With the boys back at home, it’s been harder to get his work done.  Though Mike is snug in the small downstairs study (what must have been a maid’s room when the house was first built), he can track their wanderings, their shouts, calling out to each other.  His heart lurches each time he hears Will or Jack, prodding him to join them, but there are too many projects in play.  They ping around Mike’s mind like pinballs.  Then there’s the fact that Max keeps opening the door, motioning his brother to come out, often right in the middle of a key strategy meeting.  Mike brushes him off with a shake of his head, a sweep of his arm.

Go away!  He mouths at his brother.

Max always backs off the threshold quietly, leaving Mike with a feeling he’s hard pressed to define.  Half irritation, half regret.  No, regret isn’t the right word. It’s kind of like that acronym Will used to say all the time—that social media thing, FOMO—fear of missing out.

Yes, that’s it.  Mike wants to be with his sons and brother, to be one of the “guy pack,” that has formed during the quarantine.  The gaming, joking, watching vintage Gator football.  But, the problem is, when he does take a break for, say, the boys’ latest YouTube favorite, his thoughts wander back to work—how he’s overlooked yet another process that needs to go online.

Or he worries about his wife, who is distinctly absent from this male group.  Where is she? How is she feeling?

Because this virus business has gotten Fairfax in a funk. She can’t freely roam around the neighborhood, interacting with others like she’s used to.  Last week, she received a box of masks ordered from a website, each in a wild print; Fairfax was elated, tried them all on, selected one to keep, and was headed out the door to share them with Janey Fetner when Mike reminded her that she’d contaminated all of the masks with her breath.  Plus, she shouldn’t be knocking on anyone’s door right now.  Everyone is potential contagion.  Social distancing is the law of the land.

Fairfax’s happy mood had popped like a child’s balloon.  She threw the box of masks on the dining room table and stomped off.  Mike held his breath, watching her stride up the stairs, then exhaled in a long whoosh. Whew! Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…by a pandemic. Her natural inclinations thwarted at every turn.

So, who really could blame his wife for being in such a foul mood? First, her health worries, then COVID-19, which cancelled the biggest event of 2020.

Nancy’s wedding.

Fairfax had taken it hard, too hard, in Mike’s opinion, because, after all, she wasn’t the one getting married.  True, she had done the lion’s share of the planning, and was emotionally invested (too much so) in her friend having the perfect celebration.

Mike thinks now that he needs to remind Fairfax that none of her effort was wasted.  The wedding has just been postponed.  Would eventually happen, probably in the fall, Nancy had said.

Or come to think of it, Max was the one who told him what Nancy had said.  Which brings up another interesting point, Mike’s brother’s continued fascination with Fairfax’s best friend.  Nancy’s engaged to someone else, yet he calls her, texts too, rides his motorcycle around the block, reporting that her car is there in its parking spot.  Fairfax has labeled his behavior “stalking.”  She’s said more than once to his brother that he should dial down the creep factor a notch or two.

Still, it takes a determined individual to woo (or stalk) a woman in a pandemic.  You gotta give Max a little credit for his chutzpah.  Because Nancy is definitely in love with her fiancé—sure, they had some problems, but they worked through those, according to Fairfax’s brief update on the matter.  “Love wins,” she had squealed at Christmas, kissing Mike on the cheek.

But maybe Max is onto something—perhaps the best time to pursue, to steal someone away from someone else, is a time just like this one.  When the rules have changed, when those who want to be close together, cannot, should not, because of the laws of epidemiology.  When everyone has to hunker down in solitude and wait.

And think things through in slow motion.

Mike’s sense of right and wrong quivers.  It flashes through his mind that he should put a leash on his brother, caution him to leave Nancy alone, let her live her life, marry the guy.  After all, Allen…no, that’s not his name. What is it?  Adam! Yes, Adam had gotten on the right course of meds for his breed of depression, and the prognosis was good, according to Fairfax.

A familiar dinging sound from Outlook wrenches Mike away from this thread of guilt, forcing his mind back to work.  Another meeting is starting in five minutes.

He groans.

Going fully remote has increased his task load, not decreased it as he had long dreamed.  It seems to be one WebEx after another, with Teams and Zoom thrown in for variety. Meeting after meeting after meeting.  For a while there, they were having meetings about meetings—should they switch platforms, or simply add some?  If they add one, why not two more, or three? It turns out that the “herding cats” metaphor is even more applicable in the virtual world. Maybe people in their own little bubbles, removed from the urgency of consensus, feel empowered to roam at will in the remote world.  Who knows?

A sharp rap on the study door is followed by the appearance of his wife’s snow-white head, tilting into the room.  His mood lightens, almost fizzing at the sight of her aquamarine eyes.  For the umpteenth time, he wishes they could be alone in the house together.  As much as Mike enjoys having their sons around, he does feel cheated of empty nest-hood by COVID.  And Max, the king of the pop-in.

“Hey, you,” Fairfax says.

“Hey, yourself,” Mike replies, taking in her rosy complexion.  “Did you go for a walk?”  Fairfax looks good, healthy.  No way she could ever develop blood cancer.  No one on the cusp of cancer could ever look that good.

“No, I got sidetracked looking at the CDC guidelines, and some other stuff about how to do it.  I think we could pull it off.” Her upbeat manner is a bit of a sea change, and she stares at him expectantly.

Though Mike’s happy his wife has a smile on her face for the first time this month, he’s drawing a blank.  What is she talking about? Pull what off? Mike feels his face scrunch up, nonplussed.

“A party?” She stares at him, mouth open.

“Party?” Uh oh.  Mike vaguely remembers his wife mentioning the need to see people, the leveling off of Coronavirus cases, the importance of celebrations in the midst of gloom and doom.

“Yes, Fig!  Don’t you remember the other day, I asked you what you thought about Memorial Day and you said…”

“I said…” Oh crap, what had he said?  Surely, he hadn’t agreed with her?  It was a crazy idea, a bad one.

“You said…” Fairfax pauses here, triumphant.  “You said, look it up, do your research.  A feasibility study, you said.”

“Ok, well then…”

“It’s perfectly feasible,” she interrupts, “provided…”

“Provided?” Mike hears the weakness in his own voice.  Heck, he’s almost squeaking, like a mouse.

Fairfax steps into the study, turns and closes the door gently.  She sits down on the old leather loveseat, the one they’ve dragged with them to every place they’ve ever lived.  She always wants to pitch it to the street, but Mike won’t let her.  “It’s fine to have a party, provided it’s a small group, everyone wears masks, people sit six feet apart. That kind of thing.”

“Sounds awful.” The words are barely out of his mouth when he regrets them.  Because his wife’s lower lip juts out like a baby’s.  “What I mean, Fair, is…”  Mike sighs.  “This virus doesn’t play around—you know, it’s more communicable than they first thought.  You’ve seen the news stories.”

“The media is exaggerating this, I just know it.” She shifts on the loveseat, her fingers worrying a large tear in the leather.

“Data don’t lie.”

“Data can be manipulated to say whatever the heck you want it to.  You told me that last year when Peter showed us that MDS study!”

Ouch! Mike never thought his words, true as they were at the time, would come back to haunt him.

A nanosecond later his computer dings.  Dang it, the meeting! He’d almost forgotten.  His gaze moves from his computer to his wife and back.

“Fair, I’ve got to hop onto something here.”

“Okay,” she says, standing up.  Mike hears the sadness in her voice.  All she wants is a party.  Why, he never will fully understand, he the introvert to her extrovert.  Fairfax is missing the face to face of her friends, the thrill of the invite and the decorate and the welcome.  Doesn’t she deserve to have what she loves best, especially if… Mike tells his mind not to go there, but it does.

Life is shorter than you think.

“Let me think about it,” Mike offers.  He can’t help it.  It is easy to say these words, to give his wife a window of time to imagine, plan, connect.  To allow her to live life the old way, if only in her mind.

Fairfax bounces over, kisses him on the top of the head.  Mike sees the smile on her face deepen before she sails out the door.

He knows that smile.  It means she’s won.