Limits

by Steph Campbell

“And what do you mean by that? What could you possibly gain from marrying me? You’re beautiful and bright and don’t need to be in a joke of a marriage, tied to me—forever, Genevieve.” And then his entire face changes. His eyes go dark, his mouth is hard and tight. There’s something fierce in his expression, something that makes me draw a quick breath in and hold it in my lungs. “Because that’s what I want my marriage to be whenever it happens. Forever.”

  I push away from the table and sigh.

  “What?” Adam asks, the intense expression loosened with a grin. “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

  I crack a smile. “You don’t really have many choices here, Adam. You can marry me, go back home…or what? Any other options that I don’t know about?”

  Our waitress sets the toast in front of us, but neither Adam nor I move toward our plates.

  “No.” He shrugs. “But that doesn’t mean that this is a viable option.”

  I square my shoulders and straighten my back. I realize this may not be the most rational solution, but it’s a damn workable one. One that isn’t all that weird. “I’m not going into this thinking of it as a joke, Adam. In fact, my parents talked to me this fall about meeting men. You know. Um, meeting men they…would help me choose.”

  Now is not the time for me to mention that I was completely horrified and screamed that I would never, ever do that, that there was no way I’d let them arrange something that huge. My point is that plenty of smart, rational people still have arranged marriages, and no one bats an eyelash.

  Well, very few people bat their eyelashes.

  Er, none of the Jewish parents or grandparents bat their eyelashes, anyway.

  “Are you talking about using a Shadchan?” I’m not sure if he thinks the idea is hilarious or horrifying.

  “Of course not,” I huff, though Miriam Spektor has arranged a half dozen totally happy marriages in our synagogue, and nobody laughs about her skills. Lydia was next on her list, before her partner’s divorce helped her snag a guy all on her own. “This isn’t Fiddler on the Roof.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Anyway, you only need a Shadchan if you can’t find someone on your own. We’ve already met.”

  Adam sits back, arms crossed and stares at me. “Genevieve, you could have anyone you wanted. Even if you were going to go ahead with an arranged marriage, you’d have folders full of applicants. You could pick and choose, not get stuck with some washed-up loser with too many degrees and no way to support you.” A flash of embarrassment clouds his eyes.

  I take a breath, get my thoughts under control, and try hard not to ramble.

  “Adam. If I could choose a husband, I’d choose someone kind. Someone hard-working. Someone smart and funny and…um…” I gesture at him. He raises one eyebrow high. “Handsome!” I wind up yelling. I lower my voice and ignore the way his eyes widen in…shock? Humor? Terror? “I would choose someone like you. I’d be lucky to have the chance to choose someone like you. And I will go into it like I go into everything: I’ll give it my all, and I won’t quit when things get hard.”

  “You’re not going into it like anything because it’s not happening. I’m not going to let you ruin your life because I bet my chances on a stupid thesis project that didn’t wind up working out.” He runs a hand over his face.

  “You aren’t ‘letting’ me, Adam. I’m not a child. I want to. I want to help you if I can. And it would honestly help me, too. I know you think I’m just a spoiled brat, but it’s not like that. I—”

  “Gen,” he says. He reaches across the table and covers my hands with his, finally, and they’re as strong and warm as always. These are definitely hands I can hold for a lifetime. “I don’t think you’re a spoiled brat. I really don’t. I think you’re pretty damn amazing. But marriage? There are laws against this kind of stuff. You could get in a lot of trouble. With the government.”

  I wave my hand around at him, brushing off his threats of danger and doom. “Only if it weren’t for real. We can make this real, Adam. I know we don’t know each other all that well, but we could get to. I’m pretty adorable, if I do say so myself.” I catch his eye and he smirks. Then he smiles. Then he full on laughs.

  I know I’m winning my argument and it feels amazing.

  “My place is a dump, Genevieve. Where would we live? I make next to no money. I have nothing to offer you.”

  “You’d be saving me just as much as I’d be saving you,” I say lightly and look away from him. I don’t know how to convey to Adam what’s got my insides twisted into knots and the loneliness that somehow feels like my only company lately.

  I look up from the sludge in my coffee cup and meet his eyes again.

  “Marry me, Adam. Today. Don’t think about. Don’t analyze even angle. Let’s just get in your car and go. There’s nothing and no one stopping us, and we’ve already agreed you don’t have any other options to stay in the country. You can sit here and argue with me all day, but I promise I’ll wear you down. Better to just quit now, pay the waitress and Google Map the Justice of the Peace because you and me? We’re going to get married.”

  Adam looks up, his eyes blazing, and I hold my breath and cross my fingers under the table. Suddenly he nods and reaches for his wallet.

  “I’m meeting with your parents first. And I’m not taking you to Justice of the Peace, Genevieve. If we’re going to do this, it will be in front of your family and friends. I have some money set aside. I’m happy to spend it on a real wedding.”

  I lean over and kiss him softly on the lips before he can say anything else or change his mind. It’s just a celebratory kiss, just a brush of the lips. At first.

  But then his hand comes behind my neck and pulls me closer. His lips are hot and quick, and his tongue sweeps the outside of my lips, then teases inside and tangles slowly with mine. My mind skips and jumps, sending faulty signals to every part of my body. My heart flutters and I feel a damp, spreading heat between my legs. I lick back at him, press forward with urgency to feel the hot slide of his tongue and the gentle press of his mouth for another perfect second. When he pulls away, his eyes are hot and wild.

  “Do you always get your way?” he asks, his words dragged out on ragged breaths.

  “Always.” I level a firm look across the table, and his smile is pure admiration.

  Victory!

  8 ADAM

  “Are you ready to go inside?”

  I run my thumb along her knuckles as I hold her sweaty palm against mine. Genevieve looks up at me, her pupils so huge, her gray eyes look black. I realize for the first time that I’ve seen her sad and angry and frustrated, but I’ve never really seen her scared. The other night, at the observatory, was probably the closest we’d come before. But even then, she looked more furious and worried than anything else: her eyes were too busy trying to order me down off the ledge to register any true fear.

  But now? Those eyes belong to someone who’s afraid, and it surprises me how deep the look cuts at me. How much I want to be the one who takes that fear away.

  “I’m ready,” she says. Her voice is an insecure murmur so soft, I don’t even see her lips move when the words come out.

  “Because we can go, we can do this another time,” I say it, but I don’t really mean it. We’re short on time as it is. I feel like a tool. Even if this was Genevieve’s idea, it’s my fault. And now she’s in this crazy situation and about to have to go lay it all out to her family over Sunday dinner.

  “Let’s just get it over with,” she says, taking a small step closer to the door.

  “Genevieve?” I slide my hand up her forearm and pull her toward me. “We don’t have to do this. Any of it. We can call off the entire thing right now. You just say the word.”

  She stares up at me, unblinking. A calmness takes over her features, they soften.

  “Let’s do this.” She turns the brass knob with a confidence I think she might be faking.

  As soon as the front door opens, the booming
noise of voices and laughter and the amazing smells of home-cooked food waft out. It should calm my nerves a little, but, instead, it has the opposite effect.

  I’m about to bust into this happy family gathering and blow it all to hell. Genevieve senses my hesitation as I linger in the doorway, and she links her fingers through mine.

  “Hey, all!” she calls, as we enter the cramped living room. Every surface is covered in some tchotchke, every inch of wall space has a photograph of a smiling kid or a wedding or someone in shiny graduation cap. It’s a far cry from my home in Tel Aviv. Dad got rid of most of the excess when Mom died. There are a few pictures of me here and there, but they stop right around when I’m nine, because that was the last year someone cared enough to hang a picture of me up. So the apartment I’ve lived in my entire life is like a cross between a museum and a time capsule. Nothing like the Rodriguez house, which is lived-in in the best way possible. It feels like a home.

  “Genevieve, we were waiting to eat—” The woman in the kitchen’s voice falters when she sees me, holding Genevieve’s hand. “You brought a guest!” A slow smile creeps across her face, and I feel knee-buckling relief wash over me.

  “I did. This is Adam. Adam, my mom, Dinah,” she says, pointing to the woman at the stove. “My sister Lydia.”

  Lydia is already seated at the table and the smug look on her face is exactly the way Genevieve described it. She looks one-hundred-percent unimpressed with me. “I didn’t know we could bring dates, I would have brought someone.”

  The beach bum jumps out of nowhere and gives Lydia a quick, hard noogie that tangles all her perfect hair on one side of her head. It almost makes me like him for a single second.

  “Deo! Ass! I just got my hair blown out!” She screeches like a spoiled brat and runs her hands over her hair, trying without much success to get it lie flat again.

  Deo blows on his knuckles. “Don’t say knucklehead things, and you won’t feel the wrath of these knuckles of pain. You know these shindigs are always open invite. That’s why I’ve been showing up to get my grub-on for years.”

  “That’s Deo, Adam. He’s a friend of the family,” Genevieve says pointedly, shooting me a warning look. I smile because that’s what she expects, but I kind of hate the way she’s laughing at the way he clowns around with her family. It’s not something I’m ever going to be good at. Not at all: I’m not a natural joker, and big, loving families make me feel like some orphan pressing his nose to a window he’s not supposed to be looking through. “Where’s Whit?” she asks, and I notice the way her shoulders tighten when she says Whit’s name.

  Why does the mention of Deo’s wife still bother Genevieve so much?

  Deo plops down in his chair and leans it way back. It’s an impolite thing to do at a dining table, but who the hell am I to judge anything? I’m the asshole barging into this whole scene, about to marry this much-loved girl and possibly ruin her life in the process. That’s a hell of a lot worse than some rough manners.

  “Had to work. Told her I’d bring home leftovers.” Deo shrugs and rubs his stomach. “I did warn her that I can’t promise there will be any leftovers if Mrs. R is making her wild mushroom mole enchiladas. But Whit knows the rules: you snooze, you lose.”

  I know there has to be something redeemable about this guy for Genevieve to have had her heart so crushed when he fell for someone else, but I really don’t get it.

  “My brothers, Cohen and Enzo, Cohen’s fiancé, Maren, my sister Cece, and my dad.” Genevieve makes introductions around the room, and I look at every face, blind with a panic I can’t stomp out.

  Her voice sounds like it’s in slow motion and under water, and every face is blurring against every other.

  I wish my brain devoted less energy to recognizing minute patterns of cell morphology and sporulation, and gave a little neuron power to remembering important names. Like the names of the people who make up the family of the girl I’m going to marry.

  I don’t want to fuck this up. Please don’t let me fuck this up.

  “Sit down.” Genevieve leans against my shoulder and her whisper tickles my earlobe.

  I pull out her chair for her, because it’s what I do anyway, but also because there’s not a chance in hell I would dare not to—not while six sets of Rodriguez eyes watch my every move.

  Well they’re watching my every move until Genevieve’s sister, Lydia, makes a production clanking her silverware around and crossing her arms with a heavy sigh. She sucks all the attention and seems to love it that way.

  “You aren’t eating, Lydia?” Cece asks with a raised eyebrow, as her sister puts all her silverware into a neat pile on her plate.

  “No. I’m a strict juice cleanse,” Lydia announces and again tries to smooth the lump Deo left in her hair.

  “Stupid,” Enzo coughs the word into his hand and Cohen snorts from across the table.

  “It’s healthy. Not that you’d know anything about that,” she says smugly. “Enjoy eating all the fried crap you want while you’re in your twenties. That diet is going to lead to a nice little pot belly the minute you hit thirty.”

  “You remember hitting thirty?” Enzo asks, pressing his eyebrows low like he’s asking a serious question. “The details have to be getting fuzzy as the decades roll on, right, Lyd?”

  “Not at the table,” Mrs. Rodriguez says, her voice soft but firm. Everyone clams up and sits a little straighter.

  I respect the hell out of the woman already. This is her family, her element. She made all of this, and she obviously knows exactly how to control it all. What am I doing intruding on it? And, more than that, what the hell is she going to do to me when the reason for my intrusion is revealed?

  Food is passed and small talk is made, but I can feel a table full of eyes on me the entire time. I’m cutting my food precisely, hoping I don’t drop any, hoping I don’t absently put my elbows on the table—an old habit my own mother never managed to break me of. I haven’t been this nervous since I was about to board the plane to America, and even that felt like small time by comparison. I’m here with the baby of this tight family, and they are all judging me, wondering what the hell my intentions are. I’ve got to say something.

  “Thank you so much for having me. This is delicious.” I attempt a charming smile. “These knishes, wow.”

  There’s a snap of fingers from across the table.

  “That’s where I’ve seen you before!” Cohen points at me like he finally found the answer to a question that’s been driving him crazy for weeks. “The party, right?” He nudges Maren, who nods in agreement. “You were working the engagement party!”

  All of my accomplishments, and this is what my soon-to-be in-laws will know me for. The guy who passed the knishes.

  “I was.” I nod, swallowing the food that suddenly feels like it’s lodged in my throat. I should have kept my damn mouth shut.

  Genevieve leans over and curls her fingers around my wrist, her thumb tapping in time to my racing heartbeat. “Adam was filling in for a friend. His real job is in the lab at my school. He’s a scientist.” Her voice vibrates with pride, and I try not to squirm like a kid caught in the middle of a huge whopper.

  I should correct her. I should tell them all that I’m barely qualified and about to be deported, but I watch the way her eyes sparkle when she talks about me and all I’ve accomplished, and then I watch how her parents nod at her like she’s stumbled upon the Holy Grail, and I don’t have the heart to say a word.

  “That’s quite impressive, Adam,” Gen’s mom says, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin. Genevieve looks like her mother. They both have delicate features, the same almond shaped eyes that shine with sincerity, and, when they speak, you can’t help but stare at their mouths. “What area of science are you involved in?”

  “I study yeast.” I want to keep it simple, because most scientists I know have a way of getting boring and rambly about what they do.

  “Yeast?” Mr. Rodriguez curls his lip up. “L
ike a baker?”

  “Yes!” I agree, until I see his eyes narrow. His daughter with a scientist? Good. His daughter with a baker? Not so good.

  Okay, maybe I overshot the simplicity.

  “It’s complicated, Dad,” Genevieve cuts in. “He studies it. He has petri dishes all over the lab and charts, and he’s working on this enormous paper that will probably end up in a journal.”

  “About yeast?” her dad asks, smoothing down his moustache and frowning. “What’s a bright guy doing wasting his time on yeast? We know what it does. Why not study something useful? Cancer or nuclear power. Something like that.”

  I work hard to keep my expression completely blank. If Genevieve’s family expects me to cure cancer, I’m screwed before I ever started.

  “Well, yeast is actually pretty complicated,” I say, and expect someone to yawn or groan. But every single person stares at me, waiting for my brilliant explanation. A single bead of sweat rolls down my spine. “Right. Well, yeast is a fascinating eukaryotic cell.” I see multiple sets of eyes glaze. “Um, which just means that it has a membrane bound nucleus.” More glazing. “And I study how its genomes respond to certain environmental changes. Because, basically, if we can master our understanding of the eukaryotic cell, we’ll have an easier time understanding more complex cells.”

  Genevieve bounces in her chair, her eyes shiny and her expression giddy. “See! He’s brilliant. One day he’ll be Dr. Adam Abramowitz, and he’ll be in the major journals for science and—”

  “Wait, Adam Abramowitz? Isn’t that—-are you her tutor?” Lydia asks, pulling her eyebrows together in a look that would typically spell confusion: but her sneaky grin says she’s anything but confused by this.

  “I am.” I nod slowly. I open my mouth to say what an excellent student Genevieve is, but snap it shut when I think of the innuendo they could spin from that.

  I pray her parents don’t start to see me as some perverted TA taking advantage of their little girl. There’s nothing technically—or legally or morally—wrong with what we’re doing. Other than the semi-sham marriage we’re rushing into to secure my visa.