Janet, a Stay-At-Home-Mom, had to scurry out of sacrament meeting to catch Mary (who would be a SAHM if she could, but was divorced—not her fault: a straying husband) before primary started. It was because Janet just had to have Mary’s recipe for whole-wheat bread, and Mary was on an internet fast and not answering texts or IMs. Janet’s daughter Meg, best friends with Mary’s daughter, had raved about the bread, which she’d tasted at dinner there the other day (never lunch, of course, because Meg wasn’t allowed over there with no parents home), and which she had claimed, in her prim tweeny voice, was “not sawdusty like yours, Mom.” Janet didn’t want to spoil her daughter (maybe it was too late for that), but Meg had been skipping meals lately, avoiding people’s eyes, and talking about wanting to be skinny like her stick-figure cousin. Some good bread might heal an awful lot.
Sadie, who worked fulltime, though she obviously didn’t have to—at the very least, not if she gave up those extensions and facial peels—must have overheard them, because she asked for the recipe, too. But Janet knew she was probably just trying to get “ministering” points with Mary (who had been newly assigned to her), because Sadie would never make her own bread; she bought all her bread at the trendy bakery in Sugarhouse, as she loved to tell people.
Nearby, Janet saw Elizabeth (who didn’t work outside the home but ran for hours training for marathons) rolling her eyes, and heard her whisper loudly to Kate (SAHM but gluten-free), “Really! Who has time for baking? I mean, yeah, if it’s your passion, maybe. But I have better things to do.” Kate responded that even if her family did eat gluten, she’d have to give up her book review blog in order to have time to bake bread every week.
Janet could tell what Elizabeth and Kate were implying, but she tried not to care. Ever since she had told them she couldn’t join their book group because any extra time she had would be going towards family history, she’d gotten the feeling that they thought she was shallow. But she took her responsibility to care for her family seriously, unlike them, each of whom she’d caught, at least once, lying on their couches reading when there were dirty dishes on the counter.
Janet thought of those dishes as she watched Elizabeth continue down the hallway with her tiny marathon backside and dangerously high heels, just as her own Meg turned the corner, eyes down, looking sullen. But then Janet saw Elizabeth stop, beckoning to Meg, and Meg turn and look up, and Elizabeth speak to her, smiling. Then Meg appeared a little less sullen, and Elizabeth put her arms around Meg, and Janet could see, even that far away, a small smile on her Meg’s face—her dear, anxious, lonely Meg—and suddenly there was no one in the world Janet loved more than that Elizabeth.
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