“This is just like that,” I said. “They have soul compatibility—they made out a lot during miniature golf—and they have a lot of actual compatibility. Much more than the guys she usually dates. They could talk about their work or go to the coffee shop and grade or attend, I don’t know, a political rally or just go to the library together. Most of the guys she dates never go to a library. Remember how much fun we used to have in the stacks? Faced with your free-day theory, they want to do the same things.”
“Not on Sunday.”
“Who said Sunday is the only day that counts?”
“She did,” said Nico.
Nineteen
She decided to ask before it got worse. She decided to ask before she fell in love and had to worry about hurting him or hurting her. She decided it was better to know than to wonder, to hope if there wasn’t any. She decided Jill was obnoxious but possibly right.
“I’m not saying now,” Katie told me in rehearsals, pretending I was him. “I’m not saying soon. I’m not saying you even have to decide now. I’m not saying I’ll even ask you to in the future. I’m saying if. I’m saying if we fell in love and if we wanted to be together forever and if we wanted to make a life and a family together, would you be willing to convert? I’m saying if I loved you and you loved me, in a few years, would you be willing to become a Mormon?”
“Um . . . I don’t know,” I hedged, trying to channel Ethan. “It’s a little soon. I can’t know the answers to those questions right now. But I do like you a lot. I like where this is going. I know that I would like to do things to make you happy and that if you were that important to me and it were that important to you, I’d probably make it happen.”
But that’s because I was only practice Ethan. Real Ethan said no. Real Ethan said that though he more or less believed in God, he adamantly, vehemently, viscerally did not believe in religion. He said that converting so someone wouldn’t dump you was disingenuous, offensive even to true believers with purer intentions. He said if she loved him, she wouldn’t ask him to do something he didn’t believe in. Converting was only suiting up for battle but was followed, he said, by the war—going to church every week and giving up things he loved and didn’t think were wrong and building a life among people she liked so little she was willing to date a heathen like him. He said love me for who I am, or you don’t love me at all.
“These are all reasonable points,” said Jill.
“Why do you want to be so mean to me?” said Katie tearfully.
“I’m not being mean. I’m being truthful. This is how any normal person would respond. If he had said otherwise, then I would have been worried. What kind of reasonable person says, ‘Yeah, sure, we’ve been on three dates. Let’s talk conversion’? Ask Janey.”
I looked hard at the floor.
“He said he would never ask me to give up my religion, just to practice it on my own. He said I should extend him the same courtesy. I said families don’t operate on a ‘live and let live’ mentality. I said I couldn’t be married to a non-Mormon.”
“What did he say?”
“He said let’s still be friends.”
Jill laughed and Katie looked like she was considering strangulation.
“Actually I think it’s sweet he even considered what you were saying,” said Jill. “Most people would have freaked out that you even broached the subject after date three. It’s better that you know.”
Katie looked miserable.
“So he’s not the one.” I clapped, aiming for casual. I knew that being “not the one” was not a matter of failure on the part of either of them, just fate, and not a failure of fate, just a delay, and not really a delay as there is a time for every season under heaven. In any case, this situation—dates going nowhere—was not usually cause for alarm.
“I guess that’s it. Not the one.” She didn’t sound sure.
“Let’s make a list for him,” Jill offered gamely.
Usually, there was a long, entirely quantifiable list of reasons why each guy was not the one. She actually wrote them down so that she could compare notes with the other women in her ward for whom he was also not the one (the vast majority) and to advise the one for whom he potentially was. They weren’t bad qualities per se. They were just bad for her. They would be someone else’s dream. So the list did not say things like “Chris: bad conversationalist, bad taste in music, not smart, not well read, boring.” Rather they said, “Chris: talks a lot about football, obsessed with becoming a dentist, likes Led Zeppelin, favorite author—Sports Illustrated.” Doom for Katie. Perfect, as it turned out a week and a half later, for Gracie, a high school senior in Katie’s ward, cheerleader, Seahawks fan, Zeppelin diehard, and in possession of some regrettable teeth.
“Ethan: historian,” I began.
“Taunts you with dairy-based ice cream,” supplied Jill.
“Sucks at mini golf,” I said helpfully.
“Not a Mormon,” said Jill.
“Not the one,” Katie sighed. “Except Ethan doesn’t need a list. He’s not going to be my problem to pass on. I don’t know anyone who would date him. Problem is there’s another list. Ethan: smart, funny, enlightened, feminist, liberal, academic. Hard to find all that at church.”
“Ethan: you weren’t that attached yet anyway,” Jill pointed out.
“No,” said Katie, “but I really wanted to be. I’m ready.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said.
“No, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. It doesn’t happen until you’re ready, but when you get ready and you least expect it, that’s when it happens.”
“You are expecting it,” said Jill.
“Oh my gosh I’m not,” Katie said vehemently. “At this point, I’d be positively shocked.” A lie. I knew what she meant, but dead scared something won’t happen is not the same as actually believing that it isn’t about to.
“Maybe you aren’t really ready,” said Jill.
“Of course I’m ready. I want this so much. My body is ready. Marriage and family is the divine plan. It’s what everyone around me is doing. We’re almost done with classes. I want it so badly.”
“Which is not the same as being ready,” Jill pointed out quietly, so quietly that Katie looked up suddenly, realizing it wasn’t idle musing.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe you aren’t ready. You have to want it less. You have to be able to stand on your own. You have to know that you’ll be okay without a husband. You have to want something else—something just for you, just about you—more.”
“Thanks,” said Katie. “I took Intro to Women’s Studies. But that was really helpful.”
Upstairs, Atlas started crying.
“You don’t get things just because you want them. Just because you want them doesn’t mean you’re ready for them. Love and real relationships are a huge responsibility,” said Jill.
“Really?” said Katie. “Like motherhood?”