—
While it hurt Sasha that her family seemed unable to accept her breakup with Mullin, she was also moved by the way they made room for him. They saw his own family was lacking, and so they folded him in, setting out a stocking for him at Christmas, keeping the pantry full of Corn Chex and Pop-Tarts, foods only he ate. Sasha had initially thought that was what married life would be like—that she would marry Cord and his family would fold her on in. But they didn’t. Her own family was a restaurant booth—you could always scoot in and make space for one more. Cord’s family was a table with chairs, and those chairs were bolted to the floor.
A month before her wedding, a man in a suit rang the bell at her apartment. Sasha was home alone, eating a yogurt and working on her computer, designing layouts. She had been hired by a small contemporary art museum in Manhattan to design their new signs, shopping bags, and advertisements. She peered at the security screen and knew it wasn’t FedEx, so she scampered down the hall to put on a bra before opening the door.
“Are you Sasha Rossi?”
“I am,” she said with a confused smile.
“I’m a lawyer for Fox Allston, and we manage the Stockton family trust. We’ve prepared a prenuptial agreement for you to sign. I suggest you retain your own lawyer and he or she can be in touch to negotiate.”
“A lawyer?” Sasha asked, bewildered.
“You should always use a lawyer for this kind of agreement. I wish I could recommend someone, but unfortunately, you’ll need to retain a different firm. Give a call if you have any questions.” With that, the man handed Sasha a manila envelope and gave her a nod before trotting down the hall to the elevator bank.
“What the fuck?” Sasha carried the envelope to the kitchen and called Cord at work. “Cord, the weirdest thing just happened. A lawyer just showed up at the door and handed me a prenup! Like, I got served!”
“Hey, can we talk about this later? We’re in the middle of some stuff here,” Cord said.
“Oh, sure, yeah, tonight.” Sasha hung up. But that night, after dinner at his apartment, Cord had no interest in talking about it.
“Just get a lawyer and let them sort it out,” he said, shrugging.
“I mean, I will, but were you going to mention it to me?” she asked.
“What’s there to say? It’s paperwork. They’ll figure something out, you’ll sign it, we’ll move on.”
“I mean, for starters you could be like ‘I love you honey and I never want to get divorced.’？”
“You can have your lawyer add that part.” Cord rolled his eyes.
“Ouch,” Sasha replied, offended.
“Look, it’s not up to me. Everyone signs them. It’s how marriage works. Marriage is a legal arrangement. This is part of it. Don’t make it a big deal.”
“Maybe in your world this is how marriage works, but not in mine. Do you think my parents have a prenup?”
“I don’t understand why you’re trying to make me feel so bad about this!” Cord said.
“Because it makes me feel bad!”
“It shouldn’t matter!”
“If it doesn’t matter, why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“Because it’s not a big deal!”
“You know it’s a big deal. I’m trying to build a life with you and you’re making it clear that you want to have an escape hatch. That no matter what, I’ll never really be part of your family.”
“We’re getting married. What else do you want from me?” Cord asked coldly.
“What else do I want from you? I want you to put me first. I want to be the most important person in your life. I want you to tell me that no matter what happens you will always be on my side. That you’d choose me over your family.”
“That’s a ridiculous thing to ask. I would never choose anyone over my family.” Cord walked into the bedroom and closed the door. Sasha stumbled out through the lobby and slept in her own apartment that night, getting up early the next morning and driving home to Rhode Island. She couldn’t stand to look at Cord, couldn’t imagine climbing into bed with yet another person who put her needs last.
When she told her parents what had happened her father was outraged. “He had a lawyer show up with papers like you were some parolee? That’s just wrong. If that’s how rich people act, you don’t want to be one anyway.”
Her mother was more sympathetic. “I had wondered if something like this might happen, sweetheart. These families can be very strange about who they marry. You have to assume this is coming from the parents, not from Cord.”
Sasha wasn’t sure, though. Maybe it came from Cord. Maybe it came from Chip and Tilda. But either way, she felt humiliated that they had talked about it, that they had made a plan against her, that rather than welcoming her with open arms they were shielding themselves from her infiltration.
She called her friend Jill, who was a lawyer in Providence, and they met for coffee. She passed her the manila envelope and Jill looked it over, nodding her head and making a few small notes on a pad with a pencil. “It’s a pretty generous prenup, Sasha. There are a few things that we would customarily ask for, but as these things go it’s on the nicer side of standard.”
“How standard is it, though? How often do people get prenups?”
“I think it’s something like five or ten percent among the general population, but obviously really common among people with means.”
“It’s hard not to feel offended by it. Like he thinks I’m trying to steal his money.”
“I’m sure for his family it’s as routine as getting braces or piercing your ears—just a step on the road to adulthood. Try not to read too much into it,” Jill said. Sasha wanted to believe her, wanted to let it go, but on nights she couldn’t sleep she still heard his voice, low but plain with honesty: “I would never choose anyone over my family.”
* * *
None of Sasha’s art school friends lived in Brooklyn Heights. As a rule, they lived in neighborhoods that required a subway transfer or a bus ride to visit, neighborhoods where the bodegas stocked spicy chips that were shaped like little cones and hurt your tongue to eat, neighborhoods where the water in the canal had a vaguely lavender tint. Sasha’s freshman-year roommate, Vara, chose to move to Red Hook, which, even though it was just a ten-minute bike ride from the limestone, felt like a hundred miles （or a hundred years） away. Vara’s big artists’ loft on Ferris Street was a stone’s throw from the waterfront, where a sugar refinery and shipyard crumbled prettily into the Buttermilk Channel. Big cranes moved shipping containers around the lot next door, graffiti covered the sidewalk, and the neighboring warehouses were rented out every weekend for hipster weddings.
On Wednesday nights, Vara hosted a Drink and Draw, offering terrible wine and a nude model to any former classmate with ten dollars to spare. Cord was working late and Sasha missed her friends, so she strapped on her helmet and coasted her bike down the hill. She got there five minutes early and threw a ten in the coffee can by the door, claiming a stool and an easel in the middle, right near Vara, so that they could gossip as they drew.