Leave Me

“We should go,” Maribeth said, linking an arm through Stephen’s. “I’m late.”

Stephen looked momentarily confused. “Right. So you are. Don, Susan, good to see you both.”

“You, too. Dr. Grant. I’m glad you’re doing better,” Susan said. “Life marches on. It must.”

AS MARIBETH AND Stephen left Don and Susan and escaped into Nordstrom, Stephen’s mood clouded over and Maribeth’s spirits, as if finally admitting defeat, plummeted as well. A piano player was going to town with Christmas carols, and an army of overly made-up young women was politely, but aggressively, offering fragrance samples. It all made Maribeth dizzy. She had a sudden flashback of nearly passing out at Macy’s while she and Jason registered for their wedding (or, rather, as Elizabeth registered for them—she’d come along to offer “technical support” and had gleefully aimed that little gun at gravy boats and Nambé salt shakers while Maribeth and Jason shuffled behind her).

In women’s apparel she stopped in front of a rainbow display of cashmere. “How about a sweater?” she asked. “Cashmere’s good for cold weather but also more temperate. Very flexible.”

“I don’t know,” Stephen said. “Feels a little conservative for Mal.”

“How about arm warmers?” she suggested. “A little more funky. They’ll keep her warm in the Pittsburgh winters.” She was no longer conversing. She was speaking in Frap copy.

“Maybe. If she ever came home.”

“Oh?”

“I usually go there.”

“Where’s there?”

“San Francisco.”

“I fucking hate San Francisco.”

She’d said it loudly and several shoppers turned around with disapproving expressions, as if this were not Nordstrom but the Sistine Chapel, and it was not Golden Gate City she’d maligned but God.

“What did San Francisco ever do to you?” Stephen asked.

She had such a visceral memory of that one horrible trip to see Jason there. It had only been a few months since he’d announced his intention to move to San Francisco after graduation. Maribeth had been shocked. Not just because it was the first she’d heard of it, but because only a few weeks earlier, Jason’s sister, Lauren, had come to visit and had taken Maribeth out for an early twenty-second birthday lunch. “Look,” Lauren had told her after they’d ordered, “Jason asked me to take you out so I could sneakily get your ring finger sized but I have no idea how to do that without you figuring it out so can we just go to the jeweler after this and you pretend to be surprised later?”

“Surprised? About what?”

“Mom gave Jason her engagement ring,” Lauren said. “You know, now that the divorce is final she doesn’t want it anymore.”

“And he wants to give it to me?” It took a minute for the implication to sink in. Jason was going to propose? They’d discussed moving to New York City together after graduation—her to work in magazines, him to get a job as an A&R scout for a record label—and maybe getting a place together down the line and, yes, there was a permanence to their talks of the future. But getting married?

They had her finger sized and then nothing happened. Her birthday came and went; no proposal. Spring break came and she and Jason went to New York City together so she could do informational interviews with human resources reps. No proposal.

As the weeks went by and still no proposal came, she found herself growing anxious, wondering if now would be the moment. She began to anticipate it. And then she began to anticipate it eagerly.

She’d been anticipating when Jason told her that he’d decided to move to San Francisco.

“But I can’t move to San Francisco,” she’d said, misunderstanding at first.

“I know that,” he’d replied.

“Wait. Are you breaking up with me?”

“What? No. It’s not about you.” Jason had rushed to explain how the tech scene was starting to heat up and there might be a future in Internet radio and he might be able to deejay. Now was the time to take a risk, he said, when he was unencumbered.

Unencumbered? She’d felt so humiliated, so caught out. How could she have been thinking forever when Jason had been thinking San Francisco?

But then they didn’t break up. They graduated and she moved to Manhattan and he went to San Francisco, and she got a job as an editorial floater at a magazine publisher and he got work as a temp. They kept in touch, e-mailing, calling each other when the rates were low. When he suggested Maribeth visit for Labor Day weekend, she wondered if he was finally going to propose. She used her brand new credit card to buy a ticket.

Maribeth knew from the minute he picked her up at the airport that it wasn’t going to happen. Their kiss was awkward. Everything about the weekend was awkward, that aborted proposal stomping around like the elephant in his tiny room. (Lauren must’ve told him that she’d told Maribeth. Maribeth wanted to ask, but couldn’t.) Neither one knew what to do, what to say. So they compensated by having a ton of sex—which wasn’t that great either—and then Maribeth got a bladder infection. Her old college roommate Courtney was about to start graduate school at Berkeley and said she could hook her up with some antibiotics so Maribeth had borrowed Jason’s car to go see her. “I can tell things with you two are still going strong,” Courtney said, winking and handing over the Cipro. Maribeth hadn’t said anything.

It was on the way back to Jason’s place that Maribeth had gotten hopelessly lost. Market. Divisadero. The Presidio. She kept going in circles, trying to find Golden Gate Park, which was the one landmark she knew. The afternoon fog was rolling in off the Pacific. She had no idea where she was and now she couldn’t see. Alone in the car, she began to cry. It seemed like she would drive around, in the fog, on an endless tank of gas, lost and alone, until she withered and died.