My rejection letters came in like they were supposed to – this was part of the process, you reminded me, kindly and often. It’ll happen. Your unconditional belief in me felt magical. I desperately wanted to prove to myself that I was as good as you thought I was. ‘Read to me. Whatever you wrote today. Please!’ I always made you beg and then you’d chuckle when I feigned exasperation and agreed. Our silly routine. You’d curl up on the couch after dinner, exhausted, your office clothes still on. You would close your eyes while I read you my work and you would smile at all of my best lines.
The night I showed you my first published story, your hand shook as you took the heavy-stock magazine. I’ve thought of that often. That pride you had in me. I would see that shaking hand again years later, holding her tiny wet head, marked with my blood.
But before then:
You asked me to marry you on my twenty-fifth birthday.
With a ring I sometimes still wear on my left hand.
3
I never asked you if you liked my wedding dress. I bought it used because I saw it in the window of a vintage store and couldn’t get it out of my mind while I browsed the expensive boutiques with your mother. You never whispered, as some awed grooms do, sweating at the altar and rocking on their feet, You look beautiful. You never mentioned my dress when we hid behind the redbrick wall at the back of the property, waiting to float into the courtyard where our guests drank champagne and talked about the heat and wondered when the next canapé would pass. You could barely look away from my shining pink face. You could barely let go of my eyes.
You were the most handsome you had ever been and I can close my eyes now and see twenty-six-year-old you, the way your skin looked bright and your hair still curled down around your forehead. I swear you had remnants of baby fat in your cheeks.
We squeezed each other’s hands all night.
We knew so little then about each other, about the people we would be.
We could have counted our problems on the petals of the daisy in my bouquet, but it wouldn’t be long before we were lost in a field of them.
‘There will be no table for the family of the bride,’ I had overheard the wedding planner say in a low voice to the man who set up the folding chairs and place cards. He gave her a subtle nod.
Your parents gave us the wedding bands before the ceremony. They handed us the rings in a silver clamshell that had been given to your great-grandmother by the man she loved, who had gone to war and never come home. Inside was engraved a proclamation from him to her: Violet, You will always find me. You had said, ‘What a beautiful name she had.’
Your mother, cloaked in a fancy pewter-colored shawl, gave us a toast: ‘Marriages can float apart. Sometimes we don’t notice how far we’ve gone until all of a sudden, the water meets the horizon and it feels like we’ll never make it back.’ She paused and looked only at me. ‘Listen for each other’s heartbeat in the current. You’ll always find each other. And then you’ll always find the shore.’ She took your father’s hand and you stood to raise your glass.
We compliantly made love that night because we were supposed to. We were exhausted. But we felt so real. We had wedding bands and a catering bill and adrenaline headaches.
I forever take you, my best friend and my soul mate, to be my partner in life, through everything that’s good, and everything that’s hard, and the tens of thousands of days that fall somewhere in between. You, Fox Connor, are the person I love. I commit myself to you.
Years later, our daughter watched me stuff the dress into the trunk of our car. I was going to take it back to the same place I’d found it.
4
I remember exactly what life was like in the time that followed.
The years before our own Violet came.
We ate dinner, late, on the couch, while we watched current affairs shows. We had spicy takeout on a black marble coffee table with vicious corners. We drank glasses of fizzy wine at two o’clock on weekend afternoons and then we napped until someone was roused, hours later, by the sound of people walking outside to the bar. Sex happened. Haircuts happened. I read the travel section of the newspaper and felt it was research, realistic research, for the place we’d go next. I browsed expensive stores with a hot, foamy beverage in my hands. I wore Italian leather gloves in the winter. You golfed with friends. I cared about politics! We cuddled on the lounge chair and thought it was nice to be together, touching. Movies were a thing I could watch, something that could take my mind away from the place where I sat. Life was less visceral. Ideas were brighter. Words came easier! My period was light. You played music throughout the house, new stuff, artists someone had mentioned to you over a beer at an establishment filled with adults. The laundry soap wasn’t organic and so our clothes smelled artificially mountain fresh. We went to the mountains. You asked about my writing. I never looked at another man and wondered what he’d be like to fuck instead. You drove a very impractical car every day until the fourth or fifth snowfall of the year. You wanted a dog. We noticed dogs, on the street; we stopped to scratch their necks. The park was not my only
