Page 23 of Grown-Up Second Chance

“Oh, dear. That’s too bad.”

His feet drifted but I yanked him back in the right direction.

“I guess you’ll be leaving this week,” I said. “I’m surprised you got a spot for long. We booked way in advance for this one.”

“I have to be out by Friday. I tried to get it extended.” His pace slowed.

“Oh, look,” I said practically dragging him along. “There’s Hooch waiting for you.”

“Yeah. He’s a good doggie. Aren’t you, boy?” He shook free of me and headed to the dog.

I smiled to myself. Sometimes a woman’s greatest talent was to manipulate a man into doing what she needed done.

I pivoted back to my lesson in sewage.

~ ~ ~

I finished up with my clients about ten minutes after Kathleen went off to do laundry. We hadn’t been gone long, but I think she was restless from having too little to do. She was used to being a ranch wife, and after Michael had gotten sick, she’d done everything herself.

It was funny how life turned out. While Kathleen had always seemed destined to become who she was, all bets were off when it came to Liz. She’d always found it difficult to focus except when it came to art. Mom tried to guide her into believing that being a housewife would be enough if she found the right man. She could do her art on the side for “pin money.” Such an old-fashioned term that lived on in our rural household where, even though we were loved and cherished, our work was valued a little bit less than the same task done by a man.

I’d gotten over it long ago. My parents did the best they could for the time and place they lived in. They loved and provided for us, cared for each other deeply, and held to a clear moral code. Not everyone was as lucky.

But still, I wondered. What would it have been like to be free to imagine all the possibilities of life, not simply “women’s work.”

Space fascinated me as a child. I was a kid when men first walked on the moon, not much older when the Apollo program ended. But if we’d made it to the moon, what was next? Mars?

I tried to get my parents to send me to space camp in Georgia, but that was a non-starter. My dad allowed there might be jobs for me in the new world of technology, but his advice was to make sure I took the practical bookkeeping courses alongside calculus.

Picking up the heavy copy of Ron Chernow’s Grant—I’d never lost my fascination with how historical figures intersected with each other and changed the trajectory of the country—I headed outside. Since Kathleen wasn’t there, I chose her chair.

Across the way, Joe was sitting at the picnic table outside his trailer. Several open books lay around him, and he’d read some, then scribble on the pad of paper in front of him. It was exactly the way he used to prepare for papers in the library, his quick mind assembling nuances about historical events and turning them on their head to produce something that was different from anything else I’d ever read. We’d always exchanged papers for final editing for our history class. The teacher had taken points off for what he termed “grammatical sloppiness.”

It had been a rigorous training ground for critical thinking, the one high school class that had stuck with me my entire life.

I was being ridiculous about hesitating to do things with Joe. What could be the harm? He was only here for a few weeks; we weren’t going to be plunging into a lifelong—what there was left of it—relationship. We could have some fun. He’d always been easy to be with.

But Larry had left scars. I’d thought I was entering a partnership, only to find that I was still responsible for laundry, meals, and cleaning the inside of the house while he took care of the outside and barbecued. He’d been a traditionalist in every fiber of his being. It didn’t matter that I’d spent long hours building a business. There was “women’s work” and “tasks for the man of the household.”

But worse than that was the emotional burden. Any discussion of feelings was off the table. If a tragedy occurred, like the death of his mother a few years after we were married, I was expected to do the mourning for both of us, while he simply added a second beer to his nightly ritual.

And I’d endured it. Because that’s what women did, wasn’t it?

I refocused my attention on the man across the way. Joe and I had talked about everything under the sun, including his feelings when a classmate’s older brother died at the tail end of the Vietnam War.

Joe was nothing like Larry. We’d only be together for a few short weeks. What was the harm?

At the picnic table, Joe lifted his head and saw me staring. With a grin, he raised his hand and waved, then gestured for me to come over, pointing to the sun tea jar.

Why not?

I pushed the clamoring voices with a dozen answers to that question away.

It was time to have some fun.

Chapter Eight

“What are you working on?” I asked after Joe and I were seated with our ice teas. A small stand of aspens close to Joe’s site had leafed out and provided a delicious respite from the glare of a high-elevation sun.

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