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One spring day, quite out of the blue from Isla’s viewpoint, Danny asked her to marry him.
In retrospect, there were some clues: taking her to meet his family, for one. Isla loved Danny’s father. He wore green Dickies coveralls and he smelled like machinery and hay. He reminded her of her grandfather who died when she was five, just a sweet whisper on the edges of her memory. His mother was a bit no-nonsense, and Isla could appreciate that, too. She was sure that his siblings were interesting people, but since they were always surrounded by throngs of their noisy, needy children, she hadn’t gotten to know them well yet.
He’d also asked her opinion about a lot of things at his house, she realized later. Almost as if she really lived there, which, despite a toothbrush on the sink and a drawer in the bureau, she still did not. Danny came when she called. She went when she felt like it. It was, in her view, the ideal arrangement. The question of marriage had been put to rest at the beginning of their relationship, she’d seen to that.
She was sitting beside him in the truck before supper one evening, wondering why they weren’t pulling out and beginning to feel a bit cranky about it, when he cleared his throat and she looked over to see him fumbling with a ring box. When he’d gotten it open, he showed it to her, saying, “Do I even have to ask?”
“Of course you have to ask!” she said, indignant, mistaking his nervousness for presumption. Besides, she really was taken aback. She’d said she wasn’t the marrying kind. What was all this?
“Sorry.” Danny snapped the box shut and put it in his pocket. He started the car and jerked the truck onto the road.
He’s angry, she thought, very, very angry. His jaw was set hard and he was driving down Main Street at a reckless speed. But when she noticed a tear coming down his cheek, she softened immediately.
“Danny?” He nodded. “You ok?”
“No. No, not really.” His jaw was set hard.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked at her incredulously. “Isla . . . I thought we’d have a special moment back there. I didn’t think you’d take out my heart and stomp on it.”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.” She wanted to be gentle, but really. Really. He should have known better.
“It wasn’t what I was expecting, either.”
Isla sighed and looked out the window. They were passing by Walmart now, almost out of town. “Look, even if you’d asked on one knee by candlelight, I would still have been surprised. We never talked about marriage.”
“This is talking about marriage.”
“Well, ok. But I told you at the start I didn’t think I was the marrying kind.”
“What is that even supposed to mean?”
“I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me I love someone.”
“It’s not about a piece of paper, it’s about commitment. It’s about a promise. We can skip the paper if you want. Or is it the commitment you want to skip? You want to be ‘free’?”
“Is freedom bad?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Marriage has served important roles historically and culturally, but . . .”
Danny slammed on the brakes and pulled to the side of the road. “Isla, I’m not looking for a freakin’ history class. I want to know if you love me and want to be with me, if you want to form a team. I want to know if I can rely on you for the long haul. I want to know if you’ve got my back.”
Got your back. What does it even mean? Isla pictured herself and Danny surrounded by a hostile hoard, back-to-back, her and Danny against the world, together covering attack from any side. There was an element of passion and adventure that did appeal to her, she had to admit . . . he was still talking. She forced her attention back to his words.
“. . . Why would you NOT want to get married unless you’re holding out for someone better?”
The romantic fantasy dissipated. “Don’t twist my arm, Danny.”
“I don’t mean to. But I really don’t understand.” He looked at her urgently, eyes red. “What has this all been about?”
His helplessness grabbed at her heart. She’d felt every emotion in the space of 10 minutes. “You’re so cute and old-fashioned,” she said, putting her hand on his face.
“I don’t care about fashion, old or new. That’s a stupid way to make decisions. Just please . . . think about it, will you? I love you.”
“But the problem is marriage is your default and not getting married is mine. How can we possibly resolve that? I need to know why we should do it.”
“It’s just . . . it’s natural. I need you. I need to know you’re not going away.”
“Why would I go away?”
“Then why not get married?”
Isla knew there was no end to this cycle. But he needed her, he said. Yes, she could see that that was true. Pity can feel a lot like love when you really want it to.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “But next time, ask.”
She left that door open a crack, and she never could sleep with the door open. Three a.m. for the next several weeks usually found her wondering if she was softening, weakening. Would she betray her own values, her autonomy, her control? There were many conversations with Kim, who loved to tease her about Danny. Phil just smiled at her mischievously when she passed him in the yard. She wanted it to be a fun time, a happy one, but in reality, she felt life slipping out of her tight grasp. She didn’t want to lose Danny but she didn’t want him to own her; there didn’t seem to be a way forward.
Her dad was reading by his lamp in the living room one night before supper when she sat down beside him and started sighing a lot. He finally looked up. “Something on your mind?”
“Danny asked me to marry him.”
Dad nodded noncommittally and waited.
“I haven’t answered yet.”
“I see.” He put his bookmark in.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Why?”
“I had a definite plan to not get married.”
Dad smiled a little. “Why?”
She hesitated. It might be a little hard for Dad to swallow. “I’m . . . I’m my own woman. I only ever wanted to be my own woman.” It was a bit of a truncated explanation of everything she believed about marriage being rooted in subduing and controlling women, but it was true enough, she supposed. She was afraid to look at Dad’s face, and when she did, he seemed . . . amused.
“You’ve got that right, Isla. You’ve only ever been your own woman, even when you were a little girl. I don’t think anyone could ever change that . . . ok, wait a minute.” Dad walked over to the filing cabinet beside his desk in the adjoining small room and came back with two documents. “If you take a careful look at these, you’ll find that a marriage certificate bears little resemblance to a title of ownership except for these fancy doodles at the edge.” He offered them to her. She rolled her eyes, but looked, all the same.
“You know what I mean.”
“I have some idea what you’ve been told marriage is, although I hope you don’t think that’s what you’ve seen in Mum and I. Don’t get me wrong. Marriage is hard. It involves choosing what someone else wants a lot of the time, for both of you. But you’ll always be your own woman, Isla, no doubt about that. That said, if you don’t think you should marry Danny, then don’t. I won’t tell you what to do . . . I expect that’s how you got so willful in the first place.” He winked.
“Ha. Hardly.” She play-punched his arm. He smirked at his book.
“Seriously, though, Isla, marriage does change you, both of you. And it’s really hard to know what you will bring out in each other. It can take years to really know.”
“Sometimes I think marriage is just hammering out the terms of a truce, and every couple decides on their own rules.” Dad laughed out loud then and said she wasn’t all wrong. “You and Mum have a great marriage, of course,” she said, though privately acknowledging that 35 years of observing a relationship certainly reveals highs and lows. “But I’ve sure seen a lot of others fall apart.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“Who says I’m afraid?”
“Right. Not afraid. But is that what deters you?”
“I don’t know. People do stupid things in the name of love.”
“Oh?”
Isla fidgeted before blurting, “Like Dave.”
“Ah . . . I see. Well, they seem happy together. What is your objection?” Dad’s scant hair brushed the crocheted afghan on the back of the chair as he tilted his head thoughtfully.
“She’s not the right kind of girl for him. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not a good risk. It’s a rash investment.”
“They may not be thinking of it strictly in terms of investment. If only reason could explain everything.”
“It can.”
“Can it? Interesting.” He smiled at his book again.
“The problem is that I want to marry Danny and it doesn’t make sense. I’ve tried so hard not to let societal norms influence me.” Isla stared across the room, truly puzzled.
“Maybe you just love him.”
“But why? And will I keep loving him?”
“What they won’t tell you in rom-coms, Isla, is that you get decide whether you keep loving someone or not. It’s the only way to keep loving someone, in fact. Feelings follow your decision. And I think you’ll find, if you look into it, that there are studies to prove it. Although you can dig up a study to reinforce almost any idea if you try hard enough. So much for reason being infallible . . .” He laughed slightly into his book, opening it again.
So, in the end, she decided to love him. There were feelings; she was happy when she was with him, except when they were fighting. She admired him and believed he admired her. They were grown- ups, not two kids in puppy love. But she had moments when her heart fluttered, when she let down her guard. She convinced herself that this marriage thing could be an adventure and reasoned that they could benefit each other.
And no one said, “You’re making a mistake” because nobody thought that she was.
“Isla,” Danny said, under his big garage light a month or so later, holding her close to him, “will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
“That’s more like it,” she said. “Yes. When? Now?”
“Now!” He laughed, “You ready for a wedding right now?”
“Oh, you weren’t thinking of a big wedding, were you?” Doubt immediately emerged.
“Well, what do you mean a big wedding? I was thinking wedding, not courthouse.”
“Ahhhh. Ok. I didn’t think guys cared about that sort of thing.”
“Let’s decide right now not to make assumptions based on what men or women are supposed to think. Let’s ask what Isla or Danny thinks.”
“Ok. It’s a plan.” Isla put her head on his chest and listened to his heart beat, imagining they had this compromise thing down cold.
Next Chapter: A Wedding with All the Trimmings
Copyright 2025 Jennie Robertson