She obsessively refreshed the liberal sites that delivered news about the disturbing fleet of candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination. Each revelation brought a rush of adrenaline and despair. One wanted to give embryos personhood status, another to make “In God We Trust” larger on money. They all agreed that gay marriage was an abomination. The governor from Texas said that schools oughta be teaching creationism.

She cringed a little when the applicants, surely the intended recipients of this posturing, got in touch, though they were polite, even deferential. Each week a letter or two, an email, and several phone calls: Sorry to bother her, but when would decisions get made? When would the applicant hear something? The check had not been cashed—was the application complete?

“We have to let people know,” Marianne told Eric. “We can’t wait until December.”

“Most programs don’t notify until January or February. At the earliest,” he said.

“The first session starts in March. We told them it was rolling admissions. Besides, they might move on to something else by then. Woodworking, pottery. Missionary trips. These are not regular applicants.”

“Okay,” he said. “Decide, then.”

“No!” Marianne said. She did not want to be responsible for the groups that sat around the long tables Mark had ordered. “That wasn’t what I meant. You have to help me. Or maybe Frances should help. It was her idea.”

She still hadn’t met Eric’s great-aunt, though she’d twice driven by her ranch-style retirement community. Rest home, Marianne remembered her mother calling the one where her grandmother lived, though inside it seemed more like a depressing hospital, a place where no one expected to get better. This was why she hadn’t stopped and inquired—what would she do if she found a woman as diminished as her granny, who spent entire days gazing out the window at an empty parking lot?

“She trusts us,” Eric said.

So Marianne bought a scanner and emailed him the promising applications. It took more than a week to hash out their favorites over Skype. It turned into a series of trades and compromises, and by the end Marianne wondered if she might have been better off making the decisions herself.

Insisting on the R&B singer, she had to concede the pastor’s wife with her many miscarriages, a woman she feared might be too fragile for workshop. They agreed on the strange something expressed by the Schiavo poet but disagreed about the teenage girl whose father had found the Ranch online—Eric thought she was too young. They both had questions about a poet with a pseudonym.