A Woman's Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked, laying down the magazine. “Turn it on for me, will you?”
    Somehow the evening flew by. When it was time to go upstairs to bed, Ginny was still searching for a way to tell him. She was a grown woman, thirty-three years old, a wife and mother. … Why was this so difficult?
    She lay in bed, listening to the sounds Harold made in the bathroom: turning the tap on and off, brushing his teeth, gargling with Listerine, blowing his nose—sounds that she found either endearing or obnoxious, depending on her mood. She would tell him as soon as he finished his nightly routine. She drew a deep breath, preparing herself, rehearsing the words in her head.
    Harold … I applied for a job at the shipyard today. … Harold, I found two ticket stubs in your pocket today. … Are you having an affair?
    “Virginia?” Harold called from the bathroom. “We’re out of soap.”
    She knew that couldn’t be true. She had just purchased three new bars last week. She didn’t say the words out loud. Harold hated it when she contradicted him. She got out of bed and padded into the bathroom. He was looking in the wrong place—the medicine cabinet above the sink, for goodness’ sake! She reached into the linen closet where she kept the soap and held up a bar without speaking. Harold frowned.
    “Why did you put it way over there?”
    Honestly! That was where she had stored it since they’d moved into this house eight years ago. Again, she didn’t say the words aloud.
    “We can keep it in the medicine chest from now on, if you’d like,” she said. She unwrapped one bar and handed it to him, then put the other two in the cabinet where he’d been looking. The tile floor felt cold beneath her bare feet, so she hurried back to the bedroom and climbed into bed. She drew a deep breath, grateful for the reprieve—but now she really had to talk to him.
    “Harold, I went across town today to—”
    “That reminds me. I have to go downtown to the rationing board tomorrow and complain about the ration book they gave me. I should have been issued an unlimited E card since I drive all over the state for the government. Instead they gave me a B card for commuters.”
    Maybe Virginia should postpone telling him for one more day. Tomorrow. She’d tell him tomorrow. But she was supposed to show up for training at Stockton Shipyard tomorrow.
    “Virginia …” He interrupted her thoughts again. His voice sounded muffled as he called to her from inside their clothes closet. “Virginia, where did you put my blue tie?” Harold, a creature of habit, always laid out his clothes the night before.
    “Isn’t it on the tie rack with all the others?” she called. He stuck his head out of the doorway.
    “If it were on the rack, I wouldn’t have asked you where it was.”
    She threw back the covers and climbed out of bed to help him, worried that she had lapsed in her wifely duties. She found the tie on the closet floor where it had slipped off the rack. Harold grunted his thanks and stood aside as she helped him lay out his clothes. His skin felt warm and a little damp from his bath as she brushed against him. He smelled clean and powdery, the way her children had when they were babies. How she missed those days when she could inhale their soft skin without them squirming away. She reached to caress Harold’s arm and wished he’d do something totally uncharacteristic like sweep her into his embrace and kiss her the way the hero always kissed the heroine at the end of a movie. But Harold did no such thing.
    Virginia climbed back into bed for the third time. Her feet felt like two blocks of ice, and she buried herself beneath the blankets, pulling them up to her chin. She watched her husband putter around. He was still a fine-looking man at thirty-six, in spite of too many frown lines. His hair was still dark brown and thick, his body trim and muscular. She loved the dark evening shadow that colored his chin and the way it prickled when he held her