Aldridge nods, like he understands it, now. Gets what this is about. “You are upset because you think you need to quit your life and be by her side.”
“No, she won’t let me. I just shouldn’t be happy doing this.”
“Ah. Right. Happiness. The enemy of all suffering.”
He takes another sip. We drink in silence for a moment.
“Did I ever tell you what I originally wanted to be?”
I stare at him. We’re not exactly braiding-each-other’s-hair besties. How would I know?
“I’m assuming this is a trick question and that you’re going to say lawyer.”
Aldridge laughs. “No, no. I was going to be a shrink. My father was a psychiatrist, so is my brother. It’s a strange career choice, for a teen, but it always seemed the right one.”
I blink at him. “Shrink?”
“I would have been terrible at it. All that listening, I don’t have it in me.”
I can feel the alcohol weaving its way through my system. Making everything hazy and rosy and faded. “What happened?”
“I went to Yale, and my first day there I had a philosophy course. First-Order Logic. A discussion of metatheory. It was for my major, but the professor was a lawyer, and I just thought — why diagnose when you can determine?”
He stares at me for a long time. Finally, he puts a hand on my shoulder.
“You are not wrong for loving what you do,” he says. “You are lucky. Life doesn’t hand everyone a passion in their profession; you and I won that round.”
“It doesn’t feel like winning,” I say.
“No,” Aldridge says. “It often doesn’t. That dinner, over there?” He points outside, past the lobby and the palm tree prints. “We didn’t cement that. You loved it because, for you, the win is the game. That’s how you know you’re meant for it.”
He takes his hand off my shoulder. He downs the rest of his drink in a neat sip.
“You’re a great lawyer, Dannie. You’re also a good friend and a good person. Don’t let your own bias throw the case.”
The next morning, I take a car up to Montana Avenue. It’s overcast, the fog of the morning won’t burn off until noon, but by then we’ll already be up in the air. I stop at Peet’s Coffee, and take a stroll down the little shopping street — even though everything is still closed. A few Lycra-clad mothers wheel their distracted toddlers while they talk. The morning bike crew passes by on their way out to Malibu.
I used to think I could never live in Los Angeles. It was for people who couldn’t make it in New York. The easy way out. Moving would mean admitting that you had been wrong. That everything you’d said about New York: that there was nowhere else in the world to live, that the winters didn’t bother you, that carrying four grocery bags back home in the pouring rain or hailing snow wasn’t an inconvenience. That being your own car was, in fact, your dream. That life wasn’t, isn’t, hard.
But there is so much space out here. It feels like there is room — to not have to store every single piece of off-season clothing under your bed. Maybe even to make a mistake.
I take my coffee back to the hotel. I walk across the concrete bike path, into the sand, and down to the ocean. Far to the left, I can see some surfers, zigzagging through the waves, around one another, like their movements are choreographed. A big, oceanic ballet. Moving continuously toward the shore.
I snap a picture.
I love you, I write. What else is there to say?
Chapter Thirty-One
“It’s really a question of eggshell or white,” the woman says.
I am standing in the middle of Mark Ingram, a bridal salon on the Upper East Side, an untouched flute of champagne on a glass coffee table, alone.
My mother was supposed to come in, but the University called a last-minute staff meeting to discuss a confidential matter, re: donations for next year, and she’s stuck in Philadelphia. I’m supposed to send her pictures.
It’s now mid-November and Bella hasn’t spoken to me in two weeks. She’s finishing her second round of chemo on Saturday, and David tells me not to bother her until it’s over. I’ve heeded his advice, impossibly. It’s excruciating, not being there. Not knowing.
The wedding invitations have gone out, we’re receiving RSVPs. The menu is set. The flowers are ordered. All that is left is getting a dress, so here I am, standing in it.
“Like I said, with this time frame it’s really off-the-rack, so it’s pretty much only the dresses hanging here.” The saleslady gestures to the three dresses to our right — one eggshell, two white. She crosses her arms, checks her watch. She seems to think I’m wasting her time. But doesn’t she know? This is a sure sale. I have to leave with a dress today.
“This one seems fine,” I say. It’s the first one I’ve tried on.
I was never one of those girls who dreamed about her wedding. That was always Bella. I remember her standing in front of my mirror with a pillowcase over her head, reciting vows to the glass. She knew exactly what the dress would look like— silk organza with spools of unfolding tulle. A long lace veil. She dreamed of the flowers: white calla lilies, puffy peonies, and tiny tea candles. There would be a harpist. Everyone would ooh and ahh when she stepped out of the shadows and into the aisle. They’d stand. She’d float down to the faceless, nameless man. The one who made her feel like the entire universe was conspiring for her love, and hers alone.
I knew I’d get married in the way you know you’ll get older, and that Saturday comes after Friday. I didn’t think that much about it. And then I met David and everything fit and I knew it was what I had been looking for, that we were meant to unfold these chapters together, side by side. But I never thought about the wedding. I never thought about the dress. I never pictured myself in this moment, standing here now. And if I had, I never would have seen this.
The dress I wear is silk and lace. It has a string of buttons down the back. The bodice fits poorly. I don’t fill it out properly. I shake my arms, and the saleswoman races into frame. She pinches the back of the dress with a giant clothespin.
“We can fix that,” she says. She looks at me in the mirror. Her face betrays sympathy. Who comes here alone and buys the first dress they try on? “We’ll have to rush it, but we can do that.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I feel like I might cry, and I do not want these tears being misinterpreted as nuptial joy. I do not want to hear her delighted squeals, or see her knowing glance: so in love. I turn swiftly to the side. “I’ll take it.”
Her face registers confusion, and then brightens. She’s just made a sale. Three thousand dollars in thirteen minutes. Must be some kind of record. Maybe I’m pregnant. She probably thinks I’m pregnant.
“Wonderful,” she says. “I love this neckline on you, it’s so flattering. Let’s just take some measurements.”
She pins me. The curve of my waist and the length of the hem. The lay of the shoulders.
When she leaves, I look at myself in the mirror. The neckline is high. She is wrong, of course. It does not flatter me at all. It does nothing to show off my collarbones, the slope of my neck. For a brief, wondrous moment I think about calling David. Telling him we need to postpone the wedding. We’ll get married next year, at The Plaza, or upstate at The Wheatleigh. I’ll get a ridiculous dress you have to custom order, the Oscar de la Renta one with the brocade flowers. We’ll have the top florist, the best band. We’ll dance to “The Way You Look Tonight” under the most delicate strands of white-and-gold twinkle lights. The entire ceiling will be made of roses. We’ll plan a honeymoon in Tahiti or Bora Bora. We’ll leave our cell phones in the bungalow and swim out to the edge of the earth. We’ll drink champagne under the stars, and I’ll wear white, only white, for ten days straight.