behind the door so she wouldn’t have to look at it, and scrubbed all the floors with a toothbrush. He was understanding because he had a few quirks of his own. He was a documentarian, which provided him the excuse of filming people with his camera phone when they weren’t paying attention. At least once a week she caught him holding up his phone while she sipped her morning coffee. She shooed him with a wave of her hands like he was a fly: “Are you kidding? I haven’t even brushed my hair!” But after a while she learned to ignore it. Some men buy flowers, others carry around footage of what their girlfriends look like at 6:30 A.M.
After their first year of domestic bliss, Saraub started talking about finding a bigger place. With his I NY tourism commercial editing gigs, and the job at Vesuvius, she was about to start, they could afford a house in Yonkers, maybe even start a family. She’d nodded and changed the subject, because she’d figured he wasn’t serious. Besides, it wasn’t that outlandish: she’d kept a cactus alive for five years; a baby couldn’t be that much harder, could it?…Right? And the truth was, this happy family bullshit, with its white picket fence and healthy Campbell’s-Soup-looking kids he kept dreaming about; it sounded pretty good.
One morning, he woke her up with a cup of coffee and the real-estate section of the New York Times, in which he’d circled about five house listings. “Let’s take the train to Yonkers and have a look,” he’d nudged. She’d rolled over and told him she had too much homework, which was true. She’d been working ninety hour weeks to get her thesis finished on time.
When the project was done and she’d been at the new job a few months, she couldn’t put him off anymore. They went to Yonkers. Saw a classic Victorian overlooking the Hudson River. “It’s run-down,” he’d told her. “But the taxes are low, and I know you’ll work wonders.” As soon as the broker left to take a phone call, he got down on one knee.
“I’ve got a surprise,” he told her as he reached into his pocket. A lock of black hair fell into his eyes, and she thought he was the most handsome and terrifying man in the world. The air got thin, and the walls felt closer. She pressed her hands against them to keep from getting crushed.
“I saved up the money for the deposit,” he said. He was so proud that he’d done it without his family’s help that she had to smile, and be proud of him, too. “It’s our house if we want.”
“Wow,” she mumbled, while pushing hard against plaster and trying to remember to breathe.
He opened a velvet box. Something sparkled. “My grandmother’s,” he explained. “Do you like it?”
The ring was small and classy. Antique platinum. Perfect. She loved it. The house was perfect, too. She took a deep breath and held herself steady. Then again, it wasn’t perfect at all. This was a man who burst into the bathroom while she was showering, just to announce he was leaving for work. This was a man who, no kidding, really did eat crackers in bed. His grandparents had survived famine, and as a result he thought that food equaled love. When she came home from school at night, he scampered out of the bedroom like a puppy dog: “How was your day? Did you have a good day?…I baked you this pie! Eat my delicious rhubarb pie!”
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get his shoes to line up nicely, or his furniture to shine quite right. She never wanted to admit it, but she knew why. It wasn’t her furniture. It wasn’t her apartment. The thing about other people is, they’re not you.
“You make me a better man,” Saraub said.
She took a breath. And another. And another. Imagined the house full of voices. A barking dog. Meddling in-laws with really good table manners, who corrected her when she used soup spoons to stir her tea. A kid or two. Indian kids! On holidays, she’d have to dress them in saris. The rest of the time, they’d want to know how to tie their shoes. They’d need burping, and bathing. They’d need mothering, and who was fooling whom, she could hardly take care of herself.
“What do you say?” Saraub asked.
She put out her left hand and told him the truth. “I really love you,” she