Free Getting Warmer by Carol Snow

your father to pick up some soup for dinner.”
    If it’s too hot to cook, it’s too hot for soup, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.
    “Potato salad doesn’t go with soup,” my mother said, reaching into the brown bags my father had now abandoned and stacking the items on the counter.
    “It does if you want it to,” my father said.
    “Why didn’t you just go back to Rhode Island?” I asked.
    “Our month with your sister turned into two weeks because I couldn’t stand another minute with that man . Honestly, he did everything he could to avoid us. He spent most of his time in their bedroom with the television blaring.”
    “Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked. “I mean, if you didn’t have to talk to him?”
    “No,” my mother said, pouring a carton of fresh salsa into a little dish and opening a bag of tortilla chips. My parents eat a lot of salsa because they can feel southwestern and get their recommended intake of lycopene—at the same time!
    “Your sister was tense. Tense . I try to hide my feelings about Frederick, but she knows me so well that she can tell that I disapprove of their situation.” Pretty much anyone within a hundred-mile radius of my mother knows that she disapproves of their situation.
    “And Pennsylvania?” I asked, still holding out hope that they’d popped by to pick up a few tennis togs before catching a red-eye out of Sky Harbor Airport. It’s not that I don’t love my parents or enjoy spending time with them, but after two months alone in the house, it felt like they were invading my space—and not the other way around.
    “Well, my sister-in-law called two nights ago—two nights ago!” That would be my father’s brother’s wife, a.k.a. Aunt Marilyn, a.k.a. The Hypochondriac. “She said she had a cold and didn’t want to get us sick.” My mother took a supersize box of Cheerios and stuck it in the pantry. “I said that was very considerate of her, but we’d take our chances.” She rolled her eyes. “And then, suddenly, it was more than a cold, it was probably pneumonia, and she didn’t feel up to entertaining. Well. I can take a hint. So I got on the phone to Southwest. There’s no penalty if you’re over sixty.” She gazed around at the majestic kitchen. “Let me tell you, it’s good to be back in my own house.”
    “Yeah, it must be,” I said.
    I took Jonathan’s note up to my room, shut the door and put on a CD that one of my favorite kids from last year had burned for me (she swore it was legal). Hiding out like this made me feel like a teenager myself. Next thing you knew, I’d be instant messaging Jonathan: I can’t w8 2 c u! In truth, as much as I wanted to see him, as much as I smiled every time I heard his voice on my voice mail, I’d been avoiding him—or, more precisely, avoiding the inevitable moment when I’d have to come clean.
    He’d written his note on a simple white piece of copy paper:
    Natalie,
    I was in the neighborhood (okay, not really) and hoped to catch you since I haven’t been able to reach you on your cell phone. (If I were not so supremely self-confident, I might think you didn’t want to talk to me.) I hope I didn’t upset your mother. I remember what you said about her chasing the UPS man with a paring knife because she thought he was a rapist.
    Jonathan
     
    Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I called him.
    “I didn’t expect to hear from you,” he said.
    “Why not?”
    “Well . . . when a guy leaves three phone messages for a woman and she doesn’t call back, he usually takes the hint.”
    “Then why did you come to my house?”
    “Because I am especially persistent. Or especially dense. It was my last-ditch effort. I had a couple more planned in case that didn’t work out.”
    “More last-ditch efforts?”
    “Yup. A last, last-ditch effort. And a last, last, last-ditch effort.” He paused. “Unless . . . are you calling to tell me to stop calling? If that’s the case, let me know now