Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham

powerful and free.
    “Well, you see,” Todd said, “I've been thinking.”
    “Mm.”
    “About next year. You know. We didn't apply to any of the same schools. And now it's too late.”
    “I know.”
    “And we haven't really talked about that.”
    “That's right. We haven't.”
    “So I've been thinking. Suzy. Wherever I go, I want you to come with me. If it's Yale, you know. Or Princeton.”
    His face reddened, and his eyes took on a rheumy, unhealthy cast. She had never seen him flustered like this, except when they had sex. Suddenly she wanted to help him reestablish himself, to find his way back.
    “What are you saying?” she asked softly.
    “I guess. It seems like I'm saying I want us to get married. You and me. I want to marry you.”
    The blood rushed to her head. All she could think of was, This is happening now, right now.' Someone wanted to marry her. He was asking her now, outside the cafeteria, on the night of her defeat. She thought, 'I'm not ready for this. This shouldn't be happening here.'
    “Oh, Todd,” she said. “I don't know.”
    “You don't know if you want to get married? Or you don't know if you want to marry me?”
    “Well, both. No, forget I said that. This is just—well, could we?”
    She didn't know what she meant by that. She wanted to be told whether getting married was something a person like her could do. She wanted to know if Todd was the kind of boy you married.
    “Well, yeah,” he said, and he managed a smile. “We could, if you wanted to.”
    “My father,” she said.
    “I know he's old-fashioned,” Todd said. “I'd talk to him. I'd be very—”
    Then Susan knew the answer. She knew what to do.
    She was going somewhere. If she and Todd went home that night and announced their engagement, she'd have a new language to say no in. She'd be protected.
    “We could,” she said. “Yes. This is really something we could do, isn't it?”
    “Sure,” Todd said, and laughed affectionately. “We can absolutely, positively do it.”
    His poise was back. His forthright, practiced Toddness.
    “We could do it,” Susan said. “Oh, sure. Let's get married.”
    “Really? You really want to?”
    “Yes. Oh, yes. Right away.”
    “Right away?”
    “Well, as soon as we graduate. I can wear the veil under my mortarboard, we can go straight to the church after we get our diplomas.”
    “You're funny,” he said. “You know that? You're a funny girl.”

1969/ Mary wrote on the envelope the phone bill came in: I will not steal. She put the pledge in writing. But she 'went on stealing. She didn't know why she did it. She remembered the first day, in Englehart's. She'd gone to look at stationery for Susan's wedding invitations, just to see if Englehart's stocked anything decent or if she and Susan would have to drive to New York. The salesgirl, young, tentatively pretty under too much base, had shown her the samples. Ordinary cream, a yellowish ivory, a blue milky and shallow as a bus ticket. Borders trimmed with lilies, with doves and spectral white bells. Englehart's wouldn't do. She'd have to take Susan to the city after all. Mary thanked the salesgirl, told her she'd think about it. As she rose from her seat at the counter she knew herself to be an attractive woman in her late thirties, carrying a good navy clutch and graciously rejecting the wares of a store that hired salesgirls like this one, a girl whose common prettiness was wearing away with her youth. In her own youth Mary had seen women like herself, prosperous wives who kindly and firmly rejected the merchandise in neighborhood stores. As she stood, as the sheer satin of her slip fell with liquid ease over her nylons, she saw herself with such clarity she might have been standing outside her own body. She might have been the salesgirl, watching as a woman of stature and property, a woman who wrapped all her gifts perfectly, withdrew from the local stationery store, where the quality was not of the best. Mary's heart rose