Heather opened her eyes a sliver, awoken by the sound of something she didn't want to know about coming from Delia's room. Unfortunately through her veil of eyelashes the first sight her eyes fell on was the green blanket piled on the radiator across the room, which evoked feelings too incendiary for her to pretend she wasn't awake. This blanket represented to Heather either absolute proof or absolute disproof of divine justice. Several years ago, Heather and Delia's grandmother had given them blankets for Christmas. They weer suede on the outside and downy on the inside. She gave Delia the lily pad green one and Heather the brick red one. Blind to the utility and obvious beauty of the gifts, Heather was immediately enraged--engulfed in her rage--because her room, and all the things in it, were shades of pink, while Delia's things were so haphazard and eclectic that any color would do. She managed to bury her horror at this lapse in judgment and was able to behave civilly to the whole family, no less to Delia and Grandma herself, both of whom were completely oblivious of anything wrong. It became apparent to Heather in the ensuing celebration, as her mind raced uncontrollably through all the possible logistics that could have caused this nightmarishly minor faux pas, that one of two things was almost incontrovertibly true: either the universe really was spontaneously set into motion by an exponentially unlikely chain of events, beginning with stars and reaching up through Heather's hellish present, because this kind of sublime mistake of chance could only be manifested in the most random and detached of worlds; or, there exists an all powerful deity and he, she or it had maliciously and intentionally caused Grandma to accidentaly switch the nametags on the identical boxes, and then to forget whose was whose anyway (and probably wonder, how much could it matter?), thereby plunging Heather into the fires of contemptuous indignation and forcing her to ruminate, for several years now, almost obsessively on the possibility of a God bigger than the universe and Its coexistence with pointless suffering, infinitely more passionately than she ever had before the blanket incident.
And so began poor Heather's day; she shuffled out to the miniscule kitchen to distract herself from her morning depression by making tea.
Delia's multi-colored bush of hair seemed particularly alert today.
Yes, Delia and Heather are cousins, though they are as different as their reactions to the fraternal blankets. Heather is often mistaken for an anemic preteen while Delia, tall and generously endowed, looks as if she is trying to push her flowers to their pigmentations' limits by visual stimulation alone. After dinner, she had casually observed to Heather, "I already have something lily pad green. Want to trade?" Somehow, this reversal of fate contributed nothing to her breakneck existentialism.
"Can you work in the shop today?" asked Delia. Her voice generated overtones akin to an opera singer's, though she spoke without theatricality or pretension. In fact she had no idea at all she sounded like a mezzo soprano, which only added to her charm, to people who notice these things.
Heather made her wait until she had microwaved her tea, stirred in a ghastly amount of milk and used this concoction to clear the cocoon from her mouth before she answered.
"You need me to?"
Quite convinvingly: "I'd love you to. There about a half dozen weddings next week, and they all want the biggest arrangements we have. Are you free?"
Delia is an anomaly. She is remarkably bright, yet impossibly stable. She both thinks about and is at peace with the world. She enjoys tending to flowers and so she manages a florist shop. Vibrant colors lift her spirit so she surrounds herself with them. Large engines trouble her so she drives a compact car. In fact she is so stable and intelligent that she knows she is both, and tries to share her good fortune, primarily with Heather.
Heather instantly recognized a way to distract herself from her inevitable mid-afternoon depression. Something to do! Something necessary!
Delia turned toward her.
"Do you feel okay?"
Her eyes were fixed on the wall and her hands groped at her stomach. Lips moving soundlessly, she lurched forward as if dry heaving. She was standing in a puddle.
"Oh my gosh," muttered Delia and instinctively jumped forward to accompany her friend to a sitting position.
"Heather," she said, "did you even know you were pregnant?"
