The Atlas of Love

by Laurie Frankel

  She ignored me. “I told him I had a dream where I was asleep. You know when you fall asleep in your dreams? When you’re just so tired and comfortable, you have to stop telling yourself stories and totally sleep? Except I was sleeping next to him with my head on his chest and my legs on his legs. It was the most comfortable feeling I’ve ever had.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said I was everything he ever dreamed of in a wife. He said he’s been waiting his whole life to meet me. He said he wondered why God would send him to Washington of all places, and now he knows it was to meet me. He said he knows God wants him to get married. He says he sees me with Atlas and knows I will be a wonderful mother.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Same thing. Different pronouns.”

  I hugged her, somewhere between delighted for her and also thinking she might be insane. And also wishing she could wait and tell me these things at a more reasonable hour of the morning. But since I was up anyway, I waited until she fell asleep and then walked down the hall to wake up Jill.

  “He all but asked her to marry him,” I hissed.

  “Who?” she asked sleepily.

  “He had a dream about biking around the world with her. She had a dream about sleeping on his chest. He said she was everything he wanted in a wife and that God wanted them to be together and have children. She said she thought so too.”

  “They’ve been dating since Tuesday,” said Jill.

  “I know. It’s insane.”

  “Where is she now? Singing in the front yard? Trying to find a wedding caterer open at six o’clock in the morning?”

  “She’s more calmly excited. Excited suffused with wisdom, purpose, godliness.”

  “Maybe she’s just tired.”

  “Do you think it’s too soon?”

  Jill opened her eyes for the first time and looked at me. “Are you kidding?”

  “Maybe after so much looking, she knows it when she sees it?”

  “Since Tuesday.”

  “Should we talk to her?”

  “I doubt we could put a stop to this even if we tried. It’s like stopping the weather. Maybe he’s less serious about this than she imagines.” We heard Katie get up and go to the bathroom. Then she poked her head in the room. I did my best to look innocent. Jill did her best to will both of us to get the hell out of her room so she could go back to sleep. “Are you guys talking about me?” Katie said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Jill at the same time.

  Katie looked thoughtful. “I think I’d like to have everyone over for dinner Sunday night,” she said finally. “I think Peter should meet the family.”

  Twenty-four

  It was as if we were hosting a coronation. In retrospect, it is easy to see how important the evening was, that the effort towards finery was warranted and worth it. At the time, we all thought we’d lost our minds, but none of us could stop. Jason and Lucas went without saying. They had a more or less standing Sunday-night dinner invitation. Ethan too these days. Peter’s older brother Eli was in town, one night only, so he came. We invited Diane, who was seeming unhappy to Jill on the phone. Plus the four of us, even if one of us didn’t get his own chair, made for too many around the table.

  Katie borrowed a folding table and chairs from church, and we moved the plan outside, a good excuse besides for her to buy a few thousand candles, lanterns, and paper lamps. We invited everyone for late, even though Ethan and I had to teach the next day and even though Jason and Lucas and Diane and Eli had to drive home, so that we could have post-sunset glow and moonlit summertime to go with the soft light of candles and so that we had a better shot at Atlas falling—and staying—asleep. We spent Saturday morning from nine to noon menu planning. Nine to noon. Then I insisted on going running for an hour. Then we shopped. One farmers’ market, one co-op, two grocery stores. This is a task I generally delegate, but the night seemed too important to leave up to the mischievous gods of cooking or my roommates, who tended to be less picky than one might wish when it came to selecting good produce, the right chunk of cheese, bread that was fresh, and so on, and did not take well to instruction (“Fastidiousness,” I said; “Annoying and controlling,” they said).

  A better question than why I was running all over the tourist-mobbed city on a summer Saturday afternoon with one baby, two roommates, a three-page list, and seemingly everyone else in the Seattle metropolitan area is how I knew. Even though the evening was important to Katie, even though I loved her and wanted as much happiness for her as possible, I should also have been able to relate to this from afar. Jill and I had lost somehow the distance that allowed us to watch with wry amusement and tinged alarm the pace and bubble of this relationship. We’d been swept up. Like when you go to the movies and identify so closely with the star that you go to the bathroom afterwards and look in the mirror and feel vaguely surprised to see your face and not hers looking back. Perhaps this was Atlas-effect too. Jill’s son was my son. Jill’s problems were my problems. Katie’s love life, the possibilities so suddenly opening before her, were my possibilities too? I wasn’t as panicked, short-tempered, and jittery as she was, but I was hell-bent on cooking for the queen.

  We shopped for three and a half hours, rented a movie (Big Night for perspective), ordered Thai food, and started cooking. Sunday morning, Katie got up and went to church. Diane came early and took Jill and Atlas to the zoo. Jill was sure Diane was depressed. Diane was sure Jill was depressed. They were worried about each other and, both of them right, glad I think for the distraction from themselves. I put the iPod on both random and loud and danced while I cooked. I chopped and mixed and whipped. I made an epic, seismic, disastrous mess, covering every inch of counter with eggshells, corn husks, pea pods, food wrappers, cheese rinds, and tea bags. When I ran out of room, I cleaned up the mess in order to clear counter space. Then I made a mess again. Twice. I put the mini-quiches in about four, went into the living room to turn off the music and on the ballgame, and walked back into the kitchen to find Ethan standing in it, scaring the crap out of me.

  “I was knocking, and someone was clearly home, but no one was answering, so I just came in. Thought you might need some help.” Blissed out as I was on the loud, the dancing, the chopping, the house-to-myself, I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted help. Plus, he was obviously stopping off at the tail end of a run and was grimy, smelly, and generally damp.

  “You can help,” I said, “but go shower first.”

  He grinned. He thought I was kidding. “But I’ll miss the ballgame,” he complained.

  “Shower fast. You’ll only miss the first inning.”

  “So this is serious,” Ethan observed, coming downstairs pink and scrubbed, damp hair tousled, smelling for all the world like Atlas coming out of the bath (probably because Atlas’s was the shampoo that was in the shower).

  “Peter and Katie?”

  “No, dinner,” he said, laughing.

  “Both evidently. I feel very nervous. I don’t know why.”

  “Big night.”

  “Do you feel bad?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because of Katie?”

  “No, I’m happy for Katie. I’m a little worried about you though.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “You seem to be suffering from the delusion you’re cooking for eighty.”

  “It’s hard to cook small,” I said.

  “I’ll help,” he offered, and started snacking on the tarts that were eventually going under the cream that was eventually going under the cherries. This was not helpful. What was helpful was that he stayed all afternoon, chopped what I told him to chop, and didn’t get mad when I told him he was doing it wrong and made him start over.

  Eventually, the sun went down, the house filled up with good smells and people I loved. Seattle in the summer is what makes Seattle the rest of the year worth it. The days are warm, sunny, cloudless, and very long. It’s light until ten, and then the ev
enings are cool, clear, bugless, and beautiful. We glowed warmly from the candles and the wine and the talk, laughed loudly and even with our mouths full, ate and were sated. Dinner was good, my best effort, and the anxiety and weight of it all slipped away. Seattle in summer is so lovely that the end of the dessert course is really only the midpoint of the evening. No one showed any move towards going home. Presently, in the half-drunk, overfull, dreamlike aftermath, Peter stood up, stone-cold sober, and announced that he wanted to ask a question.

  “Yes Peter,” Jason called on him.

  Peter cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask all of you for your permission and blessing to marry Miss Katherine Louise Cooke.”

  I couldn’t look directly at him—it was too embarrassing—but sidelong sneaked peeks revealed he was not nearly as uncomfortable as he’d just made everyone else. We all sat in painful, awkward silence. He just stood there beaming. Katie slowly began to give off actual light and heat. Then she kicked me under the table.

  “Say something,” she yelled with her eyes.

  “What?” I pled silently back.

  Finally, blessings on his head forever, Jason spoke. If it wasn’t the exact right thing to say, at least he said something.

  “Why are you asking us?”

  “It’s tradition,” said Peter.

  “To ask her friends?”

  “To ask her family.” This is when Katie started crying. Just like that, he seemed worthy to me.

  “You have my blessings and permission,” I said, a little tearful too. Beams and smiles from Katie and Peter. Hard, scary glaring from Jill.

  “Are you mad?” she demanded.

  “No,” I said.

  “Drunk?”

  “A little,” I admitted.

  “You’ve known her a week.” Jill turned her wrath on Peter.

  “Exactly.”

  “Exactly what?”

  “Exactly a week. I met Katie a week ago tomorrow, but it’s after midnight, so really it’s today.” He reached down and squeezed her hand.

  “So you’re asking her to marry you for your anniversary?” Lucas said wryly.

  “Exactly,” said Peter again.

  “What kind of person thinks a week is long enough?” Jill muttered.

  “I do,” said Peter, practicing.

  “How could you possibly?”

  “I already know everything I need to. I know she is kind and smart. I know she is funny and fun. I know she wants church and family and children at the center of her life. She likes to share food and watch reality TV and eat sour candy. She does not like dairy-based ice cream. She prefers shopping to most other activities. She would do anything for her friends. She can’t really cook or clean . . .” (Apparently some fessing up had occurred.)

  “. . . She wants to teach. She likes miniature golf and kite flying. She thinks sometimes that grad school is crap . . .” This was news to me. Also that “crap” didn’t count as a curse word.

  “. . . She likes ducks. She speaks Spanish. She is the woman I am meant to spend eternity with.” He stopped and thought about it. “That’s it I think.” It seemed like a fairly comprehensive list to me, especially for a week.

  Jill remained unimpressed. “You honestly think that’s enough?”

  “The first few were enough,” he said and recapped—kind, smart, funny, fun, church, family. “I knew right away actually. I could have proposed a week ago today.”

  “Katie?” Jason raised his eyebrows at her. “Is there anything you’d like to add?”

  “Me too,” she managed.

  “So you’ve stopped talking now?” Jill scowled at her. Katie ignored this.

  “Well, since no one here has ever been married, we might not be the best group to ask,” said Diane. “But since I’ve got twenty years on you all, I suppose I’m as close as we’ve got to the wisdom of the elders. You’ve got my blessing.”

  “It’s okay with me,” said Lucas though his tone was less I-am-convinced than what-do-I-care-what-you-crazy-kids-do.

  “Me too,” said Jason.

  “Me too,” Ethan added uncomfortably. “I don’t know why you’d want my permission, but it sounds okay to me.”

  “That’s why I’m here of course,” said Eli, which, come to think of it, made a lot more sense than that he happened to be in town just for the night.

  Which left Jill. We all looked at her. “It’s been a week!” she said defensively. I shrugged at her like sometimes you just have to trust that things will work out somehow, and maybe they really do know. Like they can always break off the engagement later when she really gets to know him. Like please say yes because the awkwardness here is killing me. But she just grumbled, “I’ll get back to you.”

  That was good enough for Peter. He pulled Katie up by the hand he still had in his, got down on one knee, looked deeply at her for what felt like several hours, whispered finally (though, I mean, we were all sitting right there) that she was the most beautiful, brilliant, wonderful person he had ever known, and he was certain they would make a perfect life and family together, and would she be his for time and all eternity and, pending Jill’s consent, agree to marry him. The rest of us looked hard at the ground, our plates, our shoes, the grass. I willed them to go away and have this conversation elsewhere. I prayed for Atlas to wake up wailing. I fantasized desperately a revisionist scenario in which, after Jill said she’d get back to them, I said we should do the dishes and was therefore inside while they had this discussion. But it didn’t happen. “Yes” was all Katie managed. Then they both cried while they made out. I am sure it was a beautiful moment for them. I wanted to die. “Maybe we could clear the table,” said Ethan after a while. We all jumped up simultaneously and started making stacks of serving dishes, wine and water glasses, plates—

  “Actually, we have an announcement too,” Jason began just as I thought we were about to escape. Everyone sat down again. He was holding Lucas’s hand and smiling. “We’re pregnant.”

  “Actually, my sous chef’s sixteen-year-old daughter is pregnant,” Lucas explained. “She doesn’t want to end it, but she’s not ready to be a mother either.”

  “They’re Mormon too,” Jason added helpfully. Katie cringed.

  “Anyway, she liked the idea of two dads and of being able to keep in touch.”

  “And we liked the idea of knowing the mother and her family.”

  “She’s due on Halloween.”

  They were beaming like proud parents-to-be.

  “And the best part is,” said Jason, drunk and giggly, “we aren’t carrying the baby ourselves, so we can still drink lots of wine.”

  “Well, no, that’s not the best part,” said Lucas. “The best part is we’re going to be daddies.” They gazed into each other’s eyes, thinking deep and profound parental thoughts, and for the second time in ten minutes, I positively longed to be doing dishes.

  We asked a lot of questions. The usual. What’s she like and who’s the dad and do you know the sex and what about childcare and have you thought about names. Really, it was too soon for all of that yet, and I knew from experience that it takes nine months, not just to grow a baby, but also to get used to the idea of having one. This one, clearly, would be more complicated than most though I also knew from experience that even when the circumstances are more strange than a-married-man-and-woman-make-a-baby-together, at its heart, it’s still a new family, sleepless, turned upside down, sometimes despairing, and often overjoyed. Suddenly, getting engaged to someone you’d known only for a week didn’t seem nearly so weird—we all do family a little differently. And raising my best friend’s baby, just like that, lost any sense at all for me of being anything apart from perfectly ordinary. I was just his mother. It was no more complicated than that and no more simple, of course, than families ever are.

  I have this impression that at that point we were in wee hours of the morning, that it was practically light. We were starting to fade for sure, tired of eating and sitting, tired from the w
ine and the food, emotionally drained from the evening, and aware that we had, many of us, still to drive tonight, still to get up in the morning. Answers—to marriage proposals, to baby plans—could wait until tomorrow, until next Sunday’s dinner. I thought tiredly, deliciously, of rehashing all this with Ethan tomorrow while we ran, with Jill after I got home, over leftovers for dinner tomorrow night just Jill and Katie and Atlas and me.

  And then Diane, just barely audible, said, “Me too. I have something to tell you all too.”

  My first flash was she was dating someone. My second was that she was pregnant herself. My third was full of hell and night, as I noticed that Diane looked pretty miserable, and remembered how depressed Jill thought she’d been. Cancer? Heart something? Diabetes? Probably cancer. And in just those few moments, while Diane steeled herself to tell us, I saw her shrivel and waste away, all bones and dark, faded eyes, and leave us before Atlas would even remember her. I saw it so clearly that therefore my response to what came next was at first something like relief.

  “I’ve heard from Daniel,” she said, a defiant quaver in her voice, like she was laying this fact out for our inspection and constructive feedback but was unwilling to accept complete rejection. I could almost see it, lying there among all the dishes, a big bubble of bad news, glowing and angry and quivering as if there were thousands of tiny creatures inside trying to chew their way out. We found ourselves silent again, listening in on another moment in which we did not belong. This was obviously a conversation Diane should have been having with Jill alone. And it was obvious too that she couldn’t. Safety in numbers. Or is it strength? We were there, I guess, to protect Jill from the news and Diane from Jill.

  “First, he was calling once a month or so, then every couple weeks, then we met for coffee, then he started coming to the house sometimes. He’s not met Atlas—I won’t let him come when I’m babysitting or anything—but he’d like to. He just doesn’t know how.”

  Long, long pause during which we all sneaked sideways looks at Jill, who went hot and bright red and kept standing up and sitting back down again. “Since when?” she finally managed.