Yesteryear
Caro Claire Burke
“Not an hour later, hail pounds the roof like machine-gun fire. It’s late afternoon, but the sky is so dark it looks like the dead of night. Mary is cutting up chunks of bread and slathering them with butter. That will be our dinner tonight.” p. 208
“Inside the grocery store, I moved quickly, grabbing two balls of twine and then adding a few more necessities to the cart. Brussels sprouts, green juice, active yeast. As I was checking out, the woman behind me tapped my shoulder.” p. 252
“One night, I was standing in the kitchen, swaying back and forth to keep Clementine asleep in the carrier, watching Amelia drown some stalks of broccolini in olive oil, when she set down the bottle and said, ‘You look tired,’” p. 144
“Clementine was standing by the baking dish now, quietly eating a roasted carrot. I crossed the room toward my husband and wrapped my arms around him. Our first hug in years. Then I began to cry.” p. 257
“If it were possible for a biscuit to look cheerful, then this one does.
It's slick with butter, warm in my fingers. I take a small bite, chewing slowly. Oh. It's delicious. The butter is as fresh as anything I've ever made, and the biscuit is perfect in texture. Soft and fluffy and just a bit crumbly. For a moment, I stop thinking altogether. I take another bite, then another, and suddenly the biscuit is gone and I'm reaching eagerly for another.” p.85
“I watched the husbands get out of pickup trucks and SUVs and small sleek sedans. I glanced into kitchen windows to see wives in purple and blue and pink aprons pulling roast chickens out of the oven, setting the trays down, and calling over their shoulders for their children to come down for dinner.” p. 111
“At that moment, Maeve walks through the door, carrying a full pail of water to us, sloshing a little on the floor in the process. ‘Thank you, Maevie,’ Mary says. She takes the pail and sets it on the counter. Begins to wash the mushrooms.” p. 222
“On the table before me is a single steaming crock of watery-looking soup with some vegetables and chunks of white flaky fish bobbing along the surface, and a small plate of biscuits. The meal looks, frankly, like shit.” p. 84
“The pseudo-erotic fantasy of us baking my signature lemon zest cake together, our children playing peaceably together in the background.” p. 22
“If there were two kinds of Christian housewives, then my mother was the first kind—the kind who spends her whole life pursuing a work ethic so breathtakingly valiant in its refusal to account for basic necessities like sleep that mere secular mortals could only shake their heads and mutter some needlepoint idiom about these women finding hidden hours of the day—and Amelia was the second kind, the kind who floated through the dreary tapestry of domesticity via a steady cocktail of Chardonnay, painkillers, and practiced ambivalence.” p. 144
“Was it more important to the Lord that I abstain from alcohol, or get along with strangers? I took a sip. It was surprisingly sweet, less like juice and more like syrup, not unlike the fake wine they offered out at church service each Sunday.” p. 53
