Something Borrowed

Chapter 7

Amelia

Amelia had always felt a certain injustice at the roles her body forced her to fill. As she struggled for a foothold in the city, bent over in steamy rooms cleaning laundry or dishes, she envied the men outside the walls, their backs bare to the sun as they poured their strength and effort into jobs that turned their bodies hard and strong. When she visited her married friends, it baffled her that they seemed so happy, toiling in stuffy kitchens while their husbands got to leave and work for money and then come home and eat meals with nary a 'thank you' or an offer to help with the clean up.

She'd never sought to shrug off the system-- had never approached the foreman at a construction site and asked for a job. She'd never had the time or money to spend wearing trousers for the sake of a point. She just quietly yearned for things to be a bit different. She wanted a job out of doors where she could exercise her whole body. She wanted the prospect of a marriage where she was free to leave in the day and work for her own money, as she had always done. Perhaps where she and her husband could both come home, after a day of hard work, and cook together. Clean together. Care, together, for the children.

In spite of all that, she quickly decided that her favorite room in all of the Tucker family home was, in fact, the kitchen. She preferred it to her own bedroom, to the parlor, and even to Mr. Tucker's study, with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and grandiose mahogany desk.

She liked the kitchen, not for its function, but for its simplicity and for the moments she experienced within its walls. Every other room felt ghostly and vacant. The ceilings were all just a shade too high for the people standing beneath them. The floors were all a few feet too broad for the furniture sprawled across them. The walls didn't hold enough pictures, the decorations were aloof and ostentatious, and the air itself seemed thin and cold, no matter how close she sat to the fire.

Of course she would never say such a thing out loud. Just because she came from humble beginnings didn't mean she lacked class. She kept her feelings to herself, but she quietly preferred the kitchen, with its battered black stove, chipped wooden furniture, and cluttered cabinets. It was in the kitchen that she busied herself throughout the early days of her stay at the Tuckers' ranch, shoulder to shoulder with Melissa as they laughed and talked and worked.

"It must have been amazing growing up here," Amelia noted, looking up from the potatoes on her cutting board to stare out the kitchen window. It overlooked the garden behind the house-- a colorful chaos of flowers and vegetables. Beyond the garden were a few rows of trees Melissa fondly referred to as "The Orchard."

"It was alright," Melissa said with a shrug, not looking up from the knife in her hands as she deftly sliced and carved a freshly-slaughtered chicken. "It was better when I was little."

"Why's that?"

"Oh, you know," she shrugged again, pausing in her work to follow Amelia's gaze out the window. She stared wistfully at the greenery before turning back to her task. "When I was little I spent all my time out there. Josh and I were thick as thieves back then. He was only two years older than me and the second I found my feet I tagged along after him on adventures. My earliest memories are of digging holes and climbing trees. We were a couple of little monsters. Drove our poor parents crazy." She paused and laughed at some rekindled memory. "One time we went out after a rainstorm and wandered back into the house, stark-naked, covered in mud. I remember fascination with the clarity of my footprints on the white rug in the parlor."

She laughed again, and Amelia found it hard to rectify her friend's joyful memory with the strict, stifled cleanliness of the house she stood in. Her parents must have been furious...