Part 5

Day 8

On the first full Monday of her marriage, Caitlyn Stanford arose in equal parts anticipation and dread.

She was still having pangs of readjustment when she woke up and found herself in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar place, but there was always the comfort of a very familiar set of arms. Waking up with Jon meant that the day started off right. The only problem was that he had to get up at six every morning--"It's one of the downsides of being a responsible adult," he joked--so 'waking up' was limited to stirring as his arms disengaged, giving him a muzzy kiss, and then wandering back off to sleep. There was never time to share sex, not on that schedule, which also made her sad; morning sex was very pleasant, especially when half-asleep. She had half a mind to wake him up early one day just to do him, but she didn't think he'd appreciate that later in the day.

The end result was that when Caitlyn actually awoke, it was in a cold, still bed that was missing its best feature: her husband.

It was a little after eight in the morning--early, for her, but then they had gone to bed early to make love and then make sure Jon had enough sleep. She'd originally entertained the idea of getting up once he'd drowsed off and continuing her studies, but she'd been far too comfortable. Jon had a way of relaxing her, a way she'd never experienced before. He once told me that I should learn to masturbate as a form of stress relief. I just rolled my eyes at him at the time, but... If I had known...

It had been a comfortable weekend, to be sure. They'd ended up spending most of it up in Jon's room, studying, practicing, replying to incredulous phonecalls and e-mails from their friends, and trolling Craigslist for job offers and such, coming out only for the necessities of food and church on Sunday. They'd also gotten 'distracted' (as Caitlyn liked to think of it) by each other on a fairly regular basis. She was still rather reticent about the whole thing--there was something fundamentally icky about sex--but it always felt incredibly good, and there was something good about the ickiness as well. Though she tried to resist--and even succeeded at times!--inevitably she would get drawn back to him, to his body and his kiss and that wonderful hardness between his legs, and then something would happen, and there'd be another used condom to dispose of and she would have to try and remember where she'd left off with her work. Good thing the church music had been easy.

The good news was, her first final was tomorrow, on Tuesday, and she had nothing on her schedule for today except for some harp practice. The bad news was, a single day of studying for a final was probably not going to be sufficient.

I think I see why most students get married in the summer.

She had her harp back. She had had him since she was eleven, and his name was Gabriel. Her father had swung by unexpectedly with a car-load of her things--still demanding payment, but at least willing to return them to their true owner. He had been bullish on the check; he was an accountant, it was where Caitlyn had gotten it, and money was serious business to him. Eventually Jon's parents had agreed to pay the sum, with Jon to pay them back the moment their joint-account checks arrived. Caitlyn had a hunch that an extra $5,000 or so might accidentally end up on the repayment check. Ultimately, she was just glad to get her harp back. Gabriel was now set up in the upstairs den next to Jon's bedroom.

It was the first day of finals at Greenfield too, but Jon had managed to convince his singing group to hold a short concert of Christmas music, as a sort of holiday-cheer-cum-distraction-from-finals experience. Caitlyn wasn't sure how he'd managed to do so, but everyone was amenable, even though it meant that some of them would be up late tonight, studying. (Just like I'll be, probably.) Caitlyn was, of course, invited--if not by Jon, then certainly by her friends Zach and Christa Crane--but what made her both excited and worried was that two more people from her graduating class, Brandon and Meredith Chambers, had made arrangements to drive up and attend as well. Christa had also mentioned in passing that some of her other high school friends might come with them, but she had been vague about it and Caitlyn didn't know them in any case.

The Cranes were both at Greenfield's Religious Studies program, chasing the degrees necessary to become music ministers, but Caitlyn went to Shellview State now, and she basically hadn't seen them since they'd all graduated college in June. It was a reunion she welcomed and dreaded in equal measure. She had been fairly close with Meredith and Christa and Brandon, but their lives had simply gone in different directions; the summer between their junior and senior year, the Chamberses married so that little Laurelyn would be born into a wedded family if not conceived by one, and at the reception afterwards Zach proposed to Christa. From then on, those three had been looking forward, worrying not just about studies but nebulous futures that they were now trying to create. Caitlyn had mostly had studies and parental insanity to dwell on, but a ray of light as well: a man named Jonathan Stanford, whom she'd seen around the music department a lot. He'd been invited because he had been Brandon's freshman RA. The revelation of her suicidal nature had gone to him some months before, and he was the only person she knew there, aside from the bride, groom, best man and maid of honor (all of whom were having their own interpersonal escapades). It was at that wedding that Jon drew her quietly aside and told her something about how he felt towards her. Nowadays, they counted it as their first date.

Maybe it's no wonder we got married in the rush we did. Heck, maybe it's no wonder we started thinking about marriage in the rush we did. Though, of course, the sheer luck was that we were compatible at all.

Zach and Christa had gotten married over the summer, after a year's engagement. No children were expected, or planned for that matter; Christa had taken The Pill religiously since she was fourteen, and by her and Zach's best estimations it would be years yet before they were financially and personally ready for offspring. Meredith's surprise pregnancy, announced the April of her junior year, had swept over the school like wildfire; after all, everyone knew that The Pill only failed one woman of thirty. It had taken several conversations with Meredith to straighten things out: Meredith's pill pack had expired, which no one (Meredith included) had realized was possible, and she and Brandon had unknowingly been having unprotected sex for several months before Laurelyn was conceived. It had been human error, not one of the lotto-style failures. Still, the school at large had no real idea what had happened, and even at her graduation Meredith had been accosted by people who thought she was one of the one-in-thirty.

Caitlyn, Christa, Meredith and Brandon had been the stars of the Music department for their graduating year (ironically, only Christa had actually majored in it), and, before Jon, the quartet was the closest Caitlyn had known to friendship. And this was the talk she had been surrounded with: fertility schedules, diapers, breastfeeding, sex and its consequences, receptions, conceptions, apartments, bills, jobs, taxes... Grown-up stuff. Caitlyn had never joined in; she was the odd one out, the one with nothing to contribute. Ironically, she never felt threatened by the fact that her friends had all gone to the same high school, had known each other twice or thrice as long as they had known her; it was the fact that their talk was so far over her head that did her in. There was a part of their lives she could never be involved in, and she knew it.

Now that had changed.

I've been there. I am there. I'm grown up too. I've... Jeez, what a scary thing to say. That I'm grown up. When did this happen? And Meredith skipped a grade too, like me, and she's already a mother. When did growing up become so... Right-now?

But that was all in the future, for her. First she had a lot of studying to get through. A lot of studying to get through.

It was tedious work: reviewing, marking down important tidbits, listing questions she would need to answer. This was relatively easy stuff--it was only the first semester of four before she graduated--but but tiring as well. Every now and then she would glance at the clock: Jon is sitting at his desk, or, Jon is on lunch, or, Maybe Jon is in the bathroom, or, I wish Jon was here. That one a little more frequently than the others. The truth was, she missed him. She needed the reassurance of his body, of his breath in the room, his voice behind her ear, his presence nearby. She needed him.

She remembered, after one particularly poignant date--the occasion of their first kiss, in fact, which it had taken her months to build up the courage to accept--she had lain in her bed, feeling the gap where (she had a hunch) he ought to be, and thought: It must get easier after you get married. You must not miss them as much.

Well. I know how wrong that was.

It seemed like an eternity before he would arrive, but then she blinked and it was gone, and he was knocking on the door to his own room. "How are ya, babe. Have you been there all day?"

She was sprawled on the floor, books around her every which way. "Yeah. I don't think I remembered to eat."

He scooped her into his arms. "Right. We'd better go out and get you fed before the concert."

"That'll waste money. Let's just not eat and save up."

"That's my silly little girl. Killing herself for grades and money. If I'd've known my girlfriend was such a masochist, I wouldn't've married her."

"Masochist? Doesn't that make me a sadist, someone who enjoys inflicting pain on myself?"

"No, it makes you a masochist, someone who enjoys watching me writhe because my wife isn't feeding herself properly."

"Oh, so, it's all about you, is it?" she said, giggling.

"Of course it is," he said, his voice rumbling in her ear pressed against his chest. "It's all about what I want, and what's important to me. And what I want is for my wife to still be here in thirty years, and not six feet under because she forgot to eat, so that I can go on loving her and holding her and caressing her and even having my way with her in bed every now and then."

"Ha. Like you're going to want to have sex with me when I'm fifty."

"Of course I am. I'll always think you're beautiful."

"Even when my hair is white and my face is wrinkled and my breasts sag down to my knees?"

"Even then. Mmm. In fact, that picture is so sexy--" His lips nibbled at her ear, a sure sign of what he wanted and a sure way to set her heart racing. "--I want to have sex with you right now."

"Mmph." She did too; oh, how she wanted to. But there wasn't time. "We can't. Not if we have to eat first."

His lips departed abruptly. "Oh, I see how it is. A man wants to claim his carnal rights as a husband, and suddenly she's willing to spend all sorts of money. Let me guess, you want to go back to Chadley's."

"They had good steak," said Caitlyn brightly.

"They did," he said. "But I've got something better." He bent his lips to hers.

"Jon," she said, easing away.

He hesitated for a moment, and then stepped back. "Are you turning me down?"

She looked at his face. He seemed surprised... And a little angry, too. But behind that... Was there a hint of hurt?

Her heart went out to him. "Oh, Jon. No. No, of course not. If you really want me... Jon, I love what we do. It's so... I never knew there could be anything like it. But we don't have time. You have to shower, and we do have to eat, and you said your call time is 6:30, and... If we even had five minutes more."

"You're right," he said. "You're always right." He sighed. "But, tonight..."

She smiled up at him. "Tonight? Baby, the instant we get home, you are going into that bed naked. How's that for a plan?"

He gave her a wicked grin. "Sounds good to me."

For the sake of time, and for old times' sake, they ate at the Greenfield cafeteria. The food was just as bad--or, alternately, just as good--as they remembered. Then they headed north to the Music Building. It was the first time Caitlyn had set foot there since graduating. To her surprise, most of the group was already there; musicians, after all, were not known for their punctuality. Maybe Jon and Professor Chapman had found the world's eight exceptions.

To Caitlyn's repeated surprise, Zach and Christa Crane had brought visitors with them: Brandon and Meredith Chambers. "They weren't busy," Brandon explained, "so we got the day off and made an outing of it. Three-day weekend is nice this time of year." He and Meredith both looked a little haggard, but at last report they were holding down three and a half jobs between them to keep their family afloat. And there was a unity about them, a singularity, as if the two were merely halves of the same whole. Man and wife become one flesh, Caitlyn thought, and these two certainly have.

And they had become a united, third flesh as well: they had Laurelyn with them, a little bundle of joy with her father's dark hair but her mother's clear blue eyes. "My God," Jon said. "When did she get so... Gargantuan?"

"She's... Getting close to a year old, right?" Caitlyn said.

"Fifty-one weeks exactly," said Meredith, beaming. "The holidays are going to be frantic, what with Laurelyn's birthday followed by Christmas Eve followed by Christmas Day. But at least we'll be seeing a lot of our friends."

"No one else came," Christa said in clear disappointment.

Brandon shrugged. "We tried. We weren't able to get to Jane in time; she scheduled something today. Sajel's visiting her grandparents in Chicago with her family, Arie's into the third trimester so flying down from Seattle is right out, and Derek... Well. After him and Arie..."

"Yeah, no kidding," Christa agreed. "He goes through the motions, but it's like something died inside him."

"The weird thing is," Zach said. "We always figured Derek was the resilient one. But of the two of them, who's the one who bounced right back and then got knocked up and then got married?"

"No," Brandon said. "She and Ralph came down for a surprise visit over Thanksgiving. She's too busy to show it, what with the panic wedding and a bun in the oven, but there's a part of her that died too."

"That's two of the eight of us that The Pill failed," Meredith mused. "A quantum leap in medicine that seems to have leaped over Mount Hill."

"Okay," said Jon, rubbing his hands. "I hate to break up a party, but we've got a rehearsal to run and sound checks to play with. If I could get everyone in here... Mr. and Mrs. Chambers, we'll have to ask you to wait outside, but I'll leave Mrs. Stanford here to keep you folks company. I hope you find her sufficient." And, with a final wave, he ushered his singers into a practice room and shut the door.

Caitlyn turned back to Meredith and Brandon, only to find them gaping at her. " 'Mrs. Stanford'?" they said in unison.

"When did you get married?" Brandon said.

"When did you get engaged?" Meredith said.

"Aah," said Laurelyn.

"We, um... Jon asked me to marry him on November 18th," said Caitlyn.

"And you didn't tell us??" Meredith exclaimed.

"We didn't tell--! Ugh." Caitlyn tossed her hands. "I should just make a sign. People keep saying that to us."

"What, you didn't tell anybody?" Brandon said.

"No," said Caitlyn, "we didn't want it to get back to my mother."

There was a steady silence.

"You didn't want it to get back to your mother," said Brandon.

"Oh dear," said Meredith. "One of them."

"Goo," said Laurelyn.

Caitlyn remembered some of the things Zach had said during his best-man toast. "That's right, you had similar parents..."

"Well, mine were just absent," said Brandon.

"And we made mine shape up," said Meredith.

"But, yes, we know," said Brandon.

"That rules out the shotgun wedding, though," said Meredith, "which is the usual reason for hasty marriages. You folks have only been engaged for a month, so the wedding must have been recent."

"What she's trying to say, is," Brandon said, "that, if you need a sympathetic ear..."

"And, if not, we can always talk about other things," said Meredith, smiling. "I know parental trauma isn't always the most positive of topics."

"Gibubu," said Laurelyn.

"No," said Caitlyn, "it's fine."

She told them the story as concisely as possible, from that first fateful IM to Jon the March before the Chambers' wedding, to the events of this Friday; she was a little surprised at how quickly she could summarize it all up. But then, she'd had a lot of practice over the last week. Brandon and Meredith nodded, making sympathy noises when appropriate, and when she was done Meredith hugged her. "It's not easy, going through all that," Meredith told her. "And then jumping face-first into a marriage... You've been very brave, Caitlyn. None of what you've done is easy."

"I have to ask, though," Brandon said. "Not as a brown-noser, but as a concerned friend. Do you have any regrets about it? About jumping in like this?"

Caitlyn sighed. "Sometimes. Kind of. Maybe."

Brandon shrugged. "Well, that clears it up."

"I don't like what we did to my mother," she said. "We... I said some... I said horrible things."

"Of course you did," Meredith said. "And she probably said horrible things to you. Pain makes people do that. What matters is not that you blurted it out, when you were angry and scared and wanted to hurt her--what matters is that, now, when you're calmer, you regret saying it. Don't give it a second thought."

"Though, also, don't do it again," Brandon added.

"Gah," said Laurelyn.

Caitlyn nodded. "And... Jon and I... We're not ready. Financially, at least. Logistically. We had to run around all last week trying to figure out apartments and finding jobs and pooling our assets and how to get my parents to relinquish my harp, and... It would have been nice to have more time than that, to figure all that out."

"What about with Jon," Meredith asked. "What do you feel about him?"

About Jon?

Caitlyn beamed.

Meredith laughed. "Well, I guess that answers that question."

"No, don't get me wrong, we... Not everything works out." Her cheeks colored, remembering the almost-argument they'd had not an hour ago. "But... Well, when he asked me to marry him, all I could think was, It's about time. And it was different having that ring on my finger, and it's really different having him beside me at all times now, but... In other ways, it's like we've only just finally gotten everything the way we wanted it. I mean, after we started dating, he immediately went out and got a job, because... He just knew. And... I kinda knew, too. And so, yeah, all the changes are weird. But in some ways... The only thing I really regret is not doing it sooner."

"Oh really now," said Brandon, laughing.

Caitlyn colored. "That's not what I meant."

Brandon raised an eyebrow.

Caitlyn colored further. "Okay, that's one of the things I meant."

"We knew you'd like it," said Meredith, smiling. "We could just tell."

"We have a friend back home," Brandon began.

"Friend? You used to date her!" Meredith exclaimed, laughing.

"Right," said Brandon, "as my wife has reminded me, we have a friend, back home, named Jane, who's a lot like you. It took a long time to get her to loosen up, but once she did... Man. She's just a lot happier now, and a lot healthier, and a lot more... Whole."

"What happened," Caitlyn asked, who understood exactly what Brandon was saying. "Did she meet some new guy?"

Meredith shook her head. "The Program."

"The Program?" Caitlyn had heard of it, of course--it was everywhere on the news when it was first approved. But it hadn't come up here to Shellview, where the weather just wasn't warm enough. "She was in The Program?"

"We all were," said Brandon. "That's how most of us met."

Caitlyn stared.

"Googoo," said Laurelyn happily.

Eventually, Caitlyn managed to sputter: "And you didn't tell me??"

Meredith shrugged. "You were always so uncomfortable when we brought up sexual matters. We knew you were a virgin and intended to remain so until marriage. We knew you had never had a boyfriend and didn't have too much experience with physical matters... You were--"

Brandon, who had Laurelyn, looked up. "Hold on, sweetie, I think it's someone's dinner time."

"Let's get one of the practice rooms," Meredith said. She opened the door while Brandon grabbed for the giant tote bag on the floor. "As I was saying. You were inexperienced in both men and sex, and plus we knew you were religious. That made you sound a lot like Jane, honestly--and Jane used to get really offended and kind of self-righteous when these things came up. Obviously you were never like that--you just let us talk about our things, and stayed out of it. But you were still uncomfortable. So how were we going to tell you that we went through a federally-mandated week of being pawed by random members of the student body?"

Meredith had been undoing the fasteners of her shirt as she spoke, and now one breast was bare. Brandon handed the baby over, but Caitlyn got a glimpse of pale, milk-laden flesh, and a pinkish nipple (somewhat smaller than her own), slightly wet, before the baby's head was in the way, and even after that she could still see some of the delicate network of veins beneath Meredith's skin.

"As you can see," Meredith said, "one of the legacies of The Program is that we don't have all that much modesty."

"I... I don't mind," said Caitlyn, truthfully. She knew Meredith would never do this in front of people she didn't trust, so that was a compliment right there. But on top of that, there was something eternal about the moment: Meredith, her head bent over her charge, Brandon hovering over them both, his hand on Meredith's shoulder. This was family at its most basic: the child focused on the mother, the parents on the child. There was no denying the power in that image, or the love they shared.

Meredith seems to have larger breasts than I remember. Maybe it's the breastfeeding. She was always so self-conscious about them being too small, too...

"So, anyway," said Brandon, grinning. "Away from the confusion and back towards the salacious details. So you guys are doing it?"

"They're married, of course they're doing it," said Meredith.

"So? If Jane hadn't gone through The Program, you know even her husband would've had some trouble getting at her you-know. Marriage means you're supposed to let the walls down, but not everybody is able to do that all at once."

Caitlyn nodded. "It wasn't... In some ways, letting him be physical with me was a lot easier than... Than opening up to him. I mean, it really started the March before last, when I told him about my life. That was... That was a lot harder."

Brandon nodded. "All friendship really starts with opening yourself. Or, if you're a guy, sticking something out and hoping it doesn't get chopped off."

"That's what Jon says," Caitlyn agreed. "That the only way to really start a friendship is to let yourself be vulnerable to that person."

"Brandon, are you sure that's an appropriate analogy," Meredith asked.

Brandon shrugged. "I dunno. But it seems to me that opening up to someone is just the same as offering them something. Ultimately it's the same: vulnerability. It just depends on whether you wanna think of yourself as opening up or offering up. And, amusingly, there's a physical precedent for that between men and women."

"Yeah, but-- There's a philosophy out there that all life is a balance between giving and taking," said Meredith. "And that women are predisposed to give, and men to take."

" 'A philosophy, ' " Brandon chortled. "You read that in Dune."

"So? You're the one that uses the Litany of Fear."

Brandon shrugged. "It's a good prayer."

"And this one's a good philosophy, so shut up," said Meredith, grinning. "Besides, my point stands. If it's men who take, why are they the ones offering up vulnerability?"

"But that's the physical precedent," Brandon said. "Man sticks it out, woman takes it in. And good thing too, 'cause I have no idea how conception would work if it were the other way around."

"Maybe... When the man has an orgasm, he secretes sperm into his... I dunno, I guess it would be his vagina."

"And how does the woman pick that up?"

"I dunno, maybe she absorbs it through her, what, her penis? Or maybe she excretes the egg to be fertilized and then draws it back in."

"So the emphasis is on male orgasm again. Would anyone ever bother making their women cum?"

"They don't do that now," Meredith retorted, laughing.

"I do that," said Brandon, aggrieved.

"Yes, dear, you do," said Meredith, still laughing, "and that's why you were married by the first woman you dated who had any brains."

"Oh, so that's where this baby came from," Brandon declared, trying to look angry and failing miserably. A smile peeked its way out from behind his mask of righteous indignation. "Why, if I'd'a known, I would've..."

"Oh yeah right," Meredith said haughtily, "you would not have." Her regal poise was rather spoiled by the fluster of giggles that escaped midway through the sentence.

"What makes you say that?"

"What would you have gone back to? Your right hand?"

"Excuse me??" exclaimed Brandon. "I'll have you know it's my... It's my left... That..." He was laughing almost too hard to speak now. "I'm not so... So uncivilized as to..."

Caitlyn was in two minds. On the one hand, she didn't really want to think about Brandon... Doing things with himself. (Does he even? Or does Meredith keep him... Satisfied?) She didn't want to think about him doing things with Meredith either. She was sure they must enjoy them, but that wasn't her business and she didn't want it to be. On the other hand, it was fun to see them banter. And it reminded her of the joking that she and Jon had always shared.

"Well," said Meredith, with a grin, "ignoring this uncouth barbarian over here. Who, I think, was going to try and pry exotic details out of you."

"I was not!"

"You're a closet voyeur!"

"So are you, you were in The Program!"

"Any chance of having a serious conversation goes out the window when he's in the room," Meredith told her with a grin. "So why don't we kick him out and have us some girl-talk, just between ourselves?"

"Aww man!" said Brandon. "All right, I'll behave. Girl-talk Mode On."

And he stood composedly and showed no further sign of his previous raucousness.

"Wow," said Caitlyn. "No wonder you married him."

"Yeah," said Meredith, beaming. "He can be uncontrollable sometimes, but he has his compensations."

Brandon stood composedly, showing no reaction but an ostentatious roll of the eyes.

"So, where were we before we got so thoroughly sidetracked," Meredith said. "Umm. You were explaining why you got married to Jon, and we were asking you all sorts of important but possibly-private questions as to the nature of your relationship to him."

"You said you guys had been talking about getting married for... ?" said Brandon.

"Over a year," said Caitlyn. "Actually, within the first couple of months." She blushed. "Which, seems kinda fast, you know? And back then I always got a little nervous, and even now I sometimes wonder if we jumped the gun a little bit..."

"You may have," said Meredith, "but I don't think it's the feeling you need to doubt. Brandon and I... We knew... What, within a couple of months, right?"

"I knew by our third date," said Brandon quietly.

Meredith turned to look up at him. "Really?"

Brandon shrugged. "It just... Took me a little while to bring it up."

"Yeah, no kidding. Why didn't you tell before then!"

"Well, I mean... I just did, didn't I?"

"No, I mean, why didn't you tell me you felt that way a lot earlier, so I could've told you I knew by the third date too! The wedding you played at was more of a formality than anything else," she told Caitlyn. "We'd been married in our hearts for... Years."

"Since we were juniors in high school," said Brandon. "About... What, six, seven months after our first date?"

"You have to understand, it helped that Brandon's parents lived not-here," said Meredith. "We probably got a lot more privacy than you did. Gave us room to explore, and learn, and grow in. It was just us."