The Plot by Jean Korelitz (digital book reader txt) 📗

continued to not tell her, and to justify not telling her:

How could she possibly understand? It wasn’t as if she was a writer.

“You’re right,” Jake told her now. “I should try not to be so much of an artiste. Just, right now, I’m feeling a little bit—”

“Yes. You said. In the weeds.”

“It means—”

“I know what it means.”

The waiter arrived, bringing Jake’s fraldinha and Anna’s mussels. When he departed, she said, “My point is, whatever’s making you feel so in the weeds, would you consider sharing it with me?”

Jake frowned. The answer, of course, was: No fucking way. But there were several excellent reasons not to say this.

He lifted his glass. He was hoping to get back onto a more anniversarial track. “I’d like to thank you.”

“For what?” she asked, a little suspiciously.

“You know. For dropping everything and moving to New York. For being so brave.”

“Well,” she said, “I had a pretty good feeling, from the start.”

“Checking me out at Seattle Arts and Lectures,” he teased. “Deviously arranging for me to come to your radio station.”

“Do you wish I hadn’t?”

“No! I just can’t get over the idea that I warranted so much effort.”

“Well,” Anna smiled, “you did. What’s more, you do. Even if you’re walking a lonely road.”

“I know I can be a bit of a downer sometimes.”

“This is not about you being a downer. It’s about you being down. I can take care of my own moods. But I’ve been a little worried about yours.”

For a very uncomfortable moment, he wondered if he was about to cry. As usual, she saved him.

“Honey, it’s not my intention to pry. It’s clear to me that something’s wrong. All I’m saying is, can I help? Or if I can’t help, can I at least share?”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” said Jake, and he picked up his fork and knife, as if this proved his point. “It’s so sweet of you to be concerned. But really, my life is great.”

Anna shook her head. She wasn’t even pretending to want to eat. “Your life should be great. You’re healthy. You have a nice family. You’re secure, financially. And look, you’re successful at the only thing you ever wanted to do! Think of the writers who haven’t accomplished what you’ve accomplished.”

He did. He thought about them all the time, and not in a good way.

“What’s the point of all of this, if you’re not happy?” she asked.

“But I am,” he insisted.

She shook her head. He had a sudden, terrible thought that she was saying something important here. Something along the lines of: I came all this way for someone I thought was a vital, creative, appreciative person, only to find this morose creature undercutting his own happiness at every turn. So I’m going back where I came from. His heart was pounding. What if she really was going back? Here they were together, and he was a fool, failing to appreciate what he so obviously had: success, health, Anna.

“I mean, I’m sorry if it seems I don’t appreciate … all of the wonderful things.”

“And people.”

“Yes.” He nodded fervently. “Because I’d hate to …”

“What?” she said, eyeing him.

“I’d hate to … not articulate how grateful I am …”

She shook her silvery head. “Grateful,” she said with disdain.

“My life,” Jake said, stumbling into the apparently foreign thicket of the English language. “It’s … so much better with you in it.”

“Oh? Well, I don’t doubt that, from a practical standpoint. But I have to admit, I’d been hoping for something more. I mean,” said Anna, who wasn’t looking at him anymore. “I feel like I knew my own feelings right away. I’ll admit, leaving Seattle was probably a crazy thing to do, but we’ve lived together for six months now. Maybe not everyone knows how they feel as quickly as I did, but I think it’s really been enough time now. And I mean, if you still don’t know what you want to happen here, maybe that’s its own answer. This is what I’m in the weeds about, if you want to know the truth.”

He stared at her, and a sick feeling surged through him. Eight months since their meeting, six of them spent living together as a couple, exploring the city, adopting a cat, meeting his family and his friends and broadening their shared circle … what was the matter with him? Was he so distracted by some malevolent piece of shit on the internet that he was about to miss the truly life-altering and entirely real person on the other side of the table? This dinner was not, as he’d simply assumed, a rote acknowledgment of their six-month anniversary, it was the end of some private trial period for Anna. And Jake was blowing it. Or already had blown it. Or surely would blow it if he didn’t … what?

He asked her to marry him.

It took mere seconds for her to begin grinning, mere seconds more for him to grin back, a minute at most before the idea of it, of getting married to Anna Williams of Idaho, Seattle, Whidbey Island, Seattle again, and now New York, had lost all of its unfamiliarity and become an exciting, cheerful, and above all settled thing. And then they were holding hands beside their still steaming plates.

“Wow,” said Anna.

“Wow,” Jake agreed. “I don’t have a ring.”

“Well, that’s okay. I mean, can we get a ring?”

“Absolutely.”

An hour later, having dispatched several additional caipirinhas and never once returning to their previous topic of conversation, they left the restaurant an inebriated and very much engaged couple.

CHAPTER NINETEENThe Only Place Left to Go

Anna wasn’t interested in anything elaborate, and neither of them saw any point in waiting. They went to the diamond district and she chose something called an “estate” ring (which meant “secondhand” with a nicer name, though it did look very pretty on her finger), and less than a week after that they were at city hall, waiting on the hard benches with all of the other couples. After a bespectacled official named