Arrogant Devil

I pass him the menu across his desk.

“What’s this?” he asks, not even looking up at me.

“I thought I’d get your taste preferences so I can avoid making anything you don’t want to eat for lunch. I’ve separated things into categories for you. There are protein options and side dishes—”

He shakes his head and pushes the menu back to me, gaze already falling back to his work. “Just keep doing whatever you’re doing. I don’t have time for this.”

My upper lip wants to curl with annoyance, but I don’t let it.

“Are you sure? You could just—”

“I’m sure.”

Alrighty then. I take the menu and march right on out of there, determined to find some other way to be useful.

I’m loading clothes into the washer when Edith finds me.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

I smile and keep tossing clothes in. “I’ve been in here, loading and unloading. Tell me, how do two people produce so much laundry? It’s like you both change your underwear forty-five times a day.”

She ignores my question and holds up two yoga mats still in their original wrapping. My eyes go wide with wonder.

“Where’d you get those?”

“In town, yesterday.”

My fingers reach out as if to say, Gimme, gimme, gimme. My eyes glisten. My fingers twitch anxiously. I want one of the mats so badly. I need it. Even with the prospect of new floors, yoga on a thrift store rug is getting kind of old.

Too bad my conscience prods me to remember my mission for the week: Be useful! Happy! Helpful! Especially do not accept any more help from Jack or his well-meaning, impossible-not-to-love grandmother.

I drop my hand and turn away.

“I hope they’re both for you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The blue one is yours. My new year’s resolution is to start doing yoga, and you’re going to help me.”

“It’s June,” I point out.

“I’ve learned that if I don’t start resolving until midway through the year, it’s much easier to make it to the finish line.”

I smile at her genius. “Right, well, you’ll have to find someone else to help you. I need to keep cleaning.”

“No, you need to come help me yoga. Can yoga be used as a verb? Anyway, it’s nice out and you need a break from this laundry room.”

“I don’t think Jack would agree with that.” I close the door on the washer and the machine rumbles to life.

“I just asked him, and he did.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Well, his exact words were, ‘I don’t care. Leave me alone,’ but coming from Jack, that’s all the approval we’re ever going to get, and all the approval I need. Now c’mon. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with my child’s pose.”

“That’s really more for resting.”

“Good. Best to start slow.”

I’m helpless to resist her, not only because I’d love a break from laundry, but because doing yoga outside under a shady oak tree sounds too good to pass up. I convince myself accepting the mat isn’t going against my mission for the week because technically helping Edith with her yoga practice will make her stronger and healthier. Jack wants his grandmother healthy, ergo I must become her yoga Yoda.

Once I reassure myself my logic is sound, I run to change into the yoga pants I got at the thrift store then meet her outside. I’ve been practicing yoga for years, but I’ve never led anyone else through a practice. I’m a little clunky, not sure how to best explain certain poses for a beginner, but Edith is a good sport. We start slow, and by the time we roll up our mats, she’s proven I shouldn’t have underestimated her. I wasn’t even really going easy on her; all in all, it was a pretty decent workout.

“Same time tomorrow?” she asks, standing up with her mat.

I grin. “Sounds good.”

I feel amazing as we head back to the house—better than I have in a long time. Not only did I get a little break from cleaning, it was actually really fun to practice yoga with Edith. I liked guiding her and coming up with poses, and I already have ideas for what I want to do tomorrow.

Later, Edith tries to get me to eat lunch with them, as she’s done every day, but I insist that I need to keep working. The rest of the afternoon passes quickly as I continue scrubbing, and shining, and folding, and generally staying out of Jack’s way. I figure my best chance of keeping under his radar is to steer clear of him altogether.

It works remarkably well. We don’t fight at all. In fact, it’s been so many days since we fought (two, for those of you counting at home) that he’s probably already warming up to me. Bonus: I’m so preoccupied with Jack and my work ethic, I hardly have time to remember my own crumbling life. Thumbs-up.

On Wednesday, I turn into Betty Crocker in the kitchen. I don an apron, use a rolling pin, and have half a pound of flour caked in my hair by the time I finish trying out the recipe Dotty sent home with Jack. A few dozen cranberry oatmeal cookies litter the counter. I put extra white chocolate chunks in them, and the result is nothing short of a culinary masterpiece. After a quick thank-you call to Dotty—that lasts 45 minutes—I fill up little take-home bags with cookies and deliver them to all the ranch hands. They thank me so profusely. “Meredith, you’re the best!” “Thanks Meredith!” “Aw Meredith, can’t you stay and chat?”

Though they’re remarkably good for my ego (much better than Jack is), I don’t let the hands coax me into staying. I don’t want to be a distraction. Instead, I tell them to enjoy then scurry back inside so I can take a plate filled with the very best cookies and an ice-cold glass of milk up to Jack’s office. The glass numbs my hand as I walk up the stairs, and the cookies are the perfect mix between crunchy and gooey and straight out of the oven. They could force an entire squadron of bake-sale moms into early retirement.

The door to his office is open, and he glares at me from behind his desk as I stroll in and out again without so much as a word, just a pleasant smile and a wave. He scowls like he’s confused by this version of me. Meredith Avery: non-nuisance. That Employee of the Year award has my name written all over it.

I grin to myself as I walk back downstairs. Obviously, I would have liked to stay and watch him roll on the ground, weeping at the glory of my baking abilities, but that’s not part of my plan. Instead, I just have to imagine it.

I think I’m kicking butt, proving Helen wrong, and staying focused. Later on, I’m in the kitchen making a marinade for tomorrow’s lunch when Jack shouts my name through the house. Uh oh. That doesn’t sound like cookie ecstasy. When I find him, he’s in his closet, one hand on his hip, the other gesturing to his racks of clothes. He’s wearing his Angry Jack face, his shoulders blocking out part of the overhead light. I wonder if he could squash me beneath his shoe or if it just feels that way when he’s worked up.

“What the hell is all this?”

His voice makes me jump.

“What is what?”

He points to the clothes, reminding me of the task I undertook earlier while the cookies were baking.

“Oh, right. I organized your clothes by color and category.”

“Why?”

I sweep my hand across the impeccably organized garments. “It was all a jumbled mess before—I’m surprised you could figure out where anything was.”

I don’t find it necessary to mention the fact that I did a fabulous job. His jeans are in descending shades of blue. His shirts are grouped together so that his black t-shirts (of which there are many) are all in their own section. His work shirts are separated from his nice long-sleeve shirts. The suits I was surprised to find are hanging together near the back. I also don’t mention the fact that I imagined him wearing those suits and had to prop my hand on the closet wall and pause my organizing for a solid five minutes while I let the fantasy play out in my mind. It was jarring, to say the least.

“Looks good, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t like change.”

“Okay-okay-okay,” I say, immediately deferent. “I’ll put everything back. Just…in the meantime, don’t look in your underwear drawer. No reason.”