First You Try Everything by Jane Mccafferty

this house, with these parents, in a way that
Lauren could not. Not yet.
    â€œI t’s
sad,” Lauren whispered.
    â€œWhat’s sad?”
    â€œThis is your home, and you’re like a stranger
here.”
    His stepmother had beautifully arranged the guest
room for them. She was, on some practical level, a hospitable soul. Because
Lauren was this way too, it allowed him a new appreciation for all of it: The
quilts on the mahogany sleigh bed were hand-sewn heirlooms beautifully softened
with age, the sheer curtains were embroidered with butterflies. She’d arranged
fresh blue towels on a rack, and the sheets, they saw now, climbing naked into
the old bed, were the softest, whitest dream-sheets, like silk against their
skin as they turned to each other in the dim orange glow of the night-light.
    â€œA stranger?” He was immensely grateful for the
surprise of her perception. She’d seemed quietly oblivious at the table, and
afterward, when they’d all taken a walk to the lake.
    â€œDon’t you think?”
    She rubbed his shoulders, introducing him to the
tension he must’ve felt all evening long. They made love, quietly, and the
silence of the room deepened around them. He squeezed her hand. “That was
nice.”
    â€œNice? You’re amazing,” she said.
    â€œReally?”
    â€œYou’re really surprised? Your wife never let you
in on that little secret?”
    â€œDon’t call it little.”
    She laughed.
    He was still not completely at ease with her, which
made him feel like a pedestrian lover, too considerate, too careful. He
suspected her of flattery.
    â€œSo should I never mention her? Like she never
existed? If so, that’s cool.”
    He considered this for a moment. “You can mention
her.”
    â€œSomeday I’d like to get to know her.”
    â€œStranger things have happened.”
    â€œYou could meet Carter if you wanted.”
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    â€œReally? No curiosity?”
    â€œI think I’ll just let Carter be Carter in
Carterville.”
    â€œOK.”
    A silence fell. He tried steering his mind to more
neutral territory. The morning. They could head to a bakery before leaving town.
Eclairs. Espresso. And then a long drive down 79 with some music.
    â€œI’d like to meet your mom.”
    â€œSoon.”
    â€œAre you a stranger there too?”
    â€œNo. I mean no more than any grown-up child is a
stranger in their parent’s house. My mom knows how to watch football and get
high on Pepsi. She lives on a llama farm with a guy who used to be the mayor of
Indiana, Pennsylvania, and she takes life as it comes.”
    â€œWow. A llama farm? And you never bothered to
mention this?”
    â€œShe’s only been with the mayor for three
years.”
    â€œAnd she’s happy?”
    â€œShe can spend ten hours in a tomato garden. Sort
of happy no matter what. And I don’t understand it, since her father was
horrible.” He could never think of his mother without thinking of his
grandfather, but he stopped himself before saying more.
    He’d found out who his grandfather was when he was
seven years old, staying with his grandparents while his parents went to Niagara
Falls for a long weekend. His grandfather had beaten him with a belt one night,
in a mudroom where the sound of the whirring dryer muffled the sound of his
grandfather’s voice as it ordered him to strip naked. He’d tried to run out of
the room, and this had enraged the man. “I have to take you down a peg or two,”
he’d confided, twisting Ben’s arm, “for your own sake.”
    Ben had been black and blue afterward, and stunned,
a different person altogether, and his grandmother had sat him at the kitchen
table while she moved around in heeled slippers humming her denial and baking a
cake. A clock hung high on the wall, and a small totem pole sat on the sill
above the sink next to a glass frog.