CHAPTER TEN

Julie and Matt were sitting at their petite, two-person kitchen table eating breakfast before Matt took off for work. He was shoveling scrambled eggs into his mouth, the thought of which nauseated her, while she was delicately munching dry toast. The only thing on his plate that looked the least bit appetizing to her was the bacon, but she would not give in to her unnatural cravings. She had made it eight years as a vegetarian, and she was not about to abandon her principles now, after years of sloughing off her father's jokes and her mother's unvoiced (but spoken through looks at the dinner table) worries. What kind of mother would she be if she tossed eight years of discipline aside for a single taste of salty, savory, fatty, delicious…besides. She hated the taste of meat. The thought of it repulsed her. Or at least it used to.

She looked away from the bacon and sipped her coffee. Half-caf, one cup a day. She was allowing herself that – four ounces of real coffee a day, no matter what the damn book said. Eventually, she'd have to get herself dressed and head out for her mid-morning class, but for now she just wanted to share breakfast with her husband. She foresaw herself lounging with a book for another half hour after he left. It would have to be one of her textbooks, however. Her course load was a bit overwhelming this semester, and she was having trouble finding time to study when all she wanted to do in the evenings was sleep. She had crammed the maximum allowable number of classes into this semester in order to ensure that she could graduate early. She didn't want to be in her third trimester and still going to college. She wanted to make sure she had her degree before this baby was born.

"Want the last piece?" Matt asked, pointing to a strip of bacon. It was a tired joke, one he used almost every morning since they'd started living together. It made her smile not because it was funny, but because it had become a kind of tradition.

"Someday you'll appreciate that enlightened humans don't need to slaughter animals to subsist," she said.

"Not to subsist," he agreed. "But to really live." He smiled broadly picked up the bacon, and waved it in front of her nose. Damn but it smelled good. He popped it into his mouth.

She looked away from his slow chewing and into her coffee cup. "Why doesn't Landry want to spend Christmas at home?" she asked.

Matt shrugged. "He said his parents aren't being supportive of his life choices or something like that, and he doesn't want to spend the holiday with them because they'll just nag him."

Julie laughed. "His life choices? You mean Karen?"

Karen was Landry's one-time Calculus III professor. He'd at least waited until he was no longer in the class to start dating her, but now that he had graduated, he was living with the thirty-two year old. Well, he lived with her when he was in Houston, anyway, which wasn't often these days, because he was "touring" with his band.

Landry had graduated summa cum laude and was planning to go to medical school eventually, but he wasn't applying for admissions yet, because he wanted to give his band a chance to "hit it big". Julie didn't think Landry really believed he had a chance of "hitting it big," but he liked to talk the talk, and he was having fun.

"I have to strike while the iron is hot," Landry had told them the last time he was in Chicago for a gig. He'd played the couple the new CD his band had recorded for some tiny, independent label, and Matt had smirked and said, "The iron is lukewarm."

"Not Karen," Matt said. "He hasn't even told them about Karen. It's just they want him to go to med school right away, instead of taking a year or two off to tour." Matt couldn't say the word "tour" with a straight face. Still smiling, he continued, "Apparently his folks aren't too supportive of his dreams."

Matt's tone was sarcastic, but he paused and forced his smile straight. Julie thought maybe he was considering the fact that his own dreams had once seemed foolish and out of reach, and yet he was actually beginning to realize them. His work wasn't exactly selling like hotcakes, but it was selling from time to time, and he was making a living, if not as an artist, than at least in the field of art, through his work at the gallery. In fact, they'd managed to save up enough for a down-payment on a two bedroom condo. They were shopping now and hoped to have something to move into by spring break.

At length, Matt gave up trying to repress his smile. His lips arched. Julie loved how full they were, and how just one end of his mouth went up, and how his teeth seemed to smile too. He switched the subject. "How did your mom react when you said they shouldn't come for Christmas?"

"I told my Dad, and I'm just letting him tell her. He's usually less hysterical about these things."

Matt chuckled. "Well, Coach is never hysterical. He just gets…pissed off. "

"You know what I mean. My mom's the one who flipped out when I wanted to stop going to church. My mom's the one who flipped out when I went with you to that concert and didn't tell them. My Dad flips out…but in a different way…about completely different things."

In a way that sometimes involved busting taillights, for instance. Her mother, on the other hand, had been surprisingly supportive of Julie after her screw up with the T.A., making great efforts to calm Julie's dad. Julie supposed that maybe her parents just fell into some kind of natural balance, like a set of old-fashioned weights, one dragging the other back down when he or she started flying out of equilibrium.

Julie could usually tell which directions the scales were going to tip, and she knew when it came to something like not spending Christmas with her parents, it would be her mother's end of the scale that shot out of balance, and her father's calm weight that leveled it again.

[***]

"Why wouldn't she want to spend Christmas with us? Why?"

Eric reached out and grabbed the clock on the nightstand. He looked at the glowing red numbers that read 3:23 AM. "Go. To. Sleep."

"Why?" Tami repeated. "Do you think something's wrong? Do you think they're fighting?"

"No," he muttered, slamming the clock back down on the nightstand. "I think she doesn't want the trouble of having all three of us and Landry hanging out in their one-bedroom studio apartment while she's tired, nauseous, and pregnant. That's what I think."

Tami sat up and turned on the light. He winced. "But we'd stay in a hotel!" she insisted. We'd stay in a hotel and just come over for Christmas dinner. I'd do all the cooking if she wanted! I'd clean up! We could even go out to dinner. It's Chicago. I'm sure there'd be a few places open even on Christmas."

"Tami, it's no big deal. You knew this was bound to happen at some point. She's grown up. She's married. She has a life. We're not the center of her existence anymore. Not that we have been since she turned thirteen."

"But it's Christmas!"

He put the pillow over his head to block out the light. "She was here for Thanksgiving. We're lucky if we keep getting one holiday a year, babe. Now turn off the light. Go to sleep."

She put a hand on his back, which was turned to her. "Why aren't you more upset about this?"

"Because it's no big deal. Damn, woman, it's three in the mornin'. Go to sleep! We'll go for New Year's, okay? Be back in time for school to start."

"They probably don't want us for New Year's either. They probably have plans to party all night with Matt's artsy friends."

"Yeah," he said drolly, "I'm sure our three-month-pregnant daughter's going to be drinking and droppin' acid all night long, babe."

"And they spent last Christmas in Dillon and they've already said they're spending next Thanksgiving in Dillon with Grandma Saracean and - "

Eric sat up abruptly and turned to her. "Hey, want to have sex? I want to have sex. Since the lights are on and we're both awake and everything."

She frowned and reached over and turned off the lamp. "Good night," she muttered.

He lay back down and rolled over. "Thought that would do the trick."