Даниэла Стил - All That Glitters

She called to wish him a happy Chanukah, and he asked her how things were going.

“A little wobbly, but basically okay. I feel like the KGB watching him. I don’t know if it will ever be the same again. I guess people go through worse. What about you? Will everyone come home for Chanukah?” They usually did, but she could hear that he was down.

“My mother won’t let either of my sisters come, she’s so mad at them. Rebecca converted, and Sabra and Liam will be married in April in a Catholic church. So it’s just me and Jacob this year, and my parents. They’re putting the heat on me pretty heavily about Tamar. We’ve been dating for a year and a half and they say I’m disrespecting her. They think that I owe it to her to marry her after this long, and I’ll humiliate her in the community if I don’t. I’m not even sure why I go out with her, except she’s a nice girl and a good person. She helps my father with our books. My mother loves her. Tamar wants to have a million babies, and will keep a kosher home. I feel like I’ll turn into my parents if I marry her, and she’ll become my mother. It’s everything I said I didn’t want.” He sounded tortured over it. “But I keep seeing her because it’s easy and she’s always there.”

“So?” The answer seemed obvious to Coco. He didn’t want to marry her and he wasn’t in love with her.

“I feel so damn guilty if I don’t marry her. She’s so willing and accommodating and I’ve been lazy. I should have stopped dating her a year ago, but I didn’t. My mother says they’ll be disappointed in me if I don’t marry her. Classic Jewish guilt.”

“Don’t disappoint yourself,” Coco said firmly. “That’s more important. You have a right to marry who you want.”

“I don’t want to marry anyone right now. I’m not even sure I’ve ever been in love.”

“Lucky for you,” she said, and he laughed. She always made him feel better, even from three thousand miles away.

“My father says that marrying her is the honorable thing to do, after dating her for all this time. They’ve probably guessed I’m sleeping with her, so I’ve defiled her.”

“It’s only a year and a half, not ten for chrissake, and she could have stopped seeing you.”

“She’s in love with me. And I’m comfortable with her. But is that enough?”

“No, it’s not. If you want comfortable, get a dog, or have lunch with your grandmother. Don’t you want someone more exciting?”

“Exciting doesn’t last. It’s not real. You’ve proven that twice now. And even if Nigel is back, how long do you think it’s going to last? Not forever, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t think forever lasts either. It’s just a word. But you need to feel a thrill when she walks across the room, you need to feel it in your gut, your heart should melt when you see her.”

“Maybe only girls feel those things.” He laughed.

“That’s bullshit. So do guys.”

“I don’t know. She’s a good person, she’d be a good wife and mother. She’ll keep a kosher home, which will make my parents happy.”

“And you miserable,” she reminded him. “Think of it. You’ll never eat bacon and shrimp again.” He laughed. “You’re too young to settle, and do what your parents want. Sam, think about it. This is your life, not theirs.”

“It’s hers too. And they’re nagging me day and night.”

“They’re brainwashing you to marry the girl they want.”

“Sometimes that works,” he said, sounding depressed about it. “A lot of Jewish families had arranged marriages. My grandparents did. I think they were happy.”

“This is the twenty-first century. You can’t let them do this to you.”

“I’m twenty-five years old. They think I should be married and having kids by now.”

“My parents got married at twenty-two. They’re the only people I know who pulled it off. Today that doesn’t work. Look at the mess I just made, and I was in love with him when we got married.”

“But you go for the exciting ones. That’s a big mistake. The exciting ones never last. The boring ones probably do. She won’t cheat on me. She’ll be pregnant all the time.”

“Sam, wake up! Don’t do something stupid. This is your future you’re talking about. Sixty years maybe. Possibly seventy.”

“And they’re my parents. I’m supposed to honor them too.”

“You’re breaking my heart.”

“Now you sound like my mother. She says that to me twenty times a day.”

“Go out and get laid, or drunk or something. Have a ham sandwich.” He laughed but she could feel that she was losing the battle. “One of us has to marry the right person. And I think you’re it.”

“Maybe she is the right person.”

“For someone else,” Coco said, pleading with him, but his parents had beaten him down, and he sounded confused. They talked for a long time and then he had to go to dinner with them. She wished him a happy Chanukah, and promised to call him in a few days. Her heart was aching for him when they hung up. He deserved so much better than Tamar.

—

The Christmas party Nigel and Coco gave in their new home was beautiful. They got a Christmas tree and their florist decorated it for them with antique angels. Nigel hired carolers to sing as the guests came in. Now that he was back, he was billing everything to Coco again, which was lucky for him. He’d been down to his last few hundred pounds when she relented and let him come home. The buffet was delicious, with plenty of caviar. People showed up in good spirits, and were vastly impressed by the house. In the end, they had sixty people, which felt right to Coco, although Nigel was disappointed that more people hadn’t shown up. But it was snowing and freezing cold, so some guests stayed home, or had other parties to go to.

Coco and Nigel were getting along better than they had in a long time. He was very careful not to upset her. He gave her a gold bracelet for Christmas that he had paid for himself with a credit card.

He hadn’t started looking for a job yet, but promised her he would after New Year’s. And she promised not to nag him about it until then. They went to midnight mass together on Christmas Eve, and she gave him the espresso machine he had wanted, and an Hermès sweater. They planned a ski weekend for their anniversary in January, and a week before that, something occurred to Coco that she hadn’t thought about before. She stopped at the pharmacy on her way to work, bought a test kit, and wanted to do it at the office, so he wouldn’t be around. It had just dawned on her that she hadn’t had a period since November, before Nigel had moved back in. She didn’t know what she wanted while she waited for the test to give her the answer. She didn’t feel ready for a baby yet, but maybe that was what they needed now, to stabilize their marriage. It had been a tumultuous year. She was shocked when the test was positive, even though she suspected that it might be. She was happy and terrified all at the same time.

She didn’t say anything to Leslie. She wanted Nigel to be the first to know. She knew it was what he wanted, and would bond them to each other for life, a child. It was a sacrifice she was willing to make for him, even if it seemed too soon to her, and she felt too young. She sped home in her car between appointments, and told Leslie she’d be right back. She didn’t want to wait until that night to tell him.

She let herself into the house as quietly as she could, and raced upstairs to surprise him. She could hear him in his office, talking to someone, presumably on the phone. She knocked gently on the door and walked in, and a naked blond woman was sitting on the desk, while Nigel made love to her. She was moaning, and so was he, and saying how much he loved her, which was the conversation she had heard from the stairs. He looked at Coco with horror, withdrew immediately, and held his jeans up in front of him. The girl didn’t know what had happened, and then turned and saw Coco. It wasn’t someone she knew this time, but it didn’t matter.