Every Other Saturday by M.J. Pullen

waiting for the other to say something. Life might be too short, but sometimes it felt really long.
    “I’m just going to finish getting ready.” She was ready, hair pulled up and wearing the black skirt and buttoned-down white shirt that were Caroline’s uniforms. But she suspected Dave, like most men, would accept that there was some mysterious woman thing she still had to do. “Do you mind letting Elizabeth in when she gets here?”
    “Sure.”
    She turned and practically ran up the stairs of the split-level ranch, heart pounding. “Jeez,” she muttered under her breath, “I need to get laid.”
    “What’s laid?” Brandon asked.
    Julia looked up in horror to see her son in front of her, just coming out of the bathroom. She hadn’t even seen him go upstairs.
    “No, honey. I said late. I hope I won’t be late.”
    “But you are working for Aunt Caroline, right? She won’t be mad if you are late, right?”
    Julia couldn’t help but laugh. “Have you met Aunt Caroline?”
    Brandon smiled back, probably remembering the time they had arrived late for Christmas Eve at Caroline’s, when Mia was still a toddler. Between her tantrums, Brandon’s five-year-old habit of removing his shoes in mysterious places, and Adam’s passive-aggressive dragging his feet in protest of being forced out into the cold for the Christian holiday, they were almost an hour late getting to Caroline’s house for dinner before Mass. In some families, the hostess in such a situation might have skipped church, or perhaps left behind a note, a key, even a husband to open the door for the latecomers. She might have put dinner in a warm oven, left directions to the new church that Julia had never visited, or at least called to make sure her sister and family were not bleeding in a ditch.
    Caroline being Caroline, however, she had packed her own family into the car and left without a word, turning out every light inside and outside the house, except for the one in the front dining room, which shone over the delicious meal, left laid out on the table with a locked door guarding it. The Mendels had spent the next hour and a half in the driveway with the minivan running, heat on full blast. Brandon and Mia shared a stale pack of peanut butter crackers and a mini box of gravelly raisins, both of which Julia had found tucked into her center console. Adam complained for the first half hour, heavy on the expletives and assertions that his family would never pull this kind of crap at Rosh Hashanah. His family members all fully expected everyone to be fifteen minutes late for everything. When Julia finally pointed out that they had been more than fifteen minutes late, he exploded in anger and then spent the rest of the evening sulking and making snide comments.
    This turned out to be a match for Caroline, who did the same. Upon returning from church, Caroline looked like she’d sat on a very large icicle the whole way home. Her boys, still adolescents, were both in a snit about some video game Caroline was refusing to let them play. Only Ben, Caroline’s stoic and even-keel husband, spoke to the Mendels with any warmth, which apparently was not enough for Adam. So they sat around the dining room table, eating the tepid, congealing meal in silence. Only Ben and Julia saw the humor in the situation, and exchanged careful grins at each other while Ben kept the kids somewhat entertained.
    At the time, Julia had felt that she and Ben were the balancing forces for two strong-headed people, and that his happiness with Caroline was an indication of what was ahead for her own marriage. Now she thought of this incident as a red flag she should have noticed. She should have seen how unhappy and ungenerous Adam was. In another year, he would announce his relationship with Christy and intention to leave. Had it already been going on, even that Christmas, right under Julia’s nose?
    Snapping back to herself, Julia patted Brandon on the arm as she passed him in