Page 27

Nicole

My dad met Kyle for the first time when he came out to see me during that sophomore year of college.

He loved to visit, to see the seasons. He’d been born and raised in California, had never considered living elsewhere.

When I told him I was going to Rhode Island, he was befuddled.

“ Rhode Island ?” he’d said, as if I’d announced I was headed to Mars.

He came to accept it, though, and then said he was going to visit once a season.

I was an emotional disaster my freshman year, and those visits from him made me feel less like I was floating in space.

Just knowing he was coming, even if it was weeks away, tethered me.

“Dad, I want you to meet my boyfriend,” I told him when he arrived. Kyle and I had been dating only a month, but it felt like something that could be long term, something I wanted my dad to approve of.

He raised his eyebrows, appropriately suspicious of any male I was spending time with.

“He’s a good guy,” I said.

“We’ll see about that.”

We met Kyle at a TGI Fridays, which was considered high end by most of the college kids. We got a booth, my dad and I sitting together, Kyle across from us, as if we were interrogating him together. We were, I guess.

My dad asked him questions, made jokes. Kyle was awkward and nervous. I kept reaching under the table to tap his knee reassuringly.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

“Dad!” I said, play hitting him.

Kyle didn’t miss a beat, though. Like I said, Kyle was someone with a ten-year plan.

“In five years, I should be done with my MBA and entering the workforce.”

My dad nodded, satisfied.

On the drive back to my apartment that night, my dad said, “He’s smart, that’s for sure.”

“He is,” I said.

“He treats you well?”

I wasn’t sure what to make of this question. What did it mean to be treated well? We were twenty years old. We were starry eyed about the future and having a lot of sex.

“You gotta make sure you’re on the same page with things,” my dad said. “You gotta support each other’s dreams.”

“Dad, we’re not getting married yet,” I said with a laugh, though I had already started thinking of Kyle as my future husband.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m just saying.”

“He’s a good guy, promise.”

“I trust you, Nikki Bear,” he said. “And if he’s ever not, you just call me. I got guns.”

He kissed each of his biceps, and I laughed. I’m quite sure that the hardest I’ve laughed in my life was with my dad.

Kyle got into UCLA for business school, and I decided to move with him.

One of my professors had hooked me up with an internship with her famous photographer friend in New York City.

She was one of the people who thought I was a “natural talent” who was “going places.” When I turned it down, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “I can’t believe you’re choosing to become another woman following a man. ” I never talked to her again.

It was an easy decision to follow Kyle, though. We were two years into our relationship and enamored with each other in the way only young people are. Besides, I wanted to get back to California. Harsh winters were not for me, and I missed being close to my dad and Merry.

In LA, we moved into a crappy apartment with walls so thin we could hear our neighbors, a fortysomething married couple, fighting.

We were astonished by the vitriol of their words, made a promise to each other that we would never be them.

We talked about getting married, agreeing that we would wait until he finished school, got a job, and saved a certain amount of money.

That amount was $50,000, which seemed like an impossible sum to my young ears.

He assured me we would get there. “It’ll just take time. We have time,” he said.

While he was in business school, I held a variety of fairly meaningless jobs.

The coolest one was working as a tour guide at LACMA—the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

I had plenty of time to do my photography—mostly nature stuff.

I’d drive out to Joshua Tree before Instagram made it famous and take photos of the rocks.

I’d go to the beach and photograph the waves, the surfers.

Out loud, I said I didn’t really want to rely on photography for income.

I wanted it to be fun, never obligatory.

Secretly, though, of course I hoped to make it big.

I hung some prints in local mom-and-pop restaurants, sold a few.

I had a couple of photos published in travel magazines.

I created a website to showcase my work, pretended not to care that there were only a dozen visitors to the site per week.

I paid the hosting fee on that site until shortly after Grace was born.

I didn’t make an active choice to let go of the site.

I simply forgot to update the credit card information to pay the renewal fee.

Some months into new motherhood, I typed in the website address and got an error message.

The thought of making phone calls to resolve this seemed like entirely too much.

I took photos of Grace—thousands of photos—but those days of spending hours in nature, snapping away without time pressure, felt like another life in a galaxy far, far away.

After business school, Kyle got a job with a prestigious pharmaceutical company based in Thousand Oaks, a suburb of LA.

Within a year of being there, he was already getting awards and bonuses as one of their most successful sales representatives.

He was ecstatic, and I was ecstatic for him.

It felt like this thing we had planned for so long was finally happening.

And in the last year of our twenties, our bank account crossed the $50,000 mark, and he proposed on a beach walk, pulling the ring out of the pocket of his board shorts and then getting down on one knee.

His hands were shaking, and I said, “Why are you so nervous, silly?” He said he wasn’t sure if I would say yes, and I was shocked that he had any doubt.

“Yes!” I said over and over again as we kissed and strangers clapped for us as they walked by.

I can’t say I thought much about what I wanted in a husband or if Kyle checked those boxes.

I loved him. He loved me. Marriage was a romantic notion, this idea of us continuing to grow together—buying a house, having kids, accumulating all the components of the American dream.

This was what we’d been instructed to desire.

We didn’t know to want anything else. Even now, I’m not sure Kyle would want anything else.

He’s happy enough, aside from the less-than-active sex life. It’s me that’s the problem.

In those early days, I liked being married.

I liked the ring on my finger that alerted anyone near me that I had successfully achieved this life event.

I liked saying husband and wife . I would call Kyle at work sometimes just to say “Hi, husband, it’s your wife.

” I bought an apron with polka dots and a Betty Crocker cookbook.

I had dinner ready when he got home from work.

I got my first ad-agency job via Kyle’s boss’s wife, who was a creative director looking for graphic design talent.

Before long, Kyle and I were two business professionals with a promising future.

There was never a doubt we wanted kids, but Kyle wanted a house first, so we worked and saved for a down payment.

He got a job offer in Orange County, at another prestigious pharmaceutical company, the one he still works for.

We moved there, finally bought a house. I was ready to try for a baby, but he wanted to wait until he was established enough to “take paternity leave in good conscience.”

When we finally started trying, we had no luck for a year, at which point the doctors gave me a diagnosis of “unexplained infertility.” It was during the sadness of this time that I realized that Kyle and I hadn’t been through anything truly difficult before.

In response to my sadness, the likes of which he’d never seen before, he worked more.

I remember having passing thoughts about whether or not we would make it through this.

Then, a year later, I got pregnant, and any doubts I’d had were replaced with all the plans and preparations for parenthood.

My dad is in a wheelchair now. It’s a clunky, heavy old thing with a wonky wheel. The hospice company dropped it off along with a pack of adult diapers.

“He needs diapers now?” I say to Merry, just above a whisper because my dad, who is fast becoming an invalid, is sitting just a few feet away at the kitchen table.

“Not quite yet, but I think we’re getting close.”

The depressions under Merry’s eyes look deeper, darker. It is as if she has aged ten years just since last week.

When my dad reaches for his coffee mug, his hand is shaky. It’s obvious that it takes a good deal of concentration for him to move his fingers around the mug’s handle. I wonder when he’ll no longer be able to grip it himself, when he’ll need a sippy cup like his granddaughters do.

“How’s your oatmeal, Dad?” I ask him, as if it’s any other day, as if Merry and I aren’t over here talking about when he’ll become incontinent.

“Good!” He remains upbeat, chipper even.

He glances at the whiteboard in front of him. It says, Nicole is here today . When I woke up this morning, I drew a heart on it and wrote, “I love you, Dad.”

“Hey, it says here that Nicole is here today.” He looks up, sees me. The gears of his brain lock into place for a moment. “And there you are!”

“Here I am,” I say.

“When did you get here?”

He’s asked me this three times already.

“It’s Saturday morning,” I say, reminding him, though it says it right there on the board. “I got in last night.”

“From Rhode Island?”