Limits (26 page)

“Sounds perfect,” I say, tugging on his collar and kissing him on the lips. “Do you mind going solo to pick it up? I’d love to take a shower in a bathroom that doesn’t have the distinct smell of lingering mold.” 

We had a fantastic time in Big Bear, but I am so thrilled to be home, where I know the shower is always clean because I scrubbed it myself just a few days ago and the mattress is always perfectly comfortable and covered with sheets that smell like my husband when I bury my face in them.
Most of all, I’m so happy to be here, building this, making this all real with Adam.

I feel like we’re finally settling into our real life. That this is the true start of our marriage, and there are no limits to how amazing our future together will be.

“I hear ya' there.” He pulls me close and nuzzles my neck. “That sounds good. You get cleaned up, I’ll grab dinner and a movie? Anything you want to see?”

“Surprise me.” I lean in and press my lips to his. He bites on my bottom lip and draws it into his mouth. My body goes slack, and he wastes no time pulling me into him, his sturdy hand anchored on the small of my back.

Adam reaches for the zipper on the back of my sun dress, but I reach back and swat his hand away.

“We’ll never eat if we get started with that,” I scold. He lets out a low growl in my ear, but relents, kissing me quickly before he grabs his keys.

An hour later, I’ve showered and dried my hair just enough to pull it back into a messy ponytail. I skip the makeup and throw on a worn V-neck t-shirt of Adam’s that—even though it’s washed—smells like him and a pair of cotton shorts.

I’m pulling out plates to set the table when Adam walks in.

He wordlessly drops the two plastic bags full of food onto the table, then tosses his keys and a stack of unopened mail onto the kitchen counter.

He’s still holding a single envelope, though, and his face looks pained.

“What’s up?” I ask, slowly unpacking the hot container of wonton soup and fortune cookies, crinkling in their cellophane wrappers. Adam is unmoving. “Adam?”

He looks up from the envelope he’s been staring at. “When was the last time you checked the mail?”

My stomach drops. Shit, I’m always screwing something up. Like that time I forgot to pay my cell phone bill until it was two months behind, and I had to borrow the money from Cohen the day it was going to be shut off. Or the time I planned a trip to Jamaica with the girls the same week Dad needed an all-hands-on-deck emergency inventory for an upcoming audit. Or the time I dropped my final paper in the wrong drop box and almost flunked my class for the semester. 

“I...I don’t think I’ve checked it since we’ve been here. I mean, you usually have the key with you, right? Is it something bad? If it’s a bill, it’s okay, we still have some money left from the wedding, and I get paid next Friday, so we’ll manage. Hey.” I nudge Adam’s arm to try to draw him out of this mood. I want to go back to the lightness of a day ago, hell, an hour ago. “Come on, let’s eat before your life-changing beef gets cold. We can talk about whatever it is over dinner.”

I finish arranging the dishes and containers as Adam slumps into the chair across from me, his face unchanged.

I scoop some rice onto his plate, expecting him to stop me. To tell me that I don’t need to wait on him, because he always likes to do for himself, and for me. Right now, though, he’s turned into stone.

“You’re freaking me out. Can we just talk about whatever it is? Can I see the envelope?” I reach for it, wondering what the hell could have stripped the life out of our home so completely.

Adam opens the flap of the envelope and unfolds the single piece of paper inside.

“It’s from the Office of Citizenship and Immigration, Genevieve.”

I try to swallow the piece of beef I was chewing, but it’s suddenly lodged in my throat. I gulp down the glass of wine I’d poured and then count to ten in my head, like Adam told me he does when he needs to calm down.

It doesn’t work.

“What does it say?” I ask, smoothing the delicate Spanish lace tablecloth, a wedding gift from Lydia. At first, I thought it was an impersonal gift, typical from my ice princess sister. But now that I think about it, it couldn’t be more personal. It’s a gorgeous covering for the place that Adam and I will share our meals over. It’s here that we’ll talk about our days, good and bad. And it’s here that Adam appears to be having a mental breakdown over whatever is in that letter.

He clears his throat and flips the paper out of his fingers. We both watch it flutter onto the table. “It says we have to meet with someone in the Immigration Investigations department, Gen.
Tomorrow
. This letter must have been sitting here since the day after I got the damn marriage license.”

“Since when is the government that on the ball?” I snort.

“This isn’t a joke, Genevieve.” He’s looking at me with that same expression he always had when I’d show up late to class. The look that says I’m letting him down.

I hate that look so damn much and will do anything to get it off his face.

“I understand that, but we can’t change it,” I say, my words calm. Not because I feel calm, but because I hope to trick him into following my lead and calming down. “We have to go to the meeting whether we sit here and pout about it or not. We’ll go, they’ll ask some questions, we’ll answer them, go have lunch, and find out we’re fine. Done deal.” I scoop some more food onto his plate and toss a fortune cookie toward him. “Now, can we eat.”

“I’m not hungry.” He pushes his plate away, leans across to the counter, and pulls his laptop down.

“Are you seriously going to work at the table?” I ask, my heart sinking hard and fast as an anchor dropped into the churning waves.

Adam’s rough voice makes my spine stiffen. “I’m not working,” he snaps. “I’m researching.”

“Eso es lo que dije. Es lo mismo, culo inteligente.”
I mutter quickly under my breath.

Adam barely glances up, then looks back down at his computer screen. I catch the slightest sign of a smile that he’s fighting, because I know it turns him on when I speak Spanish, even if what I said wasn’t all that nice.

“I’m trying to get some information on what we might expect tomorrow. See, right here, it says that we get to be interviewed together,” he says, his shoulders falling with obvious relief.

“That’s a good thing.” I put my hands on his shoulders and rest my chin on the top of his head, dipping my mouth to kiss his hair. I draw in a relieved breath. Crisis averted. “How can we screw up if we’re in the same room together. All we have to do is not overlap each other talking. We need like a sign, if I’m going to answer, or if I think you should take that one.”
              “Genevieve, I’m pretty sure they’re going to ask us each questions directly. It isn’t a pick-and-choose type of situation.” He shakes his head and goes back to scrolling through the endless pages of information.

I back up, taking my hands off his shoulders and crossing them tight over my chest. “Oh, really? How many of these have you done?” I ask. I feel like he’s talking down to me, and I hate it.

“That’s not what I meant, Gen. I just meant that common sense would— ” He pinches the bridge of his nose, looking unrecognizable compared to the Adam of just hours ago. He lets out a long sigh. “Never mind.”

“So we don’t need any secret sign. We’ll
interview together, right in the same room? That’s good.” I lean a hip on the counter, looking right on him. He never glances up from the screen.

“Right, but on this message board, it says that sometimes, if they’re suspicious, they’ll separate you. Then they’ll ask you the same questions. It’ll be less about gathering information and seeing how we interact together and, more like a quiz show.” He puts his elbows on the table and drops his head into his hands. “
Fantastic.
”

I shake my head. “Okay, I get that it’s important, Adam. I really do. But I just don’t think it’s productive to stress about this tonight. What time is the appointment?”

“Eleven.”

“Okay, so we have all night to spend...destressing.” I want to wink at him, but he won’t look up. “Come on, you’re not even going to let me try to seduce you?”

His eyes dart up. Finally. His face is a mask of disappointment and, maybe...disgust? I can’t be sure because I’ve never seen him look like this. What I do know is that I don’t like it at all.

“I feel like you aren’t taking this seriously at all, Genevieve. You could get in a lot of trouble for what we did. What we’re doing. We’re breaking the law! I could get sent back to Israel, and this would all be for nothing.”

I shake my head. It’s an involuntary movement. My eyes tear, and I just can’t believe the words that he’s saying. I can’t believe he’s making it sound like he regrets marrying me. I can’t believe he said that this entire thing may have been pointless.

“Do you...do you regret what we did? Do you regret marrying me?” I ask, biting back hard to stop the tears before they fall.

Adam looks up and his eyes soften. “No, Gen, I’m just nervous. I don’t want you to get into trouble. I don’t want to screw anything up.”
              I nod, relieved for a second. “But you won’t. It’s going to be fine. We know each other, we learned so much about each other this weekend, even!” I want him to tell me that we do know all that we need to know, because we aren’t faking this. This is real, and nothing will prove it otherwise.

Adam doesn’t say that. “I don’t think your unreasonable fear of stuffed animals will help us tomorrow, Gen.”

I shrug, still desperate for him to see that there honestly isn’t anything worth getting worked up over. “Maybe, maybe not. But stressing about it right now and going on a hunger strike helps nothing.”

Adam stretches his arms above his head. I watch the muscles flex as he runs his hand through his hair, and I swallow hard. “You’re right, we have tonight to relax together. Tomorrow will be what it’s going to be.”

I sigh, relieved. He finally relented.

“So we can eat?”

Adam cracks a small smile and nods.

“Oh, thank God, I’m starving.” I reach over and crack open my fortune cookie, like a kid. It’s always been my favorite part of Chinese takeout. I know it’s silly to believe in the power of a pre-printed piece of paper, but I can’t help but feel like if this one says something really good, it’ll be like a sign. A sign that everything will go off perfectly tomorrow. It has to.

I lay the small strip of paper out on the table and cringe.

ALL ROADS LEAD TO CHAOS IN THE END.

“It’s going to be fine. More than fine. We
know
each other. This will be okay.” I say the words, but there’s a knife-stab of fear deep in my throat, and I don’t know what the fuck I’m promising.

Genevieve is staring down at her phone, scrolling through yet another online article about green card marriage questions. I glance around the room, nervous for someone to see what she’s doing and call us out as frauds.

“She sounded nice enough on the phone,” I say, wrapping my arm around Gen to comfort her, but also to hide the screen from anyone who might be snooping.

“Anisha Jeffries.” She says the name of our agent in a whisper. “I couldn’t find anything about her. I mean, I found a few people with that name, but none of them had her job or were from this area.” She throws her phone in her purse and smooths the skirt she borrowed from Lydia, navy blue and sensible. Too sensible.

As glad as I am that Gen is finally stepping away from the binding, flashy clothes she picked when we met, this isn’t her either. She looks meek and prim in her white cotton blouse, buttoned too high.

It’s just clothes, but seeing her in what looks like a costume makes me wonder just how much I know about her.

A woman with masses of tiny braids piled in a bun and a no-nonsense expression on her pretty face pokes her head out the door. “Adam Abramowitz.”

I jump to my feet and Genevieve fumbles with her purse.

“No, ma’am.” She shakes her head at Genevieve, her sensible gold hoops glinting in the dull fluorescent light. “You’ll see Mrs. Jeffries when she calls for you. Your husband needs to come with me.”

“Wait.” Genevieve stands up and clutches at my hand.

My mind clicks through too many things all at once. Was there any particular emphasis on the way the agent said ‘your husband’? Like she doubts that’s what I am to Genevieve? Will Genevieve be able to make her temper match this whole docile image she’s wearing like a phoney disguise? And if they find out why we did this—if they brand me a liar and a law-breaker—what does that mean for her?

“Sit down and wait for Mrs. Jeffries.” It sounds like an order, and Gen’s chin juts out.

“I have questions to ask.” She looks at the agent with the braids and gets two very annoyed raised eyebrows.

Sweat breaks out on my neck, and I
breathe slowly, in and out. “Genevieve, listen to me. Do what the woman asked, and sit back down
now
and wait for Mrs. Jeffries.”

I’ve never spoken to her in this tone, and there are a long few seconds where all I can do is watch her face, nervous for her to fly off the handle and scream things in this cramped waiting room that will expose our whole marriage as a sham.