Chapter 3
Jane
I n the next few weeks, Evan and I find a wedding venue and pay a deposit. We’ll get married at an event space north of the city, where we can have the entire thing outside. The ceremony will be followed by a light lunch under a big white tent. Nothing too fancy. I confirm the date with my father before we make the payment; he says it’s fine. He doesn’t ask many questions.
We also tell our friends from university about our upcoming nuptials, during a small gathering at Lana and Camila’s apartment. I don’t see these people very often, but I enjoy myself when I do, this small group of queer friends that I met in frosh week. At the time, I considered myself an ally, but later, I started thinking…maybe it’s more than that.
They’re surprised by the news of our relationship and impending marriage. Except for Lana, who says she always knew there was something between us.
Evan and I have a laugh about that afterward.
I feel like a proper adult, now that I’m planning a wedding and preparing to look for a house. It’s silly, of course—I’ve been an adult for a long time, and nobody needs to get married and own property to be an adult. But still.
One Saturday in late January, Evan picks me up at Finch Station—I don’t have a car—and drives me to his parents’ house. In my lap, I clutch a tin of cookies that Evan said would be an appropriate gift.
“Are you nervous?” he asks.
I nod, and when we’re at a stoplight, he reaches over and touches my knee.
We’ve been touching each other more lately—in a nonsexual way—and it’s nice. I used to be rather touch starved. Not that I would have admitted it out loud, but I was.
“Have you ever met a partner’s family before?” he asks.
“Yes, though the first time, it didn’t go well. His parents asked me some weird questions because I’m Asian.”
“Right. I remember that now.”
“The other time…they were lovely.”
That’s why I stayed in the relationship a little longer than I should have. The pain of losing a family that accepted me so easily? It was worse than the pain of losing someone whose vision for the future was clearly incompatible with mine.
“I hope you think mine are lovely, too,” he says, and that’s when I realize he’s nervous about what I think of them. “I’m sure they’ll like you, though. They liked you when they met you for Thanksgiving—”
“It’s different when I’m a friend versus a fiancée.”
“True. But remember, I’ve brought a bunch of people home to meet my family before. I know how they react to these things.”
“I bet I’ll like them,” I assure him.
Because from what I know of them, I already do.
When I met Evan, back when we were teenagers, he was the first Asian person I knew who was out. I’d assumed that was just at school, but it soon became clear that his parents also knew, and they were fine with it. And the Thanksgiving that I attended, all those years ago, was pleasant.
Though Evan has tried to reassure me, I’m glad he didn’t simply tell me not to be nervous. I’d find that decidedly unhelpful.
“The only thing that concerns me,” he says, “is that they’re still unsure what to make of the quick engagement. So just, um, try to act like we’re in love.”
“Right.”
Evan parks on the street, and we walk up to the house. After ringing the doorbell, he reaches for my gloved hand and squeezes it; my other hand grips the cookie tin.
Evan’s father answers, his hair much whiter now. He greets his son with a hug, then hesitates. “Jane, yes? You look just as I remembered. Welcome. You should call me Howie.”
“It’s nice to meet you again,” I say, handing him the cookies.
Evan’s mother appears and says, “Ah, you shouldn’t have,” but she seems pleased.
After we take off our outdoor clothes, my fiancé ushers me to the living room, where one of his brothers and a woman are seated on the couch. On the coffee table, there’s a platter of cut-up fruit.
“My older brother, Max,” Evan says, “as you may remember, and his girlfriend, Kim.” His hand is on my back. “This is Jane.”
“Congratulations on your engagement,” Kim says.
“Thank you,” I reply.
Her gaze lowers. I think she’s trying to see if I have a ring to admire.
“I didn’t want an engagement ring,” I explain. “We’ll just have wedding bands.”
She doesn’t have a problem accepting this, and as I sit down on the couch, I can see Evan debating whether to sit next to me or on one of the recliners. With four people on the couch, it’ll be a tight squeeze, but he seems to think it’s the right thing to do, as my fiancé. I can’t say I mind the warmth of him next to me, his hand on my knee like it was in the car.
“What do you do for work, Jane?” Kim asks.
“I’m an accountant. What about you?”
“I’m an engineer, like Max.”
Before I can say anything else, two more people enter the room, and Evan smiles and makes the introductions. Leo—who was in his final year of high school when I last saw him—and Yvonne. They’re soon followed by Jon, Evan’s youngest brother. He was much shorter the first time we met.
I feel slightly overwhelmed by this large family, so unlike my own.
I also can’t help noticing that when Leo sits down on a chair and Yvonne sits on his lap, he looks at her like she hangs the stars in the sky. It might not be obvious to everyone—his facial expressions are fairly mild—but still, I can tell.
Meeting Evan’s family has made me particularly aware of the fact that we didn’t get engaged in the normal way where we live; we didn’t fall in love.
No, we’re two rather lonely people who made a pact at the beginning of the pandemic.
“Jane?” Evan’s mom says near the end of the night. “Can you come here?”
Evan gives me an encouraging squeeze on the shoulder, and I follow Lynne into the kitchen. She hasn’t said a lot to me tonight. Evan had told me in advance that his mother is not always a big talker, so I tried not to worry about it. But my worry spikes as I approach. It’s the first time tonight that it’s been just the two of us.
“You and Evan don’t live together, so I’ll give you food separately.”
“You don’t need to…” I begin, though I appreciate this kind of mothering. It’s a novelty for me.
Lynne is going to be my mother-in-law, and as I look at her now, I can’t help comparing her to what I imagine my mom would be like, if she were still alive.
But the answer is simply: I don’t know.
I was only six when my mom died, and I can’t fully trust my memories. Plus, twenty or thirty years can really change a person.
“Are you sure you don’t want to live together first?” she asks. “It can be useful, to know if you’re compatible.”
I just stare at her. She’s encouraging us to live together before marriage? My past experience with Asian mothers did not prepare me for this possibility.
“Well, we might live together first if we buy a house before July,” I say. “But we’ve known each other a long time, even if we haven’t dated for long. I’m sure.”
I think of Leo and Yvonne and feel a sliver of doubt. Maybe I should have held out for something like that, but it seems unlikely it would have happened.
“The engagement was very surprising,” Lynne says.
“Yes, I’m sure it was. But when you know…you know.”
I hope that sounds convincing.
She nods. “My engagement was very quick, too.”
I’m not sure it would be appropriate to ask about that, so I stand there awkwardly.
“Evan says your family lives in Calgary?”
“Yes,” I reply. “My dad, my stepmom, and my half-siblings.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s dead.”
“Ah, I’m sorry. Evan didn’t tell me.”
“It’s okay. It was many years ago.” I curse myself after I say it. This has happened before: when someone says they’re sorry, I try to brush it off by saying it’s been a long time. But I lost my mother when I was a child, which doesn’t exactly make people feel better.
“If you’d like, we can go out to Calgary to meet your family before the wedding.”
“No, that’s not necessary,” I assure her.
“We will all meet at the rehearsal dinner, then? I don’t know much about these things because Evan is the first of my sons to get married. But I think here, traditionally, the groom’s family pays for the rehearsal dinner? We’re more than happy to do that and help with the cost of the wedding.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll discuss it with Evan.” I hadn’t thought about a rehearsal dinner—is it necessary? Our ceremony will be very simple, and we’re using the officiant who married Lana and Camila.
There’s an uncomfortable pause, and I wonder if I’m already screwing up this relationship, which is the last thing I want to do.
I’m little relieved when Evan comes into the kitchen.
“There you are.” He puts his arm around me and kisses me on the cheek in a way that feels quite natural.
Evan doesn’t look much like his mother. Actually, he doesn’t look much like his father, either, but he and Max definitely have similar features. They both wear glasses, too.
He turns to me. “Are you ready to go? Did my mom give you enough food?”
On the drive back to the subway, Evan asks how I think it went.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” I say quietly.
“You don’t want to get married anymore?”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant. I just…I’m not sure how to be part of a family. And I think your mom finds it weird that we’re not living together first before buying a place. For, um, compatibility. I didn’t know how to react.”
“You did just fine,” he says. “My parents occasionally say things that surprise me as well. My dad said he thinks we’re good together, and I hadn’t expected him to actually say something like that.”
I admit I’m rather pleased.
I hesitate before asking my next question. “I’d like to tell Claudia the truth. Is that okay? I’m not sure how I’d convince her of the story we’re telling other people anyway. She’ll keep it a secret, I promise.”
I still haven’t told one of my closest friends that I’m engaged, even though it’s been almost two months. I’ve gotten away with it because we don’t have any other friends in common—and she lives in B.C. But I can’t do that much longer, especially if I want her to come to the wedding.
“Sure,” he says. “Whatever you need to do.”
“I have some news,” I say, looking at Claudia on my laptop. “I’m getting married.”
The video suddenly looks weird. I think she spit water on her screen, and I can’t help laughing as she rubs it with her sleeve.
Claudia and I first met on an ace-spec forum that no longer exists. Since we live over 3000 km apart, we’ve only seen each other in person a handful of times. She’s white and a couple of years younger than me.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “did you say you’re getting married?”
“Yeah. To Evan.” The two of them met once before.
“I didn’t know you were dating.”
“We’re not.” I explain how we made a marriage pact back in 2020, and how I like the idea of settling down. Of constant companionship with a friend. Possibly even having kids. “I feel like I’m taking control of my life.”
“What about sex?”
“If we decide to have kids the old-fashioned way, then we’ll consummate the marriage, but otherwise, we won’t have it.”
“He’s okay with that?” she asks.
She knows I’m okay with it; she knows I haven’t had sex in years, a state of affairs that doesn’t bother me. I’ve only ever been attracted to two men—and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt sexual attraction. I do have a libido, but I take care of that myself a few times a month. Sex isn’t something I miss, and it’s part of what makes dating so complicated for me: I’m never attracted to someone from the beginning, but in a long-term romantic relationship, it is something I’d want. At least, I did in the past, though my sample size is small.
And even though it usually takes me a while, I’ve known Evan for fifteen years, so if it was going to happen, I’d think it would have happened already.
“He’s free to get it outside of our marriage. I fully expect him to do that at some point, though he doesn’t seem too concerned about it. Don’t worry—we talked about all this before we got engaged. Which was, um, in December.”
“And you’re only telling me now?”
“Sorry. It’s a weird situation, and most people don’t know the truth.”
“You know I’m all about weird situations,” she says, and I laugh. “If you think you’ll be happy in this sort of marriage, then I support you. When’s the wedding?”
“July. You’ll be invited, of course. I hope you’ll come.”
“Definitely! Just give me the date and I’ll look at flights.”
When Claudia and I end our call, I feel relieved. It was nice to tell someone, other than the person I’m marrying.
But now that it’s done, my brain jumps to something else I need to figure out: my wedding dress.
I don’t have any female relatives to go dress shopping with me, and Evan and I aren’t having a proper wedding party. Once Claudia books her flight to Toronto, I ask if she’ll be a witness, and she agrees; Max will be the other one. We tell them that they can wear whatever they want.
“You can wear whatever you want, too,” Evan says to me. “It doesn’t need to be a white dress—or even a dress.”
But although I haven’t spent my life dreaming of my wedding, I did always imagine wearing a white dress.
“You could ask Lana and Camila,” he suggests, when we’re talking on the phone one day. “Or I could go. I think it’s supposed to be bad luck for me to see you in the dress before your wedding day, but I’m not worried about that.”
I brighten. “Would you?”
I just want something off the rack. No more than $1,500.
We start with a store in Corso Italia, and the sales lady asks me questions about what I want, but I’m not well-versed in the language of dresses. I tell her that I’d like I bit of lace. Nothing strapless. Despite my limited help, she quickly selects four dresses that look promising.
The fit of the first one is all wrong, though, and the second is okay, but not something I’d spend over a thousand dollars on. As I return to the fitting room, my thoughts start to spiral. I know I shouldn’t have expected the first or second dress to be perfect, but I fear I’ll never find something, and I don’t know anything about this sort of thing because I don’t have a mom…
I exit the dressing room in the third dress, not feeling terribly hopeful. Some women say they know as soon as they put on the dress, and I don’t feel that way about this one, either.
But when Evan sees me, he smiles. “I like it. You look very pretty.” He turns me to face the full-length mirror and keeps his hands on my lace-covered shoulders. “What do you think?”
“Your fiancé has good taste,” the sales lady says.
She doesn’t find it weird that my groom-to-be is accompanying me to search for a wedding dress. Even if it’s not “traditional,” she’s probably seen everything.
I take a closer look at myself in the mirror, the lacy details on the bodice, the long sleeves. It really is gorgeous. My mind stops racing; I can imagine myself getting married in this one.
I try on a few more dresses, just in case, but in the end, that’s the one I buy.
When we leave the store, I’m relieved to have one more thing checked off my list, and I’m also relieved that I don’t have to do any of this alone.
Not surprisingly, buying a house is harder than buying a dress.
We get a real estate agent and a preapproval for a mortgage. We tell her what we’d like and start going to viewings. We put in bids for two houses in Markham, but we don’t get either of them.
It seems ridiculous that two thirty-three-year-olds, who’ve both worked for over ten years, have to consider themselves lucky to even have a chance of buying a house in the Toronto suburbs. But I know we’re lucky. Our parents aren’t giving us six figures for a down payment, but our families paid for the majority of our schooling. Twenty-five years ago, it would have been a given that we could buy a house; unfortunately, prices have skyrocketed.
I knew it might be tough, but I feel like I wasn’t fully prepared. I’m doubtful we’ll close on a house before July. Maybe it was foolish to think we could plan a wedding and buy property in seven months, even if it’s a simple wedding.
One spring day, Evan and I go to an open house in Thornhill. It’s the smallest, shabbiest house on a nice street, and it’s painfully busy.
As we exit, we look at each other and shake our heads. We’re not going to put in an offer, and I sigh as I head to Evan’s car down the street. I’ve just put on my seatbelt when my phone rings. It’s my father, so I answer.
“Hi, Dad,” I say.
“Jane, I’m so sorry.”
My heart rate kicks up. “What’s wrong? Did something happen to Suzanne or the kids?”
“Ah, no.”
“To you?”
“I’m fine, but I can’t come to the wedding.”
I shouldn’t be surprised. My dad has been disappointing me for over two decades; he missed both my high school and university graduations. Yet I assumed he would at least show up for my wedding, even though he has to fly across the country. How silly of me.
“I have to go to Denver for an important meeting,” he explains.
It’s three months away, though. Shouldn’t there be something he could do? Change the date or ask someone else to go instead of him?
But I don’t say that.
“I understand.” My voice is flat.
On the other end of the phone, my father makes more excuses that sound like gibberish to me. I know that if Peyton or Kaden gets married, he’ll be there no matter what.
I don’t point that out. I just nod and murmur a few words until he ends the call. Then I set aside the phone and look vacantly out the windshield.
“What’s up?” Evan asks.
“He’s not coming to the wedding. Business meeting.”
“ What? Do you want me to call back and yell at him? Can’t he—”
I hold up a hand. “Don’t bother. He’s made up his mind.”
I appreciate the offer, though, and the idea of Evan yelling makes me chuckle. I’ve never heard him raise his voice.
He reaches across the console and puts a hand on my shoulder. My eyes suddenly brim with tears, but I don’t let them fall. It’s not worth crying over my father; I’ve known that for a long, long time.
I look down at my hands. “I know it’s hard to believe, but in the years after my mom died, he really was a good father. It was like the two of us against the world. He never missed an event. He made sure I had therapy. Maybe that doesn’t sound remarkable, but I don’t know how many fathers in the nineties would have done that for their grieving kids. And then…”
Puberty was simply too much for him. He couldn’t handle the fact that I needed bras or pads. He gave me cash and told me to figure it out, which once led to me sobbing in Shoppers until a friend’s mom found me. He thought I didn’t need him anymore, but I did, just in a different way.
I shake my head, and Evan doesn’t press. He leans closer to me and runs his fingers through my hair in a soothing manner.
“Is this okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. It’s nice.” I can’t remember the last time someone touched my hair like this. It’s as if he’s stroking some of the pain away. Tension leaves my body as I relax against him, and a few tears slide down my cheeks.
“I can’t promise I’ll never disappoint you,” he says. “I wish I could, but I can’t. But I’ll do my best to always be there when you need me, and if I screw up, just remind me that I promised you.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
And from then on, I feel like we’re truly engaged. We’re not sleeping together or exchanging I love you s—in fact, no man has ever said that to me before—but our relationship means something.