The fifty-year face-lift

I wrote the novel Breaking Out between 1972 (in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh) and 1975 (in Kingston-upon-Thames, UK). I will change the title. Wendy's marriage is crumbling but hasn't yet crumbled; she lives in Garden City, NY. The extract below has been recently revised.

Green peppers have a lot going for them. Their gloss celebrates vegetable life with a taste to match; better, they may be scalped and gutted as simply as opening  a ring-top beer. Having stuffed the three green crucibles with rice, onions and ground meat, Wendy set them to steam. Then placed a newly mixed shaker of martinis on the top shelf of the refrigerator.

At the station car park wives, plucked and burnished for the evening reunion, sat in station wagons, children smearing the rear windows. Wendy waited placidly, filtering out the tinkle of the car’s radio and passing time recalling characters in Moby Dick, her favourite bore.

The five-forty came and went, winnowing the choked parking lot. The five-fifty-five reduced waiting cars still further. Wendy sat on, passive and blank. Minutes in parcels of two and five were acknowledged and discarded by voices on the radio; outside, hunchbacked sparrows formed huddles before running the ball on third and short yardage. Beyond the six-fifteen Wendy's was the only occupied car remaining, and when the six-forty deposited it's skimpy cargo she started the engine and drove home.