Chapter One

Out of Tune

If I could described Mary with the notes of a piano keyboard it would sound something like Mozart, Bach, Handel, and Beethoven; classy, well rounded, compassionate, sociable, beautiful, educated and outgoing—and for me it would be d-flat, e-flat, d-flat, e-flat . . . with an occasional out of tune Strauss piece filling the in-between places with my stories. Mary and I have learned to adapt somehow. I’m the fixer. I’ll adjust the piano bench, watch and fix the sticky keys, tune and replace the occasional broken string, and mostly listen while beautiful music is being rendered. Mary would say I was a workaholic; stuck in high gear—until I hurt my back and retired—and now it’s the college studies majoring in English, with my thirty-year-old dream of a law degree that steals my time. Mary is the tuner. Somehow she understands how to juggle work, piano lessons for Kayshia, family, friends, grandbabies, love, school, horse riding lessons for Kinley, housework, gardening, quilting, scrapbooks, children, grocery shopping, dog walking, birthday cakes, forgiveness, compassion, and most of all me—all meticulously organized in a random sort of order to focus on the family she loves. I’m not sure if her traits are instinct or self instructed and I marvel how she does it all so well.
She was working on her last research paper to complete her bachelor’s degree. That’s what put us both in the office together that day. She can research cell cloning and check out the want ads all at the same time. Me, I prefer to study in silence, no phones, children, dogs, or doorbells and no questions.
“Here, look at this one,” Mary said for the fifth time, “It’s nice.”
“I’m trying to study,” I finally blurted out.
“Sorry, just look at this last one.”
I stood up and peered over her shoulder. It was nice for its age. “Let’s see if we will use the one we have first, and then let’s start looking at a nicer model.”
“We’ll use it, I promise,” she insisted before she finally let me study in peace.
It was her fixation on the motor home that really had me curious. We are still too young to be gallivanting around the country in a motor home, but she was determined. She’d take the girls and go without me, if she had to, and she was confident that she could—even if it meant she’d have to reach way outside her comfort zone to drive the monster. I believed her. She’d gone without many times before.

“Don’t sell it,” she told Leann as we stepped from the thirty-two-foot Seabreeze and headed for the car, “we’ll be back tomorrow.”
I was shaking my head to the contrary. The last thing we needed is a second one, and besides we hadn’t even finished fixing the first one and taken it on a trip yet. I guess it was my own fault. No one forced me into the car, to “just take a look.” My presence was the affirmation of the hint of agreement. While my head was saying ‘no,’ my actions were saying ‘maybe.’
Mary had been scouring the classifieds for weeks checking out features, prices, and sizes. She wanted as many seat belts as possible, lots of beds, and something newer than the 91 Ford we’d taken as partial payment for an old debt.
“I’m telling you, it’s a great price and we won’t find anything that has been so well cared for,” Mary insisted as we climbed in the car and pulled from the curb. The Seabreeze belonged to a woman I knew from my business days and it had been parked, for sale just a few blocks from our neighborhood. Mary continued, “It will be gone by tomorrow.”
Our fourteen and thirteen-year-old daughters, Kayshia and Kinley, were in the back seat. It was Kinley that kept repeating, “So, are we going to get it?”
“We already have one, the last thing we need is another,” I replied.
It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford it. We were bringing home more money retired than I did when I was working. I’m the miser of all misers and had worked hard, saved, invested, and had paid off every debt we owed; including all of our commercial property. I actually felt guilty with our new income. But it wasn’t until we were lying in bed that night when I finally agreed.
“So call her tomorrow and offer thirteen,” I said as I turned off the television.
Mary reached over and rubbed my chest. “I’ll bet she won’t take a dime less than fourteen.”
She was probably right but it never hurts to ask. I could tell how much this meant to her, and I felt less guilty spending money on things we could all enjoy than so many other things that are out there.
I suppose it was the d-flat that I first noticed slightly out of whack that inspired me to take the family and marriage class during my 2010 summer semester. Maybe that was part of the reason I agreed to buy the motor home too. But I just didn’t know how I could spend any time going places. School isn’t easy for me. In English I can get a perfect score on a paper and in physical science I’m lucky if I score seventy-percent. If I’m not in class, I spend almost every waking hour on my studies. I needed a near 4.0 average for the rest of my schooling if I had any hope of getting into the BYU law program. “Mary will just have to learn how to drive the thing,” I justified.

Ken’s Journal Entry June 6, 2010
Mary asked me to feel the lump in her breast last night; it has an irregular shape, a small mass on the right side, near her armpit. It is not particularly odd for her to have lumps. She’s had them before and they’re usually in conjunction with her menstrual cycle. But this one doesn’t feel the same. We both agreed she should get an appointment to have it checked. She decided because she turned fifty last year she’d schedule a colonoscopy too. We laughed a little. I’ve already had mine, and I woke up in the middle of the procedure. Nothing quite like a tube up the . . . .

Mary has always been a good sport when it comes to doing things with the kids that I really don’t enjoy doing; going to movies, shopping, crowds, and so . . . she just does them without me. She enjoys those things, so it isn’t a sacrifice for her. She’s made a few trips Disney Land with the kids while I’ve stayed home. Besides, I get motion sick and can’t enjoy the rides anyway. Why pay for a pass and plane ticket if I can’t enjoy it? Me . . . me . . . me.
The family and marriage class has made me think. Of course I’m just way too macho to admit it. And if I get a new idea from the class, I can’t really apply it because it wasn’t my idea . . . right? The instructor, Dr. Hill is only four or five years my senior and I am no doubt the only student grandpa in the class. I’ve had almost as much personal experience raising children as he’s had, and he’s been married just a bout the same amount of years as I have been married. On occasion he even asks me to share my opinion with the class.
Let’s see, that’s probably the way Mary would sum it all up if she were asked, but she’s too kind to just blurt it all out. She’s usually more subtle and then I don’t seem to hear a thing. So, I guess I’m not quite as dumb as I look. So, how do I fix it? How does any guy like me fix it? There I go again e-flat, d-flat, e-flat. . . .