A Personal Enigma

I walked in to find my husband sitting cross-legged on the floor, bits of packing material and oddly shaped pieces of wood gathered round him like a flock of lost sheep. He glared at the sheet of paper in front of him.

“I swear these directions are not in English,” he declared, “or in any language that is vaguely related to anything spoken by humans.”

“Really,” I called as I lugged the groceries into the kitchen. “Maybe it's written in code. Have you tried borrowing an Enigma machine from the Smithsonian?”

“You're not helping,” he called.

“Maybe I wasn't trying to,” I mumbled as I stuck my head in the refrigerator to stow the milk and eggs.

“What was that?”

“I said, 'Maybe I could help you later,'” I called, a little too sweetly.

I started putting cans in the cabinets as my husband padded into the kitchen. He leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms.

“You know, I'm doing this for you,” he said.

“I never asked you to.”

He stood straight and took my hands. The bottle of dishwashing liquid slipped ever so slightly in my grip.

“We talked about this before I ordered that crib,” he said.

“You had to go there,” I snapped, pulling back. The bottle jerked from my grasp and fell to the floor. “How many times to I have to tell you this isn't going to work? Fixing our fertility problems are not going to be like something out of a movie. This is not Field of Dreams. Building that will not make a baby come!”

I didn't know what surprised me more: my tears, or his.

“I'll send it back,” he whispered.

“No,” I sniffled. “I'll help you.”

Word Count: 300