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I Married for the Bag—Fifteen Years Later, I Still Can’t Figure Out If That Was Smart
The math was always perfect. The loneliness was never in the equation.
I married for the bag.
Not for love. Not even mostly. For the bag I had been staring at through a plate glass window for two months, costing more than two months of rent, hanging in a boutique I passed on the walk to the train. I told myself it was about David, but it was about the bag.
Let me back up.
Six months before the wedding, my best friend was sleeping on someone’s futon for nearly two months. My mother’s deductible was more than my checking account. I had a fourth-floor walk-up with a window that didn’t quite close right, and a job that paid me enough to eat but not enough to stay. David was a regional sales director with a calendar full of cities I’d only read about. He replaced his shirts more carefully than he used to. He had a watch on his wrist that I didn’t ask about.
He proposed on a Tuesday. The black velvet box slid across a marble counter at a place we used to go. I said yes before he finished the sentence. The waiter had just walked away with our menus. He ordered a Nespresso machine the same day, free shipping, no questions. Later, after he went to bed, I sat on…
