***FEATURED ON @HISTORICALFICTION'S READING LIST 'WORLD WARS & REVOLUTIONS'***
For the duration of the Second World War, newlyweds June and Harvey Dougherty played their respective parts. June got a job and raised the couple's twins to the best of h...
D E D I C A T I O N For all those who stuck it out even when the clouds seemed too thick.
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JUNE OVER BOILED the potatoes.
She didn't need the wisdom of an ace to figure it out: inflated to an abnormal size, the naked potatoes left little space on the porcelain plate June had set out specifically for them.
Turning away from the swollen vegetables, June grasped hold of the recipe card Beverly had loaned her. Scribbled between brown and yellow-hued fingerprints was the recommended boil time.
15 minutes.
Glancing up at the Smith's wall clock left of the kitchen cabinets, the big hand's position enticed June to let a string of profanities escape from her lips. She had boiled the potatoes twenty minutes more than required, a mistake only an unseasoned cook like herself would make.
In her defense, the meatloaf—a dish June had prepared plenty of times even as the need to ration diminished—turned out much better. Perhaps it was the notion that her guest would favor his carnivorous urges over his taste for mashed potatoes that compelled June to reserve more time for the loaf.
Nonetheless, she had to somehow fix her potato mess that held the power to taint her entire dinner menu. Locating a fork, she stabbed the nearest potato only for salt water to pour from its puncture wound. Biting her tongue, she inched her fork in further until the potato was nearly in half. She continued this process with each one until the large potatoes were a much more favorable size.
She moved the potatoes to a larger bowl where she was able to beat them until they were a heap of steaming mush. Fortunately, the butter and milk concoction June had heated in a saucepan did not suffer an unfavorable fate like the potatoes did, so she was able to dump the sauce over the beaten potatoes. She mixed the two with a spoon, and upon realizing that her mashed potatoes were waterier than Beverly's disaster of a peach layer cake at Christmas last year, located her bag of flour and dumped some on top to thicken it.
By the time she was finished stirring and thickening, the mashed potatoes did not look half bad. She dipped her pointer finger in the bowl and brought it to her expectant mouth.
More pepper.
As she grabbed the pepper shaker and watched flakes of black fall onto white, a small voice tore her away from the mashed potatoes.
"Momma."
She abruptly set down the shaker and turned on her heel to face the young child whose height barely reached her knee tops.
"I'm hungry," Ronald said with a hand raised to his eyes that still harbored remnants of sleepiness. June closed the gap between her and her son, her brown Oxfords clicking against the linoleum floor.
"Late afternoon naps can do that to you," June responded as she knelt down to meet her son's eye level. "Our guest should be arriving shortly, so we'll have dinner soon."
