Free The Grand Finale by Janet Evanoich

years. Didn’t you ever make love?”
    “It turned out that I gave love, and he took love, but we never made love. We went through the motions on a regular basis, but nothing ever happened for me.” She rolled her eyes. “This is so awkward.”
    “I hope I never meet this guy. I don’t think I could keep from flattening his nose.”
    “It wasn’t entirely his fault. I was very young. Allen and I both thought marriage could be a panacea for our own problems. Allen was very smart. He had direction to his life. He wanted to be a doctor. There I was floundering through school, changing my major every semester, barely passing half my courses—and Allen walked into my life. He was like the calm in the center of a hurricane. Cool blue eyes, perfectly combed hair, always a crease in his trousers. I think, unconsciously, we each felt incomplete. I needed order and purpose, and he was lacking emotion. I suppose we thought if we joined the two of us together we’d get a complete human being.
    “Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way. Marriage intensified our problems. The longer we were married, the less sure I became of myself, and he grew more withdrawn, less communicative. When it became clear that the marriage was a failure, Allen began looking to other women for comfort.” Berry shrugged. “Maybe cheating was a last-ditch effort for him. Maybe he was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t deficient.”
    “Maybe he was a creep.”
    Berry hugged her knees and laughed. “That was my original conclusion. Time and personal growth have softened the edges of my animosity.”
    Someone obtrusively clumped down the hall, stopping short of Jake’s bedroom door. “Anyone wanting to use the bathroom should do it now,” Mrs. Fitz hissed in a loud whisper. “They should get into the bathroom before Mrs. Dugan gets up!”
     
    Berry was the last to arrive at the breakfast table. She quietly slid onto a packing crate and poured a bowlful of cereal, being careful to avoid looking at Jake. She was practically senseless with embarrassment. She’d gone bonkers listening to him talk about soap. She couldn’t have felt more exposed if she’d come to the breakfast table naked. She’d told him her life story. Lord, she was such a boob. She kept her eyes trained on the cereal without really seeing it. She added milk and stirred.
    Pow! A kernel of cereal flew past her ear. Pop, ping, pow. Her cereal was exploding!
    A kernel bounced off Mrs. Dugan’s forehead. “I’ve been shot!” Mrs. Dugan cried. “Someone shot me in the forehead.”
    Mrs. Fitz dived under the table. “You haven’t been shot, you old dunce. It’s the cereal.”
    Jake jumped to his feet and clamped a dinner plate over the almost empty bowl.
    “What is this stuff?” Berry asked, her eyes wide.
    Jake cautiously removed the plate. The cereal was bloated with milk, making soft snuffling noises. “I don’t understand this. It never did this before. Maybe it was the way you were stirring it.” He took the box of cereal and Berry’s bowl and descended into the basement with them.
    Mrs. Dugan shook her head. “This never happened when we lived in the Southside Hotel for Ladies.”
    Mrs. Fitz picked cereal out of her hair. “Yeah, that place was boring. Filled with old people.” She shivered at the thought.
    Miss Gaspich folded her napkin. “I like it here. I wish he hadn’t taken that cereal away. I wanted to try some.”
    Berry stared at the cellar door, wondering what was down there. Dr. Jekyll’s laboratory? Finally her curiosity grew stronger than her embarrassment. She excused herself from the table and cautiously opened the basement door. “Jake?”
    “Mmmm.”
    “Can I come down? Will anything else explode?”
    “Take your chances.”
    Berry looked around the cluttered, well-lit room. Kites, model airplanes, wind socks, and bicycle wheels hung from the ceiling. The walls were lined with bottle-laden shelves and crowded bulletin boards.