Next step on my Enjoli saga - Never let him forget he’s a man. Oh, wait, you think I mean…sex? Oh, definitely nothing so sexy. There are many ways in which a woman is expected to assure a man that he is a man, and sex is only one of them. Not even the most common, in my experience. So, tonight, Megan never let’s Brady forget he’s a man.

Now for five women:

• Mary Anning, fossil hunter

• Émilie du Chatelet, French philosopher, mathemetician, and physicist; sometimes called the woman who put the square in E=mc2

• Eulalia Guzmán, first Mexican female archaeologist

• Maria Mitchell, astronomer, discovered a comet

• Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier - chemist and noblewoman, unfortunately mostly known for being married to Antoine Lavoisier

NEVER LET YOU FORGET YOU’RE A MAN

Megan glared at the toilet. She had long since learned not to ask Brady to put the seat down. He was a man, he said, not a sissy. But couldn’t he at least aim better? She spritzed the cleaner and knelt with the scrub brush. It was nastier than usual, because she had to let it go a day. Saturday she had to work an emergency shift, so now she had to do her cleaning on Sunday.

Brady bellowed from the living room. She washed her hands and hurried to see what he needed. “Mia needs to be changed.”

Mia was working up to a major tantrum in her playpen. Megan grabbed her and a clean diaper and shoved both at Brady. “You’ll have to change her. I’m in the middle of cleaning the bathroom.”

“Honestly, Megan, I don’t understand why it takes you so long to wipe down a toilet and a sink. I mean, when I was a bachelor, I never spent more than a couple of minutes on it.”

The image of Brady’s bathroom before she moved in flashed before her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. It had taken her half a day to get all the caked on soap scum off the tub, and the toilet…well, it probably should have been a Superfund site. She smiled a tight smile and went back to the bathroom, leaving Brady to struggle with Mia’s diaper. He knew how to change a diaper. Megan suspected he did it badly so she would always do it. Same thing with putting dishes away. He always put the big dishes on top of the small ones until she finally took it away from him and did it herself so they wouldn’t have any more broken dishes.

“Megan!” Brady called her back to the living room.

“What?”

“She’s poopy. Where are the wipes?”

Megan grabbed the wipes from the coffee table, three feet from where he sat, and threw them at him. She stomped back to the bathroom and finished scrubbing the toilet before she turned her attention to the tub. He had left the water standing after his shower again, and there was a black ring she needed to scrub off.

Her mood had lightened by dinner time. They had a rare roast, one his dad gave them from his latest butchering job. In a couple of days, they would go out to the farm and his dad would divvy up a cow and a pig between his two sons. His daughter, Brady’s sister, had married an accountant and lived in Chicago. She had no more need of their charity, as his dad called it. She had roasted the meat with potatoes and cabbage, and they were having a feast.

“I was looking at that pamphlet today”, Megan started.

“Huh?” Brady didn’t look up from carving.

“You know, that pamphlet? The one the school always sends to everyone in town? The classes and things?”

Brady dropped a hunk of meat on her plate. “Yeah. So?”

“I noticed they have a program in being a nurse’s aide. I thought, you know, I might be good at that. I could take the classes, work nights for a while, and maybe get a better job.” Megan spoke casually, as though she were reporting on a sale at WalMart.

Brady let the knife fall with a thunk on the table. “Why would you wanta do that?”

“So I could make more money. And maybe work a job I liked, instead of that…shit job. We could use the money.”

“We can’t afford classes.”

Megan leaned forward, her eyes shining. “I called them. They said they have all kinds of loans and things to help people who can’t afford it.”

“We aren’t taking out a student loan. I mean, what good would it be to make more money, if you gotta pay it all to the bank?” Brady frowned.

“It wouldn’t have to be a loan. She said…the woman at the school…I probably could get help for free, because no one in my family’s ever been to college. I would be…first generation.” Megan paused to remember what else the woman told her. “Oh, yeah, and because we’re low income.”

Brady jumped out of his seat. “You didn’t tell them we was poor, did you? Because we aren’t poor. We’re working folks, that’s all. We’re not poor, we work hard.”

“No, I didn’t say that, I just told her what I make…and what you make…and that we have a baby. She said we probably qualify for several types of help.” Megan kept her voice quiet and steady. Brady was in a mood, and she needed to calm him.

“You don’t need to go to college. You’re perfect the way you are. I like you the way you are.” He sat at the table, but refused to look at her. “What you wanta go gettin’ smart for? You wanta be smarter than me? You wanta make more money than me?”

Megan shrank. He didn’t understand. He thought…he thought she wanted a job so she could leave him. “No, I just…I want to be more help around here. I don’t make enough money. We…what if…well, you know we can’t afford birth control. What if I get pregnant again?” There, she said it.

“You late?” Brady looked at her now, fear in his eyes.

“No, it’s just…something I think about. You know.” She kept her eyes down, not wanting to be too bold, not wanting to challenge him. Let the man be the man…that was what her mother always said. It was the last thing her mother said when she helped her dress on her wedding day…let the man be the man, and you’ll have a happy marriage. She always tried to let Brady be the man, but sometimes, well, sometimes they needed something, and she was the one who had to do it.

“You won’t get pregnant. I always pull out in time.” Brady smashed his potatoes with his fork and slathered on the margarine. “You don’t need to go to college. You’ll do great. We’ll do great. I’ll get a raise soon, and then we’ll be good.”

“But…”

“Shh. Don’t worry about it. I know, it seems hard right now, because you were off work so long having Mia, but we’re gonna be all right. I can provide for you, you’ll see. One of these days, you won’t even have to work. I’ll buy you a brand new house with a shiny kitchen and one of those vacuuming things…you know, that you don’t have to push?”

“A Roomba?”

“Yeah. One of those. And I’ll buy you jewelry and all sorts of nice clothes, and…” Brady trailed off, more interested in his dinner than in her at the moment. As far as he was concerned, the case was closed. His wife was not going to make more money than he did. He was a man, not a sissy.

Megan cleared up after dinner. Brady was working on his model car in the dining room, and Mia was asleep. She sat at the table and went through the pamphlet from the college. She hadn’t told him she scheduled a tour for the next day; she would have to call and cancel that.

She fingered the pamphlet and allowed herself to dream a little more. She rose, put the pamphlet in the trash, and went to the living room to watch TV. Mom was right. She needed to let the man be the man.

TO BE CONTINUED…