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Steven Stone wished he could go back to the days when his biggest problem was trying to distract his wife from the idea of having a child. Those challenges were simpler and safer than the mounting challenges she now presented to their marriage.
He remembered back to her birthday a few years ago before she had given up on him and began trying to get pregnant by other people. One of his hobbies was woodworking and he had hinted that he was making her something for her birthday.
She had dropped hints as well. Hints about making baby furniture like bassinets. He wouldn't give that to her of course, something she would take as a sign that he was just as into the idea of reproducing as she was, and he didn't want to give her the wrong idea. He had no regrets about his final decision. He only regretted not being firmer about it early on in their relationship but he couldn't have known and predicted the way things would turn out. Even though children had never been his number one goal in life to begin with, he assumed that she would settle down and mature with time as most people did and that maybe, maybe they could have a kid and be okay.
When her birthday rolled around and it came time to present her with the gifts he’d made her, he told her to close her eyes and wait until he brought it out of the garage and could set it on the kitchen table.
She closed her eyes in excited anticipation.
He placed the object on the kitchen table and said, “Now you can open your eyes.”
The second Janelle opened her eyes, her face dropped in disappointment. The sheer disappointment was as obvious as ever, but it was hard for him to feel bad for her of course.
“What is it?” she finally asked.
“You don’t recognize it? It’s a holder for things like your cooking spices, bottles of nail polish, that sort of thing,” he said.
“Oh, I see,” Janelle said pretending to be pleased with the gift her husband had taken the time to make her.
“I’m sorry you don’t like it.”
“Oh, no, no. I love it! I just didn’t know what it was for at first.”
“Oh, okay,” said Steven. He looked pretty disappointed for a minute there himself.
“It’s great. I can definitely use it.”
“There’s one more present I made you.”
Janelle’s eyes instantly lit up again as she sucked in a breath of new hope. Hope that this time she was going to get what she really wanted. But Steven smiled to himself as he turned away from her and headed back into the garage to fetch it, knowing he was going to have the guilty pleasure of watching that face fall all over again.
Or so he thought.
After they went through the same routine of him having Janelle close her eyes and then telling her to open them when he had the item set on the kitchen table, he got the opposite reaction.
Janelle’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and she smiled with glee. Her face bore the kind of excitement you see on a small child brought into a toy store. “Oh, wow! A cute little rocking chair for the baby!”
Damn it! “No,” Steven pointed out as quickly as he could. “It's for your dolls in the collection you want to start.”
“Those too,” said Janelle, refusing to admit that she hadn't gotten what she wanted. “It’s adorable,” she carried on with.
Steven walked off in frustration and sat down in the living room chair. He was definitely no longer amused by seeing his poor wife let down.
A few minutes later, Janelle entered the room. “You okay?” she asked her sullen-looking husband.
“Yeah,” he muttered.
“Don't be so hard on yourself. They’re wonderful presents and I’m grateful that you made them.”
“Yeah, okay,” he muttered again.
“Are you sure you're okay?”
“Well,” Steven hesitated, not wanting to get into an argument. “I guess.”
"You guess? I don't get it. Why are you so hard on yourself?” Janelle asked, turning things around and into what they weren't. “They’re great gifts. I don’t know what else I can say. If I didn't like them, I would tell you.”
“It's just that I told you what they were for and you wouldn’t accept that.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I told you what the rocking chair was for.”
“Oh, yeah, I heard you. For dolls. But why can't it also be for our future kid? Would it be dangerous? Like could it tip over or something?”
“I don't know,” Steven said with a shrug.
That night, Janelle complained in her journal that she didn't understand why Steven was so upset just because she thought of other uses for her birthday present besides the one he had in mind.
But that was then and this was now. Now Janelle was on probation for the lesser charge of child neglect since nothing further could be proven despite being suspected.
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