Hodie Mihi, Cras Tibi
 

FROHIKE:

No consulting work today. Thank God. I need the break.

Not that I have nothing to do. The magazine beckons for our attention. It's always a nightmare getting out the May issue-Byers is in the throes of finishing a semester, as is Michael, and Langly has had other preoccupations. We haven't gotten any assistance from Allison, either, as she has been otherwise engaged.

But Byers will be done today, and he only works sporadically during the summer, publishing the occasional paper and doing the administrivia inherent in his current position. Langly? I'm not sure. It depends on how soon they might get results or throw in the towel. I sense he'd stick it out to the bitter end, but Allison looks terribly worn out. I'm not certain how much more of this she can take.

She popped her head in to say hello, but that was all, when she arrived home. She looks like death warmed a few degrees. If she has any sense-something which her marriage to the Blonde Boy leads me to question-she'll take a nap.

When the semester ended, my son nearly collapsed from sheer exhaustion, and spent four days in bed, sleeping and getting over a cold. I was very nervous while he was sick-not from the actual condition, but from the visions of last winter and what could happen again.

Believe me, I haven't been up for it.

Today, his young lady has a day off from work, and they expressed some interest in getting out for some fun together. Considering that as soon as he'd picked up a few days' rest and recovery, he came back to work at TMB, and I told him to go on, enjoy the good weather and the company of his young lady.

You're only young once. If you ever are.

I don't feel as if I was ever young.

Byers shows up early in the afternoon, looking considerably more lighthearted than he's been in recent weeks. This semester must have been extremely draining for him. He was very tense the last couple of weeks, more so than usual for this time of year. But today, he looks ten years younger, he steps a little lighter, and he's taken off the friggin' tie.

It's May, for Chrissake. The semester's over. Give it up.

He's almost-God forbid-bubbly this afternoon. Well, as close to bubbly as Byers ever gets.

Semester must have been rougher than I thought. He's bursting with relief.

He works away for a time, does some errands, and returns to continue. It's a pleasure to be around him when he's in good spirits. I find this improves my own frame of mind, which, if the truth be told, seems to lean to the Grinchly.

Langly never shows up before 5:30, and today is no exception. He heads in first to see the family, but he'll be out soon. Hopefully, he didn't have one of those days where he could smash the good humor Byers and I are enjoying to smithereens. He is a miserable cuss when he's unhappy, and he's not shy about sharing his misery.

Both of them appear a short time later, both Langly and Allison. Allison looks better, perhaps she did take a nap. In any event, she's got some color in her cheeks-not that she has much to start with. And a smile.

Both of them are smiling.

Could it be they have news for us?

Indeed they do. They are going to be parents.

Provided all goes well, the newest and smallest Langly will make its appearance in early February.

That could be a big if. Allison's track record is, in terms of sheer numbers, not impressive. She's had four pregnancies and one child. 25 percent isn't very good betting odds. But this isn't the time to bring it up.

I do hope she's planning to take care of herself. The girl is hopeless when it comes to looking after herself, but she does well with others, so perhaps that her current other is tucked inside her may force her to rethink her position on the subject.

And she's done this drill before. Miranda is a lovely child. Allison has done well with her.

I ask her how she's feeling, and her instantaneous response is, tired. She says she's been asleep since she got home.

This is good. I don't want to have to worry about her as well. God knows I worry about the others enough.

Oh, forget it, Frohike. You'll worry and fret the whole time. You know you will. It's the way you are.

I am delighted, but now I have new anxieties.

What if this doesn't take? The only child she's made it past 13 weeks with is Miranda, and apparently that was something of a struggle. I've hacked her medical records, seeing if there was perhaps something I missed or misinterpreted along the way.

I didn't. Her other two pregnancies ended at approximately week 9 or 10.

She has a ways to go before she is out of the woods on this one.

Leave it to me to be the proverbial wet blanket.

I'm going to keep my mouth shut and hope for the best.

And take everyone to celebrate. I instruct Byers to pick up his young lady and Allison and Langly to grab Miranda.

It's a day worth celebrating.

If for no other reason than no one is in a crabby mood today.

It's so goddamn rare that that happens.
 

I don't know where Michael and Kelly are, but I leave them e-mail, voice mail, and handwritten notes to meet us at Bustamante's at 7:30 if they're home and they're hungry. They're always hungry; home is another matter. I'd ask Jo to join us, but she runs a support group for veteran nurses on Monday night.

"You have told Miranda, haven't you?" I notice a glitch in the expressions of Allison and Langly upon hearing the name of the elder child.

"Uh-we were just getting to that." They duck out.

I think it's fair to say that the answer to that is no.

Somehow I think she'll be far less pleased than any of us.
 

LANGLY:

Miranda doesn't get home till nearly six on Mondays, she's got choir practice, so we've got about ten minutes to figure out how we're gonna break it to her.

She is not going to be a happy camper. She's sort of been figuring all along this wouldn't happen here. Finding out that not only is she not going to be the center of attention, but that she was wrong, will totally bust her bubbles.

Miranda's not good about being wrong. Junior always says she's a sore loser, and he's right.

She's gonna be real sore this time.

Hey, I'm didn't do this to make it bad for her mom and her. It's just, hey, her mom and dad got to enjoy her. It's my turn.

Sorry she got in the middle of it.

She's tough, though. She'll deal.

I hope. So does Ally. I think Ally's real nervous about breaking it to her.

She suggests we just come out and give her the headlines.

I think if Ally could have a beer right now, she'd be well into a six-pack. I notice she just about falls out of her skin when she hears Miranda drop everything near the kitchen door and open the fridge, which precedes saying hello to us whenever she comes home.

Hey, what do you want? She's 15.

"Miranda, we need to talk to you." I can hear this quaver in Ally's voice, and she's chomping hard on her nails.

"Jesse and I didn't do anything when we were here the other night!"

Jesse was here?! While we were out?!

Ally whispers, I knew that.

Whatever.

"It's not about Jesse." I let Ally take the lead on this one. Partly because Miranda was hers first and partly because, well, it's easier.

"So what's up?" Miranda asks through a mouthful of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Surge. Add Ben & Jerry's Triple Fudge Brownie Ice Cream, and you have her MDR of junk for the day.

Girl after my own heart. I've had more than a few junk food pig-outs with this kid. Ally, she'd rather do liquor, but Miranda can sit there and we'll both stuff ourselves with Pillsbury cookie dough, Snickers, Reese's, Nacho Cheese Doritos, M&M's, Orville Reddenbacher's Extra Butter, and Screaming Yellow Zonkers, washed down with Classic Coke. In the same sitting.

Binge eating at its finest.

"Uh...you remember we said we were doing fertility treatments?" I ask her.

"No, like I really forgot, what with all Mom's junk and her appointments and her screaming at me like some sort of witch on estrogen," Miranda mouths back.

"Hey, shut up!" I don't like it when she gets like that with Ally. Ally's a good mom. She deserves her respect.

"Well, anyway, honey, it worked," Ally finishes off.

Miranda stops chewing for a moment. It's pretty hard to get her to register shock or disbelief, but she's like, come again?

"We're expecting," Ally tells her, flat out.

Miranda needs a couple minutes to soak this in. She's like, no way. You're kidding. You've got to be kidding. Don't you?

We tell her, afraid not.

She looks real hard at Ally, and I can see Ally cringe, and I feel like smacking her.

And she sounds like so cold when she finally speaks. Even I shudder.

"I don't need this shit, you know. I'm almost 16! I'm gonna be driving in October! What were you guys thinking?"

"That we'd like to have a kid together, just as your dad and I did." Ally's a lot better at this than me.

"Yeah, well, don't expect me to be thrilled about it. I think you're both insane." She turns on her heels and heads for the dungeon.

She's pissed.

It's like, I feel bad for her, and I'm sorry for her, and I'm mad at her all at the same time. I start chasing her into the dungeon but Ally's like, leave her alone. Let her gnaw on it. Which is reasonable.

"That certainly went well," I observe.

"About as well as I expected." Ally's a realist, she doesn't expect miracles. "Let her be. She'll be all right if we don't shove it down her throat anymore than we already have."
 

"Miranda! We're going to dinner! Frohike's taking us!" I yell out in front of her door. It's locked, and I wouldn't want to open it anyway. Even for a slob like me, she's scary messy.

No answer. She's probably got her headset on. I open the door with more than a little trepidation. Not only because she probably hates my guts right now, but because I have no idea how much junk lurks behind her door.

"Don't you ever knock?" Her voice is more like spit.

She is definitely not a happy camper.

"I said, we're going for dinner, Frohike's treating. Get ready."

"I'm not going." She slaps her headphones on.

I move in closer to her, almost killing myself on a pile of used towels as I do. It's not for nothing Junior calls her Miranda the Towel-Sucking Monster.

"Get moving," I shout at her.

She throws her headset down. "Which part of I'm not going didn't you understand?" When Miranda's mad, she hisses like a cat.

"Your mom wants you to go."

"My mother can shove it," and it takes a lot of control on my part not to pop her one. But I do tell her I hear her talk that way to her, I'm gonna wail on her.

"Ooh, I am scared."

Miranda is major sarcastic, and when she's not having a good day, well, she's downright evil.

I think she oughta come with us.

I'm gonna leave this one up to her mom.
 

MICHAEL:

Me and Kelly just spent the day in the Tidewater District, we went to the beach and dug for clams and it was just so cool.

It's the first real day off I've had in a long time. Since going to the shore, anyway. Kelly, too. She's gonna start working every day next week, five days a week, but this week she decided she'd just keep her school schedule for work so maybe we could do some stuff together other than study. Which is what we mostly did the last month.

It paid. We kept the 4.0 tradition going strong. So this day, it's like a day off and a celebration for us. Plus I'm finally not sick with ANYTHING, and this is like so novel.

Today, it was just like heaven.

We decide to leave the beach so we can hit Alexandria and sort of miss rush hour. Rush hour is a wrong name in Alexandria. Hours would be more correct. Starts around three in the afternoon and doesn't let up till 6:30 or 7:00. I figure barring any overturned semis full of chickens-yeah, I've been on the interstate when this has happened, and it's a lot less amusing than it sounds-we should make it back to Alexandria right before 7. Dad didn't have to work for Miss Russell today, so he probably made something real tasty for dinner. He's really into his cooking shows, but he hasn't had much time to watch them lately.

We stop at Chateau Langly first, and I'm kind of surprised when it looks like everyone's about to bail out.

Dad says he left us communiques in various forms, but since we're here, he says, he's treating us all to dinner. It's a special occasion.

"For what?" Kelly and me, it's not like a holiday, we have no idea...

Okay, here come Ally and Langly, and they look like they're a couple of canary-eating cats.

"Is that why?" I ask Dad.

"Uh-huh."

"They really did it."

"So far." Dad is happy for them, I can tell, but you can see he's sort of worrying about something too.

Kelly looks like she's more serious than I would expect. She says she'll talk to me in the car.

Kelly works in Dr. Shalad's labs, maybe she knows things I don't. I'm sure she does.

I'm just hoping it's not real bad news, just Kelly being careful and scientific about stuff.

"Ally, you let this loser knock you up?" I give the little redheaded lady a quick hug. She grins big.

"Fuck you, Junior," but Langly's laughing.

It's guy speak for congratulations, asshole, you did it.

I'm trying to picture Langly as a new daddy.

And I burst out laughing. The imagery is just so warped.

I gotta be careful. Langly always remembers when it's payback time, and who knows, someday there might be payback time.
 

BYERS:

No one except Juliet and myself know why this day is a day worthy of celebration for us, and that's fine. There's something very intimate about sharing a secret with someone in the midst of a group that hasn't the vaguest idea what you're laughing about.

"How do you spell relief?" She laughs as she gets in the car. She's in a great frame of mind, considering that her job search is frustrating and slow.

"I'm not sure, but I'm glad we can." I'm just so grateful right now.

It might have been nice had it gone the other way...watching Langly and Ally in this moment, I have to confess I felt a small twinge of envy. But compared to the relief that surges through me, it's a very tiny twinge, indeed.

"So what's the occasion?"

"We may have been spared from parenthood this month, but our cohorts haven't."

"You're kidding. They had what, two treatments?"

"Yep. And it worked."

"That's fantastic." Do I note some wistfulness in her voice?

"They're very happy." Of course, they have to make it through the first trimester in order to really be on their way. I feel that perhaps this is premature, celebrating it, but I'll not be the one to throw ice water on a warm and happy day.

Apparently, Miranda, Ally's daughter, has been able to accomplish that with considerable flair. She is a wickedly witty child, and I cringe when I imagine what her response to the announcement was.

"John, do you think we'll ever have kids?"

I damn near run a stop sign.

"Umm...I don't know...it's certainly possible."

That seems to be a sufficient answer for her, for the moment, for which I am grateful.

I'm not prepared to discuss this topic between us, not at this time.

I only recovered my capacity to draw breath a few hours ago. I'd like some time to become reacclimated to that. At least for a while, anyway.

END OF PART 5