Ted would want lunch any minute, and there she was up to her elbows in soap suds and dirty plates. A real woman would have timed this better, she thought. At least the water was in the sink, and she could add the lunch dishes in after Ted had eaten. She had a specific order that she did the dishes in, learned six billion years ago in a home economics class when they still taught things like how to vacuum in a house with wall-to-wall carpeting, how to sew an invisible hem, what constituted a well-balanced breakfast, and what order to wash your dishes in: glasses, porcelain, plastic, flatware/silverware, with pots and pans pulling up the end. If the dishes were done when Ted ate, then she could start over again, with his glass, plate, etc. If he finished before she was done, then the order would be skewered—maybe the plate mixed in with the flatware, or the fork being stuck with the pots—it would never do. (Would it?) For a moment the conundrum seized her, and she thought once and for all she would be discovered to be the fraud she was.
