But you didn’t come to hear about my day, did you, Miss? Well, maybe you’ll want to write this down.

Pat was becoming another man. The change began with his stomach. He was hungry, but he couldn’t tell me what for. His words left him when he sat down at our table. Pat would survey what was on his plate and then pick up his knife and fork, as if they were too heavy in his hands.

Each meal that he ate in this way was a stab in my side.

I asked Charlotte if she knew of other ways of preparing beef.

“Yes. Add some pork to it,” she teased, and then she called her gal Lucy out of the kitchen—Lucy was from the state of Indiana—to see if they prepared beef any differently there. They didn’t.

When Pat found his words again, I wished that he hadn’t.

It wasn’t the beef that displeased him. It was the onions. He complained that I didn’t use enough of them in my cooking. Then it was the lard. He said that I used too much of it, and all he could taste was the animal and not the summer squash, the lima beans, or the turnip greens. Then it was the wine. When Pat said “wine,” he meant grape and not blackberry or strawberry wine. He claimed that the people of France used it in their cooking and that it made their dishes romantic. No, he said it made their dishes aromatic.

I’d no idea where to buy grape wine, and I told Pat so. He looked at me as if he were seeing right through me. Later that afternoon, a delivery boy came to the house with a bottle, and I stared at it, an oyster that I didn’t know how to shuck. I brought the bottle over to Charlotte, and she said that Mr. Cleneay would open it for me when he got home that evening or if I couldn’t wait, then I would have to go see him at his shop. I went over to Cleneay Brothers, and Mr. Cleneay broke the wax seal and slid the thin edge of a small carving knife around the stopper, jiggling it up and out.

“Are you planning to drink this entire bottle of claret on your own, Alethea?” the butcher asked with a wink.

“I’m going to cook with it, Mr. Cleneay,” I replied.

“You don’t have to be so formal around me, Alethea,” the butcher said.

“I believe I do, Mr. Cleneay. Your wife would think so too.”

“You know her better than I do, Alethea,” the butcher said.

“Mr. Cleneay?”

“Yes, Alethea.”

“What am I to do with this grape wine?”

“You said that you’re going to cook with it, Alethea.”

“I don’t know how,” I confessed. I hadn’t intended to, but the way that he kept on saying my name made me feel as if I could.

“This is a strong red wine, Alethea. You’ll have to get a cut of beef,” the butcher advised.