her husband's last wishes that his death be ignored.
What a strange, strange marriage they'd had, Jane thought. But then, she'd always thought that nearly every marriage, if examined closely enough, would look strange to anyone but the two main participants. Perhaps that was one of the elements that contributed to the increase in the divorce rate, she speculated. Too many people who expected their own marriage to be like what they assumed others were, rather than just accepting the inherent individual weirdnesses of the situation.
She almost mentioned this thought, then decided that discussing marriage in front of Mel might lead him to the erroneous conclusion that she was hinting at something she wasn't.
This led to deeper thoughts. She watched him as he chatted with Shelley and the boys, who had condescended to sit at the same table with the adults. Denise and Katie had, of course, insisted on sitting by themselves at the far end of the room. They were horrified that someone might discover that they had parents. Mel was telling a joke that made Shelley laugh, and Jane stared at his dimple. Would she have been so attracted to him from the first if it weren't for that dimple? she wondered. Of course she would, but maybe not so quickly or wholeheartedly.
The greatest surprise in their relationship had been sex. In her marriage with Steve, sex had been a duty. To be fair, it was a pleasant enough duty most of the time, but still a duty. She had always thought the failure to enjoy it thoroughly and every time was a failing of hers. But since her relationship with Mel had taken an intimate turn, she'd discovered how very wrong she'd been. Steve had simply had no imagination, nor any real awareness of her as an equally important participant. Whereas Mel, who was normally a serious, responsible individual, was as playful and silly as an otter in bed.
Sex with Mel was downright fun. It involved a whole lot of laughter. And he made her completely forget a lot of things she needed to forget: her stretch marks, her own limited experience, and the fact that she was slightly older than he. She might have been locked into domesticity and missed
So why didn't she want desperately to marry him? She had no idea. It wasn't that she was opposed to the idea of marrying again someday, just that it didn't seem important. No, she wasn't being quite honest with herself. She was opposed. Very slightly. She'd gone from being a daughter to a wife to a mother. She was still a daughter and a mother, but the duties and hazards of those roles were less onerous now than they had once been. But having shed wifeliness, she was becoming quite content.
She was in love with Mel, but she didn't look forward to getting intimately involved in doing his laundry. She wasn't eager to learn what he was like to live with when he had a bad cold. Or was doing his income taxes. Or was trying to fix a lawn mower. She didn't want to have to explain or defend or even talk about her household budget. And while she often consulted with him, as she did with Shelley, about decisions she had to make — things about the kids, or buying a new car, or whether the roof on her house would last another couple years — she didn't really want to have to make those decisions jointly. Decision making, which had scared the daylights out of her when Steve had died, had gone to her head now. She liked it. And intended to hang onto the power it gave her.
'What deep thoughts you must be having,' Mel said to her, startling her from her reverie. 'We're talking about dessert and you're not even listening. Is something wrong?'
'Nothing at all is wrong,' she said, smiling.
The dance was held in the conference room where the genealogy debate had taken place. Jane had been unaware that this room connected to two others by way of big dividers that were open now, making a huge area. A very loud country band was well into its repertoire by the time they arrived. Katie and Denise were already there and had found plenty of companionship. Mike immediately wandered off. The little boys declared that dancing was stupid, and begged to be allowed to spend the evening in the game room. With warnings that they were not to go anywhere else without permission, and with a largish contribution of quarters, they were allowed to leave.
There were tables set up around the entire perimeter of the dance floor with cash bars halfway down each side. Jane, Shelley, and Mel found a vacant table at the far end of the room from the band and settled in. Jane watched the line dancing for a while and reluctantly came to the conclusion that the little boys were right in this case. Line dancing looked stupid and boring to her.
Shelley echoed her thoughts. 'This doesn't look like a cultural trend I'll ever be able to embrace with much enthusiasm,' she said thoughtfully. 'I understand the appeal of a waltz or a nice, slow, close-together two-step. I can even grasp why people like to polka, and I once was able to do a really mean twist, but this is a sort of down- home version of a conga line. I don't get it.'
'We're just frumps,' Jane said contentedly.
'Now, now, you ladies are much too young to talk about yourselves that way,' a voice said from behind Jane.
'Lucky!' Jane exclaimed. 'How nice of you. Will you join us?'
'For a minute or two. My wife parked me here and told me not to get into any trouble,' he said with a smile. 'As if I'm likely to.'
Jane introduced him to Mel, then said, 'I keep forgetting to give you something, Lucky. I have a folder that belonged to Mrs. Schmidtheiser. She dropped it when she came out of the debate and ran off before I could give it back to her.'
'How long are you staying?'
'We leave at the crack of dawn on Tuesday,' Jane replied.
'Good. I'm here through Tuesday, so I'll pick it up from you before you go.'
'Just out of curiosity, what will you do with it? The folder and all her other research, for that matter? Did she have any children who might be interested? Or a husband?'
'No, Doris was widowed as a young woman and only had one son, and he isn't remotely interested. I'll probably put it into the Society's library for the time being. That's what I'm doing with the rest of the materials she had with her. And her son has said he'll box up all her research at home and send it on to me as well.'
'Poor thing,' Shelley said. 'To think of all her work just being packed away in boxes like that.'
'Oh, it'll be put to use, I'm sure. There's a slightly younger woman in the Society who's worked with her and will probably carry on,' Lucky said. 'Which may be a mixed blessing.'
'Carry on with the Tsar research, you mean?' Jane asked.
'Oh, no, that's not what I was referring to. No. Doris was a professional genealogist. Did a lot of work for other people. Earned a decent living at it. In fact, she moved to Salt Lake City to be able to use the Mormon library without having to wait for films to arrive in Cleveland, where she used to live.'
'Why do you say that it's a mixed blessing for someone to carry on her work?' Jane asked.
'I shouldn't tell tales out of school,' Lucky replied with mock primness.
'They're the best kind of tales,' Shelley assured him. 'Do lots of people hire genealogists instead of looking things up themselves?'
'Mobs. Sometimes a person has an assignment from Great-Aunt Maud, who wants the work done, but the person the job is assigned to isn't really interested and would rather pay than do it himself. It's very tedious sometimes, reading through reels and reels of film in the hope of spotting just one familiar name. And then, people who really like doing the work themselves often don't have all the time they need for it, and they'll farm out specific areas of their research to a professional. But Doris — well, Doris wasn't always as 'disinterested' as she might have been.'
'You're saying she was a snoop?' Mel surmised. He'd been quietly watching the dancing and hadn't looked like he was even listening to the conversation until now.
Lucky nodded. 'Doris was a celebrity hound, to put it bluntly. Years ago she was invited to do a little local talk show, and as a splashy way of showing off, she hunted down a bunch of information on the host of the show and surprised him by tracing his family back to George the Third or somebody. It was a huge hit, word got around, and she got invited to do other shows. It was like getting a taste of blood. She discovered the celebrities have lots of money and not much time, but are often obsessively interested in their own background. She'd actually solicited customers that way, which is frowned on in genealogical circles.'
'You mean she'd look up stuff about them, show it to them, and ask if they wanted more, instead of waiting for them to come to her?' Shelley asked.
'Exactly. And it usually worked. The payoff, of course, was that she got to be on first-name terms with famous people, which she loved. The downside of it was, sometimes she'd find stuff they weren't happy to know —
