Em Gessen

Priscilla was working at a new lifestyle magazine and had launched at Bobby's annual fashion week.

She wanted a life that was big and fast, like Alan's.

And it's true that Alan seemed to know how to make big, fast money and spend it.

Right.

One of those hiccups that happen early on in a romance and should raise a giant red flag, but somehow never do.

My Aunt Lele came to visit a few months into their relationship.

She joined Alan and Priscilla on a trip to the countryside.

You see, Lena and Alan's relationship was always very close.

When Alan was going to college and then law school, all the while living with his mother, we used to say that he was missing out on being young.

When he moved in with a girlfriend in Ukraine, we joked that he finally got far enough from Lena to have a relationship.

It was like a joke about a Jewish man and his mother that's not a joke at all.

Priscilla didn't know any of this, of course.

But for all she knew, where Alan came from, 37-year-old men routinely went to their mothers after fighting with their girlfriends, and their mothers comforted them by stroking their bald heads.

About a year after they met, Alan approached Priscilla's father to ask for her hand in marriage.

They went through a modernized version of the lobola, the custom where the prospective groom pays a price for his bride, and now they were considered married in Zimbabwe.

As Priscilla got to know Alan better, she sometimes wondered about things.

I do know.

Alan did have an internship at a law firm at the World Trade Center.

But that was the summer before 9-11.

Although, as I told Priscilla, the story Alan told her was familiar.