The House of Eve (73)
The doorbell pulled her from her thoughts. Eleanor stopped in the hall mirror to double-check that the stomach padding that Rose Pride had made for her was in place. Satisfied, she opened the front door. The bright sun was momentarily blinding, and she blinked her eyes into focus.
“Mrs. Pride, good morning. Mrs. Porter asked me to deliver this to you.” A teen boy wearing a wool cap held two stacked boxes in his arms.
Eleanor waved him in. “You can set them down in the den for me.”
She rummaged through her dress pocket and handed him a dime. “Thank you.”
When she had told Mrs. Porter that her doctor had restricted her travels until the baby was born, she had insisted that Eleanor keep working on small projects.
“You’ll need something to keep your mind fresh,” she told her over the telephone.
In order to keep working for the library and finish her degree at Howard, William had arranged for a messenger to deliver Eleanor’s papers to school and pick up her weekly assignments from her professors. Eleanor didn’t know what she would have done if she’d had to give up her archiving job completely, especially now that William was working twelve to fourteen hours a day at the hospital.
Even though it had only been a few weeks in hiding, the isolation was already getting to her, so when Nadine called an hour after the boxes had been delivered and asked if she could drop by with lunch, Eleanor was so desperate for company that she said yes before she could stop herself.
Fifteen minutes before she was set to arrive, Eleanor took her time relining her midsection with the pads, making sure they were positioned just right. Then she swapped out her simple housedress for one of the new wrap frocks that Rose had ordered from the Lane Bryant catalogue, finishing the look off with a ribbed cardigan. When Nadine arrived, Eleanor purposely answered with a handful of books so she could bypass a full body hug, leaning in for a cheeky kiss instead.
“Ohio, look at you.” Nadine beamed.
“I’m so glad you dropped by.”
Eleanor led her into the dining room just left of the foyer. It was a room they rarely used, but the wood table was big and bulky, and the perfect place to sit without worrying over being touched. A crystal vase of Gerber daisies sat between them. The table had been pre-set with green linen place mats and Eleanor’s bone china dinner plates.
Nadine put down the food. “You didn’t have to go to so much trouble for me. So formal.”
“No trouble. What’s the point of having nice plates if you never use them,” Eleanor kidded.
“Well, how’s it going?” Nadine unpacked a lunch of seafood salad, wilted spinach, cocktail shrimp, a hunk of good-smelling cheese and Ritz crackers.
“It’s okay. I have these killer hemorrhoids that keep coming and going. Makes it hard to sit for long periods of time,” Eleanor said, reciting what she had read of symptoms for six months of pregnancy.
“Well, at least you are keeping your pretty face. The women in my family’s noses spread something awful during pregnancy. You look the same, except for your round middle,” Nadine smiled.
Eleanor forced a smile back, resting her hand lightly on her padded belly. “The heartburn is a killer,” she dropped another fact, “but it’ll all be worth it.”
“Yes, it will.” Nadine popped cheese and a cracker into her mouth. She looked gorgeous as usual. “Have you thought of names?”
“William wants a William the third if it’s a boy. How can I say no to that?” She’d made her voice a bit deeper and chuckled.
“And a girl?”
Eleanor winced. She thought of her stillborn daughter and shook away the image of her tiny little foot. “The verdict is still out.”
“What about Emma or Emily? A daughter should be named after you. I’m Nadine and my mother is Nancy.”
“Both very cute. I’ll add them to the list.” Eleanor forked the seafood salad.
“Don’t forget to rub cocoa butter on your belly morning and night so you don’t have to live the rest of your life with those awful stretch marks.”
“Oh, I’ve been diligent.”
“My mother has them, and she never lets me catch her in her panties and bra because of them. She says I’ve scarred her for life.”
“Oh, but look what she got in return,” Eleanor purred, making Nadine smile.
They settled into their meal, as Nadine filled her in on the campus life she was missing. Eleanor clung to every detail of every party that Nadine described, with a longing she hadn’t anticipated.
“I ran into Greta Hepburn at Club Bali last Friday night.” She waved her fork in the air.
“Has she found a man yet?”
“Not that I know of, but she was going on and on about Theodore Pride’s engagement party in the Big Apple. Bragging about how she was spending Thanksgiving with her favorite family friends, and how much shopping she was going to do.”
Eleanor felt her temples pulse. Greta was going to New York, while Eleanor had to stay home under the pretense of being too sick to travel.
“If she gets on your nerves in New York, just stick out your foot and trip her. Maybe that’ll shut her up.”
Eleanor faked a laugh. “I’ll remember that.”
They made small talk about the girls in their dormitory, who had made which sorority line and who Nadine thought would win homecoming king and queen. Eleanor felt a pang; she was missing out on the festivities of her senior year, but it would be worth it. Their baby would make it so. After they had stuffed their bellies to the gills, Nadine rose from her seat. “I better head out. I’m taking an evening statistics class twice a week to make up for the one I failed last semester.”