4. If You Can’t Stand The Heat …

4

IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT…

QUINN

1 DAY 'TIL CHRISTMAS

It's after nine P.M. on Christmas Eve. I should not be at war with a ham.

"Can you believe I have to bake this ham the night before we even eat it?" I ask Veronica, my best friend and fellow second-grade teacher. She's on FaceTime with me as I try to make heads or tails of this maple-glazed baked ham recipe Patrick's mom sent me without much guidance. There are too many steps, and I'm scared I'm going to do it wrong and ruin Christmas like Patrick said. "I didn't read the instructions early enough to do this at a reasonable time. This is my longest break of the year, and I've spent it vacuuming, dusting, decorating, and now I'm making a whole damn feast. If this was a school night, I'd be winding down already. Instead, I'm cosplaying Ina Garten!"

I've already removed the rind on this ham, which involved a knife, some peeling, and a whole lot of cringing. This poor pig. My poor hands.

"Why can't you do all this tomorrow? It takes a few hours but it's not like you're slow-cooking it." Veronica is Jewish, so Christmas preparations are always confounding to her. Her family's Hanukkah celebrations are small—latkes, lighting the menorah, a gift or two—and her Christmases are spent watching all the pending Oscar contenders at the mostly empty movie theater with her mom. "I'm genuinely asking. I know nothing about ham. I don't eat it."

"Apparently if I want to be a present host, I should do it tonight so all I have to do is reheat it tomorrow and baste, baste, baste!" I find it hilarious that Mrs. Hargrave's handwritten instructions read so much like her speaking voice, right down to her love of repetition. "I feel so nineteen-fifties."

"It doesn't help that your house is practically that old," she jokes. On the other end of the call, she's crocheting an olive-green beanie for the woman she likes who tends bar at our favorite haunt, the Loose Nail. We'd usually be there on Christmas Eve sharing a pitcher and wings while a drag queen in a Mrs. Claus costume sings "Santa Baby," but alas.

I roll my eyes. "I just pray this prehistoric oven finally preheats before I lose my mind."

Over at the stovetop, the sugar in my glaze has finally all dissolved. I grab a brush and start painting my ham, which reminds me of doing art demonstrations with my students. "It's not about perfection," I always say. "It's about expression."

I take that attitude into this meal. It'll be Christmas. Nobody is going to criticize my cooking.

Well, maybe Mrs. Hargrave, but she'll pull me aside quietly in the kitchen to tell me. I would never consider Mrs. Hargrave homophobic. She is wholly accepting, planned most of our wedding, and vocally slaps down the haters she went to high school with on Facebook. However, I think she has some regressive ideas of who I am to Patrick.

"Are you sure you don't want to come for Christmas dinner?" I ask Veronica, who is so engrossed in her hat-making that she's probably forgotten we were on the phone. We're those kinds of friends—comfortable in the silence we share. Work trauma bonds are the kinds that can't be broken. "I'm making a ton of sides. Well, trying to. There won't just be ham."

"I'm going to pass on that, thanks. I have a hot date with Cate Blanchett and a refillable tub of popcorn." She winks at me, pushing her brown curls—almost as unruly as my own at their current length—out of her face so she can see what she's doing better. "But I have faith you'll smash this heteronormative bullshit with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole."

"Thank you," I say. "Though I really could be using this time to figure out how I'm going to teach a class of thirty kids without an aide come January. Did you see that email from Principal Masterson?"

For this, Veronica sets down her crochet hook. "Do not remind me of the hell on Earth that awaits us after this break. Try as we might, no one can truly prepare for the apocalypse."

"Drama queen." I turn away for a second to shout at the oven that has annoyingly not yet reached 320 degrees, even after a reasonable amount of time has passed.

"You're one to talk. You're yelling at an inanimate appliance! And you're the co-advisor of the Oakwood Elementary School drama club," Veronica huffs, resuming her work. Her camera feed is a tangle of thick yarn.

"Oh, lord. That's a problem for post–New Year Quinn." Yet another obligation taking up space on my already full plate.

"You know, if you're stressed about it, you're allowed to say no to things. You can always bow out gracefully," she says.

"No, I can't. Mrs. Birch needs me. She can't handle directing all those kids and the production elements by herself." I glare at the oven, hoping my sharp eyebrow might scare the heat into jumping up. "I'm just feeling the second-year burnout, that's all, and this district keeps throwing us curveball after curveball."

"My, my. Sports metaphors? Are you sure you haven't left the gas on too high?"

"V, please. You know I have a complicated relationship with baseball." I would add and my dad but that is not the kind of intrusive thought I need to be having while making a Christmas ham for my in-laws. "I know I'll survive, but after the wedding picture situation and my evaluation… I don't know. I see the kids struggling from the lack of individualized attention already. What's going to happen when it's just me? I'm only one person with two hands. Evidenced now by the fact that I should be sautéing green beans, but I can't put this ham in this damn oven yet!"

"Where's your other half, your second pair?" Veronica asks of Patrick.

"Outside hanging lights to please his parents," I say, a wormy feeling invading my gut. "He worked from home all week, which isn't usual for him. Then today, when I got back from the grocery store with all this stuff, he rushed outside like being in the same room with me was going to give him hives."

"You think he's avoiding you?" she asks, concerned. She's always one step ahead of me conversation-wise.

"Maybe," I say, mulling it over and pouring myself a glass of red wine. "Maybe not. But he's definitely keeping something from me. I can feel it."

"Why don't you ask him?"

"Because I have a whole-ass ham to worry about. I can't go starting conversations I don't have the time to finish." I don't mention that we barely even talk about the weather these days.

"Be careful where you place your verbal commas," Veronica says, unable to stop being a teacher ever. "Sounded like you said ass-ham. A ham made of ass."

"You're an ass-ham!" I joke, and we both laugh, but the levity doesn't last long enough. In a more somber tone, I ask a question that's been on my mind for the past few months. "V, how do you know when a relationship isn't working anymore?"

She sets her crocheting down for good this time and stares right into her phone camera. "What's going on?"

"Nothing. Not really." Her narrowed eyes distill her disbelief, and I quickly rescind my negation. "It's just that this isn't new behavior. Yeah, it's more avoidant than normal, but ever since we bought this place— No, maybe it was earlier. Actually, it was defi nitely earlier." I trill my lips in frustration over the timeline in my head. "Ever since we canceled our honeymoon, we've barely had any time together. It's like we put on these wedding rings and stopped seeing each other."

"Oh, Quinn," she says in a sympathetic tone that makes my skin crawl. I'm not looking for pity. What do I have to complain about? I have a job, a husband, a house. Every which one of them is giving me a migraine right now, but still. By all metrics, I should be thriving, not complaining. "Does Patrick feel the same way?"

"If he does, he hasn't said anything. Most nights he takes his dinner up to his office while he does more work, and I take my papers into the living room to grade, and the next time I see him, he's in bed asleep." Half the time, I stand there for a second and wonder what he's dreaming about. His designs, probably.

Maybe if I were a blueprint he would pay better attention to me.

Veronica shakes her head. "I hate to say it, but you're basically stating the thesis of my parents' divorce."

"Please don't use the D-word." That's what my mom called it when my parents were going through it. She'd say, "I'll be in my room. Gotta call the D-word lawyer again" or "This D-word is being dragged out too long by that D-bag. I wish he would settle already." I never knew if she was doing it to be funny for my benefit or if saying the word in full was too painful for her. Either way, it stuck.

"I'm not saying that's what's going to happen with you two," Veronica clarifies. "All I'm saying is a pattern becomes a habit and a habit becomes resentment and resentment leads to nothing good."

The sound of the front door scares me. My heart jumps into my throat with worry. I tell Veronica to hold on as I venture down the hallway and into the foyer, but nobody is there. "Pat?" I call to no response. It must've been the wind. The lightest breeze and this house groans. I shrug and take a deep breath.

"It's probably just me," I say to Veronica when I return, shoving aside any thoughts to the contrary. "It's all in my head. It'll be fine."

Just like I made a promise to Patrick with our vows, I made a promise to myself that I would never end up like my parents.

But maybe divorce wasn't the part I was supposed to be worried about. It was falling out of love with the one person I envisioned an entire life together with.

A text banner hovers over Veronica's skeptical expression.

Patrick: Can you come outside for a minute and help me with the lights?

The oven temperature is still not where it needs to be, so I can step away from this kitchen and close this can of worms I never should've opened in the first place. It'll probably do me some good.

Sure, I type back. Be right there.