by Suzan Colon
Daniel unzips my peach-hued silk dress, a designer souvenir from my days of working at a fashion magazine before I was laid off. He caresses it off my shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. He unhooks my bra, his maple syrup-colored eyes locked with mine and filled with love. I put my hands on his shoulders for balance as he pulls off my panties. We kiss as he takes off his clothes with a lot less care than he removes mine, and then we’re on my bed, our mouths sensual and slow, our hands hungry but taking their time.
I know how this will feel, how Daniel will kiss me as he holds my body against his, how we’ll touch each other. Somewhere along the way there will be a giggle as one of us makes an intimate joke whose origin we can’t even remember. Our lovemaking is familiar and comforting. I always take that as a sign that our love will withstand time. I know it will. It has to.
Daniel breaks away from me. “Katy . . . oh, my sweetheart, why are you crying?”
I felt it coming, a combination of love and hope that started in my chest and rose up. The hope is the part that hurts. I hate that I have to hope. “It’s just,” I sniffle, “I love you, Daniel.”
“I love you too, Katy. I love you so much.” He pulls me closer, the two of us becoming one.
“DID YOU HAVE a nice birthday?” Daniel asks.
I don’t lift my head from his chest, where the beating of his heart drowns out the ticking of my antique Kit-Kat clock, its rhinestone eyes and tail moving back and forth in a way that should be cute but is becoming ominous. Twenty to midnight. “I did,” I tell him, my throat tight.
Daniel kisses the top of my head. “Well, it’s not over yet.”
Fireworks! Suddenly that was the best sex we’ve ever had because it’s the last time we had sex before we got engaged. My tiny apartment is a palace, the kitty clock is a treasure, that garbage truck outside is music. It’s not over yet!
Daniel gently extracts himself from my arms and walks over to his messenger bag in my hallway. I regard his naked form, lean and wiry-muscular, and think he is the cutest he’s ever been. He will only be cuter when he’s wearing a wedding tux. Or maybe a vintage suit—that would go better with his rock n’ roll aesthetic. I’m straining to see what he’s holding, but he quickly puts it behind his back. “No way, close your eyes!” he says.
I do, and my teeth ache from grinning. Oh me of little faith. How could I have doubted my Daniel, my sweet boyfriend, my moments-away fiancé? He is going to propose. He is going to marry me. And I will love him ’til the day I die, which might be only seconds away because I may combust from joy.
I feel Daniel sit back on my bed. “No peeking,” he admonishes. “Hold out your hands.”
Uh, shouldn’t he be taking one of my hands? Like, the left one, which I was already holding out? I should cut him some slack. It’s his first proposal. In fact, this is the first big, long-term relationship for both of us. The way he’s doing this only makes the story cuter.
I hold out both my hands. My face hurts from squinting my eyes shut tightly and smiling so wide. Then Daniel places something in my palms and says, “Happy birthday, Katy.”
My heart thuds, I open my eyes, and—it’s a jewelry box!
It’s . . . kind of a large jewelry box. Not huge, but definitely more velvet-covered real estate than an engagement ring would need. Confused, I keep my happy face on as I open the lid. The look crashes and burns when I see what’s inside.
A watch.
Tiny diamonds wink mockingly at me from each number on the mother-of-pearl face that tells me it’s ten minutes to midnight. It’s a beautiful watch, probably expensive, and definitely the worst gift Daniel could possibly have given me. It’s so mind-numbingly wrong I can barely wrap my brain around it: The man I want to marry has given a watch to me, a woman who feels like her marriage-and-baby clock is ticking.
Ding. Time’s up.
Daniel’s looking at me with a big schmoopie smile, waiting for approval like a loyal dog that’s just performed an excellent trick. And I could still perform the trick I’ve perfected over the years, which is quietly accepting everything, even though I want more. I can squeal It’s gorgeous! put it on, make love with him again. And wait until tomorrow morning, after he leaves to go back to his apartment, to cry.
“Well? What do you think?” He’s still beaming at me.
“Daniel,” I sigh, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s . . . it’s beautiful.”
But when I close the box, he looks at me with confusion. “Katy, what’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
The truth and I are not friends. We haven’t been on speaking terms for years, not since the time I said something honest and horrible to someone I loved more than anyone in the world. Once it was out I couldn’t take it back, and one day it was too late to try. But the truth, having been repressed for too long, comes flying out of my mouth. “I was hoping for an engagement ring.”
“An engagement ring?” Daniel repeats.
He says it like this is so totally shocking that I get angry fast. “Yes, an engagement ring,” I repeat. “As in, you asking me to marry you and me jumping up and down and saying ‘Yes! Yes, of course I’ll marry you, Daniel North!’ As in us having kids and spending the rest of our lives together.”
Part of me hears this as though I’m standing across the room, and if I were, I’d be frantically mouthing Katy, no! Stop talking, you’ll ruin everything again! But the words are out, and I can’t put them back.
There is a pause that makes me sick to my stomach, still too full of birthday tiramisu and nerves. Then Daniel looks away from me, his hair falling like a curtain to shield his eyes. “Jeez, I’m sorry I didn’t get the script. I thought the party and the cake and the champagne and the love and all that was going to be acceptable. If I’d known—”
“If you’d known?” I’m incredulous. “You know how I feel about you!”
“And I thought you knew how I feel about you,” he shoots back before climbing off my bed. He grabs his grey boxer briefs off the floor and puts them on hastily. “Katy, where is this coming from all of a sudden?”
“Five years together isn’t all of a sudden.” I gather up the sheet in front of me because I feel more than naked. I feel bare, like I’m peeling my own skin off.
“Five amazing years,” Daniel counters, “five years of me thinking everything’s the best it could ever be! You never said anything about wanting to get married, Katy.”
“I shouldn’t have had to.” I can’t look at him because this sounds weak, even to me. “I just thought it would happen.”
He blinks at me. “After everything I’ve told you about my parents’ horrible marriage and their even worse divorce. Years of them arguing, my college fund freakin’ devoured by their lawyers’ fees, them tossing me back and forth across the country with every custody battle. Katy, you knew all of that, and you still figured I’d be up for marriage and kids?”
“Well, why not? My parents divorced, and I’m up for a do-over.”
Daniel is slowly shaking his head. “You didn’t go through what I did. And I told you I’d never put a kid through that either.” He starts picking his clothes up off the floor and putting them on haphazardly.
I climb off the bed, itchy from the desperation that’s starting to crawl all over me. I shouldn’t have told him the truth, or I should have found a way to ease into the subject. Now everything’s spinning out of control too fast. I hold the sheet around my body, lifting it to keep from tripping on it. The white fabric billows around me, a little girl’s make-believe wedding dress. “Daniel, we can do better. We’re not your parents or mine.”
He won’t look at me. “Right. Your parents may not have been playing Death By Divorce like my folks with me as the chew-toy in the middle, but your mom hated your dad for years and years after he left you.”
I swallow the sting of the words He left you. Daniel looks immediately repentant, knowing how talk of my father’s dep
arture hurts. “Katy, I’d never leave you that way. You know that. This is the best relationship I’ve ever had. We’re amazing together.”
“We’re not really together,” I say carefully, “And it’s the only relationship you’ve ever had.”
“That’s another thing,” Daniel says, a pleading tone in his voice. “This is my first serious relationship. And the only one I ever want to be in,” he adds, his eyes going all buttery at me. “But Katy, I can’t picture getting married and becoming a dad now. I’m only twenty-seven.”
I hardly felt the three years of difference in our ages when Daniel and I met, him a sweet twenty-two, me a not-exactly-worldly twenty-five. But now, at thirty, I feel like I’m looking at him from across an ocean. Was I ready to settle down at his age?
I know the answer in my bones. “Daniel, I want to start a family. You know how long it took my mother to have me and my sister to have Celia. And that was with help.”
“There’s no guarantee you’d have trouble getting pregnant,” he mumbles nervously.
“I will if you’re putting off having kids or don’t want them at all.” I stop when he clutches his head, looking like I’m battering him. “Daniel,” I say, trying to find words that aren’t sharp, that won’t harm either of us. “I love you. I want to be with you.”
“And I want to be with you,” he says, framing my face with his hands. “Always, Katy. Always.” He leans forward to kiss me.
Before he can, I say it. “Then let’s get married.”
Daniel stops. I can feel his defeated exhalation on my chest. His hands slowly fall away from my face, and he takes a step away, looking at me like he doesn’t know me, and I have to say I don’t know this truth-spitting woman too well either. He finds his T-shirt and pulls it on. “Katy, let me make sure I understand you now, because apparently I’ve been a total freakin’ idiot for the past five years.”
I sigh with pain for him. He’s not exactly the most confident man in the world to begin with, and this isn’t helping. “Daniel, you’re not an idiot. Okay, I didn’t say anything. I thought this would, I don’t know, happen organically.”
“But it didn’t, because I thought you understood me.”
“I do understand you. I understand you don’t think you’re good enough for almost anything. Not to be a husband or the great, caring father you would be, or to be a record producer instead of just an assistant engineer, like you’ve been since you started working at the studio years ago.”
“I’m definitely not good enough for that yet,” he murmurs.
“Yes, you are! Daniel, why can’t you see yourself the way I do?”
“I could say the same to you,” he counters. “I always told you to write more, like you wanted to, instead of spending all your time doing proofreading jobs. I was the one who told you to blog for Now News. And I’ve been saying for ages that you have a book in you, and you always say, ‘Some day.’”
“I will write a book some day!” I try to ignore the ream of blank paper Daniel gave me that’s been sitting by my desk for years. “And that is so not the point. Can’t you see how much I love you?”
His earthy eyes finally meet mine. “And again, I could say the same to you. Katy, if we love each other, can’t we compromise?”
Oh, great. The chess player has shown up for negotiations. “Define ‘compromise’,” I say, folding my arms.
“Move in together,” he says. “See how we do living together, day in, day out.”
It’s a sideways maneuver, but I see where it’s going. We’ll live together, everything will be fine for a while, but when I bring up the subject of marriage again, he’ll give me the classic argument: If it ain’t broke, why fix it? “No,” I say. “I want to get engaged and set a date. Then I’ll move in, we’ll get married, and we can start working on having kids.” There. The plan is simple. And, from the look on Daniel’s face, about as subtle as a baseball bat.
“That’s your idea of a compromise?” he says.
I sigh and sit back on the bed. “Daniel, we could move in together, but you know I hog the blankets, and I know you never screw the caps on anything.” I’m starting to feel drained. “What are we waiting for?”
He looks equally exhausted. “Maybe for both of us to be ready?”
“I’m afraid you’re never going to be ready, Daniel,” I state. “That’s why I had to set a deadline. I can’t wait for my life to begin anymore. I can’t spend another year wondering when, or if, you’re going to decide that I’m the one.”
“Katy, of course you’re the one.” Then his face falls. “Wait, what deadline? Katy, what are you saying?”
“I—” I have to force the words out. “I want to marry you, Daniel. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and for you to be the father of my children. But if you won’t do this with me . . . I have to move on.”
Daniel’s eyes cloud over. “A deadline. And I’m guessing that’s tonight.” He nods and looks at the watch he gave me, still in the box. “So technically, I already blew it. And it doesn’t matter that I love you and that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, too. I either propose to you now, or you’ll go find someone who will.”
“Oh, Daniel, don’t make it sound like—”
“So I’m not special at all,” he says, his voice breaking as he picks up his jeans off the floor. “It’s not, ‘I want to be with you, Daniel, so we’ll figure this out.’ It’s, ‘I want to get married and have kids now, and if you’re not ready, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.’ I get it, Katy.”
“No!” I jump up and go to him. “Damn it, I want to marry you!”
“That’s not what it sounds like,” he says, grabbing his jacket and thrusting his arms through the sleeves. “It just sounds like you have an agenda and your deadline.” He looks up at me as he pulls on his sneakers, not even bothering to put on his socks, which he shoves in his jacket pocket. “I’m sorry I wasted so much of your time,” he snaps, but his harsh tone doesn’t match with the hurt pooling in his eyes.
I stand there, mute, realizing that everything has gone so horribly wrong, not knowing where, not knowing what to say as Daniel gives me one last look, or how to keep him from walking out the door and out of my life.
Forever.
2.
THEORETICALLY, I’VE done the right thing by letting Daniel go if he won’t commit. But right now, doing the right thing feels like I just got hit by the breakup truck. And dragged a few miles. I haven’t sobbed like this since my dad died, so hard that I can’t even call my sister Bethany yet, and she made me swear to call her at midnight to share what we’d both thought would be the good news. Well, she didn’t make me swear to call her with the bad news.
Crying hard into my pillow, curled up on my double bed where just an hour ago Daniel and I made love—for the last time, a thought that makes me sob harder—my life feels shrunken without him, and it wasn’t exactly huge to begin with. My family is just me, Mom, and my sister, who increased our little clan by two when she married her high school sweetheart, Ray, and had my niece, Celia, the world’s most adorable kid, at least until I have a baby. Looks like she’s going to hold that title for a while longer.
And I guess I won’t be leaving this tiny apartment to live with Daniel. I moved in here when I got laid off from the biggest magazine in the country, the one for women who live their lives to the fullest. I lived vicariously through their life-changing adventures in my job as assistant researcher until I was downsized out, another statistic who suddenly couldn’t afford Manhattan rent. I didn’t want to move in with Daniel just to save money, preferring romance to finance, and besides he’d already told his roommate he could renew for another year. But I’d always figured my tiny cocoon would be temporary.
From my bed, which is at the far end of a short space, I can see my whole world. My small antique desk and chair, where I thought I’d become a good writer. My dining table with two mismatched vintage chairs, my loveseat-mas
querading-as-a-couch, my coffee table that fits two plates and coffee cups.
Above my bed, a constellation of photos smiles down at me. There are a lot of photos, but they’re of the same people. My sister and her family, my parents, both together and apart, and me with Daniel. My small world. I’ve got friends, but the two people I’m closest with are Daniel and my sister, and now one of them is gone. Actually, now both of them are gone.
Bethany and I used to hang out constantly and talk every day, sometimes being on the phone together for an hour before we hung out. Our sign off was, “I’d better get going, or I’m going to be late to meet you.” Two years ago, Bethany’s husband, Ray, got transferred to Santa Monica, not far from Long Beach, where our father moved after Mom divorced him. I was thirteen and Bethany was nine, and we stuck a pin in the heart of his new city, which was two whole feet away from New York on our poster-sized map, and wrote “Daddy.” Pathetic, I know, but we were just kids.
Dad was so far away. Bethany is so far away. My mother has always been emotionally distant. And even though Daniel’s not technically that far from me, just a few trains between Jersey City and Brooklyn, the distance between us now seems incalculable. I’m the girl on the moon, alone.
I used to go out to California to visit Bethany almost every other month until I got laid off. Unemployment checks and sporadic freelance assignments don’t buy many plane tickets, and Bethany’s so busy being a mom that we don’t talk as much as we used to. I don’t know if I’ve ever needed to talk to her as much as I do now. Besides, the only other person I could talk to about this situation is my mother, and if I hear her say, “I told you so,” I may hurl myself out the window. And I live on the ground floor, so that’s not going to do much. I speed-dial my sister’s number, my agony making each ring hellishly long.
