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box.
    But I don’t try to explain. I just say, “It was just in case we needed a laugh. After the funeral.”
    Jess still has not taken the ring. She must still be thinking about Peter. “So now,” she says, “you’re really proposing?”
    What does she want to hear? “I can’t think of how to live the rest of my life without you.”
    “Oh, Jesus.”
    “Please marry me.”
    “I’m too upset to think right now,” Jess says.
    “I’m not asking you to think.” I tremble as I hold out the ring. Still on one knee.
    “Get up,” Jess says. “You’re making me nervous.”
    I stay right where I am. “Marry me. Please.”
    Silence. She still can’t look at me. I just want to breathe the air you breathe. That’s what Peter would say. But I am not Peter.
    I stand. Gregor Luft. Peter Beckwith is dead and gone. “Jess Hale. Marry me.”
    Jess says, “We just went to a funeral looking like clowns. How will we ever be adults?”
    “What’s so great about being an adult?” I reply. “Jess Hale. Please.”
    Peter is dead, and she didn’t love him anyway. Not like she loves me. I know that. We used to laugh about Peter. She chose me, not him.
    Slowly she gets out of bed, takes the ring and looks at it. It really is beautiful. “It was your grandmother’s?” she says.
    “She was married seventy-two years. Couldn’t stop smiling.”
    Jess slips the ring onto her finger. But she still can’t look me in the eye. “Aren’t you supposed to kiss me?” she asks.
    “You haven’t said yes.” I need her to say yes.
    Jess fiddles with the ring. “If we were married for seventy-two years, then we’d be almost a hundred—”
    “We will be happy dust together!” She needs someone who will not back down. “And we’ll remember this day. This shining moment. Like seeing the pregnant dinner plate moon.”
    “Which I didn’t remember until you reminded me,” she says.
    “But you will remember this. You will remember finding that snake—”
    “Shut up.”
    “We’ll say: ‘We lived on cereal, then. When we had it. Breakfast cereal and love.’”
    She takes the ring off and puts it on again, over and over.
    “I need to hear you say yes,” I say.
    Finally she looks at me. But the words do not come. She firms her lips.
    “You can’t not say yes.” My voice breaks. “Jess.”
    Silence.
    My knees buckle. I take a step backwards, to keep from falling over. “I can’t believe this! Do you know how hard this is for me? You wear that ring, I won’t stack chairs for more than another year at most. I won’t look at another girl at a party, not even at a funeral. I won’t work for beers anymore, never, never again! I have to build something that will be worthy, worthy of you and me, of this moment. Isn’t that what you want to hear from me? Don’t keep looking at me like that. You can’t. Do you hear me? I want us to have everything together! All right?”
    Quietly she takes off the ring.
    “Jess?” My voice squeaks.
    She puts the ring back in the box and closes the lid.
    “Who are you?” she asks.

Chapter Eight
    “What do you mean, who am I?” I cry. She really is making me crazy.
    But she will not back down. “Where’s the guy I’ve been living with for the past year?” she asks. “Is he just giving up?”
    “Giving up?”
    “Do you think I want some tamed guy? A guy who will hate me every time he looks at our one little rose bush?”
    “I don’t understand!”
    “Do you think I want to crush your spirit? I don’t want you to stop working for beers. I love that you work for beers!”
    “But before you said—”
    “Forget what I said! What kind of marriage do you want? One where we keep track of who said what, like keeping a ... a cricket score?”
    “Cricket? Since when do you care about cricket?”
    “Since never! All I know is, the score gets too high to count. And you shouldn’t keep score, either!” She wraps me in her short, loving arms. Just like that, she looks as if she