate’s mother had taken one look at the area and told her they needed to move. But the rent was cheap and Kate liked the families who gathered on the sidewalks on summer nights—several generations, eating grilled meat, drinking beer and Mexican Coke, setting off homemade firecrackers that fizzled into golden blossoms outside their bedroom window.

  There was a cast of odd characters on their block, who gave her a warm feeling—a giant of a man with only one eye who greeted her each morning outside the bodega on the corner. An old Italian woman with deep wrinkles who walked six tiny white dogs and spoke only three words of English, which she used constantly: “God bless you.” A Puerto Rican grandmother who didn’t look very old at all, but couldn’t talk. Kate assumed she’d had a stroke. The woman spoke only in grunts, but with such enthusiasm that it seemed she didn’t realize that no one could understand her. And in fact, it seemed like some of the neighbors could.

  Dan said he wanted Ava to have a yard to run around in. They both agreed that being in the suburbs felt like waiting to die, so they moved two hours up the Hudson to a hamlet called Stone Ridge, which somehow seemed more real, just as the city had before it.

  She occasionally wondered if subconsciously he had wanted to leave Brooklyn in part so that she’d have to give up her job. Her position at Human Rights Now was one of the few things they had ever argued about. Kate was proud of the work she did; it had always been a part of her identity, perhaps the biggest part. But after Ava was born, she found that it took too much from her. There were nights when she’d be up nursing her baby and thinking only about the children who were suffering elsewhere at that moment. In meetings, she’d become so upset that she would have to squeeze the underside of her chair with both hands to stop herself from leaving the room.

  She had never seen the people they served as an abstraction, the way some of her coworkers seemed to. But now they were almost too real to her. She had lost all professional distance. She could not reasonably discuss five-year-old girls in an Indian brothel, or eight-year-olds forced to be child brides in Yemen, without thinking of them as she did her own daughter.

  She knew she couldn’t save them. Change came so slow, if it ever came. That was one of the hardest lessons she had learned.

  Sometimes she felt like she was losing her mind. Even when the baby slept, she couldn’t. Dan said he hated seeing her this way, that she ought to find another job that wouldn’t rob her, or their family, of so much happiness. Kate agreed to some extent, but she thought that maybe she just needed time—when the baby was older, maybe her feelings wouldn’t be so unbearable. Her doctor prescribed a low dose of Zoloft to help with her anxiety, but she couldn’t feel it working.

  Ava’s first birthday arrived, and Dan put together a lovely little party with a few friends and family members. He hung crepe paper around the apartment and bought rainbow-striped pointy hats with cheap elastic bands that pinched their chins. The kids ate pizza and the adults drank wine.

  Everyone brought presents. Not picture books and pop-up toys, but exquisitely wrapped boxes that filled their living room. May brought a set of hand-painted wooden sushi and chopsticks, and Mona brought a wooden kitchen set with an oven and fridge. Their downstairs neighbor had purchased a tiny purple tutu. She left the price tag on—lifting the tutu from the tissue paper, Kate saw that it had cost two hundred dollars. There were miniature UGG boots and sequined Mary Janes, a ridiculous fur vest that she would never put on Ava, and even, improbably, a t-shirt bearing a portrait of Frida Kahlo.

  As Kate watched her daughter’s chubby fingers dig into the wrapping paper of one more gift, she felt a tightening sensation in her chest. She couldn’t breathe. “I’ll be right back,” she said with a smile, not wanting to ruin the moment. Dan gave her a concerned look, but she shook her head as if to say there was nothing to worry about.

  It was Toby who found her sitting on the edge of the bed a few minutes later, staring out the window.

  “The world is just so unfair,” she
said, knowing that she sounded like an angsty teenager. “All those over-the-top presents for a one-year-old who doesn’t even want them. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I just feel powerless. I don’t understand how we can have so much when other people have nothing.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Compared to everyone on the Upper East Side, we have nothing,” Toby said, trying to make her smile. “If they saw this place, they’d throw a fundraiser for you.”

  Until that day she was just like anyone; she knew precisely what was wrong with her life and what she might do to fix it eventually, but she never did those things. After the guests left, Kate took a walk and thought about what should have been a sweet and hopeful year. She realized that Dan was probably right.

  Moving provided a reasonable excuse to quit. Ellen had said maybe they could figure something out; Kate could telecommute, or come in twice a week. But she turned the offer down. When they arrived upstate two years ago, she started doing press and fundraising for a local food pantry Monday through Thursday, which was still important, Dan pointed out, just more manageable. In the city, she had worked full-time, and though Dan had worked from home, they still had had a babysitter three days a week. Now they were trying to handle the child care themselves; she worked from home two of the four days, he was home all the time, and somehow they made it work.

  Kate enjoyed the warmth and safety of the cocoon they had created, but she sometimes felt smothered by it, too. Their closest neighbors lived half a mile away. She hadn’t made any friends; all the women she worked with were in their sixties. They would occasionally have dinner with the parents of one of Ava’s playmates, but if they were being honest, all they had in common were their kids.