Our Daily Bread by Lauren B. Davis Page A

water.
    He went into the kitchen and found her fussing with pots and pans. When she heard him she turned, and gave him a big grin.
    â€œI quit my job! Just like that. It came to me during my coffee break. I don’t have to do this. I’m not a prisoner. I just washed my mug out in the sink and I walked back into Mr. Wilton’s office, turned in my smock and said I wasn’t coming back.”
    Patty twirled around the kitchen holding a wooden spoon in one hand and pot lid in the other. She wore a white, ankle-length dress he hadn’t seen in a long time. Her feet were bare.
    â€œFree! I’m free! Free at last! Thank God almighty I’m free at last!” She spun over to him, smiling. Glowing. Then stopped. “Why are you looking at me that way? It was your idea. You said I could quit if I wanted to.” The wooden spoon and lid dangled from the ends of her arms.
    â€œSure. It’s great,” He tried to mean it, tried not to think about bills and clothes for the kids who grew out of them almost as soon as their arms were through the sleeves. “I just thought maybe it was something you’d do next year, or sometime . . .”
    â€œYou said I could.”
    It was as though a screen door slammed. He saw her face there, behind a defensive metallic haze, her features fuzzy and guarded. He wanted more than anything for her not to hide herself.
    â€œAnd I meant it.” He reached out to brush a curl out of her eyes, but she pulled back. “I meant it, Patty. We’ll be fine. The most important thing is that you’re happy. We’ll manage.”
    She regarded him sternly, the way she looked at Bobby to see if he were fibbing. Then she smiled. “It’s going to be better around here. You’ll see, Tom. The house will be clean and I’ll plant a garden next month and grow our own vegetables. I’ll bake bread. Won’t that be great?”
    She threw her arms around his neck, stood on tiptoe and kissed him in the soft hollow where his throat met his shoulder. He shivered and his arms went around her. She squirmed away and was back at the sink, gone so quickly he wondered if he’d only imagined the sensation of her lips on his skin, the smell of patchouli in her hair.
    She made a celebration dinner. Chicken with lemons, green beans with almonds, rice and cheesecake, a bottle of cheap red wine, which only she drank. It was disorienting to have such a strangely formal dinner in this old house. Ivy made them light candles and wanted Patty to blow them out and make a wish.
    â€œIt’s not a birthday,” said Patty, laughing.
    â€œThen it’s an un-birthday,” said Ivy.
    â€œBoth your Dad and I will be home now, when you get back from school,” Patty said.
    â€œI want my own car next year,” said Bobby.
    â€œWe’ll talk about that when you get your licence,” said Tom.
    â€œAnd then you can work for it,” said Patty.
    â€œYou don’t need your car now,” said Bobby. “Since
you’re
not working anymore.”
    It changed in an instant. A sudden drop in temperature. A crackle of electricity. A draft. Ivy laid her fork on the table and clasped her hands in her lap. Patty’s mouth pulled down, the lines running from her nose deepened. “Listen, you—”
    â€œCome on, now,” said Tom. “Not tonight. Celebration, right? No point in talking about cars just yet, anyhow. You don’t even start driver’s ed until next fall.”
    Bobby mashed his beans into green mush. “I’m just saying.”
    â€œIt’s all right, son. Every boy needs a car. I get it. When the time comes.” He patted his wife’s arm. “Great dinner, baby. Really first-rate.”
    Tom looked at the festive dinner and tried to get in the spirit of the thing. The candles in Chianti bottles. The kitchen transformed through the miracle of soft lighting to a place where even Bobby sat up