Welcome to Amateur Theatricals, book twelve in the Operation Quickline series. The stage is set for a major operation as Lisa, Sid, and Nick go undercover at a university to find who’s killing KGB moles in training. You can read the first episode here, and catch up on the series here.
It figures it had to happen during Holy Week. That’s the week immediately before Easter and it’s a big deal in the Catholic church. Sid, Nick, and I had been back for almost a month. We’d fallen back into our usual routines quickly. Motley, my springer spaniel, was a little needy for a while. Nick took the dog with him to go skateboarding several afternoons after school, and that helped. The cats, well, they were cats. Long John Silver let Sid know she was not happy to have been deprived of his lap, her favorite napping spot, for so long. Her two grown offspring didn’t seem to care that we’d returned, except for the one who pooped in one of Sid’s dress shoes. We still don’t know which one does that.
I’d gotten Nick permission to knit at school, but he decided he didn’t want to chance the other boys making fun of him, and I couldn’t blame him. So, he was bored, and the only thing that made it better was that he’d been accepted at a Jesuit high school for boys and that both his cousin Darby O’Malley and his best friend Josh Sandoval would be going with him. The school was known for its challenging curriculum. Nick would also be eligible for Advanced Placement classes and would get to take classes at the local community college at the same time.
I made my final decision about where I was going to do my PhD work and sent in the confirmation just in time.
Frank and Esther returned a week after we did. Esther had decided that she didn’t need a master’s degree to start a company, at least not one in engineering. She was debating about an MBA, though. Frank immediately applied at the same school where Sid was finishing his master’s degree and a couple other places. Only Frank wanted to major in choral music. Or liturgical music. He hadn’t made up his mind.
I’m not sure when Kathy and Jesse got back to Los Angeles, but the six of us and Nick went to dinner on Palm Sunday and Kathy’s pregnancy was definitely showing. Jesse had an impressive collection of photos, and the show will be later this summer. Kathy was thrilled to have missed tax season. She’s an accountant, but was seriously considering putting that aside to become a full-time mom.
April tenth, Sid and I celebrated the day we first made our promises to each other to spend the rest of our lives together and to be faithful. That was our couple day, and it was lovely.
Wednesday of Holy Week, I’d had to stop by the rectory office at church to pick up the Eucharistic Minister schedule and work out a couple last second details for the Triduum, which are the three main services for Easter, namely Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil that Saturday night. There are also the masses on Easter Sunday, but I wasn’t involved with those.
Margaret Dyson was in the office, too, that day. She was on the Liturgy Committee. I had joined the previous fall when I’d given up going to the Tuesday night bible study. I was still banned from the Teen Bible Study on Mondays because I have a teen. As for the Liturgy Committee, Margaret was very locked into doing things the way they’d always been done and had seen me as an obstacle. I was sure she’d been ecstatic when I’d had to take off right after Christmas.
“Oh, Lisa.” She smiled and came up to me. “How are you?”
“Doing well. You?”
“Fine. Just fine.” She paused. “Um, Lisa, I don’t know how to say this. But there are a couple people on the Liturgy Committee who find you, well, a little forceful.”
“Oh. Who?”
She smiled. “I was asked not to say. No one wants to hurt your feelings.”
“Oh, Margaret,” I sighed. “I’m so sorry they feel intimidated by me. I can’t imagine why anyone would feel that way. Worse yet, who wouldn’t want to work things out up front, instead of hiding and spreading distrust among the committee members? You guys are nicer than that.” Okay, Margaret wasn’t, but I was purposely laying it on a bit thick. “Margaret, darling, if you hear people complaining about me, would you please tell them to speak to me directly and we’ll work it out? I’m not an ogre and I don’t bite. I’d hate for people to be afraid of me simply because they don’t know me. I can trust you to do that, can’t I?”
Margaret couldn’t answer, so I smiled.
“I’ve got to go meet my husband,” I said. “If you’ll excuse me?”
I told Sid about it that night as we got ready for bed.
“It’s just annoying that she’s being so petty,” I grumbled as I rinsed my toothbrush.
Sid finished rinsing his contact lenses. Both his and Nick’s hair had been restored to their natural color, as had mine. Nick threw away his contact lenses. Sid wanted to throw away his glasses, but he occasionally needed them.
“That’s normal for that crowd,” he said. “At least you’re not all upset that someone is mad at you.”
I shrugged. “It’s their problem. I’m tired of worrying about it.”
Sid pulled me close to him and kissed my temple. “That’s more like the woman I know.” He smiled. “You’re different since we got back from Kansas. More like your old self.”
“I suppose.”
We walked over to our bed and got under the sheets. Sid slid over and snuggled next to me.
“Actually, I think you’ve been more like your old pre-married self since before we got back,” he said. “You’ve even been calling me your husband rather than your spouse.”
“You’re right.” I thought about it. “Huh. I think I finally know what happened to me. It’s what I said in Kansas about the faculty wives’ and your colleagues’ BS not being about us because we weren’t us. Only in a way, we were. But, yeah, the whole losing myself thing started when you and I became a couple that year before we got married. Before then, it was just me, and if some people got judgmental, I didn’t care because they didn’t know me. I didn’t like it, but it was no big deal. Then you and I made our lifetime promises to each other, and you became a part of me. So, when someone questioned our choices, it wasn’t just judging me, it was judging you, too. Then Nick became a part of us, and it was judging him. I started feeling like I had to defend us, because it wasn’t just me, anymore, it was you guys, as well. Worse yet, being so afraid of losing myself in the relationship, I began to think I had.”
“But you really hadn’t.” Sid looked at me. “Even as worried as you were, I could see that you were still there.”
“That’s probably why I was so confused. I hadn’t lost myself. I was still the woman who really didn’t care about what others thought of her choices. But then we went to Kansas and there were all these people trying to judge all three of us who had no idea that we were not the people they thought we were. And it really didn’t make a darned bit of difference what they thought. When Margaret started her game today, I realized she and her anonymous friends don’t have the first clue about who we are, and probably never will. It’s annoying, of course, because of having to dance around their BS. We both know confronting them with it will never work. But it really has nothing to do with any of the three of us. It’s about them and their limitations and if they can’t get past that, well, fuck them.”
Sid’s jaw dropped, and he laughed. “Did I just hear you say that?”
“It’s the vilest word I can think of, and it’s vile behavior.” I nuzzled him. “The bottom line is that I didn’t lose me by getting married. The risk was there, without question. I did have everything to lose. But I also had everything to gain, and I did. I’m still who I’ve always been. I’m just growing, is all. I have you as part of me. I have Nick as part of me, and the people we love. But I’m still there, too.” I chuckled. “It’s ironic as hell that it took pretending to be someone else to get me to see that I was still who I am.”
Sid gently grasped my chin. “Who you are is the woman I love so very, very much. And you and Nick are so much a part of me now that I do not know if I would recognize myself without you.”
“I love you, Sid. I love being with you. I love when we’re working together. And I love being who I am with you.”
Sid laughed gently and then got frisky. It was delicious. Best of all, it was real.
Thank you for reading. For more information about the Operation Quickline series, click here.
Please check out the Fiction page for the latest on all my novels. Or look me up at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Vroman’s, in Pasadena, California.