The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard by Erin McGraw

ahead." By then I had given his mother twenty dollars of my earnings and kept thirty-eight. If she guessed at my private fund, she hadn't given me a clue.
    "Don't know that Grant Station can afford you doing this."
    "I'd say Grant Station is affording me just fine. Us."
    "Zeke Closter says you're ruining his life. When he needed a new harness, he went to the coffee jar where they keep household money. Fifty cents in there. 'Where's the paper money?' he asked Minnie. 'In Nell Plat's purse,' she said."
    "A first-rate wool dress, with a tippet. It's an old-fashioned style, but it suits her."
    "A harness costs fifteen dollars."
    "I can't be responsible for whatever all Minnie Closter might be spending on. I made her a wool dress. Five dollars, less the cloth. If Minnie's spending more, then Zeke had ought to ask her about that." My voice was calm, and my stitches so tiny I could feel them better than see them. Focusing on the nearly invisible seam kept me from meeting Jack's eyes, his look balanced between sadness and anger. Minnie had not seen fit to tell Zeke about the other clothes she had ordered along with the wool dress: two blouses, three serge skirts, plus a set of handkerchiefs. Fifteen dollars for all of that was a bargain, as she told me when she pressed the bills into my hand. A professional now, I smiled in response.
    "How would Zeke know what to ask?" Jack said. "When something comes along you never foresaw, how can you know to ask about it?"
    "You don't." Running along the chalk line, my infinitesimal stitches would follow the rise of a bust, allowing just enough room for a caught breath. "You trust your spouse. I would expect you to tell me anything I needed to know."
    "You didn't tell me any too soon about the new baby."
    "It's bad luck to talk too soon about a baby."
    "Luck," he said.
    "What else can you call it?" I said.
    "Plenty." He cleared his throat. "No one asked you to start seamstressing."
    "Mrs. Cooper did. And then Mrs. Trimbull."
    "No one in this house," he said. The air in the room was tightening like a gear, notch by notch. "How do you think it looks, Nell? I come in for dinner, and my mother is hauling water, feeding the stove, dishing up the same meal she just cooked. Where is Nell? Nell is sewing."
    "Nell is giving your mother money, every week."
    "It isn't enough."
    "It's more than anybody else gets," I said. If Jack would just leave an opening in the conversation, I would be happy to remind him: Mabel Ornett, who never got out of bed. Tillie Hansen, who heard voices. Rose Pruitt! After the first child was born, she gave their cow to a tinker. After the second, her husband, Virgil, came home to find the wagon gone. There had been no more children, and people joked that Virgil was afeard of what she would give away next. It would be my pleasure to remind Jack of this.
    He said, "It must be nice to have your life. Everything just the way you want it."
    "Not everything." The look that passed between us could have corroded metal, but he did not say "You may not" or "I forbid." Extra household money was not harming his progress toward a gasoline tractor. He did not lift his hand, but when he left the room I realized I had been crushing the edge of the bodice in my fist. I had to flatiron it in the morning.
    That Saturday, when we came wordlessly home from town, I gave his mother ten dollars, half of what I had brought home. I could not keep myself from staring at her hands as she took the bills, smoothed them, and tucked them into her pocket. Handing her the money was the hardest thing I had done all day. "Business is picking up," she said.
    "Thank Paris. Your fashionable lady of today is looking toward the new, larger sleeves."
    "Mutton sleeves."
    "Leg of mutton," I corrected her, though I knew I would do better to hold my tongue. "The style would suit you."
    "Mutton dressed as lamb," she said, not quite contradicting me. My first sewing task for the week would be an opulent blouse for my