Tightening the Knot (16 page)

On Sunday, Greg was sore.
 
He got dressed for church in slow motion and when they returned home, he just loosened his tie and lay back on the couch, unable to bear the thought of getting more comfortable.
 
Meredith, however, did change her clothes.
 
She put on her old college sweats and a slightly stretched out tank top.
 
Greg was not the only productive member of the family.
 
She began with some light housework, her typical weekend routine of dusting, vacuuming and a once over of both bathrooms.
 
Then she got more serious.
 

She decided that as long as Greg had washed the outsides of the windows, she ought to take a crack at getting the insides clean.
 
She pulled a bottle of Windex out from under the sink and tucked a roll of paper towels under her arm.
 
As she fought back the curtains on the first window, it seemed like a better idea to simply take them down.
 
And because she couldn’t remember how long it had been since she washed
them, that
also seemed like a good idea.
 
She went around her house collecting curtains for a load of laundry.
 
All of her curtains were machine washable.
 
They were also all varying shades of yellow so they could be washed in the same load.
 
Jenna had chastised her friend for decorating based on care instructions.
 
She felt that the choice of window dressings really set the personality of the entire house and that it was one choice that could absolutely be made solely on looks.
 
She also didn’t especially care for yellow.

With the washer humming, Meredith went back to the bare windows and began scrubbing in earnest.
 
The new roll of paper towels was down by half by the time she had finished.
 

Next she put the curtains in the dryer and stripped the bed to refill the washer.
 
This gave her the idea to flip the mattress.
 
She wasn’t really sure why someone would flip a mattress, but recalled her mother doing it occasionally so felt it must be important, though hopefully not so important that it mattered that she’d never done it before.
 
The mattress was queen-sized with a pillow top.
 
The size was what caught Meredith’s focus at the thought of moving it.
 
This was probably going to require a plan, or perhaps a couple of burly guys.
 
As the only available guy, who was only mildly burly anyway, was not currently in a state to lift his own arms, she was going to have to make do with a good plan.
 
A quick survey of the room indicated nothing breakable on Greg’s side.
 
She could probably shove the mattress that way and stand it on its side against the wall and then… figure something out.

“Ugh,” Meredith grunted as she gave the mattress a good, hard push.
 
Then she looked down and saw the two inches of box springs sticking out.
 
It seemed the mattress was heavier than she realized.
 
She bent down to put her shoulder into it and pushed with her legs.
 
A little more progress.
 
She heaved and shoved until the far side slipped to the floor and her side tipped upwards.
 
Then she climbed up between the mattress and box springs and squatted with her back against the pillow bottom, slowly standing to push the mattress upright.
 
She nearly lost her balance when it reached the tipping point.
 
This resulted in what would have been a rather embarrassing dance if anyone had been helping.
 
As it was, Meredith was simply grateful not to have fallen.

She studied the mattress now propped against the wall and began to sense a miscalculation.
 
In order to turn it over, the side against the wall would need to end up against the box springs.
 
There was not enough room to turn it around and even if there was, she was reasonably certain the mattress would fall on her during the process.
 
She furrowed her brow and put her hands on her hips.
 
She was going to do
something
with this mattress.
 
Eventually, she tipped it back onto the bed, but turned it so that the head became the foot.
 
Something told her this was not what people meant by flipping a mattress.
 
Why would it have a pillow top on the bottom if that wasn’t also a top?
 
But the mattress was not in the same position that it started in and that satisfied her sense of accomplishment enough to seek out another chore.

She dusted mostly invisible cobwebs from the upper corners of every room in the house and then got down on her hands and knees to clean the baseboards.
 
The bookshelves begged her attention as well.
 
She carefully removed and dusted each and every book and the shelves they sat upon.
 
Greg had ordered pizza for dinner and the scent joined her in the den right about the time she began to feel she had been productive enough for one day.
 
Unfortunately, she was surrounded by stacks and stacks of books that were not going to sprout wings and fly back onto the now very clean shelves.
 
She grumbled to herself, only slightly more loudly than her stomach, and worked quickly to put things back in order.
 
Then she put away more pizza than was typical for her and didn’t feel even a bit guilty about the extra calories.
 

╣ Chapter 21 ╠

           
Meredith was a little sore the day after her cleaning spree.
 
She felt it as she packed a New Year’s Eve bag for her and Greg, who was feeling only marginally better.
 
Still, they were able to head to the hotel with the belief that they might have one of the
most well
-maintained houses around.
 
The feeling gave little comfort though as there was also the sensation that the real work was about to begin.

           
Meredith had successfully packed a light suitcase for the event.
 
Even so, Greg heaved it from the trunk as though she had packed for a week.
 
He put the wheels on the ground and followed his wife, who was walking slower than usual, into the lobby.
 
It had a very high, white ceiling supported with square columns over that typical hotel combination of business and living room.
 
There was judicious use of weedy looking plants and a black lantern on the desk that seemed to add a touch of backyard as well.
 
A red-striped couch with end tables sat near a TV on one side and a large sturdy looking desk stood ready to serve.
 
The woman behind it, however, appeared to be suffering from an extreme case of boredom.
 
The entrance of customers was not a diversion.

           
“Can I help you?”
 
It was not so much a question as a yawn with words.

           
“Greg and Meredith
Donnor
.
 
We’re here for… um, it’s a marriage thing.
 
I don’t know if it has a name.”

           
“You mean the ‘Tightening the Knot’ seminar.
 
What was the last name again?”

           
“
Donnor
.”

           
“
Donnor
.
 
I’ll look that up.
 
I hope you haven’t eaten anyone lately.”
 
She gave no smile or any other acknowledgment of her own joke so neither Greg nor Meredith felt the need to acknowledge it either.
 
They simply stood patiently while she absently tapped on her keyboard and then rummaged under the counter.
 
Without looking up she asked, “Do you want to keep this on the credit card you used for the reservation?”

           
“Yes, please.”

           
More tapping.
 
Meredith picked up one leg and then the other to stretch her sore muscles.
 
She hadn’t realized how much squatting was involved in cleaning baseboards.
 
Eventually, a purple folder was shoved to their side of the counter.

           
“This is your welcome folder for the seminar.
 
And these are your room keys.
 
You’re in 212.
 
Take the elevator and make a left.”

           
“Okay, thanks.”
 
Greg took the keys and Meredith took the folder, even though it didn’t make her feel all that welcome.
 
It had a label stuck to the front that said only “couple #14.”
 
They made their way to the elevator and then to the second floor hallway.
 
The sign that greeted them showed 212 to the right and there was no dilemma as to which information to trust.

           
The first thing that struck Meredith about the room was the lack of flowers.
 
It seemed to her that most hotel rooms she’d been in had some sort of flower pattern on the bedspread and/or drapes and perhaps framed pictures of flowers on the walls.
 
This room had a plain spread on the bed and simple striped coverings on the windows.
 
It had a fresh, clean look and she liked that illusion.
 

           
Meredith opened the suitcase to immediately hang her dress in the closet to avoid wrinkles.
 
She had packed an elegant blue dress she bought for a cousin’s wedding the previous year.
 
Still mildly plagued by the feeling that she had spent too much on it, she was glad to have an occasion suitable for a second use.
 
Greg had only one suit.
 
It was black and he had worn it to every appropriate affair for the last eight years.
 
She hung this next to her dress.
 

           
Then she opened up that purple folder to investigate.

           
“Don’t get too comfortable,” she warned Greg, who was checking out the flat screen TV.
 
“This has an itinerary for couple #14 that starts at four.”

           
“Do you think we need to remember our number?”

           
“I just assumed we’d bring the folder with us.”

           
“Okay.
 
So what are we doing at four?”

           
“It’s a session called ‘Weaving your personalities together.’
 
It’s supposed to give us…” she looked down and read from the paper, “a hands-on exercise in making one cloth of our separate beings.”

           
“One cloth of our beings?”
 
Greg looked skeptical, almost as though he’d rather be doing yard work again.

           
“That’s what it says.
 
We’ll be making cloth from 4 to 5 and then from 5 to 6 we’ll be ‘Molding Emotions.’
 
6:30
to 8 is dinner, a ‘grand buffet,’ and then
8 to 9
is something called ‘Finding the Fun in Fundamentals.’”

           
“I thought this was supposed to be a dance.”
 

           
Meredith kept reading their prepared agenda.
 
“We have nothing scheduled between 9 and 10, presumably to get ready for the ‘Fairy Tale Ball,’ which is from 10 to 1.
 
Oh, I don’t believe that.”

           
“What?”

           
“There’s a breakfast set for
6:30
after an event that goes until 1.
 
They forgot to schedule sleep.”