Nancy presses her hand to her mouth and blinks back the tears.
“I love you, Nancy Mitchell. Will you marry me?”
Nancy throws her arms around Michael, burying her nose in his neck. She can feel him shaking.
“So, is that a yes?” Michael asks her, laughing.
She pulls back to see his face. “Yes! It’s a yes. I love you.”
Michael rises awkwardly to his feet, pulling Nancy with him as they kiss each other deeply. Only now does Nancy hear the applause issuing all around them. Even across the street, people are whooping and cheering for them.
When they pull apart, Nancy wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, then holds her left one out to Michael, who slides his ring onto her trembling finger. It fits perfectly. They kiss again, and Nancy feels like her feet might leave the ground. Or maybe she’s already floating.
“I love you,” she whispers, grinning.
“I love you, too.”
“You’re shaking. Are you okay?”
Michael nods. “Yeah. I mean, I was pretty sure I knew what the answer was going to be, but no one ever tells you how scary it is. My God, that was terrifying!”
* * *
That night, Nancy and Michael change into fresh clothes at their respective apartments, then meet up to walk over to Nancy’s parents’ house to relay the happy news.
They already know, of course. Michael phoned them one night in June to invite himself over for an Important Conversation. He certainly didn’t have to wrangle their blessing out of them.
“It was intimidating, to ask your dad,” Michael tells her now as they stroll hand in hand the last few blocks toward the Mitchells’ house.
Nancy smirks. “He’s all bark. He loves you.”
“I keep trying to figure out which of your parents you look more like. With most people you can usually see more of one than the other, but I can’t really tell with your folks.”
Nancy clears her throat and squeezes Michael’s hand, her eyes on the sidewalk beneath her feet. She’s thought about telling him the truth for a while, but has kept putting it off, telling herself that it’s a conversation for another day. Now isn’t the time. Not when their engagement is casting such a warm glow over everything. The truth might ruin all that, and what if Michael decided it was all too much for him? What if he got angry that she’d waited this long to tell him?
“Well,” she says, deflecting the comment, “honestly, don’t let anything my dad says bother you. He’s just a giant teddy bear.”
Michael chuckles. “And your mom is beyond thrilled. She started sobbing, said it gives her something to live for.”
Nancy halts abruptly on the sidewalk. “That didn’t…” She tries to stop herself from asking it but can’t. “Her cancer doesn’t have anything to do with you proposing, does it?”
Michael stops walking and turns to face her. His blue eyes squint into the sun as a lock of sandy hair falls across his forehead. “What?”
Nancy registers the unfamiliar sensation of her engagement ring between her fingers. “I just mean you’re so close with her, and what you just said, about her saying it gives her something to live for…”
Michael drops her hand. “Jesus Christ, Nancy. You think I asked you to marry me because your mom was sick?”
“I—no, of course not.”
“But that’s exactly what you just asked me.”
Nancy’s breath is coming quicker. She regrets saying anything now. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. It was just her comment, that’s all. Why would she say that?”
Michael scoffs, shakes his head. “I don’t think she was serious, really. Not in the literal sense. She was just excited, that’s all. Jesus. What’s your issue with her? You’ve done this before, gone out of your way to find issues with your mom. She’s your mom. It’s like you’re… suspicious of her or something. Or me,” he adds.
“I’m not suspicious of you, Michael,” Nancy says, reaching out for his hand again. He lets her link her fingers through. He must feel the ring, too, because his face softens. “I’m sorry I said anything. Just forget it. Please.”
Michael takes a deep breath. “Okay. All right. Because I love you, you hear?” He brushes her cheek with his other hand and kisses her. “I’m not marrying your mom, I’m marrying you. She just finds me irresistible, that’s all. And who can blame her?”
Nancy chuckles as Michael gives an exaggerated swagger, and they continue down the sidewalk, reaching her parents’ house a moment later.
After the news is relayed and bone-crushing hugs are delivered, Nancy’s father sneaks away to the kitchen.
“I’ve had a bottle of bubbly chilled ever since Mike came to chat with us,” he calls from inside the refrigerator. “Glad he finally got around to asking! Thought I was going to have to drink this all myself.”
“Oh, Bill!” Nancy’s mother hisses. “It’s his sense of humour, Michael,” she adds.
“So I’ve heard,” Michael says, winking at Nancy.
Nancy’s dad returns to the living room with a frosty bottle of Brut and four champagne flutes. He sets them down neatly on the coffee table, then wiggles the cork out with the familiar pop that signals the start of something exciting. He pours champagne into the flutes with an expert hand; the foam reaches the very tops of the glasses, where it mushrooms threateningly but never overflows. They each take a glass.
Nancy’s dad is still standing, as though about to make a speech, and affection bubbles in her chest as Nancy pictures him standing up just like this to give a toast at their wedding.
“To Nancy and Michael,” he says now. “May the road rise to meet you.”
He nods at them both as Frances once again gasps, “Oh, Bill!” this time with tears in her eyes.
“Thank you, Daddy,” Nancy says, standing to kiss him on the cheek.
“So happy for you, Beetle,” he mutters in her ear. His bristly moustache tickles her skin. “He’s a good egg.”
“I know, Dad.”
They sit down again, and all four of them clink glasses over the coffee table. Nancy leans back on the couch, smiling at her mother across from her. Michael wraps his arm around her shoulders.
Frances reaches up and straightens her wig. Her hair has grown back since the chemo, but it’s thin. Nancy suspects she might just wear wigs on a permanent basis now.
Frances claps her gloved hands together. “Well,” she says. “I say we all go out for lunch tomorrow to celebrate. Somewhere smart. Us four, and your parents, too, Michael. We’re so very excited to meet them.”
Nancy winces guiltily. She has a shift with the Janes tomorrow, helping Dr. Taylor and Alice. They have three appointments lined up in the afternoon at a secret location off Spadina Avenue. Nancy is scheduled in for pre-op counselling.
“I actually can’t tomorrow. I’m so sorry. How about Saturday?”
Frances’s hand pauses midair, the champagne glass halfway to her red-stained lips. “Why not? What are you doing?”
* * *
“Can that air conditioner blast any stronger than this?” Dr. Taylor asks.