Informed Consent (11 page)

How the hell would she
pull that off?Stepping into the shower she gave herself a lecture.
 
She did have a brain.
 
She could look up a recipe on the
internet, figure out what to buy, and cook it.
 
Surely she could do that.

 
Sitting on the bed, wrapped in a robe,
Denise powered up her laptop.
 
She
browsed one sight after another.
 
Everything sounded good, or nothing sounded good.
 
If the recipe sounded good it also
seemed very complicated.
 
Terms
like “fold into” and “caramelize” and “remoulade” and “bouqet garni” and
“chapelux” made her head spin.
 

 
Probably it would make sense to think of
a dish she liked to eat, that sounded easy, and then look up a specific
recipe.
 
Otherwise she might well
be sitting here when dinner time rolled around. There were those contractors to
call too.
 
The man was sure to
check up on her. She HATED obeying him.
 
Absolutely hated it.

It didn’t matter that it
sounded like a good idea, something she would have liked to have thought of
herself as she wandered around getting depressed at the fact the house was crumbling
around their ears. Because he told her to do it she didn’t want to.

Stealth mode.
 
She needed to go along as much as
possible.
 
Look at the debacle that
had fallen around her ears last night without even trying.
 
Her butt still kind of stung.

Hiking up the robe she
moved across the room and back into the bath, presenting her backside to the
mirror and craning her neck to see.

No marks.

Why did she feel
disappointed? Oh shit, why was she suddenly wet and longing AGAIN.

She stomped downstairs,
her laptop under her arm.
 
The pad
of paper and business cards lay where she’d left them.
 
Curling a leg underneath her butt she
reached for the phone with one hand while powering up the laptop again with the
other.

 
Sometime later Denise realized that
multitasking has some drawbacks.
 
Off to one side lay a pad of paper with random notes that might make
more sense when she gave it her full attention but at the moment made none
whatsoever.
 
Meanwhile the laptop
sitting directly in front of her listed pages and pages of domestic discipline
sites.
 

Her eyes flicked to the
browser.
 
She’d Googled ‘spanking
in marriages’ not Sloppy Joes.
 

“Mrs. Cross?”
 

“Sorry! I’m trying to do
two things at once and that’s always a mistake. Could you repeat that?”

“I’d like to make the
appointment to walk through your place for Friday, if that would work for
you?
 
You don’t have to be
there.
 
It’s actually better if
you’re not.”

“It is? Don’t I have to
tell you what I want?”

The guy on the other end
of the connection chuckled. A quick glance at her pad showed her the name
Breshares underlined and circled.
 

 
It was a friendly chuckle, her inner
compass noted.
 
No need to get all
Gloria Steinman.
 
“Before you tell
me what you want, Mrs. Cross, I need to crawl all over the place and figure out
what we have to work with.”

Inadvertently, her eyes
rested on a site:
 
‘Spanking me
Sweetly’.
 
That made her want to
hurl. She clicked on it anyhow.

“Assess the bones, in
other words.”

Jim Breshares wanted to
assess her bones?

“Is the foundation strong?
 
What about wiring, plumbing?
 
Things like that.
 
Honestly, Mrs. Cross,

I’ll do better at that
if you leave me too it.”

“Friday is fine, Mr.
Breshares.
 
What time?”

“I’d like to make it
early, ma’am. As in eight o’clock? I try to do my estimates first thing so I’m
with my crews no later than 10 in the morning.
 
Will that work Mrs. Cross?”

“Eight is fine.” If
today and yesterday were examples her husband intended to make sure she was up
and at ‘em bright and early.
 
That
pissed her off so she added, “Oh, and Mr. Breshares? It’s Ms. Marrow.
 
Not Mrs. Cross.”

Damn that felt
good.
 
Feeling magnanimous now she
added, “But please call me Denise.”

 
“All right, Ms. Marrow.
 
Sorry about that.
 
I must have gotten confused. Andrew
Cross-”

“I am married to Mr. Cross.”
Denise knew she sounded like the Queen of England with her panties in a knot
but she didn’t care.
 
“But my name
is Marrow.”

 
“Gotcha! Modern woman, eh?”

“Is that a
problem?”
 
Christ she sounded like
a nutcase.
 
This was what one
idiotic domineering man could do to her; she was leaping on perfectly
reasonable men assuming they were all oinking chauvinist pigs.

***

Zander sat in Spelling
and wished his mother was alive.

His mother had been a
flake, Lucas said.
 
William wasn’t
so polite.
 
He called her a bi
polar freak.

Which Zander didn’t
understand.
 
He didn’t necessarily
grasp everything there was to know about the poles, North and South, but he
didn’t see how any woman could be on both at the same time.
 
Not to mention his mother had been in
the house when William called her that.

Despite her flakiness
his mother had liked him.
 
Maybe
she hadn’t liked William and Lucas anymore, but she had still liked him.
 
He was still little.
 
His sister Denise said “Mom likes
babies and toddlers.
 
Don’t have
your own life if you want to stay on her good side.”
 

 
William and Lucas did have their own
lives.
 
William played lacrosse and
sold pot.
 
He was an important guy
in their school and the neighborhood.
 
Lucas was always on his skate board doing death defying leaps into the
air with his pals. Or killing zombies.
 
Or playing guitar.
 
Or
collecting stray dogs.
 
He
definitely had a life.

Zander had decided not
to cultivate a life because he wanted his mother to keep liking him. According
to Denise, who seemed like the most reasonable person in the family, Mom was a
Narcissus and that meant the world needed to revolve around her; in other
words, the other person couldn’t have a life.

“It means she’s the
sun.”
 
His sister had said.
 
“And you have to be her little moon.”

So Zander had been a
moon and his mother had remained very fond of him.
 
She hugged him and liked to run her fingers through his
hair.
 
She liked him to look at her
pictures, or weaving, or felting or whatever she was working on, and tell her
it was the best thing ever.

“Zander!”

The entire class had
turned and was looking at him.
 
Dubonnet Hawthorne was sticking his tongue out too and crossing his eyes
while safely waving The Finger at chest level where the teacher wouldn’t be
able to see it.

“Were you day dreaming
again, Zander?”

Zander shook his head.

“Then you don’t need me
to repeat the question.”

 
Zander had liked Ms. Franten the first
few minutes of school at the beginning of the year.
 
He didn’t like her anymore. Here was a perfect example of
why.
 
Why ask a question if you
knew the answer.
 
That was
entrapment.

But his mother had not
raised a stupid moon.
 
He was in
spelling.
 
Lucas always said to go
ahead and take a whack at anything.

 
“A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G”

 
Dubonnet was laughing his ass off now.

 
Mrs. Franten inhaled a great deal of
air.
 

 
“That’s lovely, Zander.
 
Unfortunately we spelled that word some
time ago.”

 
“I didn’t,” Zander muttered.

 
All of the air Mrs. Frankenstein had
sucked in came whooshing out.
 
She
shook her head and walked down the row towards him shaking her Barbie head.

 
“Zander we all know you miss your mother
-”

 
She had more to say but Zander didn’t
wait to hear what it might be.
 
He
felt tears pop up in his eyes and that was the kiss of death even in the second
grade.
 
So he said something rude -
like eat my shorts, and bolted for the door.

Being in the hall solved
one problem but caused others. He ducked into the bathroom and poised near a
toilet, ready to hop up if needed.

“Alexander Thomas
Marrow.”
 

The door opened.
 
Zander moved ninja-like to stand on the
toilet seat.

 
“Are you in this bathroom, young man?”

Zander saw a swoop of
bright yellow hair cascade to the floor. Mrs. Frankfurter was checking for
feet.

 
Smarter than her Barbie looks let on,
his teacher was now shoving doors open.
 
Zander didn’t wait.
 
In one
amazing move he swung the stall door open and leaped through to the floor.
 
He shoved Ms. Fancy Pants into the
stall she was currently investigating and took off running.She screamed.
 

Zander ran faster.

His goose was
cooked.
 
No point in staying
around.

***

Desperate in Duluth
wrote:
 
My husband says he’s going to sort me out tonight after the kids are in
bed.
 
I’m still sore from the last
sorting.
 
What should I do?”

 
Denise was in a bad mood.
 
“Shoot him in the guts you big baby.”

By His Grace
advised, “Your husband is the Head of
Household.
 
God made him better
able to lead and you to follow.
 
You should trust his actions are in your best interest.

Denise arched a brow.
“Whacko slut.”

Her Man
wrote, “I don’t understand the problem, Desperate.
 
You’re pretty new here, so we know very
little about you, your HOH, and your circumstances. Tell us more or we can’t
legitimately offer advice.”

Following Him
:
 
“What Her Man said.
 
Do you
think the last ‘sorting’ was too severe?Were you injured, or are you
‘tender’?
 
What happened to make
him say he’d ‘sort you out’ tonight?
 
We probably can’t offer much that is helpful, Desperate, because unless
you can write a short novel, and someone here can read it now there’s too much
we don’t know.
 
But we’ve all been
there, where you are I mean.
 
Most
of us don’t look forward to punishment, but we do look forward to the relief it
usually brings
J
 
Keep coming back, Desperate! We’ll get to know you and be able to help
more!”

Trouble
:
 
“oooohhhh!
Sounds good to me! What’s your complaint?”

Despicably Disobedient
Denise thought: “Pack of fruitcakes.”
 
Don’t label other people’s beliefs
psycho.

By His Grace
is a religious case.
 
Ok.
 
Her choice.
Won’t work for me.
Following Him
and
Her Man
sound like they at least live on
this planet.
 
Trouble
was obviously a bdsm-er.

***

Cabbing it to the
grocery store, Denise felt virtuous.
 
But the feeling disappeared rapidly. She’d left everything too
late.
 
She looked at the list in
her hand and the vast acres of grocery store around her.
 
Somehow, her perspective had shifted
since she’d whipped in here last, looking for organic raspberries. The music
playing softly in the background led her to suspect a host of people in
downward dog
were to be discovered in
aisle 6. Fresh faced employees in Birkenstocks moved around bins adding fresh
produce and tidying stacks.
 
One of
every two wore their hair in dreds.
 
Knotted bracelets, tie dyed Ts, and piercings abounded.
 
Customers carried babies in slings.