All Happy Couples Are Alike

Five years ago, I was in a classroom lit with long fluorescent rods, staring at a tall blond boy sitting across the empty square formed by the edges of four rectangular desks. It was an orientation session for our college’s summer study abroad program in Russia, and when he asked questions—and he posed many questions—he did so with an air of authority and condescension that gave me the impression he already knew the answers. He chose each word as carefully as a chef chooses a fish at the market, and gestured with long, capable-looking fingers. I tried to catch his swimming-pool-blue eyes; they eluded me.

The next time I saw him was a week or two later at an end-of-the-school-year party in a crowded room limned with Christmas lights. I was holding, but not really drinking, a sticky red Solo cup of vodka-and-something. He was involved in an animated conversation with a boy I didn’t know. Through a process of casual but wide-ranging questioning—of friends on my floor, acquaintances in his dorm, fellow students of the Russian language—after that first sighting at orientation,... Continue Reading