Chapter 5
Chapter Five
The first time Sophie came home and found Lorraine inside, she smelled onions before she saw the car. A white sedan was parked behind the rosebush, half hidden from the street, and the kitchen window had been opened. Sophie stopped on the path with her work bag sliding off her shoulder.
Lorraine stood at the stove wearing one of Sophie’s aprons. A casserole dish waited on the counter, and two grocery bags sat beside the sink. The kitchen radio was playing a station Sophie didn’t recognize.
“There you are,” Lorraine said. She glanced at the clock. “I wasn’t sure when you’d be home.”
Sophie set her bag down. “How did you get in?” she asked, though she remembered the answer before Lorraine gave it.
“My key,” Lorraine said. She stirred the pan. “Jesse said you’re both run off your feet.”
During the renovations Lorraine had let in a plumber while Sophie and Jesse were at work.
Jesse had given her a spare, and Sophie had never thought to ask for it back because the house had still been full of tools and dust. Now her underwear was drying on a rack upstairs and a half-finished letter to Nina lay on the dining table.
“Did Jesse ask you to come today?” Sophie kept her voice light. She hadn’t even taken off her shoes.
“He said he’d love my chicken casserole sometime. You know how he is.” Lorraine smiled toward the pan. “He never asks for anything.”
Jesse had asked Sophie to wash his work shirts that morning because he had forgotten again. She closed the refrigerator harder than she intended, and Lorraine turned at the sound.
“I was going to make salmon.” She opened the refrigerator and saw her packet of fish pushed behind a large tub of potato salad.
“Oh, save it for tomorrow,” Lorraine said. “This will be a treat for him.”
She stood with the door open, cold air touching her shins.
“You should call before coming over.” She closed the refrigerator gently.
Lorraine turned from the stove. “I didn’t want to make work for you,” she said. “That was rather the point.”
“I would’ve told you we had food.” Sophie moved Lorraine’s handbag off the chair where she usually left her own.
“It’s nearly ready.” Lorraine reached past her for a serving spoon, and Sophie put both bags on the empty chair instead.
Jesse arrived twenty minutes later. His face lit up at the smell of dinner, and Lorraine laughed when he bent to kiss her cheek. Sophie watched from the sink, where she was washing a pan Lorraine had used without soaking it.
“Look at this,” Jesse said. He lifted the casserole lid and let the steam hit his face. “Thanks, Mom.”
“I thought you could use a proper dinner,” Lorraine said. She glanced toward Sophie. “You both work so hard.”
Sophie put the pan down. “We eat dinner every night.”
“Of course you do, sweetheart. I meant a dinner neither of you had to cook.”
At the table Lorraine asked about the delayed inspection at Jesse’s job. She knew the inspector’s name, remembered that his wife had been ill, and told Jesse which bakery they both liked when he complained about the wait. Sophie ate three bites of casserole before anyone asked about her day.
She had made this dish with Lorraine two winters ago while Jesse and Hank carried a washing machine downstairs.
Lorraine had done most of the cooking, Sophie most of the drinking, and when Jesse came up to complain that they were laughing too loudly to hear him, Lorraine told him to carry his end properly.
Sophie still had the recipe card in the drawer beside her knee.
After Lorraine left, Jesse found Sophie wrapping the untouched salmon. He stood beside her and waited until she put it in the freezer.
“You seemed mad,” he said. He picked up a dish towel and dried a clean plate.
“She let herself in. I didn’t know she was coming.”
“She brought dinner.” Jesse stayed beside her with the plate he’d just dried.
“I know what she brought. I ate it.” Sophie closed the freezer. “I asked if you’d invited her. She said you wanted casserole.”
Jesse frowned. “She asked last week if I missed her cooking. I said sure.” He put the plate away. “I didn’t mean come over today.”
“Then tell her,” Sophie said.
He began folding the towel.
“Jesse.”
“I will,” he said. “Next time we talk.”
Four days later, Sophie came home early with a headache and found the kitchen cupboards open. Lorraine was standing on a folding stool, handing a serving bowl down to Hank. Three bags of groceries stood on the floor where Sophie normally kept the recycling.
“Careful,” Sophie said when Hank nearly dropped the bowl. She set her bag down beside the door. “What’s going on?”
Lorraine looked over her shoulder. “There you are,” she said. “I found more space for you.”
Sophie looked at the counter. The small blue jug had been wrapped in newspaper, along with the bowls Marianne had given them and the chipped plate Sophie used beneath her basil plant. Her salmon lay in the sink, still inside the packet she had put in the freezer.
“Why is that out?” Sophie picked up the salmon.
“I needed room for the casseroles,” Lorraine said. “It had a date on it from last week.”
“Because I froze it last week.” Sophie felt the soft flesh give under her thumb and put it down. “You can’t come here and throw our food away.”
Lorraine climbed off the stool slowly, one hand at her back.
“I haven’t thrown anything away,” Lorraine said. She gestured at the neat newspaper parcels. “Those are for the garage. You’ll have room for the wedding things.”
“Those are wedding things,” Sophie said. She pulled the paper from one of Marianne’s bowls.
“Oh, I meant the new ones.” Lorraine took the packet of salmon and looked for the date. “We were only trying to surprise you.”
The newspaper had left gray marks on Marianne’s bowl. Sophie carried it to the tap and turned the water on too hard, soaking the front of her blouse.
“I asked you to call.” She put the bowl on the table. “Both of you need to go.”
Hank set the casserole down on the only clear section of counter. “We’ll take these,” he said, gathering the grocery bags by their handles.
“Leave them,” Lorraine said. Her voice shook. “They’re for Jesse.”
Sophie stood at the back door while Hank carried out the stool and Lorraine searched beneath the newspaper for her handbag. When Lorraine tried to take the jug, Sophie held it against her body until the reaching hand dropped.
“I can finish putting things back,” Lorraine said. “You obviously have a particular way.”
“I do,” Sophie said. She opened the door wider. “Please go.”
Jesse arrived before they had left the driveway. Sophie heard his truck, then the voices outside, and began unwrapping the bowls because she needed something to do while Lorraine spoke first. She knocked one against the tap and chipped the rim.
She was holding the little broken piece when Jesse came in and surveyed the open cupboards and newspaper on the floor.
“Dad said she was helping you put things away,” he said. He put his keys in the bowl by the door.
“They were away,” Sophie said. “In our cupboards. Where we put them.”
He opened a parcel and found the plate from beneath the basil. His face changed a little, but he folded the paper over it again.
“You could have asked her to put it back,” he said. He was still holding the newspaper, and Sophie wanted to make him unwrap every parcel himself.
“I asked her not to come without calling. When did you tell her? You said you would.”
Outside, the white car started, then idled while someone closed a door.
“I hadn’t yet,” he said. He looked toward the window. “She and Dad were already here. I thought?—”
“I want the key.” Sophie set the jug beside the basil saucer. Her hand was slippery from the water on the bowl, and she wiped it on her pants before Jesse could take it.
“I’ll talk to her,” he said. He put one hand on her arm.
Sophie pulled away. “Before she comes back? Or after I come home and find her deciding something else?”
Jesse reached for the small broken piece still in her hand. Sophie closed her fingers around it before he could take it.
“What happened to your hand?” he asked. She opened her palm, keeping it beyond his reach.
“Nothing,” she said. She dropped the chip in the trash. “I want the key tomorrow.”
He went outside. Sophie heard Lorraine begin speaking before he reached the car, then heard him say her name over the rest. She went upstairs and shut the bathroom door before she could listen for the familiar change in his voice.
The next evening he laid the brass key on the kitchen counter. Sophie picked it up, recognizing the small scratch beside the hole, and closed her hand around it.
“Did she give you trouble?” Sophie slid the key beneath the recipe cards in the kitchen drawer. His wet jacket lay on the counter.
“Some,” Jesse said. He opened the refrigerator. “It’s done.”
He spent the evening putting the cupboards back the way they had been.
They argued about the position of the plates until Sophie remembered she had moved them herself on Monday, and she began laughing, unwillingly at first. Jesse leaned against the counter and laughed with her, then kissed her when she came close enough.
She kept the chipped bowl, its broken rim facing the wall. For the next few days she could look at it without remembering how it had happened.