Lick Your Plate Clean

This is a story that might explain an adult's odd behavior is the result of her upbringing. I wrote it so long ago, that I forgot all about it. After reading it, I realize it's just the beginning.

Espresso made from fresh ground beans in a strange little Italian coffee pot that Gwen set on the stove.  Toast broiled in the oven.  Silverware, china, and linen napkins rolled in rings atop an ironed tablecloth.  Maybe the honeymoon to Maui was over, but Sage could get used to work-mornings like these.  In fact, being treated like a gentleman in a different era was exciting.  Gwendolyn had an old-fashioned way that did not seem to acknowledge the existence of a trendy coffee shop with paper cups, plastic lids, or "Free Wifi".

Sage worked as a manager at a tire store.  His life had been boring before he met Gwen, but she seemed to enter his world like raindrops after a drought.  He'd never had a girlfriend who could manage to boil water without having some near catastrophe.  While having a spouse who not only helped by working outside the home, she seemed almost like a robot programmed to the traits he really found attractive.   The only "flaw" that concerned him a little was that during their engagement,  she refused to go to church with him, even though the tire store was closed she did not work at an insurance company on the weekends. 

After word of the whirlwind relationship had spread around the church community, everyone said Gwen sounded like the answer to their prayers.  Undaunted upon hearing she was an atheist, most concurred it was "God's will" that these two souls and flesh become one in marriage.  Oddly enough, Gwen wanted to be married either in Las Vegas or at a courthouse.  Together, they decided upon the latter.  Even stranger was the fact that Gwen claimed she was very frightened of  entering churches and other formal places of worship.  Sage thought maybe it was actually severe shyness, or something more common.  He'd never heard of such a strange phobia, and felt she had invented it as a defense mechanism.

So, life was rolling along just as the waves in the ocean.  Sage felt he and Gwen were adjusting well to their cohabitation.  One night, Gwen opened a conversation, "I seem to have misplaced my checkbook.  Do you think you could pay the power bill tomorrow morning before you go to the shop?"

"Of course.  No problem."

You won't forget, will you?"

"No.  Why?  Is it late?  Are they going to shut off the lights?"

"Only if it doesn't make it by 5:00 PM tomorrow,"  the words choked through her tears.

"Honey!  Don't cry!  It's okay!  I'll take care of it.  Honestly, I'm glad to help with something.  Sometimes you seem so organized that  I feel you practically don't need me."

This doting seemed to brighten Gwen's mood like a cloth to a tarnished spoon.

The next morning, Sage's lunch was packed in the insulated bag his wife had bought him.  No negative talk was spoken at the breakfast table.  Life appeared to be back to being excessively ideal and more serene than the lives of their friends.  Unfortunately, appearances can be deceiving.

When the phone rang at work, Sage answered, hoping it was his bride surprising him.  Instead, it was the minister of the church.  "Say, Sage, I was trying to get a hold of Gwen to see if you two could make it to the ice cream social.  The gal said she didn't work at Brian Sun's Office any longer."

"What?  Well, that doesn't make sense.  Maybe it was a friend of hers playing a joke."

"I don't think so.  She said Gwen hasn't worked there since last month."

Sage had the same sensation wash over him as when his father told him his mother "was gone".

"Gone?  What do you mean?  Where did she go?"  Yes, those were the words he had asked so long upon learning about his mother's suicide.