Tightening the Knot

Amanda Hamm

© 2009 by Amanda Hamm

All rights reserved.  No part may be copied or reproduced in any manner or by any means without prior written permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-0-557-05658-3

Tightening the Knot is a work of fiction.  All names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

To my husband,

who doesn’t like coconut either.

╣ Chapter 1 ╠

Meredith hated the man sitting across from her.  She hated the shiny scalp visible under his ridiculous comb-over and the third and fourth chins created by his too-tight collar.  She hated the way he licked his finger before he turned each page of his desk calendar.  But mostly she hated him because of his job.

“Have you told your husband yet?”

“My husband?” she whispered.

“Because I’ll need to know who will be representing him.”

Meredith bit her lip and shook her head slightly.  The man went back to shuffling the papers on his desk and occasionally licking one of those disgusting fingers.  She felt sick to her stomach.  A minute later, he pushed some of those papers to her side of the desk.  “You can start by filling these out,” he said.

She took the pen he handed to her and thought it felt oddly heavy.  It got heavier and pressed her hand against the desk until she was forced to drop it.  But then it rolled lightly across the desk and bounced off the strange giant-headed turtle paperweight.  Meredith had longed for a sign to give her some direction in this decision.  This was a little late, but as far as signs go it couldn’t be much clearer.  She stood up abruptly, knocking that pen all the way to the ugly brown carpet; the kind used in so many offices and designed not to show stains.

The man looked startled.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I’m afraid I’m wasting your time.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes.  Or maybe it isn’t really wrong after all.  I guess I just, what I mean is… it’s not you, it’s me.”  She smiled in spite of herself and let out a nervous laugh.  Did she just break up with a divorce attorney?  “I think I’ve changed my mind about this whole… thing.”

“Okay.  In my line of work, it can actually be a good thing to lose a client.”  It was the right thing to say, but his forced smile gave away his disappointment.

She left the office quickly, guilt about all the wrong things swirling in her head, and walked into the quiet, sterile hallway.  This felt better.  She twirled her ring around her finger, glad it wasn’t going anywhere.  There was a little too much zeal in the spin and it flipped right off and out of her hands.  She tried to catch it, but felt it slip past and saw it bounce and heard it rattle on the hard floor.  She stomped down, trying to stop it with her shoe and somehow caught it on its side, hard.  Back on her finger, it fit differently.  She took it off, very carefully this time, for inspection.  It was no longer a perfect circle.  Meredith probably wouldn’t have cared at all about the tiny dent if the circumstances had been different.  If the ring had been bruised anywhere but the office of a divorce attorney, if it hadn’t seemed so fitting, she likely wouldn’t have thought about it again.

She sighed heavily and paused for a moment to wallow in the certainty that she would always feel that dent and remember how it got there.  Then she tried to shake it off as simply the defining moment in this new resolve, the one she was still forming.  All she felt right then was that if her marriage was going down the drain, she was not going to be the one to pull the plug.  Not like this.

She took slow, deep breaths on the way home, trying to contain her excitement.  She was thrilled that it was finally time for things to be different.  She and her husband, Greg, could be like newlyweds again.  How was that not fantastic?  There was a slight rush of adrenaline as she walked through the door of her home.  She was ready to make things better.  Greg was watching TV and looked up as she came in.  “You’re late today.  Did something come up?”

It wasn’t an accusation, but Meredith immediately became annoyed… with herself.  She taught first grade.  The school day ended at 3:25 and she usually stayed after to do paperwork or tidy the classroom.  But not on Fridays.  On Fridays, she liked to leave right after the last student.  This was Friday and she was coming home just before 6 o’clock.  Of course Greg noticed.  She was an idiot for not thinking of something to say.  But she couldn’t lie to him any more than she could casually mention where she had actually been.  Why didn’t she have a speech prepared?  And why didn’t he care!?  After  two full minutes of watching her stand open-mouthed in the doorway, he turned back to the TV.

She felt all the air coming out of her inflated resolve.  “Well, if you’re not even going to wait for an answer,” she huffed, and stormed up the stairs.  She looked around their bedroom.  She groaned.  There was no food in the bedroom.  Why did she come upstairs at dinnertime when there was no food in the bedroom?  Meredith briefly imagined going back down and asking the man she had just snapped at if he had made her something to eat.  That would surely improve everyone’s mood.

She groaned again and changed her clothes.  It was completely out of the ordinary for her to change clothes after work, but felt it gave her an excuse for having come up the stairs.  Then she went back down to the kitchen intending to make a sandwich.  She found a plate of leftovers in the fridge, Greg had made dinner, and warmed that up instead.

She sat at the table eating and pretending to watch the news.  She was really watching Greg.  They had been married for six years and she still loved watching him.  Talking to him had become another matter altogether.  Each conversation seemed to revolve around that which they were not talking.  They had fallen into an accepted silence.  But it was not the happy, confident silence that results from being so comfortable with each other that words are no longer necessary.  It was a sullen refusal to communicate and it seemed unlikely that they were going to bond over the shared stubbornness.  Meredith had called the attorney during a weak moment when she did not know what else to do.  Sitting there starring at Greg, she knew now it was time to figure out what else to do.  It was time for a plan.

╣ Chapter 2 ╠

Meredith was what some people would call a cradle Catholic, having been raised in the faith.  Greg was Catholic, too.  He was also six years older than Meredith.  Both of these facts about him stood out to Meredith’s parents when she introduced him shortly after her 20th birthday.  When they discovered that his older sister was a nun, one began to outweigh the other in importance.

Now Meredith decided that step one in her newly forming plan to reconcile with her husband was to go to Confession and reconcile with herself.  A nice, clean slate seemed appropriate.  She never knew how often to attend, feeling that too often meant she wasn’t trying hard enough to overcome her sins and not often enough meant she wasn’t being honest with herself about those sins.  Like other problems in her life, she chose to solve this by avoiding the issue altogether.  Consequently, it had been nearly three years since her last visit to a confessional.  When she mentioned to Greg where she was headed, he naturally looked surprised.  He also looked as though he knew better than to comment on this decision.

****

The large church was very quiet as she entered.  Meredith joined those kneeling in the rear pews to wait her turn.  She marveled at how different the relatively empty building looked on a Saturday afternoon.  It was as though the architecture was more visible with fewer people to distract the eyes.  When her turn came, she knelt behind the screen and recited the opening lines, wincing slightly as she admitted her long absence.

As she opened her mouth to list the nitty-gritty part, step one of her plan came to a choking halt.  She was suddenly aware that she didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say.  The first words that came into her head were “I haven’t been honoring my marriage vows.”  But that sounded like… and she hadn’t done that!  Her mind was reeling for a better explanation.  She knew she was responsible for some of the tension at home, but how could she put that into words?  Where to start?  There was an inexplicable wave of panic threatening to drown her and when she noticed by his shadow that the priest was getting up, that he was coming around to her side, she reacted without thought.  She jumped up like a crazy person and bolted to the parking lot.

After several furtive glances assured her she had not been followed, Meredith sat in her car sulking.  It no longer mattered that her plan had no step two.  Once she was calm and her heart rate had returned to normal, she decided that this was going to be a setback, not a defeat.  St Andrew’s was not that far away.  She would simply have to find out when they had Confession and try again where no one would recognize the fool who was afraid of a priest.  Or rather, a priest’s shadow.

Two of Meredith’s friends were meeting her for dinner in an hour and she determined to use the time until then to write out exactly what she would say next time.  Using crib notes in a confessional was surely less pathetic than a major freak out.

****

Jenna was waiting for her at the restaurant.  It had become an unwritten rule between them to show up early and have a few minutes alone before Mercy arrived.  Jenna and Meredith had been best friends since the sixth grade.  They remained close despite some jealousy on both sides.  Jenna was a knockout.  She was simply beautiful with thick, chestnut hair that she kept long and perfect at all times.  She was a Jazzercize instructor and her figure earned the gym numerous clients of both sexes.  It was excellent job security.  But despite all the attention she received from guys, she still had very bad luck in the relationship department and tried very hard not to resent the fact that Meredith had married her first serious boyfriend right out of college.

She looked concerned as Meredith sat down with an obvious cloud around her.  “What’s up with you?”

“I’m having a bad day, or week actually, but I’m going to change it.”  She took a deep breath to insert a dramatic pause.  “I’ve decided to work on my marriage… but I’m not really sure what that means.”

“Are you and Greg having problems again?”

“Not again… still.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.  I thought you said things were improving.”

“I thought they were.”

“Maybe it’s time, you know, if Greg is still willing…” Jenna seemed to be trying to choose her words carefully, and with good reason.  She was alluding to marriage counseling.  Greg had suggested this a few months ago and it was still a sore spot with Meredith.  She had stubbornly insisted that they did not need anyone else’s help to solve their problems.  She had felt proven correct when the discussion had them temporarily talking about what those problems might be.  When the talks eventually brought them back to their original stalemate, she found it too difficult to swallow her pride and admit that maybe they could use some outside help after all.

“He hasn’t brought it up again.”

“Have you?”

Meredith just shook her head, looking defeated.  And Jenna didn’t really want to talk about this any more than her friend.  She felt completely unqualified for any sort of relationship advice, having never had one of her own last more than two months.  “Well…” Jenna dove into the silence with a new topic.  “My resolve was tested today.”

“The one about not dating clients?”

“I almost didn’t say it today.”  Looking the way she did, Jenna was hit on at least once a week.  She used to have a fairly liberal acceptance policy, agreeing to meet most guys who seemed nice, and were not scary.  She hoped that the more guys she met, the more likely she’d be to luck into a good one.  Her luck had apparently not kicked in yet.  After a particularly disastrous date that involved washing her hair in tomato sauce the following day, she changed her policy.  She now insisted that she would not date again until a man was willing to work for a “yes.”  She called it the “I don’t date clients” policy for simplicity and mostly it just gave her a rejection line to use without feeling guilty.  “This guy,” she continued, “his name is Shawn, and we talked a little bit last week and I saw him again today and he asked me out and I kinda wanted to say yes since it wasn’t the first time I saw him.”

Meredith nodded with mock understanding.  “So he happened to be at the gym twice, a place he’s paid a ridiculous fee to attend, and that qualifies as working for your attention?”

“Well, he was also there on Thursday and he waved at me during my class.”

“Oh you didn’t tell me there was a wave.  Now I understand.”

Jenna didn’t mind the teasing and even laughed at herself a little.  “Okay, I admit it!  He’s very cute.”

Meredith smiled, too.  “I thought so.  And I don’t really want to give you a hard time.  It’s just… You did tell me to remind you of the tomato sauce if it seemed like you were giving in too easily.”

“I know.  And you’re right about the membership fee.  At least that means he’ll probably be back.  So maybe he will try again, and then it’ll be okay to go out with him.”

“Go out with who?”  Mercy had just arrived.

“Just some guy I met at the gym.”

“Do we really need to hear about all the guys you meet?”  Mercy rolled her eyes as she sat down.  She didn’t hide her jealousy as well as some.  “Have you guys ordered yet?  I’m starving as usual.”  Mercy Sayers was a fellow teacher, fourth grade, and Meredith had known her for years.  They had only started getting together outside of school the last four or five months.  She was expecting her first child at the end of the month.  Meredith found the torture of hearing about another woman’s pregnancy strangely irresistible and Mercy could talk about little else.  “It’s insane how much this little guy apparently eats.”

“Just wait until he’s a teenager.  My mom could never keep enough food in the house for my brother.”

“That is kind of a scary thought.  But I don’t know if he’ll ever be a teenager.  He’d have to come out first.”  She said the last line a little louder and addressed it to her abdomen.

“You sound ready for the due date.”

“Am I ever!  The closer I get to delivery, the more people keep telling me to enjoy sleep while I can.  What sleep?  How can you sleep with a foot, or something, constantly wedged between your ribs?”

“But it’s still neat to feel him moving, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.  But he’s like my own personal space heater.  I’m hot all the time.  I mean, it’s December and I’m always hot.”

Jenna was growing bored, these complaints were not new, and tried to steer things in a different direction.  “So Mercy, you were supposed to meet your sub yesterday.  How did that go?”

“Oh, yes.  Speaking of hot…”  She grinned suggestively.  “I am almost sorry to be leaving, Meredith.  You are going to enjoy the eye candy replacing me, not to mention the fun of watching the single teachers battling for his attention.”

“Hot, huh?  What else do we know about this guy?”  Jenna clearly approved of the conversation’s new heading.

“He’s very young, like twenty-four or twenty-five I think.  He just finished his Master’s.  His name is Gavin.  Dark hair, dark eyes, he has sort of a Mediterranean thing going on.”

“Hey, Mer, maybe you could forget your lunch or something so I’ll have to come visit you at school.”

“Sure.  We’ll hang out.  I’ll show you the sites.”

“Okay, but if this guy doesn’t live up to the hype, I’m eating the lunch myself.”

They all laughed, then Mercy sighed.  “As much as I want this baby to hurry up and get here, I’ll be sad that you two will have to go back to hanging out without me for a while.  I don’t know how long it will be before I’ll be able to have another girls’ night.”

“Yeah, I’m just glad Meredith hasn’t abandoned me for a baby yet.  I guess she’s waiting until I land a man so we can do it together.”  She winked at Meredith.  “I hope you don’t mind waiting till you’re forty.”

Meredith forced her outward appearance to return the smile while her insides split painfully in two.  She hadn’t told anyone, not even her best friend, that she and Greg had been trying to have a baby for nearly two years… that it had become the source of almost everything that was wrong between them.  She was sure it would bring nothing but pitying looks that she would not be able to bear.  How those looks could be worse than keeping it a secret eluded her at that particular moment.

╣ Chapter 3 ╠

There was one week left of school before the holiday break.  Normally, this was a time that Meredith truly enjoyed.  She loved helping her students make presents for their parents, and she loved the time off with her own family.  This year she was having a little trouble getting into a festive mood.  Greg’s mother would be descending from Virginia on Wednesday.  Since Greg’s only sibling was a nun, all hopes of grandchildren rested on his shoulders and his mother was not shy about reminding him, and Merdith, of this responsibility.  Meredith didn’t feel they should be trying to bring a child into a house where the adults rarely spoke more than two sentences a day to each other.  Alerting her mother-in-law to this fact would be very unlikely to make her feel any better.

Meredith’s brother, Tom, was also starting a visit on Friday, along with his girlfriend.  Tom was twenty-four.  He met Ellie during college in Bowling Green, Ohio and they both stayed in that area after graduation.  She was nice enough.  Meredith felt extraordinarily bad about using the phrase “nice enough” whenever she mentioned this possible sister-in-law, but the phrase always seemed to slip out anyway.  There was something awkward about Ellie that made it seem as though she was being introduced for the first time every time she entered a room.  It made the whole family nervous.  Meredith was charged with picking them up from the airport and was reminded by her mom during a Sunday evening phone call.

“The flight gets in at 5:46 pm.”

“I know, Mom.  I have it written down.”

“I just want to be sure.”

“Yes, and I’m bringing them straight to your house.  That’s still the plan, right?”

“Yeah.  And Ellie will be staying in your old room while they’re here so maybe you want to come over first and make sure you’ve cleared everything out of there?”

“Mom, I got everything out of that room when I moved out.  You know, six years ago.”  Meredith was aware that her tone sounded suddenly like an impatient teenager.

“I just thought I’d make sure.”

“You are aware that you’ve used that room for guests numerous times since then… including for Ellie at least twice before?”

“I know, but…”

“But you’re just so excited that they’re coming?”

“Something like that.”

“Don’t worry, Mom.  It’ll all be okay.  See you Friday.”

Meredith hung up the phone and looked at Greg for a minute.  He had his laptop out and appeared to be working.  He never used to bring work home.  She sat down across the room and opened a magazine.  She wasn’t reading though.  It was a prop.  She had made a more successful trip to Confession and was trying to figure out what step two was going to be.  Ideas were not leaping to mind, nor were they even strolling.  Every now and then her eyes would focus on a page and her mind would wander to what was actually in front of her.  After a quiet hour or so, Greg got up and began putting his things away.  He was getting ready for bed.  This gave Meredith an idea.  They had never officially stopped trying to have a baby; they had just sort of stopped trying.  Meredith had taken to staying up later than Greg to avoid the awkwardness of bedtime.  She decided to make a point of going up the same time he did.  Perhaps he would take the hint.

When he noticed her brushing her teeth, he asked, “You’re going to bed now?”

She nodded.

They crawled under the covers facing opposite walls as usual.  Then she moved an inch or two toward the middle and waited for him to notice.  She fell asleep waiting and woke up seriously annoyed.

A new box of cereal absorbed most of her wrath.  It got a bit mangled as she opened it with significantly more vigor than was necessary, shooting Greg a few withering looks as though he might be responsible for making the box so uncooperative.  He was accustomed to being more or less ignored over breakfast and the obvious hostility left him at a bit of a loss.

“Is there…” he started.  “I mean, did I do something recently?”

Meredith was silent.  She ate quickly and then finished getting ready for work.  He tried one last quizzical look as she reached the door.  She answered pointedly, “I went to bed early last night.”

He looked unsure, but also hopeful.  “Oh, so you’re just tired?”

She didn’t utter a single syllable as she closed the door behind her, yet her answer still dripped with sarcasm.  She knew this wasn’t Greg’s fault.  In fact, even without a degree in psychology, she knew that she was actually angry with herself for not knowing how to improve the situation.  Guilt over taking that anger out on Greg only compounded the anger that she took out on Greg.  It was a cycle she wanted to end.  But why couldn’t it be easier?

****

Meredith arrived in the teachers’ lounge to discover that Mercy had not been wrong about her replacement.  At least not about the buzz he would generate among some of the other teachers.

“Oh my God!  I mean, did you see him?”

“I know.  My class might have to start taking the long way to the playground so I can peek in the window.”

“Look all you want.  I get first dibs though.”

“Dibs?  Are you talking about a man or a cookie?”

“Good morning, Meredith.  You must not have seen him yet, or you wouldn’t be asking.  We are talking about a very tasty man.”

“Yeah, Mercy approved, too.  I may have to check in and see how her last week is starting out.”

“I already used that excuse so you’ll have to think of another one if you don’t want to be too transparent.”

“You guys are terrible!  I was really going to stop in to see her and now I can’t because it’ll look like I’m just trying to sneak a peek at the new guy.”

Meredith helped herself to a cup of coffee to take to her classroom.  She regularly saw Mercy during the day and could wait till later to be introduced.  She left the drooling co-workers to themselves.  There was one student in her classroom when she entered.  Jeffrey was always the first one to arrive.

“Good morning, Miss Donna.”  Jeffrey always called her Miss Donna.  She had given up explaining that her name was Mrs. Donnor about two months into the school year.  Jeffrey suffered from the coincidence of having had both preschool and kindergarten teachers called Miss Donna and it left him blind to the subtle differences.

“Good morning, Jeffery.  I see you’ve remembered your picture.”  She had asked each child to bring in a picture of himself for a project.  He was holding his in the air and waving it at her proudly.  He beamed that she noticed.

She sipped her coffee and got a few things organized for the day as the rest of the class trickled in.  Her new-guy-worshiping co-workers had amused her and eased most of the foul mood she had felt earlier in the morning.  She was now reasonably convinced that she would be better able to control her emotions in the future.  The morning’s behavior was just a remnant of past failures.  Since Meredith was in the process of improving the relationship, there was no need to dwell on those old problems.

A little of that foul mood tiptoed back though as a student, Jacob, walked in chewing an obvious, and very large, wad of gum.  This had been a problem all year and she was quite at a loss as to how to handle it.  She caught him chewing gum at least once a week.  Since this was against the school rules, she would bring him the garbage can and ask him to spit it out.  This eventually stopped working because Jacob took to swallowing the gum as soon as he saw her coming with the trash can.  Though this did stop him from chewing the gum, and even more importantly from sticking it to his desk, it created the new issue of a possible choking hazard.  Meredith hated sending notes home, but was concerned enough about his safety to write the following and slip it into his bag.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Tenney,

Jacob has been regularly caught chewing gum at school.  As you know, this is against school rules.  In an attempt to avoid getting in trouble, Jacob swallows his gum when it is noticed.  I am concerned that this may cause him to choke and ask that you please assist him in keeping his gum at home.

Thank you,

Mrs. Donnor

Jacob’s mom sent a reply the very next day.

We have no rules against Jacob chewing gum.  He buys it with his own money and I will not take it away from him.  If the school wishes to have a rule against something as harmless as gum, the school can enforce it.

This was why Meredith hated sending notes to parents.  It was also why she hated parent-teacher conferences.  It seemed every year there was one parent who refused to parent.  She had sat down with Jacob after this to explain her fears.  She told him that she would simply leave the trash can near his desk.  She attached a piece of paper to the wall behind it with the word “gum” and an arrow pointing down to remind him.  For a few weeks, he would spit out his gum shortly after arriving and no one had to say a word.  This eventually stopped working, too.  He started waiting longer and longer to spit it out and was now back to swallowing it when she said something.  And she had to say something as the entire class was aware of his habit.  She planned to start a new approach, one she had not yet thought of, after the break.  In the meantime, she had recently stopped by the school nurse to brush up on her Heimlich technique.

╣ Chapter 4 ╠

Shortly before lunchtime that Monday, Jeffrey’s mom appeared in the hallway holding up a familiar red lunchbox.  It was familiar because half the boys in the class had the same Spider-Man box.  Meredith took the lunch as Jeffrey’s mom blew a kiss to her son and rushed off.

“Thanks, Miss Donna.”

“Oh, nuts!  I mean, you’re welcome Jeffrey.”  It had just dawned on Meredith that he was not the only one to have forgotten a lunch.  She laughed and wondered what Jenna would say and if Mercy would believe it had really been an accident.  At least she worked in a place with a cafeteria.  She lined up the kids and grabbed her bag, which did not contain any food, and followed the little ones down the hall.  Most of them scattered to tables and she followed the rest into the lunch line.

After paying for her lunch, Meredith found her way to a staff table and chatted with co-workers over several fried items and a Jell-O cup, which was actually a bit of a treat as she never bothered to make Jell-O at home.  Then she bused her tray.  More than anything else she did as a teacher, returning a tray to the cafeteria reminded her of her own school days.  There was something very déjà vu inspiring about the clinking of cheap silverware into plastic wash tubs.  She sat back down and pulled out her laptop for the last five minutes, as a few at the table had already done, and logged on to her email account.  She found a note from Greg informing her that he would be gone when she got home.

He would be leaving after lunch on a business trip to Atlanta.  He was called upon to spend a day every few months at his company’s office there.  He was typically given a bit more notice and explained that the trip could have waited till the end of the week, but he wanted to go now so he could drive back on Wednesday and be home in time for his mother’s arrival.  Meredith appreciated the fact that she would not be left alone with her mother-in-law, who was also nice enough.

Meredith’s class lined up next to another group of first graders as the bell rang.  She greeted the other teacher, Ellen, as they headed down the hall.  This was one of the same women she had caught drooling over the new teacher earlier in the day.

“Hey, Ellen.  How’s your day going so far?”

“Pretty good.  How’s yours?”

“Honestly, I forgot my lunch so it could be better.”

“Yeah?  The food here isn’t that bad though.”

“It’s okay.  But I also found out my husband is going to be out of town on business the next two days.”

“Oh.  Sorry you’ll be lonely.”

“I’ll probably try to do something about that.  Maybe I can get a friend to come over or… Is that him?”  Meredith had noticed Mercy and her class about to pass them.  Bringing up the rear was a man she did not recognize, except by reputation.  And she suddenly understood how that reputation had come about so quickly.  She subtly flashed Mercy a look of approval and received a mouthed, “I know,” in response.

Then Meredith realized her hallmate was eyeing her strangely.  “What were you saying?” Ellen asked.

“What?”  Meredith flushed a little as she realized she had been caught studying the new teacher like the day-after-Thanksgiving sale ads.  “I… oops, we’re here.  Later, Ellen.”  She ushered her students into her room as Ellen continued to hers.

At the end of the day, Mercy appeared in her doorway to make a proper introduction and to pretend she hadn’t already told her friend all about her attractive replacement.

“Meredith, you’re not too busy for a quick visit, are you?”

“Of course not.  Come sit down.  Are you going to make it through the week?”

“I’m a little tired, but it’s not so bad.  As for making it through the week,” she pointed at her basketball-shaped midsection, “that’s up to this guy.”

Meredith nodded, and then looked deliberately past Mercy to the man who had followed her into the classroom.

“Oh, yes.  I brought Gavin in to meet you.  Meredith Donnor, this is Gavin Giano.  He’s taking over my class for the rest of the year.”

“Hey, Meredith.  Donnor?  Like ‘the Donnor party?’”

“Yes, no relation though.”  Meredith was always in a hurry to move beyond her last name to avoid the tired jokes.  “So, Gavin, how was your first day?”

“Not bad.  Seems like a good group of kids so I don’t think I’ll have any problems.”

“Maybe not big problems, but I for one don’t know how you stand the giggling.”  Mercy turned to Meredith.  “I swear every girl in the class has a crush on him already.”

“They’re fourth-graders!  Are fourth-graders old enough to have crushes?”

“Sure.  Didn’t you?”

“To be honest, aside from maybe a couple subs, I didn’t have a male teacher until seventh grade.  And let me assure you that no one had a crush on Mr. Johns.”  They all laughed, probably thinking of different teachers from their respective pasts, before Meredith looked at Gavin more seriously.  “But I hope that isn’t really going to be a problem for you.”

“No, they’ll get used to me pretty soon.  And as soon as I have to give a detention or something, I’ll seem much less cool.”

“Maybe.”  Mercy looked doubtful.

“Has Mercy given you the official tour of the building and clued you in on everything you’ll need to know?”

“Yes.  She even told me about the coffee.”

“Oh, good.  Because she wasn’t kidding.  You will be fired if you use the main pot for decaf.”

“Thanks for the warning.  Both of you.  I really don’t drink coffee so it shouldn’t be an issue.”

“Worried it will stunt your growth or something?”  Meredith teased.  Gavin was about six foot four.

He smiled.  Wow.  Now there was a smile.  Meredith would miss her friend during her maternity leave, but she couldn’t help appreciating how much the scenery would be improving with her replacement.

“We should get back so we can all go home soon.”  Mercy was already halfway to the door.  She was bored with showing off for now.

“Alright.  See you both tomorrow.”  There was some waving and nodding as the two visitors departed.  A short time later, Meredith left the room for the day as well.  She went home to an empty house.  She couldn’t decide whether to be upset that, with Greg gone, step two of her plan would be delayed; or pleased that, with Greg gone, she would have nothing but time to think of a step two, which still did not exist.  She spent about an hour that evening staring at the wall.

╣ Chapter 5 ╠

It rained all day on Tuesday.  This meant that the students did not get to go outside for morning recess.  They stayed in the classroom where Meredith helped them move some desks so they could play musical chairs.  They played to a Wiggles song that kept going and going in Meredith’s head long after the game was over.  It was still raining, horrible cold rain that they all wished could be snow instead, when the time came for afternoon recess.  Again the kids stayed in the classroom and this time pulled some board games off the shelves.  Checkers crashed onto a desk near the front of the room whenever someone connected four, and it could have been really annoying.  Fortunately, Meredith couldn’t hear it over the raucous game of Hungry-Hungry Hippos near the back.

When she got home that evening, Meredith was very thankful she had invited Jenna over for dinner.  It would be nicer to spend time with a friend than an empty house after a difficult day.  She was even more thankful that she had accepted Jenna’s offer to bring pizza.    The women agreed that a pizza should generally be topped with veggies.  Nothing with veggies could be called junk food.  When Jenna arrived with pepperoni and extra cheese, Meredith knew she was not the only one in need of some comfort food.

“I saw him again today.”

“Uh… him?”

“You know.  I told you about this guy at the gym.  Shawn.”

“Oh yeah.”  Meredith could tell already that the meeting had not gone well.  She watched her friend go straight for the pepperoni, picking three off and popping them in her mouth before starting at the point of her slice.  “So what happened with Shawn?”

“Nothing!  I mean, he talked to me for nearly a half hour when he came in and even waved when he left, but he didn’t ask me out.”

“Gee, that’s strange.  Maybe he actually believed you when you told him you don’t date clients.”

“Well, he didn’t have to give up so easily.”

“Here’s a radical idea.  If you’re sure you’re interested, why don’t you just ask him out?”  Meredith had never, in her short dating life, asked a guy out.  Yet somehow the sarcasm worked.

“That’s not the plan.”

“Right, the plan about waiting for someone to try harder.  Maybe he his.  Maybe by talking to you, he’s hoping to change your mind.”

“He doesn’t have to work that hard.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“Look, you said you wanted a guy to work for a ‘yes.’  You don’t really know that’s not what he’s doing so you’ll just have to convince yourself to have some patience.”

“I suppose I’ve already waited years for someone worth my time to come along.  I can probably wait a few days for this guy.”

Meredith raised her eyebrows.  “Days?”

“What?  I can’t be patient and optimistic?”  Jenna grinned broadly and finished her slice.  After the pizza, they made some popcorn and decided to watch a movie.  Meredith had an extensive collection of romantic comedies so this was not an easy choice.  They settled it in the usual way, by each picking one and playing Rock, Paper, Scissors for the right to watch it.

They chatted for a while when the movie was over and Meredith eventually found the nerve, and an opening, to discuss her own romantic problems.  “Remember I told you the other day that I was trying to work on my marriage?”

“Yeah.”  Jenna looked a little hesitant.  She need not have worried as Meredith was unlikely to share anything too uncomfortable.  Her nature remained very private throughout their long friendship, but Jenna still waited for her to open up a little more.  She rather hoped to be let in on the good stuff first though.

“You see…  There’s just this weird tension between us.  I feel like if I could just make some sort of gesture to show I’m trying to fix things, that might get us talking again and sort of… back on track.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I can’t think of anything.  Can you help me thing of something?”

“You remember that I’m not married, right?”

“I know.  But I thought that might actually help.”  When Jenna looked very skeptical, she continued.  “Maybe that it would make you more objective or something.”

“I don’t know about that, but… let me think about this,” Jenna sat and scrunched up her face a bit.  It has been well documented that scrunching your face helps you think.  “Well, could you maybe… like send him some, I don’t know, man-flowers?”

Meredith burst out laughing.  “What are man-flowers?”

“I may have just made that up.”

“No kidding?  How am I supposed to send him something that doesn’t exist?”

“If you’d stop laughing for a minute, I’ll explain what I meant.”  Jenna waited for Meredith to contain herself, with only slightly more patience than she had for Shawn, and then continued.  “Well, you know how it’s common for men to send flowers to women as a nice romantic gesture.  What I mean is, isn’t there like a male equivalent that you could send to Greg as a similar show?”

“I… I’m not sure.  Do guys get things?”

Jenna grinned.  “Not usually.”

“I mean, in the mail.  Do guys get things delivered?”

“Aside from things wrapped in brown paper?”

Meredith sighed.  “Are you helping or not?”

“Sorry.  Well, what does Greg like?  Couldn’t you just get him a little surprise?  Just a little something that he wants to show that you’re still paying attention.”

“Except that Christmas is next week so I already have something under the tree.  I’m not sure it’s much of a surprise to get my husband a Christmas present.”

“True.  The timing doesn’t really work in your favor.”  She was quiet for a moment.  “You know, maybe there really is no such thing as man-flowers.”

Meredith smiled and they sat together with scrunched faces, trying to squeeze out a better idea.  Jenna finally shrugged as though she was giving up.  “So when does Greg’s mom arrive for the holidays?”

“Tomorrow at… um, I think the flight is around 4:30.”

“Oh… Hey!  Maybe you could just be extra nice to her as a kind gesture.”

“Okay, I see you’re out of ideas.”  Meredith teased her friend, but was grateful on the inside because the joke really had given her an idea.  Greg wanted to tell his mother about their baby woes.  No details, just a simple comment to let her know the lack of grandchildren was just as disappointing to him and Meredith.  But Meredith insisted they keep it between them and he had agreed.  She just couldn’t stand to talk about it.  Maybe she should relent in her stance.  Telling Greg it would be okay with her to say something to his mother might show that she was trying to open up a bit about the whole thing.  She would just need to time it so that he told his mom near the end of her visit.  That would really be best for all concerned.

╣ Chapter 6 ╠

A voice mail for Meredith early Wednesday afternoon confirmed that Greg had arrived in town without delay and would have no trouble picking his mother up from the airport as planned.  She was not surprised, therefore, to be swept up in a giant bear hug by her mother-in-law, Judy Donnor, the moment she walked through the door.  What did surprise her was the sound of a dog barking.  She looked around for the source and saw a metal crate in the corner of the room.  Inside was a medium-sized dog with orange and white speckled fur and pointed ears.  It stopped barking and returned Meredith’s gaze with much more than a scrap of hope and with its tongue lolling out one side of its mouth.  It was an adorable animal.  It was also a bit of a puzzle since she was reasonably sure there had not been a dog in her living room when she left for work that morning.  She looked from Greg to his mother.  “As far as I know, no one in this room owns a dog, and yet…” She gestured toward the caged animal.

“It’s Mark’s,” Greg answered, as though this explained everything.  Mark was one of Greg’s co-workers.  Meredith had met him on a few occasions, but did not know him well enough to even know that he had a dog, let alone why he did not appear to have a dog at that particular moment.

Judy added what she knew of the situation.  “I guess Greg volunteered to dogsit while Mark and his family are visiting his in-laws.  This is very nice of course, but I was as surprised as you are since Greg has never liked dogs.  I hope you’re not going to be too put out.”

“No way!  I love dogs.  I tried to talk Greg into getting one for years.  But…” she turned back to her husband.  “How long is the dog going to be here?”

“Till the day after Christmas.”

“Is it a boy or a girl and what’s its name?”

“Girl.  Her name is Katie.”

“How long has she been in the crate and can we let her out?”

“I was waiting for you because I didn’t know what to do with it.  She’s only been in there about two hours.”

Meredith unlatched the crate and the dog ran in crazy circles, sniffing the three of them thoroughly, then flopped down at Meredith’s feet.

“The thing is… Mark said she likes to run away.  We need to make sure we put a leash on her before we open the door to take her out.”

“Okay.”  Meredith had knelt down to pat the dog, who had correctly landed in front of the one most likely to give her some attention.  “She’s so soft and so cute.”

“Just don’t forget that we have to give her back in a week.”

“Now don’t spoil my fun.  Did you get any toys for her?”

Greg showed his wife all the supplies they had been given.  This included several toys and a doggy Santa hat that Mark’s kids had insisted Katie would be sad not to wear on Christmas Day.  Meredith gushed over the cute hat and how cute the kids must have been packing it for their pet.  Then she tried to be polite and focus on the conversations with her mother-in-law, but she remained distracted by the dog until the three of them left to go out for dinner.

Judy generally insisted on treating them to dinner a few times each visit which Meredith interpreted as a slight on her cooking.  She retaliated by making the meals they did eat at home rich and lavish, even though it meant “forgetting” the diet Judy had been on for the past twenty years.

They arrived at the restaurant during the dinner rush and had to wait for a table.  When the hostess called their name, she chuckled.

“Donnor party of three… the Donnor party, huh.  That’s so funny.  I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t make you wait too long.”

“Don’t worry, we’re not that hungry.”  Judy answered with remarkable cordiality.  It did not sound at all as though she had used the same line fifty times in the past, though the number must have been even higher.  Meredith cringed at the joke, mostly because she had made a similar one to Greg upon their first meeting and was embarrassed to be reminded of it.  She quickly forgot the lame joke as they were seated.  There was something much more cringe-worthy as Judy opened with, “So we’re all here and with no distractions now.  This would be an excellent time for an announcement, if either of you were going to make one.”

Meredith decided that there was suddenly nothing more urgent than getting that napkin unfolded and smoothed neatly, very neatly, in her lap.  Greg showed a little more grace under pressure.  “The only thing we have to announce is how pleased we are that you’re here for Christmas.”

“Hmmm… You’re not just making me wait till Christmas to find out, are you?  Did you plan a special grandma-themed present?”  This comment brought an angry flush to Meredith’s face and it was noticed and misdiagnosed by Judy, who thought she had guessed too close to the truth.  She started gushing.  “Oh!  I see you blushing.  I guessed right, didn’t I?  Congratulations you two!  It’s about time.  Oh, I can’t wait to tell Mary and…”  Meredith stopped the flow by abruptly excusing herself from the table.  She went to the restroom, ran cold water on a paper towel and dabbed it on her face.  She closed her eyes for a moment and reminded herself that the woman just wanted the same thing she did.  How could she be mad at Judy for not knowing what she refused to tell her?  Meredith tried to focus on this thought and pushed ideas of politeness, privacy, and the last time her parents had hinted about grandchildren out of her head.  One last deep breath steadied her, until she opened her eyes and jumped at the crowd now in the mirror.  Two other women would hardly constitute a crowd under most circumstances, but she was embarrassed at being so visibly startled and their stares may as well have been a roomful.

A waitress had just arrived at their table when Meredith returned to it and the business of placing orders successfully closed the previous subject.  Meredith did wonder what had been said in her absence, but not enough to remind anyone that she had been gone.  All three were content to pretend there had been no conversational issues and chatted pleasantly about various safe subjects.  Greg commented on traffic tie-ups he had run into on the way to Atlanta and on how smooth the return trip had been by comparison.  Meredith talked about some of the projects her students were working on and how serious the placement of glitter could be to a six-year-old.

When it was Judy’s turn, she regaled them with stories of her volunteer work.  She had become very active in her community shortly after retiring, when she discovered she could no longer fill all her free time with knitting.  She averaged about one blanket a week and when she ran out of family and friends to accept them, she delivered a garbage bag full to a project run by her church and ended up staying for her first shift of many.  She had been meeting a lot of people and had a talent for turning even fairly mundane occurrences into entertaining stories.  It helped that neither Greg nor Meredith had met any of the people featured in her anecdotes.  In person, medical conditions were rarely amusing and affectations in general less pronounced.

They finished the evening on an agreeable note and dropped Judy at her hotel on the way home.  It had been a late dinner so Greg went to bed shortly after they returned while Meredith took Katie outside and then played with her for a bit.  The instructions from Mark said that she slept in her crate at home.  Meredith gave her a little tuck in and even sang a little song.  Yes, she sang a lullaby to a dog and then she went upstairs and listened to heart-breaking and ear-splitting whines until she was sure all the neighbors would be penning angry letters in the morning.  At which point she went back down to sleep on the couch.

╣ Chapter 7 ╠

There is a remarkable phenomenon whereby a piece of information that would otherwise be of no interest becomes the thing one most wants to know only because someone else would have you left in the dark.  Meredith had the pleasure of experiencing this phenomenon Thursday morning as she entered the teachers’ lounge to the sound of one teacher, Ellen, shushing another.  She smiled anyway as she got her coffee and pretended not to notice anything unusual, even adding a nod and a “good morning” in their direction as she left.

She was mostly able to shove it to the back of her mind through the morning, but it became a source of irritation during lunch when the sight of Ellen reminded her of the incident.  Ellen’s attitude did not seem any different though so Meredith began the task of convincing herself that the slight had been imagined.  She had nearly succeeded by the afternoon recess.  The fourth-graders were in music during that time and she and Mercy occasionally took advantage of the overlapping free time to visit each other.  Today it was Gavin in her doorway.

“Hey, Meredith.  Good day?”

“Mostly.  You leaving Mercy with all the work?”

“She insisted on grading the spelling tests herself and I was a little restless so I thought I’d pop in and say hi to you.”

“Hi to you, too.  Are you ready to be on your own after the break?”

“I think so.”  His words were not definite, but he oozed confidence that belied his inexperience.

“I know that… well, Mercy told me that you just finished your Masters at NC State.  Were you teaching while you worked on that or is this your first time?”

“I’ve been subbing on and off, but this will be the first time I’ve been with the same class more than two weeks.  Of course that means I’ll be around for my first conferences this spring.”

Meredith smiled, knowing exactly what he meant.  “Don’t worry, most of the parents around here are perfectly reasonable.”

“See, you just used the scary word.”

“What, ‘parents’?”

“No.  ‘Most.’”  She laughed and he looked around the room, probably thinking he should be heading back to his, and noticed the giant arrow over the trash can.  “Are you having a gum problem?”

“Yes.”  The frustration was evident in her voice.

“Is the sign working?”

“Not anymore.”

“Have you sent a note home?”

“No help.”

“You look like you’ve been dealing with this for a while.”

“All year.”

“Detention?”

“I’m trying to avoid that.”

“Do you have any other ideas?”

“Not really.  If he would just spit it out for me, I wouldn’t worry about it, but he swallows it.  At least twice a week I’ll catch him with gum and when I show him the trash, he’ll swallow it and try to act like he never had any.  It worries me every time because I fear he’ll choke, sometimes he has a big wad of it, but I can’t just let him chew it because the other kids will start doing it, too.”  Her speech came out in a rush and she realized how much she had wanted to share it with Greg.  It was only important because she hadn’t.

“It’s really none of my business so I won’t be offended if you ignore me, but I’d have given him detention a long time ago.”  Meredith looked skeptical.  “He knows the rule and he’s broken it whether he swallows it or spits it out or whatever.  Sounds like he’s had more than enough warnings to me and it might be the only way to get his attention.”

“That’s really what you’d do, huh?”

“Definitely.”

“You are so gonna be labeled the ‘mean teacher’ before the end of the year.”

He laughed and said, “I can live with that,” as he backed out of the classroom.  The voices of returning children were echoing in the hall so they both knew the visit was over.

Meredith hurried through her afterschool tasks to leave as much time as possible for making dinner.  She walked the dog briefly around the backyard and left her prowling the kitchen for stray crumbs while she worked on the feast.  Greg shuttled his mother from the hotel on his way home from work and they arrived as Meredith was setting the table for rosemary and fennel roast pork with stuffed zucchini and a feta walnut salad.  She had even found the time for homemade baklava to top off the meal.

Judy was adequately impressed and indignant after a second helping of dessert.  Greg knew enough not to ask in front of his mother why they didn’t eat that well more often and even offered to clean up while the women rested in the living room.  Meredith absentmindedly threw a ball for the dog while Judy sat rather awkwardly in a nearby chair.  Judy seemed at a loss for words, which was completely out of character for her and Meredith was not sure if she should say something.  The silence was broken by Greg’s voice from the kitchen.

“Meredith.  Where’s the washrag?”

“It’s in the sink.”

“No, it’s not.  Don’t you think I looked there?”

“Well, I’m sure I used it while I was cooking.  Maybe it just got under one of those pans or something.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Just get out another one for now.  It’ll turn up eventually.”

“Alright.”

Sounds of running water and shifting dishes filled the kitchen and Meredith remembered she was uncomfortable as she refocused on her mother-in-law.  “I…” she started.  “Um, do you want to play with her?”

She held up the ball to Judy, who took it as she replied, “Don’t tell me you’re getting tired of having a dog already.”

“No.  Although I have to admit I’d be more enthusiastic if I hadn’t slept on the couch last night.”

“But…”  Judy looked concerned.  “Greg brought her home.”

“Oh, dear, no!  I mean, it’s not Greg.”  This seemed to have come out of no where and Meredith chose to ignore the implication.  “We tried to leave her downstairs last night and she whined so piteously to be left alone.  I thought she might wake the dead.  Or at least some very cranky neighbors.”

“Are you going to put the crate in your room tonight?”

“I guess.”

Greg joined the women once the kitchen was in order and the three of them had a pleasant chat.  The most excitement of the evening came when it was time for Greg to take his mother back to the hotel.  Katie slipped through the open door like water through a cracked fishbowl.  There was a moment where no one knew quite how to react.  Then Judy stood on the porch looking concerned while both Greg and Meredith gave chase in a contest where the prize was either not trampling their neighbors manicured lawns or not explaining to Mark how they lost his dog.  The dog was going wherever she was going at top speed.  When she finally stopped to sniff a tree, Greg managed to loop a finger through her collar.  Then he and Meredith walked the eight blocks back home completely out of breath and taking turns hunched over to hold the escapist’s collar.  Neither had thought to grab the leash before taking off.  In fact, Meredith had not even put on her shoes.  She had felt something sharp pierce her foot and she decided that if she needed a tetanus shot, the dog would not be getting any treats from her the next day.

╣ Chapter 8 ╠

It turned out that Meredith’s foot had been affected more by her overactive imagination than by anything particularly sharp.  There was no blood.  Katie was completely forgiven five minutes after she was back in the house.  She was, after all, still cute.

When Greg returned he helped Meredith move the crate into their bedroom.  There was no whining that night, but Meredith still had trouble falling asleep.  Something wasn’t sitting right with her new plan.  Judy had acted strangely that evening, almost as if she knew there were problems between her son and daughter-in-law.  Meredith was no longer sure that telling her anything would be a positive step.  But what would be?  She couldn’t abandon another step two until she invented something better.  Greg’s mother would be in town several more days, so confiding in her could be relegated to back-up plan status.  There was something else swimming in Meredith’s head though; something with the potential to be either very encouraging or very troubling.  She had noticed that she and Greg seemed better while Judy was around.  In talking to her, they talked to each other.  Had Greg noticed this?  Surely it couldn’t be unique to Judy.  This was the potentially troubling aspect.  Meredith looked forward to testing their interactions with her family starting with her brother’s arrival the next day.  They didn’t need family at night.  There was no tension when Greg was sleeping and he was so warm.  She finally found some sleep listening to him breathing.

Friday morning was deceptively cold.  It was one of those mornings where the sun shines bright and clear and creates a warming glow through the windows. And yet, it was thirty-five degrees.  Meredith didn’t normally wear a hat because her curly bob was excessively prone to static.  She readily made the sacrifice that day and dashed back inside for her hat and gloves.  As the door closed behind her a second time, she heard Greg call, “Have a nice day,” after her.

She spent the entire ride to work neurotically obsessing over this simple phrase.  Did he realize he hadn’t given her so much as a “goodbye” in the morning for quite some time?  Was that why he said it?  Could there be even the slightest chance that he also wanted to prove they didn’t need his mother in the room to have a conversation?  Then again, “Have a nice day” was hardly a conversation.  It could have been a reflex.  The odds of it having been a reflex actually seemed greater than the odds he had suffered over not saying anything the first time she left the house.  How Meredith wished he had suffered over it.  Not really suffered of course, but just agonized a little over it, like she would have.

She resolved to think nothing more of it as she prepared to start the school day but was still somewhat agitated when Jacob walked in loudly smacking his gum.  She snapped and told him to “lose it immediately and the next time she saw gum in his mouth he would have detention faster than he could swallow it.”

“Great,” she thought.  “Now I’m the mean teacher.”

She recovered nicely in the afternoon, giving the kids a little extra free time in anticipation of the vacation.  At the end of the day, Meredith stopped briefly in Mercy’s classroom to congratulate her on the start of her maternity leave.

“You made it!”

“Yes.  I have just a bit of paperwork and then I’m officially a stay-at-home mom… till July anyway.”

“I’m so excited for you.  Now will you tell me the name?”

“Well…  You can probably wait a few more days.”

“But the baby will be here by then.”

Mercy replied only with a slightly self-satisfied smile.  She had announced about a month ago that she and her husband had finally decided on a name for their future son.  If Meredith had responded with a little less interest, she’d have likely known the name for just as long, but Mercy sensed it would be fun to hold the information over her and had enjoyed a month of playful torture at Meredith’s expense.  Meredith knew this, but could not help herself.  The lure of anything baby-related continued its hold on her.  They said their goodbyes, both knowing the next time they saw each other Mercy would be holding a newborn.  This meant different things to each of them and would change the friendship.  How it would change was something neither could know until it happened.

Meredith met her brother and Ellie in baggage claim as planned.  Tom had dark hair like Meredith.  His was very straight and he kept it shaggy so that it wasn’t much shorter than hers.  Ellie immediately extended a hand to Meredith as she approached.  “Meredith Donnor… It’s so nice of you to pick us up.”

“No problem.  Hey, Tom.”

He nodded.  “Sis.”  The sibling relationship had improved as adults, but he was still just a little too cool to be too happy to see his sister.  “I have my bag.  We’re just waiting for Ellie’s.”

Ellie’s bag turned out to be a hot pink hard shell case with a giant sparkly rainbow sticker on both sides.  Meredith couldn’t decide whether this was embarrassingly juvenile or borderline genius, as there was certainly not going to be another like it on the conveyor belt.  She offered to take the suitcase, but was outmaneuvered by Tom’s chivalry.  The automatic doors prevented him from trying to get the door and two bags at the same time.

“I still hate that sculpture,” he said as soon as they were outside.

“The giant sundial?”

“What sundial?  It looks like a crashing airplane.  You shouldn’t have a crashing airplane sculpture in front of an airport.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to look like that.”

“But it does.”

Meredith squinted at the sculpture a moment.  She didn’t see what her brother did.  “I think you must be looking at it wrong.”

“Wrong?  How can you look at something wrong?”

“When you look at an airport sculpture and see a crashing airplane, you’re looking at it wrong.”

“Well, it’s not a sundial.  I’ll tell you that much.”

“A sundial makes more sense.”

“I don’t know what planet you’re living on.  What does a sundial have to do with airplanes?”  Tom gave her a look that said there was no point in arguing it further and Meredith didn’t care enough to pursue it.  They rode to their parents’ house chatting about this and that with Ellie sitting quietly in the back seat.

Tom was embraced like the prodigal son before he even made it up the driveway and assured by his mother that his visit would be the highlight of their Christmas.  Since he moved to Ohio, Meredith had grown accustomed to the short end of the parental affection stick while he was around.  She gave her mother a playful scowl.

“And of course Meredith is the other highlight.”

“Thanks, mom.  Glad I at least rank an afterthought.”

Jeanette Kester ignored the sarcasm and moved toward the third arrival.  “And Ellie…”  She stopped awkwardly as though waiting for a signal on whether a hug would be acceptable.

Ellie reached out a hand.  “Thanks for having me, Mrs. Kester.”

“You’re very welcome.”  She took the offered hand with both of hers.  “But please call me Jeanette.”  This was not the first time Ellie had been given permission to use the first name and might not be the last time, not even on this visit.  It might be a long visit.

╣ Chapter 9 ╠

At a glance, it might appear that Meredith’s mother was not a great housekeeper, for there was “stuff” everywhere.  But the house was clean, very clean.  Jeanette had a scrubbing arsenal in the back closet that collected less dust than anything else in the house.  Dust, however, was about the only thing she did not collect.  A house could never contain too many twist ties or unmatched socks, otherwise known as future dust rags.  And the assortments of bread bags, boxes, various-sized screws and nearly empty bottles of who-knows-what might be considered clutter if everything wasn’t organized so darn neatly.

The house was particularly full this time of year.  While most of her compilations grew out of a desire to not be wasteful, the Christmas decorations were actively pursued.  She had a passion for Victorian Santas in any form.  As Greg arrived with his mother, Jeanette had just finished setting the table with the matching Santa plates and delicately painted Santa goblets.  The seven assembled around the table for a festive meal.  Tom took a seat near the leg he had reattached himself about ten years earlier.  Undetectable under the embroidered tablecloth was a web of nails and string and copious amounts of wood glue, though no one knew for sure which actually held the table together.

As they began dessert, he raised his fork to give one of those fragile goblets a gentle tap.  It was either not as gentle as he intended, or hit the glass in just the wrong place as it cracked and left a puddle of water and Santa-shaped ice seeping into the cloth.  “Oops.  I’m sorry, mom.”

“Stay there.  I’ll clean it up.”

“You Ichabod!”  Meredith hurled the childhood insult towards her brother.  Both had long ago forgotten the source, but Ichabod was a long standing, all purpose insult between the siblings.

“I didn’t mean to break it.”

“Then why were you beating it with your silverware?”

“Beating it?  It was a light tap.  How was I supposed to know it was so fragile?”

“Don’t worry.  I have plenty of these.”  Jeanette was back with a towel and was carefully dabbing the table.  She left again with a handful of pieces.

“What made you want to tap the glass anyway?”

“It never breaks when anyone else does it.”  Tom was a little sullen.

Bill Kester, Tom and Meredith’s father, stood up.  “I think I might know where this is going.  I better get your mom back in here.”  But Jeanette was already in the doorway holding a fresh glass.

“What did I miss?”

“Nothing.  You saw him break it.”

“Were you trying to make an announcement, son?”

“Ooh!”  Jeanette sat down excitedly.  “I’m so glad you waited for me.”

Meredith glanced at Judy, sure a snide remark was forthcoming about the fact that someone had an announcement.  Judy was silent though and seemed to be intentionally avoiding looking in Meredith’s direction.

Tom was a bit frustrated and seemed unsure about saying whatever it was he had to say now that the moment had been through the ringer.  His mother was not going to be put off and gently prodded him with, “So let’s have it.  You better have some news after all this build up.”

“Alright.”  Tom stood up.  It was clear this was not the way he had intended for this to go.  “I’m very happy to tell you all that Ellie has accepted my proposal.  We haven’t set a date yet, but are hoping to get married sometime this summer.”

There was a general outcry of jubilation, with Judy’s squeal hitting the highest note.  Tom shook his father’s hand while Ellie sat quietly, smiling pleasantly at the exclamations.  When things settled down and Tom was seated, she stood up and said, “And I’d like to wear your dress, Mrs. Kester,” before sitting down just as quickly.

“My… Okay… It’s… I think it’s in the attic.”  Jeanette had a questioning note in her reply that had nothing to do with the location of her dress.  Ellie was tall and thin.  While Jeanette had been a little thinner on her wedding day, over thirty years ago, she had not been any taller.  Her empire-waist, tea length gown might look odd on someone with a full six inches on her height.  If the relationship with her future daughter-in-law had progressed at least to a first name basis, she might have suggested this.  Instead, she groped for a safer argument.  “So… um, your mom won’t be upset if you don’t wear her dress?”

“She’s not sentimental at all.”

“Well, I’ll just have to look for it after we’ve cleaned up.”

There was a weird silence at the table, given the exciting news and pre-Christmas spirit they were all in a short time earlier.  Even the men, who had little understanding of sentimentality, wedding fashions or women, sensed that something was amiss.  Meredith wondered how many at the table were secretly hoping moths had gotten into the attic.

Meredith helped her mother clean up the kitchen after dinner while the three guys absorbed a Hurricanes game and Ellie and Judy sat with Ellie’s wedding book between them.  It might have been an odd pairing, but it became immediately obvious that neither woman would rather be doing anything other than fantasizing about the perfect wedding.  They spent the majority of the evening discussing possible hairstyles for Ellie’s curly black tresses.

Because of the hockey game, Meredith hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to her husband.  Not that she would have had anything meaningful to say, even if they hadn’t been surrounded by relatives.  The point was that she really had no reason to feel like a failure for having exchanged no more than a few lines of small talk with Greg that particular evening, but she felt badly all the same.

He left first to return his mother to her hotel and Meredith followed a short time later, determined to make an effort not to ignore him.  She took the dog into the back yard when she arrived and heard Greg’s car in the driveway a minute later.  She was unexpectedly distracted from all thoughts of a forced conversation.

“Greg!” she called.  “Come out here!  You’re not going to believe this.”

He slid open the back door.  “What is it?”

“Come see what just came out of this dog.”

“Ewww.  You’re not seriously calling me out here to look at dog… the dog’s business.”

“Just look.”

He seemed unconvinced that this was a good idea, but came closer anyway.  Then his mouth fell open.  “Is that?  She ate it!?”

“I can’t think of any other way she could have deposited it in our yard.  But I had no idea a dog could eat a whole washrag and even so, I don’t know how I could have missed it.  Though it doesn’t look like she really spent much time chewing it up or…”

Greg suddenly burst out laughing.  “And you tried to blame me for losing it.”

Meredith followed Greg from bewildered to amused and they had a good laugh before taking Katie back inside.  They got ready for bed making half-serious jokes about the things they’d need to keep out of her reach from now on and Meredith felt pretty pleased with the situation as she tried to drift off to sleep.  Until she suddenly realized that the first time in ages she and Greg had enjoyed each other’s company had been sparked by a pile of doggy doo.  This might be worse than help from her mother-in-law.

╣ Chapter 10 ╠

Meredith woke up on Saturday morning feeling as though she had been enjoying a rather nice dream.  She closed her eyes and tried to recall the details, but it evaporated quickly.  Instead, she focused her thoughts on the day.  Greg was having lunch with a friend before catching a new movie.  She was supposed to entertain Judy for a few hours on her own.  It wouldn’t be that bad and they were all to have dinner with her parents again in the evening.

It was around 10 o’clock by the time Meredith came downstairs and Greg was fully dressed and engrossed in his laptop.  She poured herself a bowl of cereal.  “No paper today?”  It was more observation than question.

Greg put the computer aside and jumped up.  “It wasn’t here when I got up.  I’ll go look for it.”  He slipped out the front door.  Greg had always been an early riser.  Meredith used to joke how that would come in handy when they had a baby wanting 6 am feedings.  When he came back with the paper, Katie was ready for him.  She went right between his legs and took off down the street faster than a kid on the last day of school.  The paper hit the floor as Greg turned to go after her.  Meredith ran onto the porch a few seconds later, but Greg called over his shoulder, “I’ll chase her.  You get the leash and catch up to us.”

Meredith ran back inside and slipped on some shoes and a jacket.  Where was the leash?  They’d only had the dog a few days so there was no usual place for it.  She surveyed the house and found it on the floor in a corner.  She bunched it up and ran outside.  Meredith was not much of a runner.  The December air burned her lungs a bit, but the adrenaline kept her going.  Until she came to the spot where they had caught Katie the last time.  This was when Meredith realized she had no idea where she was going.  Neither Greg nor the dog were anywhere in sight.  She stopped for a moment and listened.  There were cars going by on a nearby street and someone somewhere was using some sort of power tool.  She had hoped to hear Greg calling for Katie.  Maybe he had already caught her.  Maybe he was too out of breath to call for her.  Or maybe he simply sensed how fruitless it would be.

Not knowing what else to do, Meredith decided to go back for her car.  She could cover more ground that way and Greg would probably appreciate the ride back, assuming she could find him.  She jogged home, looking up side streets and between houses.  Her bag was on the counter.  It had a usual spot.  She flung it over her shoulder and hurried to the door, then stopped.  She scribbled a quick note to Greg, saying she was in the car and asking him to call her if he got back first.  It was unlikely that he had his phone on him already this morning, but she dialed his number just in case.  A familiar ring started in the closet and reminded her that her husband was also running around without a coat.  She rushed to the car, feeling the whole time as though she was moving in slow motion.

She drove serpentine through the neighborhood until she found Greg, walking awkwardly with his hand on Katie’s collar.  She pulled over and he put the dog in the back seat before opening the door to the front.  But she jumped over the front seat and back through the open door before he could get in.

“Stupid dog!”  He lunged after her and managed to grab hold of her only about ten feet from the car.  This time, he asked Meredith for the leash and got into the back seat with Katie.  Greg didn’t drop his end of the leash until they were safely back in the house.  And with the door locked.

“Where did you catch her?”

“Holmes Street.  Only a block or so from where you picked us up.  I waited for you for a few minutes before I started walking back.”

“Sorry.  I lost sight of you and didn’t know which way to go.  That’s why I came back for the car.”

“It’s cold out there.”  Greg was rubbing his hands together with the laptop still sitting next to him on the couch.

“Yeah.”  Meredith hung up her jacket, feeling badly that she had taken the time to put it on while Greg was waiting out in the cold.  She thought she had handled the situation as best she could, but Greg seemed a little annoyed.  Was he upset with her or just kicking himself for bringing the dog home in the first place?  She sat back down to her now soggy breakfast without the newspaper.  If he was annoyed with her, flaunting that she was the reason he had gone outside in the first place would probably not be the greatest idea.  Still, wouldn’t he be more bothered that he had chased the dog after fetching the paper and now she didn’t even seem concerned with reading it?  And there was always the possibility that she was imagining his mood.

By the time she finished her cereal, Meredith had done a complete job of working herself up.  She was convinced anything she said to Greg would be the wrong thing and kept her jaw tight.  She wondered what he was thinking about the paper.  It was calling to her, but she couldn’t bring herself to pick it up any more than she could bare the thought of Greg getting to it first.  She should have been the one to chase the dog.  She should have insisted on getting the paper herself.  Why did she even ask Greg about it?  She wasn’t suggesting he should get it for her.  It was just a question.  There was hardly ever anything interesting in the paper anyway.  Why didn’t they put anything interesting in the paper?

Her funk was interrupted by her phone.  It was Mercy.

“Guess where I am?”

“Oh my gosh!  Are you at the hospital?”

“I am.  It’s a boy!”

“Congratulations!  I want details.”

“Well, my water broke only about a half hour after I got home last night.  I guess I just made it.”

“Oh my.”

“Yeah.  He wasn’t born until a little after 1 am so his birthday is today.  His name is Jackson Xavier and he weighs 6 pounds and 10 ounces.”

“Jackson?  I like it.”  Meredith felt that this was one of those acceptable lies, and the name would likely grow on her.  Mercy had lots of calls to make and so hung up after a brief account of how tiring it was to have all these people lining up to bring her gifts.  She didn’t mention Meredith visiting the hospital, even though she had been making her promise to do it for a month.  Meredith was too polite to invite herself.

She hung up the phone and took her empty bowl to the sink.  She didn’t really want to talk about babies with Greg and he had probably gotten the gist of it from her end of the conversation.

He had.  “Mercy had the baby, huh?”

“Yeah.  Early this morning.  Or late last night, depending on how you look at it.”

“I better get going if I’m gonna meet Dave on time.”

“Okay.”

He moved toward the closet and stopped.  “Hey, the dog made us forget all about the paper.  Here you go.”  He put it on the table and left Meredith feeling somewhat less confident in her mind-reading skills.

╣ Chapter 11 ╠

Judy Donnor was an accomplished conversationalist.  If the situation warranted it, she could hold up both ends at once with one hand tied behind her back.  Meredith contributed the story of the dog’s second escape during one lull and otherwise passed the afternoon alone with her mother-in-law by smiling, raising eyebrows, and even throwing in one or two winces at just the right times.

When Greg returned, he drove them to his in-laws as planned.  Meredith noticed, as soon as she walked in the door, a big white box sitting on the coffee table.  She recognized this as the box containing her mother’s wedding dress.  It didn’t appear to have been opened, yet no one mentioned it.  Meredith cornered her mother in the kitchen while she was putting the finishing touches on dinner.

“What’s going on with the dress, Mom?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing’?  It’s just sitting there.”

“That doesn’t constitute ‘nothing’ to you?”

“Well, yeah, but… I mean, has Ellie tried it on or anything?”

“No.”

“Have you showed it to her?”

“No.”

Meredith was getting a little frustrated with the lack of information, particularly after having spent the earlier part of the day with a woman who would elaborate on anything.  “She didn’t say anything when you got it out?”

“Look, it didn’t come up again after you left last night.  I was up first this morning so I went to the attic and brought it down.  It’s been sitting right there in the living room all day and no one has said a word before you.  I don’t know if she’s changed her mind and hopes I’ll forgot or what, but I know she’ll hate it and I don’t want her to feel she has to use it and I just don’t know if I should be the one to bring it up so I haven’t.”

Jeanette turned around quickly at the end of her speech as Tom had just come in.  He was alone.  Meredith decided to try this new source for information.  “Why hasn’t Ellie looked at the wedding dress?”

“What wedding dress?”

“Mom’s dress.  She said last night she wanted to wear it.”

“I don’t know.  I assume she’s waiting for Mom to get it out.”

“Get it out!?”  Jeanette fumbled a little with the stack of plates she was carrying.

“It’s sitting on the coffee table!”

Tom poked his head around the corner, then back to his mother and sister.  “In the box?”

Meredith rolled her eyes.  “No, Tom.  It’s an invisible dress sitting on top of the box.”

“Well, how is she supposed to know it’s in the box?  You said it was in the attic.”

“It was in the attic.”

“I brought it down this morning.”

“It’s a big white box with the words ‘Our Big Day’ printed on all sides.  What did you think it was?”

“If it said ‘Your Mother’s Wedding Dress’ all over it, then you could yell at me.  I thought the box was there yesterday, like some sort of decoration.  Good grief, it’s not like there aren’t boxes all over this house.  I’ll get Ellie to try it on if that’s what you want.”

“Not now.  We’re about to have dinner.”

Tom threw his hands up.  “Fine.  After dinner, I’ll get it out of the box and then we’ll all be happy, right?”

“Okay.”  Jeanette exchanged a look with Meredith.  She seemed relieved that Ellie would be trying on the dress, but not exactly happy.  She gave the plates to Meredith to take to the dining room and started handing glasses to Tom.  The Santa goblets were not going to cower in the cabinets because of one overzealous toast.

When they were done eating, Tom came back into the kitchen to put plates into the dishwasher, beginning with the one in his mother’s hand.  “I’ll take care of this.  Ellie’s going to try on the dress now.”

Jeanette dried her hands and motioned Meredith to come to the living room with her.  Judy followed.  Ellie came down wearing the much talked about wedding dress a short time later.  Her features were very young, and at twenty-four she could still pass for a teenager.  She looked awkward, a little like she was merely playing dress-up and not an actual bride-to-be.  The dress was clearly not made for her.  The empire waist was tight under her bust and the sleeves too short.  She kept tugging the dress down and then fidgeting the sleeves back into place.  None of the women seemed to know what to say.  Finally, Ellie said, “Well?” and they all turned to Jeanette.

“Um… there’s a full-length mirror in my room.  Let’s all look in there.”  She led the way to her bedroom and Ellie stood with her back to the other three as they all gazed at her in the mirror.  The reflection did not change her into a glowing bride.  She still tugged uneasily as they watched.  No one wanted to offend the dress’s owner or its wearer.  Jeanette broke the silence.  “You do look very pretty, but… but I’m just not sure it’s quite right for you.  I’m so much shorter, you know.”

Meredith suddenly found the situation incredibly silly.  Ellie was so obviously uncomfortable and the angle in the mirror made her appear a true giant compared to her future mother-in-law.  It was so quiet though; Meredith bit her lip hard to suppress the giggle she felt.  And then she noticed that Ellie was doing the same thing.  A minute later they were all enjoying a good laugh amid the relief that the dress could go back in the attic without hurting anyone’s feelings.

“I better change.  Thanks for letting me try it anyway… Jeanette.”

Jeanette beamed.  “Of course, dear.  And don’t worry, we’ll find you the perfect dress.

As Ellie went to re-box the dress, Meredith found Greg in the living room.

“I heard you all laughing in there.  Is the dress going to work out?”

Meredith just smiled and shook her head.

“Well, it sounded like everyone’s okay with that.”

“Yeah.  I’m sure she’ll find something better.”

“Hey, maybe she should wear yours.”  He smiled jokingly and Meredith felt a slight flutter at the look he gave her.  It was an expression that had always made her knees a little weak and it had been too long since she’d seen it.

╣ Chapter 12 ╠

Jenna belonged to the same church as Meredith.  They had sat together during college.  Jenna returned to sitting with her parents after Meredith married Greg.  It was not that they asked her to move, quite the contrary.  But she held to her belief that church was a family activity, mostly because of her hopes of being joined by her own one day, and was fearful of intruding on someone else’s.

That Sunday, Jenna persuaded her parents to join her directly behind Meredith to more easily meet up with her afterwards.  They pretended not to notice the looks from the pew’s usual occupants. Jenna and Meredith had a lunch date, followed by a plan for some very last minute Christmas shopping.  Christmas was now only two days away and while Meredith was generally done much sooner, Judy’s gift was the last one again this year.  Greg was no help.  And she had a more difficult time than usual bugging him for ideas, given how little they had been speaking.

After the Mass, Greg renewed the acquaintance between his mother and Jenna’s parents.  Judy promptly invited them to lunch and Meredith and Jenna hurried out before they could get roped into joining the rest of the party.

As they waited for their food, Meredith asked Jenna for perhaps the hundredth time if she had any present advice and they had yet another variation of the same conversation.

“I still think a book of knitting designs would work.”

“But she makes all her blankets the same.”

“That’s why it’s a good idea.”

“No it’s not, because she’ll think I don’t like the pattern she uses now.”

“She won’t.”

“Well, alright.  We’ll look at the bookstore first if only because we might be lucky enough to avoid the mall.”

“It’s a plan.”

They sat silently for a moment, Meredith contemplating all the ways her mother-in-law might misinterpret a present and Jenna casting an eye over the church bulletin she had picked up on her way out.  Meredith rarely read the bulletin and Jenna typically only skimmed it for the singles events.  Something different caught her eye this week.  “Speaking of plans…” she started.

Meredith looked up.

“Are you… I mean, did you ever come up with any ‘man flowers?’”

She smiled.  “Actually… well, no ‘man flowers,’ but something you said did give me an idea, but then I changed my mind, or sort of.  I mean, it made me think of something else and I’m kind of keeping that as a back-up while I try to find something I like better.  But… sorry, I’m kind of babbling.  I don’t suppose you brought it up because you were about to suggest a fabulous idea?”

“I was.  At least it seems like a good idea to me.  I don’t know if you’ll like it better than whatever it was you were thinking of or not or maybe this is another back-up, but… here… read this.”  She slid the open bulletin over to Meredith’s side of the table and pointed to the text she had been reading.

Rejuvenate Your Marriage

All married couples are invited to a special New Year’s Eve party, held overnight at a Triangle-area resort.  Start the new year more in love with your spouse than ever after this exciting night of dinner, dancing, and marriage enrichment.  Fun activities build on the lifelong journey of love.  Call Mary at 555-2468 for more information or to register.

Hurry!  Space is limited.

“It sounds like it could be fun and the ‘marriage enrichment’ part could be like very, very short term marriage counseling, which I know you are opposed to, but this would just be one night and would show Greg your willingness I think.  Even if he doesn’t want to go, that title should be a pretty bold hint.”

Meredith read the ad three times before responding, partly because it was difficult to digest while Jenna was talking, then she began nodding.  “You know, I think this does at least approach fabulous.”

Jenna grinned.  “Who would believe I’m still single?”

“I know I don’t.  But as much as I’m liking this idea, I have to admit I’m a little nervous about it.  It just, it sort of feels like asking him out… and it’s not like I’ve, I mean…”  As she struggled for the words, a completely different thought took over.  “Oh yeah!  I didn’t tell you that Mercy had her baby.”

“Really!?  When?”

“Yesterday.  It was a boy of course, and they named him Jackson.”

“That’s exciting.  I hope you’ll congratulate her for me.”

“Of course, as soon as I get to meet the little one.”  But Meredith didn’t know when that might be.  An odd change had come over her since hearing the news.  As much as she had found it irresistible to be around Mercy and hear about her pregnancy, now that the baby had been born, she felt just as strongly the urge to stay away.

╣ Chapter 13 ╠

Meredith and Jenna decided to temporarily forget there was a gift to find.  They entered the bookstore and went directly to the humor section, where they entertained each other with their discoveries.  Jenna pointed out various comics and Meredith read aloud passages from the books she picked up.  Eventually, Meredith’s eyes wandered to a display of calendars for the following year.  Jenna followed her and they flipped through several, gravitating to ones with very attractive and occasionally shirtless men.

“Oh my.  What do you think Judy would think of this guy?”

“Very nice, but not for my mother-in-law.  That’s a little creepy.”

“Get out!  This would make a great gift for anyone.”

Jenna was obviously joking, but the mention of Judy put them back on track.  They moved to what seemed a logical spot to find a gift idea as it was a large display labeled “Gift Ideas.”  There was a section for girlfriends, co-workers, favorite aunts and just about anyone else for whom you could possibly want to buy a present.  Meredith tried to find one for mothers-in-law, but her eye fell on the new parents section first.  A whole row of books with babies on the covers spread out before her.  Each baby was beautiful, smiling… and someone else’s.  Meredith had felt the frustration of not having a child for a long time.  She thought she had been handling it very well and she could not explain why it was at that moment that something broke.  She stood right there in the middle of the bookstore, still and calm, with a rush of tears falling down her face and no way to stop them.

Jenna noticed and went pale.  “Meredith?” she whispered.

Meredith shook her head.  There was nothing to say.  Jenna took her arm and gently steered her into the ladies’ room.  There was a floral couch inside the door.  Meredith had commented on it when they were here once before, wondering aloud why anyone would want to sit on a couch in a public bathroom.  That thought was nowhere in her head as Jenna deposited her on it and sat beside her a minute later with a pile of tissue.  Neither of them said anything for a full ten minutes.    They were a depressing sight and others came and went with their eyes carefully averted.

When Meredith had regained some self-control she said only, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Really, I’m sorry.”

“Really, it’s okay.  I’ll wait till you’re feeling better.”

Meredith continued to dab at her eyes.  Despite the complete lack of privacy, it was actually not a bad place for a private talk, what with the constant sounds of flushing, hand dryers and water running.  And Meredith suddenly felt the need to pour her heart out.  It seemed everything else was coming out anyway.

“I can’t get pregnant.”

“You… I don’t, I mean I… I’m sorry?”

“Thanks.”

“How long… I mean, do you want to talk about it?  Is it okay if I ask?”

“Well, honestly, I don’t know for sure that I can’t.  Greg and I tried for almost two years.”

“But you don’t… Is there like a test or something?  I’m sorry if I’m being an idiot about this.  I… Have you been to a doctor?”

Meredith shook her head.  “I’ve been too scared.  I thought as long as I didn’t know for sure, there was still hope.  I wanted Greg to go to a doctor first, but he refused.”

“He refused?”

“Basically.  I started dropping hints and bugging him and after months of him ignoring me or changing the subject, I found a doctor and made an appointment for him.”  She paused to throw away some of the tissue.

“But he didn’t go?”

“When I gave him the information, he called right in front of me to cancel.  Then he threw the card away and said, ‘Don’t ask me again.’  That was almost three months ago and when things really went downhill between us.”

“Wow.  I had no idea.  I thought you guys were fighting over whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher or something.”

“Yeah, we fought about that.  We were fighting about everything for awhile, but it wasn’t until we just stopped talking that it really started to hurt.  I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you about it before.”

“Oh, Meredith, don’t be sorry about that.  I’ve always known that you’re very private.  I really respect that about you.  But I’m glad that you can talk to me when you really need to.  Is it helping?”

“A little.”

“Good.  So… are you thinking you might be ready to see a doctor now?”

“I don’t know.  It sort of feels like Greg and I have other problems to deal with now first.  I just wish he wasn’t so stubborn about it.”

“Well, no offense, but aren’t you being just as stubborn?”

Meredith gave a guilty nod.  “But he’s a guy.  Women are supposed to have babies.  We’re supposed to be made that way.”

“I think, isn’t it supposed to be kind of manly to get your wife pregnant?  Maybe he could be afraid of finding a problem as much as you are.”

“I really hadn’t… I guess I just thought there were more things that could be wrong with me so his part would be simple, but… This whole thing is just, it’s not something I ever expected.  I don’t know how to deal with it.”  She dabbed away the last bit of tears and took a deep, steadying breath.  “How did you get to have so much insight into men by the way?”

“Well…”  Jenna winked at her friend.  “I do watch a lot of chick flicks.”

Meredith smiled in spite of her swollen eyes.  It really did feel good to let go for a moment, though she still would have preferred a different venue.  Somehow, she felt more hopeful even though nothing had really changed.  At the very least though, she felt ready to get that last present crossed off her shopping list.

╣ Chapter 14 ╠

“Do we have any peroxide?”

“What!?”  Meredith answered a call from Greg while still walking up their driveway.  Jenna had just dropped her off from the shopping trip.

“Hydrogen peroxide.  Do we have any?”

“I think there’s some under the sink.  What are you doing?”

“Under the sink?  This stupid dog!”

Meredith was bewildered by this conversation she seemed to have joined in progress.  “Hang on, I’m right outside.”

“Wait!  Don’t come in!”

His urgency stunned her and she froze on the porch.  A few seconds later, Greg opened the door for her with his other hand firmly on Katie’s collar.  “I am not chasing her again.”

When the door was closed, Greg let go of the dog and they put their phones away.  Meredith followed Greg into the kitchen and saw that he had found some peroxide and was now trying to stick a turkey baster into the bottle.

“What are you doing?” she asked again.

“That stupid dog.  Stupid, stupid dog.  She ate the batteries!”

“Batteries?”

Greg got down a bowl and poured some peroxide into it as he explained.  “I was changing the batteries in the remote and I put the old ones on the couch next to me while I was putting in the new ones and she ate them.”

“The old ones or the new ones?”

“The old ones.  Does it matter?”

“I… I have no idea.  Is that dangerous?”

“Well, it seemed like a bad thing to me so I found a vet in the yellow pages.  They told me to make her drink about a tablespoon of peroxide.  It’s supposed to make her vomit so we can retrieve the batteries.  They suggested a turkey baster to do it so…”  He gestured at his operation.

“Okay.  Should I, like, try to hold her or something?”

“I don’t know.  She might bite you if she doesn’t like it.”

“You think so?”

“What do I know about dogs?  I feed them batteries.  Let’s just see how this goes first.”

Greg sucked just a bit of liquid into the baster and aimed it at Katie’s mouth.  She evidently thought this looked like a fun game of tug-o-war and immediately grabbed it.  Unfortunately, she grabbed it from the side so the end was not in her mouth.  Then she gave a good tug.  The baster separated, leaving Greg with just the bulb, while Katie dashed around the house with her prize.  She crouched into a playful bow, daring them to chase her.

Greg looked at Meredith.  “Maybe we do need to hold her.”

Meredith took a treat from the box on the counter and held it up where the dog could see it.  Katie dropped her new toy and ran to her.

“Okay.”  Greg was planning the next attack.  “I’ll hold her and you try to squirt it in her mouth.”

Meredith nodded and got ready.  But Katie would not stay still or open her mouth.  They tried offering treats, but the dog always managed to close her mouth too fast for Meredith and the floor was starting to get slippery.

“This just isn’t working.”  Meredith put down the baster.

“Do you think there’s any chance we could just put it in her dish?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she eats washrags and batteries… maybe she’d willingly drink peroxide.”

“I guess it couldn’t hurt to try.”  Meredith squirted a bit into the dog’s dish and called her over.  Katie lapped it up eagerly.  “Now I feel pretty silly.”

“Hey, at least you’re not the one who ate batteries.”

Meredith laughed.  She was only slightly concerned for the dog and already had the feeling this was going to make a good story, one that she and Greg could tell together.  It was not exactly a romantic story, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it would still be something they would share.  She loved making new memories, but her reverie was short.  It was rudely interrupted by a horrible gagging sound.  She turned quickly away.  “I’m not watching; just tell me when you see batteries.”

“Um… yeah, there they are.  Wait, no!  No, no, NO!  I don’t believe this!”

“What?”  Meredith spun around to see Katie licking the floor.

“She just ate them again.”

“Ewww… again?  That’s so gross.”

“What do we do now?”

Meredith shook her head.  She didn’t need to answer because it was obvious that Katie was about to give up the batteries a second time.  Greg quickly put the leash on her and pulled her away as the mess hit the floor.  Meredith grabbed the leash.  “Good idea.  But this time I’ll hold her and you deal with that.”  She pointed at the centerpiece of the less than delightful new memory.

╣ Chapter 15 ╠

The story of the dog and the batteries went over well with Meredith’s family that night, even if it wasn’t terribly appropriate dinner conversation.  She arrived home in good spirits and pulled the page from the church bulletin out of her bag, the one Jenna had given her over lunch.  She couldn’t wait much longer to broach the subject with Greg and still have any hope of getting a reservation.  But it felt funny to be holding the suggestion as he walked in, like she was waiting to pounce or something.  There was no need to be overly aggressive.

An idea struck and Meredith raced up the stairs.  She put the page on the bed next to where she had taken off her church clothes, planning to “notice” it when they were getting ready for bed.  She could mention it very casually.  The sound of the garage door seeped through the floor, it could probably use some WD-40, and told her that Greg was home.  Her stomach fluttered as though she was about to approach a cute boy at a party and she made it back to the living room just in time to meet him at the door.  Immediately, she recognized the church bulletin in his left hand.

“Hi.” He smiled at her.

“Hey.”

“That was a pretty good dinner, huh?”

“Yeah.”  Why were they both so stiff?

“I can’t believe Ellie actually asked about your dress.”

“Uh-huh.  I’m starting to think she really doesn’t care and just wants to find a free dress.”

“Well, if I remember right, wedding dresses aren’t cheap.”

“True.”  The bulletin was folded open.  Had he gotten to the page with that ad?

“Would it be weird if she wore yours?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Hmm… hang on a sec.”  He unzipped his coat.  They had both been standing in the middle of the room and he now moved to the closet to put the coat away.  He held the bulletin in his teeth as he took it off.  Meredith watched closely, wondering why he wouldn’t put that bulletin down.  He fiddled with it for a moment, then brought it to the couch and sat down.  “Can I talk to you about something?”

He seemed to want Meredith to join him, but she didn’t like where this was going.  She hadn’t read the rest of the bulletin.  What were the chances he was going to bring up something else?  Or anything not related to the paper in his hands?

Her heart sank as he put the familiar page into her lap.  He pointed quickly and then began his speech.  “I was hoping you’d like to go to this with me.  We don’t have any plans for New Year’s and it might be fun to do something for a change.  Now I know how you feel about marriage counseling and it does say marriage enrichment, but it’s not like therapy or anything.  It’s just an excuse to do some things together.  And we could use those dance lessons you made me take for our wedding.  I mean, if I can remember anything.”

Meredith sat quietly.  This wasn’t right.  It was the second time today someone had tried to convince her of the merits of this idea.  But the point was for it to be her idea.

“So what do you think?”

“Umm…”  What did she think?  She hadn’t considered what it would be like to actually go to this event.  Its promise had been in what it might mean for her to suggest it.  And he had just taken that away from her.  She wanted to stall to collect her thoughts.  “It, uh, it says space is limited.  Do we know if we could go?”

“I already called, just to get some information, and the woman told me there was just one room left so I went ahead and booked it for us.  We can still cancel so that doesn’t mean we have to go, but I thought it was best to take it, in case I could convince you.”

Meredith felt cornered.  She also felt suddenly useless.  Making plans had always been a strength for her.  Did she not make a plan for her classroom each day?  And in that setting, she had no trouble adapting when things didn’t work out.  When Aiden put a bead up his nose, she hadn’t panicked for a moment.  Where was that kind of resiliency now?  What did she think?  While she was disappointed in not being able to suggest this, it did seem that agreeing to go could be a smaller, though still positive, step.  And it wasn’t as though she could say no just so she could ask him later.  But it was taking her an awfully long time to answer.  It was going to seem like he was dragging her along.  How helpful would that be?  Hoping to salvage the situation, she finally blurted, “I’m just surprised because I was thinking of suggesting this myself.”

“Oh?”  He looked… What was that look?  “So you’re okay if we go?”

“Well, you already signed us up and everything.”  That sounded snottier than she intended.

“I said we could cancel.”

“No, it’s fine.”  Fine!?  Fine was the answer of someone looking for a fight.  She didn’t mean that kind of fine.  “I mean good.  It’ll be good.”

“I’m not trying to make you do this.”  It sounded like an argument, but his expression was more concerned than annoyed.  Meredith looked into his amazing eyes and felt herself in danger of forgetting every fight they had ever had.  She wanted to tell him how much she loved him and how she wanted more than anything to get through this rough patch.  She wanted to say a lot of things and couldn’t figure out why any of it was so difficult.  She sat silently and helplessly as he stood up.  He spoke softly as he left the room.  “The number is right there if you want to cancel.  I’ll just leave it up to you.”

Greg went upstairs and Meredith heard the shower running a few moments later.  He didn’t usually shower before bed.  Meredith took Katie outside and stood shivering in the backyard until her fingers were numb and she could think of nothing but the cold.  The relief was welcome.

╣ Chapter 16 ╠

Monday morning felt peculiarly like a Monday morning.  Meredith was on vacation and it was Christmas Eve.  There should not have been any reason to dread getting out of bed.  In fact, the pitiful whining coming from the nearby crate should have made staying in bed pretty unattractive.  But Meredith hadn’t slept well and she was having a little trouble rousing herself.  She noticed the shower running in the next room.  Greg had been still showering when she went to bed.  She couldn’t believe he needed another already.

Wait a minute!  She sat up quickly in bed.  Greg had been getting the dog up with him.  Why was she still in her crate?  Was it… it couldn’t be possible that the shower had been on all night.  It would have kept her up.  It was true she hadn’t slept well, but there had to be a more rational explanation.  Dark thoughts began creeping into her head and she tried to push them away.  A feeling that something was wrong here took hold of her and she could not shake it.  She sat frozen in place trying to listen for movement from the bathroom.  She couldn’t hear anything over the pathetic creature in the corner.  Katie had gotten more excited when Meredith sat up and she was now pawing the bottom of her crate.

While Meredith was not immune to the effects of Psycho, this was the first time her spine had tingled while listening to the shower from the outside.  Her eyes focused on the light coming from under the door as she pushed back the covers and moved slowly toward it.  Her hand closed on the knob.  Katie was jumping up and down frantically in her crate, apparently oblivious to the bashing it gave her head.  Then the eerie moment was shattered by the unmistakable sound of metal rings sliding on the shower rod as the water stopped.

Meredith groaned at her overactive imagination before she walked over to release the dog, and swear her to secrecy.  Katie was a willing confidant and her ears were so soft.  Meredith felt some release as well and began to relax.

“Oh, you’re up.”  Greg had opened the bathroom door wrapped in a towel, a not at all unwelcome sight.  She was feeling better and better.  “Sorry about the whining,” he added.  “After that battery incident, I wasn’t sure it’d be safe to let her roam the house while I was in the shower.”

“That’s alright.”  It was alright.  It was perfectly rational.  Why hadn’t she thought of that?  And now that she was fully awake, she remembered that Greg had come to bed before she fell asleep.  “I should be up anyway.  Has she been out?”

“Yeah.  We got the paper, then I put her back in the crate.”

“Okay.  I better get started on breakfast.”  Katie bounded down the steps ahead of Meredith, then back up to see what was taking so long, then back down again.  She circled eagerly while Meredith prepared a coffee cake.  It went into the oven about the same time Greg stepped out the door.  He would be back with his mom one last time this visit.  They were going to exchange gifts after breakfast and then Judy would leave for the airport by noon.  She planned to spend Christmas Day with Greg’s sister.

Meredith chopped some vegetables and cracked quite a few eggs.  The omelets would start cooking once everyone was there so they’d be fresh.  Then she went back upstairs to get dressed.  Her red sweater was appropriate for the holiday.  It was also a shade that looked fabulous on her.  She noticed this as she checked herself in the mirror, and it occurred to her how she had been taking a little less care with her appearance lately.  She paused to put in her diamond stud earrings, a gift from Greg two Christmases ago.

A car door shut in the garage as she made it back to the kitchen and she was struck with an impulse.  She dashed to the calendar on the wall and wrote “marriage thingy” on the 31st.  That would show Greg that she was not backing out.

As the door opened, she heard Greg yell, “NO!” and knew immediately that the dog had escaped again.  She grabbed the leash and bag of treats off the counter and when she couldn’t find any footwear of her own, put her feet into Greg’s slippers before beginning her sprint down the street.

The dog had stopped to sniff a tree just as Meredith caught sight of her.  Greg was gaining on her.  When she started running again, Meredith called her name and waved the package of treats wildly.  Katie recognized what Meredith was offering and changed direction in mid-stride.  She received her undeserved reward only after the leash was secure and when Greg caught up, the three of them walked back together.

“She totally did an Indiana Jones under the garage door.”

“Really?”

“Well, it started going back up right away and everything, but it certainly gave her a head start.  Like she needs one.”

Meredith shook her head.  “Stupid dog.”

“Yeah.  I might be giving Mark an earful when he gets her back.”

“He did warn you that she likes to run away.”

“But he didn’t tell me how good at it she is.  Or that she eats things.”

“It has been interesting.”

Breakfast was interesting as well.  Meredith was distracted.  She tried not to be.  She tried to focus on the conversation, but her mind was formulating a new plan.  Greg had noticed her addition to the calendar while he was setting the table.  He added “check-in 3pm” and smiled at her.  They were going to make the most of the event no matter who suggested it.  And if Meredith could just get a minute alone with Greg, she was going to add her other part of the plan by letting him know it would be okay for him to hint at the baby trouble on the way to the airport.  Judy was very helpful though, even when Meredith tried to insist she have a seat in the living room while they took care of the cleanup.

Meredith found herself amused rather than frustrated by her mother-in-law’s constant presence.  She wasn’t sure it even mattered that she couldn’t find the time to talk to Greg privately.  They had not talked about the source of their trouble for months and the fact that she was not afraid to broach the subject was encouraging.  It seemed there was nothing like not finding something traumatic in your bathroom to improve one’s perspective.  She sat down to open presents feeling downright festive.  When Judy opened the knitting book and skeins of yarn, she said she had been thinking of trying a new pattern and Meredith took this declaration at face value.

Judy’s present to Meredith was wrapped in red and green plaid paper with a pile of curly ribbon on top.  It felt like a book.  Meredith carefully peeled off the bow and placed it next to her.  Then she noticed Katie looking at it and moved it to a higher surface.  The pretty paper came away to reveal a book called “Fertility, Cycles & Nutrition.”  The hints never stopped.  Meredith sighed, internally, and said, “Thank you.”

“You don’t have that one already?”

“No.”

Greg peered over her shoulder at the title and seemed slightly panicked when he read it.  Why was this hint worse than the others?  Meredith inspected the book a little more closely and began to realize what was happening.  She knew.  Judy knew they were having problems.  The book was intended to be helpful, not just plant an idea.  And Greg looked worried because he thought Meredith would be upset he had spilled the beans before she was ready.  Meredith almost laughed out loud at yet another plan being derailed.  She hadn’t even liked this idea; it was just the backup.  She was starting to wonder if there were other hints she was supposed to be picking up on.  Hints that it was time for her to stop trying to orchestrate some grand plan and work on the simple things.  But nothing really seemed simple and the New Year’s plan was still in the works so she was not ready to give up yet.

“I look forward to reading this.”  She carefully included Greg in what she hoped was an approving look and then asked him to open his present.  Just because she was not upset this issue was out in the open didn’t mean she wanted to dwell on it.  Her “cycles” were not open for discussion.

╣ Chapter 17 ╠

Meredith and her mother-in-law parted cordially when they said goodbye at the airport.  There was a relief in the knowledge that the grandchild hints would likely stop that almost made Meredith wish she had been honest much sooner.  But there was a new tone in Judy’s voice that Meredith couldn’t quite define except by how much it bothered her.  It tempered the wish.

The rest of the day felt a little odd.  Greg and Meredith were very polite to each other.  They smiled occasionally and made necessary comments like “Are you done with that?” or “I’ll get it” and otherwise said very little.  It was almost as though, by writing on the calendar, they had made a subconscious agreement to make a fresh start at the couples event... but not one moment sooner.  In fact, they spent a good part of the day doing little but waiting, patiently and pleasantly, to start talking to one another.

They attended midnight Mass together, which was significantly later than Greg was normally willing to stay awake.  He was a morning person in no uncertain terms who had been making this exception every year since getting married.  He was still up by 6 o’clock the following morning.  Meredith put her pillow over her head while he showered to muffle Katie’s protests and slept one more hour after Greg took the dog downstairs.  When Meredith came down, he was sitting at the table with a newspaper and a cup of coffee and Katie was thrashing about on the floor with something red and shiny on the back of her neck.

Meredith didn’t say anything.  Her look of confusion was enough to prompt a response from Greg.  “I heard the water running so I knew you were up.  I thought you’d think it was cute for her to greet you with a Christmas bow.”  After a pause he added, “But I think she might be trying to eat it.”

“Well, it is cute, but I suppose we should rescue her.”  Meredith took the bow off and put it out of reach, then poured herself a bowl of cereal.  “Oh, yeah.  Merry Christmas.”

“And Merry Christmas to you, too.”  He disappeared for a moment and came back with two presents, which he set in front of her on the table.  He had not gotten the presents from under the tree.  Every year he insisted on hiding his gifts to Meredith until Christmas morning.  The stated reason for this was so Meredith could not try to guess the contents.  She suspected it was also to conceal when the gifts were purchased.

Meredith went upstairs to get her presents from under the tree.  It was in an all too empty room upstairs that happened to have a window facing the street.  The gifts were practical and yet appropriately intimate.  Greg received a new electric razor.  He would no longer need to tap his on the counter to get it started in the morning.  He also opened a new hat and gloves, ones that would cover all ten fingers.  Meredith got some craft kits to use with her students and a beautiful nativity scene.  She had accidentally chipped a wise man setting hers up earlier in the season.  After the gifts, Meredith got to work in the kitchen and Greg pretended he wasn’t having fun playing with Katie.

They arrived at Mr. and Mrs. Kester’s house in time for lunch with six dozen cookies, a laundry basket full of presents for the family and a large white box containing Meredith’s wedding dress.  The house smelled delicious as Jeanette had made her famous cinnamon bread.  Meredith picked a choice spot in the living room for another round of gift giving after the meal.  Everyone agreed that because she had done so well on the scrumptious food that Jeanette should have the honor of opening the first present.  She picked up one from Tom.  Meredith knew it would be something to add to the Santa collection.  She was not clairvoyant.  Tom had bought his mother something with Santa every year since he was ten, usually something kitchen related.  This time it was a butter dish with Santa’s head and shoulders poking out the top for a handle.  Jeanette held it up to show off and opened it so everyone could admire the full Santa on the inside.

As she was about to put it aside, Greg snorted rather loudly and she realized he had been trying to suppress a laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I… I just have to know.  Am I the only one who thinks that’s just a little bit creepy?”

“Creepy?”

“It’s a butter dish.”

“I know, but… I’m sorry, Tom… but to me it looks a little… with that shape, like Santa’s popping out of a coffin.”

“What!?”  Jeanette held it up again to inspect it.

Tom started laughing, too.  “Oh, no!  I see it now.  The way he’s lying down inside makes it look like he’s sitting up when you close it.”

Jeanette took the lid on and off a few times and found that she and Ellie were now the only ones able to keep a straight face.  Perhaps Ellie had been the one to select this Santa.

Meredith was caught up in the laughter now as well.  “It is a little creepy how it looks like he’s sitting up in it.”

“Yeah,” Tom agreed.  “It’s like a vampire Santa or something.”

Jeanette just sighed and said, “Oh, stop it.  It’ll look fine once I get a stick of butter on him.”

Something about the way she said “him” instead of “it” only reinforced the image in everyone’s mind of Santa lying in a coffin.  Only now he was lying under a stick of butter.  They laughed harder until Greg, who had started all this, felt he should be the one to move things along.  Particularly if he intended to stay on good terms with his mother-in-law.  He opened up a pair of slippers.  They were successfully unfunny.

But Jeanette had her new dish washed up in time for dinner that evening.  It sat proudly in the very center of the table and was responsible for many stifled smiles during the blessing.  As napkins went into laps, Tom said, very politely, “Mom, will you please pass the vampire Santa.”

She was not actually in a position to reach the butter.  He knew this.  The line was intended to make her crack and it worked.  She let out a quick laugh and smiled at Meredith.  “Honey, please give your brother the vampire Santa.”

╣ Chapter 18 ╠

“I actually miss her.”

“Really?  I mean, she was cute, but you made her sound like a bit of a menace.”

“Yeah, well, the house seems so empty now.”  Meredith was having lunch with Jenna.  The house felt empty for a lot of reasons.  The school was closed so she was still on vacation, but she felt like the only one.  Greg had returned to work on Wednesday, Thursday and now Friday.  And Katie had gone back to work with him Wednesday morning to be returned to Mark.  Tom had returned to Ohio on Wednesday as well so she was no longer spending the evenings at her parents’ house.  And then there was still that strange happy anxiety between her and Greg.  “And it’s quiet, too.”

“Quiet?  You miss the early morning whine sessions?”

“Like I’d miss a toothache.”  Meredith smiled wryly and then paused.  “But things are just sort of quiet in general.  It’s weird.”

“You mean between you and Greg?”

“I don’t know.  I think things might be a tiny bit better, but not… I mean, we’re still barely talking, but instead of tense, angry silence, it’s just this weird, happy silence.”

“Happy is good.  I’m not so sure about silence.”

“I mostly feel good that there’s some progress, except when I’m sitting around with a goofy grin on my face, and can’t think of a single thing to say.  My biggest fear is that we’re both expecting an awful lot from an event that might turn out to be very lame.”

“Well, I’ll be thinking about you when I’m sitting home alone watching the sixty-twelfth annual whatever Rockin’ Eve.”

“Sixty-twelfth?”

“I know.”  Jenna shook her head at herself.  “I was trying to think of a big number and my mouth was faster than my brain.”

“I thought you had plans anyway.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you.  Tammy ditched me for James.”

“Already?”

“Apparently.  He admitted he was wrong about something and so now he’s allowed to take her out for New Year’s.”

“Well, I’m sorry she flaked on you.”

“I’ll get over it.  And it’s not like I’m surprised.”  Tammy was one of Jenna’s co-workers.  She had been dating James for nearly four years, on and off.  They would break up every few months and spend about two weeks discussing when they were going to start talking to each other again.  Tammy also taught jazzercise and her class paid the price on the days she stopped speaking to James.  “I’m more bummed that I’m not doing something with Shawn than I am that I’m not doing anything.”

“Still no luck there, huh?”

“No, and I may have to give up on him.  He completing blew me off yesterday.”

“Really?”  Meredith put down her fork, already indignant for her friend’s sake, but waiting for the full story.

“Well, I had decided that it was time for me to go ahead and ask him out.  We’ve been getting along great and I don’t know what he’s waiting for.”  She ignored the look from Meredith.  “Yesterday I had the perfect chance.  He happened to be coming out of the showers right as I was about to step out for a bite to eat.  I pretended it was just a casual idea for him to join me, like it had just popped into my head since we were both heading out.  And d’you know what he said?  He said he’d love to, but he had some meeting he had to get to.”

“How do you know he didn’t really have an appointment?”

“Because when I came back a half hour later, I saw him leaving!  He had obviously stayed to chat with someone else there, even though he didn’t have time for me.”

“Did he say anything when you saw him leaving?”

“No.”

“He just ignored you?  Maybe he is a jerk.”

Now Jenna looked a little sheepish.  “Well, he didn’t exactly see me.  I kind of hid in my car when I saw him.”

Meredith laughed, understanding the refuge of a car.  “If you really like him otherwise, I wouldn’t write him off until you see what he says when he actually has a chance to say something.”

“Do you really think there could be a good explanation?”

“Sure.”  Meredith paused for a moment, knowing Jenna was waiting for an example of one.  “Maybe, um, maybe he got a phone call right after you left canceling the meeting.  And maybe he stayed at the club because he knew you were coming back.”

“That could work.  I certainly like it better than my idea that he was talking to Miss Freaky Eyes at the desk.”

“Who?”

“Oh, yeah.  We got this new girl up front and she wears colored contacts and changes the color like every day.  It’s a little freaky.”

“Freaky eyes?  Aren’t you the one who went around for a month with one green eye and one brown?”

“Hey!  That was like, twelve years ago and it’s not my fault I lost one.”

“Whose fault was it?”

“Okay, so maybe it was my fault, but I couldn’t throw away a perfectly good colored contact just because it no longer had a match.  I had to dish a lot of ice cream to pay for those.”

╣ Chapter 19 ╠

Meredith loved the man sitting across from her.  She loved the way he tipped his head when he smiled at her.  She loved the way his eyes laughed at her without ever being unkind.  And she even loved that odd way he would flip the napkin over as he placed it in his lap.  What she did not love, was this absurd silence.  She put down her fork, mid-bite, after Greg offered the seventeenth goofy grin of the meal.

“Greg?”

“Mm-hmm?”

“Are we going to keep doing this all weekend?”

Greg raised one eyebrow slightly, not a natural talent, but something he had spent time practicing in front of a mirror in college.  “Doing what?”

“This!”

He looked around.  “Dinner?”

“Are you kidding me!?  Do you really not know what I’m talking about?”

Greg looked as though he feared a trap.  It seemed he really was at a loss and searching for an acceptable answer.  Meredith waffled between rescuing him, because that would be more conducive to rescuing the relationship, and yelling at him, because that would be more satisfying at the particular moment.  She resolved to remain calm and forcefully stabbed another bite of omelet while she waited for Greg to speak.

He attempted a disarming smile.  “I know our anniversary was in October so this isn’t about that.”

Meredith softened a little at the joke.  Greg had never forgotten an important date, so was free to make light of the cliché in a rough spot.  Meredith still harbored a healthy level of exasperation though, and it forced her to bring the conversation back to her original question.  “I mean, how much longer are we going to live like a bad sitcom?”

Greg let out a quick laugh.  “Oh, yeah, that clears it up for me.”

“You know, all this weird grinning at each other.”

“What’s so weird about being nice to each other?”

Meredith couldn’t believe that Greg didn’t get it.  She shoved a huge bite into her mouth to keep from saying anything until she’d had a minute to reflect.  She was momentarily distracted by the delicious flavor.  Although clueless in some areas, she did have to admit that the man made a mean omelet.  All the same, she began sharpening her daggers, just in case her eyes should need them.

Greg shook his head.  “Alright.  I’m probably shooting myself in the foot here, but I’m going to ask anyway.  I thought we just didn’t have anything much to say, but have you been giving me the silent treatment on purpose?”

“No.”

“So you’re not upset about anything?”

“I wasn’t.”

“So now you’re upset because you haven’t been upset?”

“No.  I’m not upset.”

“You seem upset.”

“I’m just a little bothered that you haven’t noticed anything wrong.”

“But you said there wasn’t anything wrong.  I don’t understand why you’re angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“You said you were ‘bothered.’”

“I just meant…”   Meredith took a deep breath.  Both of them were beginning to raise their voices and this discussion about whether or not they were having an argument was about to become the most ridiculous argument they’d ever had.  This was not what she intended.  “I just meant that it seems like we should be talking.”

“We are talking.”  Greg had also made a measured attempt to calm down, but he seemed no less baffled.

“Not now.”

“You want to talk later?”

“No, I mean we haven’t been talking.  We should talk more in general.”

“Okay…”  Greg put down his fork and directed his full attention to his wife.  “What do you want to talk about?”

“Oh, I…”  Meredith sighed heavily.  There was really only one thing they needed to talk about.  Only one thing that was constantly on her mind.  But she knew how that conversation would go, and more importantly, how it would end.  They hadn’t discussed their desire for a child or their seeming inability to create one since the last stalemate and she couldn’t really think how anything had changed since then.  She just smiled rather weakly and said, “Nothing.”

Greg resumed his dinner and did not display any more of those goofy grins.  Meredith did not revel in the victory.

╣ Chapter 20 ╠

Greg spent all of Saturday working in the yard.  Yes, it was December and yes, it was cold.  But other than the occasional pass with a lawn mower, Greg rarely worked in the yard and so was able to find things to do.  The previous owners had planted some ivy next to the house where it had grown over an archway between the front and back yards.  They took the archway with them when they moved, but not the ivy.  Not sure what else to do with it, Greg had simply been mowing over it the last few summers, but it grew faster than the grass and annoyed him.  Now he took a shovel and tried to dig up all the roots.  First, he piled the ground to the side, but he worried that it might just take root somewhere else.  So he drove to the hardware store for some yard waste bags.  He shoveled all the dirt he thought might contain roots into the bag, leaving a wide, shallow hole in the ground.

Next, he took a steak knife from the kitchen and used it to edge the dry, yellow grass along the driveway.  He rinsed it when he was finished and put it in the dishwasher, hoping Meredith would not notice the now bent blade.

He borrowed a ladder from a neighbor and carefully removed every last leaf and bit of debris from the eaves; or at least, from the eaves on the first level.  And since he had the ladder, thought he might as well clean the windows it helped him reach.

There was a row of small trees along the property line.  They flowered in the spring and were much smaller, more like bushes, when Greg and Meredith had bought the house.  As Greg eyed them now, he decided he actually liked them better as bushes.  Cutting them back would be his next project.  There was a problem though.  He had no idea how to trim trees.  In fact, the only thing he knew for sure about the process was that nothing in the kitchen would be able to handle the task.  So he got back in his car and drove to the library.

It seemed reasonable to start by identifying the type of tree he’d be working with, or rather on.  He located the gardening section and pulled down a couple of tree encyclopedias and another book on bushes, just in case they actually were bushes.  He took his small stack to a nearby table and opened the top book.  He immediately judged it unhelpful.  It had sparse, and mostly very small, pictures.  The book on bushes was quickly pushed aside as well.  On closer inspection, Greg discovered that it was devoted to “exotic” shrubbery.  Since nearly half the yards in his neighborhood sported the same bush, or tree or whatever it was, it seemed unlikely he would find it in these pages.

Large, full color pictures awaited him in the third book and he became more hopeful.  Unfortunately, this book was a bit too accommodating.  He was able to find four trees that all looked like his.  Unsure how to narrow it down, he simply picked one at random and started skimming the information.  There was a section on the history of the tree and a whole list of scientific words, possibly Latin, but no mention of how to prune one.  He began to wonder if it might have been more useful to start with a book on general pruning rather than hunting for the specific tree.  He was too restless to restart the search.  He placed all three books on the little cart, making sure they felt his full level of disgust, and then went out the automated doors to his car.

In the hardware store for a second time, he concluded that all he really needed to do was find something sharp, but not too sharp.  The only limbs he wanted removed were on the trees.  He settled on a basic hand saw and took it to the self checkout.  Small talk with a cashier seemed a little risky.  It would be seriously emasculating to find he had chosen the worst possible tool for the job.

Greg started with the tree closest to the street to work away from any staring neighbors.  He quickly hacked off the branches that were easiest to reach before he realized that he wasn’t making the tree any shorter, which was his goal.  He stepped back to inspect the tree, then continued with a better plan.

He ended up trimming all the trees in the same way, debating with himself the entire time on whether or not this was a good idea.  If he had done them differently, that may have made it more likely some would survive.  But he didn’t even know if a tree could die from a botched haircut so he decided to keep them looking fairly uniform.  Perhaps if they all died, he could just blame it on the fact that he never watered them.

Meredith had been peeking out the window regularly to keep tabs on Greg throughout the day.  She wondered what he was going to bury when he went digging in the side yard, and later why the hole was an improvement.  She had forgotten the ivy almost the day they moved in.  She didn’t have to mow it, after all.  She took the knife back out of the dishwasher, wrapped it in a paper towel and tossed it into the trash.  It wasn’t a matching set anyway.  She prayed he didn’t fall off the ladder and tried not to be too embarrassed when he used an old undershirt as a rag for the windows.  Surely none of the neighbors had eyesight that good.  And when he trimmed the trees, she realized how much better she had liked them as bushes, too.

On Sunday, Greg was sore.  He got dressed for church in slow motion and when they returned home, he just loosened his tie and lay back on the couch, unable to bear the thought of getting more comfortable.  Meredith, however, did change her clothes.  She put on her old college sweats and a slightly stretched out tank top.  Greg was not the only productive member of the family.  She began with some light housework, her typical weekend routine of dusting, vacuuming and a once over of both bathrooms.  Then she got more serious.

She decided that as long as Greg had washed the outsides of the windows, she ought to take a crack at getting the insides clean.  She pulled a bottle of Windex out from under the sink and tucked a roll of paper towels under her arm.  As she fought back the curtains on the first window, it seemed like a better idea to simply take them down.  And because she couldn’t remember how long it had been since she washed them, that also seemed like a good idea.  She went around her house collecting curtains for a load of laundry.  All of her curtains were machine washable.  They were also all varying shades of yellow so they could be washed in the same load.  Jenna had chastised her friend for decorating based on care instructions.  She felt that the choice of window dressings really set the personality of the entire house and that it was one choice that could absolutely be made solely on looks.  She also didn’t especially care for yellow.

With the washer humming, Meredith went back to the bare windows and began scrubbing in earnest.  The new roll of paper towels was down by half by the time she had finished.

Next she put the curtains in the dryer and stripped the bed to refill the washer.  This gave her the idea to flip the mattress.  She wasn’t really sure why someone would flip a mattress, but recalled her mother doing it occasionally so felt it must be important, though hopefully not so important that it mattered that she’d never done it before.  The mattress was queen-sized with a pillow top.  The size was what caught Meredith’s focus at the thought of moving it.  This was probably going to require a plan, or perhaps a couple of burly guys.  As the only available guy, who was only mildly burly anyway, was not currently in a state to lift his own arms, she was going to have to make do with a good plan.  A quick survey of the room indicated nothing breakable on Greg’s side.  She could probably shove the mattress that way and stand it on its side against the wall and then… figure something out.

“Ugh,” Meredith grunted as she gave the mattress a good, hard push.  Then she looked down and saw the two inches of box springs sticking out.  It seemed the mattress was heavier than she realized.  She bent down to put her shoulder into it and pushed with her legs.  A little more progress.  She heaved and shoved until the far side slipped to the floor and her side tipped upwards.  Then she climbed up between the mattress and box springs and squatted with her back against the pillow bottom, slowly standing to push the mattress upright.  She nearly lost her balance when it reached the tipping point.  This resulted in what would have been a rather embarrassing dance if anyone had been helping.  As it was, Meredith was simply grateful not to have fallen.

She studied the mattress now propped against the wall and began to sense a miscalculation.  In order to turn it over, the side against the wall would need to end up against the box springs.  There was not enough room to turn it around and even if there was, she was reasonably certain the mattress would fall on her during the process.  She furrowed her brow and put her hands on her hips.  She was going to do something with this mattress.  Eventually, she tipped it back onto the bed, but turned it so that the head became the foot.  Something told her this was not what people meant by flipping a mattress.  Why would it have a pillow top on the bottom if that wasn’t also a top?  But the mattress was not in the same position that it started in and that satisfied her sense of accomplishment enough to seek out another chore.

She dusted mostly invisible cobwebs from the upper corners of every room in the house and then got down on her hands and knees to clean the baseboards.  The bookshelves begged her attention as well.  She carefully removed and dusted each and every book and the shelves they sat upon.  Greg had ordered pizza for dinner and the scent joined her in the den right about the time she began to feel she had been productive enough for one day.  Unfortunately, she was surrounded by stacks and stacks of books that were not going to sprout wings and fly back onto the now very clean shelves.  She grumbled to herself, only slightly more loudly than her stomach, and worked quickly to put things back in order.  Then she put away more pizza than was typical for her and didn’t feel even a bit guilty about the extra calories.

╣ Chapter 21 ╠

Meredith was a little sore the day after her cleaning spree.  She felt it as she packed a New Year’s Eve bag for her and Greg, who was feeling only marginally better.  Still, they were able to head to the hotel with the belief that they might have one of the most well-maintained houses around.  The feeling gave little comfort though as there was also the sensation that the real work was about to begin.

Meredith had successfully packed a light suitcase for the event.  Even so, Greg heaved it from the trunk as though she had packed for a week.  He put the wheels on the ground and followed his wife, who was walking slower than usual, into the lobby.  It had a very high, white ceiling supported with square columns over that typical hotel combination of business and living room.  There was judicious use of weedy looking plants and a black lantern on the desk that seemed to add a touch of backyard as well.  A red-striped couch with end tables sat near a TV on one side and a large sturdy looking desk stood ready to serve.  The woman behind it, however, appeared to be suffering from an extreme case of boredom.  The entrance of customers was not a diversion.

“Can I help you?”  It was not so much a question as a yawn with words.

“Greg and Meredith Donnor.  We’re here for… um, it’s a marriage thing.  I don’t know if it has a name.”

“You mean the ‘Tightening the Knot’ seminar.  What was the last name again?”

“Donnor.”

“Donnor.  I’ll look that up.  I hope you haven’t eaten anyone lately.”  She gave no smile or any other acknowledgment of her own joke so neither Greg nor Meredith felt the need to acknowledge it either.  They simply stood patiently while she absently tapped on her keyboard and then rummaged under the counter.  Without looking up she asked, “Do you want to keep this on the credit card you used for the reservation?”

“Yes, please.”

More tapping.  Meredith picked up one leg and then the other to stretch her sore muscles.  She hadn’t realized how much squatting was involved in cleaning baseboards.  Eventually, a purple folder was shoved to their side of the counter.

“This is your welcome folder for the seminar.  And these are your room keys.  You’re in 212.  Take the elevator and make a left.”

“Okay, thanks.”  Greg took the keys and Meredith took the folder, even though it didn’t make her feel all that welcome.  It had a label stuck to the front that said only “couple #14.”  They made their way to the elevator and then to the second floor hallway.  The sign that greeted them showed 212 to the right and there was no dilemma as to which information to trust.

The first thing that struck Meredith about the room was the lack of flowers.  It seemed to her that most hotel rooms she’d been in had some sort of flower pattern on the bedspread and/or drapes and perhaps framed pictures of flowers on the walls.  This room had a plain spread on the bed and simple striped coverings on the windows.  It had a fresh, clean look and she liked that illusion.

Meredith opened the suitcase to immediately hang her dress in the closet to avoid wrinkles.  She had packed an elegant blue dress she bought for a cousin’s wedding the previous year.  Still mildly plagued by the feeling that she had spent too much on it, she was glad to have an occasion suitable for a second use.  Greg had only one suit.  It was black and he had worn it to every appropriate affair for the last eight years.  She hung this next to her dress.

Then she opened up that purple folder to investigate.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” she warned Greg, who was checking out the flat screen TV.  “This has an itinerary for couple #14 that starts at four.”

“Do you think we need to remember our number?”

“I just assumed we’d bring the folder with us.”

“Okay.  So what are we doing at four?”

“It’s a session called ‘Weaving your personalities together.’  It’s supposed to give us…” she looked down and read from the paper, “a hands-on exercise in making one cloth of our separate beings.”

“One cloth of our beings?”  Greg looked skeptical, almost as though he’d rather be doing yard work again.

“That’s what it says.  We’ll be making cloth from 4 to 5 and then from 5 to 6 we’ll be ‘Molding Emotions.’  6:30 to 8 is dinner, a ‘grand buffet,’ and then 8 to 9 is something called ‘Finding the Fun in Fundamentals.’”

“I thought this was supposed to be a dance.”

Meredith kept reading their prepared agenda.  “We have nothing scheduled between 9 and 10, presumably to get ready for the ‘Fairy Tale Ball,’ which is from 10 to 1.  Oh, I don’t believe that.”

“What?”

“There’s a breakfast set for 6:30 after an event that goes until 1.  They forgot to schedule sleep.”

“It might be optional.”

“Sleep!?”

“No, the breakfast.”

╣ Chapter 22 ╠

The carpeting in the hotel hallway seemed to be on a mission to make up for the lack of flowers in the room.  Greg and Meredith followed this floral path to the meeting rooms.  Their first activity was in room E, which they were not at all surprised to find after room D.  They entered the room and immediately felt out of place.  While every other couple was also holding a purple folder, none of them appeared to occupy the same generation as Greg and Meredith.  Had they missed an age requirement for this seminar?

Meredith attempted to disappear into the wall behind her while she took in the scene.  Greg, meanwhile, accepted the outstretched hand of the man nearest him and Meredith was forced to nod politely when they looked in her direction so it would not appear that Greg was introducing a wall.  The two men were only able to exchange a few words before another couple entered the room carrying boxes.  These appeared to be the instructors and all eyes turned in their direction.

The female instructor was tall and thin and had likely been teased about having bug-eyes at some point in her life.  She placed her box on the end of a table and began pulling out bunches of pink yarn.  The tables were arranged in a large U with chairs along the outside.  She put a bunch of yarn in front of every other chair.  The man she was with was short and stocky and wore a suit that might have been trendy when he was a teenager forty or fifty years earlier.  He first pulled a clipboard out of his box and then began adding blue yarn to the places that did not have pink.  When they finished laying out the yarn, the woman invited the students to have a seat.

“Please sit next to your spouse.  All women should have pink yarn and the men should have blue.”

Following what sounded like simple instructions quickly deteriorated into more trouble than spreading out a picnic blanket on a windy day.  There were six couples ready to participate.  Five couples sat down so that the remaining chairs were separated by two couples.  These two couples moved over a seat to close the gap and brought their yarn with them to keep the right color.  Then the standing woman claimed the extra pink yarn to take to the end with her husband at the same time the sitting couples decided it might be easier to have the men and women switch sides and pass the yarn back.  This resulted in general confusion, which distressed the instructors in a way that caused them to be helpful in ways that were not helpful.

Meredith was not involved in the chaos, but gripped her own pink yarn as though it was something quite valuable while she watched.  When things settled down, the instructors took their places in front.

“Okay, men, look at me.”  The male instructor held his arms out in front of himself, bent at the elbows.  He looked as though he was about to break into a robot dance and Meredith mentally dubbed him Mr. Roboto for the rest of the session.  “Put your arms up like this and face your wives.”

“Now wives,” the woman took over the directions, “you take the blue yarn from in front of your husbands…” There was an awkward pause at the end of this instruction as though she was formulating a better set up plan for her next group.  “What you’ll want to do is loop the strings, one at a time, over your husbands’ arms.  You’ll want to leave an inch or so between each one.  Wait!”  Some of the women had started already and this was apparently wrong.  “We’re going to do this slowly.  For each piece of yarn, I want you to tell your husband something about him that you appreciate.  When you’re done, you’ll weave the pink strings in vertically and have your husband do the same for you.  I mean, do the same with the appreciation.  He’ll tell you one thing he appreciates about you for each pink string.  Any questions?  Good.  Now you can start.”

Meredith watched for a moment as the female instructor hurried to get all of the blue loops over her husband and began working in the pink.  There were no forced compliments between them.  She then turned to Greg, who had pushed his sleeves up and was ready for her.  The yarn was fuzzy as Meredith fiddled with a blue piece between her fingers.

“Are you stalling because you can’t think of anything nice to say?”  Greg had a mischievous grin.  He clearly thought this was just as silly as she did, but was going to make her do it anyway.

“I didn’t realize this was a race.”  She answered calmly and put the first piece of string all the way down to his elbows.  “I appreciate your patience.”  She winked and picked up a second piece.  “I also appreciate how good you are at getting your sleeves out of the way.”

“I think that might be cheating.”

“Cheating?”

“That’s not a real thing.”  Greg was being playful, but was also wincing slightly at having to hold his sore arms up at this angle.  Meredith took pity and moved things along a bit faster.  For the other eight strings she gave serious, though not too mushy, praise.  She really was grateful that he regularly cooked dinners for her and that he never gave her a hard time about spending time with Jenna.  She loved his sense of humor and also his sense of responsibility.  When it came down to it, she ran out of yarn before she ran out of compliments.  But the yarn kept slipping down his arms.  She was having trouble getting it organized to weave in the pink strings.  The pieces were not exactly the same length and she reordered them again and again to make them stay in position.

“Here.  Lay your arms down on the table.”  She grabbed his hands to turn him slightly and placed his arms down.  This kept the blue strings in place, but made adding the pink a difficult reach.  Meredith stood up behind him and slid one arm under Greg’s to start the first string.

“I appreciate that you let me put my arms down.”

“Now who’s cheating?”

“I also appreciate how determined you are.  I’d have chucked those blue strings a while ago.”

Meredith laughed.  “No you wouldn’t’ve.”  She picked up another string and began to work it through.  It did not escape her notice that she had to lean against his back a little to reach.  It seemed to her that it had been a long time since they had been this close.  And she loved that he still felt familiar.

“I appreciate that you’re better at weaving than I am.  I hope you’re going to be able to do what she’s doing now.”  He nodded in the direction of the instructors.  The woman was looping the ends to hold everything together.

“Yeah.  It’s just like a potholder.”

“Huh?”

“You know, those bags of sock pieces you wove together as a kid to make potholders.”

“I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know you’re a guy, but surely you’ve seen it done.  Didn’t Mary make any potholders?”

“Let me get this straight.  I’ve never seen anyone make potholders out of socks and you think that’s weird?”

“Yes.  But you better be careful because I’m on the next string so you’re supposed to be saying something nice.”

“Okay.  You look very cute when you think I’m the one who’s weird.”

“Thank you.”  Meredith smiled and continued working.  She was leaning in a little more than she had to now and they were almost check to check.  Meredith blushed slightly, partly from the closeness and partly because half the room was now copying their technique.  She wasn’t getting too comfortable in front of an audience.  Greg seemed aware of her nearness though and got a little more serious with his next few compliments.  Until the final string when he got a lot more serious.

“I love knowing you’ll be an excellent mother.”

She gulped a little at the forbidden topic and looped together their new creation in silence.  It really didn’t look anything like a potholder.

╣ Chapter 23 ╠

Meredith had enjoyed that first activity, though she was embarrassed to admit it even to herself.  And this didn’t mean she was any more optimistic about “Molding Emotions” than when she had first read the title.  Still, she walked into meeting room C hoping to at least find some participants that were not as old as her parents.  Instead, she found her parents.

“Mom?  Dad?  Uh… hi.”

“Hello, Meredith.  Greg.”

“What are you kids doing here with all us old fogies?”

A few answers popped into Meredith’s head, but she only smiled while Greg said something much more diplomatic than anything she had come up with.  She probably should have appreciated his people skills in the previous session.  The four of them made small talk while Meredith appraised the room.  It was arranged like the other meeting room except there was no yarn on the tables.  There was a large box of Play-Doh, blue and pink of course.  A woman near the front was wearing a heavy apron that may have been more suited to shielding her from x-rays than something normally used by preschoolers.  Meredith surmised that this was the female half of a lead couple, but no man was similarly armored so the other half was still conjecture.  The woman clapped her hands excitedly.

“People… people!  It’s already 5:04.  We must get started.  Take your seats, please.”

Seats were taken and heads turned to face the front.  Meredith had grabbed a chair on the end because it was nearest to her.  Her mother was on Greg’s other side.  One man remained standing and had moved to the front.  The lead woman gave him an impatient gesture and he began passing out the cans of Play-Doh.  He hobbled.  There was no other way to describe it.  He had a limp, and though pain did not register on his face, he held the cans in one hand and hunched over to grip the table edges as he passed.  There was a mound of what must have been five or six cans of dough mixed together on the front desk.  The woman waved her hands over this mound as though considering how best to approach it and Meredith wondered if she might be trying to animate it.

The woman became very lively herself as she pushed and mangled and forced her mass into a sloping mass.  She grabbed a hunk from the top and vigorously worked it into a ball between her hands.  Then she added this ball near the bottom of the slope and stepped back.

“This,” she said with gusto, “is anticipation.”

There was a pause, during which she appeared to be allowing this revelation to sink in.  Meredith and the other students stared back in wordless awe.

“More specifically, it represents my anticipation of the beautiful sculptures you are about to create.  You will have the opportunity to display your own emotions in this form.  You may now open your materials.”

“Materials?” Greg murmured.  Meredith rolled her eyes in agreement and then turned her attention back to the front.

“Now, what I want you to do is pick a time, with your spouse, that you both felt particularly strong emotions.  This can be a happy event or an argument, or any situation you experienced together… just as long as you both remember your feelings at the time.  Then… mold that emotion and show it to your spouse.  You may do as many as time permits.  This is an excellent activity to connect with each other.  Don’t worry if it is very powerful your first time.  There is a box of tissues here if anyone needs one.”

The man had taken his place in one of the two chairs up front, where he sat looking rather bored as the woman sank down next to him, clearly drained by the expression.

Meredith turned to Greg.

“Is that all the help we’re going to get?” he asked.

“Was that helpful to you?”

“Well, I mean, I get that we’re supposed to try to make an emotion with this stuff, but how do you do that?”

Meredith shook her head doubtfully.  “I’d probably say the point is just to get us talking about our shared experiences, except that she was really getting into it.  I think if we don’t look like we’re trying it’s going to hurt her feelings.”

“You mean she might be molding melancholy after we leave?”  He was biting his lip to keep from laughing.

Meredith smiled back; her mother had overheard and poked Greg gently.  “You two be nice.”  The commandment was more from a sense of what was polite than a sense of her appreciating the experience.  She would probably be joking with them about it next week.

Greg tried to look more serious.  He may have actually been a little more so given the reminder that his mother-in-law was close enough to hear a conversation about his emotions.  Meredith decided to go first.  She took the still cylindrical dough and twisted it in the middle.  “This is…um, I’m not sure what emotion that would be, but this is what I felt like when that dog coughed up the batteries… and all that other yucky stuff.”

“Hey!  You’re actually pretty good at this.”  Greg looked genuinely impressed.  He looked at his “materials.”  After a few moments of thought, he began shaking his head.  “I just really don’t get this.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s no wrong way to do it.  Would you like to try molding grossed out, too?”

He laughed.  “Um, no, I don’t think I can.  I mean, not without copying you.  That’s clearly grossed out so if I do anything else it will just look wrong.”

“Well, what emotion do you want to do?”

Jeanette poked back into the conversation.  “I started with love.  I’m sure you can remember strong emotions from your wedding day.  Try that.”

This suggestion made Greg squirm a bit.  What would Jeanette say if marrying her daughter was not enough of a muse?  Then again, he was a guy; he wasn’t wired to mold mushy emotions out of squishy dough.  He reluctantly began rolling the dough into a ball and then flattening it out a bit, which Meredith recognized as the way most of her students worked with it.  And was theirs not a labor of love?  Greg was working slowly though, still waiting for an idea to come to him.  Then his hands worked faster and he formed the dough into a heart.

“How about this?” He looked up at Meredith feeling reasonably satisfied with his efforts.  The female instructor had given up her seat to survey the work of her class.  She arrived in front of Greg before Meredith had a chance to answer.

She looked disappointed.  “Emotions are abstract by nature, and unique to the individual.  A heart is an object, the same to everyone.  You need to feel the sculpture, not form it.”  She walked away with the look of someone who had been wounded.

Meredith was shocked at the lecture and raised her eyebrows at Greg, who only shrugged.  “I guess there is a wrong way.”

╣ Chapter 24 ╠

Greg and Meredith arrived in the hotel dining room at 6:25 to discover they were one of the last couples to arrive.  There seemed to be about fifty people in the room and Meredith guessed most of the other participants had figured out there was no point to going back to their rooms to stand around for twenty minutes without actually going back to their rooms for those twenty minutes.

Hotel staff members were setting out a buffet and Meredith recognized the instructors from the weaving class running like sheepdogs to herd the men and women into separate groups.  They had taped pink and blue streamers to the floor to mark out the pens.  Meredith gave Greg a look of surrender as they moved apart to join their respective genders.  She had just about given up on finding her mom in the group when she spotted her parents entering the room.  Jeanette quickly smoothed down her hair as she entered and Meredith had to squash from her mind the horrifying idea that her parents might not have been standing around since the last session.

Mother and daughter found each other and stood together trying to decide what was on the menu.  Meredith was about to comment on how good the cheesecake looked when the room was filled with the ear-splitting squeal of sound equipment used poorly.  When the pain subsided, the crowd looked up to see an apologetic-looking man standing before a microphone.  He had black hair dotted with gray and the woman next to him had red hair, very red hair.  They wore overly large, matching T-shirts sporting the words “I’m not complete without” and arrows pointing at each other.

The man leaned timidly into the mic before he began.  “I’d like to first take a minute to welcome everyone here.  I hope you’re all having fun and that those knots are tighter already.”  He received many polite smiles for his words.  Then he led the group in a heartfelt prayer of thanks for the food they were to receive and for God’s work in bringing all the couples together.  He said he was proud to have the opportunity to witness so many couples gathered to further the will of God in their holy unions.  Meredith was stunned by the depth and eloquence of his speech and felt a slight pang for having judged him so harshly on his wardrobe.

He moved to the side so that his wife could have a turn at the mic.  She also looked as though it might bite her.

“Hi.”  She pulled some note cards from her pocket and began reading.  “So is anyone hungry?”  A few hands went up on the men’s side, but she didn’t look up for a response.  “I’m sure you’d all like to get to this splendid meal, but we have a little activity for you first.”  She forced a smile.  “I need all the women to organize in order of wedding date.  The most recently married should be first in line behind Sue.  Raise your hand, Sue, so they know where to go.

Apparently, Sue was the tall woman of pink yarn fame.  Meredith had a feeling she would be near the front of the line so she left her mom’s side to find her way to Sue.  The women were able to assemble themselves fairly quickly.  When the line was formed, Meredith was second only to a 70-year-old newlywed.

Sue gave a thumbs-up sign and the redhead flipped to her next card.  “Now is where the fun begins.  Each of you ladies will grab a blue plate.  You’ll be dishing food for your husbands to prove how well you know what he likes.  Then find your couple number on these tables and wait for him to bring you your dinner.”  She stepped quickly back from the mic, and Sue stepped aside to let the women through the line.

Meredith picked up a blue plate.  Greg was not a picky eater.  He liked pretty much anything except coconut, which he felt was a little too much like eating plastic.  Meredith had never asked when he had eaten plastic.  She went through the line and dished a little of this and that, leaving room for dessert.  As she was about to slide a slice of pumpkin pie onto the plate, she saw that the woman in front of her was hurriedly eating a slice of the cheesecake right out of the pan!  It didn’t look as though anyone else had noticed the offense.  She skipped the cheesecake for Greg and hoped he wouldn’t ask why.

Once Meredith sat down, it seemed that the line was moving rather slowly.  Perhaps some of the women were taking this very seriously.  When they were through, the organizers had the men organize into a similar line, except in reverse for “more fun.”  This put Greg near the end.  What Meredith had chosen for him was becoming less and less important because she knew what he liked most of all was food that was still very hot.  The steam from his plate was dissipating with any hopes of delivering on that preference.  She considered taking this plate for herself, but worried what sort of fun punishment might be in store for breaking the rules.

Several people had already finished and had begun to mingle by the time Greg sat down with Meredith’s dinner.  They sat at a round table with three other couples.  Two of the couples obviously knew each other well and were engaged in heavy conversation that never let up.  The other couple had placed their hearing aids on the table as they sat down.  Greg and Meredith mostly ate in silence as well.

As they were about to leave though, Greg noticed that she had not touched her dessert.  “I know you love cheesecake so I got you a big slice.  Don’t you even have room for a few bites?”

It did look tasty and it was irrational to think a fresh pan hadn’t been brought out since her time at the buffet, but she couldn’t bring herself to risk it.  “I’ll tell you later,” she said.

╣ Chapter 25 ╠

Meredith expected to find the shirt buddies from dinner leading her and Greg’s last activity before the dance.  Instead, they were introduced to another couple, Martha and Stan, who seemed less than thrilled to be leading the group.

“Okay, everyone,” Martha started, “we’re going to spend some time talking about putting the fun back in the fundamentals of a good marriage.”  She put air quotes around the word fun and also included a slight eye roll, which was probably not in the script.  “The first fundamental is communication.  Of course, we all know good communication is essential to the success of any relationship and we’re going to do a little game to remind ourselves.”  Meredith got the distinct impression that Martha had to hold back from adding more quotes to the word game.  “Each couple should take one box, but don’t open it yet, and they’re all the same so it doesn’t matter if you take a pink one or a blue one.”

There was a table in the center of the room with piles of pink and blue boxes.  All the chairs were lined up along the walls.  A few had been taken, but most of the couples had been milling around the table waiting for instructions.  Greg happened to be closer to the table and now picked up a blue box, then looked at Meredith as though asking if he had made a good choice.  She nodded, sure it wouldn’t matter.  The cutesy pastel theme was starting to get on her nerves, mostly because all the pink and blue reminded her of a baby shower.

When it appeared no one else intended to pick up a box, Martha continued her explanation.  “Now everyone grab a chair and spread out.  You’ll want to be facing your spouse, but leave some space between each couple.”  Meredith and Greg staked out a good corner while the other couples took their places as well.  “Ready?  Good.  Now if you have a blue box, the husband should be holding it, and if you have a pink box, it goes to the wife.  Each box has the same four objects inside, one for each of the fundamentals, and the person holding the box needs to get his or her spouse to guess these objects by describing them.  I’ll put on some music to drown out the clues.”  She sat down, pushed a button on a CD player to fill the room with muzak, and buried her face in a magazine.

“Is the music supposed to make it harder?”  Greg wanted to know.

“I don’t think so.”

“What did she mean by ‘drown out the clues?’”

“That didn’t make sense to me at first, but I think she meant drown out the other clues.”  Meredith gestured around the room.  “You know, so I can’t guess off what anyone other than you says.”

“Alright, I guess we should get started then.”  Greg opened his box slowly, tilting it towards himself and giving Meredith an exaggerated hairy eyeball, as though she might be trying to sneak a peek.  He studied the contents for a moment, then nodded.  “We’re gonna start with an easy one.  It’s like a string of beads with a cross on the end.”

“A rosary?”

“One down, um, three to go.  The next is a little… thing with, um, bits in it?”  He paused for a moment, but Meredith made no attempt to guess.  “Oh, grains, it has little grains of…”

“Sand?”

Greg nodded encouragingly.

“Oh!  An egg timer?”

Greg looked thoughtful for a second, then shrugged and held up the item.  “Is this what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I was calling it a sand timer, which is why I thought I couldn’t say sand.”

“I see, so now we’re halfway there.”  Meredith glanced around the room a bit.  This almost felt like a game and it made her feel slightly competitive.

“The next one is something you write on.”

“Paper?”

“Yes.  And now we have a problem.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Well, I was saving this one for last because I’m not sure I know what to call it.”

“Just try to describe it.  Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“It’s black.”  He looked up expectantly.

Meredith let out a snort.  “Keep going.”

“Okay, it’s kind of long and made out of some sort of fabric.”

“Is it a scarf?”

“It’s thinner than a scarf.”

“Not a winter scarf, but like, you know, an accessory?”  Meredith did not own any scarves and didn’t think she had ever seen Judy wear one.  She wouldn’t be surprised if that limited the scope of Greg’s knowledge of women’s wear.

“I don’t think so.  I think this is narrower and, um, not as… or more dense.”

“More dense than a scarf?  I don’t know what that means.”

“Just, you can’t see through it.”

“Oh.  Hmm… a belt?”

“There’s no buckle.”

“I mean a belt that you tie, like a sash.”

“Oh, that could be.”  He looked around shiftily.  “Let’s just go with that.”

“So we’re done.”  Meredith noticed that at least one other couple was sitting back, looking rather bored, so there was no reason to feel smug, not that she would have.  She glanced up towards the leaders.  Martha was still using the magazine to ignore everything else in the room and Stan had his head back against the wall and his mouth open.  Meredith couldn’t see his eyes, but assumed they were closed.

She turned back to Greg, who was absently looking through the box.  “So what fundamentals do you suppose these things represent?”

Meredith grimaced.  “Please don’t say it like that.”

“Sorry, I was trying to mock it, but you’re right, it’s not even funny when I say it.  But what do you think they represent?”

“I don’t know.  Is there one for communication or is that just the box?”

“I was thinking maybe the paper is communication since you could write a note on it.”

“That makes sense.”  Meredith tipped the box her way to remember which items she had guessed.  “And I suppose the rosary is a reminder to keep God or faith in the marriage.”

Greg held up the belt, then quickly put it back in the box and looked over his shoulder.  Other couples might still be trying to guess.  “What about the belt thingy?”

“I don’t know.  Is it… no, that’s stupid.”

“What were you going to say?”

“I was just thinking since the seminar is called “Tightening the Knot,” maybe the belt is something you can tie in a knot.  But I’m not sure that’s a fundamental.”

Greg smiled.  “It’s hard to stop saying it that way, isn’t it.”

“It’s not funny.  I didn’t mean to say it, I’ve been brainwashed or something.”

“Okay, so we’ll just wait to hear what the leaders have to say about the belt.  What do you suppose this timer is all about?”

“I don’t know that one either.  It just makes me think of death.”

“Death!?  How do you get that?”

“I’ve just been mildly afraid of hourglasses ever since I saw The Wizard of Oz.  You know, when the witch gives Dorothy the one with the red sand.”

“Oh, well, I could see it’d be scary if it had red sand.”  There was sarcasm in his voice, but he wasn’t being cruel.  They gave up looking for meaning in the seemingly random objects and chatted about what the dance might be like and whether or not Meredith had remembered to pack Greg’s black socks to go with his suit.  When there were only a few minutes left in the session, Martha gave Stan an elbow to the ribs and he stood up to explain the objects.  Greg and Meredith had been right about the paper and the rosary.  The timer was meant to represent patience and the last item turned out to be a blindfold.  It was in the spirit of trust, as was the next activity.

╣ Chapter 26 ╠

Since Meredith had guessed the blindfold, as far as the leaders knew or cared, she was also in charge of wearing the blindfold.  Greg’s job was to lead her back to their room with his voice only.  He was not supposed to just take her hand.  He decided to have a little fun with this task and had Meredith walking up and down random hallways until she realized he wasn’t heading for their room.  The second trip in the elevator tipped her off.

When they did make it back to the room, Meredith locked herself in the bathroom for some primping.  She tried something a little different with her hair by pinning up just one side.  It looked good.  She slipped into her blue dress and put on a necklace.  It caught the light as she fastened it and Meredith started to feel pretty good about her appearance.  A knock at the door made her jump.  Greg wanted to shave and she should have just let him in, but she took another look in the mirror and touched up her lipstick first.  Her stomach flipped when she opened the door as though she was about to go on a date.  She had almost forgotten what that felt like.  It was a giddy sort of nervousness that she was overjoyed to be feeling towards her husband.  It also worried her just a bit as she was afraid she was about to mess it up.

When she did open the door for Greg, he looked as though he was about to be annoyed and then changed his mind at the sight of her.  “Okay, this was worth the wait.  But I need to hurry now so we’re not late.”

Meredith smiled at the compliment, feeling for once as though she deserved it, and then paced by the door while Greg finished.  He had been only half dressed and still needed only five minutes to be ready.

They walked hand in hand to the dance and it should have made Meredith more optimistic.  It didn’t.  Although this was not the artificial happiness of those days at home, it felt just as fleeting.  While the togetherness of this event was facilitating a rekindling of sorts, nothing had really changed or been resolved.  It seemed an unlikely possibility that they would find time for a meaningful discussion in a room full of mostly strangers, and her parents, so she worked hard to shake off the uneasiness and prepared to enjoy this event, if in fact this portion turned out to be enjoyable.  She would worry about showing her inner Scarlet O’Hara tomorrow as well.

It was a few minutes past ten when they arrived and the music was already playing.  Greg opened the door to reveal silver and gold fringe hung from the doorframe.  It gave Meredith a brief prom flashback.  The inside was even more juvenile.  Someone had taken the fairy tale ball theme literally.  The walls were littered with cartoon posters and storybook pictures.  Everything from Rupunzal to Rumpleskiltskin was represented and a giant Big Bad Wolf cutout was guarding the appetizers.

Aside from the décor, the event actually looked promising.  The food smelled wonderful, the music was loud enough for dancing, but not so loud you couldn’t talk over it, and a few couples were already busting a move on the parquet floor.

Meredith spotted her parents about the same time they spotted her and Greg.  Jeanette waved them over.  It was still slightly odd for Meredith to be at a supposedly romance-inducing event with her parents, but she consoled herself with the knowledge that it was probably weirder for Greg.  If it was, he didn’t show it.  He greeted his in-laws warmly and the four of them settled in for a fun evening.  About an hour into it, he even danced with Jeanette so Bill could have a father-daughter dance.

The food turned out to be as delicious as the aroma had promised, and even included bite-sized cheesecake so Meredith got to have some of her favorite treat after all.  The DJ was moderately insane, but in a good way.  The night was marred only slightly by an attempt by the organizers to interrupt with a Cinderella-themed game.  This involved all the women tottering around in one shoe while husbands tried to find a match.  Many of the men seemed to be grabbing random shoes and the whole thing temporarily devolved into multiple games of keep-away until there was a patent leather addition to the punch bowl.  Things settled down a bit after that as it was nearly time for the big countdown.

Having made plenty of noise at midnight with everyone else, and lingering soreness sadly preventing them from keeping up with a room full of older couples, Greg and Meredith headed back to their room about 12:05.  Meredith felt too hot and sticky to get in bed so she got into the shower first.  She expected Greg, who never stayed up this late, to be out like a light when she was done.  Instead, he was sitting on the end of the bed.  He patted the space next to him and said, “I think it’s time we talked about something.”

╣ Chapter 27 ╠

The words were a bit ominous, but his tone was not.  Meredith was taken slightly off guard.  This was likely for the best as it gave her less time to fret about what was coming or try to make any sort of helpful plan.  She lowered the towel from her hair and sat down with it in her lap.  She waited quietly to see how Greg would begin.

“Well, this has been fun.”  He was apparently going to work up to the main event.  Meredith didn’t know yet what the main event was going to be, but still didn’t blame him for stalling.

“Yeah, I… I really did have some doubts when we got that itinerary, but I’ve enjoyed myself.  For the most part.”

“The dancing was fun.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m glad you got your shoe back pretty quickly.”

“Yes, thanks for that.”

“No problem.”

They sat silently, staring at separate but equally uninteresting spots in the carpet.  Meredith couldn’t quite bring herself to prompt the serious conversation, but didn’t want to miss this opportunity.  She was going to sit right there until Greg said something, or until he fell asleep.  After another minute, during which a group of raucous guests could be heard passing by their door, Greg began again.  “You still want to have a baby, right?”

Meredith opened her mouth to say the obvious “yes” when he surprised her by adding, “With me?”

She answered without hesitation.  “Yes, of course.  I want that.”

“Because I know we’ve been going through a rocky patch, but I think we’re… maybe not all better, but it feels like we’re trying again.”

“I want that, too.”  Meredith’s voice was barely a whisper.

“I have a confession to make.”

He paused and Meredith turned to look at him.  He was still looking at the floor as he continued.

“Before we can really move on, I need to be honest about something.”

“Okay.”

“I… I did see a doctor.”

“You mean, like a fertility test?”

“Yes.  He said… or the test showed, it didn’t seem like there was any medical reason I wouldn’t be able to father a child.”

Meredith was stunned, and confused.  “But that’s good news!  Why didn’t you tell me that?”

Greg had been rather stalling up till that point.  Now that the confession was out, he started talking rapidly.  “Because you wanted it to be me.  I know you did.  Every time we tried and failed, I could see it chipping away at you.  I know you wanted me to be tested first because you couldn’t bear the thought of the problem being on your side.  You wanted it to be my fault and I didn’t know how to say it wasn’t.  And when I told the doctor we had been trying for a year, he said sometimes it can take that long even if there are no real problems so once I knew I was okay I hoped we’d get lucky before… before you had to… and then the more time went by the harder it was to tell you and I just don’t know when it got out of hand.”

Meredith said nothing in response.  She didn’t know how to answer because she felt wrong.  She should have felt betrayed.  She should have been angry that Greg had lied to her, that he had made her feel badly about setting up that appointment with the doctor without his permission.  She should have been upset to discover that their months-long stalemate had been the result of an unnecessary lie and not the fear or anxiety she had thought.  And yet she could not push away the only emotion she did feel… guilt.  It was completely unexplainable because that little voice deep down had no idea what it was talking about.

Meredith eventually said the only thing she could say, that she didn’t know what to say.  Greg accepted this, for now, and they went to bed with barely a “goodnight,” both exhausted at the end of a long year.

****

Meredith awoke to the sound of the room door clicking closed, and the louder sound of Greg groaning at the noise.  She noticed two things as she sat up; it felt later than 6:30 and she smelled cinnamon.  Greg had gone to the early breakfast by himself to let her sleep in.  And in case that wasn’t nice enough, he returned carrying one of the largest cinnamon rolls she had ever seen.  The bottom of the plate felt warm as she took it and a thin layer of icing oozed down the sides.  It tasted as good as it smelled.  The only problem was that Meredith wasn’t sure if she was enjoying Greg’s usual thoughtfulness or if he was working to get out of the perceived doghouse.  She should really let him off the hook, but wasn’t sure if she should be the one to bring it up again.  Okay, really she wasn’t sure if she had the guts to bring it up again.  Why was talking with her husband so difficult?  She hated the answer that came to her, that she was simply out of practice.

“This is really good.  Thanks.”  Meredith decided to start with small talk and see if it grew.

“I had one, too.  I thought you’d like it.”

“Were you the only one by yourself?”

He pulled out the desk chair and sat down opposite her.  “No, not at all.  There seemed to be quite a few spouses still in bed.”

“Hmm.”  She had just stuffed a huge bite into her mouth.

“So I don’t know if I told you, but I have to go back to Atlanta on Monday.”

“Already?”

“Yeah.  But this should be the last time for at least a few months.”

“Two nights as usual?”

Greg nodded.  “I’ll be back on Wednesday.”

“Well, I’ll be back to work on Monday, too so…”  She trailed off because she really didn’t have anything else to add.

“So you won’t even have a chance to miss me?”

He winked and she smiled.  Greg was kidding of course, but he wasn’t just kidding.  There was a question in his eyes and in the air about whether or not they were secure enough for a relationship joke to be okay.  It was okay and it was in that comfort zone that Meredith finally found her courage.

“Greg?”

“Yes?”

“I need to say that I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me about your visit with the doctor.  I don’t think it’s fair to say I wanted you to have a problem, but I was scared enough to be somewhat irrational so I can kind of, I mean, I’m not upset with you because I understand why you didn’t want to tell me.”

“I guess neither one of us really knew what to do with the situation.”

“Yeah.  Maybe we’re ready now?”

Greg nodded.

“I think… or I hope I’d like to take the next step, but I’d really like for you to go with me.”

“Absolutely.  We’ll find out together what our options are.  And I don’t think it would hurt to start trying again, just in case.”  He moved to sit next to her on the bed as he said it and Meredith realized that his suggestion was not meant to refer to some vague time in the future.  It made her self-conscious.  She tried to smooth her bed head with her non-sticky fingers, but gave up when she noticed that Greg was looking at her the same way he had the previous night when she had been dressed to the nines.  She stashed her plate on the bedside table and prepared to reconnect with her husband.

╣ Chapter 28 ╠

Meredith and Greg spent the rest of that Tuesday and Wednesday feeling pretty good.  They went to a movie together.  Neither of them cared for the film all that much, but they enjoyed discussing its flaws together.  On Wednesday, they had dinner at home and then went out to split a banana split.  Greg casually asked, as he gave her the one cherry, if she had yet scheduled a doctor visit.  She explained that since he was coming with her, it wouldn’t make sense to call when he was going out of town so soon.  He wisely said that he just wanted to put it on his calendar and then dropped the subject.  Slow progress was good progress.

He returned to work on Thursday, and while he was there, Meredith received an excited phone call from Jenna saying they had to get together.  The two women met for lunch on Friday.  It was a tiny Italian place a few blocks from the gym where Jenna worked.  They sat down with goofy smiles and each noticed the other’s pleasant mood.

“You look like my idea worked.”

“What idea?”

“The marriage thingy,” Jenna prodded.  “How was your New Year’s?”

“Interesting.”

“Interesting?  Is that good or bad?”

The waiter interrupted to take their orders, and when he left, Jenna continued to look expectantly at Meredith, who obliged her friend by elaborating.

“The event itself was, well, interesting.  They had some ideas that were a little… out there.  But I can’t really say anything bad about it because we did spend a lot of time together and we ended up having a really good talk so I can’t say it was a waste of time or anything.”

“I’m glad you guys talked.”

“Yeah, it sort of got the ball rolling at home.  Things aren’t perfect yet, but I’d say we’re sort of rekindling.”

“That’s great.  I don’t want to pry into anything personal, but I’m very curious about these ‘out there’ ideas.”

“I think the most interesting was the bit about molding emotions.”

“Moldy emotions?”

Meredith giggled slightly.  “No, molding emotions.”

“Okay, that sounds less yucky, but doesn’t make any more sense to me.”

“They gave us Play-Doh, pink and blue Play-Doh, everything was pink and blue and very… cute.”  She managed to give the word cute a negative connotation with her expression and Jenna understood.  She nodded to encourage Meredith to continue.  “We were supposed to make the Play-Doh into the shape of some emotion.  It was all very abstract.  I can actually kind of see how some people would enjoy it, and believe me the instructor was very into it, but it just didn’t, it just wasn’t my idea of fun.”

“Was Greg a good sport?”

“Yeah, we both tried.”

“Okay.”  Jenna paused for effect.  “Now I really want to tell you my news!”

“News?  I’m all ears.”

“I have a date with Shawn tomorrow.”

“How did that happen?  Last I heard you were getting ready to send him hate-rays because you thought he snubbed you.”

“Let me explain.  Thank you.”  A waiter had just placed a steaming dish in front of her, which she left untouched out of politeness.  They assumed Meredith’s was on its way.  “So yesterday morning, Shawn comes into the gym.  He comes right up and says ‘hi’ and I’m thinking he doesn’t know that I know he was still at the gym when he was supposed to have had an ‘appointment’ and I’m trying to decide if I should ask him or just let it go and he says, completely out of nowhere, ‘How do you feel about dating co-workers?’”

“What is your policy on co-workers?”

“I don’t know.  I just said that I guessed it would depend on the co-worker, and he said that it was his first day in accounting.  He hoped that since he was now a co-worker instead of a client that maybe I’d reconsider going out with him.”

“Yeah, I bet you had to consider that for a long time.”  Meredith laughed through her sarcasm.  She was genuinely happy for her friend.

“I don’t think I was too transparent, but was it bad to agree to Saturday?”

“Were you free on Saturday?”

“Of course, but isn’t it supposed to make you look desperate if you’re available on short notice?”

“I think it makes you look honest, and you can go ahead and start eating by the way.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t know where my food is and I don’t want yours to get cold.”

“Okay.”  Jenna picked up her fork.  “But are you sure about the not-looking-desperate thing?”

“It’s not like I’m an expert on relationships, but I would think the only reason to lie about your schedule is if you want to give the impression that you’re dating other guys.  Since you’ve always had your attention on one guy at a time, it would seem, to me, that giving a contrary impression would not be true to who you are.”

“You’re right.  And he was the one who suggested we get together so soon anyway so if anyone’s desperate…”

“There you go.”

“Oh yeah, and it turns out that when he said he had an appointment, that was the job interview.  It was at the club so he really did have an appointment.  He must have just come out of it when I saw him.”

“See!  I told you there was no need for the hate-rays.”

“For the record, I never sent him hate-rays.  I don’t even know what that means.”

“If you figure it out, could you send some to our waiter?  I would kind of like to have my food eventually.”

╣ Chapter 29 ╠

There was a tense moment on Saturday when Greg left a few hairs on the bar of soap.  Meredith nearly started an argument, but managed to remind him very calmly how disgusting she found this.  They silently agreed that it was not worth fighting over and it was a positive step.  Saturday night, Greg went out with a friend and Meredith did not feel like he was trying to avoid her.  This was also positive.  She wasn’t quite sure what to do with her evening alone and was trying to decide the likelihood of finding anything good on TV when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Meredith?  This is Ellie.  Tom’s Ellie.”

There was something odd about the way she introduced herself.   Mostly because Meredith remembered her parents’ friends discussing each other’s kids that way.  As in, “Bob’s Jennifer is starting at NC State this year” and “Fred’s Matt is in trouble with the law again.”  She pushed the weirdness aside, assuming that Ellie did not have the same associations.

“Hi, Ellie.  What’s up?”

“Well, I want to thank you again for letting me take your wedding dress.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And Tom and I have tentatively set the date for August 9th.”

“Okay, I’ll be sure to mark our calendar.”  Meredith’s assertion was followed by a fairly long pause.  It gave the impression that there was another purpose to the call, but she wasn’t sure how to prompt Ellie.  “Um… so you guys had a nice trip home?”

“Yeah.  It was uneventful, which is good on a plane.”

“Absolutely.”

There was another pause.  Ellie seemed to take in a breath before diving in with, “Meredith?”

“Yes?”

“Now this is a big deal so you can say ‘no’ or if you want to think about it, that’s okay, too.  If I’m asking too much I want you to just say ‘no’ and not hate me or anything.”

“Just ask me.  It can’t be that bad.”

“Since we’re having a summer wedding, I was hoping, well, I just thought that maybe it would be alright if I had the dress altered just a bit.  I just want to take the sleeves off.  Is that terrible?  Would it ruin it?”

Meredith had been married in the fall.  The dress had long, gauzy sleeves attached to a V-neck bodice.  She could picture it looking very nice without the sleeves, particularly in August.  She tried to put Ellie at ease.

“I think that’s a great idea.  In addition to making it more seasonable, it would sort of put your stamp on the dress.  You know, really make it yours for the day.”

“You’re really okay with this?”

“I really am.  I’m just happy it’ll get another use.  And hey, now you’ll be the one who has to find a place to store it.”

Ellie let out a short laugh.  “I’m so glad you approve.  I was really afraid to ask and almost wasn’t even going to at all.  But then Tom was so sure you wouldn’t mind.  He told me to call you an Ichabad if you refused.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Well, thanks again.  We’ll let you know more details about the big day as we decide them.”

“Great.  I’m looking forward to it.”

They said their goodbyes and Meredith put the phone down next to her on the couch.  Parts of that conversation had been almost cordial.  Perhaps there was hope for that relationship, too.  She picked up the remote to relax for the evening, but put the phone back on the charger before she got comfortable.  Greg preferred it there.

****

Sunday morning’s homily had a theme.  Most homilies have themes of course.  That particular Sunday, however, Meredith felt that the priest was talking directly to her.  He talked a great deal about how people tend to make excuses for not doing what they know needs to be done, and that sometimes those same people spend too much time planning how to do something.  Meredith resolved to call the doctor as soon as possible.  But not right then as the office was probably closed on Sundays anyway.

╣ Chapter 30 ╠

Sometimes the winter break seemed to fly by and sometimes Meredith came back to work feeling as though she had really been out of the classroom since the previous year.  The latter case applied this year, but instead of making the school feel somewhat foreign, it felt new and promising.  Her fresh start was going to carry over into her work life.  She was confident in that.

When Jeffrey called her Miss Donna, she tried one more time to explain the difference and he seemed to accept the correction.  When Jacob entered smacking a wad of gum, Meredith did not lose her temper nor did she let it go.  She calmly asked him to spit it out and invited him to her desk where she filled out the necessary paperwork for detention.  And when poor accident-prone Elizabeth fell off some playground equipment, there was no blood.  The day even finished with a pleasant, though odd, chat with a fellow teacher.  It was pleasant because they shared stories of their time off and Ellen had some interesting characters in her family.  It was odd because she kept looking over her shoulder toward the doorway as though hearing an invisible person entering.  The only thing that could have improved the first day back was if Greg had been home to hear about it.

But as much as Monday was steady with Meredith’s happiness and satisfaction, Tuesday was fickle with some of her less popular emotions.  First, it brought in a little boy with an empty mouth, which seemed pleasing until he handed Meredith a note from his mother.  It read:

Since my schedule does not have the luxury of an extra half hour to wait for detention, I will be picking my son up at the usual time.  I expect him to be waiting.

Meredith put the note aside on her desk.  It made her furious on the inside, but she refused to take it out on the children.  She was going to put it out of her mind until the morning recess, when she could consult with the principal.

Just before that recess, a package arrived for Meredith.  Judging by the company name on the return label, she trusted that it would be safe to open in front of the class.  They were as impressed as Meredith with the pretty pink and purple flowers it contained.  Meredith looked around the room for something that might work as a vase.  She had no actual vase because she had never before received flowers.

This was not Greg’s fault, not exactly.  When they were first dating, Meredith had made what seemed at the time a very enlightened speech about how sending flowers was about the most unromantic thing a man could do.  She expressed that this was partially because it had been done so many times already and partially because it had become almost synonymous with a man trying to earn his way out of the doghouse.  She had insisted that she would never appreciate flowers and Greg had either taken her at her word, or else used that word as a convenient excuse.  At any rate, Meredith had long since realized the speech had come more from immaturity than illumination and was glad Greg had finally seen through it.  She assumed he had seen through it.  The card in the box actually read “From your secret admirer.”  Since Meredith did not have a secret admirer, the flowers must have been from Greg.  Meredith ultimately gave up on finding a vase substitute.  She laid the flowers across the corner of her desk with the blooms pointing towards the class.  That would have to do for today and surely she had something at home that would allow a proper display.

With the interruption over, Meredith resumed the clock project they had been working on and then walked her class outside.  She mentioned to the other first grade teachers where she was headed and then marched to the principal’s office which, unlike bussing trays, felt completely different as an adult.  She caught him on his way out.

“Hey, Will.  Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.”  He motioned to the open door and then followed her back inside.  “What’s up?” he asked as he sat behind the desk.

“Yesterday I gave a student detention for today.”

“Jacob, right?  I saw his name on the list.”

Meredith nodded.  “And today he came in with this note from his mother.”  She put the paper on the desk and pushed it towards him as though glad to be rid of it.

Will took only a few seconds to read the note, then groaned, put the paper down and rubbed his right palm against his forehead.  She recognized the gesture of frustration.  His forehead generally received a good rubbing at least once during staff meetings, usually while the lunchroom monitor schedule was on the table.  “Alright,” he said finally, “let me get all the details.”  He pulled a notepad from a side drawer and grabbed a pen.  “This is Jacob Tenney, right?”  Meredith nodded.  “What did he do?”

“Gum.”

“And you gave him plenty of warnings?”

“It’s been an issue all year.”

Will sighed.  “And I suppose you already tried sending a note home?”

“His mother sent back a fairly snotty reply and I’m pretty sure he was chewing gum when he gave it to me.”

“So that didn’t work, huh?”

Meredith let out a slight laugh and shook her head.

“Obviously, I’m going to back you up on this.  She signed the handbook so she agreed to detention as a possibility.  We’ll just try to avoid a scene, especially in front of Jacob.  I’ll find out who’s on carpool duty and let him or her know what’s going on.  Hopefully, we can get his mom to pull through and come inside so she doesn’t hold up the line.  It could be that she’s had time to think about it since writing the note or will just be less confrontational in person.  Let’s hope for the best.”

“Okay.  Thanks for your help.  I really should get back outside.”

Meredith got to recess just in time to find Jeffrey and another boy screaming at each other because their ball had gone over the fence.  She went out to retrieve it and forgot to look for goose droppings.

“Great,” she muttered, furiously scraping her shoe on the sidewalk.  “It’s not even lunch time.”

╣ Chapter 31 ╠

Expired yogurt is generally not something about which anyone spends a great deal of energy being concerned.  But when that someone is already having a lousy day, it becomes worth at least a few minutes of irritation.  Meredith chastised herself for not checking the dates at the store more thoroughly.  She hoped her smaller than usual lunch would last until she could get home.  She was annoyed enough to have convinced herself that she was hungry before she even got up from the lunchroom table.

Shortly after lunch, the kids went to Art.  Meredith took the opportunity to call Jenna to make dinner plans.  She enjoyed cooking for one less than she enjoyed cooking for her mother-in-law and still hadn’t heard about the first date with Shawn.  Unfortunately, she only got through to voice mail so would need to wait on plans.

Gavin walked in as she hung up.  “Hey, what’s up in first grade?”

“Hello. Mostly the usual, but things could honestly be better.”

“Sorry to hear that.  I just wanted to say that Mercy called to tell me she’s going to bring the baby in today to show her class.  I figured she’d probably try to stop in here, too.”

“Oh, that would be nice.  How’s your day going by the way?”

He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed.  “Not bad except for this stupid argument that will not die.”

“What’s that about?”

“For some reason, these two girls started arguing about which one of them has longer hair.”

“Shouldn’t that be fairly obvious?”

“Maybe, if anyone really cared.”  There was some frustration in his voice as he felt a little silly just explaining the frivolous argument.  “Apparently, one of them has her hair up today, like in a pony tail, and claims that just makes it look shorter.  I thought I had successfully gotten them to move on, but have had to squelch the same argument two more times.  The last time they had even gotten a third girl involved.  She was holding a piece of paper up to one head to mark the length.”

Meredith smiled.  She didn’t want to revel in his distress, but it did feel good to know she was not the only one having some difficulties.  “Don’t worry, maybe tomorrow they’ll both wear pony tails.”

He smiled, too, feeling better having shared the story.  He turned to leave, but then noticed the pile on her desk.  “Hey, you got flowers, huh?  Your day can’t be all bad.  Don’t you have anything to put them in?”

“The best thing I could come up with is that bucket for the Legos, but then we’d have Legos all over the floor, so not really.”

“I think Mercy has a vase in her room.  I’m sure she won’t mind.  I’ll go get it.”

Gavin was back in a moment with a pretty blue striped vase.  He set it on her desk and then went to fetch his students from Music.  Meredith left for the Art room shortly after arranging the flowers.

The first-graders had a satisfyingly uneventful afternoon recess and had barely made it back inside when Mercy appeared in the doorway carrying her bundle of joy.  She proudly paraded around the room so the kids could have a peek at the newborn and Meredith felt a heavy sense of guilt at having not spoken to her friend since little Jackson’s arrival. She tried to assuage it by making the appropriate comments about how cute and tiny he was, and how much he looked like his mother.  Mercy appreciated the compliments.  She was still looking at Meredith strangely, however, and seemed in a hurry to leave the classroom.  Meredith resolved to wait a few days and then give her a call.  Perhaps she could offer to bring over dinner and they could still reconnect.

Her thoughts were not on Mercy for long as it was only a short time later that the unmistakable sound of a child vomiting came to her ears and required immediate attention.  She sent Jeffrey to the office for a janitor, hearing “Okay, Miss Donna,” and then set to work trying to comfort the poor sick child without actually touching her.  She sent her into the bathroom with the clean shirt from her cubby and took her to the nurse’s office to wait for a parent.  By the time the classroom was back in order, there were only a few minutes left in the day and Meredith was worn out.  She passed out Bingo cards and gave everyone a hassle-free end to the school day.

But then of course came detention.  Jacob remained in his seat as the others filed out.  Meredith was thankful that he at least was not going to make this more difficult.  He sat quietly at his desk while she looked over some projects that had been turned in earlier in the day.  She glanced regularly between her watch and the clock on the wall, always noting that hers was faster by two minutes.  She tried hard to relax at first, figuring that even if Jacob’s mom was going to come in and make a scene, she would be stuck in the carpool line for at least ten minutes first.  Her anxiety swelled as those ten minutes ticked by and continued the upward spiral for the rest of the half-hour detention.  When the wall clock, which felt more official, showed the end time, she stood up and thanked Jacob for his patience.  He put his backpack on and followed her to the door.  As they entered the hall, Meredith found her principal and a woman who must be Jacob’s mother waiting for them.  She had met his mother at a fall conference, but she had met many mothers.

No one spoke for a few tense seconds and then Will said, “Are we all done here?”

Meredith nodded.

The other woman looked as though she was going to say something.  She struggled for a minute before uttering an annoyed “Fine.” She then took her son by the hand and walked quickly down the hall with her nose practically grazing the ceiling.  Meredith had never before been so satisfied with a scene so anti-climactic.  She looked at Will and he seemed just as satisfied.  She guessed that he must have gotten off as easily because he began to whistle as he walked away, saying only, “There’s always tomorrow.”

╣ Chapter 32 ╠

While Meredith had managed to avoid an ugly run-in with a parent, she had still felt the stress of the threat.  And then there was the vomit, the arguments and her growling stomach.  It was enough to have her craving a night out over an empty house.  Fortunately, just as she began to lament not having heard from Jenna, she felt the buzz of the phone in her bag.  The two friends easily agreed on a meeting place and Meredith shuffled around a bit more paperwork before heading out.

She sat down a few moments before Jenna, who arrived grinning from ear to ear and looking just as eager to talk, though likely on happier subjects.  For Meredith, listening to a friend’s good news could be as cathartic as spilling her bad; and this was convenient because Jenna would not be contained.

“I’m going to be in love!” she announced as she took her seat.

“Going to be?”

“Well, I know it’s too soon to be serious about Shawn so I’m just trying to be practical.”

Meredith suppressed a grin.  Declaring future love after a first date was so much more practical than falling already.  “I guess things went well on Saturday.”

“Oh, yes!  We talked and talked and we stayed until they started putting up chairs because we didn’t even notice how late it was getting.  He hates those phone commercials, too.”

“That’s definitely the basis for a solid relationship.”

“Hey, be nice.  We talked about the important things, too.”

“The important things?”  Meredith shook her head.  “Don’t tell me you brought up kids on the first date again.  I keep telling you that’s not a good idea.”

“I know that’s your opinion.”  Jenna twirled her napkin around looking a bit sulky, but brightened quickly.  “But thirty is getting awfully close so if a guy doesn’t want the same things I want… eventually… then I shouldn’t waste either of our time.  Besides, I don’t think I scared him.”

“What did he say?”

“He agreed that he is hoping for a family eventually.”  She stressed the word again to point out how practical they both were.  “And then he asked me how long he should wait before he proposes.  I think he was kidding.”

“Wait, wait… you think?”

“Well, obviously he was kidding, but there was just something about the way he said it that… I don’t know.”

“Wow.  He sounds just a little bit insane.  He might actually be perfect for you.”

“I know!  Isn’t it great?”  Jenna was clearly not going to be talked down from her emotional high, not that Meredith would try.  It felt wonderful to see her friend so deliriously happy and the foul mood she had been in began to lift.  They continued to share details of the date and Meredith worked in some scenes from her day.  Jenna was appropriately sympathetic, particularly when Meredith kept the sick child details to herself.  They both went to Jenna’s place after dinner to continue their time together.

They decided to play a game and pulled out an old checkerboard that Jenna was surprised to find she owned.  She thought it must be a hand-me-down from her parents.  But as they sat down to play, neither was terribly clear on the rules so they put it back and got down the usual Lost Cities, which was a fine game except that Jenna seemed to be much better at it.  The progress on the game was slow as they were constantly distracted by conversation, and the time passed quickly.  It was nearly 11 o’clock when Meredith left for home.

She got ready for bed and decided to check her email before turning in.  That was when her day hit the lowest point yet.  There was some spam, a reminder about an upcoming staff meeting, and a note from Mercy.  She opened the one from Mercy last because she hoped it would prove the most interesting.  It confused her at first because it began with, “You don’t know me, but…” Then she realized that the message had been sent to Greg, that Meredith was only copied in, though there was nothing courteous about it.  Meredith read it three times and still could hardly comprehend what she saw on her screen.

You don’t know me, but you may know my name as I work with your wife.  While this shouldn’t be any of my business, I feel compelled to contact you because my first husband cheated on me and I was the last to know.  I am currently out on maternity leave and my replacement is a man.  Talk around the school is that there is something going on between him and Meredith.  I wanted to dismiss this as just an ugly rumor, but when I visited Meredith today, she had flowers on her desk in the vase from my classroom.  I know that just because this man gave her flowers does not prove there is anything on Meredith’s side, but the prominent display is suspicious.  Do with this information as you will.

Mercy Sayers

╣ Chapter 33 ╠

There were so many emotions to choose from that at first Meredith could not decide which to experience.  There was disbelief that she had just been accused of something unthinkable, and by a friend.  There was panic at what Greg would think when he read the note.  There was confusion, as she now wondered if it had been right to assume the flowers came from Greg.  Could they have actually come from Gavin?  And if so, was that somehow her fault?  Did she miss a cue somewhere in what she thought had been only friendly conversations between fellow teachers?  After a few minutes of letting things sink in, Meredith decided on anger as the most appropriate emotion.  Anger at Mercy most of all for even believing this rumor, let alone passing it on like this.  Anger at whomever started such gossip, and she had a pretty good idea whose jealousy could be behind it.  She felt anger at the florist for allowing an anonymous order.  What a stupid policy that was.  And she was angry at herself for not knowing how to handle the situation in front of her.

She turned off the computer and lay in bed staring at the ceiling.  She knew she wasn’t going to sleep, but it was a quiet place to think.  Through all of her anger, she eventually saw that making sure Greg did not believe this email was the only thing really important.  It didn’t really matter if she called Mercy and screamed at her or simply spent the rest of her life ignoring her.  It didn’t matter if anyone at work was jealous or if Gavin had given that person any reason to be.  Meredith and Greg had only just started to return to smooth ground in their marriage journey and removing this potential boulder was where Meredith put her focus.  She wanted to let him know by her response how ridiculous the allegations were, but what was the best way to do that?  If she denied it too quickly or eagerly, would that make her look guilty?  If she didn’t deny it strongly enough, would he wonder why?  She thought about the practical aspects.  Greg was almost certainly asleep at the moment.  Mercy had sent the email around 9:30, which made it somewhat unlikely that Greg had read it yet.  If she called now he would not answer his phone and it was a toss-up as to whether he would retrieve her message or Mercy’s first in the morning.  Since she couldn’t predict this, she didn’t know what sort of message to leave.  If only he was home.  If only he had seen the message first and denounced it before Meredith had any idea of what she had been accused.

Could she pretend she hadn’t seen it?  Maybe until the morning, but Greg would never believe she hadn’t seen it by the time he got home tomorrow.  And how would any sort of dishonestly help the situation?  She decided that the casual approach would be to wait until Greg got home, without any sort of pretense.  She would just need to make an off-hand comment about how she wouldn’t be hanging out with Mercy ever again and Greg would understand.  He had to understand.

But then there was work.  She could weather gossip and probably even be an adult when Mercy returned.  She wasn’t sure about Gavin though.  Was he an innocent bystander and unaware of the rumor or was there really a crush that triggered it?  She didn’t want to act all self-conscious around him, especially if he didn’t know what was going on.  Snubbing him for no reason would be mean and really shouldn’t be called for.  She wasn’t very good at making friends at work and was unlikely to spend more than two minutes every other day talking to him.  There was no need to panic or start rehearsing speeches.  She would simply be a little more guarded to make sure he didn’t get the wrong idea and everything would be fine.

Meredith managed to logic away every reason to worry by about 2 am.  And yet she remained uneasy about the coming day and alternated between wishing it would start so she could get it over with and wishing it would never come.

Sleep finally became her friend a little before dawn, but was chased away by the terrible noise of her alarm before they could share secrets.  The pounding headache that joined her as she climbed out of bed seemed almost like a blessing at first.  She could call a sub.  A moment later the idea seemed cowardly.  She knew she would never stay home with a headache on any other day.  She had a side of Tylenol with her breakfast and made sure there was some in her bag for later.  She found she was ready a little earlier than usual, probably because the newspaper had not held her attention, and she spent the extra minutes staring at the phone.  She wondered if Greg was on his way back yet.  Loneliness washed over her.  She thought about those times not so long ago when she had looked for ways to avoid him.  It was sad to realize how long it had been since she had actually missed her husband.  She wanted to hear his voice, but did not pick up the phone.  The clock was calling her out the door.  It was time to be brave.

╣ Chapter 34 ╠

Meredith took comfort in the fact that even if every adult at the school believed the gossip about her, her students would still have no idea what was going on.  Her classroom would be a safe haven.  She went directly there, not sure the extra cup of caffeine would necessarily be a good thing for her headache anyway.

The flowers sat on her desk, blooming more fully yet somehow looking less attractive than the previous day.  She pulled them out of the vase, water dripping over her desk, and considered throwing them into the trash.  But what if someone noticed and wondered why?  And what if they were from Greg?  She stuffed the stems back in the vase and settled for moving the whole display off to the side of the classroom.  It wasn’t as though she had a lot of desk space anyway.  As she cleaned up the water, she noticed that her wedding picture had gotten shoved behind various gifts from students and other clutter.  She pulled it back to the foreground and angled it slightly towards the door.  Thankfully, her headache had eased somewhat by the time her first student arrived.

“Good morning, Miss Donna.”

“Good morning, Jeffrey.”

Jeffrey hung up his backpack and began to unload it.  Meredith went through her papers to make sure she had everything organized for the morning.  As more students arrived, she found she was able to concentrate better than expected on the tasks at hand.  The morning passed as though things were perfectly normal.

At lunchtime Meredith sat with the usual group of laptop wielding colleagues.  There was pleasant chitchat and not a single one of them looked strangely at Meredith.  This was truly promising.  But as she opened her computer, Meredith hesitated before checking for messages.  She knew that whether or not there was anything new, she was going to torture herself with another look at last night’s bomb.  Curiosity, or perhaps merely habit, won out in the end.  In darker print at the top of the list was Mercy’s address.  Meredith read this new note, which had been sent early that morning, with a strange lack of emotion.  This message was a plea for forgiveness.  It blamed postpartum hormones, lack of sleep and personal insecurities for the rash email to Greg.  It insisted that after rational reflection, Meredith couldn’t possibly be guilty of anything.  The rumor was simply that.  The problem, however, was that, intentional or not, this email stank of insincerity because this email appealed only to Meredith, this email had not been sent to Greg.

Meredith reread the older message to refresh her anger at Mercy.  Then she scowled slightly and logged out.  She finished her lunch and prepared to walk her class down the hall.  Ellen began to line up her class nearby.  Meredith’s first impulse was to grab the French braid at the back of her neck and yank it really hard.  Instead, she went with her second instinct and offered Ellen a broad, knowing smile.  This clearly made her uncomfortable and neither woman said anything as they led the parade of students.  But as Meredith stopped at her door, she sweetly called, “Have a nice day,” to her co-worker’s back.  She wasn’t sure this exactly qualified as being the bigger person.  True growth could not be rushed, after all.

The afternoon was relatively painless.  One little boy burst into tears while cutting out a project and caused her a moment of panic.  Meredith relaxed when she discovered that he was not harmed, that the damage could be repaired with a simple piece of tape.

The next and slightly longer moment of panic came when Meredith managed to leave for the day at the same moment Gavin was passing her classroom on his way to the door.  When he offered to walk out with her, she thought seriously of pretending to have forgotten something.  She would have gone through with it if not for the fear that he would be nice enough to wait for her.

She tried very hard to remain calm on the short walk and stick to safe subjects.  When Gavin held the door for her she said, “Greg, my husband, always gets the door, too.”  She realized how not calm she was at the same point she realized it was the third time in two minutes that she had followed the word Greg with “my husband.”

Gavin gave her a funny look that seemed to say, “I figured out who Greg was the first time.”

“I’m sorry.”  Meredith could tell that he had no idea why she was acting nuts and she was able to get a grip on herself.  “Greg’s been out of town on business and gets back today.  I’m just a little excited to see him.”

“That’s nice.  That he’s coming home, I mean.”

They finished the sidewalk in returned normalcy and parted ways at the edge of the parking lot.

Meredith blared the radio a bit on the ride home, her head feeling nearly all better.  As the garage door opened to reveal Greg’s car, she felt suddenly very nervous.  So far, the fallout from Mercy’s interference had been primarily restrained to Meredith’s sleep debt.  Would that still be true the next morning?

Greg was sitting at the table with newspapers spread in front of him.  He looked up as she came in, smiled and said, “Hi.”  She put her bag down and moved to take off her coat, fumbling a little with the buttons.  By the time she got it on the hook, Greg was standing next to her.  Was he watching for signs of guilt?

He simply held out his arms for a hug and she fell into them.

“Should we go out for dinner?” he asked into her hair.

“Okay.”  He wasn’t even going to bring it up.  Of course not, she thought.  It wasn’t worth it.  They both knew it couldn’t be true and there was no need to suffer through an unnecessary conversation.  She reached out to put her coat back on, and froze.  This was taking the easy way out.  She knew, she knew, that she could never again be afraid to talk to her husband.  She turned and looked him in the eye.  “So I suppose you know that I’m not speaking to Mercy.”

He exhaled deeply.  “I can’t believe she did that.”

“Me neither, and,” she pulled out a little more courage here, “and what she said, you don’t believe that either?”

“Never.”  He hugged her again.  “Oh, Mer, even when we were fighting about lint I knew the problems were entirely between the two of us.”

Meredith laughed in spite of the tension.  They had actually argued about lint once.

“You didn’t really think I’d believe you capable of that?”

“No, but… it was just hard that you weren’t here and I just thought that… that even something that didn’t need to be said, should be said.”

He nodded.  “And you know I sent the flowers.”

Now she nodded.  “Thank you, by the way.”

He leaned in and kissed the top of her head and they both heard his stomach growl.  “So about dinner?  We can go to that Mexican place you like.”

“No, I think we should get pizza, since that’s something we both like.”

He smiled.  “Now that is a great plan.”

╣ Epilogue ╠

“I’m a whale.”

“You’re not a whale.  You’re a beautiful mom-to-be.”  Jenna had only recently begun to complain about her pregnant size so Meredith could be very patient.  But the baby was not due for nearly two months.

“I am a whale.  A sperm whale.”

Meredith had a good laugh at the exaggeration.  She and Jenna were enjoying a quiet afternoon on Jenna’s day off.  She was still working full time, but had, since the start of her third trimester, switched to teaching water aerobics for lower impact.  She looked momentarily confused at Meredith’s laughter.

“The sperm whale is the biggest one, right?”

“I thought the blue whale was the biggest.”

“Oh, well.  It’s still appropriate.”

Meredith decided not to argue.  Jenna sat quietly for a moment and then appeared to be leaving the analogy aside for a topic that would generate more sympathy.  “I just hope George stops sharing when I go back to my usual size.”

“What’d he say now?”

George attended Jenna’s class at least twice a week and had recently acquired his first great-grandchild.  He had actually been in the delivery room for the birth and constantly marveled at how different things were nowadays.  Jenna’s work stories contained the word “nowadays” quite a bit more frequently since the average age of her clients had gone up about forty years.  George mostly remarked about how much more open people were when talking about childbirth and related matters.  He was always in danger of crossing the line between open and creepy.

“I told you about the nipple thing, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”  Meredith was uncomfortable just thinking about it.  George had talked the previous week about his granddaughter’s inverted nipples and the problems they had given her when starting breastfeeding.  Though Jenna was not as private as Meredith, talking to a random 80-year-old man about nipples still fell outside her comfort zone.  Especially given the fact that she couldn’t help feel the conversation had been sparked by that day’s particularly cold water.

“Well, yesterday he said, ‘Do you think you could tell if your water broke while you were in the water?’”

“Eww!”

“I know, it’s like a double eww.  Eww the thought of it happening there and eww that he’s apparently considered my… fluids.  Shawn thinks I should invite him to the birth to freak him out for a change, but I think he’d say ‘yes.’”

“That would be bad.”

“It would be bad and it would be more eww.  Mostly it would be just plain weird.”

“There does seem to be something about you that attracts weirdoes.”

Jenna couldn’t resist the jab.  “That explains you anyway.”

Meredith poked her friend and they sat in happy silence for a moment before Meredith got the impression that Jenna was about to ask if there was something to eat.  She had always had a fantastic appetite, considering all the calories she burned at work, and now that she was eating for two she seemed to be hungry more or less all the time.  Meredith was going to offer a snack when a cry filled the room and the baby monitor on the counter lit up to enhance the urgency.

“I guess your little one is up.”

“Yeah,” Meredith smiled.  “She’ll probably want something to eat, too.”

Jenna understood the “too” and Meredith truly couldn’t be happier with all the mouths to feed.

Dear Jane Letters

Dear Jane Letters is a light-hearted look into the life of Raina Lane, author of a local advice column titled Dear Jane. Raina has a close family who loves and entertains her at every encounter. She lives with her best friend, Vicki, who is about to get married and is anxious to see Raina paired up as well. She looks for romance between Raina and just about anyone with whom they come into contact, including a blind date and the old friend who has recently reentered Raina's life. Despite her roommate's constant vigilance, when Raina does find love, it still catches her by surprise.

Zero Station: A Science Fiction Novella

Humans have known for years that they are not alone in the universe. Those in power have chosen not to seek further contacts because of a tragic history, but sometimes contact cannot be avoided.

When an unidentified ship crashes in Antarctica, a team is assembled to communicate with the new arrivals. First agonizing silence, then a confusing plea for help. Who or what caused the ship to crash? Will scars from the past interfere with the mission? And will the team understand the danger in time?

Zero Station is a gripping tale of first contact, uniquely told from both the human side and the alien.