Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin Page B

But it is a different story when my family is in town. In fact, the last thing I said to Nick this afternoon when he told me he had “to run into the hospital for a few minutes” was, “Please don’t be late.”
    He nodded, seemingly understanding all the nuances of the instruction—that for one, we don’t want to give my mother ammunition to prove her point about his life taking precedence over mine. And for another, although I adore my older brother, Dex, and am very close to my sister-in-law, Rachel, I am sometimes a little jealous of, if not sickened by, what I perceive to be their perfect marriage and can’t help using them as a yardstick of our relationship.
    On paper, the four of us have much in common. Like Nick, Dex has a stressful job, working demanding hours as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, while Rachel, too, gave up her legal career once she had children, first working part-time, then quitting altogether. They also have two children—Julia and Sarah (ages seven and four)—and like the dynamic in our house, Dex defers to Rachel when it comes to parenting and discipline (which, interestingly, does not rile my mother as it does when Nick takes a background role; to the contrary, she has occasionally accused Rachel of expecting too much of Dex).
    But the most striking thing my brother and I share is our relationship history, as he, too, broke his engagement mere days before his wedding. It’s crazy, really: two siblings born two years apart, both canceling weddings, also two years apart—a fact that any psychiatrist would have a field day analyzing and likely attributing to our parents’ own split. Dex believes this is the reason for their incredible support both times around; they lost thousands of dollars in wedding deposits and must have been embarrassed in front of their more traditional friends, but they seemed to believe it was a small price to pay for making sure their children got it right on their first try. Still, the joint scandals scored us some rather ruthless ribbing from my mother, who felt the need to give us both the woolliest, thickest socks for Christmas—for our cold feet, naturally. In addition, we had to endure her endless advice that we not marry on the rebound. To which Dex, in his analytical way, argued that he could more readily identify “the one” on the heels of “the wrong one”—and that he was absolutely sure about Rachel. And which I simply rebutted with a straightforward: “Butt out, Mom.”
    As an aside, though, Dex’s situation was far more scandalous as Rachel was actually friends with my brother’s former fiancée— childhood friends, in fact. Moreover, I am fairly certain there was some cheating involved. This suspicion has never been confirmed, but occasionally Dex and Rachel will let a detail of their early days slip, and Nick and I will exchange a knowing glance. Not that these circumstances really matter at this point, years into their marriage, other than the fact that I think a shady genesis puts a greater burden on a relationship. In other words, if two people have an affair, they’d better stay together. If they do, they have this romantic “we were meant to be” story and a certain degree of exculpation for their sin; if they don’t, they are just a couple of cheaters.
    So far, Dex and Rachel fall squarely in the former camp, still sickeningly in love after all these years. Beyond this, they are truly best friends in a way that Nick and I simply are not. For one, they do absolutely everything together—go to the gym, read the paper, watch all the same television shows and movies, eat breakfast, dinner, and sometimes even lunch together, and, remarkably, go to bed at the same time every night. In fact, I once heard Dex say that he has trouble falling asleep without Rachel—and that they never go to bed angry at one another.
    This is not to say that Nick and I don’t love the time we spend together—because we really do. But we are not