Saturday's Storyteller: Option One
by Belinda Roddie Option One is, when you open the door, stepping into a single story house with three bedrooms and two baths, and a backyard that appears to stretch to infinity, if infinity were constructed from fallen tree branches and broken bridges. There is debris everywhere, rubble that you are not expected to clean up or rebuild. You are allowed to settle in this home and see if you can handle the mortgage and the upkeep. Option One includes a spouse that is soft on the eyes but tough on the stomach. She will be nothing but candid as you navigate your new married life together. You both will have fallen hard and fast in the beginning: "whirlwind" is not even the strongest word you would use to describe it, though it is difficult to find something in your vocabulary that feels more appropriate. Six months into dating, and you two will have married on a warm September evening on a beach in Southern California, where the smog will be less dense and more gray than brow