[July 19-29]

Tami confessed to Eric that she was worried about him getting hurt by his mother. He responded with tight lips and a clenched jaw. Whenever Tami tried to broach the subject, he would change it. Things were not bad between them; they made love regularly, talked about other things, and dealt with the busy details of their lives, but there was an unspoken tension around that one particular subject.

Eric's mom would call him on the phone every night, and Tami would leave him alone to talk to her, listening to his happy laugh drift from the kitchen, and worrying about how attached he was already becoming.

They found an apartment six miles from Bowie High, in a relatively safe neighborhood in Arlington. It had a small balcony, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen and breakfast nook, and a tiny laundry room with linen closet. Mr. Taylor installed an old washer and dryer for them that he'd picked up from a job site and fixed up himself, and then he had three of his workmen help move their things in.

Karen hired a new nanny for Andrew, and Tami threw herself further into the job hunt, with follow-up calls and a continued search for additional openings. Her list was full of striken-through school names, all but two, which were still "considering her application." She was growing increasingly nervous.

Eric commuted from the new apartment to Dallas for his certification program, and he watched game tape in the evenings and began to draw up lesson plans for his history classes. One Saturday, when they took Julie to the park, Eric got involved in a pick-up game of football. The other guys, who ranged in age from 17 to 30, were impressed by his skills and asked if he'd ever thought of playing in the amateur leagues. "No time for that," he said with a smile.

[July 30]

Tami was finishing up the unpacking one evening when the phone rang. Only a handful of people had her new number, and two of them were the schools that were still considering her. She rushed for the phone, hoping to be asked to an interview, but it was only Shelley.

And Shelley was crying.

Through the tears on the other end of the line, Tami eventually made out her sister's words. Shelley had caught Javier in bed with one of her roommates. The wedding was off.

Tami pretended not to be relieved and instead consoled her sister as best she could. She offered to make phone calls for Shelley to the would-be attendees so that her little sister wouldn't have to go through the pain of telling person after person not to come.

"I'm keeping the car he bought me," Shelley said. "And the engagement ring. Maybe I'll pawn the ring and go to the Bahamas."

"Or maybe you can pawn it and pay for a semester of community college," Tami suggested.

Shelley sniffed. "Maybe I'll use it for cosmology school."

"You want to study science?"

"No! I want to do people's hair and make-up!"

Tami sighed. "Cosmetology, Shell. Cosmetology."

When she hung up the phone, Eric was standing behind her. He set an open box on the kitchen counter. "I found what you were looking for. The mugs got mixed in with a box of Julie's outgrown clothes."

"Stumpy must have packed that one," she said. The boxes had been sitting in storage all summer.

"Yeah. He wrapped each cup in a different outfit. Engineering genius, that one." He began unraveling a cup from a shirt. "I need to call him and see how he's doing. The Bears might be getting a new head coach soon."

"I talked to Gretchen the other day. She said Stumpy's being moved to wide receiver for his last season."

"Really? Huh. He might do well there." He slid a cup into the cupboard.

"Could you put them in the sink? I'll wash them first."

He took it down and put it in the sink. "You know who I haven't heard from in ages? Joey. You ever talk to Sarah?"

Tami had tried to stay in touch with Sarah, but they'd drifted apart. She thought that high school friendship, once so dear to her, was being phased out - not intentionally, and not with any malice, but gradually and inevitably. It made her sad to think that a chapter was closing on her life. "I got a letter from her in June." Tami had written back six weeks ago, but had not received a reply. "She said she'd got a job and was moving in with that law school boyfriend of hers."

"So no chance for Joey for sure, now, huh?"

Tami shook her head. "She wrote that Joey got a job as a financial analyst in Atlanta."

"Atlanta? Wow. I thought he'd be in Texas forever."

"Nothing is forever," she said with a sigh. "Least of all high school friendships."

He kissed the top of her head and returned to his project. "Was that Shelley on the phone?" he asked as he unraveled a pair of little pants from around a mug. "What happened?"

Tami told him.

"Can't say I'm surprised," he said. "She's not still marrying him, is she?"

"No."

"Good. Then can I meet all the Bowie coaches for a drink Saturday? I need to get to know them before my first day."

"Sure," she said, a little annoyed that he was so nonchalant about Shelley's broken heart. "I don't know what happened to my baby sister, Eric. She's such a flake now. She used to get As and Bs in junior high. She's not dumb. But sometimes she says and does the dumbest things."

He set a mug in the sink. "She's always been a flake, as long as I've known her."

"Well not as long as I've known her."

"People change," he said. "Sometimes for the worse. But sometimes for the better. Like my mom."

It was the first mention he'd made of his mother to Tami in days.

[August 2]

Tami was talking to the pastor's wife when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, Julie devouring the last bite of a second doughnut she had snuck from the fellowship table. Tami had allowed the two year old only half of one. She scolded her daughter and wiped her hands and then looked around for Eric, whom she found out front, tossing a football back and forth with one of the deacons.

"You ready, babe?" he asked her as the approached. "I've got to get to that brunch with my mom."

On the drive back to the apartment, he said, "Let's stop church hopping and just settle here."

"Hopping?" Tami asked. "This is only the second church we've been to. There are two more I want to try before we decide."

"This one has sports leagues, Tami! They've even got spring flag football. I could actually play that. I won't be coaching then. I mean, spring training...but I'd have weekends free."

"Didn't you think the pastor's sermon was a little dry?"

"Sermons are always boring. They're sermons. Why do you think I draw play diagrams on those little notepads?"

"I didn't like the music much either."

"Those were old school hymns, Tami. That's good stuff."

"Wasn't it a little too big for you? Didn't you say no more than 500 members? I think they have 700."

"Nah. It's about right. A little big, but that's probably how it can have sports leagues."

"Let's just try two more, and if we don't like either one better, we'll come back here. You can join the football league even if you don't go to the church, right?"

"Yeah, probably, but - "

"- Doo-nut!" Julie shouted from her car seat in the extended cab of the pick-up. It was cramped back there. Tami needed to think about buying a second car soon. "I like doo-nuts!"

"See," Eric said. "Julie likes the church."

[*]

After Eric left to meet his mother for brunch, Julie took a rare nap. Perhaps she was experiencing a sugar crash. While the little one was snoozing in her new bedroom, Tami sat at the table in the breakfast nook and proofread her resume yet again. She wanted to see if maybe she'd overlooked some egregious error.

The front door opened and closed.

Tami had not expected Eric to be home for another hour. "Did you forget something, hon?" When she glanced up from her resume, she noticed how dark his eyes had grown and how his jaw line quivered.

"Yeah," he said. "I forgot not to be a goddamn fool." And then he kicked the kitchen chair that was on the other side of the table so hard that it went flying and slammed into the kitchen bar.

Tami winced, but she didn't react negatively. Instead she stood and came close to him, her hands in the back pockets of her jean shorts, unsure if she should try to touch him.

"She asked for something," he said bitterly.

"Money?"

"No. I told you she's a lawyer and doesn't need money."

"Then what?" Tami asked.

"My kidney."