Otherwise Engaged by Suzanne Finnamore Page B

same time. It seemed we were no longer discussing chicken broth, but who was going to get the final space in the lifeboat.
    I kept saying, “Listen, it’s no big deal, I just need some CHICKEN BROTH.”
    Then Michael went to the Lucky Penny and had a patty melt. I put everything away in the refrigerator and had a bowl of Grape Nuts.
    When I tell Lana all of this, she describes how she and Raul fight over who is going to change Isabel’s diaper, how he claims the baby doesn’t need to be changed when her diaper is hanging to her ankles, stuffed. When her turds are literally skittering across the floor.
    “They’re that way,” Lana says, brightly. Then she whispers in a demonic hush, “Spoiled.”
    This makes me feel better, more normal. Yet I suspectdeep down that it is not all his fault. Mama’s making the Shake ’n Bake, but I’m helping somehow.
    One thing I know for certain, this is not about chicken broth. When I think of finding out what it is about, I want to weep with fatigue.
    After my session with Reuben I bought six cans of chicken broth and three large heads of garlic. I know it’s not that simple, but it feels good.
    Reuben says he wishes everyone who gets married to have a good fighting marriage. He himself has a good fighting marriage, to another psychoanalyst whose name is Sheila. It’s possible for me to believe in good, fighting marriages and also be very glad that he and his wife don’t live upstairs. I think once you’ve heard your therapist shrieking over who ate the last banana, you’re finished.
    Michael’s mother, Ilene, called last night, and I answered the phone, thinking it was Michael. Busted.
    Ilene told me that women have to act like the man is smarter, even though he’s not, and they have to act like the man is stronger, even though he’s not.
    She said I have to be nice to Michael, and patient. So he’s told her about the arguments.
    “You have to be nice to Michael.” She said, “It’s your job, as his wife.” Ilene is not one to mince words. She doesn’t mind conflict; it makes her feel more alive.
    “I’m not his wife yet,” I said. She ignores this. Like a tank, she is able to barrel over ground most lesser vehicles are slowed by.
    “You have to make him happy, as a man.”
    I took a cleansing breath. Finally I said, “Yes, but it’s hard making someone happy three hundred and sixty-five days a year.”
    “Well, you have to,” she said. “Other
wise
 …” Her voice trails off to indicate a terrible conclusion, which is understood to be unspeakable.
    Then she was off, in a puff of orange smoke.
    We’re flying to Taos, for Lana’s wedding to Raul.
    Lana and I got engaged within two weeks of each other, this last fall. Both of us to men who’ve been divorced and have one child. Somehow without exactly planning it, we do everything together; except she and Raul had Isabel a year before they got engaged. We’ve been friends longer than we’ve been people; she’s the sister I never had. She is the jackpot sibling.
    Lana got engaged first. That’s what triggered the ultimatum I gave to Michael over coffee. Lana and I had both been waiting for a long time, and then when she got hers, I wanted mine. Commitment-wise, things between Michael and me instantly went from Unresolved to Fucking Unacceptable.
    When it happened, she called me before she even called her mother. I hung up the phone with her by pressing my finger on the flash button, and then I released the flash button and speed-dialed Michael at his office to relay the news.
    “Raul just asked Lana to marry him.”
    That’s all I said. But as everyone knows, it’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.
    Now Michael’s right here next to me, eating dry-roasted peanuts, engaged to be married. Finished, in other words. Off the shelf. Whenever we hit turbulence, he holds my hand and squeezes. Not as if he is afraid, but as if he is just checking to see if I’m ripe.
    It is tempting to believe that