The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess

by Regina Hale Sutherland

  His face flushed red, and he sputtered, “But…”

  “Homework,” she reminded him. “You were supposed to make coffee and eggs this morning.” But he hadn’t even been up when she’d left. “Like you learned last night. You didn’t forget already?”

  “I’m just taking that class to help Millie with the situation with her son.” His tone was doubtful, as if he was beginning to realize she’d had another motive for getting him to join.

  “So? It wouldn’t hurt you to learn something new.” She’d thought her irritability was courtesy of the caffeine. But she doubted that now. It was courtesy of this man to whom she was married. This stranger.

  She needed her friends. Until Wally’s retirement, Theresa would have never guessed that a woman could be married and still be lonely.

  Hand shaking, she reached for the carafe and held it under the faucet to fill with water. But strong fingers closed over hers.

  “Let me,” Wally said, taking the pot from her hand.

  She looked up at him, and his green eyes, once so bright with intelligence and energy, held a faint glimmer of that former brightness instead of the bleary fog that had filled them since his retirement. She sputtered, “But…”

  “I remember how,” he insisted, but he stared at her instead of the pot, which overflowed with water.

  She wasn’t sure if he was talking only about making coffee… or something else.

  Millie fidgeted as she waited on the front porch of her son’s house. She knew there was a spare key hidden in the hollowed-out newel post at the bottom of the steps. If she tipped it, the post would open on a hidden hinge and reveal the key and she could let herself in.

  If Steven were still living in the house, she might have. But things were different now. Steven was as much a guest in his home as Millie was.

  She had “dropped by,” hoping to help both her son and daughter-in-law. Except that no one was home, so she waited outside with a casserole bowl in her hands. She should have called first, and she would have except that every time she had, Audrey had found an excuse for her not to visit. Millie had thought that was all they were, excuses, because Audrey didn’t want to hear Millie pressuring her to take Steven back. Undoubtedly she got enough of that from Brigitte.

  But now Millie realized her daughter-in-law had probably been telling the truth; she was too busy for visitors. So busy that she wasn’t even home. Millie considered leaving the casserole on her doorstep like she’d done for Charles in those months that she’d thought his wife had died.

  “Mom?” Audrey yelled with the exasperation of someone who’d called her more than once.

  Millie turned toward where her daughter-in-law stood next to her car in the driveway. She hadn’t even heard her drive up. Kim claimed the memory was the first thing to go, but maybe it was the hearing. However, at her last check-up her doctor had declared Millie’s hearing perfect.

  Audrey wore scrubs, in that universal green that was a mix between sage and pastel aqua. Her hair struggled free of the elastic band holding it in a haphazard ponytail. Wisps of blond framed her face, highlighting the dark circles beneath her eyes. She didn’t look any less miserable than Steven. Despite what he believed, Millie thought there was hope for a reconciliation.

  “Mom?” Audrey said again, in a questioning manner… either of her presence or her distracted state of mind.

  “I knew you were starting your internship, so I brought something by that you or Brigitte can heat up for your dinner.”

  “Why are you standing outside with it?” Audrey asked. “You know where the key is.”

  Millie shrugged, unwilling to admit how uncomfortable she was now in her son’s house. “I just got here,” she maintained. It wasn’t exactly a lie; she had no idea how long she’d stood on the porch.

  “You looked like you were a million miles away,” Audrey said, as she stepped around Millie to unlock the front door, then pushed it open. “Come in,” she said, stepping into the living room.

  Millie had rarely been in this room; it was the place for receiving strangers, through the front door. Family walked through the garage and down the hall to the kitchen. This room, with its sterile white walls and light beige carpeting, didn’t even look lived in. While Millie respected the cleanliness of white walls and the floral couches, she wanted to feel at home in her son’s house… for however much longer it might be his house.

  “So how is everything going?” Millie asked.

  Audrey turned and studied her through narrowed eyes, undoubtedly gauging her sincerity. “Good. I’m interning at St. Mary’s, in the ER, so it’s busy. It’s interesting.” She dropped the forced cheerfulness with a sigh and admitted, “Exhausting.”

  Millie hadn’t needed Audrey’s confession to figure that out. She put her free arm around her daughter-in-law’s shoulders. “Ah, honey…”

  “It’s not that I don’t love it,” Audrey hastened to explain. “Because I do. I know this is what I want to do…”

  “But?”

  “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

  “I’m sure it is. But you’re a smart, strong woman. You’ll handle it just fine, Audrey.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself,” Audrey said, followed by a little self-deprecating chuckle. “I don’t think I’m listening, though.”

  “You and Steven have that in common. He didn’t listen when you said you needed help.”

  “Mom,” Audrey’s tone cautioned Millie to back off.

  Millie had made that mistake before, when she sensed there were problems in their marriage and didn’t want to interfere. “Audrey, you don’t have to do this alone.”

  “I told you already that I appreciate it, but I don’t want your help.” But even as she said it, she took the casserole bowl from Millie’s hands.

  Millie followed her into the kitchen that she’d helped decorate with granny apple green walls and an apple border. Unlike the plain living room, this room was bright and cheerful. “I wasn’t talking about me.”

  Although she did intend to help.

  “Steven?” Audrey snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.”

  Millie hoped it would.

  “He didn’t help me when I asked,” Audrey reminded her, “why would he now?”

  “Because he can.”

  Audrey turned away from the butcher-block counter where she had set the casserole and lifted a dark blond eyebrow. “What?”

  Honesty forced Millie to admit, “Well, he can make coffee and eggs. But it’s a start. He’s taking a class on cooking and housekeeping.”

  Audrey’s green eyes widened and her mouth fell open. “He is?”

  Millie wasn’t about to share the name of the class with her daughter-in-law. She didn’t want to give her any ideas.

  “Where is he taking this class?” Audrey asked, skepticism heavy in her voice.

  “At Hilltop’s community center.”

  “So this is your idea?” Audrey answered her own question with a nod, then added another, “You’re teaching it?”

  “With Kim and Theresa’s help.”

  Audrey shook her head. “Mom, you’re so sweet to try. But you’re putting in all the effort, not him.”

  “He’s taking the class, Audrey.”

  “Why?”

  She’d rather not answer than respond honestly to that question, that his brother had goaded him.

  Audrey pounced on her hesitation. “So he’s not taking it for me? For our marriage?”

  “He hasn’t admitted it,” Millie confessed, “but I’m sure he is.” Or at least the hopeless romantic in her was certain.

  “It’s going to take more than coffee and eggs for me to ask him to move back home, Mom.”

  And Audrey hadn’t even tasted his ground-laden coffee and eggshell omelet. “We’re going to teach them more than that,” Millie promised, and she was determined to make sure that they actually learned.

  “Them?”

  “We have a whole cl
ass of…” She caught herself from saying bachelors, which wasn’t accurate anyway. Not all of them were. Yet. Millie had an uneasy feeling that Wally might be in the same situation as Steven soon, about to be kicked out of his home.

  Guilt nagged at Millie for having skipped the after-aerobics gabfest with Theresa and Kim. Kim hadn’t planned on going, either. But Theresa had. She’d seemed anxious to talk, as if she really needed to. Despite his attendance in their class, her impatience with Wally was growing.

  “Class of what?” Brigitte asked, as she joined her mother and grandmother in the kitchen. She tossed her backpack on the floor, where it toppled over.

  “Guys,” Millie said. “We’re teaching them to cook and clean and do other household chores.”

  Brigitte’s dark eyes brightened with hope. “And Dad’s in it?”

  “Yes,” Millie said, giving her granddaughter a quick, greeting hug, “he’s taking the course.”

  “That’s great!” the teenager exclaimed, excitement bubbling out of her. “Then he can come home—”

  Audrey shook her head. “That’s not for you to decide. That’s between me and your—”

  “Father,” Brigitte interrupted, her pretty face pulled into a sulky pout. “I know. You keep saying that.”

  “Your grandma brought us dinner,” Audrey said, pointing to the casserole bowl, probably hoping to distract her daughter from an argument. “We won’t be able to eat it until we get home again. We have to go, Mom. I have to drop Brigitte at practice, then do some studying.”

  From the clothes piled on the dining table, either dirty ones that had really overflowed the hamper, or clean ones that hadn’t been folded and put away yet, Millie surmised that Audrey had more than studying that needed to be done. “I can stay here and take care of some things for you…”

  “That’s nice of you to offer,” Audrey said, seeming to choose her words carefully, “but…”

  She didn’t have to say it again. She didn’t want Millie’s help. Millie nodded. “Okay, then. But let’s plan on getting together another day, a girls’ night out. We can go shopping or to a movie.”

  Brigitte nodded and sniffled, on the verge of tears again. The teenage years were emotional enough without her parents having problems.

  Problems. That was all Millie would consider it. She wouldn’t even think about how this could end. She wouldn’t let it end. not even if she had to teach the class seven nights a week.

  But would it be enough? As she hugged her granddaughter and daughter-in-law goodbye, she thought about what Audrey had said. Maybe it wasn’t that the eggs and coffee weren’t enough to get Steven moved back home. Maybe she meant that the classes wouldn’t help what was wrong between them.

  But Millie couldn’t consider that a possibility. The classes had to help. She wouldn’t give up until they did. When Millie was done with him, Steven would give Martha Stewart a run for her money.

  And Audrey a run for her heart.

  Chapter Ten

  “Positive reinforcement is hugging your husband when he does a load of laundry. Negative reinforcement is telling him he used too much detergent.”

  —Dr. Joyce Brothers

  Martha Stewart probably didn’t do laundry. No doubt she sent that out. Maybe that’s what Millie should have advised her class to do.

  The thuds and pounding of an uneven load in the washer echoed off the walls of the utility room in the community center basement. Water rushed and suds foamed, bubbling up beneath the top cover of the rattling and shaking machine. It knocked against the dryer next to it, which rubbed against the machine on its other side. Four sets of washers and dryers were lined up along one wall of the big, square room with its white laminate walls and fluorescent lights. Only one washer thrashed around, the one her sons were using.

  “Which one of you loaded it?” she demanded. They stood behind her in the doorway.

  “Mitchell put the stuff in,” Steven, always the first to confess, said. “I put in the detergent.”

  “I think you used more than I directed,” Millie said, pointing to the foam sliding down the sides of the machine. She rushed forward, bobbing and weaving with the machine as it thrashed around. Unable to reach the controls, she leaned against the foamy front and fumbled with the dial, pushing it in to shut down the cycle. The washer shuddered once, then again, before subsiding onto the cement floor like roadkill in its death throes.

  The suds soaked through her knit shirt and pants, reminding her of the night she wound up in Charles’s sprinklers. “Why didn’t you shut it off?” she asked, patience wearing thin.

  Now she knew why she hadn’t bothered teaching them household chores before; it wasn’t that she was too old-fashioned or preferred doing it herself. She just didn’t possess the necessary patience to be a teacher.

  “You didn’t teach us how,” Mitchell said, his brown eyes sparkling with amusement as his mouth twitched into a wide grin, totally unrepentant.

  He had her there. She hadn’t covered what to do if they overloaded the machine with clothes and soap. Exasperated, she reached through the foam to lift the cover. Bubbles floated up, drifting around the room, while others popped between her fingers, leaving her skin wet and sticky.

  “What did you guys put in here?”

  At the last class, she’d given each student a laundry bag to fill and bring next time. Before she’d sent the students to the basement to do their washing, she’d given them instructions on how to sort their clothes. She hadn’t actually checked to see what they’d brought. So she plunged her hand inside the machine, pulling up jeans and more jeans, which she transferred from the battered washer to the deep utility sink next to it. A shoe dropped free of the soaked clothes, tumbling to the floor where the cleats scratched the wet cement.

  “Golf cleats?”

  Mitchell shrugged. “The shoes were stinking pretty bad.”

  She didn’t want to think about what the cleats had done to the inside of the washing machine, not to mention the motor. She really shouldn’t have included her boys in the group that had gone first. But then she’d thought they would be more likely to remember the instructions if they went immediately after she gave them. Of course, to remember them, they would have had to listen to them.

  Mr. Lindstrom, with his screeching hearing aid, already had his small load in the dryer, which hummed quietly in the row of machines. And two other groups of men had finished with the washers as well. They’d all gone upstairs for the lessons Kim and Theresa were giving.

  This was the third class, on Tuesday of the second week. Some of the students were starting to come along pretty well. Last class, they’d learned how to heat cans of soup and make sandwiches, both cold and hot. And of course they’d covered dusting, one of Millie’s favorite chores. The students still struggling were, of course, Mitchell and Steven. They’d even messed up the cold sandwiches, overloading the bread with mayo and pickle juice until it had dissolved into mush.

  “You put all this in one load?” she asked, as she unwound a few more dripping pairs of jeans from the washer drum.

  “Yeah.” Steven sighed. “He’s a slob. He dirtied that much stuff in just a couple of days.”

  “Hey, a few of those jeans are yours,” Mitchell protested.

  “A few?” Millie asked. “There must be at least ten pair in here.”

  “Told you he’s a slob.”

  “What’d you do? Put them in with a shoe horn?” Millie asked. Even her damp clothes couldn’t cool off her simmering temper. What am I going to do with you boys?

  The question reverberated inside her head; she didn’t dare ask it aloud. She knew what they’d advise her to do, fail them out of the class. Were their little mishaps accidents, or attempts to manipulate her the way she had them?

  She wouldn’t put anything past them. They were too clever. “Go upstairs,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

  She could have had them clean up, but they’d take so long that they’d miss Theresa a
nd Kim’s lessons on starching and ironing and loading a dishwasher. She hoped her friends were more successful teachers today than she’d been. Laundry lessons had been a mistake. Maybe the whole class was.

  Not only wasn’t she teaching her sons anything, she wasn’t learning what she’d wanted to. She still found it easier to just do things herself. Frustration pounded at her temples. She slammed the lid on the washer, with half the pairs of jeans her sons had packed into it, and tried to push it back into place beside the dryer. Her shoes slipped on the sudsy floor, and her hands slid off the wet front.

  If not for strong hands catching her around the waist, she would have fallen onto the cement. As it was she could barely regain her feet; they dangled above the floor as the hands held her up. Her heart pounded as hard as the cleats had against the sides of the washer, knocking her as off balance as the oversized load had the machine.

  “Whoa,” Charles’s deep voice rumbled close to her ear. His hands tightened around her waist for just a moment, until she regained her footing and pulled away. “You’re all wet again…”

  “At least it wasn’t my fault this time,” she said, her voice shaking almost as much as her body. She had to be cold. Although it was warm outside, the basement was cool, and her clothes were damp.

  “It wasn’t your fault the first time,” he reminded her.

  Her mind remained as blank as it had since he touched her. “What?”

  “It was the cat’s.”

  The cat. That was why she never lied. She couldn’t remember fact from fiction. “Yes,” she agreed, barely resisting the urge to squirm.

  She really should tell him the truth; it wasn’t as if she could embarrass herself any more. But then how did she admit to being jealous of a shadow in his living room window?

  Jealous? Until this moment, she hadn’t even admitted that to herself.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, reaching out to touch her cheek. Against her skin, his fingertips were cool and damp from contact with her wet clothes.

  She glanced down at herself, at the dark spots of water and the graying foam from the suds liberally dotting her navy blue shirt and khaki pants. “I’m fine,” she lied, again. So much for honesty.