over test, going on to pass it handily. In the end, aside from issues of pride, my
screwup would make no difference at all.
Several years later, though, the memory was causing me to regard Barack
with extra curiosity. He was attending bar review classes and carrying around his
own bar review books, and yet didn’t seem to be cracking them as often as I
thought maybe he should—as I would, anyway, knowing what I knew now. But
I wasn’t going to nag him or even offer myself as an example of what could go
wrong. We were built so differently, he and I. For one thing, Barack’s head was
an overpacked suitcase of information, a mainframe from which he could
seemingly pull disparate bits of data at will. I called him “the fact guy,” for how
he seemed to have a statistic to match every little twist in a conversation. His
memory seemed not-quite-but-almost photographic. The truth was, I wasn’t
worried about whether he’d pass the bar and, somewhat annoyingly, neither was
he.
So we celebrated early, on the very same day he finished the exam—July 31,
1991—booking ourselves a table at a downtown restaurant called Gordon. It was
one of our favorite places, a special-occasion kind of joint, with soft Art Deco
lighting and crisp white tablecloths and things like caviar and artichoke fritters on
the menu. It was the height of summer and we were happy.
At Gordon, Barack and I always ordered every course. We had martinis and
appetizers. We picked a nice wine to go with our entrées. We talked idly,
contentedly, maybe a little sappily. As we were reaching the end of the meal,
Barack smiled at me and raised the subject of marriage. He reached for my hand
and said that as much as he loved me with his whole being, he still didn’t really
see the point. Instantly, I felt the blood rise in my cheeks. It was like pushing a
button in me—the kind of big blinking red button you might find in some sort of
nuclear facility surrounded by warning signs and evacuation maps. Really? We
were going to do this now?
In fact, we were. We’d had the hypothetical marriage discussion plenty of
times already, and nothing much ever changed. I was a traditionalist and Barack
was not. It seemed clear that neither one of us could be swayed. But still, this
didn’t stop us—two lawyers, after all—from taking up the topic with hot gusto.
Surrounded by men in sport coats and women in nice dresses enjoying their fancy
meals, I did what I could to keep my voice calm.
“If we’re committed,” I said, as evenly as I could muster, “why wouldn’t we
formalize that commitment? What part of your dignity would be sacrificed by