got a flat,” Barone said.
“Damn it. That’s the next-to-the-last thing in the world I need.”
“Come look.”
She climbed out of the car and came around to the back. She wore an old housecoat the color of dirty dishwater. When she heard the back tire hissing, she laughed.
“Well, if that ain’t the cherry on top of my sundae.” She laughed again. She had a nice laugh, like the cheerful jingle of coins in a pocket. “After the day I had, it’s the damn cat’s pajamas.”
“Open the trunk,” Barone said. “I’ll change it out for you.”
“My hero,” she said.
He checked to make sure the road was empty and then cut her throat, turning her a little so that she didn’t spill blood on his suit. After a minute she relaxed, like a silk dress slipping off a hanger. Barone just had to let her slide into the trunk of the car, no effort at all.
While everyone else gathered around the television in the living room, Charlotte inspected the dining table to see what she might have forgotten. She’d been awake since five-thirty that morning, baking and basting and grating and mincing. And last night she’d stayed up until almost midnight, polishing the silverware and ironing the Irish-lace tablecloth that Dooley’s parents had given them for their wedding.
Had she slept at all? She wasn’t entirely sure. At one point, lying on her back in the darkest hollow of the night, she’d felt the dog’s whiskery muzzle twitching close to her mouth, making sure she was still breathing.
Dooley’s mother, Martha, popped into the kitchen. “Need any help, Charlie?” she said.
“No thank you,” Charlotte said. “I’m just about ready.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Both Martha and Dooley’s father, Arthur, were lovely people, gracious and unfailingly kind. If Charlotte had left the silver unpolished, the tablecloth unironed, if she’d forgotten the rolls or the cranberry sauce, they would have made a point not to notice.
Which made it worse somehow. Charlotte wished that her in-laws were less gracious, less lovely. Better a pair of cruel snippers, icy snubbers, implacable adversaries she could never hope to appease. The searchingly earnest way Dooley’s father studied Charlotte, the way his mother would reach out, unprompted, to pat Charlotte’s hand—their pity, at times, was agonizing.
In the living room, the mood was hushed and grim. The television report showed a horse-drawn caisson bearing the president’s casket from the White House to the Capitol. A reporter broke in to confirm that Lee Harvey Oswald, who had been shot earlier that morning, was dead.
Charlotte saw that Joan and Rosemary had snuck back inside to watch the TV.
“Rosemary,” she said. “Joan.”
Rosemary prepared to deliver arguments for the defense. “But, Mommy—”
“But nothing,” Charlotte said. “I told you to go play outside with your cousins.”
The girls had already been exposed to far too many hours of disturbing television news for which they were far too young. They understood that a bad man had killed the president of the United States. They didn’t need to know all the gruesome details.
“But they’re playing fort,” Rosemary said.
“So?” Charlotte said.
“They said we can’t play fort with them because we’re just girls.”
Before Charlotte could answer, Dooley’s brother, Bill, handed Charlotte his empty beer bottle. “I sure could use another one of these, Charlie,” he said.
During grace, her eyes closed and head bowed, Charlotte’s thoughts returned to that eleven-year-old girl knifing her way fearlessly across the river seventeen years ago. The following winter Charlotte’s father—just turned thirty-two, the very picture of ruddy health—had suffered a heart attack and died. His death devastated her. For the first time, Charlotte learned that life’s currents were more treacherous than she’d thought, that she was not as strong a swimmer.
After that … what happened? Charlotte’s mother, a distant and timid woman, grew even more so. She discouraged Charlotte from taking risks, from standing out, from expecting too much. Before too long Charlotte proved quite adept at discouraging herself. She’d enrolled at the University of Oklahoma instead of at one of the smaller colleges closer to home (though her mother discouraged it), but the moment Charlotte stepped foot on campus, she was overwhelmed. She’d just turned seventeen, she’d never been away from Woodrow before, she knew not a soul. In October, only six weeks into the semester, she packed her things and fled back home.
She found a job at the bakery, which is where one afternoon she struck up a conversation with a handsome customer. Dooley was three years older than Charlotte, so she hadn’t known him well in school. But he was friendly, fun, and he didn’t take himself as seriously as the other boys in town. He asked her out, and soon after that they started going together. Soon after that she married him and they moved into a house three blocks from the one she’d grown up in. Soon after that she was pregnant with Joan. Soon after that she was pregnant with Rosemary. Soon after that was right now.
“Mommy,” Rosemary whispered. “It’s your turn.”
“My turn?” Charlotte said.
Her turn. If only life were like that, Charlotte thought, a game where every round you were allowed to spin the wheel again, to pluck a fresh card from the pile. Though who was to say that a new spin or a fresh card would improve your position on the board?
There’s always a bumpier road than the one you’re driving on, Charlotte’s mother had always cautioned her. Be content with what you have, in other words, because the alternative is probably even worse. Her mother shared this philosophy when, for example, Charlotte complained that the math teacher in eighth grade refused to let any of the girls in class ask questions. When her boss at the bakery followed Charlotte into the back room and pressed her up against the wall. When Charlotte began to worry that Dooley, her fiancé at the time, was drinking too much.
“It’s your turn to say what you’re thankful for, Mommy,” Rosemary said.
“Well, let me see,” Charlotte said. “I’m thankful for my two beautiful daughters. I’m thankful for the family that could be with us today. I’m thankful for this wonderful Sunday dinner.”
Dooley carved the roast. The knife in his hand was steady. Each slice of the meat flopped onto the platter perfect and glistening. Whenever his parents came over for dinner, Dooley limited himself to a single beer or glass of wine. Even though his parents knew, everyone knew, that five minutes after the last guest was gone, Dooley would be out the door, too. Claiming that he had to pick up cigarettes or mail a letter or put gas in the car, back in a jiffy.
Early afternoon, the light from the dining-room window stern and wintry and uncompromising. Interesting light. Rosemary reached for the salt,
