Chapter 8: The Plant Manager's Table

The Strubs lived in a brick house on Hardin Street with white pillars and a doorbell that played four notes.

Gertrude Strub opened the door herself.

She was tall and thin and rigid, in a plum wool suit with pearl earrings.

Her silver hair had been set in a wave that did not dare move.

She held her handbag in front of her with both hands, even indoors.

"Mrs. Rausch," she said. She looked at my hat, my gloves, and the pie in my hands. "You are punctual."

"Thank you, Mrs. Strub."

"The Guide says, 'A punctual wife is a credit to her husband's name.'"

"Rule 3," I said.

Her eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch.

"You know it."

"Every rule, Mrs. Strub."

"We shall see," said Gertrude.

Her husband, the plant manager, was already in the dining room.

He was a big pink man with a napkin tucked into his collar.

He had the face of someone who has listened to the same voice for thirty years.

He shook Hal's hand and called him "son" and took my pie as if it were a medal.

There was a pot roast, and boiled potatoes, and a little dish of beets that nobody touched.

Gertrude sat at the foot of the table, and from the first mouthful she did not stop.

She told us about the Auxiliary and the Ladies' Missionary Circle.

She told us about a foreman's wife who had worn trousers to the market and whose husband had been moved to the night crew.

She told us about nerves.

"It is common after a war," she said, spooning beets onto her plate.

"Men come home unsettled. The wife must take the greatest care."

"A man who walks at night is a man whose home has failed him."

Hal had gone completely still beside me.

I put my fork down.

"Who walks at night?" I said pleasantly.

"I only note it. The Guide says, 'A wife who cannot give her husband a restful home has failed him.'"

"Rule 11."

"You are very well read."

"Rule 18," I said, "says, 'Do not greet him with complaints or problems.' So I haven't."

"I was not suggesting..."

"Rule 1 says that a husband's comfort is a wife's first concern. I attend to it."

I smiled.

"Hal is comfortable, Mrs. Strub. I made sure of it."

Across the table, the plant manager made a small wheezing noise into his napkin.

Gertrude's color rose from the collar of her suit.

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