Free While She Was Out by Ed Bryant

While She Was Out
    It was what her husband said then that was the last straw.
    â€œChrist,” muttered Kenneth disgustedly from the family room. He grasped a Bud longneck in one red-knuckled hand, the cable remote tight in the other. This was the time of night when he generally fell into the largest number of stereotypes. “I swear to God you’re on the rag three weeks out of every month. PMS, my ass.”
    Della Myers deliberately bit down on what she wanted to answer. PMS, she thought. That’s what the twins’ teacher had called it last week over coffee after the parent-teacher conference Kenneth had skipped. Pre-holiday syndrome. It took a genuine effort not to pick up the cordless Northwestern Bell phone and brain Kenneth with one savage, cathartic swipe. “I’m going out.”
    â€œSo?” said her husband. “This is Thursday. Can’t be the auto mechanics made simple for wusses. Self defense?” He shook his head. “That’s every other Tuesday. Something new, honey? Maybe a therapy group?”
    â€œI’m going to Southeast Plaza. I need to pick up some things.”
    â€œGet the extra-absorbent ones,” said her husband. He grinned and thumbed up the volume. ESPN was bringing in wide shots of something that looked vaguely like group tennis from some sweaty-looking third- world country.
    â€œWrapping paper,” she said. “I’m getting some gift-wrap and ribbon.” Were there fourth-world countries? she wondered. Would they accept political refugees from America? “Will you put the twins to bed by nine?”
    â€œStallone’s on HBO at nine,” Kenneth said. “I’ll bag ‘em out by half- past eight.”
    â€œFine.” She didn’t argue.
    â€œI’ll give them a good bedtime story.” He paused. “’The Princess and the Pea.”’
    â€œFine.” Della shrugged on her long down-filled coat. Any more, she did her best not to swallow the bait. “I told them they could each have a chocolate chip cookie with their milk.”
    â€œChrist, Della. Why the hell don’t we just adopt the dentist? Maybe give him an automatic monthly debit from the checking account?” “One cookie apiece,” she said, implacable.
    Kenneth shrugged, apparently resigned.
    She picked up the keys to the Subaru. “I won’t be long.” “Just be back by breakfast.”
    Della stared at him. What if I don’t come back at all? She had actually said that once. Kenneth had smiled and asked whether she was going to run away with the gypsies, or maybe go off to join some pirates. It had been a temptation to say yes, dammit, yes, I’m going. But there were the twins. Della suspected pirates didn’t take along their children. “Don’t worry,” she said. I’ve got nowhere else to go. But she didn’t say that aloud.
    Della turned and went upstairs to the twins’ room to tell them good night. Naturally they both wanted to go with her to the mall. Each was afraid she wasn’t going to get the hottest item in the Christmas doll department-the Little BeeDee Birth Defect Baby. There had been a run on the BeeDee, but Della had shopped for the twins early. “Daddy’s going to tell you a story,” she promised. The pair wasn’t impressed.
    â€œI want to see Santa,” Terri said, with dogged, five-year-old insistence.
    â€œYou both saw Santa. Remember?”
    â€œI forgot some things. An’ I want to tell him again about BeeDee.” “Me, Too,” said Tammi. With Tammi, it was always “me too.” “Maybe this weekend,” said Della.
    â€œWill Daddy remember our cookies?” said Terri.
    Before she exited the front door, Della took the chocolate chip cookies from the kitchen closet and set the sack on the stairstep where Kenneth could not fail to stumble over it.
    â€œSo long,” she called.
    â€œBring me