“You need anything, you call me out at the plant. I’ll probably be in the yard working with the dagos and coon-asses, but I’ll get back to you.” He smiled, showing a rack of straight teeth.

Colette watched her reflection in a glossy strip of wood grain on the dash. She knew he’d get back to her.

*   *   *

The next month, the divorce was finalized, and when she held the papers in her hand, she didn’t feel anything, and this worried her. She yearned for the clean break, a feeling like cool air and sunshine as she walked down the street. She felt nothing of the sort. She was unemployed, with a senile father to tend. Had she been employed and fatherless, she would have to deal with pests at work and loneliness at home. She saw that freedom was a thin fantasy touted by TV commercials: freedom from sleeplessness, freedom from wetness. On the way home from city hall, she passed the church and remembered that she was Catholic and couldn’t remarry. This prohibition gave her a cynical joy, an excuse not to get tied down to another man.

Every day when her father’s mind was clear enough for her to leave him for a few hours, she’d put on a loose dress and go to the neighboring towns; there were two poor, stagnant hamlets that could offer her no work at all. She’d given up on Tiger Island after one day. Her old bank job had been cut, and her supervisor suggested glibly that she might go back out west. A man in the hardware who knew her looked at the floor and said her that the Holiday Inn needed a maid. She tried to get on as a bookkeeper at one of the local grocery stores, but the grocers were employing their daughters and cousins. In early August Colette got out a notebook, went over her finances, and saw that she would have to budget to get prenatal care. She had a nest egg from California, her Caprice, and her father had a pitiful retirement from his years as a principal. His Chrysler had gone to glory in a cloud of blue smoke a month before Vera died. Her mother had left behind almost nothing other than her burial policy. Within two weeks, Colette began to feel the pinch. She had to order maternity clothes from a catalog. In the market, she began choosing cheaper cuts of meat. The first time she put a T-bone back in the cooler, the pain was physical. Her hand ached and shook.