The Engagements

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  Good Lord, she needed a cocktail.

  The copy read, A man who is his own man is my love. Strong and proud and sure. And now he’s going to share his life with me. A diamond is forever.

  “I should probably warn you that De Beers is a conservative client,” Frances said. “They have strict rules. No religion in the advertising. Men and women can never be—That is, nothing at all can suggest—touching.”

  “I know,” Deanne said. “Although Jerry Siano says we can push the envelope, just a bit.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yes. These have already been approved.”

  “I see.” She tried not to show her surprise. “Still, it’s important to remember your objective. In this case, it’s to maintain the DER tradition while convincing consumers that a more unique, higher-priced DER is the most expressive way to acknowledge their love and commitment. DER stands for ‘diamond engagement ring,’ by the way.”

  “I know. Well, here, have a look at this one. It’s for Seventeen, Vogue, and Life.”

  Frances lifted the page up to the lamp.

  The Prince or the Cowboy or the somebody you never told anybody about is suddenly real. And he wants to marry you. A diamond is forever.

  It wasn’t half bad.

  “You’re talented,” she said, even as it pained her to do so.

  “Thanks. Now, this is my favorite. It’s a photo of Lucy Saroyan as a child, meshed with a photo of her as an adult. Both were taken by Richard Avedon. I’m still tweaking the copy, but I’m thinking of something along the lines of A part of every woman is the little girl who dreamed about the day someone would find her and love her and give her a ring. A diamond is forever.”

  “Who is Lucy Saroyan?” Frances asked.

  “The actress,” Deanne said, as if it should be obvious. “Her father won the Pulitzer Prize. Her mother is married to Walter Matthau. And her brother is a poet. He writes those one-word poems.”

  Frances frowned. “My dear, there is no such thing as a one-word poem.”

  “The last thing I wanted to show you is a slight twist on your line. Something for that ever-growing group of women who don’t want to get engaged. But maybe they’ll buy diamonds for themselves. A Diamond Is For Now. What do you think?”

  “I’ve already seen that one.”

  “Oh. All right then.”

  “You should be very proud of yourself,” Frances said, not sure why she was saying it. “How are you getting on here? So many changes coming up.”

  “I’m thrilled to be back in New York,” Deanne said. “When I first came to Ayer Philadelphia, I felt I’d been transported to the Middle Ages.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The boutique agency I used to work for was based out of the penthouse at the Plaza Hotel,” she said. “Then I come to Ayer. It’s just so antiquated. The fact that there’s no conversation or collaboration between art and copy, for example. The two departments aren’t even on the same floor. This business where you get a memorandum from some account executive explaining what an ad calls for: This is your authority, to create an ad that conveys blah blah blah, to run in such-and-such publications. It’s so stiff. No one does it like that anymore. Dunning says this company is run like a fine clock, which is anathema to the creative process.”

  Frances raised an eyebrow. “Dunning?”

  “Robert Dunning. The head of creative in New York.”

  “Yes. I know who he is.”

  She called him Dunning. Frances wondered if they were an item, or if this was just the way people talked nowadays.

  “And don’t even get me started on the way they treat women around here,” Deanne went on. “They’re making me a vice president. I’m not supposed to tell anyone yet, but they’ll announce it soon. Nineteen sixty-eight, and they’re just getting around to their first female VP on the creative side.”

  Frances felt shaken. In her day, not only were there no women in positions like that, she had never even dreamed that there ought to be.

  This girl was entirely unapologetic. Of course, Frances herself might have been the same way, had she ever been given the chance.

  “I don’t know how you survived it the way it was back then,” Deanne said. “I would have lost my mind.”

  Part Three

  1972

  The grandfather clock struck twelve-thirty.

  Teddy would arrive for lunch soon, and Evelyn still had plenty to do.

  Gerald had left the TV on in the den when he went upstairs to shower. Through the open kitchen door, Evelyn could hear strains of game-show applause, followed by the more somber tones of the midday news. As she chopped the celery, she made out the words Saigon, Capitol building, cold front coming, annual Halloween parade.

  She went toward the set to turn it off, pausing for a moment while a reporter announced that after weeks of tiptoeing around the idea, George McGovern had now come right out and said that he believed President Nixon was personally involved in the Watergate affair.

  “But,” the newsman said, “the Watergate scandal is a ho-hum for most of the people. Politics as usual, they say.”

  “Quite right,” Evelyn said. There were far more serious things to worry about.

  She twisted the knob until it gave a satisfying click, and the picture melted into itself.

  In just the last few years, there had been so much unrest, so many attempts to alter the status quo: civil rights, women’s rights, even homosexuals’ rights. It was a different world, and it made an old person feel older. She was pleased when the schools desegregated. That was an important step. But now it was legal everywhere in America for blacks and whites to intermarry. Evelyn wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  There was even a black woman running for president. Gerald said she wasn’t serious, but Evelyn thought perhaps she was. Her friend Ruthie had invited her to a consciousness-raising meeting, where they talked about campaigning for Shirley Chisholm. The women there also discussed a new best-selling book called Open Marriage, with a chapter all about how couples might choose to accept affairs as part of a healthy relationship. They had created words, like chairperson and Ms., which to Evelyn’s mind signaled a whole new order.

  Ruthie took it all lightly—she was just keeping up with the young people. She didn’t know what she really thought about half of what they preached.

  “At least it’s something to talk about besides that awful war,” she said.

  Evelyn supposed some of the changes were very good news. But she never went to another one of those meetings. Something about it frightened her.

  It was probably the book that upset her most.

  “Open marriage,” she said to Gerald that night. “No wonder our son has no morals, when this is the world we’re living in.”

  She thought of it again now, even as she knew she shouldn’t let herself get this way. If she focused on Teddy’s bad traits, she’d be boiling by the time he arrived. She tried to imagine him as a baby, wrapped in a blue blanket, coming home from the hospital. But it was no use. She was angrier than she had ever been. She thought of what Julie said: he had actually asked her for a divorce.

  Evelyn imagined turning him away when he came to the door later today, but she knew she’d never go through with it.

  She reminded herself that she hadn’t always done what her parents wanted either, and things had turned out all right. But of course that had been different. After Nathaniel died, her mother and father insisted that she come home to New York, but Evelyn refused. All she had left of him was Boston. The restaurants where they had eaten dinner, the dance halls where they had laughed and perspired on summer nights. Eventually, she returned to work, where her students called her Mrs. Davis. Each time, the sound of the words made her heart seize up with a mixture of happiness and sorrow. The children’s presence brought her pleasure, yet served to remind her that she would never have children of her own.

  Gerald went back to Chicago. She missed their talks, and the way he cou
ld make her laugh on even the dreariest of days. When she spoke to normal people, it was as if she were on a time delay—she couldn’t keep up with a simple conversation, couldn’t remember what they had said a minute earlier. There was a group of single girls who taught at the same school she did, most of them a bit younger than her. They went out bowling on Friday nights and always invited Evelyn along. She never accepted their invitations. She was a married woman, after all. And it was easier to be alone.

  A few months after the funeral, Gerald wrote to say that he was moving back to Boston. It was his hometown, so Evelyn didn’t think much of the news, other than that she was pleased. His father’s company was run out of Park Square, and she assumed that Gerald would work there. But when they met for supper on his first night in town, he told her that he had given his father notice. His dad was furious, but Gerald said that he couldn’t get Nathaniel out of his head, talking about the importance of being a self-made man. And so, rather than continuing to follow in his father’s footsteps in the banking world, Gerald had taken a job with an insurance company. He’d have to start from the bottom, which thrilled him, in a way. He hoped that now he might make friends at work. Of course, his inheritance meant that he wasn’t self-made, and he knew it, but still it seemed a noble pursuit to at least try to walk his own path. Evelyn knew Nathaniel would have been proud to know he had made such an impact.

  She thought perhaps Gerald was trying to improve himself in other ways, too. He looked a bit healthier, and he only drank one gin and tonic all night.

  Like Evelyn, he worried about how Nathaniel’s mother would get on. He had sent her enough money, he said, to keep her going for a year. (He continued to do so every year until she died.) Evelyn tried to visit her mother-in-law once a month in Pittsburgh, though she dreaded those weekends. The house felt heavy and dark, and no one ever mentioned Nathaniel by name. She couldn’t tell if they welcomed her presence or if she was nothing but a painful reminder.

  With Gerald, it was different. They cried, but they also spoke of Nathaniel with happiness and laughter, telling one another their favorite stories, even when they both knew the endings. She learned things about Nathaniel she had never known. There were private moments that existed between close friends, things a man wouldn’t even tell his best girl. But now Gerald told her. It delighted her to find that there were still parts of Nathaniel she had yet to discover. It was like realizing that your favorite novel had four extra chapters you’d somehow never noticed before. Gerald understood this, and Evelyn could not imagine a more precious gift.

  She had never spent any time alone with Gerald in the past. Away from Nathaniel he seemed softer, more earnest. He told her that he’d been shy as a boy, and when she dismissed this with a laugh, he said, “My hand to God, it’s true. I overcompensated by becoming the class clown.”

  Despite his pedigree, he preferred simple pleasures. He loved unfussy food, and baseball games. He hated the ballet. He didn’t see the point in novels. He read only newspapers, which he said were stranger and sadder and funnier than fiction anyway.

  On Sunday nights, he sometimes invited her along to dinner at his parents’ stately home in Wellesley. Evelyn’s own parents were relatively wealthy, but they were paupers compared to Gerald’s. She felt a bit intimidated, but tried not to show it. She liked the way that Gerald was fully himself, making corny jokes, even as his mother furrowed her brow as if he were speaking a foreign language and a butler stood stiffly by his side, offering dessert wine.

  No one else could cheer her like he could. It was almost embarrassing how many times Gerald had caught her in the middle of a pity party: sobbing into a handkerchief at home, listening to “Someone to Watch Over Me” on the record player.

  “Let’s go out, kid,” he’d say, and they would.

  They spent almost all of their free time together. It was different, spending evenings with a man who never had to think about money. Gerald suggested Locke-Ober for dinner, while Nathaniel would have taken her to the Wursthaus. Evelyn felt it was almost a betrayal of Nathaniel, and so she’d tell Gerald that she much preferred a hamburger to filet mignon.

  One winter afternoon, they walked through the Public Garden in the snow, and talked about how excited Nathaniel would have been to see Franklin Roosevelt elected president. Gerald mentioned that he had seen Roosevelt give a speech in New York, back when he was dating Fran. It made Evelyn think of something that had crossed her mind now and then; since Nathaniel died, she hadn’t known Gerald to go on a single date. She wondered if perhaps she was to blame.

  “I don’t think I would have made it this far without your friendship,” she said. “Thank you, Gerald. It’s just that I hope I’m not monopolizing too much of your time.”

  “Impossible.”

  “But truly. You came to Boston to start a new career and make friends and meet someone wonderful. Aren’t I keeping you from all that?”

  He looked surprised. “I came back here for you.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Just what I said.”

  “I thought you came back for a job.”

  “There were plenty of jobs in Chicago,” he said with a shrug. “But I promised Nathaniel I’d take care of you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Plus, I like you, kid.”

  She smiled weakly, unsure what to say next.

  “Do you want to stop on Newbury Street for a hot chocolate?” he asked, saving her from having to say anything at all.

  It was a few months later, springtime, on the night they went to the Parker House for dinner. Nathaniel had been dead for one year, one week, and two days—she still kept count every morning when she woke. While they ate, she cried into her lobster thermidor. She told Gerald she could no longer remember the way Nathaniel smelled, or the exact tone of his voice when he laughed. Gerald was understanding, telling her that he knew just what she meant. Sometimes he’d forget the name of a song or a restaurant they had liked in college, and his first inclination would be to call Nathaniel up to see if he remembered.

  When the waiter asked if they wanted dessert, Gerald suggested that they share something. She nodded.

  “The sundae,” Gerald told the waiter, just as Evelyn said, “The Boston cream pie.”

  They laughed.

  “Well?” Gerald asked the man. “Care to be the tiebreaker?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to go with your wife’s pick,” the waiter said. “The pie is our specialty.”

  After he walked away, they sat in silence for a moment.

  “Oh jeez,” Gerald said.

  “It was an honest mistake.” She lifted her left hand, where her little emerald glistened. “I’m still wearing this. I suppose I always will. Do you think you’re still considered a spinster if your husband is dead?”

  “I think it would be impossible for anyone to mistake you for a spinster, whatever the circumstances.”

  She smiled. “I feel selfish saying this, but I’m jealous of other women. The ones who get to go on dates, the ones who get to have babies, and weddings. I feel half alive, Gerald. I’m not a part of it anymore.”

  “You will be,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  A month or two earlier, she would have hated him for saying so, but he likely wouldn’t have said it then. As usual, she felt grateful for his presence in her life.

  After dessert, they went out to the street. It was a warm evening, and Evelyn thought she might like to go somewhere for a nightcap. She started to ask Gerald if he felt like it, but stopped when she saw him staring at her with a strange expression on his face.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “That waiter. He thought we were married.”

  “Oh Gerald, don’t worry about that.”

  “I’m not worried. I liked him thinking it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He spoke in a rush. “Isn’t it obvious, Evelyn? I’m crazy about you.”

  “Don’t say that.”
/>   “But I thought—”

  “You thought what? Just because I said I’m lonely, you’ve got to swoop in? You told Nathaniel you’d take care of me, and that means taking pity on me?”

  He frowned. “Pity? Evie, I have carried a torch for you since the day we met.”

  “Stop that,” she said.

  “You were wearing a red bathing suit, and you had a big wet strand of hair stuck to your cheek.”

  “I did?”

  “You were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I wanted to ask you to dinner, but Nathaniel got to it first. I was mad about that in the beginning, to tell you the truth. But once I got to know you, I realized you weren’t made for the likes of me anyway. You were out of my league, and squarely in his.”

  “Don’t be so defeatist.”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

  Evelyn didn’t know what to say.

  “I think that’s why he was always so worried about me finding the right girl,” Gerald said. “He felt guilty, because he knew I had my heart set on you, even though I knew you’d never be mine.”

  “I’ve got to go,” she said, just as a taxi pulled to the curb.

  For a week, they didn’t meet or speak. She missed Gerald. She’d laugh, thinking of a joke he had told. She would read something interesting and want to tell him straightaway.

  When she came home from church the following Sunday, he was sitting on her stoop. She felt instantly full of joy.

  “Feel like a walk?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Sure.”

  They strolled along the cobblestone streets, trading stories about their weeks. Neither of them mentioned what he had said, and she found with some surprise that she wished he would. They went on this way for a couple months longer. Every time Evelyn thought of their situation, she felt perplexed. She wanted Gerald to kiss her, but she couldn’t say why.

  Finally, on a sweltering night in July, she kissed him. There was a spark there, which she never would have believed if you’d told her five years prior, or even five months.