Curtis Sittenfeld - Eligible

Happy now? Kitty had typed above the institute’s digital letterhead, and Liz wrote back, Yes, very. Good for you!

MRS. BENNET WAS the one who called Liz, which was unusual, unless there was a sale on bath mats at Gattle’s. “Your father has gone to a lecture with that deviant,” Mrs. Bennet practically hissed. “Can you imagine?”

“Do you mean Ham?” Liz asked.

“I don’t know what your father’s thinking.”

Liz had been pleased to hear that Mr. Bennet and Lydia had met on more than one occasion for breakfast at the Echo, but as far as she knew, this was the first time since the elopement that he had socialized with Ham.

“What’s the lecture about?” she asked.

“That has nothing to do with anything,” Mrs. Bennet said.

A modicum of research revealed that the two men had heard a professor at the University of Cincinnati speak on law and politics in ancient Greece.

Are u a history buff? Liz texted Ham.

Whatever it takes, Liz, Ham texted back. Whatever it takes:)

USING A SMARTPHONE matchmaking app that hadn’t existed the last time she’d been single, Liz embarked on a series of dates that were neither terrible nor particularly promising. The fifth man she met for a drink turned out to be someone with whom she had gone on one date seven years earlier, though neither of them realized it until they were seated across from each other at a restaurant on East Thirty-sixth Street and had been talking for ten minutes. The man’s name was Eric, and he was now living in the suburbs of New Jersey, divorced, and the father of a five-year-old and a two-year-old.

He was a perfectly pleasant person, but as they spoke, all the things that had bothered her the last time around bothered her again, with only the slightest particulars changed. She hadn’t been aware of storing this list of Deterrents to Dating Eric Zanti in her brain for seven years, but once it got reactivated, there was no denying that it was there: He didn’t read much, he said, because he was too busy. He enjoyed small-game hunting, though on a recent guys’ weekend with his buddies, he’d taken down a 150-inch whitetail deer. He thought his ex-wife spent too much time on Facebook.

In her twenties, Liz had lived with a roommate named Asuka who loathed grocery shopping; she said that looking at all the food in the aisles, thinking of the meals she’d need to fix, day after day and year after year, filled her with despair. Parting ways with Eric outside the restaurant — they kissed on the cheek, and Liz stifled the impulse to make a joke about seeing him again seven years hence — Liz understood Asuka’s despair, except with men instead of food. Even before she returned to her apartment, she had deleted the matchmaking app from her phone.

DURING THE FORTY-EIGHT hours she was in Cincinnati for her parents’ move from the Tudor and the subsequent closing at the title company, Liz looked for Darcy. She looked for him running on Madison Road as she drove back and forth — her own trips were staggered with those of the movers — between the Tudor and the Grasmoor, which was the building where her parents had, after all, decided to live, though they were renting a two-bedroom rather than buying a three-bedroom and using the funds that might have served as the down payment to maintain their country club membership. She looked for Darcy downtown, when she and her father went to the title company’s office (she had never previously encountered Darcy downtown), and while she waited at the Dewey’s in Oakley to pick up a pizza for her parents’ first dinner in their new dwelling. She looked for him on her own run the next day, and it would have been a lie to claim she didn’t consider stopping by his apartment, but it was seven-twenty in the morning and he had a complicated work schedule and a girlfriend. (I’m sure you’ve heard from my brother about him and Caroline.)

Before flying out, Liz met Ham and Lydia for lunch at Teller’s. “I don’t know if Lydia mentioned that I wrote a letter to your mom,” Ham said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t heard back.”

Over pizza the previous night, Liz had inquired about whether her mother had considered breaking the silence between herself and her youngest daughter and her husband. “I certainly haven’t,” Mrs. Bennet had declared.

“I think she still needs time,” Liz said to Ham. “Maybe after they get settled into the new place, she’ll be more receptive. But I’m glad you’re trying.”

“Lizzy, I have a question,” Lydia said. “Have you ever gotten your eyebrows threaded?”

The three of them had stood to leave the restaurant when they saw a middle-aged woman Liz recognized as Gretchen Keefe, who decades earlier had been their teenage babysitter and neighbor on Grandin Road. Gretchen was accompanied by another woman, both of them wearing black leggings, recognizably overpriced hooded sweatshirts, and large diamond rings.

“Hey, guys!” Gretchen said warmly. “Is it true that Mary eloped with a transvestite?”

Liz winced as Ham extended his hand and said with equal warmth, “Actually, I’m transgender, not a transvestite, and married to Lydia here, but nice to meet you. Hamilton Ryan.”

“Oh my God.” Instead of shaking Ham’s hand, Gretchen brought her own hand to her mouth; her face had drained of merriment.

“Is it true,” Lydia said to Gretchen with feigned brightness, “that you and your husband haven’t had sex in fifteen years? Because that’s what he told Kitty last summer while she was trying to swim laps.”

“I didn’t realize—” Gretchen said, and Liz said, too loudly, “Yeah, lots of changes in our family. In fact, our parents moved from Grandin Road yesterday. The house had just gotten too big for them.” This was what Mrs. Bennet had explained to Abigail Rycraw, a widow and Women’s League member they’d run into in the Grasmoor parking lot, and her mother had said it so convincingly that Liz briefly thought she believed it.

Gretchen looked to be on the cusp of tears, and Liz said, “Anyway, nice to see you!” She glanced at Ham and Lydia and pointed toward the front of the restaurant. “Shall we?”

Outside on the sidewalk, Lydia said, “Gretchen Keefe sucks.”

“You need to grow a thicker skin, baby,” Ham said. “You’ll get there.”

“Sorry,” Liz said, and Ham shrugged.

“I’ve heard worse.”

REMEMBER THAT GUY Darcy who dissed u at the Lucases bbq? Mary texted Liz on Halloween. Just saw him at Skyline but he was bizarrely nice.

Liz was at her desk at Mascara, preparing to enter a one o’clock meeting.

Another text arrived from Mary: Maybe he’s bipolar.

What did you talk about? Liz typed, then deleted.

Was Chip’s sister Caroline with him? she typed, then deleted that, too.

Did my name come up? she wrote, and this she also deleted.

Finally, she wrote, I guess he likes chili, and that was the text she sent.

JANE’S FORTIETH BIRTHDAY fell on the first Saturday in November, and Liz traveled by train to Rhinebeck to help set up the dinner party Amanda and Prisha were hosting. Liz had made two earlier trips to Rhinebeck and been reassured both times to see that her sister’s coloring was rosy, her demeanor was upbeat, and a small, enchanting bump protruded a little more from her midsection with each visit. By her birthday, Jane was twenty-two weeks pregnant and downright voluptuous. She wore empire-waist shirts that emphasized her full breasts, and jeans whose stretchy belly panels she revealed to Liz with amusement. “You’re like a fertility goddess,” Liz said, and Jane laughed but didn’t seem displeased.