“Man, that’s a lot,” Nick said. “Becca and I didn’t have kids, but we just…didn’t have them, you know? I always felt like if we did it was fine, if we didn’t it was fine. I think we thought we would. But we just had other things going on, and we put it off a few times, and then by the time we were done putting it off, we were getting divorced.”
“Are you glad you didn’t?” Ryan asked.
“Have kids?” Nick paused. “I was glad when we were getting divorced that we didn’t have kids, yes. It certainly makes it easier. Not easier—simpler. It’s one less thing. It’s a completely different ball of wax getting divorced if you have kids. You get divorced with no kids, it’s like…if you want, you just take your stuff and she takes her stuff and you go. Obviously, it’s a lot more complicated than that in your head, but a week after you’re divorced, you can choose to almost not have ever been married, you know what I mean? Which is easier, but also really weird.”
“I used to worry so much about what would happen if we ever broke up,” June said. “Especially since my kids are close together, when Tommy was a baby and Bethie was really little, I used to imagine myself trying to take care of both of them without Charlie. There was a night when he was out playing beer-league softball and he got in this home-plate collision, and his friends took him to the hospital. And I knew he would probably be fine, which he was, but there was this moment when I was waiting for him to get home and thinking, ‘I have a three-month-old and a two-year-old. If something happened to him, what exactly would I do?’ And it wasn’t that big of a deal, obviously, but once I went down that road, I started thinking about what would happen if we broke up. I guess to me, we were less likely to survive being married to each other than he was to survive beer-league softball.” She turned to Laurie. “I’m telling you, there’s something to be said for deciding not to get married.”
Laurie went around the table in her head. Married, used to be married, married, and me. “I don’t think you mean that at all,” she said. “I don’t think any married people mean that. I’ve never met a married person who would tell anybody as a general principle not to get married, except, like, Andy Capp. Or Tim Allen.”
“Andy Capp from the cheese fries?” Ryan asked.
“Well, yes, but not because of the cheese fries,” Laurie said. “He had a comic strip before he was a mascot.”
“A comic strip about what?”
“About how he didn’t like his wife,” she said. “I think the only person who’s really happy I decided not to get married is Erin, my friend back home who’s engaged. Her wedding is in a month, and her cat destroyed her dress.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do with you not getting married,” Nick said.
“Remember I told you I had no choice but to keep the dress I had paid for? Well, Erin and I have very similar taste and wear basically the same size, plus or minus some alterations, so as we speak, she’s retrieving it from my house, and she’s going to wear it. It is hers to have and to hold, to give to her descendants, forever after.”
“You gave away your dress?” Nick said.
“Yes. She needed it, and I don’t.”
“I guess not,” he said, almost defensive, almost as if she’d insulted him to his face.
“You were happier when I said I was going to be buried in it,” she said.
“I absolutely wasn’t,” Nick answered.
“Well, nevertheless. I decided not to marry Chris, and so now I don’t have to be a supporting character in any dude’s sitcom or comic strip.”
“Or a brand of cheese fries,” Nick offered.
“Precisely. Single lady house, single lady rules.”
“You really brought the ‘when I live by myself’ ethos with you right up to now, didn’t you?” A little smile brightened Ryan’s eyes.
“What do you mean?”
He laughed. “You were designing your dream house when I was fantasizing about making the NBA. I didn’t think I was even going to be allowed to visit you. When you left for college, I thought, you know, I hope she comes back home sometimes, because I don’t think I’m going to be invited over.”
“You thought you were going to play in the NBA?” June asked.
“Hey, we all had dreams,” he said. “I wanted to be taller, and Laurie wanted a private villa made to her specifications where nobody would bug her.”