The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess (15 page)

“Them?”

“We have a whole class of…” She caught herself from saying bachelors, which wasn’t accurate anyway. Not all of them were.
Yet. Millie had an uneasy feeling that Wally might be in the same situation as Steven soon, about to be kicked out of his
home.

Guilt nagged at Millie for having skipped the after-aerobics gabfest with Theresa and Kim. Kim hadn’t planned on going, either.
But Theresa had. She’d seemed anxious to talk, as if she really needed to. Despite his attendance in their class, her impatience
with Wally was growing.

“Class of what?” Brigitte asked, as she joined her mother and grandmother in the kitchen. She tossed her backpack on the floor,
where it toppled over.

“Guys,” Millie said. “We’re teaching them to cook and clean and do other household chores.”

Brigitte’s dark eyes brightened with hope. “And Dad’s in it?”

“Yes,” Millie said, giving her granddaughter a quick, greeting hug, “he’s taking the course.”

“That’s great!” the teenager exclaimed, excitement bubbling out of her. “Then he can come home—”

Audrey shook her head. “That’s not for you to decide. That’s between me and your—”

“Father,” Brigitte interrupted, her pretty face pulled into a sulky pout. “I know. You keep saying that.”

“Your grandma brought us dinner,” Audrey said, pointing to the casserole bowl, probably hoping to distract her daughter from
an argument. “We won’t be able to eat it until we get home again. We have to go, Mom. I have to drop Brigitte at practice,
then do some studying.”

From the clothes piled on the dining table, either dirty ones that had really overflowed the hamper, or clean ones that hadn’t
been folded and put away yet, Millie surmised that Audrey had more than studying that needed to be done. “I can stay here
and take care of some things for you…”

“That’s nice of you to offer,” Audrey said, seeming to choose her words carefully, “but…”

She didn’t have to say it again. She didn’t want Millie’s help. Millie nodded. “Okay, then. But let’s plan on getting together
another day, a girls’ night out. We can go shopping or to a movie.”

Brigitte nodded and sniffled, on the verge of tears again. The teenage years were emotional enough without her parents having
problems.

Problems. That was all Millie would consider it. She
wouldn’t even think about how this could end. She wouldn’t let it end. not even if she had to teach the class seven nights
a week.

But would it be enough? As she hugged her granddaughter and daughter-in-law goodbye, she thought about what Audrey had said.
Maybe it wasn’t that the eggs and coffee weren’t enough to get Steven moved back home. Maybe she meant that the classes wouldn’t
help what was wrong between them.

But Millie couldn’t consider that a possibility. The classes
had
to help. She wouldn’t give up until they did. When Millie was done with him, Steven would give Martha Stewart a run for her
money.

And Audrey a run for her heart.

Chapter Ten

“Positive reinforcement is hugging your husband when he does a load of laundry. Negative reinforcement is telling him he used
too much detergent.”

—
Dr. Joyce Brothers

M
artha Stewart probably didn’t do laundry. No doubt she sent that out. Maybe that’s what Millie should have advised her class
to do.

The thuds and pounding of an uneven load in the washer echoed off the walls of the utility room in the community center basement.
Water rushed and suds foamed, bubbling up beneath the top cover of the rattling and shaking machine. It knocked against the
dryer next to it, which rubbed against the machine on its other side. Four sets of washers and dryers were lined up along
one wall of the big, square room with its white laminate walls and fluorescent lights. Only one washer thrashed around, the
one her sons were using.

“Which one of you loaded it?” she demanded. They stood behind her in the doorway.

“Mitchell put the stuff in,” Steven, always the first to confess, said. “I put in the detergent.”

“I think you used more than I directed,” Millie said, pointing to the foam sliding down the sides of the machine. She rushed
forward, bobbing and weaving with the machine as it thrashed around. Unable to reach the controls, she leaned against the
foamy front and fumbled with the dial, pushing it in to shut down the cycle. The washer shuddered once, then again, before
subsiding onto the cement floor like roadkill in its death throes.

The suds soaked through her knit shirt and pants, reminding her of the night she wound up in Charles’s sprinklers. “Why didn’t
you shut it off?” she asked, patience wearing thin.

Now she knew why she hadn’t bothered teaching them household chores before; it wasn’t that she was too old-fashioned or preferred
doing it herself. She just didn’t possess the necessary patience to be a teacher.

“You didn’t teach us how,” Mitchell said, his brown eyes sparkling with amusement as his mouth twitched into a wide grin,
totally unrepentant.

He had her there. She hadn’t covered what to do if they overloaded the machine with clothes and soap. Exasperated, she reached
through the foam to lift the cover. Bubbles floated up, drifting around the room, while others popped between her fingers,
leaving her skin wet and sticky.

“What did you guys put in here?”

At the last class, she’d given each student a laundry bag to fill and bring next time. Before she’d sent the students to the
basement to do their washing, she’d given
them instructions on how to sort their clothes. She hadn’t actually checked to see what they’d brought. So she plunged her
hand inside the machine, pulling up jeans and more jeans, which she transferred from the battered washer to the deep utility
sink next to it. A shoe dropped free of the soaked clothes, tumbling to the floor where the cleats scratched the wet cement.

“Golf cleats?”

Mitchell shrugged. “The shoes were stinking pretty bad.”

She didn’t want to think about what the cleats had done to the inside of the washing machine, not to mention the motor. She
really shouldn’t have included her boys in the group that had gone first. But then she’d thought they would be more likely
to remember the instructions if they went immediately after she gave them. Of course, to remember them, they would have had
to
listen
to them.

Mr. Lindstrom, with his screeching hearing aid, already had his small load in the dryer, which hummed quietly in the row of
machines. And two other groups of men had finished with the washers as well. They’d all gone upstairs for the lessons Kim
and Theresa were giving.

This was the third class, on Tuesday of the second week. Some of the students were starting to come along pretty well. Last
class, they’d learned how to heat cans of soup and make sandwiches, both cold and hot. And of course they’d covered dusting,
one of Millie’s favorite chores. The students still struggling were, of course, Mitchell and Steven. They’d even messed up
the cold
sandwiches, overloading the bread with mayo and pickle juice until it had dissolved into mush.

“You put all this in one load?” she asked, as she unwound a few more dripping pairs of jeans from the washer drum.

“Yeah.” Steven sighed. “He’s a slob. He dirtied that much stuff in just a couple of days.”

“Hey, a few of those jeans are yours,” Mitchell protested.

“A few?” Millie asked. “There must be at least ten pair in here.”

“Told you he’s a slob.”

“What’d you do? Put them in with a shoe horn?” Millie asked. Even her damp clothes couldn’t cool off her simmering temper.
What am I going to do with you boys?

The question reverberated inside her head; she didn’t dare ask it aloud. She knew what they’d advise her to do, fail them
out of the class. Were their little mishaps accidents, or attempts to manipulate her the way she had them?

She wouldn’t put anything past them. They were too clever. “Go upstairs,” she said. “I’ll take care of this.”

She could have had them clean up, but they’d take so long that they’d miss Theresa and Kim’s lessons on starching and ironing
and loading a dishwasher. She hoped her friends were more successful teachers today than she’d been. Laundry lessons had been
a mistake. Maybe the whole class was.

Not only wasn’t she teaching her sons anything, she wasn’t learning what she’d wanted to. She still found it easier to just
do things herself. Frustration pounded at
her temples. She slammed the lid on the washer, with half the pairs of jeans her sons had packed into it, and tried to push
it back into place beside the dryer. Her shoes slipped on the sudsy floor, and her hands slid off the wet front.

If not for strong hands catching her around the waist, she would have fallen onto the cement. As it was she could barely regain
her feet; they dangled above the floor as the hands held her up. Her heart pounded as hard as the cleats had against the sides
of the washer, knocking her as off balance as the oversized load had the machine.

“Whoa,” Charles’s deep voice rumbled close to her ear. His hands tightened around her waist for just a moment, until she regained
her footing and pulled away. “You’re all wet again…”

“At least it wasn’t my fault this time,” she said, her voice shaking almost as much as her body. She had to be cold. Although
it was warm outside, the basement was cool, and her clothes were damp.

“It wasn’t your fault the
first
time,” he reminded her.

Her mind remained as blank as it had since he touched her. “What?”

“It was the cat’s.”

The cat. That was why she never lied. She couldn’t remember fact from fiction. “Yes,” she agreed, barely resisting the urge
to squirm.

She really should tell him the truth; it wasn’t as if she could embarrass herself any more. But then how did she admit to
being jealous of a shadow in his living room window?

Jealous? Until this moment, she hadn’t even admitted that to herself.

“Are you all right?” he asked, reaching out to touch her cheek. Against her skin, his fingertips were cool and damp from contact
with her wet clothes.

She glanced down at herself, at the dark spots of water and the graying foam from the suds liberally dotting her navy blue
shirt and khaki pants. “I’m fine,” she lied, again. So much for honesty.

A grin creased his handsome face as his gaze traveled down the short length of her. He didn’t call her on the lie, but his
blue eyes twinkled.

Heat rushed to her face, so she turned away, busying herself with squeezing the excess water and soap from the jeans sitting
in the washtub sink. “So what brought you to my rescue?” she asked, trying for humor even though she felt more like crying
than laughing.

“Steve and Mitch told me it was my turn and sent me down,” he said.

Steve and Mitch? He was already close enough to her sons to shorten their names? How had that happened? More importantly,
what had her boys been telling him about her?

“Well, they weren’t exactly telling the truth.”
Must get that from their mother
“They should have known it would take me a little while to clean up their mess and for the load to finish. I’m afraid these
lessons aren’t going as well as I’d planned.”

One of those strong hands that had saved her from flattening her face squeezed her shoulder. “Give yourself a break. You’re
doing great.”

She turned back toward him, to narrow her eyes skeptically. “Great? I don’t think so.”

“I made breakfast the other morning,” he bragged, lifting his chin with pride.

“You already knew how to make coffee.”

“But I made the eggs without burning them.”

“That is great,” she said, wishing Steven had had as much success. “I’m glad someone’s learning something.”

“Your sons will catch on,” he encouraged her, then added, “when they start taking it seriously.”

And that was the problem in a nutshell. One she hadn’t a clue how to solve. Yet.

“I’ll be a while here,” she sighed. “You can go back up to the kitchen. You don’t want to miss Theresa and Kim’s instructions.”

“I just finished with Theresa’s starching and ironing lesson,” he said, then referred to Kim’s lesson, “I already know how
to load a dishwasher.”

“Another skill, like your coffeemaking one.” Did he really need this class? And if not, why had he signed up?

“Yes,” he agreed, “one born of necessity. There are some things you have to learn for yourself. I wish I’d had your class
back then, in my single days.” He sighed. “Would have saved a set of dishes and more glasses than I can count.”

A smile teased her lips. “So your self-taught method was trial and error,” she surmised.

“A lot of error,” he admitted, with that adorable self-deprecating grin that creased his bearded face.

“Too bad that’s also how I’m teaching this class,” she said, sighing. “With a lot of error.”

“Stop being so hard on yourself,” he said, touching her cheek again. This time his fingers lingered, softly stroking her skin.
‘Like I said, you’re doing great.”