Young Widower Read Online Free PDF Page B

finishes her work and shuts down her computer. Then we will head out together to dinner, for drinks, to the shops, to a friend’s house or the countryside for the weekend, maybe to the cinema to watch the latest American movie. And when her contract is finished, we will start to feel restless. We will consider our options, make a decision, and see what comes along next.
    The medieval walled city, birthplace of Vlad the Impaler, was guarded that year, as it had been for centuries, by bell ringers greeting tourists in forty languages. Good friends, Dave and Meghan, visited from Chicago for the week, on their way to Hungary. We had planned the trip with them as much to watch the scenery as to see the place. It was spring. Snow still peaked the taller mountains off the track. We wore heavy jackets and drank long espressos as we rode the train through tunnels and valleys. We moved to the forward compartment of the new express rail—lightweight, sleek—and for the first half of the journey, we were the only passengers.
    Dave and I sat together by the window, talking about Chicago. Much, he explained, had changed since Katie and I left our apartment in Uptown three years earlier. Our favorite bowling alley had closed suddenly that New Year’s Eve, sold to developers; a parking garage was already up in its place. Ross and Melissa were gone to Wisconsin for graduate school and engaged. Sarah and Jason lived now in Seattle. They had a son. Everyone else, it seemed, was headed for the near-north suburbs, commuting still to the city, but starting families.
    Dave was handsome and modest, an exceptional bowler. He had the habit of genuinely apologizing when he won, as though he enjoyed the victory but hated beating me. He had recently been promoted, so he could finally start to pay down his student-loan debt and save for retirement, family, a house. They had purchased life, term, and disability insurance. They had written wills and advance directives, given powers of attorney, and named beneficiaries and legal guardians. Meghan would quit working, if she wanted to; they were thinking hard about having a baby sooner rather than later. Dave wanted a big family, like the one he had married into, but Meghan was less certain about a number. Mostly, he said, it would be a matter of timing. The clock was ticking.
    Children and parenting was a conversation Katie and I could never quite begin. We doted on nieces and nephews. We weregood with babies. We had always imagined ourselves individually as adults with children. Together, we were less certain. How would parenting alter a life that valued speed, work, and travel? Would our children inherit, from either side of the family, certain illnesses and conditions? The prospect of caring long term for a sick or disabled child terrified Katie. She dreamed about it frequently.
    Other considerations were less hypothetical. We had decided to marry as much to stay together as to continue a life we both liked. Would we really stay together long enough to raise a child? Did we want our longer life to follow those patterns that had established the shorter one? A lot of people seemed to be doing this, though now many of them were having babies. Wasn’t it so very ordinary to think about settling somewhere where we might want to work, live, and raise a family?
    I was happy for Dave. I liked that he was so pleased. As I listened and took mental notes to fill in the details later with Katie, I wondered how she was managing what must have been a similar conversation with Meghan. Katie had noticed that trip how Dave and Meghan kept referring to themselves as “a family.” Their ambitions, like their marriage, were the beginning of something to which they were committed, rather than its continuation or end. I envied their certainty. Here was a corollary that said marriages worked with planning and thrived on certainty with the best of intentions. Like bowling with Dave, however competitive I felt, I couldn’t