The Cheese Maker
She found her apron and tied it, savoring the familiar smells of the kitchen: the sweat she wiped from her brow with the back of her hand, the wooden spoon and earthenware bowl.
They ate in silence. He shoveled her cornbread and beans in without comment. As he rose and pushed in his chair, he said, “Good.”
Long shadows felt their way across the yard while she washed up, leaning forward over the sink to see as much of the place as she could. She tidied the kitchen, sweeping the floor, searching for dirt, stretching the time. She heard him rattle his paper. He coughed once or twice. Then he appeared in the kitchen doorway, resting a shoulder against the frame.
“You done in here?”
She nodded, her mouth cottony.
“I’ll teach you to milk tomorrow. Got to do it early, so…“ He let the sentence trail off, his mouth working. He sighed. “You go ahead. I’ll be in directly.” He walked past her into the yard.
She’d bought the nightgown two days before, pausing before choosing pink over white. It had cost five dollars: more than she’d budgeted, but she felt it was only right to have something special for her wedding night. When she’d married Ned, her mother helped embroider her nightgown with a trim of small pink roses. He had stared at her with such astonishment that it made her giddy. She pushed his image aside, got into bed and waited.
George turned out the overhead light as he entered the room and undressed in the dark.
She felt the bed sag as he lay down. She wasn’t sure if she should turn toward him or not and felt her cheeks color with anxiety and expectation. He reached for her, brushing her breasts with one hand, and, groaning, pulled at her gown. Wait, she wanted to say. Wait. Her legs parted and he thrust himself inside. She squeezed her eyes shut, terrified she’d see Ned’s ghost appear behind the man who rose and fell like a wounded beast. Above her George grunted hard, rolled away and rose from the bed in one movement. She heard him leave the room, his bare feet sure in the dark, and heard water gushing from the pump in the kitchen. He returned as silently as he’d left and got back in bed. She curled away from him, a sob escaping.
“You all right?”
She felt him turn toward her. “You hurt me.” Tears trickled down her cheek.
“I didn’t mean to.” He was silent for a long while. “I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.”
In the morning George drove her back into Amity where the Ben Franklin carried a few clothes, bolts of cloth and sewing supplies. “You got nothing useful in that suitcase,” he said.
She glanced at the Presbyterian Church as they drove by, white clapboard with a small bell tower. “Do you go there, or some other?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Not interested. But if you want I’ll drive you in. Probably not every week, mind you. But if you want.”
Did she want? The first Sunday after the funeral she slipped into a pew near the back, and had gone home humiliated by the whispers and stammered condolences. The next Sunday she stayed home terrified God would toss her into the fires of hell. Nothing happened.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want.” God had deserted Ned.
When they returned, she packed up her dresses, the blouse with puff sleeves and pearl buttons, the navy blue skirt, her hat, gloves, and pretty shoes, replacing them with denim and heavy lace-ups. She surveyed herself in the mirror, pressing the fold marks of a green and white checked shirt, inspecting the seams for puckers. Her mother had taught her to pin a pattern, operate the Singer, prick out seams, put in darts, add edging and create buttonholes. A memory slipped in, blurring her mirrored image: her mother standing in the kitchen doorway while she draped her prom dress over the sofa, as if it were a seated guest. Across the room, her father had set aside his newspaper. “Bet lots of boys would like to swap places with Ned,” he said. Though she could furnish the room down to the books in the shelves next to the fireplace, she couldn’t flesh out their faces. Neither of them had lived long, and she, their only child, mourned them with an ache as constant and assumed as the night sky.