No wonder Kurt is thinking this through so carefully. The enormity of the responsibility, once one begins to think of it, is mind-boggling.
Friday, March 5
The next morning, Bryan, showing more energy and enthusiasm than he has in months, collared me as I entered the Innova office. His eyes were narrow and his pupils, angry pinpoints. “Are you the one who took my pierogis out of the refrigerator last night?”
Pierogis? I’ve never tasted one, and from the look of them, they are definitely not something anyone would want to steal. In fact, they’d probably be pretty hard to give away. Bryan, whose Polish grandmother has made them for every holiday since he was a child, has an unnatural attachment to these lumps of dough filled with mashed potatoes or sauerkraut. More peculiar yet, she makes dozens of them and gives them to him as a Christmas present. Bryan freezes them and metes them out slowly between Christmas and Easter so he doesn’t run out until his grandmother refills his stash on his birthday. He guards them like gold nuggets and brings them to work boiled or fried in butter. At noon, he heats them, slathers them with sour cream and eats them at his desk
“Bryan, you know I’d never steal anything, especially your Christmas present.”
He sagged and looked woeful. “I suppose it’s my own fault, leaving them there overnight. They were just too tempting, and someone just couldn’t resist.”
“Tempting?” I put a knuckle between my teeth to keep from laughing. Bryan took it as a signal of my upset and sympathy.
“Who could pass up my grandmother’s pierogis? I should have known better than to leave them in the refrigerator to entice people. If you discover who might have taken them, will you let me know?”
Move over, Nancy Drew. Now I’m on The Case of the Purloined Pierogi.
Mitzi entered the office in a cloud of Chanel N° 5 and the aroma of chocolate. “Treats, everyone!” She set a bakery box on my desk and opened it to reveal chocolate éclairs and chocolate doughnuts frosted in chocolate and covered with sprinkles.
“Why do you do this to me, Mitzi?” I take Mitzi’s treats as a direct attack on my waistline. Because Mitzi doesn’t like chocolate, she can ignore it completely. She knows that I, an admitted chocoholic, will succumb repeatedly before the day is done.
“Self-preservation,” Mitzi said with her characteristic straightforwardness. “I like people around me who are heavier than me. It’s good for my self-esteem.”
“What about my self-esteem?”
“Oh, you’re in charge of that,” she retorted airily. “I can’t take care of yours and mine, too. Éclair?”
No wonder I leave the office with a headache.
“Have you seen the pierogis Bryan left in the refrigerator?” I asked, hoping to catch Mitzi in a petty crime.
“Those white lumps he eats for lunch? They look like brains and boiled cauliflower.”
Now that’s a visual.
“His lunch is missing today.”
“He can have an éclair. I’ll put them in the break room.” And Mitzi tripped off happily, acting as if she’d solved every problem but world peace.
Then Kim slouched in wearing a baggy sweater and jeans even though it wasn’t casual Friday. When I greeted her, she walked by me as if I wasn’t there.
Now, I’m accustomed to that kind of treatment from Mitzi, who is usually too involved in her own little world to notice mine. But Kim? That’s another story.
I caught up with her in the back room. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” She flung a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into the refrigerator and slammed the door. “Nada. Zip. Nil. Zilch. Nothing.”
Before I could point out that there seemed to be a whole lot of “nothing” going on, she burst into tears and flung herself into my arms, toppling us into a file cabinet. “The doctor said no, Whitney. What am I going to do?”
It took me a moment to recall that yesterday was the day Kim and Kurt were to visit her oncologist.
“‘No?’” I snapped my fingers. “Just like that?”
“Not exactly,” she snuffled. “He said ‘not yet.’ My oncologist is very conservative, and he recommended that I wait. Since my cancer was caught very early, it’s not likely another pregnancy would be dangerous, but he wants to follow me medically for a while longer before I try to have a second child. Of course, Kurt picked that up and ran with it, reminding the doctor about my issues with chronic depression.”
This didn’t sound good. “And?”
“The doctor called to consult with a specialist, who said that women with a history of depression before pregnancy are almost twice as likely as other women to show signs of it while they are pregnant. It has to do with hormone imbalances.” Her face crumpled. “My doctor started talking about my susceptibility to postpartum depression, and Kurt put his hands in the air and said, ‘That’s it. There’s no way I’d ask my wife to go through that again.’”
“The doctor tried to assure Kurt that babies exposed to antidepressants in utero don’t seem to be set back by it, but you know how stubborn Kurt can be. He never heard another word the doctor said.”
“He’s trying to take care of you, Kim. You can’t fault him for that.”
Kim scrubbed away her tears with the back of her hand. “I know it. And I know we have to be in agreement about this before we try again. But I don’t think he’ll change his mind. He says he loves me too much to jeopardize my health.”
“It’s hard to argue with that. He loves you, Kim. He’s seen you in both physical and emotional pain.”
“Not having another child will hurt me, too!”
That was something I wasn’t going to touch. Only God was smart enough for that one.
Friday March 19
Today, I was innocently minding my own business as I put treats out for afternoon coffee. My plan was to infuse the staff with pure sucrose, to give them a sugar high that would last until the end of the day, so we could get some work done around here.
“Ahah!”
The door to the office coat closet flew open and crashed against the wall behind it, revealing Byran standing there, piles of extra toilet paper at his feet, his head in a tangle of wire coat hangers.
I dropped the Tupperware container of divinity I was carrying and grabbed my chest with both hands. “CPR! Call an ambulance! Someone, start CPR!”
“Sorry, Whitney, I thought you were the Pierogi Bandit.” Bryan slunk out of the storage closet where he’d been hiding and began to pick up the white globs of divinity candy that were now on the break room floor. “You had white lumps in your hands. I thought…”
“Give it up, Bryan. Ask your grandmother to make you some more pierogi. Give me her number and I’ll ask her. You can’t continue to leap out of cupboards and shuffle through our desks looking for food.”
“It’s just wrong,” Bryan insisted. “There’s a thief on the premises, and I’m going to find her.”
“‘Her?’”
“There are four women in this office and two men. It’s got to be a woman. The odds are in favor of a female.”
Talk about allegiance to your gender. I wish some of that loyalty would rub off on Mitzi. For the past two weeks, while Kim has been utterly distracted by her debate with Kurt over another child, Mitzi has turned into Lady Godiva—Godiva chocolate, that is. She’s even had her housekeeper bake goodies for the office—German