She Poured Out Her Heart by Jean Thompson

her to come along. But maybe he had wanted to be certain he had been matched, that he had something to offer her. Exactly what was he offering her, anyway?
    Jane called Bonnie the next night. “Eric’s going to Atlanta for his residency and he wants me to come with him.” Although he had not actually said anything about wanting; you had to extrapolate that.
    â€œYeah? You going?”
    â€œI don’t know yet. It just came up last night.”
    â€œAre you getting married?”
    â€œThat part didn’t come up.”
    â€œI trust,” Bonnie said, “that you have told him the instructive story about free milk and the cow.”
    â€œI’m not a cow.” It wasn’t what you’d expect to hear from Bonnie. “Since when did you turn into some marriage booster?”
    â€œYou know I’m not. But if you’re going to up and quit your job, and live somewhere you don’t know anybody else—you don’t, do you?—so that pretty much everything depends on Eric, how do you want this to end up? You want to get married, don’t you? You love him all goo-goo, right?”
    â€œYes. Sure. But . . .”
    â€œBut what, tiresome girl?”
    â€œHe hasn’t asked me.”
    â€œWell go out there and get him to marry you. It can’t be that hard, people do it all the time.”
    â€œI don’t know.” She didn’t even know what she didn’t know, except for that sense of something sliding away beneath her and life tilting sideways. “If I don’t get married. If I never get married. I’d be this whole different person. Does that make any sense?” Jane waited.
    â€œWell,” Bonnie said after a time, “I guess so. But that’s how it works. You can’t be everything. Nobody can.”
    â€œAll this is happening just because of
his
job.
His
swell career. I’m just a component of it.”
    â€œIt’s never too late to discover feminism, Jane honey.”
    â€œDr. and Mrs. Nicholson. It sounds so fifties.” She wasn’t even sure she believed in all her objections, but it seemed important to register them.
    â€œThen don’t change your name. Marry somebody else. Be a doctor yourself.”
    â€œWhat if we get married and move to Atlanta and things don’t work out?”
    â€œThen you’ll at least get something from it. Train fare back home. Never mind. Don’t get married. Hitchhike on down there with him. Throw caution to the winds.”
    â€œThat’s what you’d do,” Jane said.
    â€œNeed I say more?”

    J ane stood in the apartment’s hallway, her back to the crowd, and tossed the bouquet over her shoulder. There was some whooping and scrabbling, because the men were in on it too, clowning around and pretending they wanted to catch it. But when Jane turned around, Bonnie was holding the roses, wagging them back and forth. “How is this supposed to work? Do I get a prize or something?”
    Everybody gathered around to wish them good-bye, good-bye. Bonnie hugged her and told her she done good, and Jane did not see her again for a long time.

    T he rose, the gold, the leaping sunlight: did everyone see such things as she did? The beautiful seeing filling you up so entirely that there was no room for the rest of you? She didn’t think so, but how would you know? It was nothing anyone ever talked about.

    T hey walked out into a swirl of snow that had already coated the streets and sidewalks. Cars passed by on muffled tires. Veils of moving snow dimmed the streetlamps. It was as if it had all been arranged for them. Their breath sparkled with frost and once they were far enough away from their friends’ apartment they stopped and kissed, the first private kiss of their marriage. It was cold, but not brutally so, and once they reached their car and started it up and the heater began to work, the cold only sharpened their pleasure