Chapter 7

Jason's turn:

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and say a little prayer of thanksgiving. Why? Next to me is the most beautiful girl in the world.

I tell her that all the time. She always squeals and tells me that I am delusional and then we wrap each other up. My gorgeous blonde wife. God, I am fortunate. Right now she's lying there, sleeping. There's moonlight streaming in through the window and I'm looking at that blonde hair splayed out on her pillow, her eyes closed, that perfect uptilted nose, those lips. Even asleep, there are parts of a smile there.

What doesn't show, at least not yet, is that there's a baby in my bed. It's inside my wife. It gets even better. It's not one of those infamous "Oh, shit! I'm pregnant!" things. We discussed offspring from way early in our relationship.

"My dear mother expects grandbabies."

"So does mine," I said. "So before we get too far..."

"You wouldn't marry a woman who didn't want kids?"

"She'd have to be so completely spectacular..." I looked at who I was talking with. "Yeah, if it was..."

"Me."

"Yeah. She'd have to be at least as spectacular as you."

"So you're not talking about marrying me, then?"

This was before the actual proposal, but we both knew it was coming. "We're not talking a specific marriage here, Susan," I said. "Just some hypothetical..."

She shut me up with a kiss. "Hypothetically speaking, if I was to find some random guy to marry, he'd have to want kids."

We're married. Ergo, kids. Not irresponsibly timed kids. No, a couple of months before our assured graduations, hers being more assured than mine, from college, she stopped taking her pills. It slowed us down not at all. If anything, the idea of me making Susan pregnant was a big turn-on for me.

I said so one time.

"Really?" she laughed. "You really get me, then, don't you? I feel like this is what I was MADE for, baby." She thought for a second. "This. And being your wife. And THIS!" and she grabbed the bit of me responsible for the actual impregnation some time during the next month.

Cindy played the straight line in one of our conversations. She glanced around. Terri and Rachel were off on an adventure, probably plotting the subjugation of the planet. "So do you think you know which time DID it?"

Which comment set Susan up for the retort. "Cin, when you eat a whole can of beans, you don't know which one made you fart!"

"Susie!" I barked. "Don't be coarse!" My demure little Susan. She doesn't often resort to coarse language, so when she does, it's usually a good one.

TWO future grandmothers went nuts. Not unexpected. My mom is quite vocal about my first (disastrous) marriage versus this one. "Son, Susan is THE woman you needed in the first place."

"Mom, when I got married the first time, Susan was, like, TEN!"

"Doesn't matter. She will make you two a family. And this news..." she squealed happily. "Best news EVER!"

Susan and I flipped a coin to decide which home we visited first after the announcement. She won. Hers is closer anyway. Mom and Dad understand. We got the full family exposure. Mike and I argued over the barbecue. Had a great time.

In bed that night, in Susan's old bedroom, she whispered, "Aunt Mimi..."

"I must be losin' it, baby," I said. "Aunt Mimi didn't grab my ass today..."

"You, sir, are off the market." She squeezed my ass. "She said that she's glad it's you. She knew some of the guys I dated."

"I'm glad it's me, too. Do I need to tell you I love you again?"

"Yes. With every breath."

"I love you. With every breath."

The trip the next weekend to Mom and Dad's was in Alan and Tina's Cessna 182 because we brought them back with us for graduation.

There were times in the past two years where I wanted to give up that idea. Maybe my buddies WERE right. The math was daunting at times. However, every time I foundered, Susan was on the phone to either Cindy or Nikki.

"Yeah, he's having a math moment." Pause. Giggle. "Okay. I'll learn something, too." And one or the other would show up and we'd end up on the whiteboard and I guess Cindy was slightly better, but they'd put me up there working the problem.

"Jason Ellerbee! Why'd you do THAT?!?" Cindy said one time when I went the wrong direction on a solution.

"Because I'm the gahdamned STUDENT, that's why!" Took Cindy and my loving wife five minutes to recompose themselves, during which time I finished the problem. The story made its way around several venues.

"Heck of a way to be famous," I told my wife. "So much for private moments."

Giggle. "How private do you think it's supposed to be? Everyone knows that Cindy and Nikki tutor you..."

"As long as they don't think that Terri tutors me..." Terri. Our proto-daughter. Lovely.

"Uncle Jason, that new Pixar movie's out." She smiles. Like I DON'T know. I have a love of animation. "So when you gonna take us?"

Trooping into the movie theater with Terri and Rachel and my giggly wife in tow legitimizes my appearance. I remember sitting by myself, pre-Susan, pre-Terri, and feeling eyes on me like 'Let's keep an eye on that guy. He might be one a'them predators.' Watching those two giggle at the screen masks my own glee, a subject of analysis from my loving wife and her friends.

But math. I closed out the last class. A 3.2 is plenty good enough to graduate. There being no other Ellerbees graduating from Auburn this spring, Susan and I will stand together and it saves me from having to beat the stuffing out of anybody who might stand between us.

Mom and Dad will be there for me. Susan's mom and dad will be there for HER. And in a miracle, according to Cindy, Cindy's mom and new step-dad will be there, along with Judge Charles Peebles and his wife. Him being a state judge and an Auburn alumnus, he'll be sitting on the dais. I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd be part of this, this that all started with, "Jason, you wanna do a few weeks on a job in Tennessee?"

And when it's all over I won't ever have to hear, "But Mister Ellerbee, we need this looked at by an engineer." Because I will be one. Officially. Diploma. And eight years of field experience.

Today I'm on my own. I don't need help, so it's hard to justify taking Susan with me. She's back at the office, supposedly working on a report with Nikki. I'm meeting a couple of technicians who're working on some upgrade work at a utility company substation.

One thing ... I get a good say in who we hire when it comes to technicians. I leave out the losers with destructive habits and the loud talkers who can't walk the walk and the ones who can only do things if they're given step by step procedures.

"That's okay," Dan Granger says. "Don't want the 'cookbook' guys. If they can't think on their own, they need to work somewhere else."

Of course, the downside to that is that, like this job, I have a couple of prima donnas. Friction arises, but we work it out between ourselves. The project reigns supreme. I'm just showing up for a progress check, to take care of any questions, and to tell one of the techs that we're sending him off to school, and yes, we'll pay for TWO tickets so the wifey can go along. It's worth a little more to get the very best.

That's why I have a stack of job applications. I haven't been happier at work since, like, ever.

And home. At least the stress of coursework is behind me and Susan. I'm in awe of Nikki and Cindy, a view that is not a bit unique. Master's? And I've sat in client meetings with 'em. It's a hoot. I mean, I'm GOOD at what I do, but those two, or either one on her own, they're something.

I can set up and test and troubleshoot a tone channel for a protection system. Nikki goes to a meeting and says, "I don't know why you still use ONE fiber for ONE channel. You have the fiber. You put terminal equipment at both ends, you get that silly tone channel and a few thousand OTHER channels. Or you can swap away from the tone protection scheme and go with something, frankly, that is several decades more modern, configurable and responsive."

And an old engineer who says, "Nikki Granger, if they buy into that based on YOUR recommendations, I'm gonna go shoot myself. I've said the same thing."

She smiled and said, "I was willing to bet you did. This isn't rocket science."

"Yeah, it is," the old guy said. "To the people who dole out the money, I could be writing recommendations in cuneiform on clay tablets for all they understand."

Another one added, "Bachelor of Arts and an MBA."

"Oh, come on, Radley! MBAs need love, too!" a third added.

Me, I was sitting in the corner sympathizing. I'd made a good living at this stuff, but I'd run into more than one bean counter who just couldn't figure out why we charged so much and at the end of the day, all we did was deliver a report of our efforts. It's magic. But those two, they should be wearing wizard's robes with diplomas from Unseen University. Yeah, I read Pratchett. I'm a geek. So sue me.

I hate when the job has me out for overnight stays and I can't bring Susan. I know that I'm with one of the engineers so I know that Susan and that other poor deprived wife are staying together. Now, though, Susan's just about graduated and she's certainly old enough to work, being essentially twenty, but that's beside the point.

The point is that in a few months, my Susan is going to stay home. Pregnancy. Yeah, don't give me that stuff about pioneer women delivering babies in the field. We're from hardy stock and all that, but sometimes she LIKES being my princess and I like her that way. I just can't picture her in a substation sporting a baby bump. I guess I could have my mind changed, though. When I first met her, I couldn't picture her in a substation at all. She's sort of cured that, although my blonde wife bouncing around in the vicinity of a crew of gnarly linemen is liable to bring work to a halt.

Why is she bouncing around? The bounce is natural to her. The 'around' part is because she wants to KNOW things, so while our job is inside the control building, that crew out in the yard working on a big oil circuit breaker gets a visit. She asks questions. Get answers. Smiles. Gets more answers. Made for one heck of an interesting 'spring break', working with me instead of following the hordes to the beaches.

Everybody at college knows that I work. The people in some of Susan's circles asked her about her spring break activities. "Spent part of the week on the road with my hubby at a substation in Georgia. Made some money."

Yeah, she made money. She got paid for the time she spent with me doing equipment upgrades. My Susie isn't one of those fragile little females who's afraid to wreck her nails. I've seen her with grease on her hands. Lately, though, she's the helper I always wanted to work with. She's a good worker, knows when to stop and ask questions, and at the end of the day we go to bed together. Okay, she's the first helper I've ever wanted TAKE to bed...