I

that?”

From here, we traversed all the familiar loops of the old argument. Did
marriage matter? Why did it matter? What was wrong with him? What was
wrong with me? What kind of future did we have if we couldn’t sort this out?
We weren’t fighting, but we were quarreling, and doing it attorney-style. We
punched and counterpunched, dissected and cross-examined, though it was
clearly I who was more inflamed. It was I who was doing most of the talking.

Eventually, our waiter came around holding a dessert plate, covered by a
silver lid. He slid it in front of me and lifted the cover. I was almost too miffed to
even look down, but when I did, I saw a dark velvet box where the chocolate
cake was supposed to be. Inside it was a diamond ring.

Barack looked at me playfully. He’d baited me. It had all been a ruse. It took
me a second to dismantle my anger and slide into joyful shock. He’d riled me up
because this was the very last time he would invoke his inane marriage argument,
ever again, as long as we both should live. The case was closed. He dropped to
one knee then and with an emotional hitch in his voice asked sincerely if I’d
please do him the honor of marrying him. Later, I’d learn that he’d already gone
to both my mother and my brother to ask for their approval ahead of time. When
I said yes, it seemed that every person in the whole restaurant started to clap.

For a full minute or two, I stared dumbfounded at the ring on my finger. I
looked at Barack to confirm that this was all real. He was smiling. He’d
completely surprised me. In a way, we’d both won. “Well,” he said lightly, “that
should shut you up.”

said yes to Barack, and shortly after that I said yes to Valerie Jarrett, accepting
her offer to come work at city hall. Before committing, I made a point of
following through on my request to introduce Barack and Valerie, scheduling a
dinner during which the three of us could talk.

I did this for a couple of reasons. For one, I liked Valerie. I was impressed by
her, and whether or not I ended up taking the job, I was excited to get to know
her better. I knew that Barack would be impressed, too. More important,
though, I wanted him to hear Valerie’s story. Like Barack, she’d spent part of her
childhood in a different country—in her case, Iran, where her father had been a
doctor at a hospital—and returned to the United States for her schooling, giving