She sat at the kitchen table, trying to think where she might find the fifteen cents she needed to get a loaf of bread to go with dinner. It was Friday. The machine shop her husband worked in paid their workers on Fridays. He would come home with money, but the bakery around the corner would be closed by then. She had made a hardy escarole and bean soup for dinner, a good choice for Catholics on a Friday. 

She knew when they sat down for dinner, her husband would say, “What no bread? How am I supposed to eat this without bread? Her two boys would complain too.

It wouldn’t occur to her husband that she didn’t have a fresh loaf of Italian bread on the table because she didn’t have the money to pay for it. She would say, “I guess I forgot.” Her husband would be churlish about it, but she preferred that to embarrassing him in front of the boys by telling the truth. “I was broke.” No, that wouldn’t help matters at all.

She had already dug her hands between the sofa cushions in the living room. Nothing there, and nothing underneath or behind the sofa either. Most of the families on the block were doing better than hers. The men had union jobs or worked as electricians, or plumbers. Her husband wasn’t so lucky. He worked hard, sometimes working extra shifts to help make ends meet. He was a good man, wonderful with his children. But he was also a man who was disappointed by life, as if he was just smart enough to know he wasn’t as smart or ambitious as other men. Some nights, after a couple of beers he would say, “Who’s kidding who? Where am I going? Nowhere, that’s where I’m going.”

The woman walked over to the stove and stirred the soup. She added a little salt. She had managed to put together a little surprise for the boys. She made chocolate pudding earlier that afternoon with what was left of the milk. She walked into her bedroom and looked under the bed. Then, on a whim, she decided to take one more look in her dresser’s bottom drawer. She was about to close it when she saw a tiny old change purse she had put away after getting a new one last Christmas. Her heart raced as she opened it, hoping she would find a nickel and a dime or even two dimes so she could pay for a larger loaf.

What she found instead were pennies. She counted them, hoping she had enough. When she finished counting she wiped tears from her eyes. She went to the back door and called the older boy, who was playing with other boys in the yard. She called him into the apartment. She said, “I need you to go to the store for me. Take these fifteen pennies and go to Paduana’s and get a loaf of bread. Don’t lose them, please.”

The boy looked at his mother. He was about to say he would be embarrassed to hand Mr. Paduana all those pennies. His mother saw that and her heart ached. She would go to the store herself, but she would be mortified to hand the man fifteen pennies in exchange for the bread. She was asking her son to do it for her. That he realized it, somehow made it worse. “I’m sorry, it’s all I have. Please don’t say anything to your father.”

The boy understood. He took the money. Rather than stuff it in his pocket, he squeezed the coins in his fist, lest he lose one. 

He kissed his mother’s cheek and ran out the back door. When he got to the bakery, Mr. Paduana was standing behind the counter. The baking was done for the day, but the intoxicating smell of fresh bread was still in the air. There were only a few loaves left. “Can I have a fifteen-cent loaf?” he asked.

"I’m out. All I got left is the twenty-cent loaf, kid.”

The boy opened his hand and put the pennies one at a time on the counter, praying his mother counted wrong. Irritated, Mr. Paduana, let out a sigh. “I only got fifteen cents,” the boy said.

“I can see that,” Mr. Paduana said. He turned and grabbed a loaf and stuck it in a brown paper bag. “Your old man owes me a nickel.” 

The old man was in a good mood that night. The boy didn’t ruin it by mentioning what Paduana the baker said. The escarole and beans with Italian bread were delicious.