Read Online About Face by Carole Howard - Free Book Online Page A

date.” Neither of them mentioned the elephant in the room waiting to be discussed.
    While David was gone, Ruth loaded the stereo with Brahms’ Violin Concerto, Joan Baez’s Diamonds and Rust, and the Carole King record Josh had called Weally Wosie. She turned up the volume and occasionally hummed or sang along as she neatly slid check-writing and phone-calling between washer and dryer cycles, enjoying the solitude and the steady progress. While she tackled tasks, she also churned around her major dilemmas, David and Jeremy. Yin and Yang. Scylla and Charybdis. Rock and hard place.
    She hated the idea of retiring. It was about being old. She wasn’t in denial, she knew her body was aging, especially since the so-called “Change of Life.” She hated that euphemism for menopause. Menopause needed some marketing. If it were her product, she’d call it “Freedom from Mess.” Or maybe “Babies Be Gone.”
    And her spirit was older, too. She sensed it at work, especially around the snippy young MBA types who thought they knew everything.
    Lurking somewhere in there, she knew, was the facts of her parents’ deaths, two years apart. She was surprised how much she missed them, considering she hadn’t gotten along with them all that well. The other day, she’d caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror at the gym and, fleetingly, saw her mother’s face. The sagging cheeks and tired eyes, the graying eyebrows. Did she really look like her mother, she’d wondered with horror? Or was she just missing her?
    And raising Josh was over and done with, too. David was right—she should let him run his own life, make his own mistakes. But, oh, she liked it better when he was five or six and she was more … more what? … more important.
    Running into Vivian last night didn’t help, either, especially since Vivian had remained so “pure.”
    So, no, she wasn’t denying she was aging, she just didn’t want to honor it.
    David returned from his errands before she’d begun to focus on Jeremy. They unbagged the groceries, working side by side, mostly silently. Each item removed from its bag was like a brick removed from the wall between them.
    David unwrapped each lunch element from the new store in town as dramatically as if it were a Christmas present.
    â€œDon’t these white beans with olive oil and oregano look terrific? We don’t have beans that often and they seem so, I don’t know … so … like sitting in a café? Like that time in France with… ?”
    Ruth grabbed the stepladder, then silently went to the cupboard over the stove at the far end of the kitchen. She stood on her toes on the top step and grabbed the blue celadon dish they’d bought and shipped home from a pottery factory in Thailand.
    â€œNow here’s something you don’t see every day. Marinated … Jerusalem … Artichokes,” David said, trying to roll the “r’s” and waving his hands in the way of a magician with brightly colored scarves.
    â€œWhat are they ?” Ruth asked.
    â€œI’m glad you asked. It turns out Steve of ‘Steve’s Deli’ was in Paris during the war. He said food was really scarce because the Germans ate all the good stuff. Except they didn’t like Jerusalem Artichokes and left them for the French. Now they’re back in vogue.”
    She walked back to the pantry, flattening herself out as much as possible as she passed David along the way, to retrieve Aunt Alice’s practically-unused wedding gift platter with sparkles.
    David, still playing Santa Claus, presented the curried lamb balls and dilled new potatoes. When he was finished, he said, “Not too much fat, right?”
    â€œMm-hmm, you did good, sweetie.” Another dropped stitch in the marital fabric reknitted.
    They set the food on the round table by the window, rearranging the vase of forsythia, and the