Curing the Uncommon Man-Cold (37 page)

Amanda took a thoughtful sip of her cooling coffee. “Well, I feel awful for everything we put you through. I just thought you were being a big baby and wanted to regress to when you were the center of attention and the entire world revolved around you and your needs, or whims.”

Lame smile. “Yeah, that, too.”

Amanda whapped his hand.

“It’s not always easy to separate what’s described here,” Jason tapped the paper, “from the way you just stated it. But a man needs, occasionally, to shut down his systems and run a complete…”

“And the little boy wants Momma to hug and coo and comfort him at her breast.”

“Is that so bad?” Jason shrugged again. “Anyway, it’s not so easy to differentiate. All those needs rolled up together and the body has signaled it’s time for a diagnostic.”

“Runny nose, headache, and half a degree of temp.”

“I didn’t say I was Code Blue on the E.R. crash cart. Look, it might not seem justifiable, but I’m at least trying to describe it. I do want you to understand that it’s not just manufactured. The cold really happened.”

“And then fabrication clicks in, so you can stretch it out.” Amanda made that motion with the fingers of both hands.

“Well, once we shut down for the checkup analysis and receive a bit of extra attention or comfort… it feels good. So, if it does drag on, it’s because we feel so at home that we don’t want to leave.”

“I guess I can’t blame you for wanting that. But it’s still unfair, off balance — most women just have to keep going. Cooking, cleaning, working, handling children, et cetera. When do women have this little vacation in the diagnostic shop? When do females get a reprieve from responsibility, obligation, accountability, whatever?”

Jason shrugged. He started to mention PMS and menstrual cramps, but since he didn’t understand a single thing about either one, he wisely kept his mouth shut.

Chapter 26

Amanda watched as the distant relaxed family returned to their minivan; all got inside except the young girl, who needed a few final swings before leaving. She was probably about eight and looked like a tomboy. About twenty years before, Amanda had been just like her.

The mother called several times, with increasing volume. The girl finally left the swings and, distinctly disgusted, entered the family vehicle.

Their minivan drove away slowly, the girl gazing toward the swing set.

Amanda watched the vehicle disappear around a tree-lined curve and then turned to Jason. “Thanks for sharing your essay. And since you’ve decided to bring up colds again, let’s establish some ground rules, just in case either one of us should ever get sick again.”

“Hold on. Just to make sure… these are rules for each of us. Right?”

She nodded. “Number one, it’s a lot easier to visit a sickie and bring him meals… so stay at your own apartment unless you’re truly at death’s door.”

Jason frowned. He likely thought he’d just recently experienced that dire status.

“Number two, if you absolutely
have
to be in somebody’s else’s dwelling, shower every day and comb your ratty hair. At least every other day, you shave.”

“That includes legs, for you.” He stroked her thigh, still surprisingly smooth from last night’s shave.

Amanda smiled as she nodded. “And burn those nasty jammies.”

“What do I have to wear? Prison uniform?” Jason looked down and possibly imagined garish stripes on coarse gray wool. At the moment he wore a tee-shirt, jean shorts, and sneakers.

“I’d settle for decent looking sweatpants with an actual waistband, and a clean shirt each morning.”

“So, what’s your sick apparel going to be? Sexy negligee?”

“Dream on. Probably warm flannel jammies with the feet sewed on.” She touched his upper chest. “But they’ll be clean each day.” She closed her eyes to think of other components. “Oh, and brush your teeth, morning and night. Plus, clean up after yourself.”

“Not crazy about having to endure my illness in solitary confinement, but I think I can hold up the rest of that contract. Is that it?”

“We’ll have to work out something about food — maybe the sickie brings his or her own food as long as it doesn’t inhibit recovery or cause extra mucous.”
Hmm.
Food and diet would need additional study. “Biggie: no channel flipping TV marathons in the middle of the night. I need my rest since I have to work the next day. Oh, and I require at least an hour to chill after I get home from work.”

“Sounds fair enough.” Then Jason grinned cheesily. “What about the kindly nurse fluffing my pillow and other stuff.”

Amanda recalled how much she’d wished for someone to take care of her during those first three days after her accident. “Okay, tit for tat. If I’m the desperately ill sickie, on the day I get well enough to leave your apartment, you’re the cabana boy who gives me a full body massage.”

“No problemo,
señorita
.”

Amanda thought for a second about reciprocation. “Your next cold better not be during the remainder of this decade. But the next time you’re truly ill, I’ll try limited participation in your attentive nurse fantasy. But only on the day that you leave my apartment.”

“So, that’s my incentive to get well quicker? No sex ’til I’m walking out the door?”

“Not walking out
per se
. But, you know, I’d need a certainty you were heading the direction of the door.” She smiled.

“Like a parting gift.”

“Maybe a departure celebration.”

“So, how would that work? Would I be in actual departing motion?” Jason’s fingers mimicked walking. “Or would a bed be involved?”

“I don’t know. Bed, couch, floor, gurney. Whatever’s convenient.” She smiled fondly. “Remember that time we made love on a dining room chair?”

He nodded vigorously. “It was so good, I nearly passed out.” Jason seemed to like the turn of their conversation. “Well, we could do the nurse thing even if I don’t have a vicious cold. You know… practice, so we could work out the kinks.”

“You want to be sure we’re on the same page…” Her fingertips touched the inside of his forearm.

“Received the same memo…” His hand returned to her thigh.

“Attended the right briefing…”

Somehow their list transitioned to a close embrace. Then they kissed.

When her fractured toes touched the broad cement base of their massive picnic table, Amanda groaned and pulled away. “Let’s head back to my place.”
Breakfast sausage is not tasty enough to revisit in a kiss.

———

Jason did not want the kissing to stop, but he figured Amanda’s apartment held promise for other delights.

For the moment, however, he was using restraint. He’d seen pain in her eyes and she probably needed another pill.

His natural urges would have pressed the issue, but somehow his rational brain and newly empathetic heart kicked in instead. So he waited and watched. And drove.

When they arrived at her apartment, Jason hurried to the kitchen cabinet to bring her the pain pills. She only took one.

After they got settled in, Amanda propped her right leg on the hassock and watched portions of two different sappy movies. She leaned against his side with her shoulders under his right arm, until Jason nearly dozed off.

Apparently tired of television, she accidently roused Jason as she got out from under his heavy arm. Then Amanda repositioned her footstool and moved over on the couch nearer the lamp. She gave him the remote and resumed reading the paperback she’d left the previous evening.

Jason surfed for a few moments. As usual, with over 30 good channels, it was difficult to make up his mind. It was only late morning and the pre-season football Sunday games hadn’t started yet. So bored with television at the moment that he actually felt like talking, he put down the remote. “The other day my mom was telling me stuff I’d never heard before.”

“Like what?” Amanda marked and closed her book.

“Mom said Dad had a couple of suspicious colds, sometime before I started school, I guess. She was at the point with him that she actually felt like leaving my dad if she couldn’t break him of the alleged man-cold syndrome.”

“Sounds pretty serious. And…?”

It was painful for Jason to phrase this. “But she said she loved him too much to leave him.”

“So she broke him instead.”

“Uh-huh. And early this morning… I was thinking.”

———

Amanda sat up straight.
This is new.
“Thinking about what?”

“I figured…” He started hesitantly. “If you loved me enough… to do all that stuff… to break the cycle of what you call man-colds… then you probably loved me enough… not to leave me.” Jason appeared relieved that he got all those words out.

She snuggled into his side. “I’m not going to leave you, Jason. But I sure was ready to throttle you.”

“But you do love me?”

“Yes, Jason, absolutely. Even at your grungiest, even with that awful breath and those pitiful jammies. Even with all the whining, I never stopped loving you.” She kissed his cheek. “But I didn’t
like
you very much, not last week.”

Jason scrunched his brow. “How do you tell the difference? How far can it go — not liking someone — before the love is gone, too?”

“I don’t know. I guess that’s what Margaret found out with your dad. There must be a point when the weight shifts over and you
could
stop loving someone, but I don’t know what it is.” Amanda touched his wrist for emphasis. “I’ve seen old married couples who didn’t seem to like each other at all any more, but somewhere deep inside, a core of mutual love remained.”

“My mom said love was about the person, but liking was about the behavior. She said when me and my brothers were kids, she sometimes hated what we did, but never stopped loving us.”

Amanda nodded. “That’s maternal love. There’s a lot of primal instinct and other stuff involved with motherhood. Part of that’s about
you’ve
got
my blood in your veins and you came from my body
. That’s different from romantic love.”

“I guess I’d agree, but I’m not sure I could explain that difference.”

She thought for a moment. “Romantic love is about attraction, passion, bonding, and whatever, but it begins with two people who have no blood ties. So whatever grows out of that romantic love doesn’t have the blood to back it up.” She wondered how well she was explaining her grasp of the difference. “The love of partners has to do with commitment that involves, at least to some extent, a series of choices. I think.”

Jason looked into her eyes. “What are your choices?”

Amanda didn’t answer. She’d only recently realized that, until yesterday, she’d never truly been in love, even though she’d convinced herself at those other times that she was. Whatever she’d experienced with her sleazy college professor had certainly not been love. And her attraction to that Cary Grant executive had been little more than inflamed infatuation.

Jason watched her for several moments and probably guessed she didn’t have a response. So he sighed quietly and resumed channel surfing.

Nobody could imagine how many times Jason had zipped through sequential channel numbers during the past hour. Though he seldom reviewed the programming guide for the locations of interesting shows, he now checked that screen for the time. Nearly noon. “You feel like any lunch?”

“Depends on what you have in mind.” She was not willing to try tuna again.

“I was thinking simple… like cereal. We got milk at the store yesterday.”

“True, but I think the only cereal I have here is flax, hemp, and those large shredded wheat bricks you complained about.”

He frowned. “How ’bout I make another grocery run and get some good cereal?”

“Define
good
.”

“You know, tasty, sweet. Regular stuff. Real cereal.”

Amanda eyed him skeptically. She suspected this was some kind of guy maneuver but couldn’t imagine his motive. Men don’t eagerly rush to the store to pick up cereal. Nonetheless, she nodded slowly.

He checked his pockets for keys and wallet. “This’ll be a commando mission: in-grab-out. Twenty minutes, tops.”

“Okay, but get me some ordinary generic raisin bran. I don’t think I can handle Fruity Pebbles or whatever you’re likely to come up with.”

“Okay, red-bunny.”

“What?”

“Red-bunny. That’s my pneumatic for raisin bran.”

Mnemonic
. But she didn’t correct him. “If you can remember red-bunny, surely you can remember raisin bran.”

“But the brain holds onto it better when you substitute something. Saw that on the Discovery Channel.”

She was surprised Jason’s quick surfing thumb had allowed him sufficient exposure to any one channel to absorb an entire segment of anything. “Okay, red-bunny. Bye.” Amanda waved without turning around.

Jason started out the door. Then he came back, walked around to the front of the couch, leaned way over, and kissed her lips lightly. “Be right back.”

Her lips were still slightly parted when the front door closed. “He kissed me goodbye.”
Who is that guy?

While Jason was gone, Amanda logged on to her Facebook account to check recent posts and then read her newest e-mails. One each from Maria and Sunny, one from sister Kaye, two from Mom, one from King Louie, three from Christine, and a new one from Jason! She checked the time stamp. Why had Jason sent her an e-mail at 6:17 a.m.? At that point, she’d been still asleep on the couch less than eight feet from where he’d been typing.

The last e-mail she’d received from Jason was his break-up memo. Her fingers trembled slightly as she clicked open this new message.

.

Please disregard my previous transmission. It was intended for a different woman I used to know. I apologize for any inconvenience and assure you your account will be properly credited.

.

Amanda shook her head. Jason couldn’t write three sentences without defaulting to the schpiel he was required to say at his job. But she smiled. The sentiment of the first portion was lovely.