A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity by Kathleen Gilles Seidel

Author:Kathleen Gilles Seidel [Seidel, Kathleen Gilles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312333263
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2006-03-21T07:00:00+00:00

The snow had extended along much of the Mid-Atlantic, and I had spoken to Jamie’s parents early in the day. Yes, Pittsburgh was catching the edge of the storm system, but it shouldn’t be bad at all.

The following morning, however, my father-in-law called. Pittsburgh’s slush had frozen overnight, and Jamie’s mother had been in an accident. Another car had slid into hers, forcing it into the car ahead. Her airbag had inflated, and she had been wearing her seat belt, but she had broken her sternum. She was going to be fine, but her recovery was going to be long and, for a while, rather painful.

The kids and I drove up Friday after school. I was prepared to be the perfect daughter-in-law, but the other daughter-in-law and her million Polish relatives had gotten there first. The house was spotless, and the freezer was full of neatly labeled little packages. So there wasn’t much to do. My mother-in-law slept; my father-in-law did guy-type stuff out in his workshop with Thomas and taught Erin how to use a slide rule. “No one ever uses them anymore,” he said, “but the learning is good for you.”

As soon as he heard about his mother, Jamie said he would fly up to Pittsburgh on Saturday, but his dad and I agreed that there wasn’t much point. I tried not to hear the relief in Jamie’s voice.

Sometimes I wondered how much I was missing Jamie. I did miss the Jamie whom I knew and loved, but the fellow who had been coming to our house for the occasional weekend wasn’t him. That individual was a cantankerous bachelor.

Jamie had been finding it hard to come from the pristine order of a hotel room to the normal chaos of a family home. So whenever he was going to be coming home, I spent Friday afternoon frantically tidying up so that our house was within hailing distance of a pristine hotel room, and nothing makes me bitchier than when I am doing something to meet someone else’s standards.

In Houston he had been falling asleep listening to sports talk shows. So when he came to bed at home, he unthinkingly turned on the clock radio to listen to complete idiots yammer about major-league hockey. He found it restful, a way to stop thinking about the trial; I didn’t find it restful, and I wasn’t thinking about the trial in the first place. He’d walk in the room where someone was watching television, pick up the remote, and change the channel. When the kids or I shrieked at him, he blinked, startled at himself, and apologized, but then sat there, obviously unable to relax because he couldn’t channel surf.

What he truly wanted was for all four of us to be sitting quietly in the same room while he channel surfed. If we really did live in a theme park, I could get three automated dummies to sit with him and then the kids and I could go about our business.

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