Partly, she blamed her sister for the fact that she wasn’t able to make up her mind about Rudy. Patsy kept asking if Rudy was “the One.” She accused Pru of being contented, of settling. Pru wasn’t sure she was settling; but she wasn’t sure she could see what was wrong with that, anyway. Rudy loved her. He told her so all the time. She never had to worry about him being faithful or attentive or responsive. But her sister had put doubts in her head.
Was Rudy the One? Was there even a One? If so, who was it, and where the hell was he? How would she even know, when she met him? Maybe Rudy was the One, or on his way to becoming the One. Or maybe he was One of the Ones, as she liked to tell Patsy, much to her sister’s annoyance. Patsy had refused to marry Annali’s father, because he wasn’t the One. Pru couldn’t help but feel it was a bit of a selfish decision, on her sister’s part. Jimmy Roy had his problems, she couldn’t argue with that. But Pru had always liked him. He seemed to sincerely love her sister, and that he adored Annali was beyond question. Was it better to wait for the One than to give your child a home with two loving parents? Pru wasn’t sure. But she didn’t have big emotions, like her sister.
Anyway, she was sick of wondering about the One. The question bored her. She could hear the boredom in her friends’ voices, too, as she revisited the same old topic yet again. Everyone she knew, including her friend Fiona, Patsy—Jesus, even her gay friends—had moved on, long ago. She wanted new questions, like the ones the other women had: What should we name the baby? Epidural or natural birth? Dr. Maurino, Dr. Hamilton, or a midwife? Post-delivery doula, live-in nanny, stay-at-home or work? Montessori, Waldorf, or Reggio? For heaven’s sake, she already knew the answers: Josephine or Benjamin, epidural, Hamilton (she’d delivered Fiona’s kids), doula, stay-at-home, Montessori!
Even after her first few sips of beer, she couldn’t quite get the words out. She knew McKay wasn’t going to be thrilled. For one thing, she supposed, it would mean less time with him. The three of them—Rudy, Pru, and McKay—had never worked out. Girlfriend Pru and Best Friend Pru didn’t seem to be the same person. It was like when Annali handed her a Barbie and a Teletubby, and demanded a story. Made-up stories weren’t Pru’s strong suit, much less one with two such disparate characters. (Rudy, she realized suddenly, would have known what to do. See? They complemented each other.) With McKay she never gave a second thought to what she did or said, but when she was with Rudy, she sometimes felt—constrained, somehow. McKay didn’t like that. She knew—she could feel—that it made her a little rigid.
“Guess what,” she finally ventured. “I think we’re going to get married. Me and Rudy, I mean.” It sounded funny, just saying it out loud.
What other people said with their whole faces, McKay conveyed with eyebrows alone. They were like two batwings that came whooshing down, in full glower, gathering to a scowling point right above his nose. McKay almost never bothered to hide his feelings, one of the things Pru loved most about him.
There was a little silence while he glared. Finally he said, “Rudy Fisch? God, why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because Rudy loves me.”
“So what? Do you have to marry everyone who loves you? I love you, and you don’t see me going around asking you to marry me.” The batwings furrowed even deeper. “Is this because you got fired?”
She winced, and took a long drink of beer. She couldn’t even think of that word without wanting to squash it down to six-point type, in her head. She hadn’t done anything to deserve getting canned. In fact, in retrospect, she felt she should have seen it coming. Her boss was notoriously whimsical and sadistic. There weren’t government grants for the arts, like there used to be. She slaved over her proposals—beautifully written, gorgeously punctuated odes addressing the plight of the inner-city children who lacked a proper arts education. She knew how to artfully disguise her budgets to hide the fact that a good chunk of government change was going to pay her boss’s undeserved salary. Okay, so, inside, she acknowledged the utter bullshit of the endeavor: Sorry you didn’t get breakfast this morning, kid. Let’s decoupage! And yet, the grants kept coming back rejected. That she’d gotten the boot seemed just plain unfair. Indecent, in fact. Maybe she didn’t have “A Passion for Mission!” But she’d thrown several good years at that job, and it had come to nothing.
More than that, she was simply not used to failing. She’d never doubted for a moment that she would rise to the level where she belonged. It’s what you did, growing up middle class in the Midwest. She’d always climbed whatever ladder was in front of her— the swim team, the high school band flute section, her literature classes—and went up, step by step. It never occurred to her to go down a step, not by accident, and certainly not on purpose. People were supposed to be like bread: people rose.
“Not at all,” she said, defensively. “Well, yes, a little bit. I mean, I’m beginning to think this whole work thing is antifemale. Antifeminist, frankly. It’s so male—oh, you have to have a job, so we can define you in some narrow way. What’s wrong with just being a wife and a mother? Why do I have to be some other . . . thing?” Not, she reflected ruefully, that she had any idea of what that other thing would be.
McKay looked truly appalled. “God, Pru, when did you start channeling right-wing talk-show fascists?”
“You know what I mean. There’s so much pressure to do everything, have everything. I’m
