Chapter Seventeen #3
My heart might have fluttered. “That’s in four days.”
He nodded again. “I know.”
I stared at him, trying to calibrate. “You want to propose to your husband at his mother’s house in four days.”
He did the mouth thing again. “I want to ask your mother’s blessing and then propose to my husband at his mother’s house in four days, yes.”
I ran a hand over my face, not to hide, but to process. “She’s going to cry.”
“Good,” Kenneth said.
“I might cry,” I admitted honestly.
He stepped closer, so that there was nothing between us but air and the sum total of every dumb decision that had brought us to this point. “Also good.”
I picked up my wine, took a small, deliberate sip, and looked out at the skyline. “I have been in serious trouble since that stupid engagement dinner,” I said. “I want that on the record.”
Kenneth’s hand landed at the small of my back, steady and sure. “It’s on the record.”
We stood there, side by side, watching the lights change, and I let myself have the quiet.
I was pretty sure I didn’t deserve any of it.
But if the city could keep going, then so could I.
* * * *
Clara’s kitchen was so small you had to decide in advance who got to stand where.
The stove dominated the near wall, and the little pine table was jammed against the window, so close to the radiator that the wood always felt sun-warmed.
On Sundays, with the soup simmering and Carmen laughing in the next room, the entire place smelled of garlic and whatever else they’d decided to throw in.
Kenneth had shown up with a bottle of wine and a second bottle of Ibuprofen, which made my mother laugh until she coughed, which made her laugh more.
We sat at the table, and the conversation was half memory, half what-next, the air so thick with actual, lived-in happiness that I had to check myself more than once to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
He ate two bowls, asked for a third, and told Clara it was the best soup he’d had since his grandmother died. He said it plainly, honestly, and my mother looked at him with an expression I had only seen a handful of times in my life: the one that said, I was right about you, and I’m proud of it.
I watched her and Kenneth talk across the table.
He asked her real questions—about her first job, about the time she saw Louis Armstrong in concert, about how she and my father met.
She answered with stories I had never heard, or versions of stories that got better in the retelling, and I felt something in my chest go quiet in a way it had not been quiet in thirty years.
No one talked about Carolyn.
The sun shifted in the window, throwing a slow-moving patch of light across the table, and for a few minutes, none of us spoke. The only sound was the soft click of spoons on ceramic, and the low hum of Carmen running water in the next room.
Kenneth stood, offered to help with dishes, and joined Carmen by the sink. The two of them conspired, you could tell; every now and then she would laugh, low and delighted, and he would say something back in a low tone I couldn’t hear.
My mother reached across the table and put her hand over mine. “He’s good.”
I didn’t argue. “I know, Ma.”
She looked at me with those soft brown eyes, the ones that had managed to withstand every disaster and disappointment of the last two decades, and said, “You deserve good.”
I squeezed her hand, not trusting myself to say anything that wouldn’t sound like a punchline. She squeezed back, then let go, and turned her attention to the cooling soup.
Kenneth came back, sat beside me, and looked across the table at Clara. He was quiet, the way he got when he was making a decision and had already made it, but wanted to check one last time for other options.
“Clara,” he said, and her name landed with the weight of a statement. “I would like your blessing. I want to spend my life with your son.”
She didn’t answer right away, which in my family was the only sign that you were about to get the real version. Finally, she said, “Yes.” Her voice was steady, but her eyes were full and shining.
I looked at her, then at Kenneth, and found I was blinking hard, and that my face was doing something I could not control.
Kenneth pulled a ring from his jacket pocket, a simple band, nothing shiny, and set it on the table between us. He looked at me, with all the patience in the world, and said, “I’d like to marry you on purpose. Not on scotch.”
The words landed and didn’t bounce.
I picked up the ring, rolled it in my fingers, and then looked at Kenneth. “Yes,” I said, and this time it was the answer I’d been waiting a whole life to give.
He took the ring, slid it onto my finger, and squeezed my hand once, hard and sure. Clara reached across, took Kenneth’s hand in hers, so the three of us made a circuit across the table.
The soup was still on the stove. The afternoon light was spilling gold across the far wall. Everything I had ever wanted was in the space between my hand and his.
This, I realized, was what it felt like to be chosen.
It had been worth the wait.