[hider=Mother's Little Helper][color=dimgray][h3][table][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Title[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup]A politician's aide's wife, known in the parish for her potato salad and her reliability, has done something that would end her marriage, her reputation, and possibly her freedom, and will do whatever it takes to make sure no one finds out.[/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Name[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup]Dolores Nowak[/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Age[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup]30[/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Sex[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup]Female[/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Business[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup]Housewife. Her husband works as an aide to one of the city's most connected politicians, so her days are split between keeping the home in order and showing face at fundraisers, parish functions, and ward picnics.

The other business came through the people she buys from. They figured out whose wife she is and realized she sees and hears plenty worth trading. So she trades it.

It also helps that nobody looks twice at a respectable woman running errands. She can carry things across town that someone else couldn't.[/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Savvy[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup]Dolores can sew, cook, and play piano, same as any girl of her generation. She has a head for numbers, something the household budget has put to good use. Years of hosting political dinners and parish functions means she can keep twenty guests fed, seated, and talking without breaking a sweat. And her memory borders on unnerving: names, faces, conversations from months ago, things people said once and forgot they said.[/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Ruin[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup]Dolores Nowak, who had not been raised to complain, did not complain.

Married at twenty, she had moved into a life that fit the way a good coat fits: correctly, completely, with no particular room to move. The Nowak name meant the parish and the auxiliary and the dinners where her mother-in-law sat at the head and watched, not unkindly, just watched, and Dolores sat where she was put and said what was wanted and kept her mouth closed when a closed mouth was called for, and wore her hair the way that was wanted and over time she got good at it, very good, good enough that people said so, good enough that the compliments started to feel like a life sentence. This is not a thing she said to anyone. In the mornings she made her husband's coffee and in the evenings she made dinner and on the weekends there were obligations and on Sunday nights she set out what she needed for the week ahead and stood in the kitchen after, just stood there, and this was the only moment that was hers and she could not have said what she did with it.

Something got bad in the third year, and worse in the fourth, though she couldn't have named it exactly if asked. She went to Dr. Heany. He asked two or three questions and wrote her a prescription. She filled it, took the pills in the morning; they helped, which was almost worse, and she didn't think about it again. When they stopped helping she went back, he adjusted the dosage, and that helped for a time, and then it didn't. Dolores understood she had reached the end of what he could offer her, thanked him, and drove away.

Someone at an auxiliary meeting had let a name drop. She called the number that week.

Gerry operated out of the dry cleaner's on Clement Street and he was a small polite man who conducted business with the brisk good humor of someone who understood that everyone who came to him arrived embarrassed and that the kindest thing he could do was pretend otherwise. They reached an understanding and that was that.

The errand came three weeks later. An envelope. An address on the north side. A man she'd never seen took the envelope and closed the door, and Dolores walked back to her car in the gray November afternoon and sat with her hands in her lap.

Degraded was what she had expected to feel. Instead she sat in the car and felt, for the first time in longer than she could account for, entirely herself.

Gerry called again. Yes came out before he finished asking. It turned out carrying envelopes was only part of it. An aide's wife hears things. What she heard she remembered, and what she remembered she passed on, and what she passed on was apparently worth something. On the drive home with the heat on and the radio off, she thought about when Gerry would call again.[/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Cred[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup]"Don't know her from Adam. Wife of somebody, I think."

"Dolores? Oh, she's lovely. Very quiet. Always the first to offer a hand."

"A respectable woman with somewhere to be. Nobody stops her, nobody asks questions. Honestly she's more appreciated here than she ever was at home."

"She runs a beautiful home, she really does. I just think... well, Walter would make a wonderful father."

"You ask me, she thinks she's too good for the room. Sanctimonious bitch, always has."[/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][row][cell][right][sup][sup]Ilk[/sup][/sup][/right][/cell][cell][sup]☞[/sup][/cell][cell][sup][sup][i][b]Real Clean, Like My Conscience[/b][/i]

[i][b]Gone Faggot[/b][/i][/sup][/sup][/cell][/row][/table][/h3][/color][/hider]