Well Behaved Wives(22)
When she saw him again, he had grown from a scrawny boy into a handsome senior at Penn. Thoughts of Peter replaced thoughts of polio and politics. Dreams of a lush life with a handsome husband eclipsed those of a meaningful life.
Not that she was a bad person now, Lillian rationalized. She’d just been diverted from her ideals. Anyway, they’d found a vaccine, and she’d made sure her girls had gotten it. In a small way, Lillian had contributed. Now her efforts were focused closer to home.
The closest she’d gotten to doing anything useful in years was stuffing envelopes for birthday party invitations. And teaching young wives to be better wives.
It didn’t have to stay that way. Did she have the chutzpah to tell Peter she was yearning for something more? That she might have found it in her musings this afternoon? Not in giving etiquette lessons, but in turning the Diamond Girls’ efforts to something more worthwhile? Perhaps she could rekindle her own ideals in them.
What magnitude of work could the Diamond Girls do if Lillian taught them social responsibility along with manners? Yes, this was a noble thing to do. They could come up with a common purpose that would put their talents to real use.
Besides, who was stopping her?
The savory aroma of pot roast filled the kitchen. Cooking had always eluded Lillian, likely because her grandmother had coddled her by keeping her out of the kitchen. Her grandparents’ aim was to ensure that she would marry a man rich enough to hire a cook. Yet Lillian excelled at identifying ingredients and spices by nose and taste. As Lillian closed her eyes and Sunny’s chicken soup burned her tongue, she could name every ingredient that flavored the fowl: sweet onions, earthy carrot, spicy garlic, herbaceous parsley and dill, and a squeeze of lemon—her grandmother’s secret ingredient, now Sunny’s too.
Lillian hadn’t known it at the time, but this parlor trick—identifying the ingredients without the knowledge of how to cook the dish—would become a metaphor for her life. To sample instead of to savor. To decorate rather than create.
She shone when it came to reheating and presenting meals, displaying them beautifully atop lettuce leaves and lavishly garnished with gherkins, radish roses, carrot swirls, and olives speared with ruffled toothpicks. No one noticed that Lillian’s meals had been cooked by someone else.
The young wives she’d hosted would doubtless be home preparing their own creative and romantic dinners, fawning over husbands, paying themselves no mind. They were lovely girls, and they would soon have perfect manners. Lillian thought about her daughters and realized with a shock that those were not the lives she wanted her daughters to emulate.
No. And she still had time to change things for them.
Lillian envied the Diamond Girls in a way. They brimmed with hope, love, na?veté. Reality had yet to set in. Even the older one, Irene, had a fresh and capricious essence uncommon in the other twenty-eight-year-olds Lillian knew. Irene would be the eager beaver of the group. There was always one who pulled more than their weight. Though with four children—four!—there likely wouldn’t be many elegant dinners in that house.
Carrie was the quiet one. Fresh-faced. The sweet peacekeeper. A bit of a loner with much to learn. Lillian always had to watch the quiet ones. Those were the girls most likely to surprise her with their under-the-breath swearing or inappropriate familiarity with the racy section of Saks Fifth Avenue’s lingerie department.
Friendship was the secret bonus of these lessons—and truly the best part, though Lillian never advertised that. Husbands wouldn’t authorize their wives’ participation if they didn’t see a visible benefit to the family. At least, Peter wouldn’t have. But if friendships were a side effect of learning how to be a better wife, so much the better.
She considered Ruth. The girl was unsettling, somehow. Her college education still so fresh.
Her own college friends had fallen away when Lillian married Peter. Her grandparents were delighted. After all, they’d agreed to her going to college primarily so that she would get an M.R.S.—a Mrs. in front of her name. That hadn’t been Lillian’s goal initially—she’d wanted to get away from home, to mix with other young people and study. She had hoped to find some kind of vocation.
That vocation had morphed into her becoming an ideal wife, one whose suburban friends would watch a toddler while she napped, or while she organized and alphabetized bookshelves and spice racks. They would offer honest criticism about the shape of her behind in a particular outfit too, if she asked, though she had never needed to worry about that. She kept herself trim for Peter.
She had thought, when she became engaged, that being a wife and, later, mother would be enough to make her happy.
She understood the value of female camaraderie but, with the exception of Shirley’s friendship, Lillian considered herself a collector of acquaintances.
Lillian had never been trained to perform kitchen chores and found them tiresome—one of the many ways she differed from the mother she remembered. So she cut the radish roses and carrot swirls she’d seen in the Ladies’ Home Journal with care as she considered Harriet—apparently the most natural housewife Lillian had met. Ready to devote her time and energy to her future home life and husband’s career before she even said “I do.” Harriet would learn soon enough that being a perfect wife wasn’t as easy as it looked.
Maybe Lillian should tell her to get out while she could.