I shook out a white sheet, the damp fabric snapping in the wind. “We were just talking.”
Ruth took off her wire-rimmed glasses and began to clean them with the corner of her gingham apron. Her fingers worked in small, tense circles against the glass.
“A good wife shares everything, Clara. It is a lesson most girls learn before they stand at the altar.”
“My father worked that soil for forty years,” I said.
“And now your husband works it,” Ruth said, her voice dropping into that rhythmic, instructional cadence she used for Sunday school. “A family matter is not a ledger book. We do not keep separate columns.”
She put her glasses back on, her eyes appearing slightly larger behind the thick lenses.
“There are bills that do not wait for pride,” she said.
I did not ask her which bills she meant. I pinned the corner of the sheet to the line and looked down at the red dirt staining the hem of my apron.
At three o’clock, I drove the old sedan down to the local hardware store to buy three yards of clothesline wire. The gravel driveway rattled under my tires as I backed out, a sound that usually made me feel like I was going somewhere of my own choice.
George was standing by the pegboards at the back of the store, sorting brass screws into small plastic bins. He had his wooden surveyor’s ruler tucked into his back pocket, the brass hinges glinting under the fluorescent lights.
“Clara,” he said, turning around. “You look pale.”
“The baby is growing,” I said, putting a hand over my apron.
George tapped the wooden ruler against his thigh, a steady, hollow click that filled the space between the shelves. He looked past my shoulder toward the street, where the highway traffic hummed in the distance.
