Melanie Gideon - Wife 22

3. Take Jampo on a brisk walk outside: 30 to 45 minutes minimum without sunglasses, perhaps in a low-cut V-neck, so I can fully absorb optimal daily dose of vitamin D through my retinas and the delicate skin at the tops of my breasts.

4. Plant lemon verbena in the yard so I can start drinking tisanes and feeling organic and cleansed and elegant (providing 1. lemon verbena is still alive after buying at Home Depot a month ago and then forgetting to water or repot AND 2. if able to dip head below waist without puking).

5. Laundry.

6. Make Bolognese sauce, simmer on the stove all day so the family comes home to homey smell of cooking.

7. Sing, or if I’m too nauseous to sing, watch The Sound of Music and pretend I am Liesl.

8. Remember what it felt like to be sixteen going on seventeen.

It’s a good to-do list-too bad I don’t do a thing on it. Instead, I make another mental list of things I absolutely should NOT do and proceed to knock off every single item:

1. Load the washer but forget to turn it on.

2. Eat eight bite-sized Reese’s peanut butter cups while telling myself they only add up to half of a regular-sized cup.

3. Eat eight more.

4. Put a bay leaf (because lemon verbena very clearly dead) in some boiling-hot water and force myself to drink entire mugful.

5. Feel great because I picked that bay leaf while taking a hike in Tilden Park and then dried it in the sun (okay, in the dryer, but I would have dried it in the sun if I hadn’t left it in the pocket of my fleece and then stuck it in the wash).

6. Feel really great because I am now officially a forager.

7. Contemplate a new career as a bay leaf forager/supplier to Bay Area’s best restaurants. Fantasize about being featured in the annual food issue of the New Yorker wearing a bandana on my head while holding a woven basket full of fresh bay leaves.

8. Google California bay leaf and discover it’s the Mediterranean bay leaf that is used for cooking and while the California bay leaf is not poisonous, ingestion is not recommended.

9. Go online and reread all the communication between me and Researcher 101 until I’ve read between all his lines and sucked every bit of titillation out of his words.

10. Exhausted, fall asleep on the chaise in the sun, Jampo curled up beside me.

“You smell like booze. It’s oozing out of your pores.”

I open my eyes slowly to see William looking down at me.

“It’s customary to give a person some warning when a person is sound asleep,” I say.

“A person shouldn’t be sound asleep at four in the afternoon,” William counters.

“Would now be a good time to tell you I’d like to change schools and enroll at the Pacific Boychoir Academy in the fall?” asks Peter, he and Zoe strolling out onto the deck.

I raise my eyebrows at William, giving him my see-I-told-you-our-son-was-gay look.

“Since when do you like to sing?” asks William.

“Are you getting bullied?” I ask, cortisol flooding through my body at the thought of him being picked on.

“God, Mom, you stink,” says Zoe. She waves her hand at me.

“Yes, your father already informed me of that. Where have you been all day?”

“Zoe and I hung out on Telegraph Avenue,” says Peter.

“Telegraph Avenue? The two of you? Together ?”

Zoe and Peter exchange a furtive look. Zoe shrugs. “So.”

“So-it’s not safe there,” I say.

“Why, because of all the homeless people?” asks Zoe. “I’ll have you know our generation is post-homeless.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means we’re not afraid of them. We’ve been brought up to look homeless people in the eye.”

“And help them panhandle,” adds Peter.

“And where were you while our children were begging on Telegraph Avenue?” I ask William.

“It’s not my fault. I dropped them off at Market Hall in Rockridge. They took the bus to Berkeley,” says William.

“Pedro sang ‘Ode to Joy’ in German. We made some guy twenty bucks!” says Zoe.

“ You know ‘Ode to Joy’?” I ask.

“There’s a ‘You Can Sing Ludwig von Beethoven in German’ channel on YouTube,” says Peter.

“William, should I start with the potatoes?” Caroline shouts from the kitchen.

“I’ll help,” I say, hauling myself out of the chaise.

“No need. Stay here. We’ve got it under control,” says William, disappearing into the house.

As I watch everyone bustling around the kitchen, it occurs to me that Sunday afternoon is the loneliest time of the week. With a sigh, I open my laptop.

John Yossarian

likes Sweden

3 hours ago

Lucy Pevensie

Is in need of her magic cordial but seems to have misplaced it.

3 hours ago

There you are. Have you looked under the backseat of the car, Wife 22?

No, but I looked under the backseat of the White Witch’s sled.

What does the cordial do?

Heals all illnesses.

Ah-of course. Are you ill?

I have a hangover.

I’m sorry to hear that.

Are you of Swedish descent?

I can’t divulge that information.

Well, can you tell me what you like about Sweden?

Its neutrality. It’s a safe place to wait out a war, if one is in a war, that is.

Are you in a war?

Possibly.

How can somebody “possibly” be in a war? Wouldn’t it be obvious?

War is not always obvious, particularly when one is in a war with oneself.

What kind of war does one typically have with oneself?

A war in which one side of him thinks he may be crossing a line, and the other side of him thinks it’s a line that was begging to be crossed.

Researcher 101? Are you calling me a beggar?

Absolutely not, Wife 22.

Well, are you calling me a line?

Perhaps.

A line you are in the process of stepping over?

Tell me to stop.

Wife 22?

You’re Swedish.

What makes you think that?

Based on the fact that you use the word “ah” sometimes.

I’m not Swedish.

Okay, you’re Canadian.

Better.

You grew up on a cattle ranch in Southern Alberta. You learned to ride when you were three; home-schooled in the mornings with your four siblings, afternoons spent poaching cows with the Hutterite children who lived in the Colony next door.

How I miss my friends, the Hutterites.

You were the oldest, so much was expected out of you, not the least of which was to grow up and run the ranch. Instead you went to college in New York and only came home once a year to help with branding. An event to which you brought all your girlfriends to impress and shock the hell out of them. Also so they could see how good you look in chaps.

I still have those chaps.

Your wife fell in love with you when she saw you mount a horse.

Are you psychic?

You’ve been married a long time. It could be she is no longer as interested in seeing you mount a horse, although I would imagine that would never get old.

You’ll get no disagreement from me on that.

You are not: pasty, a gamer, a golfer, a dullard, somebody who corrects other people’s malapropisms, somebody who despises dogs.