Ch 24 – Working Girls (7)

"Mother!" Angela's head whipped around.

"Oh, don't mind me," Mona said as she stepped into the kitchen with a broad grin on her face. "I'm not exactly shocked. No, wait. I am! I'm shocked you actually took my advice!"

"What advice?" Tony asked.

Only now did he notice that he was still holding Angela's hands. He let go of them suddenly, as if he had touched a hot stove. It was an old reflex, useless now that Mona had caught them. The jig was up, once and for all, they were going to put their cards on the table right now, he could see it in Angela's eyes when she looked at him after he dropped her hands.

"Not to make everything so complicated," Mona explained matter-of-factly. "Do the kids know?"

"Shh! No!" Tony hissed. "And don't you tell them. We're … we're going to do it our way, in our own time," he finished in a much calmer voice and took one of Angela's hands again, running his thumb over her knuckles. This was all getting way too stressful.

"And soon," Angela added. "But right now, we're late for the train, Mother." She got up, squeezing Tony's hand before letting go.

Mona gawked at her. "Are you kidding me!? How do you expect me to go to work when there is so much you two have to explain to me! How did this happen? Was it seeing him in his tight little baseball uniform when you went to St. Louis?" She waggled her eyebrows and pointed her finger back and forth between Tony and Angela.

"I promise I will tell you more in the car," Angela offered. "But please, can we get going now? I'm driving."

"Oh, alright," Mona acquiesced, "but whatever you have to say, it better be good. And aren't there supposed to be three of us? Where is Sam?"

"It's just you and me. I'll explain later," Angela reiterated, already on her way to the den to retrieve her briefcase.

Tony busied himself by clearing the table, but he felt Mona's gaze on his back the entire time.

"What?" he finally asked and turned to look at her.

Mona inclined her head. Gone was the lewd grin, replaced by a genuine, happy smile. "Nothing. I'm just very glad the two of you managed to unstick your heads from your-"

"Mona!"

"Alright. I'm very glad you're finally allowing yourselves to be happy."

Tony felt his ears grow warm. What was the point in denying anything any longer. Two or three months from now, the whole family would be able to see just how happy they had allowed themselves to be.

"Thanks. We're … we are. Happy. Very happy."

Mona nodded, her eyes sparkling. "I knew it."

"What?"

"That this would work out."

"Wh-"

"When I first met you, that day in my old apartment building. I could tell right away."

"Oh, Mone, come on."

"I'm serious! I knew you'd be good together."

Tony was sure that his ears were flaming red by now. "Well, congratulations. You were right."

"Thank you. And now please try not to ruin it!" Within a split-second, Mona's smile had turned into a warning frown.

Tony raised his hands. "Message received."

Mona winked at him. "Good. And so you don't get the wrong idea, bub. I'm going to give Angela the same speech in the car. You've both got a special talent for making things difficult, and I'm not sure how much more drama I can tolerate in this lifetime."

ooooooooo ... ooooooooo

"And now spill it!" Mona demanded as soon as Angela had backed the Jaguar out of the driveway while explaining to her in so many words that Sam wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be going to work today.

"It's not so different from what you suggested earlier," Angela said in a level voice, keeping her eyes on the road. "Tony and I … we had a couple of conversations over the past few weeks. And the result is that we're dating."

"In secret." Mona added.

"Well, yes. Until this morning at least."

"Why?"

Angela sighed. "Because, as you know quite well, things are a little complicated between us. With the kids, and his job, and Michael's new baby …" Immediately Angela wanted to bite her tongue for letting this last part slip.

Mona, ever the bloodhound, was on the trail right away. "What does Michael's baby have to do with Tony and you dating? You're not pregnant already, are you?" she cackled.

"Of course not!" Angela retorted, relieved that her mother obviously thought that that would have been an absurd turn of events. She would find out soon enough how dead-on she was. But not yet.

"We didn't want to confuse the kids while we were still working out the details," she continued. "Jonathan especially. He took Michael's news so hard."

"Uh-huh," Mona said, and Angela felt her mother's eyes on her face. She prayed that she wouldn't start blushing.

"We are going to tell the kids over the holidays. That way, we have some time to talk as a family, and we can all settle into this new … situation."

"Only you can make happy news sound terribly clinical, dear." Mona clicked her tongue and slapped Angela's thigh. "Aren't you just ecstatic about this?"

Now Angela's face began to turn red. "I'm very happy. We both are. But it's … still new. And we have some things left to figure out."

"Like what?"

"What we are going to do about Tony's job, for example. We don't want people to get the wrong idea."

"And what idea would that be?"

"That we're doing something wrong here."

"Trust me, dear. Half of New England is going to breathe a sigh of relief when they can stop pretending that what you were doing before this was ever right."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Almost from day one, there has been enough static electricity between the two of you to light up a small city."

"Like Dubuque?" Angela had no idea where that had come from.

"Wherever. It would be a shame to let what you've got go to waste."

Angela sighed and felt a gush coming on. "It really is beautiful, Mother. Do you remember when we talked about what Tony said to me right before they took out his appendix?"

"When he said he loved you, but you were too chicken to bring it up later?"

"Yes. You said, 'But what if it's good, really good.' Well, it is. It feels so right. And it is really, really good."

"I take it we're not just talking about kissing and hand-holding here?"

Naturally, her mother's mind had to go there, but Angela didn't have it in her to freeze her out now. "If you must know, we're not. But that's all I'm going to say about it."

"That's more than enough, dear," Mona said with a quiet smile in her voice. "I saw the look on your face after Thanksgiving."

"So you knew!" Angela cried.

"Of course. I just decided to take a hands-off approach this time. Let you two crazy kids find your own way. Or did you seriously believe anybody could tolerate four days on the fake Orient Express? Saturday and Sunday, I got re-acquainted with a very nice man whose spotlight I happened to steal a couple of years ago. You may remember him as Santa Claus. Well, his real name is Bill, and as it turns out, he was very eager to forgive me."

"Mother!"

"What? You weren't the only one who had a memorable Thanksgiving."

Apparently not, Angela thought. The difference being that she and Tony had come away from it with much more than beautiful memories. But that was an announcement for another day.

ooooooooo ... ooooooooo

"So," her dad said. "Listen. I'm in a hurry because I got a lot of errands to run before school. But I have this week's list. Pick something. If you manage to check four things off, we'll call it a successful day."

With that, he handed Samantha a piece of paper on which he had written a long, tightly spaced list of household tasks, sorted by the days of the week. So far, only a couple of items were crossed out.

"You didn't think that I'd let you off easy, did you?" It sounded serious, but he said it with a kind smile.

Sam pursed her lips. "Dad, it's fine. Like I said, I'm not looking for an easy way out here, and I want to learn. 'Domestic Engineering is a very honorable profession'," she quoted him. "Remember?"

"Okay, good. Your head feeling better?"

"A little," she lied. Her head didn't hurt at all. She didn't know why she had even said that it did. Maybe because she wanted to soften the blow a little.

These past two days at the office, everybody had been nice enough. But Angela seemed to be under a lot of pressure, and Sam couldn't shake the feeling that she didn't really want her there. On both Monday and Tuesday morning, she had hardly spoken to her, not in the car, not on the train. As soon as they arrived at the Agency, Angela locked herself in her office, and only came out to bark orders at Mona or Sam, or she rushed past them without a word.

Then Sam had put those important papers in the broken cabinet. She had never seen Angela so angry before. Not even when they had their big blow-up about Chad McCann's stupid love song.

And on Tuesday, she told everybody at the office that Angela would take her to the Russian Tea Room, only to have her forget about it. Sam waited for more than half an hour before someone finally thought to tell her that Angela had left and wouldn't be back until the afternoon.

Sam didn't know what she had expected. Angela was the boss, and she was terribly busy. She had probably only said yes to the internship because she felt obligated.

Still, it was hard to tell her to her face that she didn't want to work there anymore. Angela had looked so shocked and surprised that Sam wondered for a moment if maybe she was blowing this all out of proportion. That was why she had tacked on a lie about not feeling well. Maybe it would have been smarter to pretend to be sick right out of the gate.

But it was too late now. She had made her bed, and she would have to lie in it. Quite literally: The first open items on Tony's list were the beds.

"Alright," he said, already standing by the back door. "Are you going to be okay here?"

Sam nodded. "Yes, Dad. Good luck on your exam."

"Thanks, honey. I'll be back around two. And then we'll talk."

"Yup." Sam nodded solemnly and watched as her dad shouldered his backpack and left the kitchen.

The beds.

Usually, her dad changed the sheets on Mondays, but this was finals week, and he hadn't gotten around to it yet. Or so she assumed. It was completely unlike him not to get stuff done on time, no matter what else was going on.

But then again, these past couple of weeks, everything had felt unusual around the house. Sam couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was. As recently as this summer, everything had been normal: Jonathan was his annoying self, her dad was Mr. Perfect, and Angela was … Angela. Kind, and smart, and successful. Okay, she could be a drag sometimes. But wasn't that what everybody's mothers were like?

And then, near the end of the summer, something changed. The overall vibe became different somehow. Her dad was suddenly extremely busy with school, and ever since Angela had hired Jack, she seemed to spend even more (instead of less) time at the office and in her study, supposedly working.

Whenever the family was all together, there was a certain kind of tension in the air. If she hadn't talked to Jack's girlfriend on the phone on Monday, Sam would have suspected that Angela and Jack were having an affair.

Then came the fall and Thanksgiving, and Angela and her dad started handling Jonathan with kid gloves because Heather and Michael were going to have a baby. Sam didn't quite understand what the big deal was. It wasn't like the baby would take up time that Michael would otherwise have spent with Jonathan. His dad hardly called, he never came by, and Jonathan had only been out there to visit him a handful of times.

Sam wasn't necessarily upset about the lack of attention from her dad and Angela. She could talk on the phone a lot more freely since they had become so immersed in school and work, to the point that they became almost invisible around the house.

But it was still a weird shift. All summer, they spent every night together, out in the backyard or on the sofa, watching television, reading, or playing cards. These cozy nights – and the fact that neither of them seemed to be dating other people anymore – had first given Sam the idea that maybe their trip to St. Louis and their first date this fall really meant something.

Now she just didn't know anymore.

Her and Angela's conversation at the airport on Thanksgiving morning had confused her more than anything. "We'll do our best," Angela had said. What did that mean?

Sam knew that Angela and her dad liked each other – hell, they were head over heels in love with each other! Everybody could see that. But for some reason, they didn't want to do anything about it. Maybe Angela's weird mood this week had something to do with her dad.

Sam shook her head and slowly made her way through the living room and up the stairs.

She had her own love life to worry about. If she wanted to go ice skating with Eric on Friday, she would probably have to return to work at the Agency, she realized with a start. He had suggested going to the rink in front of the big Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, a stone's throw from the Bower Agency.

In fact, their talk about Eric had been the only good moment between her and Angela this week.

On the train back home on Monday night, after the broken cabinet incident had been resolved, Angela had suddenly asked about him, and Sam had told her … some version of the truth.

"At first I didn't like him. You know, he and Scott kept treating Bonnie and me like little kids."

"And then what happened?"

Angela sat with her head against the train window, looking as if she was ready to go to sleep. But she stayed awake the entire time Sam told her about Eric's teasing, and their ride on the ski lift, and playing cards with Bonnie and Scott, and how handsome he looked in his suit and tie for Thanksgiving dinner.

What she didn't mention were the beers they drank while they played cards, and the way Eric kept staring at her. With Jesse, things had been … sweet. Sweet, and ultimately harmless. This didn`t feel harmless at all, and part of her didn't want it to be. It was a heady rush to feel wanted by a man.

"I don't know what you see in him," Bonnie had said to her, to which Sam's haughty reply had been, "He's your brother's best friend, it's different for you."

"If you ask me, he's an idiot."

But Bonnie had still vacated their shared room to go watch a movie with Scott, so Sam and Eric could spend some time alone on Saturday night.

Things between them had maybe gone a little too far, but Sam didn't really regret it. And she had stopped him in time, telling him that her dad would kill him if anything else happened.

"I guess then I'll have to meet your dad and convince him that I'm a good guy," Eric said with a grin, and with his hand still under her shirt and his thigh pressed between her legs.

"Yeah, maybe you should," Sam had said, half serious and half … not.

In the end, Angela had agreed to talk to Tony about letting Sam go out with Eric.

Sam wondered whether she would keep that promise, or whether she had forgotten all about it.

By now, she was standing in the upstairs hallway, trying to decide where to start. Something drew her to Angela's room.

Back when she was younger, she had sometimes asked to sleep in Angela's bed when she had a bad dream. Her dad tended to snore, and Angela didn't. A night spent in her king-size bed was just so much more restful. Also, it felt nice to close her eyes and imagine that it was her own mother sleeping next to her. Cuddling up together in her parents' bed while her dad was on the road was one of the few clear memories Sam had of her early childhood.

Now that she was older, she hardly ever came in here. The last time had been when she helped Angela get ready for her disastrous date with her dad. She scoffed at the memory. Maybe their family situation was really a lot more unusual than she usually liked to admit.

With a pile of fresh sheets in her arms, Sam opened the door to Angela's bedroom. Even though she had a clear mandate – her dad's list of chores – she felt like an intruder, going in here by herself while Angela wasn't even home.

But a job was a job, and so Sam put the sheets down on the dresser and got to work.

First, she folded up the comforter and placed it in the rocking chair, on top of that creepy Raggedy Ann doll. She had no idea how Angela managed to sleep in here, all alone with this thing.

Then she pulled the pillowcases off the pillows and placed the pillows themselves on top of the comforter. After she had pulled the blanket off the bed and let it drop to the floor, she noticed an item of clothing on the mattress.

She blinked and looked again.

It was a pair of white panties. White, lacy panties. Didn't Angela have a hamper in her bathroom? Why would she-

Never mind, she didn't want to think about that.

Sam slid her fingers in between the mattress and the fitted bedsheet and yanked on it, hoping to get it to snap off the mattress in one go, taking the panties with it.

It didn't work, of course. She had to pull again, and finally the sheet came loose everywhere. With it, another article of clothing surfaced that seemed to have been wedged between the mattress and the headboard.

It looked safer than the panties, and when Sam picked it up and held it out in front of her, she recognized it immediately. It was one of her dad's undershirts. In Angela's bed. She dropped the shirt like a hot potato. Either Angela had taken to sleeping with her dad's clothes, or there was more going on here.

Even though she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about her discovery, Sam's curiosity – and her sleuthing instincts – took over. Looking around Angela's bedroom, she wondered where she might find any other clues. The obvious first choice was Angela's nightstand. The nightstand was also a clear breach of trust. But she couldn't help herself.

Carefully, she slid the top drawer open and peered inside. There were a box of tissues and a pair of glasses. A wristwatch that had stopped, and what looked like a leather bookmark. Probably something Jonathan had made, it was hideous enough. Sam snorted to herself.

She closed the drawer and opened the one below it. And almost immediately she wished she hadn't, as she set eyes on a large, half-empty box of Trojan condoms. But not only that – there were one or two opened wrappers in there, too. Maybe this was a little more than she wanted to know.

Sam bumped the drawer shut again and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Were her dad and Angela really sleeping together? But when? And for how long had this been going on?

Sam knew that she should stop right now. This was none of her business. But then again – in a way, it was. She lived in this household, too, and she wasn't a child anymore. Tony and Angela were her parents, for all intents and purposes, and she deserved to know the truth.

The other two drawers in the nightstand were less interesting. There was nothing in there but advertising reports and romance novels.

Sam gathered the sheets in her arms, careful to get the panties, too, and deposited everything in the hamper in Angela's bathroom. Her dad's shirt would have to go in the hamper in his room later on.

Standing in Angela's luxurious bathroom, Sam's gaze fell onto the cupboards and drawers under the sink. She chewed her bottom lip. Looking in there was even worse than the nightstand. But again, she couldn't help herself.

Sam worked her way from the bottom up. There were hair products, and makeup, pads and tampons, various lotions and creams, razor blades, a hairdryer, and at least five or six different brushes and combs.

When she came to the smallest drawer at the top right of the cabinet, Sam had almost given up hopes of finding anything else. But this seemed to be the medicine drawer. There were various empty or half-empty prescription bottles, a thermometer, and another oblong object, wrapped in toilet paper.

Sam knew that she was home alone, but still she turned around to make sure nobody was looking over her shoulder before she took the small package out of the drawer and slowly began to unwrap it.

Two plastic sticks clattered onto the bathroom counter, and Sam knew what she was looking at, because Julia (who could be such an airhead sometimes!) had managed to get herself into a bit of a … situation … a few months ago and had enlisted the support of their friend group when she had to take a pregnancy test. Luckily, the test had come up negative.

Unlike these two, Sam realized.

Wait, WHAT!?

Suddenly, so many things made sense. Angela's mood. The tension around the house. There was something big going on, and her dad and Angela, old-fashioned as they were, were trying to keep it a secret.

Sam re-wrapped the tests and replaced them in the drawer just the way she had found them. Neither Angela nor her dad could ever find out. Snooping around like this was unforgivable.

While she put fresh sheets on Angela's bed and made the rounds through the other three bedrooms, Sam couldn't think about anything else but the changes that were in store for their family.

Not only were her dad and Angela having sex. They were going to have a baby! It was hard (and weird) to imagine. But she liked the general idea of a little sibling. And she suspected that it would make her dad and Angela happy, too.

Would they get married now? When was the baby going to be born? And why hadn't they told her and Jonathan and Mona? If Jonathan was upset about his new brother or sister in California, how was he going to feel about this one right here in Fairfield? Or was she misreading the entire situation? Maybe the tests were old? Maybe it wasn't her dad's baby? That seemed unlikely. But Sam had no way of knowing for sure.

She had so many questions, and nobody she could ask. Well, the one thing she could do was to return to the office tomorrow to keep a close eye on Angela.

ooooooooo ... ooooooooo

"Sam?" Tony called out when he returned home shortly after two in the afternoon.

He was eager to distract his mind from going over his answers on today's Statistics exam. It hadn't gone half bad, at least he had managed to complete all the problem sets. But some of the results just didn't seem plausible, odd numbers with way too many decimal places.

On the way home, he had once again reminded himself of his new mantra: He was doing his best here. Talking to Kathleen yesterday afternoon had helped calm him down a little. Everything would fall into place as long as he kept putting one foot in front of the other.

Of course, new problems and pressures were already on the horizon , now that they had let themselves get caught by Mona, and Sam suddenly didn't want to work at Angela's office anymore. All of this came on top of the as yet unresolved question of how they were going to tell the kids, and what would become of his job, and whether (no, when!) they should get married.

"Hey, Dad!" Sam said as she came bounding down the stairs. Her mood had certainly improved since this morning.

"Sam! You seem … happier."

"I am, Dad. Housework is very meditative, you know? I had time to reflect on some things."

"You did?" he asked and set down his backpack, still surprised.

"Yes. And I came to the conclusion that I can't go through life flip-flopping. Quitting when it's hard is not an option. I want to go back to work with Angela tomorrow morning. She's really busy right now, and I guess I took some things personally when I really shouldn't have."

"Wow." He almost couldn't believe it. "This is really … grown-up of you, Sam. You're making your old man proud."

Sam nodded. "That's the idea."

Tony exhaled. "Well, then. If you've had such a good day around here, show me the list!"

Sam pulled the piece of paper out of the pocket of her sweatpants and handed it to him.

"I put fresh sheets on the beds, vacuumed upstairs, dusted all the shelves I could reach, folded the laundry, and I clipped some coupons."

"I gotta say, I'm impressed." Looking at the crossed-out items on the list, Tony realized that it would have been better not to leave the beds to Sam. It felt highly inappropriate for his daughter to be changing the sheets on the bed where he and Angela …

His head had been elsewhere this morning, he had simply not connected the dots. But it was too late now, anyway, his only option was to act nonchalantly about this. "So you put fresh sheets on all the beds, huh? Mine too, and Angela's?"

"Yup," Sam confirmed, holding his gaze. "I figured you're so busy with school this week, it was the least I could do. No biggie."