Home Chef

She is listening for his footsteps coming down the hall, trying to decide whether to sit up and say hello or tuck under the sheets with her eyes shut tight. Before that she had put the boys to bed. Before that she had bathed them, picked up their strewn-about toy cars, washed the dishes. Before that she had cooked a fantastic meal, one of those mail order kinds that come with almost all the ingredients and the recipe tucked inside, one that both boys had shook their heads to when she had pulled it out of the oven and asked her to fix peanut butter jelly sandwiches instead. When her husband got home tonight, he would peek beneath the plastic lids at the Marsala Fig Pork Chops, at the Garlic Truffle Chicken. He would set the oven to 425, open the freezer, and slice the cellophane off a pepperoni Jack’s.