Mrs. Hilda Gruber studied Sam’s scrapbook with a disdainful air. “Are these all the pictures you have? This won’t fill up half your scrapbook.”
“Maybe if I made the letters bigger, it would take up more space and I wouldn’t need as many pictures,” Sam suggested.
“Scrapbook letters should be exactly one inch,” she sniffed. “Of course, some scrapbookers will tell you letter size isn’t important, but that’s what’s wrong with this world. People make up their own rules and look where it’s gotten us. Anarchy and chaos. One inch letters, Mr. Gardner. No smaller, no larger.”
“Yes, ma’am. One inch. I understand.”
“And some of these photographs are curled. How do you store them?”
“In a shoe box.”
“You store your photographs in a shoe box?” Mrs. Gruber asked incredulously.
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“I don’t.”
Of course you wouldn’t, Sam thought.
“Class, may I have your attention,” Mrs. Gruber said, tapping her ruler on Sam’s desk. “I’ve just been informed that Mr. Gardner stores his photographs in a shoe box.”
The women frowned, clearly not surprised by this sordid revelation.
“I file mine chronologically and can cross-reference them both alphabetically and by subject matter,” Mrs. Gruber said proudly.
Sam’s classmates applauded.
She turned to the next page in Sam’s scrapbook and lifted it up for the students to view. “Dreadful. Perfectly dreadful. No consistent theme. No thought given to balance and proportion. No obvious system of arrangement. Mr. Gardner, this scrapbook is an assault to the senses. This is nothing short of pictorial pandemonium.”
She closed the scrapbook. “I don’t want you to paste one more photograph in this book. Do you understand me? Not one more picture!”
“What will I do?”
“We have several students who show some promise. I want you to examine their scrapbooks. Perhaps it will inspire you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The rest of the evening passed with agonizing slowness.
He arrived home a little before ten. The house was dark, and Barbara and the boys were asleep in bed. On the drive home, he’d had an idea, and he now went to the phone to call his mother-in-law.
“Sorry to call so late, but I don’t want Barbara to hear me,” he explained when she answered the phone. After swearing her to secrecy, he told her about the scrapbook he was making. “Could you sort through your old pictures and send me a dozen or so pictures of Barbara when she was little? You’ll need to send them to the meetinghouse so Barbara doesn’t find them. Don’t put your name on the package. I have a nosy secretary.”
Upstairs, Barbara had awakened to hear the tail end of Sam’s conversation. She rose from their bed, flipped on the hallway light, and began descending the stairs.
“I can’t talk now. She might hear us,” she heard Sam say. Then he hung up the phone.
“What will I hear?” Barbara said, standing on the bottom stair and studying him.
“Oh, nothing.”
“How was your men’s meeting?” she asked.
“Pretty good. We talked about motorcycles.”
“Motorcycles, eh?”
“Any phone calls for me?”
“Just Fern Hampton. She said, and I quote, ‘If that husband of yours doesn’t fire Frank by the end of the week, I will.’”
Sam grimaced.
This he did not need. In addition to being publicly humiliated by his Nazi scrapbook teacher, Sam had to deal with Dale Hinshaw, who had stopped by the meetinghouse that day to inform him he’d secured a new sponsor for that year’s progressive Nativity scene.
“And who would that be?” Sam had asked.
“Bud’s Mattress City over in Amo. Thing is, Bud wants to put one of their mattresses in the manger along with a sign, which I told them would be no problem.”
Sam groaned inwardly.
“Yep,” Dale went on, oblivious to Sam’s dismay. “Uly Grant said we could put the infant Jesus in his yard and Mary and Joseph are going to be in Bea Majors’s yard again, the wise men at Mabel Morrison’s, the shepherds at my house, and we’ll end with the heavenly hosts here at the meetinghouse with hot chocolate and cookies.”
He thought of telling Barbara the latest progressive Nativity developments, but decided not to bring the matter up. The pain was still too fresh. Instead, they went upstairs and went to bed. Sam fell asleep promptly, while Barbara lay awake, wondering what Sam had really done that night and whom he’d done it with.
The following days passed quickly. Sam took Monday off and Tuesday arrived at his office to find a package from his mother-in-law.
“Came in yesterday’s mail,” Frank said. It had taken all his willpower not to open it. “What is it?”
“None of your business,” Sam told him.
“Are you still sore at me?”
“No,” Sam sighed. “I’m not mad. I just wished you had been a bit more circumspect with the Friendly Women.”
“All I did was talk about this woman a bunch of us guys knew about while we were in Korea. Boy, Sam, I tell you, she could—”
“Stop right there, Frank.” He looked at Frank for a long moment. “What you need to do is get married.”
Frank had been a widower for six years and the stress of celibacy was beginning to show.
“You know, Fern Hampton has never been married,” Sam hinted.
“I’d sooner be dead.”
“Can’t fault you there.” Sam paused. “Fern wants me to fire you.”
“Yeah, I heard. So are you going to?”
“Of course not. But perhaps you ought to take a vacation for a week or two. Maybe drive down to North Carolina and visit those granddaughters.”
“Hmm, probably not a bad idea,” Frank said. “Maybe I’ll go down for Thanksgiving.”
“I was thinking maybe tomorrow. You know what they say, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ Let Fern cool down. Then when you come home, she’ll be agitated about something else and will have forgotten all about it.”
Sam walked into his office, with Frank right behind him. “You gonna open that envelope anytime soon?”
“I thought I might.” He reached for the pocketknife he kept in his desk to open mail with, slit the end, and pulled the photographs from the envelope. He began thumbing through them one at a time while Frank peered over his shoulder.
Frank chuckled. “Cute little thing, wasn’t she? Look at that. Holding a doll and packing heat at the same time.”
“I think her father wanted a son,” Sam said.
“So what are you doing with those pictures?”
Sam hesitated. “Promise not to tell?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“I’m making Barbara a picture scrapbook for her Christmas present.”
He didn’t mention enrolling in the class. Being the only man in a scrapbooking class was still a bit embarrassing.
Frank whistled. “Say, not a bad idea. Women love that kind of thing. Good thinking.”
Sam smiled proudly. “It was a stroke of genius, if I do say so myself.”
“They got classes you can take in this stuff,” Frank said. “My daughter and grandkids are in one. They had to buy these special scissors and paper and tape, plus the book the pictures go in. Then there are these pens and cutouts and punches and stamps and stencils. It’s cost them about four hundred dollars. They could’ve bought themselves a lawn mower for what they’re spending on those picture books.”
Sam had dropped over five hundred on his scrapbook class so far, but wasn’t about to tell that to Frank.
Coincidentally, at that very moment, Barbara Gardner was studying the bank statement that had arrived in the morning mail, noting a pattern of withdrawals over the past several months. That’s odd, she thought. Wonder what that’s all about? She suspected the worst. Sam’s probably wining and dining some chippy, she said to herself.
She picked up the phone and dialed the meetinghouse number.
“I’ll get that,” Frank said, reaching for the phone. “Hello.”
“Hey, Frank. Is Sam there?”
“It’s your wife,” he said, handing Sam the phone.
Sam listened for a moment, then said, “Withdrawals, you say. Gee, let me think. Yes, maybe I did make those.” He paused while she spoke. “Oh, you know, this and that. First one thing and then another. Nothing special. Just needed to pick up a few things.”
“Five hundred dollars worth?!” Barbara said, in such a loud voice Frank could hear her across the room. He winced, then backed out of Sam’s office, closing the door behind him.
Sam came out a few moments later, walking with a slight stagger, his hair laid back as if he’d encountered a hurricane. “Boy, is she mad. I tell you, Frank, Christmas is getting more dangerous every year.”
“I hope your marriage makes it until then,” Frank said. “It’d be a shame for you to put all this work into a scrapbook for your wife, only to have her leave you.”
“Six more weeks. If I can make it six more weeks, I’m home free.” He stumbled back into his office and collapsed in his chair with a moan. “What was I thinking? Why didn’t I just get her some pot holders? She was saying just the other day she needed new pot holders.”
“Can’t go wrong with pot holders,” Frank agreed.
“But no, I had to be creative. I had to get her the perfect Christmas gift. Now look where it’s gotten me. My wife hates my guts.”
“Maybe you ought to come to North Carolina with me,” Frank suggested. “Let your wife cool down. You know what they say, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’”
Sam sighed. “I wanted to surprise her with the scrapbook, but now I think maybe I oughta go ahead and tell her. I don’t want her to think I’m having an affair.”
“Well, you do what you want,” Frank said. “But I wouldn’t knuckle under if it was me.”
“What do you mean? I’m not knuckling under. I’m just going to let her know what I’m doing so she doesn’t worry.”
“And spoil your surprise? Sam, you’ll ruin the whole thing. You know you’re not having an affair, so she’s got nothing to worry about. Besides, think how fun it’ll be on Christmas morning when you show it to her. And now you’re gonna tell her, just because you’re afraid of her?”
“I am not afraid of my wife.”
“Then don’t tell her.”
“I thought you were going to North Carolina,” Sam grumbled.
The rest of the day passed at a crawl. Sam was tormented, unsure whether or not to tell Barbara what he’d been doing. When he walked in the door in the late afternoon, Barbara was in the kitchen, cooking supper. He slipped up behind her and put his arms around her. “Hey, honey.”
“Hi, Sam.”
“What’s for dinner?” he asked, sniffing the air.
“Beef stew.”
“Mmm.”
“Sam, can we talk?” Barbara asked, shutting off the flame underneath the stew and turning to face him.
“Sure. What you want to talk about?”
“About what you’re doing on Wednesday nights.”
Sam hesitated. “There are some things I can’t talk about right now, but I want you to know I love you and would never do anything to betray your trust.”
She sagged in his arms and began to weep. “Oh, Sam. I’ve been so worried about you. I heard you on the phone the other evening talking with somebody. You’ve been gone all these nights. And then finding that money gone from our savings account, well, I was just worried sick. I want you to be honest with me.”
“I would never be unfaithful,” Sam promised. “I thought you knew that.” He kissed away a lone tear on her cheek.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. You just hear so many stories these days of spouses cheating on one another.”
“We don’t do that,” Sam said firmly. “Understood?”
“Understood,” she said.
And standing in the kitchen, they made their peace, the pleasant scent of beef stew wafting through the air as the weight of worry fell away.