wouldn’t be seeing the error of his homosexual ways and turn straight any time soon. Now she saw him only as a friend, a friend she spent a lot of time bickering with, for they hardly ever agreed on anything. She also hated that Jeremy made fun of her husband’s name. His name was Tom Jones, and Magda grimaced whenever Jeremy hummed “It’s Not Unusual” at the water cooler. “I can’t believe I used to have a crush on that asshole,” she’d complained to me one time.
“Now she plans to come over every other weekend,” Magda continued. “Every other fucking weekend! Can you believe it? And she won’t stop badgering me about having kids. The woman’s never happy. First, she constantly nagged at me because I was single in my thirties and she was ‘worried’—”
“Because you live in Northampton and therefore might be a lesbian?”
“Exactly! Now she wants me to have babies. When does the nightmare end? What does it take to be left alone?”
“Having babies?”
She rolled her eyes as she smeared grape jelly on a blueberry bagel. “I wish! If I have a baby boy, she’ll want a baby girl, and vice versa. I will never be free.”
I laughed and understood her plight. My mother had been behaving the exact same way lately. She was “concerned” about my single girl status in a town largely populated by homosexuals and called regularly to see if I’d met “someone special” or to give me an I-won’t-love-you-less-if-you-turn-out-to-be-a-lesbian speech. My mother lives in Hartford, Connecticut, which is about an hour drive away from Northampton. The old gal ain’t perfect, God only knows she’s not, but I love her anyway, especially from a safe distance.
“Pretty!” Magda gushed suddenly, staring down at my feet.
Curious, I glanced down and spotted the object of her admiration. My ankle bracelet and toe ring twinkled back at me.
“Where did you get that?”
“O-oh, um,” I stuttered, not knowing what to say. “I—I bought it. I saw it at a jewelry store at the mall and thought it looked nice, so I bought it.”
She smiled, a dimple peeking out from one side of her mouth. “They’re beautiful! Are those real diamonds? That must’ve been quite a splurge. They must have you cost a fortune!”
I was saved from answering by Jeremy’s appearance at the door. “Alfred wants us. Staff meeting. Or, as I like to call it, a ‘let’s get together and talk about David J. Seton’ meeting.”
“Great,” I muttered, rolling my eyes at Jeremy. I waited for Magda to grab her coffee and bagel and then charged into the staff room, which would soon become the David J. Seton worship room. Magda showed my ankle bracelet and toe ring to everyone. They all complimented me on how lovely the set of jewels was—all except for Jeremy, who just stared at the twinkling items on my left foot with a frown.
***
It was the longest day of my life.
I had waited to hear from Seton all day long and nothing. He hadn’t answered my e-mail. There were no text messages from him on my cell phone. So I rushed home from work, hoping to hear a message from him on my answering machine.
“Why did you delete that scene in chapter four? That was an awesome scene! It was imperative to the story development…”
“Marjorie, it’s your mother. You do remember you have a mother, don’t you?”
“Hi, Marge, I’ve got a question. Do you by any chance know if people ate biscuits during Civil War America? I’ve been doing research and haven’t found anything on that subject. Call me pronto!”
Nada from Seton. I sighed.
Fine. Didn’t really care. I had a lot of work to do anyway. And when that was done, I’d do other fun stuff. Like watch TV. Read. Pick at my toenails. I would order greasy Chinese takeout and watch Gone with