I got home. Made tea. Sat at the kitchen table with the lamp on.
Tomorrow was a Tuesday.
November
The dinner with Olivia was in the middle of November, at a Thai place she’d picked near her and Ethan’s apartment.
She arrived in the particular put-together way she has, the yellow tulips energy applied to how she showed up for things — on time, with intention. We ordered quickly because she’d been here before and knew what was good. The drunken noodles, she said, were exceptional.
She was right.
We talked about the wedding first, because it was the most recent large shared event. She said it had been beautiful in a way she hadn’t fully expected. I said I’d thought so too. She said she’d cried at the ceremony, which she’d told herself she wouldn’t.
“I knew I would,” I said. “Ethan cried first.”
She smiled. “He told me he was going to hold it together.”
“He cannot hold it together. He never could.”
“I know,” she said. “I find it very endearing.”
Then we talked about the months before the wedding, which was what we’d actually come to talk about, in the way of two people who have had a complicated shared experience and want to see what the other one made of it.
She said she’d been thinking about how she’d been positioned when she first came into our family — what information she’d been given and in what framing. She said she hadn’t understood, initially, why I seemed sometimes slightly guarded at family gatherings, and now she had a much better picture of why.