Curtis Sittenfeld - Eligible

She stepped in and hugged her loathsome, charming younger sister. “Keep me posted,” she said.

OUTSIDE, LIZ WALKED briskly to her father’s car and was just a few feet from it when she heard her name. She turned to see Ham jogging after her.

“You slipped out without giving me a chance to say thanks again for coming tonight. Really.”

“Thanks for including me,” Liz said automatically, and then they both were quiet, and Liz wondered if they would continue to be part of each other’s lives for decades to come — if Ham and Lydia would stay married.

“I hope you don’t feel”—Ham paused—“I guess, ah, misled.”

“I don’t care that you’re transgender,” Liz said. “And even if I did, I realize you don’t need my approval. But it’ll be a huge bummer if Lydia becomes permanently estranged from our parents.”

“No one wants her to have a good relationship with them more than I do,” Ham said. “I didn’t plan to — she was the one who had the idea of eloping. I could have said no, obviously, but what if I did and your parents succeeded in turning her against me? I couldn’t risk losing the love of my life.”

To be adored as deeply and inexplicably as Ham adored Lydia — would she herself, Liz wondered, ever experience it?

“I decided the best strategy was to tie the knot now, then spend as long as it takes convincing your mom and dad I’m a good guy,” Ham was saying. “That’s still my aim, and I welcome your advice.”

“So the other stuff you’ve told me,” Liz said, “or your bio on your website — I’d understand if it’s not, but is it all true? Were you in the army, and did you grow up in Seattle?”

“It’s definitely all true,” Ham said. “I was commissioned into the Signal Corps as a female and I had a different name, but yes.”

Liz sighed. “Do you think the storage locker with all the stuff from my parents’ basement is infested with spiders?”

“That crossed my mind. I can check. Liz, I know that Lydia can be hard on you, but your opinion matters a lot to both of us. I’m really happy we have your blessing, and I promise I’ll make things right with your parents.”

“I believe you,” Liz said. “Now go inside. You’re missing your own party.” As Ham stepped forward to hug her once more, she said, “Lydia’s lucky she found you.”

LIZ’S PLANE LANDED at JFK shortly after eleven A.M., and as it taxied toward the gate, she switched the setting on her phone out of airplane mode. Immediately, three texts popped onto her screen, one of which was from her editor, Talia, a second from Jane, and a third that read, It’s Darcy. Hope things are okay with your family. Can I buy you a drink this weekend?

Her heart stretched and contracted. Why now? Of course now! I’m sure you’ve heard from my brother about him and Caroline, Liz thought, and the idea of sitting in a bar listening to him describe his renewed romance made her glad she’d left Cincinnati.

She was ready — more than ready — to once again inhabit her life in New York. So it hadn’t worked out with Darcy; she was thirty-eight, and it hadn’t worked out with plenty of guys. Actually I’m back in NY, she typed hastily. Looks like we’re ships passing in the night. Take care. Then she hit Send, and within a few minutes, she was off the plane and hurrying through the terminal, buoyed, however temporarily, by the relief of resolution.

FOR THE MORNING of the Women’s League luncheon, Liz had ordered a large bouquet of pale pink roses, hypericum berries, and sweet peas to be delivered to the Tudor, along with a card bearing her and Jane’s names. During the luncheon, she texted Mary and Kitty to ask how it was proceeding.

Fine, Mary texted back. Almost over.

Picture a sorority that time traveled 50 years, Kitty texted back. Except drunker.

Neither of which exactly answered Liz’s question.

The day before, Liz had heard from Shane Williams that another couple was preparing to make an offer on the house, and she had purposely withheld this information prior to the luncheon. Upon calling the Tudor in the late afternoon, she learned from Mr. Bennet that her mother had retired to bed.

“In defeat or triumph?” Liz asked, and her father said, “It’s hard to tell sometimes, isn’t it?”

THE INITIAL OFFER was for $899,000; after negotiations, it stalled at $920,000, which Shane told Liz and Mr. Bennet in a conference call he strongly recommended accepting. “Unless you want to take the house off the market, make improvements, and put it up for sale again in the spring,” he said. “But with the school year under way, and the holidays on the horizon, now just isn’t when most people are looking to move.”

The second time around, the inspection did not yield surprises; a closing date was set for October 18, and Liz booked a ticket to Cincinnati accordingly.

SEPTEMBER IN NEW York was still prone to unpleasant hotness, but by October, which had always been Liz’s favorite month, the city was at its best — the leaves in Central Park were changing color, the stylish women who worked at Mascara and its sister magazines were wearing belted coats, and her favorite deli was selling pumpkin soup. It had occurred to Liz that her extended stay in Cincinnati might distance her from her New York friends, or even from her own habits there, but in fact, she appreciated the city anew, and the affection appeared reciprocal: She went out often for drinks, dinner, or brunch, in many cases with people she hadn’t socialized with for over a year, and there was much to gossip about and discuss. Though she made a point of calling her parents every other evening, and texting her sisters as often if not more so, the absence of constant familial obligations made her feel as if additional hours had been inserted into each day, hours in which she could read novels, attend movies, go for long runs, or visit museum exhibits that she probably, the previous spring, would have intended to see without actually doing so, believing herself to be too busy.

A few weeks had passed before Liz realized that these auxiliary chunks of time were attributable not simply to no longer being at the beck and call of her family but also to the conclusion of her relationship with Jasper. It was in the second week of October, with neither delight nor vengeance, that Liz discarded the red sheer teddy and matching thong underwear, never worn, that he’d sent her in Cincinnati. She also recycled the piece of computer paper on which, over a decade and a half, she had written what she’d once deemed Jasper’s best sentences: I talk way more openly with you than I do with her. Sometimes I think you and I would be a good couple. I love you in my life. How meager these offerings had come to seem, how provisional their compliments. Yet surely she was as culpable as he was; recalling her casual speculation about when Jasper’s wife’s grandmother might die and thereby free Jasper and Susan to divorce, Liz wondered if a stronger sign of a relationship’s essential corruptness could exist than for its official realization to hinge on the demise of another human being.

In any case, when the autumn nights most filled Liz with yearning — when, as she was leaving work, the smell of candied cashews and fallen leaves wafted through the cool air — the person she thought about wasn’t Jasper.

CONGRATULATIONS, KATHLEEN BENNET! read the email Kitty had forwarded to Liz. The Kenwood Institute of Cosmetology is pleased to offer you a place in our rigorous and state-of-the-art 16-week Manicuring Program; your session will begin on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2013.