Back to the 80s novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: St. Agnes

On Friday, I took lunch to the yard.

It was the first time I had seen my husband's work.

Dunleavy Freight was twelve acres of cracked asphalt by the Norwalk harbor, with forty trucks nosed in.

Men in work shirts ate at a long plank table under a tin roof.

When I walked in with a paper sack of ham sandwiches, the whole table stopped chewing.

"That's her," somebody said. "That's the one from the church."

"Boss's wife."

"The one who made the banker shake."

Word travels in a yard.

Russell came out of the office wiping his hands.

He took the sack from me, kissed me in front of all three hundred pairs of eyes, and said, "Gentlemen, you've met."

A cheer went up.

I turned red to the roots of my hair.

"Eat," he told them. "She cut the crusts off. Somebody mind your manners."

I was laughing when the pink Cadillac came through the gate.

It stopped in the middle of the yard.

Vivian got out in a white dress cut to her thigh, in heels that had no business on gravel.

Behind her, my mother sat at the wheel and didn't get out.

"Russell, darling," Vivian called.

The yard went dead quiet.

She picked her way across the gravel with her hips swaying.

"I came to apologize properly. For Sunday."

"I behaved horribly."

"Vivian," I said.

She didn't look at me.

She walked up to my husband and laid a hand on his chest.

"I made a mistake, running," she said, soft and breathy, loud enough for the tin roof.

"I'd have been a very good wife, Russell. I'd have been anything you wanted."

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