Blue Raspberry 3, Cola 18: Dinner
Title: Dinner
Main Story: In The Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: Blue raspberry 3 (fast food/takeout), cola 18 (the other white meat ), My Treat (Odd substitutions are required for a meal with a picky guest), fresh peaches (Someone or something may intimidate you and make you want to retreat, Leo. But this person or situation is the very thing you need now in order to do what you have to do), rainbow sprinkles.
Word Count: 2388
Rating: PG.
Summary: Joanna finally tells her mother the truth.
Notes: Please be aware that this story deals with infertility, though Joanna has come to terms with it. Ties in to Aftershocks in a number of ways. Character opinions are not necessarily shared by the author.
Hugh walked in the door just as Joanna hung up the phone, and the look on her face told him everything he needed to know.
"Let me guess," he said, setting his briefcase down. "Your mother."
As he'd hoped, the faintly stricken look she wore gave way to a smile. "Yes. How did you know?"
He crossed to her, dropped a kiss on her hair, and said, "No one else makes you look as if you've been dragged over sharp rocks. What is it this time?"
"Well, the usual," she said, and sighed, leaning back against the table. "When are you going to have children, Joanna, you can't keep putting it off forever."
He winced. "I'm sorry, love."
She held up a hand before he could continue, and said, "I know, I know, I should tell her. I will tell her. It isn't as if I won't have the perfect opportunity."
"I wasn't going to say that," Hugh said, suppressing the rising foreboding, "but since you bring it up, yes, you probably should tell her. At the least it'll stop her asking. What do you mean, perfect opportunity?"
Joanna sighed. "She's coming here. To San Francisco, more properly. Some kind of gathering, I'm not really sure what, but she wants to come down and have dinner with us one night." She hugged herself, and looked up at him. "If that's all right with you. I was going to tell her then."
With that decision hanging over her, how could he say no? "Of course I don't mind," Hugh said. He was lying through his teeth. The last-- and only-- time he'd had any contact with Fatimah Amala had been when Joanna told her parents they were getting married. She'd hated him so obviously that he was in no hurry to repeat the experience.
"You're lying," she observed, her mouth crooking up at one corner.
Hugh really didn't feel that he should be expected to resist that expression. He leaned down and kissed that crooked little corner of her mouth, then said, "Of course I am, but she's your mother, love. The least I can do is endure one dinner."
"If it helps," Joanna said, "she will stop caring about you the moment I tell her the truth."
He would have happily endured a thousand dinners with Fatimah Amala, if only he could ensure that Joanna would never look like that again. "I'll be here," he said, instead, helplessly.
"I know," she said, and stretched up to kiss him, delicately. "All right. I'll let her know. Does Saturday work for you?"
"This Saturday?" Hugh asked, taken aback. His mother-in-law usually didn't move that fast.
She smiled that crooked little smile again. "This Saturday. I think she didn't want to give me time to evade."
"Well," he said. "That's... all right. This Saturday. Um, I have office hours in the morning, but I should be free after that."
"This Saturday, then," Joanna said. "Don't worry. I'll make it up to you."
"Sexual favors should about cover it," he said, and made her laugh.
--
On Saturday, Joanna was up long before even he was, cleaning the house from top to bottom. By the time he left for his office, she had already started on the cooking, going through her recipes and making a list. By the time he got back from the office, the table in the kitchen was covered with groceries, and Joanna herself was bent over a stove, her hair tied roughly back and sticking to her face and neck.
"Hugh," she said, sounding distracted. "Good. Can you put the groceries away, please?"
"Of course," he said, mildly alarmed. "Are you all right?"
She glanced up at him, blinking. "Fine. Why?"
"You seem..." How to put this delicately? "Stressed."
She gave him a distracted smile and returned her attention to the pot she was stirring. "Well, I am, a little. Mema's... you have to cook everything very precisely for her. If it isn't exactly as she used to make it, she won't eat it."
"Seriously?" Hugh asked, pulling the first of the grocery bags over. "Your mother is a picky eater?"
"My mother is a picky everything," Joanna said. She tasted whatever was in the pot, made a face, and added some salt. "It's just most obvious with food."
"You know," he said, thoughtfully, "Olivia went through a picky phase. Of course, she was four at the time." And he wouldn't recommend Yvonne's methods of getting her out of it to anyone. Starving a child never did any good; he'd been furious when he found out.
Joanna, oblivious to his thoughts, laughed dryly. "Yes, well, ordinarily I wouldn't indulge her, but I'd like her to be in a good mood if I'm going to tell her tonight." She lifted a hand and wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead. "It'll be hard enough as it is."
"Of course." He finished with the bag, then went hunting through the rest for anything that might melt or go bad. "Good Lord, Joanna, did you buy the grocery store?"
"Close enough," she said. "Mema's a picky eater, I told you."
He pulled out a bumpy red fruit and stared at it for a moment. "I don't even recognize this."
Joanna glanced at it. "Prickly pear. They taste a bit like watermelon." Her voice turned a bit wistful. "They're cactus fruits really... we had a few in our backyard when I was very little. Mema used to cut the fruits up on weekend mornings and we all had a bit with our breakfast."
He glanced at her, saw no sorrow, and decided it was only nostalgia. "That sounded a bit like 'try it, you'll like it.'"
She giggled, and said, "Try it, you'll like it. I promise they are tasty."
"Hmph," he said. "What other substitutions am I suffering through?"
"Beef chili," she said, "with chicken instead of the beef, because Mema can't have red meat for some reason or other, and nondairy cheese because she doesn't like dairy. Baked potatoes, again with nondairy cheese, and you'll have to make do with margarine instead of butter on yours. And cornbread."
Hugh groaned theatrically and slumped against the counter. "What, exactly, did you do to the cornbread?"
She giggled again. "Nothing. It's perfectly normal cornbread. Except I made it with soy milk."
"You're going to kill me, woman," he said, and finished putting the groceries away.
--
Joanna enjoyed cooking; she was happy and more or less relaxed as long as the food was still being made. The moment she took the pan of cornbread out of the oven, though, she stiffened up. She fussed endlessly over her appearance and his, took off and redid her hijab at least three times, and was still smoothing imaginary wrinkles out of the tablecloth when the doorbell rang.
She jumped, her eyes going wide as a startled deer's, so Hugh said, hastily, "I'll get it."
"I should," Joanna said, but without any real force; she didn't make a move to stop him, either, to his secret dismay. Ah well. Might as well get that initial sting of hatred over with.
He opened the door, and received the expected glare from his mother-in-law. "Hello, Ms. Amala," he said, as calmly as he could. "Please, come in."
Also predictably, she didn't respond, only sniffed and stalked past him.
"Oh, yeah," he muttered, shutting the door. "This is going to go well."
Joanna waited for them in the dining room, her hands clasped tightly at her waist, everything in the room in perfect neurotic order. "Mema," she said, exchanging cheek kisses with her mother.
"Joanna," Fatimah replied. "You're looking well. Do you have dinner ready?"
"Yes, Mema," she said.
Her mother clucked, leaned down, and examined the table and the food minutely, while Joanna shot Hugh a resigned look over her head. He returned it with an exaggerated eyeroll that made her hastily stifle a giggle before her mother leaned back up. "Well enough," she pronounced it. "Let's eat."
It wasn't so much that Fatimah hated him, Hugh decided, over the course of that meal. He was used to it, after all; his first mother-in-law had hated him too, and with a lot more reason, for that matter. It was the strange, preemptory way that she treated Joanna, much too much like the way Yvonne had treated Olivia for him to be entirely comfortable. On this specific occasion, she ate with single-minded concentration, ignoring the few desultory attempts at conversation he and Joanna made, refusing even to tell her daughter that she'd made a decent meal. Nor did she seem to notice Joanna's nervousness, her subtly shaking hands and the way she barely picked at her food.
Finally, she leaned back, set her cutlery down, and fixed Joanna with a look. "That was well done," she said, tone curt. "What is it you want to say?"
Joanna stiffened, and folded her hands in front of her waist again, pressing them inwards as if she could hold herself together. "I have something I need to tell you, Mema."
"That much was obvious," Fatimah said, caustically. "Are you pregnant?"
"No," Joanna said. She looked at Hugh then, held his eyes. "No, I'm not. I'm infertile."
In the stunned silence that followed, Hugh got up and changed seats, the better to hold his wife's hand.
"You are joking," Fatimah said, at last.
Joanna sucked in a breath, and replied, sharply, "No, Mema, I'm not. I have endometriosis. It got very bad because..." She stopped, squeezed Hugh's hand, and continued, "It got very bad. I cannot have children, Mema, so please stop asking me when I'm going to."
To Hugh's surprise, Fatimah gave him an almost frightened look, then said, "Don't be ridiculous, Joanna. They're doing all sorts of things with fertility clinics these days. You'll be fine."
"Mema," Joanna said, more sharply still. "It isn't possible. I've gone to three different doctors and I... I can't have children! Can you please just accept that?"
Again Fatimah darted a half-frightened look at Hugh. "Don't be ridiculous, Joanna," she said, voice harsh. "There's always someone if you just..."
"Mema!" Joanna's voice rose to a scream.
"Do you think I'm going to leave her?" Hugh asked.
Both women looked at him, Joanna bewildered, Fatimah frightened and defiant. "Of course not," she said. "It isn't like it's real."
Joanna looked as if she was about to cry, and Hugh gritted his teeth. "Endometriosis is very real," he told her. "And very painful, and I would never leave Joanna over this. I married her, not her uterus."
"I told him," Joanna added, leaning her shoulder against his. "Long before we ever married, I told him. I trusted him. I still do."
And if her voice went a little shrill and brittle on the word trust, Hugh could hardly blame her. He leaned back into her in silent support.
Fatimah looked between the two of them, then pursed her lips. "You can't have children," she said, at last.
"No," Joanna said, between her teeth. "And I'd really rather not discuss it anymore."
There was a long, silent moment.
Finally, Fatimah got up from the table. "Fine," she said, curtly. "I can see you have no interest in my input."
"No, Mema," Joanna said, "I really do not."
Her mother narrowed her eyes, but proceeded as if her daughter hadn't spoken. "I'll be on my way then," she continued. "And rest assured I will not ask you about children again."
If her tone was waspish, the sentiment at least was sincere. Joanna closed her eyes. "Thank you, Mema."
"I'll show you out," Hugh added, standing up.
When he got back, Joanna was slumped in her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Headache?" he asked, crossing towards her.
She nodded. "My mother," she began, and then stopped. That was really all she needed to say.
"I don't know," Hugh said, moved behind her, and began unwinding her hijab. "I thought it went well."
"At least it's over," Joanna said, leaning her head back into his hands. "She's just so... she doesn’t understand."
Mothers, in his experience, generally didn't. "She didn't seem to be trying very hard."
Joanna shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because she and Baba weren't happy, she thinks nobody can be. Or maybe she just loves her children so much she can't imagine that anyone could be happy without them."
Hugh chose not to acknowledge the twist of irony he could hear in her voice. Instead, he unpicked the loose braid she'd put her hair in, ran his hands through it, then pulled it out of the way and laid his palm at the nape of her neck. Her shoulder muscles felt like wires under his touch, wound tight as iron. "It seems as good a guess as any."
"I suppose," Joanna began, but whatever else she might have said was lost in a moan when he dug his thumbs into her muscles. The sound went straight to his groin, as did the light touch of her head against his stomach and the look on her face when she closed her eyes and leaned back.
"Joanna," he said. "You didn't eat very much."
"No," she said. "I don't really like chili. It's just easy, for Mema."
And she'd been nervous. Oh well. He looked out at the food, shrugged, and said, "Well, there's my lunches for the next week or so. Tell you what. Let me call for some takeout and you can have a proper dinner."
"Mm," she said, eyes still closed. "And then what?"
He grinned, though she couldn't see it, and got a particularly vicious knot under her shoulder blade to release. She moaned again, and he had to pause for a moment to relax. "Well, you do owe me for sitting through dinner with your mother. If you're up to it."
"Not tonight," she said. "I need a night between me and this. But--" and she opened her eyes, smiling up at him, "tomorrow morning, I'm all yours."
"Tomorrow, then," he said. He continued the massage, feeling her muscles gradually loosen under his hand, and added, "I do love you, you know. No matter what."
Joanna didn't answer aloud, only turned her head to the side, and kissed his hand.
Main Story: In The Heart
Flavors, Toppings, Extras: Blue raspberry 3 (fast food/takeout), cola 18 (the other white meat ), My Treat (Odd substitutions are required for a meal with a picky guest), fresh peaches (Someone or something may intimidate you and make you want to retreat, Leo. But this person or situation is the very thing you need now in order to do what you have to do), rainbow sprinkles.
Word Count: 2388
Rating: PG.
Summary: Joanna finally tells her mother the truth.
Notes: Please be aware that this story deals with infertility, though Joanna has come to terms with it. Ties in to Aftershocks in a number of ways. Character opinions are not necessarily shared by the author.
Hugh walked in the door just as Joanna hung up the phone, and the look on her face told him everything he needed to know.
"Let me guess," he said, setting his briefcase down. "Your mother."
As he'd hoped, the faintly stricken look she wore gave way to a smile. "Yes. How did you know?"
He crossed to her, dropped a kiss on her hair, and said, "No one else makes you look as if you've been dragged over sharp rocks. What is it this time?"
"Well, the usual," she said, and sighed, leaning back against the table. "When are you going to have children, Joanna, you can't keep putting it off forever."
He winced. "I'm sorry, love."
She held up a hand before he could continue, and said, "I know, I know, I should tell her. I will tell her. It isn't as if I won't have the perfect opportunity."
"I wasn't going to say that," Hugh said, suppressing the rising foreboding, "but since you bring it up, yes, you probably should tell her. At the least it'll stop her asking. What do you mean, perfect opportunity?"
Joanna sighed. "She's coming here. To San Francisco, more properly. Some kind of gathering, I'm not really sure what, but she wants to come down and have dinner with us one night." She hugged herself, and looked up at him. "If that's all right with you. I was going to tell her then."
With that decision hanging over her, how could he say no? "Of course I don't mind," Hugh said. He was lying through his teeth. The last-- and only-- time he'd had any contact with Fatimah Amala had been when Joanna told her parents they were getting married. She'd hated him so obviously that he was in no hurry to repeat the experience.
"You're lying," she observed, her mouth crooking up at one corner.
Hugh really didn't feel that he should be expected to resist that expression. He leaned down and kissed that crooked little corner of her mouth, then said, "Of course I am, but she's your mother, love. The least I can do is endure one dinner."
"If it helps," Joanna said, "she will stop caring about you the moment I tell her the truth."
He would have happily endured a thousand dinners with Fatimah Amala, if only he could ensure that Joanna would never look like that again. "I'll be here," he said, instead, helplessly.
"I know," she said, and stretched up to kiss him, delicately. "All right. I'll let her know. Does Saturday work for you?"
"This Saturday?" Hugh asked, taken aback. His mother-in-law usually didn't move that fast.
She smiled that crooked little smile again. "This Saturday. I think she didn't want to give me time to evade."
"Well," he said. "That's... all right. This Saturday. Um, I have office hours in the morning, but I should be free after that."
"This Saturday, then," Joanna said. "Don't worry. I'll make it up to you."
"Sexual favors should about cover it," he said, and made her laugh.
--
On Saturday, Joanna was up long before even he was, cleaning the house from top to bottom. By the time he left for his office, she had already started on the cooking, going through her recipes and making a list. By the time he got back from the office, the table in the kitchen was covered with groceries, and Joanna herself was bent over a stove, her hair tied roughly back and sticking to her face and neck.
"Hugh," she said, sounding distracted. "Good. Can you put the groceries away, please?"
"Of course," he said, mildly alarmed. "Are you all right?"
She glanced up at him, blinking. "Fine. Why?"
"You seem..." How to put this delicately? "Stressed."
She gave him a distracted smile and returned her attention to the pot she was stirring. "Well, I am, a little. Mema's... you have to cook everything very precisely for her. If it isn't exactly as she used to make it, she won't eat it."
"Seriously?" Hugh asked, pulling the first of the grocery bags over. "Your mother is a picky eater?"
"My mother is a picky everything," Joanna said. She tasted whatever was in the pot, made a face, and added some salt. "It's just most obvious with food."
"You know," he said, thoughtfully, "Olivia went through a picky phase. Of course, she was four at the time." And he wouldn't recommend Yvonne's methods of getting her out of it to anyone. Starving a child never did any good; he'd been furious when he found out.
Joanna, oblivious to his thoughts, laughed dryly. "Yes, well, ordinarily I wouldn't indulge her, but I'd like her to be in a good mood if I'm going to tell her tonight." She lifted a hand and wiped the back of her wrist across her forehead. "It'll be hard enough as it is."
"Of course." He finished with the bag, then went hunting through the rest for anything that might melt or go bad. "Good Lord, Joanna, did you buy the grocery store?"
"Close enough," she said. "Mema's a picky eater, I told you."
He pulled out a bumpy red fruit and stared at it for a moment. "I don't even recognize this."
Joanna glanced at it. "Prickly pear. They taste a bit like watermelon." Her voice turned a bit wistful. "They're cactus fruits really... we had a few in our backyard when I was very little. Mema used to cut the fruits up on weekend mornings and we all had a bit with our breakfast."
He glanced at her, saw no sorrow, and decided it was only nostalgia. "That sounded a bit like 'try it, you'll like it.'"
She giggled, and said, "Try it, you'll like it. I promise they are tasty."
"Hmph," he said. "What other substitutions am I suffering through?"
"Beef chili," she said, "with chicken instead of the beef, because Mema can't have red meat for some reason or other, and nondairy cheese because she doesn't like dairy. Baked potatoes, again with nondairy cheese, and you'll have to make do with margarine instead of butter on yours. And cornbread."
Hugh groaned theatrically and slumped against the counter. "What, exactly, did you do to the cornbread?"
She giggled again. "Nothing. It's perfectly normal cornbread. Except I made it with soy milk."
"You're going to kill me, woman," he said, and finished putting the groceries away.
--
Joanna enjoyed cooking; she was happy and more or less relaxed as long as the food was still being made. The moment she took the pan of cornbread out of the oven, though, she stiffened up. She fussed endlessly over her appearance and his, took off and redid her hijab at least three times, and was still smoothing imaginary wrinkles out of the tablecloth when the doorbell rang.
She jumped, her eyes going wide as a startled deer's, so Hugh said, hastily, "I'll get it."
"I should," Joanna said, but without any real force; she didn't make a move to stop him, either, to his secret dismay. Ah well. Might as well get that initial sting of hatred over with.
He opened the door, and received the expected glare from his mother-in-law. "Hello, Ms. Amala," he said, as calmly as he could. "Please, come in."
Also predictably, she didn't respond, only sniffed and stalked past him.
"Oh, yeah," he muttered, shutting the door. "This is going to go well."
Joanna waited for them in the dining room, her hands clasped tightly at her waist, everything in the room in perfect neurotic order. "Mema," she said, exchanging cheek kisses with her mother.
"Joanna," Fatimah replied. "You're looking well. Do you have dinner ready?"
"Yes, Mema," she said.
Her mother clucked, leaned down, and examined the table and the food minutely, while Joanna shot Hugh a resigned look over her head. He returned it with an exaggerated eyeroll that made her hastily stifle a giggle before her mother leaned back up. "Well enough," she pronounced it. "Let's eat."
It wasn't so much that Fatimah hated him, Hugh decided, over the course of that meal. He was used to it, after all; his first mother-in-law had hated him too, and with a lot more reason, for that matter. It was the strange, preemptory way that she treated Joanna, much too much like the way Yvonne had treated Olivia for him to be entirely comfortable. On this specific occasion, she ate with single-minded concentration, ignoring the few desultory attempts at conversation he and Joanna made, refusing even to tell her daughter that she'd made a decent meal. Nor did she seem to notice Joanna's nervousness, her subtly shaking hands and the way she barely picked at her food.
Finally, she leaned back, set her cutlery down, and fixed Joanna with a look. "That was well done," she said, tone curt. "What is it you want to say?"
Joanna stiffened, and folded her hands in front of her waist again, pressing them inwards as if she could hold herself together. "I have something I need to tell you, Mema."
"That much was obvious," Fatimah said, caustically. "Are you pregnant?"
"No," Joanna said. She looked at Hugh then, held his eyes. "No, I'm not. I'm infertile."
In the stunned silence that followed, Hugh got up and changed seats, the better to hold his wife's hand.
"You are joking," Fatimah said, at last.
Joanna sucked in a breath, and replied, sharply, "No, Mema, I'm not. I have endometriosis. It got very bad because..." She stopped, squeezed Hugh's hand, and continued, "It got very bad. I cannot have children, Mema, so please stop asking me when I'm going to."
To Hugh's surprise, Fatimah gave him an almost frightened look, then said, "Don't be ridiculous, Joanna. They're doing all sorts of things with fertility clinics these days. You'll be fine."
"Mema," Joanna said, more sharply still. "It isn't possible. I've gone to three different doctors and I... I can't have children! Can you please just accept that?"
Again Fatimah darted a half-frightened look at Hugh. "Don't be ridiculous, Joanna," she said, voice harsh. "There's always someone if you just..."
"Mema!" Joanna's voice rose to a scream.
"Do you think I'm going to leave her?" Hugh asked.
Both women looked at him, Joanna bewildered, Fatimah frightened and defiant. "Of course not," she said. "It isn't like it's real."
Joanna looked as if she was about to cry, and Hugh gritted his teeth. "Endometriosis is very real," he told her. "And very painful, and I would never leave Joanna over this. I married her, not her uterus."
"I told him," Joanna added, leaning her shoulder against his. "Long before we ever married, I told him. I trusted him. I still do."
And if her voice went a little shrill and brittle on the word trust, Hugh could hardly blame her. He leaned back into her in silent support.
Fatimah looked between the two of them, then pursed her lips. "You can't have children," she said, at last.
"No," Joanna said, between her teeth. "And I'd really rather not discuss it anymore."
There was a long, silent moment.
Finally, Fatimah got up from the table. "Fine," she said, curtly. "I can see you have no interest in my input."
"No, Mema," Joanna said, "I really do not."
Her mother narrowed her eyes, but proceeded as if her daughter hadn't spoken. "I'll be on my way then," she continued. "And rest assured I will not ask you about children again."
If her tone was waspish, the sentiment at least was sincere. Joanna closed her eyes. "Thank you, Mema."
"I'll show you out," Hugh added, standing up.
When he got back, Joanna was slumped in her chair, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Headache?" he asked, crossing towards her.
She nodded. "My mother," she began, and then stopped. That was really all she needed to say.
"I don't know," Hugh said, moved behind her, and began unwinding her hijab. "I thought it went well."
"At least it's over," Joanna said, leaning her head back into his hands. "She's just so... she doesn’t understand."
Mothers, in his experience, generally didn't. "She didn't seem to be trying very hard."
Joanna shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe because she and Baba weren't happy, she thinks nobody can be. Or maybe she just loves her children so much she can't imagine that anyone could be happy without them."
Hugh chose not to acknowledge the twist of irony he could hear in her voice. Instead, he unpicked the loose braid she'd put her hair in, ran his hands through it, then pulled it out of the way and laid his palm at the nape of her neck. Her shoulder muscles felt like wires under his touch, wound tight as iron. "It seems as good a guess as any."
"I suppose," Joanna began, but whatever else she might have said was lost in a moan when he dug his thumbs into her muscles. The sound went straight to his groin, as did the light touch of her head against his stomach and the look on her face when she closed her eyes and leaned back.
"Joanna," he said. "You didn't eat very much."
"No," she said. "I don't really like chili. It's just easy, for Mema."
And she'd been nervous. Oh well. He looked out at the food, shrugged, and said, "Well, there's my lunches for the next week or so. Tell you what. Let me call for some takeout and you can have a proper dinner."
"Mm," she said, eyes still closed. "And then what?"
He grinned, though she couldn't see it, and got a particularly vicious knot under her shoulder blade to release. She moaned again, and he had to pause for a moment to relax. "Well, you do owe me for sitting through dinner with your mother. If you're up to it."
"Not tonight," she said. "I need a night between me and this. But--" and she opened her eyes, smiling up at him, "tomorrow morning, I'm all yours."
"Tomorrow, then," he said. He continued the massage, feeling her muscles gradually loosen under his hand, and added, "I do love you, you know. No matter what."
Joanna didn't answer aloud, only turned her head to the side, and kissed his hand.