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patted the table in front of her instead, keeping time. “‘It was there I knew, that you loved me true…’”
    They all three sang the rest of the song, more or less lustily, and after the last line, Ralph, with a rare burst of his former spark, grinned mischievously as he used to do and added under his breath, “Without a shirt.”
    Nora laughed.
    But Ralph turned back to the shopping list. “Don’t need butter, do we?” he asked.
    “I’m afraid we do,” Nora told him. “We’ve only got a quarter of a pound left.”
    “Let me see.”
    “Father!”
    “Daughter! Let me see.”
    Sighing, Nora went outside to the back stoop against whose far edge the rain was splashing down off the roof and making puddles in front of the adjacent woodshed; she took the butter out of the ice box.
    Ralph eyed it suspiciously when she handed it to him. “You didn’t take some out of the package, did you, to fool me?”
    “No, Father, of course not.”
    “All right. But we don’t need so much meat. You have three things down here. Hamburger. Chicken. Lamb. We don’t need all that. We’re not made of money, you know.”
    “Mrs. Brice told me there are sales this week,” Nora said evenly. “I thought we should take advantage of them.”
    “A sale is never an excuse to buy what you don’t need. Meat doesn’t keep that long. You know that.”
    Nora sat down at the table again. “Father, Mrs. Brice has offered to let me use part of her freezer. That way I can take advantage of sales and freeze meat to use later. It’ll save money in the long run. I could even freeze vegetables from the garden.”
    “What’s wrong with canning? Your mother canned for years. Louise Brice is an interfering old bitch.”
    Nora swallowed her temper with difficulty. “Freezing’s quicker and the food tastes better,” she said quietly.
    “Ha! And Mrs. Brice will want some of what you freeze to pay for the use of the freezer.”
    “No, she won’t, Father. She even said she wouldn’t.”
    “Nothing’s free in this life, Nora. You’re old enough to know that. She’ll want something.”
    “The more food that’s in a freezer, she says, the better it works. It uses less electricity because it stays colder. So we’d be doing her a favor.”
    “No. I won’t be beholden to anyone. It’s bad enough she has to take you to the store and to church.”
    “If you’d let me drive,” Nora retorted, noticing that Corinne’s eyes and head were swaying from one of them to the other, “she wouldn’t have to.”
    “Driving’s not for women,” Ralph said illogically.
    “Plenty of women drive. Patty Monahan drives and she’s only eighteen, still just a girl. In fact, I’m probably the only woman my age who doesn’t.”
    A moan from Corinne stopped both of them. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Don’t.”
    Nora got up and hugged her. “I’m sorry, Mama. We both are. Aren’t we, Father?” She glared at him.
    He grunted, then said, “Just because that woman who was here yesterday about the tire—just because she drives doesn’t mean you have to. Look what happened to her anyway.”
    Nora laughed, hard. She knew she was on the edge of losing control, but she let the laugh go anyway. “Men have flat tires, too, Father.”
    “Men don’t let tires get to that point.”
    “I imagine any tire can go flat if you run over something. A nail, glass…”
    “Men have the right things in their cars.”
    “She had a rented car.”
    “What do you care, Nora? She’s nothing to you. Is she?”
    “Of course not,” Nora said. “I never saw her before in my life, and I’ll probably never see her again.”
    “Did she return the jack?”
    Nora stared at him. “No.” To her surprise, she felt a smile spread over her face. “No, as a matter of fact, I told her not to hurry to return it.”
    “Hah! Probably three states away from here by now. We’ll kiss that jack goodbye.” He wagged his finger at her. “It doesn’t pay to lend things.