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didn’t mind the move to Manhattan; in fact, I was excited about it—more so than Brad. But it felt strange to tell my parents that Brad and I had decided to relocate to Manhattan, when I hadn’t decided anything at all. My parents pressed me for reasons, and I listed them all as if the move had been my idea.
    They had, of course, heartily praised Brad for wanting to spend more time with his family, even though the move meant we wouldn’t be living fifteen minutes away from them anymore.
    My parents had been charmed with Brad since the moment I brought him home to meet them, practically congratulating me for falling for a medical student who would one day be able to provide for me in ways my parents could not. My dad envied the doctors he shared the hallways with at Long Island General. He and they both worked long hours and wore beepers on their belts and had the same pale yellow name tags. They both were called away from warm beds at 2 a.m., from Christmasdinners, and into driving snowstorms to respond to emergencies. But the doctors scurried to save lives, and my dad to respond to a stalled ventilation system or leaking water tank. Dad didn’t draw the same respect or paycheck as his co-workers in scrubs and white coats.
    As an up-and-coming doctor of radiology, Brad was like a white-horsed knight to my parents. He was all that my father wished he had been and all that my mother wished for him.
    I had dated only a few guys before Brad, including my high school sweetheart, Kyle, an easygoing soul whose aspirations to build houses in third world countries utterly failed to impress my parents. They nearly threw a party when Kyle and I reluctantly agreed to see other people after high school graduation, since I was moving to Massachusetts and he to Virginia.
    I really wasn’t looking to begin a relationship when I met Brad a year later. I was still getting occasional letters from Kyle, who had finished a vo-tech course on carpentry and was working with a relief organization in Kenya.
    Brad was so unlike Kyle in so many ways, it’s odd that I’d been attracted to both. Kyle thrived on adventure; Brad appreciated steadiness and dependability. Kyle liked surprises; Brad liked knowing details up front. Kyle was unpredictable; Brad was constant, reliable. One man made me feel like I was on the edge of the unknown; the other made me feel secure. In the end, I chose security.
    I wondered, up until the day I married Brad, if that’s what true romantic love was like—not the pulse-quickening, dopey-eyed fascination I’d had for Kyle, but this deeper, steadier attraction for Brad that had more to do with what I knew than what I felt.
    The night of my bridal shower, I confided in Leslie that I was struggling to let go of the last traces of attraction to Kyle, even though I hadn’t seen him in two years, and that I had moments when I wondered if I wasmaking a mistake. She asked me, without even looking up from the punch she was mixing, if I could imagine myself happy in a hut in the African wilderness, peeing behind bushes, running from poisonous snakes, and sleeping under a mosquito net. I started to laugh.
    “I’m serious.” She was laughing too, but then she looked up from the punch bowl. “I’m serious, Jane. That’s what your life would be like.”
    Leslie had reminded me of that conversation at our parents’ fiftieth a year ago, when again she was making punch and teasing me for once wishing I had married Kyle instead of Brad and how I’d be chasing centipedes on my earthen floor with a switch if I had married Kyle.
    I’d looked over at my parents, standing close as a photographer snapped their picture. I told Leslie that Mom would’ve swept centipedes for Dad. She laughed and said, “No, she would not.” But she looked up at them too, and her laughter ebbed.
    Mom would’ve found a way to lay down tile in her third world hut.

     
    Molly called a taxi for me after we and her girls polished off several little