No matter what a chef tells you, cooking is not entirely like life.

Gwen's journal... June 6th Monday

I haven't made a journal entry in twenty years, and this is the last blank page. It seems right to fill it in because I'm forty, and it's spring, and because sometimes hope is more than just an idea. Sometimes it even requires courage, putting yourself on the line like a man who brings flowers on Valentine's Day. Like a woman who...

Gwen's life the day before...

"Put the cinnamon in the egg batter right here." She tapped on the large laminated French toast recipe and smiled at the work-study student. She glanced across the kitchen where the last breakfast of the semester was nearly ready for the serving line. She waved at Stuart, got a nod in return.

The work-study student looked impressed. "Old Man Jameson must be in a really good mood. I've never seen him actually nod before."

Gwen laughed. "Yeah, Old Man Jameson's gonna like retirement."

The student shook out the last of the cinnamon, and she took the empty container and headed towards the offices. She passed the one she'd cleaned out for the new assistant and opened the door to hers. She moved a couple of boxes out of her path, but the cookbooks she'd packed from the house, the textbooks from the cooking program, and all her binders of notes would have to wait until Monday to be shelved.

Glancing at her watch, she saw that two hours until graduation didn't give her much time to get ready. She needed to get going, but she couldn't help herself and sat for a minute in the leather chair. It was cushier than the assistant's one she'd sat in for the past six months. Being director of food services would have its perks.

She set the cinnamon bottle on the desk and studied the photos she'd moved straight from her desk next door. Her mom and Missy stood beside her on spring break at a resort in Mexico that was so low budget no one complained when Ellen sunbathed topless. In deference to Missy, Gwen had left her own top on but liked to think she could have been a girl-gone-wild herself. She'd even encouraged her mom, who'd wanted to increase her vitamin D levels, at least until they'd seen the police cruiser in the parking lot.

Reaching for the next photo, she smiled at all of them on the campus oval. She'd have to make an annual event of the finals week barbecue she'd talked Stuart into. Maybe she'd name it the Old Man Jameson Memorial Weenie Roast. He'd think that was funny but never admit it.

In the photo, Guy and Annie had their right hands up in front of their chests, happy or cheer she was pretty sure. They were all stumbling along with sign language, but Guy and Annie were patient teachers. And the boys looked so happy, Hayden's arm around Missy, and the rest of them making kissing faces and flipping off the camera. It was so sweet of them to remember the revenge of the pee photo.

She didn't want to think about the fall, the past, Max. She was done with all of it and only looking forward. She spotted the blank name plate on her desk, pulled out a roll of masking tape and a marker and wrote Gwen Ciarrochi on it. She stuck it on, set the roll of tape on a stack of files beside her and spotted it. It was amazing that after twenty years she could still recognize the battered green cover of her college journal. She leafed through it, pleasure and sadness in equal measure, until she stopped at the last entry just one page from the end.

Gwen's journal... December 11th, Monday 1990 Not everyone is meant to stay together.

It's just the place, maybe, or fun that makes two people a couple for a while. It's not like most things are supposed to last forever. And the truth is that women are just more mature than men. That's why most couples have the man older, and it's not like I think anybody needs to be some kind of stereotype or perfect or anything. But I just need other things right now. And it's hard to say that, but, you know, I need to be honest.

I'm just beyond where I was and looking for, well, I'm not looking, but the man I end up with will be there for me no matter what. I'm there. I'm just more mature, and I need to move on I think. I really, really need to get out of this.

Back to U...

She watched the journal shake, her hands unsteady. Setting it down on the desk, she tried to take a deep breath, think clearly even though she was overwhelmed with feeling.

Max had brought the journal to her office. She hadn't seen it in twenty years, but he had. He'd found it, no doubt, in his apartment where she'd left it when she'd run away from everything. Ellen had asked Gwen's roommate to box up her things, and Steve had picked them up. God, Steve. They had probably started then, the two of them. He, a new graduate, and she, newly adrift.

But the journal had been left behind, and Max had read it, hadn't he? Read it alone and known her judgment of him. The man I end up with will be there for me no matter what.

Would he have read what ran beneath her words, the river of fear and self-doubt and panic? Why would he? She'd left him. She'd written off her love for him clearly enough, and he hadn't come after her, that dismissed, imperfect boy.

She closed her eyes and saw him again for the first time, smiling across the table at her, first in the bar, then at his parent's house. She felt their first kiss against his car, the heat of the dorm shower the first time she touched him.

He was the boy she loved. And he'd become the man she would have fallen in love with if she'd ever fallen out in the twenty years that had passed.

In her time back at Belmar, Max had taken care of her mom, understood what her daughter meant to her, and had always come to her at night when she dreamed. He'd never had anything to prove.

She opened her eyes, saw the cinnamon, and ripped off another chunk of masking tape. She grabbed the marker, wrote Not for People, and stuck it on the label as a reminder there were recipes she didn't ever want to change.

Stuart stood in the doorway. "You still here, missy? Get goin'. You've got your la-de-da graduation."

Gwen smiled at him. "I do. And I have a favor to ask."

She stood on the oval and scanned the crowds.

She'd felt a little funny at first in the cap and gown, Belmar blue with a bobbly tassel. But when she'd flipped the silver fringe from the right side to the left, and walked away from the stage with her diploma in hand, she'd heard Missy shout out. She'd given a teary smile in the direction it came from. She had so much, she should probably not even hope. She should just count the blessings she already had, but she wouldn't settle again. She couldn't settle without first giving it the old college try.

As she walked down the brick sidewalk, she saw the graduation crowd scattered across the expanse of green lawn. Where would he be? She knew him well, and it warmed her to know that. So the question was, where would the best photos be?

Making her way around the groups of families and friends, she spotted him, capturing images of graduates on their way out across a parking lot, their gowns fluttering like birds.

She took a deep, shaky breath and walked to stand beside him.

She heard a slow click like he knew she was there, the swish from her own gown probably giving her away. He lowered the camera and looked at her with an expression she couldn't read, but unreadable was better than an instant no.

She tried to smile, but her heart raced in both nervous panic and the desire to throw her arms around his neck and not let go. She let out a slow breath. "Will you come with me?" She waited, thought he would ask where, but he just shrugged as if he had nothing to lose and fell in beside her.

They crossed the oval and headed toward the edge of campus, passing beneath the arch to the football stadium. She led him then, beneath the east bleachers where she stopped. He looked up at the rows of seats overhead just as he had that day she'd sat above him and their time together had started to unravel. She watched the sun filter down over his face. "You want to take a gum on the underside of humanity shot for old time's sake?"

He turned to her and looked so tired she wanted to smooth the lines of his face. "What do you want, Gwen?"

"I want both of us to stop looking at things from here." She studied the dark slats above. There just wasn't enough light. "I thought I came back to fix something, but I came to start new." She took his hand, relieved that he let her, and led him along the back corridor and out into the full sun of the stands.

He stopped in front of her, waited with his back to the field.

She wanted to look at him for the rest of her life. "You didn't let me down, Max. I was just afraid you would." It clicked for her for the first time that Steve had left her before she could leave, and she'd done the same to Max. Maybe karma, college, and cinnamon had made things right.

She smiled. "You never needed to make the big gesture. I needed to." She pointed towards the field, and he turned around.

They were all lying down at the fifty yard line, and they'd done a good job, but to be on the safe side, she leaned closer to Max and whispered, "It's a heart."

Missy took the point, her body angled into a V, her feet pointing to Deb while Annie and Guy made up the right curve of it. On the left, Bryan, Josh, and Hayden formed their side. It was a little bulkier with their football bodies, but good. And at the top, her mother sole to sole with...

"Is that Old Man Jameson?" Max motioned toward the field.

"Yeah." She squinted. Was her mother running her toes up his calf?

"Is Ellen..."

"Yeah." She turned Max away from the view and tilted her chin to meet his lips, warm and exactly what she wanted, and he kissed her back with the same fierce joy she felt.

She leaned back to enjoy his face returning her smile. "Enough about them. Back to you."

The Do-Over

Maybe Mara Jane deserves her own mulligan... She'll swap the mom jeans for vintage funk, discover her inner party girl and outer cleavage, and hope she'll soon be ready to return home and happily warehouse shop for jugs of ketchup again.

She's pretty sure she can explain to her husband the strip club and the pack of wild grandmas, the lesbians at her slumber party, and possibly the all-over sunburn from the clothing optional beach, but the soapy encounters with a bubble bath mogul?... probably not.

As the days sail by, Mara Jane Mulligan discovers she has a decision to make that even Dorothy couldn't avoid...Should she click her heels for home or kick them up for good?

________________________.

Chapter 1.

The chrome faucet shook from the abundance of hot water streaming out. Mara Jane Mulligan held her bathrobe close at the neck and made a wish. She wished that her house had hotel quality water pressure so baths could come instantly, without planning, without waiting, without earning. Even to her it seemed like a small thing to make a wish on, but sometimes a bubble bath was more than a bubble bath. It was the one thing that stood between a working mom and her ability to make it work.

She could hear the travel alarm clock, the second hand ticking along the thirty minutes she'd managed to carve out of an entire week. She needed to hurry, or she'd have no time to relax. She reached for a beige hair tie and made a tidy ponytail, the tie disappearing like camouflage. She reached for the iridescent bottle of Luscious Bubbles, unscrewed the pearly top and, breathing in the lavender sweet musk of it, tipped it over the tumble of water.

Nothing.

She waited, found herself half looking into the bottle as if it were just slow to arrive.

Nothing.

She shook it three times.

Nothing.

She was out? After she'd gotten Logan packed for his stay at Grandma's, cleaned the entire house, stocked the fridge for Dan's days without her, prepped a workshop for thirty-five middle-school teachers, and driven the four hours into Seattle, she was out? Her stomach rumbled. She'd even chosen a bath over dinner. A simple little bubble bath, the one thing she'd claimed for herself, and she was out?

She shook the bottle as hard as she could and watched two drops fall, disappearing in the cascade of water. Empty. And hadn't her whole day gone like that? She'd started it jammed under her side of the bed, reaching for a suitcase that after fifteen years had suddenly migrated to the other side. Wedged beneath the box springs, she'd spread in half a snow angel and reached for something she couldn't get a grip on. How had it gotten so far from where it had always been? And when had one tiny thing for herself become impossible to manage?

She was going to enjoy a damn bubble bath. She smacked her palm twice on the bottom of the bottle. She wasn't going to settle for a tub of plain, hot water. She wanted a restorative bath of scents and silk just like the label promised because she deserved thirty minutes in the middle of a sea of work and responsibilities and the unceasing grind of the normalness of a day. But nothing came out of the Luscious Bubble bottle, and she knew nothing would. Seeing it tipped in unjustified optimism, she felt her neck muscles jerk then tighten like they were too short a tether for her frame, and she stumbled backwards. Her hip rapped on the edge of the sink, and she sat down on the toilet lid, afraid she would lose her balance and hurt herself. Just the thought of hurting herself and not being able to do the million things everyone needed her to do made her breath hitch. That one irregularity was followed by another, until she couldn't get enough air, and her heart followed, tripping up on its usually steady beat. Her eye caught the sweep of the second hand. Twenty-seven minutes. Twenty-seven minutes wasn't going to help her any. She still had a couple of hours of work before she could even think about going to bed, and she was never going to rally with only... Twenty-six minutes. The ticking made her light-headed, and her breaths fluttered in and out, quick and shallow. She had to get out of the bathroom.

She turned the faucet off and rushed out, trying to force herself to take a couple of deep breaths, but moving to another room didn't seem to help. She set the bottle down on the low dresser next to the bed and watched her hand shake. She just needed to get dressed and everything would be fine. She didn't over-react to things. She was steady, reasonable, logical. Isn't that what anyone would say about her? She'd get a hold of herself once she had her sweats on, and who wasn't a little tired after a long drive? She reached into her suitcase and felt her heart keep up its racing pace. She ignored the sheen of sweat in the cup of her palms as she pulled the pants on, her foot struggling through the bunched gray elastic at the bottom. The matching sweatshirt was easier, her head popping out just in time for more air. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing. She could hear the air whoosh out of her lungs, hear the pound of her heartbeat against her ear drums. She wished she knew how many breaths there were supposed to be per minute. An average number to aim for would help her.

She needed... she scanned the room, so small, so bland, it offered nothing. She needed... her eyes rested on the bottle of Luscious and its reflection in the mirror. Both empty. She grabbed the bottle, and held it above the dull metal trash can. A simple bath. She took a shuddery breath and tried to still the speed of her nervous system. She'd sacrificed plenty of them, thousands maybe, definitely hundreds. She'd given up whatever small indulgences she needed to, so she could get to the grocery store, drive Logan to basketball practice, volunteer at the school. Her resources were limitless. Sometimes it hadn't felt like her resources were limitless, but hadn't she always managed to have the hours and the energy she'd needed for work and home and community and whatever else made a request for a piece of her?

The Luscious bottle hung in her hand. What if she couldn't do it anymore? Her heart kicked once then galloped even faster. What if she was tired for real? Worn out, used up, ruined, nearly forty, out of bubble bath, and incapacitated? How could she let that happen? Her family, her house, her job would collapse in ruins. She had to keep on, keep moving, keep working, keep giving. Logan had five more years before he was even eighteen. She had an instant picture of her high school graduation, the purple cap and gown, the diploma in her hand, and only her father beside her. She jerked the bottle to her chest and reached for her purse. She'd find Luscious somewhere and get what she needed to go on.

Janie held the empty bottle in one hand and in the other a jug with a pink soap face with a smile she didn't return. "Mr. Bubbles?"

The teenage boy, eyes droopy with disinterest, shrugged her off. "It's bath stuff."

She studied his unlined, still round face. What did he know about drawing the line in the sand? He was maybe nineteen. How many compromises had he made in his life? The grind of work hadn't even touched him yet. And he was a he. Labor, real labor, breast-feeding, the bulk of errand running, and most social obligations would pass him by even when he did hit thirty-nine. Heck, at that point in his life, he'd probably be reminding his wife they were out of facial tissues and couldn't she just stop by the warehouse store and buy eighty-six boxes of them when she gets back from her conference where she's working even though, like all school administrators, he's mostly off all summer and- "Lady, there's a whole bunch on aisle twelve or thirteen."

She wiggled the jug. "I got this on twelve A." She moved the empty bottle closer to him. "I need this one. Can you suggest another store?"

"Maybe a mall, lady. But it's, like, after nine."

Janie let out a slow breath to keep herself in check and focused behind the boy's head so she didn't panic again or give in to the absurd and inappropriate impulse to lean over the counter and give him a stinging flick on the forehead. She tried to keep her breathing steady and studied the produce sale prices posted behind his check stand. Good deal on artichokes. They could be pricey even in the summer. Calendar. July. Good month. Warm. July first. Canada Day.

The boy looked closer at the back of the bottle. "Guess you gotta go to Vancouver." He turned her hand so the back of the bottle faced her, and his nail bitten finger pointed. "They make it in Canada."

Janie glanced at the calendar again. July first. Canada Day. Vancouver, British Columbia. "How far?"

He shrugged. "Don't know."

She gave him her mom look, and he straightened. "A couple hours, I guess, but you're not gonna drive to Canada for soap."

"Of course not. That would be crazy." And there was one thing Mara Jane Mulligan knew about herself. She was a responsible wife and mother. She wasn't driving to Canada so she could buy soap. She was driving to Canada so she could breathe.

"Don't stop me now." Janie sang along with Freddy Mercury about having a good time. The classic rock station had kept her company for an hour with a Queen retrospective. At the start of the hour, she'd learned the singer's name was Freddy Mercury, the band was Queen, and the choruses were pretty catchy. The songs had been vaguely familiar, maybe heard through a dorm room wall. But the lyrics were new to her and so well done. She'd removed the Enya CD as soon as she'd turned the van toward Canada. A spontaneous drive to another country required something a bit edgier than New Age sighing with strings.

She glanced down at the half-empty bag of nacho cheese chips, glad that she'd gone for the family size. Interstate Five would take her straight to Vancouver, and it looked like the chips would hold out. She had plenty of time. It was two-and-a-half hours from Seattle to Vancouver, and if she estimated an hour to hunt down Luscious and two-and-a-half hours back to Seattle, she'd have time for a bath and maybe even an hour or two of sleep before morning. Everything was fine. She felt fine. Better than fine. There was nothing wrong with her a bath wouldn't cure.

She took a gulp from the seventy-eight ounce cola, not diet, that she held between her thighs. She'd discovered that real sugar tasted like real sugar, and the bladder-buster size didn't fit in the van's drink holders. She'd take it as a good sign, a kind of square peg in a round hole situation. How better to refill her energy than to do something that didn't fit her normal life?

Queen kept rocking, and she turned it up far louder than Enya ever needed to be played. Freddy sang about Lady Godiva, and she took her eyes off the dark freeway just long enough to grab the king-sized Snickers bar on the passenger seat. She'd open the party-sized bag of Hershey's kisses later. She took a queen-sized bite of chocolate and sang along about re-loading a sex machine.

The border crossing had been painless. She'd passed through the Peace Park wondering if it would impart a state of calm to her, but she only felt the zing of caffeine and a desire for even more. At the booth, the border patrol wore his national security face sternly but asked questions easy enough to answer. What is the purpose of your trip? Shopping. That was true, and she certainly hadn't been tempted to tell him she needed a bottle of bubble bath. Neither of them had enough time for that conversation. Weapons? No. She wasn't even sure she could defend herself from herself.

Selling? Giving? She had no intention of either.

Home? Yes. She had one where people needed her in a well-tended development east of Seattle.

Occupation? Middle school teacher trainer.

And then he'd waved her into his country. Why would she ever have trouble crossing a border? No one in the international community would peg her for a person of interest. She didn't peg herself for a person of interest. She wouldn't endanger the citizens of Canada, plus who even worried about woman nearing middle age? They weren't a demographic that filled prisons. They didn't have time to break the law.

She could see the city of Vancouver clustered ahead of her. Canada. It seemed even more of an adventure when she considered that she was actually in another country, socialized medicine and all that. It was a foreign land and Vancouver, an exotic port. Even in the darkness, when exact shapes were impossible to determine, the city had a utilitarian quality, like a place the Jetsons might have found homey. Maybe it was the sense of change she felt looking at it, with so many buildings rising unlit in the midst of construction.

She followed the flow of traffic, considerable for so late at night, and assumed it would eventually lead her to an open store. Along the way it shot past established neighborhoods. At the edge of the sidewalks, large houses hid behind towering hedges. The growth rate with the climate had to be amazing to get ten, twelve feet of green.

She worried for a moment about getting lost. She had no map, no orientation devices in the van or inborn. But she had no real destination either. Just a place that sold bubble bath. And the lights were green, green as far as she could see and flashing. It wasn't enough to signal go. In Vancouver the lights said go, go, go! She'd trust the signs and flow with the Vancouverites. Would they be called that? They all seemed to be heading somewhere. She'd let them lead her and end up somewhere herself.