Now there was no escape. Was there? Jesus, could I leave Mary, pregnant and alone, branded forever as the woman whose husband left her for Hattie Hoffman, that girl who was in the plays and not even out of high school? He was her teacher, you know. I could hear their whispers, picture their sympathetic looks.
I sped toward Rochester. The melting fields blurred into rolls of white and brown, and then subdivisions gave way to the car dealerships and big-box stores that lined the freeways on the outskirts of the city. I turned toward Mayo Clinic and downtown, slowing the car as people spilled into the sidewalks for lunch hour, their faces lifted, basking in the unseasonable warmth of the day.
It was warm the day I’d proposed to Mary, too. God, it seemed like a lifetime ago now, but it was less than six years since that day after graduation.
I zigzagged up and down the streets of the business district and finally parked next to a café and started walking, thinking about the girl I’d proposed to, everything I prized about her. I loved her sweet, dependable personality. I loved how loyal she was to the American classics, to Steinbeck and Cather and Thoreau. I loved how she’d shop the thrift stores twice a year, always on the Daylight Saving Time days so she never forgot, and she’d take back grocery bags of her old clothes and sell them for half the money of her new finds. She was so responsible with her money, not like me. I could get by on ramen and tofu for a week, but then I’d go to the bar on Saturday and blow two hundred dollars on drinks and cabs. I knew I needed a wife like Mary. It made sense on so many levels that I never wondered—like a lot of my friends did about their own girlfriends—if I could find someone better. To think that one day I’d long to leave her for a deceptive, brilliant actress would have been laughable.
I planned to propose at Solera, the same tapas restaurant that I’d taken Hattie to in Minneapolis, but when I told Mary about the reservation, she balked.
“It’s too expensive,” she said. “Thirty dollars for a bottle of wine? That’s ridiculous.”
She suggested a picnic instead, so on the Saturday after graduation we took the bus to the Stone Arch Bridge and walked to the park on the north side of the river. Mary had prepared a cold feast—a fruit-and-cheese plate, crunchy baguette, and wine poured into grape juice bottles so the park police wouldn’t bother us. We lay out in the sun and watched the bikers and rollerbladers zoom over the bridge from our vantage point up on the bluff, eating and throwing our crumbs to ducks that became progressively bolder as the afternoon passed. As settings for marriage proposals went, it was absolutely ideal.
Dessert was my cue. I’d brought Mary’s favorite chocolate cake from the bakery, but when I brought it out—while the jeweler’s box bulged conspicuously in my pocket—I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make myself say the words. Mary noticed my sweaty anxiety after a few bites and asked whether I was feeling okay. I lied and said I’d probably had too much sun. We packed up the picnic while I kicked myself, trying to figure out a way to propose now that I’d missed my moment. It wasn’t until we were walking back over the bridge that Mary unknowingly handed me a second chance. She stopped, leaned against the railing, and smiled at the small rapids rushing in front of Nicollet Island.
“Isn’t that just perfect?” she asked, and even though the question was obviously rhetorical, I seized upon it.
“Not quite.” I dropped the picnic basket, pulled out the ring, and bent to one knee. “You can make it perfect, though.”
“Oh, my.” She breathed it, I remembered. Her hands came up over her mouth just the way I’d imagined. A few rollerbladers cheered and whistled as they shot past us.
She blushed, dropping her hands, but then abruptly sobered and looked intently into my eyes.
“Are you asking me something?”
“Yes,” I stammered, finally spitting it out. “Mary Beth Reever, will you marry me?”
“That depends.”
Her answer caught me so off guard, I actually swayed. I remember the ground rising toward me for a second, then my standing awkwardly again, still holding the ring between us.
“Depends on what?”
Every nuance of her answer was still etched in my mind: her solemn tone, the careful set of her features eclipsed by the painfully perfect blue of the sky, the dignity of downtown and the spires of the Hennepin Avenue Bridge on the horizon. Every part of the cityscape seemed to sanctify what came between us right then, more so than even the minister did later at the wedding. He gave us someone else’s words to say to each other; these were the vows we found for ourselves.
She asked me, “Do you want to have children? I can’t marry a man who doesn’t want to start a family.”
“Yes, I do,” I answered instantly. I did want a family with Mary. She would be an exceptional mother.
A smile broke over her face and tears glistened on her smooth, apple cheeks. “Yes. Yes, Peter Martin Lund, I’ll marry you.”
Six years later she was pregnant. This Mary, who harbored little more than an echo of that glowing girl I’d twirled around on the Stone Arch Bridge, had managed to conceive her child.
I felt sick. The wine I’d drunk with Hattie turned into a pounding headache as I kept walking through downtown Rochester. The sidewalk crowds died down when lunch hour ended, exposing me as an aimless wanderer. I had no destination and was incapable of forcing pretend smiles when strangers extended their Minnesotan niceties at stoplights. After a while, my pace slowed. Then it seemed pointless to continue. I stopped in the middle of a sidewalk, staring at the dirt-smeared puddles eating at the concrete.