The Baker's Wife: A Short Story

By Loretta Giacoletto

Rose Bianco has been working her entire married life in the St. Louis bakery her husband Sal inherited from his parents. Now Bianco's is closing, the entire block destined for the headache ball to accommodate another tacky discount store. If only Rose and Sal could agree on how to spend their retirement years. She wants to travel; he wants to open a mom and pop fishing resort in Missouri's Ozarks.

"We'll call it Sal's Hideaway, a quality retreat for the sports-minded," Sal tells Rose. "I'll be the fishing and hunting guide. You can do the cleaning and cooking. After we get settled, I'll teach you the finer techniques of pie making. You can start a little side business to support those extras you're always wanting."
"Stop it, Sal. You're killing me."
"More like giving you a reason to live. Think second careers for both of us. Ain't we always been good at making a living? Although I sometimes wonder where all the money went."

Surely, there must be a way to work this out. After all, isn't that what marriage is about--the art of compromise?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marelwood Publishing
• Release date: Jul 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781501467394

Loretta Giacoletto

Loretta Giacoletto was named a finalist in the 2015 and 2014 "Soon to be Famous Illinois Author Project" for her sagas, Family Deceptions and Chicago's Headmistress. She divides her time between Southern Illinois and Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks where she writes fiction, essays, and her blog Loretta on Life while her husband cruises the waters for bass and crappie. Their five children have left the once chaotic nest but occasionally return for her to-die-for ravioli and roasted peppers topped with garlic-laden bagna càuda. An avid traveler, she has visited countries in Europe and Asia but Italy remains her favorite, especially the area from where her family originates: the Piedmont region near the Italian Alps. Her novels are filled with bawdy characters caught up in problems they must suffer the consequences for having created. ITALY TO DIE FOR, from her Savino Sisters Mystery Series, shows how too much togetherness can spell disaster for two thirty-something sisters vacationing in Italy. In LETHAL PLAY a grieving widow is suspected of killing her son's coach, a man with more enemies than friends. FAMILY DECEPTIONS follows two generations of earthy characters who learn to thrive and survive through a series of misdeeds, the worst against those they love the most. FREE DANNER features a cynical young man whose troubled past and deadly encounters hinder his search for the father he has yet to meet. THE FAMILY ANGEL is an Italian/American saga about the an immigrant family of bootleggers, coalminers, winemakers and priests, and a mysterious black angel who enjoys sticking his nose in the family business. The previously mentioned CHICAGO'S HEADMISTRESS, a prequel and partial parallel to THE FAMILY ANGEL, follows a 1905 Italian street urchin's notorious rise to wealth and power as the headmistress of Night School, Prohibition Chicago's most popular and innovative men's club in the 1920s. Loretta is also the author of A COLLECTION OF GIVERS AND TAKERS, twisted stories about the good, the bad, the self-centered and disillusioned In addition to the horror anthologies, Damned in Dixie and Hell in the Heartland, Loretta's short stories have appeared in a number of publications including The MacGuffin, Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine, The Scruffy Dog Review, Allegory and Literary Mama, which nominated her story "Tom" for Dzanc's Best of The Web.

Book preview

As an added bonus an excerpt from

The short story

Givers and Takers

Is included at the end of

The Baker’s Wife

Rose and Sal Bianco clash over an early retirement that only one of them is destined to enjoy.

The Baker's Wife:

A Short Story

Rose Bianco sent her afternoon clerk home at five-thirty. Thirty minutes later she locked the door and started balancing the register, just as she had done every workday since joining the bakery as a twenty-one-year-old bride. She’d inherited the front-end duty from Sal’s mother Lena, a sharp-tongued busybody who suffered a fatal stroke before she could mold Rose into her own image.

After turning out the lights, Rose climbed worn stairs to the only home she’d known as Sal’s wife. Besides the bakery duties, she’d also inherited the time-warped fifties apartment Lena once shared with Sal’s father. The old fart had died within a year of his wife; Rose couldn’t imagine from a broken heart. She opened the door to find his successor clad in undershirt and boxer shorts, dozing in his vinyl recliner while Fox News blared from the television. Asleep and prone, he appeared younger than his sixty-two years. Awake and mobile, he wore forty-five years of bakery abuse like a tattered badge of honor.

Some honor, just ask Sal. Flat-footed from unforgiving tiled floors. Rheumy-eyed from the constant irritation of flour dust; stoop-shouldered from bending over fifty-quart mixers and rolling out endless acres of dough. The temperamental back he’d acquired from lifting fifty-pound sacks. Rose searched her husband’s slack face for some remnant of what she once must’ve felt. Finding none, she switched the remote to a home decorating channel.

What the hell! Sal sent his chair into an upright position. I was watching my program.

Rose flipped back to his station. Excuse me, Superman. You were sleeping and watching at the same time?

Is it too much to ask, a little knowledge of current events before I hit the sack? You can have the clicker at eight o’clock, like always.

I still say we should get another TV.

Yeah, yeah, when we move.

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