The Merchant of Menace

dressing, and added the big bowl to the garage stash of food.
    The cats were charmed by this unusual activity. Jane noticed them watching her and laid a cardboard box over the food.
    When Mike returned with the hams, she asked him to take them to Shelley’s. “They’re going in her oven this afternoon since I don’t have room,“ she explained. “Oh, and take along the parsley to decorate the plates. God, I’m good, aren’t I?”
    Feeling devastatingly domestic and terribly smug, Jane took on the dining room. She’d already struggled to get all the table extensions put in place, which hardly left room to squeeze around the end of the table, and had put the big red tablecloth and centerpiece in place. Now she put out the sturdy paper plates (she’d sprung for far more than was sensible for them because she loved the colorful wreath pattern around the edges), cups, and plastic silverware. She fished around in the drawers of the china cabinet for hot pads and scattered them artistically.
    Jane closed the door on the dining room after a last, admiring look, to keep the cats and Willard out of the room, and she tackled the broccoli.
    “Anything I can do?“ Mike asked, coming in the kitchen door. “By the way, Mrs. Nowack said parsley is passé and she’s doing a pineapple and Chinese mustard sauce for the ham.“
    “Parsley is passé? How dare she?“ Jane said with a grin. “I’m the hostess with the mostest today.“
    “Be careful,“ Mike said, pouring himself a soft drink and sitting down at the table.
    “Of what?“
    “Of getting too cocky.”
    Jane went on cutting broccoli flowerettes. “Are we talking about me or you?“
    “Me, I guess,“ Mike admitted. “School?“ Jane asked.
    “Yeah. Do they send my grades to you, like they did in high school?“
    “Either that or you’ll send them to me. Won’t you?”
    He nodded. “You’re not gonna like them much. All C’s, unless some instructors take pity on me.“
    “Oh, Mike,“ Jane said, knowing she sounded terribly disappointed in spite of her resolve to be supportive. “You were a straight-A student in high school.“
    “Yeah, but I knew why I was doing it. I was working at getting A’s so I could get into college and now I’m there and don’t know why. See what I mean?“
    “Not exactly.“
    “I don’t know what’s next... why I’m doing this... where I’m headed.“
    “But you know wherever you’re headed you need a college degree to get there.”
    “Sure. But in what? One of my nerdy roommates knows he wants to be an accountant so he’s taking all these math and business courses besides the basic stuff and he’s acing everything. Mom, he doesn’t know the difference between a fork and a spoon, but he knows what he wants to be. Another one is taking all this science stuff and likes it so much he wants to talk about it all the time. Genes and DNA and that. I’m just taking all this dumb college freshman stuff. English, algebra, earth science. I’ve already aced those in high school.“
    “And now you’re getting C’s in the same things? They’re that much harder?“
    “No, the courses aren’t hard at all. In fact, some are a lot easier than high school. It’s just ‘cause they’re so boring. I want to be really, really interested in something. I want to be like John, spouting about double helixes because I think they’re so neat I can’t keep it to myself.“
    “But Mike, you’re interested in—and knowledgeable about—a lot of things.“
    “Uh-huh. Too many. I’m pretty good at sports, but I don’t have dreams about making touchdowns. I can play a couple instruments, but I’m not good enough to make it my life’s work. I know all the grammar rules and have big chunks of Macbeth memorized, but you can’t make a living with that stuff. Besides, I don’t want to.”
    Jane dumped the broccoli flowerettes into a bowl and started peeling the stalks and cutting them into slices. “Okay, I’m getting the picture. Yesterday I was asking Shelley for advice and she said she’d like to be the wise woman and give it to me, but had none. I feel sort of the same way. But I do have a few suggestions.”
    “Yeah?“
    “First, get the grades in the dumb courses “Yeah, I know that. I will. Piece of cake, really.“
    “Second, get it out of your head that you have to decide right now what you’re going to be for the rest of your life. You’ve got at least two years before you have to even pick a