The Vow

“Seriously?” I ask, but nobody’s listening to me. Annie’s gazing at Sam like she wants to ask to be adopted.

“Do you have your birth and marriage certificates?” Sam asks.

Annie pulls out the file she’s brought along and hands it to Sam, who flips through it. “Wait, you guys are how old?”

“Eighteen,” Annie says.

“And you?” Sam says to me.

“Seventeen.”

She puts the file down. “Wow. So you guys got married because . . .”

“Because we’re madly in love,” I say. “Now what do we need to do to get started on this?”

Sam looks to Annie. “Okay, I can give you guys suggestions, but I can’t help you break the law.”

“What are you talking about?” I ask. “Since when is getting married breaking the law?”

“Getting married isn’t,” she says. “Filing immigration papers based on a fraudulent marriage is.”

“Fraudulent?” Annie asks.

“Not real,” Sam says, her eyes flitting back and forth between Annie and me.

“I thought you didn’t know anything about immigration law,” I say. The pinch from Annie is much harder this time.

“I believe I said I don’t know much,” Sam counters. “But I called a few friends last night and found out the basics. I do know that you guys are going to have to go for an adjustment of status interview in a few months. They’ll separate you and ask you the same questions to make sure your answers match up. You’ll have to show them proof that you’re living together. More than just this.” She holds up the marriage certificate.

“And what if we can’t do that?” Annie asks.

Sam puts the marriage certificate back down and closes the file. I suddenly feel naked. Stupid. We are idiots. I’m not sure why, but we are.

“Let’s speak hypothetically,” Sam says.

“Let’s,” I say. I should probably be feigning enthusiasm, but I don’t like this egg-salad-rotting-in-my-nostrils feeling, and I already know I’m not going to like what’s about to come out of Sam’s mouth hypothetically.

“Let’s pretend that you two just got married.”

“That’s not pretending,” I say. “We did just get married. Do you know what hypothetical means?”

“Right,” Sam says, “so I guess that’s not the hypothetical part.”

I stare at Sam, waiting for something hypothetical to come out of her glossy pink mouth and enlighten me.

“Let’s say you two got married just so Mo could stay here. If I knew that, if one of you tells me that, I can’t help you.”

“What?” Annie asks. “Why?”

“Because I can’t help you commit a felony.”

I think I can hear Annie’s heart thudding. I ignore the voice in my head that’s screaming Felony, felony, felony and say, “Wait. Lawyers defend criminals all the time.”

“But I wouldn’t be defending you. I’d be helping you commit a crime. Hypothetically.”

“Right,” I mutter. “Great. This is why we need to get a real lawyer. Law students still have ideals. Whatever happened to the stereotypical scumbag attorney—Ouch, Annie, pinch me once more and I swear I will never watch Project Runway with you again.”

“Hold on,” Sam says. “We were talking hypothetically for a reason. Nobody has confessed to participating in a fraudulent marriage, and I’m only suggesting that nobody does.”

She pauses to stare meaningfully at both of us, but I’m watching her nose, not her eyes. It’s a perfectly normal nose when she’s quiet. But then she starts talking again and it bobs up and down like there’s an invisible string connecting it to her bottom lip or something. Therefore, I can’t not hate her.

“Let’s talk more about the interview,” Sam says. “They’ll ask you the questions married people know about each other—who sleeps on what side of the bed, that kind of thing—and you’ll bring stuff that proves you’re really married. Wedding pictures, honeymoon pictures, your apartment lease with both your names on it, checkbook with both your names on it, evidence of joint purchases, yada, yada. It’s not uncommon for them to send agents out to interview people you know, relatives, bosses, friends to make sure you’re actually living together and in love. And if he buys that you guys are actually married, and not committing immigration fraud, then you’ll be a conditional permanent resident, Mo.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say. “Agents will come to Hardin County?”

“It doesn’t happen most of the time, but if there’s even the tiniest of red flag in that interviewer’s mind, then they’ll investigate, and at that point it’s sort of impossible to hide the lie. If it’s a lie. Which I’m not saying it is.”

I try swallowing the golf ball lodged in the back of my throat, but it can’t be coaxed down. I should be processing what she’s saying to me, but I can’t focus because all I can think about is why I didn’t know this and if Mom knew any of this, and if she did, why didn’t she tell me? She couldn’t have known. But did Dad?

“When is this interview?” Annie asks, barely above a whisper.

“A few months. Probably October or November. And then two years after that, you will petition to have conditions removed.”

“Can we speak hypothetically again?”

Sam nods.

“What if a couple isn’t living together? What if their friends and family don’t know they’re married?”

“Then that couple should either get their marriage annulled immediately to avoid a felony conviction and a fine and possible jail time for the US citizen”—she pauses to stare at Annie—“or they should make it real.”

“But who’s to say what’s real?” Annie asks, an almost panicky tone to her voice. “What if they love each other like best friends? Because they are best friends. Who is anybody to say that their marriage is less real than, say, my parents, who haven’t had a real conversation in years and have separate bedrooms?”

If Sam is embarrassed by the overshare, she doesn’t let on. She gives Annie a sympathetic look, but I see more. There’s a glimmer of condescension in her eyes. She’s underestimating Annie. People shouldn’t do that.

“Listen,” Sam says, the glimmer still there. “The United States government doesn’t allow people to file for permanent residency because they have a best friend who’s an American citizen. They allow people to file for permanent residency if they have a spouse who’s an American. You could argue about what kind of love makes a marriage a real marriage all day long, but if that couple isn’t living together, hasn’t told a soul that they’re married, and is planning to divorce as soon as the immigrant’s status has been secured, it’s obviously fraudulent, and that couple is screwed. Screwed. Seriously, I don’t mean to scare the hypothetical couple, but they either move in and start doing the married people thing, or march back into that courthouse and get it reversed.”

“And go back to Jordan,” I say.

Sam shrugs. Clearly you don’t need a heart to be in beauty pageants.

“The married people thing?” Annie says. “Are you saying they’re actually going to ask if we’re sleeping together?”

“No. But you’ve got to be living together.”

“For how long?” Annie asks.

“If you’re not still actually married when you’re petitioning to remove conditions—so that’s two years after your interview—you’re going to have a hard time convincing them the marriage was real.”

Annie looks like she’s going to throw up. “Two years,” she mumbles.

“I thought people did this all the time,” I say.

“Oh, they do,” Sam says, flipping open the file folder to the first form in a stack. “They also get caught all the time. They get examples made of them all the time. And then the one gets sent home and the other has a criminal record. I mentioned the fines and possible jail time already, right?”

Annie nods, eyes glazed.