he said, “that we should probably get married.”
“Married?”
“Yeah. I mean, we’re going to be together anyway, and with the baby, I just feel like it’s right.”
“I just … I don’t know. It’s a lot.”
“But don’t you want to marry me? I want to marry you,” Max said. He shut his laptop and turned to face her. “Will you marry me?”
She said yes, although she felt unsure. It seemed mean to say no. It was a horrible story, really. That was her engagement, Max saying, “We’re going to be together anyway,” and her saying yes, because that seemed the polite thing to do.
Later in the week, Max came home and threw his bag on the floor. “I got something for you,” he said. He pulled a small box out of his backpack and opened it for her. In it was a ring with a large round diamond on it. Cleo looked up at him and tilted her head.
“It’s fake,” he said. “Sorry, I should have said that right away.” He took it out of the box and held it out to her. “I just thought you should have something now, until I can get you something real.”
“Oh,” Cleo said. “Thanks.”
“Should I kneel?” Max didn’t wait for her to answer, before getting down on one knee. It felt like they were playacting and Cleo wanted it to be over soon. She took the ring and put it on her finger.
Cleo felt funny wearing the ring, like she was pretending to be something she wasn’t. She turned the ring around often, so that the fake diamond faced the other way. She was embarrassed whenever one of her professors noticed it.
When Cleo told her mom that they were getting married, Elizabeth was silent.
“What?” Cleo asked.
“Oh, Cleo,” her mother said. “What do you think is going to happen? That you’ll get married and live together, all happy playing house? Come on, Cleo. You’re smarter than this.”
Cleo wanted to tell her mom that clearly she wasn’t smarter than this. If she was smarter, wouldn’t she be in a different situation? It reminded her of the time she got a B in calculus senior year, and Elizabeth had been angry, had shaken her head. “No B’s,” she’d said. “You’re smart enough to get an A.”
That never made sense to Cleo. If she was smart enough to get an A, wouldn’t she have gotten one in the first place? She often wondered if she was even smart at all, or if Elizabeth just expected her to be, so she had to live up to it. Of course, the next semester she had brought home an A in calculus. Elizabeth had just nodded. “I told you,” she said.
She wore the ring for Max, since it seemed to make him happy. After a while, her fingers got bloated and she had to take it off. She was scared it was going to get stuck on there, that her fat little sausage finger would lose circulation and have to be amputated.
A little while later, Max came home with an identical ring—except this one was bigger. She wore it until that, too, got too tight, and she placed it on her dresser. She was ringless until Max replaced it again. Sometimes she took all three rings and lined them up next to each other. She never asked Max where he got them. They were probably from Walmart but she didn’t want to know.
WHEN SENIOR WEEK CAME, Cleo was relieved. At least when it was over, people would stop talking about it all the time. Max kept insisting that he should skip it. “I don’t even want to go to Hilton Head,” he said. “I hate it there.” Because he was nice enough to lie, she told him he had to go. It didn’t go unnoticed that he was acting in a way that very few college boys would. She saw the way his friends looked at her, like she’d ruined his life, like he didn’t have as much to do with this situation as she did. And so, because of this, she kept saying, “You have to go.”
Max finally agreed, but tried to get her to come with. Cleo was firm on this. There was no way in hell she was going to Senior Week with a huge pregnant stomach to be the only sober person in a sea of Bucknell students. She’d rather be trapped in a cave with Mary and Laura for seven days straight than go through that.
“Then I’m