Kitteridge was a big woman; she spoke almost over Cindy’s head.
“Around the corner here, I think,” said Cindy, and she saw with some relief that the couple who had been standing near the soup had left. Cindy put two cans of tomato soup into her cart, and Mrs. Kitteridge walked with her to the checkout. Cindy paid for her items, put them in the reusable cloth bag she had brought with her, and then she felt compelled to wait for Mrs. Kitteridge, who said, “One second there, Cindy, and I’ll walk you to the car.”
Together they left the place, and in the huge glass doors that slid open—right before they opened—Cindy caught her own image, and she could not believe it. The wool cap on her head did not cover its baldness, and her eyes were sunken so far in she felt the prick of awe. “I don’t think I’ll be coming here again,” she said to Mrs. Kitteridge as she walked to her car. “I only came because Tom wanted me to.”
“Ay-yuh,” said Mrs. Kitteridge; the bag she carried banged against her side.
Around them a sudden gust of wind sent a few twigs swirling, and a muddy plastic bag that had been run over a number of times rose slightly, then dropped back to the ground among slushy car tracks from the old snow. Cindy opened the door to her car, got in, and realized Mrs. Kitteridge was waiting. “I’m okay now. Goodbye, Mrs. Kitteridge.”
The woman nodded, and Cindy did not turn to look at her once she pulled her car out.
The drive seemed interminable, though it was less than a mile, and because it was a Saturday afternoon, it seemed to Cindy that there was more traffic than usual. When she got home she left the car in the driveway, though the door to the garage was open. The Christmas wreath was still on the front door, and she wished Tom would take it down. She must have told him a hundred times that now it was well into February, the Christmas wreath should come down. Cindy put the groceries onto the counter in their cloth bag. “Hi, honey,” she called to her husband, and Tom came into the kitchen and said, “Hey, Cindy— See? You did it.” He took the butter and the soup and the milk from the bag and said, “Want to watch some TV?” She shook her head and moved past him up the stairs. Too late she remembered about the Christmas wreath; she would remind him later.
* * *
Twenty years ago they had built this house. To Cindy it had seemed huge. She had been embarrassed by it as she watched the construction, the basement poured, the two-by-fours going up; she and Tom had seemed too young for such a large house. Cindy had grown up right outside of Crosby, in a house that had been very small; they had had almost no money, she and her mother and her two sisters. Her father had left the family years earlier, and Cindy’s mother worked night shifts at the hospital as a nurse’s aide; it had not been easy. But Cindy had been lucky; she had gone to the university, paying her way and borrowing money. And there she had met her husband, who went on to work in the accounting office at the ironworks where he had been ever since. Only later did Cindy realize that this house they had built was a regular-size house, with three bedrooms upstairs and a living room and dining room and kitchen downstairs. A few years later they built the garage, attached to the house, and instead of that making the place look bigger, somehow it caused the house to seem smaller. A perfect-size house; for years she had thought that. But as the boys reached adolescence, she started to think that the house looked ordinary, and she asked Tom if it could be painted a robin’s-egg blue. The boys had objected; she let it go, and the house had remained white all these years.
Cindy lay down on the bed and looked through the window at the tops of the trees, the limbs bare, and yet there was that funny little soft sun that sneaks around on a cloud-filled afternoon in February—what was it? The bare branches seemed to reach out, reach out, the opposite of shrinking.
* * *
—
When she saw Tom standing in the doorway of the bedroom, his face open, looking to please,