The Hopefuls (2 page)

“Okay,” Matt said. “Fine by me.”

“Seriously, this apartment is like twice as big as our last place and I still don't know where to put anything.”

“Ugh,” Matt said, leaning over to look into one of the boxes, which was filled with the most random of our possessions—Post-it notes, a shower cap, a pair of wooden lovebirds. “Let's just toss it.”

“Deal,” I said. I stepped over the pile of stuff around me and sat on the couch as he went to the kitchen to get himself a beer.

“How was work?” I asked.

“Good,” he said. He sat down on the couch with a sigh and leaned his head back. “I'm so tired.”

“Too tired for a trip to the grocery store? I was thinking we could go to the Giant up on Connecticut.”

“Why do you want to go all the way up there?”

“We need so much stuff. It's not that far. I can't eat Chipotle again for dinner. The employees are starting to recognize us and it's getting embarrassing.”

“I know,” Matt said. “The manager seemed genuinely excited to see me last night.”

“We basically have no food in the house. I just think the Giant is our best bet.”

There were two Safeways within walking distance of our apartment, but they were both disappointing, full of dirty produce and questionable meat. In DC, all of the Safeways had nicknames—the one in Georgetown was the Social Safeway, because apparently it was a good place to find a date, although I never met anyone who actually got picked up there. There was the Stinky Safeway (self-explanatory), the Underground Safeway, the UnSafeway. The two closest to us were the Secret Safeway, because it was tiny and hidden away on a side street, and the Soviet Safeway, because the shelves were always bare.

People found these nicknames charming. I found them stupid. When I went to the Soviet Safeway for milk and had to walk away empty-handed because the dairy case was empty, I wasn't amused. I just wanted them to get new management.

“We need a real grocery store,” I continued. “One that has actual food on the shelves.”

“Do you think you could take the car and go?” Matt asked. He gave me an apologetic look. “I'm so beat.”

Matt had started insisting that I drive as soon as I got to DC. “You just have to get used to it again,” he kept saying. But I disagreed. After living in New York for seven years, I'd pretty much completely forgotten how to drive. When I went home to Madison, I sometimes dared to take my parents' car a few blocks, gripping the wheel at 10 and 2 and riding the brake the whole time.

Even when I was a teenager, my dad had to beg me to practice driving, taking me to empty parking lots where I coasted along at fifteen miles an hour, slammed on the brake when it was time to turn. Some people love driving, love the feeling of being in control, swerving in and out of lanes; I've always preferred being a passenger.

I'd driven exactly once since I'd been in DC, when we went to brunch in Georgetown. I'd panicked as I tried to parallel-park and a line of cars honked at me like I was purposely holding them up. Matt and I had to switch places so that he could pull the car into the parking spot, which was mortifying. And now here he was, casually suggesting that I “take the car” like he was going to trick me into driving.

“I don't really know where I'm going,” I finally said.

“You have the GPS. And you know where you're going.”

“I really don't. I have no idea where anything is.”

“Beth, it's like riding a bike. I promise. You just need to get back on.”

“I think you mean, it's like a horse. The saying is, get back on the horse.”

“Yeah, sure, okay. Driving is like that. You need to get back on the horse.”

“Well, I hate horses. You know that.”

Matt looked at me, like he couldn't decide whether or not to be amused.

“Fine,” I said, grabbing the car keys. “I'll go.”

I walked out the door, waiting for him to come after me. When he didn't, I said, “Fuck,” and went to the car, which was parked in an alley that was home to the biggest rats I've ever seen. Just a few days earlier, one had charged at me and I'd screamed bloody murder. Matt said it sounded like I was being assaulted, and I said that's what it felt like. It was something no one had told me about DC—the rats are bigger there. And bolder. I think the warm weather makes them this way.

I found the store just fine, of course. Deep down, I knew Matt was right about the driving. What did I expect? That he'd drive me wherever I wanted to go, always? Like my own personal chauffeur? As I loaded a case of Diet Coke into my cart, I felt slightly ridiculous for making a big deal out of it.

But then, on the way home I got lost. I missed the turn onto T Street and somehow ended up entering the Dupont traffic circle. The GPS had been telling me to turn around, but as I continued around the circle for the fifth time trying to find the right exit, she couldn't keep up, and just kept saying, “Recalculating.” When we'd gotten the GPS, Matt had set it to speak in an Australian accent, which was funny at first but now I couldn't understand the stupid Aussie. “Tell me where to go,” I screamed at her. And then, like she would care, I added, “I hate it here.”

Leaving our apartment in New York had been harder than I'd expected. It was our home for five years, the first place we'd lived as a married couple, and I was attached to it. It didn't help that my parents had sold the house I'd grown up in just a year earlier, and now lived in an unrecognizable ranch house in a retirement community. Our New York apartment was the only home I had left.

I made a point of telling everyone that we were moving—the man who worked at the wine store around the corner, the workers behind the counter at our bagel place. When I pulled the manager of J. G. Melon aside to say good-bye, Matt looked embarrassed. “What?” I said. “We come here all the time. Don't you think it would be weird if we vanished? If we never came back?”

“People leave New York all the time,” Matt said. “I'm sure they're used to it.”

“I just want to say good-bye. It's the right thing to do.”

The day the movers came, I couldn't stop crying. I cried as they carried out our boxes and furniture, and when I hugged the twitchy doorman, Bob, good-bye. For the whole time we lived there, he'd blushed and said, “Okay, now,” whenever I said hi to him or told him to have a good day, and when I wept on his shoulder on moving day, he just about turned purple.

We watched the moving truck pull away, and then we got into our new car, which was loaded with the rest of our things, and started the drive to DC. Matt kept his hand on my leg, sometimes rubbing my shoulder or smoothing my hair to comfort me. But after about an hour, I knew he just wanted me to stop crying. And that night, as we got ready for bed, and I still had tears in my eyes, he was a little impatient.

“Come on, Beth,” he said. “I know it's hard, but what did you think? That we were going to live in that apartment forever? For the rest of our lives?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I guess I didn't really think about it.”

He sighed that night and reached over to put his arm around me. “We're here,” he said. “And home is wherever we're together.”

It was a nice thought, but I didn't totally believe it.

When I got back from the grocery store, Matt came right down the stairs to meet me at the door. “I thought you'd need help with bags,” he said, looking at my empty hands.

“I left it all in the car,” I said. And then, feeling stupid, “I got lost.”

“Oh, no. Did the Australian fail you?”

“Yes,” I said. And then, before I could help myself, “I hate it here.”

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

I hated everything about DC. I hated the weather in the summer, how it was so humid you could barely breathe, how you started sweating as soon as you walked out the door.

I hated the way people asked, “Who do you work for?” as soon as you met them, like that was the only thing that mattered. I hated the shorthand people used to talk about their jobs: I work at Treasury, they'd say. Or at DOD, or For POTUS, or I'm an LA. It was like they didn't have enough time to say the whole thing, like if you didn't know what their acronym meant, you didn't matter anyway. (I also hated how it wasn't long before I used these acronyms, how they so quickly became a part of my vocabulary.)

I hated that the Metro was carpeted, and that it was so far underground—you felt like a mole by the time you got down the escalator—and I hated that you had to swipe your card to get in
and
out of the station. I hated that you couldn't eat or drink on the train, and I especially hated that everyone obeyed the rule, like they were afraid they'd be arrested for sipping a cup of Starbucks on their morning commute.

I hated the helicopters that buzzed overhead, like we were in some sort of war zone. I hated how the motorcades stopped traffic, halted the Metros, and clogged up the streets, usually when you were running late to get somewhere.

I hated how young everyone was, especially on the Hill, how they walked around all doughy and baby faced, wearing suits that their mothers had bought for them, thrilled with the fact that they'd accepted a salary of $23K to work for ten hours a day. I hated that they were all so eager, ready to tell you about their passion—healthcare or Planned Parenthood or clean water—whether you asked or not. I hated the way people dressed, in collared shirts and knee-length skirts, muted suits and sensible ties. I hated that all the women looked like they'd just left an Ann Taylor store (and I hated that most likely, they probably just had). I hated that so many women wore sneakers and socks with their suits while they commuted, as if it were still 1987. I wanted to pull them aside and tell them that there was no need for this, that there were very comfortable ballet flats out there they could wear instead.

I hated the way that everyone wore their ID cards around their necks and tucked into their front suit jacket pockets, so that the only things visible were the lanyards, just so they could let you know that they were very important people who worked at very important places.

I hated how the cabs were always dirty, how they took only cash, and how the drivers never seemed to know where they were going. I hated that you couldn't order takeout past 10:00, unless you wanted pizza from a questionable place. I hated that I had to drive to get decent groceries, that there weren't any good neighborhood stores. I missed our neighborhood bodega. I missed it every day.

That night, after Matt had made three trips to retrieve the groceries from the car, he unpacked them and made grilled cheese for dinner. He insisted that I stay on the couch, and brought me a glass of wine. “For my little driver,” he said. “My master of direction.” He sat down next to me and ran his hand over my hair. “It'll get better, Buzz. I promise.” When we'd first started dating, I told Matt how my parents used to call me Busy Bee as a child, which he thought was hilarious. He started calling me that as a joke, then it turned into Buzzy Bee, and then Buzzy, and then just Buzz, which sounded more like a nickname for a large, bald man and less like a term of endearment. But it stuck.

“Thank you,” I said. “That's why I love you.”

I tried not to take Matt's kindness for granted, tried to appreciate it. It wasn't always a given that I'd marry someone like this, especially because I spent most of college dating (and I use that term loosely) a guy named Justin Henry, who once told me about a recent date he'd gone on while I was lying naked in his bed and once walked right by me on the street—just completely ignored me and continued down the sidewalk.

Not long after Matt and I were married, I'd said something about craving Indian food and he'd said, “Let's do it,” even though he hated Indian food. When I asked him if he was sure, he'd said, “Whatever makes you happy.” It was so easy for him, so simple. He wanted me to be happy and he'd do anything (even eat naan for dinner) to make it happen. For him, kindness was a reflex, and I envied that. I wanted it to be the same for me, to automatically put his wants first. But most of the time I had to remind myself to reciprocate, the way a socially awkward person struggles to remember appropriate topics of conversation.

That night, I ate my grilled cheese and told Matt all the things I hated about DC. I wanted him to understand how I felt, but he just told me it was impossible to hate that many things. “It's not impossible,” I told him. “It's hard. And it takes a lot of energy, but it's not impossible.”

Matt looked at me like he wasn't sure what to say. He rubbed my leg. “Do you want some more wine?” he asked, and I nodded. He got up to fill my glass, and I pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and covered myself with it, curled my legs underneath me, suddenly tired.

When he handed me my wine, he leaned down to kiss me. “Maybe,” he said, “if you try to hate it here a little less, you eventually will.”

“I doubt it,” I said.

“But maybe you could try it.”

“I could,” I said. But I didn't say that I would.

I
met my husband at Dorrian's, a bar on the Upper East Side, right around the corner from the railroad apartment I shared with three friends from college. The bar was infamous for being the place where the Preppy Murderer met his victim before he lured her to Central Park. You'd think any association with murder would make a bar unpopular, but you'd be wrong. Every night, it was crowded with twentysomethings who were new to the city. When “Sweet Caroline” played, the whole place pumped their fists, smacked their palms on the tables, and chanted, “So good, so good, so good.”

We met in October 2001, and the amazing part about that night wasn't that we found each other in a big city, or that we wound up at the same bar at the same time—it's that I'd gone out at all. I arrived in New York in July, moved into the tiny apartment that took more than half of my paycheck, and for a couple of months, everything was great. I was an editorial assistant at
Vanity Fair,
for a theatrical and judgy gay man, who loved talking about whatever new diet he was on and how fat and gross everyone else was. (Once he walked by my desk in the morning and wrinkled his face at the bran muffin I was picking apart. “Is that fried chicken?” he asked, before disappearing into his office and letting me explain that it was a muffin, that I wasn't in fact eating fried chicken at 9:30 in the morning.)

But regardless, we were all happy and employed, getting drunk most nights, making under $30K a year (except for our one friend working in finance), and supplementing most things with credit cards that still went to our parents, who insisted we use them for groceries (“You have to eat well!”) and the occasional night out (“Enjoy the city!”) and of course, some clothes every once in a while (“You work so hard! Treat yourself!”).

And then, the fall came. After September 11, we all thought about leaving the city. That morning, we'd made it back to our apartment, crying, although we didn't really know what had happened yet. We went out to Long Island, to stay with my roommate Colleen's parents. Mrs. McEvoy served us strange combinations of food—mashed potatoes and spaghetti, chicken casserole with a side of ham—and kept pouring us whiskey, which none of us normally drank but all accepted gratefully.

The second night there, I decided I was moving back to Wisconsin. I was alone and homesick and scared, and I wanted to be back there so badly my chest hurt. Why would I stay in this city, to make lunch reservations and have my food choices mocked by a forty-year-old editor? The Midwest, I decided, was where I belonged.

Of course, I didn't move. None of us did. Julie, who'd been the only one of us downtown when the attacks happened, kept telling us about the people she saw jump, bringing it up in any conversation, mentioning it out of the blue. When she finally went back to work, she'd come home at the end of the day and put her pajamas on and get right back into bed. We didn't know what to do to help her, and to be honest, we just wanted her to get better and to stop talking about it, to stop reminding us of how horrible it was.

One of our neighbors was missing—a boy we called Yale to his face because of the T-shirt he always wore. We didn't know him well, but he'd come over a couple of times to have a beer late at night, when we'd all bumbled home at the same time. His parents were staying in his apartment, putting posters up around the city with his face on them, and we looked down every time we passed them in the hallway, because it felt like we should apologize for still being there, for how easy it was for our own parents to find us.

The four of us stopped going out. We'd taken to ordering Thai food on the weekends and drinking huge, inexpensive bottles of red wine, until our lips were purple. It felt wrong to go out, disrespectful almost, and so we sat in pajamas and watched movies, eating crabmeat wontons and drinking wine until we could fall asleep.

But that Saturday, I suggested we go to Dorrian's. Maybe it was because our apartment was starting to smell like pad thai noodles all the time, or it was the thought of waking up with a pounding headache and purple-crusted lips. Whatever it was, I begged my roommates to put on clothes, telling them we wouldn't have to go far, that fresh air would do us good. And somehow, they all agreed.

It was loud in the bar, and the four of us stayed close so that we could hear ourselves talk. Colleen and I were sitting on stools and Julie and Courtney were standing behind us. None of us were particularly energetic or cheerful, but I still considered the night a success for getting out of the apartment. I was taking a sip of my beer when Colleen leaned toward me and said, “Dogpants is totally checking you out.”

“Who?” I asked. I looked over my shoulder.

“Dogpants. To your right.” She sounded hopeful, like this situation might make the night more interesting. “He's not awful,” she continued. “I mean, besides those pants.”

I looked blatantly at Matt then, who was holding a beer and listening to one of his friends. He was smiling in a way that made me think he knew we were talking about him. He was tall, with wavy brown hair and a handsome face, and he was wearing dark green corduroy pants with small yellow Labs embroidered all over them.

“Jesus,” I said. “They might as well be whales.” (I still don't know what I meant by this, but Colleen quoted me in the toast she gave at our wedding and everyone laughed.)

Matt finally came up to talk to me, a couple of beers later, and Colleen looked right at him and said, “Hey Dogpants, it took you long enough.” She slid off her stool and gestured to it with her hands. “Would you like a seat?”

He blushed a little bit then, and I noticed how friendly his eyes were, how they crinkled at the edges when he smiled, and said, “Thanks, I'd love to sit. These dogs are barking.”

Matt was three years older than we were, a lawyer, and he lived alone, all of which made him seem like an adult. He took me out on real dates, to dinners and museums and shows. And also, he was just so nice. He was generous to all of my friends—buying them rounds of drinks, helping to prop up Courtney after she drank too much, buying us late night pizza and bringing it up to our apartment. We were used to college boys who thought it was the height of romance to offer you a can of beer from their refrigerators. If Matt had known what he was being compared to, he might have realized he didn't have to try so hard to impress us.

The night I met him, he was out with his friends from college. “We were all at Harvard together,” he told me as he introduced us. “You went to Harvard?” I asked, hoping I'd misheard. All I thought was, I am talking to a guy with dogs on his pants who went to Harvard and there is no way I'm ever going to see him again. But I was wrong.

From the beginning, my friends were invested in my relationship with Matt—overly invested, actually. They weighed in on it just as much as I did. When I got ready to go out with him, they all crowded in my room, suggesting I change my shirt or put on lip gloss.

“I'm in love with your boyfriend,” Colleen used to say, and everyone would agree. Before Matt, I'd dated a string of guys who always prompted my friends to say, “He doesn't deserve you.” I was the sweet and thoughtful one in relationships, and now it was all turned around. “I think you're going to marry Dogpants,” Colleen said one day. “I mean, you will if you're smart.” Her words stuck with me, like a warning not to mess this up.

Matt proposed in Central Park a year and a half after we met. We'd just decided to move in together, which felt like the most adult decision I'd ever made, and I'd spent hours talking about it with the girls, squealing at the idea of having to go to the bathroom with Matt in the apartment and wondering what it would be like to share a bed every single night. When he pulled out a ring, I can honestly say that I was surprised—and not in the way that my friends would later be surprised when their boyfriends proposed as the years went on, but all-out shocked because I had no idea that it was coming. We'd never discussed it, not in any serious way, and I was mostly just confused when he knelt on the grass and said, “Beth, will you marry me?”

His hands were shaking a little bit, and I could feel the people around us staring, elbowing each other and whispering that there was a proposal happening. “What?” I asked. I looked at him and he laughed. He seemed more confident then, and he took the ring out of the box and started to put it on my finger. “Will you marry me?” he asked, and I laughed too and said, “Yes, of course.” I was twenty-three years old.

My wedding was the first one I'd ever been to. No one could believe this, but it was true. I had no idea what to expect and I let the wedding planner (a woman named Diana who carried around five huge binders with her wherever we went) dictate everything. Whenever I asked Matt his opinion about anything, he just said, “It's up to you.” We got married in Madison and had the ceremony at St. Andrews, the church I'd grown up going to, and the reception at the Sheraton downtown. We did every last cheesy wedding tradition out there. We had a groom's cake, I threw my bouquet, we smeared frosting on each other, Matt took a garter off my leg, and my whole wedding party danced into the ballroom as they were announced, as if we were all a part of some music video.

It didn't occur to me until years later to be embarrassed about our wedding. It was only after attending the beautiful, tasteful, grown-up weddings of our friends that I began to see that ours was almost a little tacky. But by then, it was too late.

Before the wedding, Diana mailed a list of “bridesmaid dos and don'ts” to the girls. They included tips such as “Don't drink too much! No one likes a drunk bridesmaid.” And “Don't expect to be anywhere close to the center of attention…this isn't your day!” And “Don't tan before the wedding! You don't want to risk a burn!” And “Do ask the bride how she's feeling and offer emotional support.”

Colleen thought this list was the funniest thing she'd ever seen and kept it for years. At the wedding, Colleen got so drunk she fell and ripped her dress. And my best friend from childhood, Deborah Long, used her maid of honor speech to talk about how she was more than ready for her own boyfriend to propose. And when I walked down the stairs in my wedding dress for the first time, my single aunt Bit gasped and said, “Good God, you're just a baby.” Then later, she whispered to me, “If you don't want to go through with this, you don't have to.” Diana was probably mortified, but none of these things bothered me. I thought the whole day was perfect.

On the day of the wedding, Matt and I agreed we wouldn't see each other before the ceremony. But we met at a doorway, and stood on opposite sides with the wall between us, reaching around to hand each other our wedding presents. He gave me diamond earrings and I gave him a watch. The photographer took a picture of us, holding hands through the doorway, still hidden from each other. It is one of the most ridiculous pictures I've ever seen.

Years later, Colleen told me that my marriage to Matt was a result of terrorism. When she said this, we were at her apartment, lying on the couch and eating licorice out of a giant plastic container. I stopped mid-bite, squinted my eyes at her, and waited for her to explain.

“You know,” she said, and took a bite of her Red Vine, “everyone was afraid they were going to die then. So many people had died that it was all anyone could think about. People were looking for anything that made them happy, and they moved fast, like there wasn't a lot of time left.”

I wanted to defend my marriage, tell her that our relationship was strong and good and I would have fallen in love with Matt no matter what was happening in the world. But then I thought about what it had been like that month, how Julie was always in bed and how anytime we turned on the TV we heard about survivors and victims and babies being born who would never know their fathers. I thought about how claustrophobic it was in the apartment, and how from the moment Matt and I met, it felt like we were racing toward something, so eager to get to the finish line.

Every so often, it worried me to think that Colleen was right, that we'd gotten married because we were scared. But then I thought about Matt in those pants covered with little dogs, the way he blushed when Colleen teased him, and I figured there were worse ways to end up with someone.