Part 4

Day 5: The Plan

On Friday morning, Jon was up bright and early—or, at least early, for despite Daylight Savings Time there was little sunlight to be had. Leaving his sleeping wife as he had the day before, he snatched a quick five-minute shower, hung some clothes on his body, grabbed a granola bar for breakfast, and drove to work.

"You were saying you needed to leave early today, right?" Dr. Polkiss said by way of greeting.

"Yeah," said Jon, "about one-ish. We managed to line up some appointments to go look at apartments. I told them I'd have to clear it with my boss, and that if we didn't show to just assume I hadn't gotten time off."

"Now, why would you have to tell them such a thing as that," Dr. Polkiss asked, smiling. "Of course you can take off early, Jon. We'll cover for you. You don't really work all that much out there anyway," he added with a grin.

"Yeah, don't I know it. The other thing was... Sad as I am to say this, I might not be able to work here much longer. It's a great job, and I really enjoy it, and I was talking to Caitlyn about seeing if she can shift her classes around enough that she can maybe fill in the gap. But... A family costs money, and..."

"Yes it does," Dr. Leyton agreed, stepping in. "It costs a lot. What, is he handing in his two weeks' notice?"

"No, he's handing us notice of his two weeks' notice," said Dr. Polkiss.

"I'm still looking around," Jon said, "I don't have anything lined up yet. But if something does come up... I mean. I just... Need the money."

"Right," Dr. Leyton agreed, "family being the multi-million dollar industry it has become."

"We could just give him another raise," Dr. Polkiss said.

"No, we couldn't," Dr. Leyton said. "Jon, we love you and we love your work here, but to be perfectly blunt, we pay you more than you're worth. —As a worker, I mean. We pay you a lot less than you deserve as a person, but we didn't hire a person, we hired a secretary. And we're barely turning a profit as it is. Polkiss-Leyton Dentistry is a business, and we have to think like a business, no matter how much we want to be a charity."

"Which is pretty damn much," Dr. Polkiss agreed.

"But you'll probably be here for a while," Dr. Leyton said. "I mean, you don't have any major expenditures in your life coming up, do you?"

"Well... Apartment hunting," Jon said. "And, plus, Caitlyn's mom wrangled on a lot of her possessions. She's making us pay her almost $30,000 to buy it all from her, because she technically owns most of Caitlyn's things. That's like half our total savings."

Dr. Polkiss gaped at him.

Dr. Leyton gaped at him.

Then they looked at each other, and Jon had the impression of a couple of knights going for their swords.

"I swear," said Dr. Leyton. "If there was a test of whether someone two people were qualified to be parents, those two would not have failed. They wouldn't've flunked. They wouldn't even have washed out. They would have been dragged out the door and sterilized by Charles Darwin."

Jon sighed. "Yeah, but then where would Caitlyn be?"

"You gotta take the good with the bad," Dr. Polkiss agreed diplomatically.

"But that's a whole fuckload of bad," said Dr. Leyton. "Seriously. No parent should be allowed to load their kid down with this amount of bullshit."

Jon sighed. "Yes. That is true. But being true doesn't make it happen."

"So, what are you going to do," Dr. Polkiss asked.

"We're putting The Plan on them," said Jon. They'd spent about half of Thursday bringing people up to speed and refining the presentation. "We're only bringing in her grandparents, her uncle Max, and Pastor Pendleton, but we hope it'll be enough."

"Those are powerful names to Linda Delaney," said Dr. Polkiss. "Names to conjure with."

"When are you putting it on them?"

"Tonight."

Dr. Leyton choked on a mouthful of water. "Tonight? On top of work, and checking out apartments? It's a Friday, you guys should be partying!!"

"We'll have time for that over the weekend," said Jon. I hope. I'm exhausted from this week, and so's Caitlyn, I can tell. And it's not like she doesn't have her first final on Tuesday. Jon's mother had very generously agreed to drive Caitlyn to school and pick her up again, joking that it made her feel young again, so Caitlyn would be able to get her papers and final assignments and homework (on which she had spent the other half of Thursday) turned in on time. "Besides, Cait... She's not pleased about all this, I can tell you that, especially the stuff about making her buy her harp from them." A quick call to the local constabulatory had straightened that one out—and, unfortunately, the Delaneys did have the law on their side. "Nobody knows what her music will sound like on Sunday, that's for sure, 'cause she hasn't had a harp to practice on."

In truth, Jon was dreading the confrontation. It would be ugly, he knew that, and probably painful as well. Hateful things were going to be said, by all and sundry, and no matter who won, every inch would be bought and paid for in blood. No one would like each other after this—and, even worse, no one would respect each other either.

Or themselves.

At 1 PM, Jon clocked out and swung on home to pick up his wife. She greeted him at the door with a kiss, and Jon suddenly realized that in the chaos of the last two days, they hadn't had time for sex since Wednesday morning. Suddenly he wished they had a lot more time. But they didn't; if they hurried, they might make their appointment on time. Real life indeed. Why did any of us want to grow up? Well, besides so that we could have sex.

Their first stop was a nice place several miles away from Shellview State, a posh two-bedroom apartment that was far out of their price range. But Jon's mother had suggested they check it out anyway, just to get some perspective. It was very nice—moderately spacious, and pleasantly lit despite the dim December sun. But it was about $1500 too expensive for them—$1500 a month—and though they were polite and acted as though they were considering it, it was all a little white lie.

Caitlyn had also stumbled across a good deal—a very nice apartment for under $1000 a month, so nice they seriously considered taking it. The main problem was that it was just down a major freeway from both Shellview State and Greenfield, and the commutes would be killer. It was just too far out of the way.

The one they were really looking for was not hard to find; Caitlyn had passed that building on her way to school every day. The place did not compare favorably to the other two they had looked at: it rented to students, so it was small and not all that well-kept. Judging by the smell, its previous occupants had either been football players or some sort of mass murderer; either way, it explained some of the splotches on the floor, and perhaps why whoever had previously rented the place had since been evicted. But it offered two overwhelming advantages: it was cheap, and it was close enough to school that Caitlyn could walk (in other words, it was cheaper still). It was the only one they were really considering, and while it wasn't perfect, they knew it was the best choice. It took about an hour to read through and sign the lease, which lasted through the end of the school year to reset the typical leasing cycle: they would move in the day after Christmas, and move out in mid-June. Jon felt tremendously proud, but also tremendously scared.

"I'm not even sure there's going to be enough room for my harp," Caitlyn said as they left. "And good thing they have an elevator, 'cause we can't take that thing up and down stairs."

"We'll need to pack very carefully," Jon said. "And furniture, we'll have to choose that very carefully too. There won't be much room. If you don't mind the kind of cramped quarters we have now, we can just take my twin bed and call that done; open up a lot of space in the bedroom."

"We could bring mine," Caitlyn said. "It's a lot wider, it's more like a queen-size."

"Is it extended-length?" asked Jon, who was five feet eleven barefoot.

"Huh?" said Caitlyn, who was five foot five with heels on. "Does it need to be?"

"Yes," said Jon, who was still five eleven.

"Uhh. I dunno, I'll have to measure it. It's large enough for me; I can sleep on it sideways, backwards, at diagonals... Nathan used to use it, but my grandparents gave it to me, and once he moved out I took it back."

"Your parents might try to take it back too," Jon reminded her.

"But it's not theirs. It's mine."

"You think that's gonna stop them? If we have to get this legally adjudicated somehow..." He sighed. "This is gonna be like a divorce."

Caitlyn gave an unhappy sound. "Let's never get divorced, then."

They got back to Jon's house at about 4 PM. Jon felt tremendously tired: while he had worked yesterday, Caitlyn had frantically finished up a week's backlog of homework; then they'd spent the night carefully refining The Plan into its present format. This was on top of the past three days, which, while fun, had not been especially relaxing; they'd been continually thrust into new situations (including the situation of Jon thrusting into Caitlyn), and while that was rewarding, they both preferred the safety of habit to constant chaos. Jon was looking forward to being able to establish some sort of weekly routine—one that didn't involve them having to develop new patterns of response every two seconds.

When I imagined what my first week of marriage to Caitlyn was going to be like, I never imagined this.

"You know what would've been really bad," Jon said.

"No," Caitlyn said. "What?"

"If your mother had found out about us, and then declared we could never see each other again."

Caitlyn made a face. "Cut off the engagement. Yeah. I think that's probably what we were trying to avoid. Why we... Well, eloped, really, is what we did, even though we didn't go very far."

"What God has joined, let no mother burst asunder," Jon agreed. "If she's going to oppose the engagement, let's make it something she can't meddle in."

"Not that she isn't going to try," Caitlyn warned. "She'll... Ugh, I don't know what she's going to do. She'll..."

"Hey," Jon said, "hey," drawing her to him. "She can try. But she's not going to succeed. I mean, we just agreed that our marriage is beyond anything she can bust up, didn't we?"

"I know," said Caitlyn. "But that doesn't mean life won't be a living hell for a while." And Jon didn't have much of an answer for that, but to hold her tighter still.

"Hmm," she said after a while. "We haven't had enough time to do this."

"Then I know a very good way to spend a couple hours before dinner," Jon said, drawing her towards the bed.

"Okay, but... No... No naked stuff," said Caitlyn. "—I mean, that's fun too, but right now, I just want..."

"And what my baby wants," Jon said, "is what my baby gets."

It seemed like he had utterly forgotten just what comfort was to be found in her arms. It wasn't just being able to smell her, and feel her cheek against his, and her breasts on his chest; it was that his arms were made to be filled, to hold someone close and comfort them. And to be comforted as well. To be reunited; to be... Whole.

"We need to remember," he murmured. "No matter what happens, no matter how, how crazy life gets... We need to stop for a while and just... Hold each other."

"Mmm," she said. "Yeah."

"I wish we had time," he murmured. "I just..."

"I know," she said. "But, if we started, we'd still be here in three hours." She must have sensed his mood—that was just what he was thinking of. "And, we have... A deadline."

"Right," he grumbled. "A line that, if we cross, we're dead."

"No," she said. "We're going to win. We have... We're so much in the right, we have so many supporters, there's no way..."

"No, I know that," said Jon. "What I'm worried about is: in war, everybody loses."

They had agreed to meet Caitlyn's parents for dinner, as a prelude to the campaign and also to see if they could somehow open peaceful negotiations. Jon sometimes thought Caitlyn was looking forward to the possibility of open hostilities—he supposed to he couldn't fault her for wanting the chance to tear her mother a new one, even if he didn't think it was a smart thing to actually do—but clearly she was wary of it as well. What he was more worried about, personally, was that her mother might decide to make a scene. Caitlyn didn't think so—"She's not so lost to propriety as that"—but in Jon's opinion, Mrs. Delaney might be desperate enough to do anything to keep from losing. Or maybe it was to keep control over her daughter. Sometimes it seemed like she didn't see a person at all, just a knick-knack on a shelf that needed to be nailed down so—

"—Hey," he said suddenly.

"What?"

"I just realized something. The theory is, your mother wants to control you, right? She wants you so under her thumb that you practically can't even breathe without her say-so. But it's been hard for her to accomplish this, because you never give her any openings. Right?"

"Okay, I'm with you so far."

"So... You just gave her a huge-ass opening. You let her see that ring on your finger."

"Umm... Ri-iight... But, she didn't—"

"But she didn't!! Cait, what a catastrophe would it have been if she'd said, 'Okay, young lady, we'll let you get married, but only if you agree to our terms, which basically consist of us being able to dictate your life'? What would've happened if she had turned around and used that ring as a weapon against you? What would've happened if she'd taken the weapon you provided her and strengthened her rule?"

Caitlyn was quiet, seeing it now. "Wow."

"She had a golden opportunity and she missed it. Up until the moment you told me to take you away, you were basically submitting to her rule."

"Yeah. I know."

"If she had struck before you'd decided to fight..."

"So, basically..."

"So, basically, she's at her wits' end. She wasn't thinking clearly enough to take advantage of this huge gap in your lines—and half of combat is just being fast enough to exploit momentary weaknesses in your opponent's defenses. You've been fighting with your brain, so there haven't been that many weaknesses to exploit. But your mother's been fighting with her heart—she's been making bad decisions and letting her fear control her—and now we know it. There will be plenty of weaknesses for us to exploit. We just gotta be smart enough and fast enough to see them and hit them."

"Wow," said Caitlyn, smiling. "This is pretty cool."

"We are so gonna wipe the floor with her."

"And here I thought you were the pessimistic one."

"I was." Momentary ebullience faded. "I still am. It's still gonna be really hard. But—that's a pretty good thing to discover about your opponent on the eve of battle, isn't it? That she basically has no conscious idea of what she's doing and how to do it?"

But, instead of responding in kind, Caitlyn sighed. "We're going to war," she said. "Against my family."

And then: "This sucks."

"I know," Jon said, and took her hand. But somehow he knew it wasn't enough.

They arrived at the Delaney house—1334 Praden Terrace—in a flurry of dust and silence. Jon had told Caitlyn at least once a day that she didn't need to return here unless she wanted to... And here they were, returning again. Jon knew he didn't want to, and judging from the heaviness in Caitlyn's step, maybe she didn't want to either. Maybe it was too early. They'd been married for only three days and twenty-odd hours, after all—barely enough time to establish identities of their own. 1334 Praden Terrace, on the other hand, was Linda Delaney through and through. She'd marked her territory as a dog sprays trees, and every decoration, every speck of paint, every flower was a reeking reminder of her presence.

And yet... There, just off the curb, was the teetering mailbox (the neighbors') that Jon had come near to clipping with his wing mirror every time he'd visited. There, towering over the backyard fence, was the tree against which he and Caitlyn had once stolen a few very passionate minutes, tongues dueling, hands roaming further than they had ever gone before. And upstairs were Caitlyn's two rooms, just as fragrant with her personality as the rest of the house was with her mother's.

We have a place here too, Jon reminded himself. "We have a place here too."

"At least, until I take the last of my stuff," Caitlyn said.

Then Mr. and Mrs. Delaney were meeting them at the door, and it was time to go.

Jon was relieved at the relative calm of the proceedings. On the one hand, Mrs. Delaney kept her peace throughout the meal, and Mr. Delaney seemed content to offer polite conversation. (The man had always reminded Jon of some huge savannah-bound herbivore: placid, but possessed of total stillness, and implacable when roused.) On the other hand, polite conversation was all that was offered; it was plain that the Delaneys had no intention of connecting with their daughter or her husband, and as it takes two to make conversation, Jon and Caitlyn found themselves getting nowhere. Jon found that frigid propriety was not very good seasoning for any sort of meal. If her parents noticed that both he and Caitlyn were eating one-handed—the other clasping their spouse's tightly beneath the table—they made no comment whatsoever.

What did we ever do to you! Jon wanted to yell. What on earth did we ever do to you! We've been dutiful, we've been respectful, we've been mindful of God's laws... Yes, we got up to things that involve a certain level of intimacy, but if you were to tell me you two never did the same, you'd be lying. You've never made me feel any more welcome than politeness requires, but I've done my best to be open and receptive and courteous, for Caitlyn's sake if nothing else— What more do you expect? What more can you rationally expect??

But that was the problem, wasn't it. They had left rationality behind a long time ago.

When they got back to the Delaney house, Jon was struck by a sense of claustrophobia. It took him a while to realize why: it was the amount of pictures on the walls. All those faces, smiling out at him: Linda Delaney, Samuel Delaney, Nathan, Caitlyn herself... Uncle Max, Mrs. Delaney's parents Ruth and Gordon Cassidy, even Uncle Max's sons Roger and Jerome. There were none of Mr. Delaney's siblings, and very few of his parents, but easily a dozen of the others. So many pictures. It had always unsettled him, he realized, the phalanx of garish smiles, much the same way it had discomforted him to always have to tiptoe around his parents' house and the gazillions of artifacts and knickknacks and curios on display. It was like a shout of desperation: "Hey, we're wealthy!" He wondered what Mrs. Delaney was trying to prove with all those pictures.

"So," said Mrs. Delaney, seated on the couch with Rex curled up at her feet. "I understand the two of you had something you wanted to discuss with us."

"Yes, as a matter of fact," said Caitlyn. Jon could see her struggling for composure. "We did."

Mrs. Delaney gestured expansively. Caitlyn was silent for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

"As you know," she said, "Jon and I have been married. We haven't come here to discuss this. Pastor Pendleton wed us in the sight of God and man, and we have no intention of getting an annulment or a divorce or anything like that. Jon is my husband, just the way I've always wanted him to be, and I am his wife as I have always wanted to be. I'm sorry we couldn't inform you of our plans ahead of time."

Jon wanted to add that the frosty expressions on their faces were part of the reason they hadn't been informed, but he held his tongue.

"We haven't come to discuss why we got married," Caitlyn said. "We came to discuss why we got married so quickly—why we went from fiancée to spouse in a matter of hours. We wanted to... To share some observations with you."

"I can't think of anything you could say that I'd want to hear," said Mrs. Delaney.

And why do you think we're having these problems, Jon wanted to say, but he didn't.

"Be that as it may," Caitlyn said with surprising calm, "there are things we feel we want to tell you. And we have agreed that it might be to your benefit to lis—"

"First off, young lady, there is no 'we, ' " said Mrs. Delaney. "You are our daughter, and we haven't given you our blessing for this marriage. Until—"

"I'm sorry," said Jon loudly, "am I hearing that you are denying your twenty-year-old daughter her right, as guaranteed by law, to choose her own husband?"

"Mr. Stanford," said Mr. Delaney, speaking for practically the first time all night, "You are not helping your case with these outbursts. Kindly—"

The entire argument collapsed when the doorbell knifed through it. Mrs. Delaney looked up, annoyed. "Who in—"

"I'll get it," said Caitlyn, who had deliberately placed herself near the door. It was, unsurprisingly, Grandma and Grandpa Cassidy: that was what happened, when one's progenitors lived a mere two minutes' walk away.

"What are you doing here," said Mrs. Delaney.

"We heard there was a party," said her father with a broad grin.

"How are you, Caitlyn," asked Grandma, giving her a hug. "It's hard to believe my tiny little granddaughter is all grown up."

"You're not the only one for whom it's hard to believe, Grandma," said Caitlyn, and Jon suddenly wondered if the old woman had said that just to set Caitlyn up for that response. Eighty though they were, and slow of movement, Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy were still too clever by half. He was just glad they were on his side.

Barely had the grandparents gotten settled (Jon and Caitlyn obligingly giving them half the couch) when the doorbell rang again. It was Uncle Max, followed mere moments later (while the door was still open) by Larry Pendleton. Jon (unasked) grabbed two chairs from the dining room to get them all seated, and of course it took some minutes to get Rex to sit down and stop drooling on everyone's pants. By now Mrs. Delaney was looking around with a wariness bordering on fear. All of these people (with the sole possible exception of Pastor Pendleton) had given her a piece of their minds regarding her treatment of her daughter at some point in the past couple of years. Caitlyn was clearly planning something. The question was, What.

"All right," said Caitlyn. "Now that everyone's here."

"I think it's a bit presumptuous to invite people to a house you don't even live in," said Mr. Delaney.

"It is," said Caitlyn. "But they're part of our conversation. If they leave, I leave."

Mrs. Delaney's face was stone. She didn't want these people here, but this was her best and maybe only chance at getting her daughter to abandon this folly, and Jon knew she knew it. They had been counting on it. "Then let's talk," she said.

"All right," said Caitlyn. "I wanted to tell you about how Jon and I met. We knew each other at Greenfield, but we weren't really friends until last March, when I took a risk and decided to open up to him. He was a psychology major, so I thought I could trust him. And so, I told him..." She drew a deep sigh—this was something that only Jon and Larry Pendleton knew. "I told him that I'd been thinking about killing myself."

There was a complete and absolute silence. Even Rex was still, his liquid eyes inexpressibly sad.

"Jon, of course, was alarmed. He'd never suspected that anything like this was even remotely true about me—"

"We never suspected!" cried Grandma Cassidy, who was, outside of Jon, probably Caitlyn's closest friend.

"I know," said Caitlyn. "I hid it from people. I didn't let on. I took a huge risk in telling Jon—one that paid off, because he was my loyal friend from then on and eventually a lot more—but for the most part I didn't tell anybody. And this was even after having friends at school—Brandon and Christa and all those—who had experience with this sort of thing. But I didn't know that at the time; I only found out after I'd told Jon." She gave him a smile. "Good thing for me that I didn't." "Funny," said Mr. Delaney. "When you invited them over last Christmas, they didn't seem that messed-up."

"Because they aren't," said Jon sharply.

"Well, they must be," said Mrs. Delaney. "Who else would try something as stupid as suicide?"

"Why does a fox chew off its own leg," Jon retorted. "Not because it's stupid—because it's caught in a situation, in this case a trap, that will lead to its death, unless it somehow escapes. Sure, losing a leg is a crippling blow, literally—but better that dying."

"Most of the time, suicide isn't about actually killing yourself," said Pastor Pendleton. "It's about asking for help. It's a rather backward but very effective way of telling the world, 'Look, I can't take this anymore, I need to escape, I need to change something.' Maybe the person actually succeeds at killing themselves. Well, something's changed. Or, maybe their plea falls on the right ears, and someone, let's say Jon, steps in and tries to make things better. Well, something's changed. Either way you achieve your goal. But you're right about one thing: you don't try it unless you have nothing to lose. You don't try it unless something's really, really wrong."

"What could've been wrong?" asked Mrs. Delaney in anger. "Caitlyn, you had the perfect life. You won the Cartier Prize for Musician of the Year when you graduated. You're an excellent harp player, you're an excellent oboe player, you— Your grades were wonderful—"

"And was I happy with any of this?" Caitlyn retorted. "Did you ever stop for one moment and ask, 'Is Caitlyn happy with all this?' "

"Well— Well, of course, we—"

"You didn't." It was like an iron door slamming closed. "You took a quick look around and never thought to ask why I was wearing all black, or why I wanted to spend more time at school, or why—"

"Caitlyn, be fair," said Grandma Cassidy. "You're a very close-mouthed young lady. You didn't tell me these things until I'd been asking you for months."

Caitlyn took a deep breath. "Yes. Yes, that's true. I'm not the kind of person who speaks up."

"Well, then!" cried Mrs. Delaney.

"Do you know why?" Caitlyn asked.

Mrs. Delaney blinked.

"I'd like to recount a conversation to you, Mom. You may recognize it. You and I were sitting in the exact same places we are now, and I said to you, 'Mom, I'd like to talk to you about why Jon and I got married so hastily.' And you said... ?" She gestured for Mrs. Delaney to fill in the gap.

"Well, I... Why, I'm sure that I asked for you to continue."

"You said, I can't think of anything you could say that I'd want to hear," said Jon in a sharp voice.

"That is exactly what you said, Mom," Caitlyn agreed.

Mrs. Delaney looked at her husband, whose face was stone.

"Mom, Jon and I did something kind of stupid," Caitlyn said. "We've been working on marriage plans for almost as long as we've been dating, but when this crisis happened we jumped the gun. I don't regret it, not in the slightest, but I also know that if we had waited a few months or even a week to get married, things would have been a lot easier. We're paying for it, now, as we speak, and we will probably continue paying for it for a long time.

"Knowing this, I came to you to talk about the subject—one which is sensitive and will probably result in hurt feelings. I came to you to try and strike up a real conversation. And look how you responded. That's always how you respond, mother. So is it any wonder that I don't tell you anything?"

"I don't see what that has to do with it," said Mrs. Delaney. "My mother forced me to tell her things all the time—"

"And you appreciated it?" said Grandma Cassidy. "Did you truly now, Linda? I seem to recall a certain incident when you were twelve, where I forced you to tell me that you'd kissed Roger Gorman behind Building Twelve, and you threw beets at me and swore not to speak for me for a month."

Uncle Max laughed. Mrs. Delaney turned red.

"You may appreciate it now," Grandma Cassidy said, "but at the time, you hated it. And you may remember that I didn't punish you, not for kissing Roger Gorman and not for wanting to keep secrets. I let your red face do that. If you're going to try to pin these problems on me, and on your terrible upbringing—Lord knows enough people try to do that these days—I will fight you on it, and you'd better believe my memory's sharper than yours when it comes to those times."