Well Behaved Wives(29)
“I promise,” Irene said.
Harriet snorted. “Sure. What’s the big secret? How important can it be?”
Ruth had to defend herself. “I’m a lawyer,” she snapped. “I graduated from Columbia Law School in New York. I was one of seventeen girls with two hundred forty men.”
Irene’s mouth hung open. Even Harriet had been stunned silent.
“I still have to pass the bar exam. I have to find four hundred hours to study.” She couldn’t believe she had to explain it all. At Columbia they got her. They were even proud of her.
“And then?” Harriet asked.
“She has a law degree. That’s quite an accomplishment,” Irene said.
“Your husband let you do this?”
“It’s not a matter of anyone letting you, is it, Ruth?” Irene asked with a smile. “We all want different things, Harriet.”
“I’m guessing you’ve always wanted to be a wife and mother,” Ruth said.
Harriet nodded.
“I’ve wanted to be a lawyer since sophomore year.” But she wasn’t one, was she? She had to pass the bar. She couldn’t give up. She wouldn’t give up.
Harriet shrugged as if she couldn’t be bothered to understand.
“I think you’d be good at whatever you set your mind to,” Irene said, watching Heidi.
The compliment might have been maternalistic, as if a pat answer for one of her children. Still, Ruth held on to the kind words and tucked them inside. Then she gathered the napkins, stored the silverware, and stacked the empty bowls, as if her actions would help to pad Irene’s kindness and keep it safe.
“My cousin married a mean drunk who hit her and threatened her,” Irene said. “Nobody helped her. I bet she could’ve used a lady lawyer.”
Harriet widened her eyes. “That doesn’t happen in Wynnefield.”
“Is your cousin okay?” Ruth asked, as she pictured the women she knew in New York. She hoped Irene’s cousin hadn’t experienced the same fate, but she didn’t ask for details. Maybe after she passed the bar, she would investigate more.
“Her brothers ran him off, threatened to knock him off if he ever came back. No one’s seen hide nor hair of him in sixteen years. Personally, I think he’s at the bottom of the Schuylkill River.”
“You’re not serious,” Harriet said.
“I’ll never tell,” Irene said, a gleam in her eye.
“What if it wasn’t true?” Harriet sneered.
“Why would someone lie?” Ruth asked.
“You tell me—apparently you’re the expert,” Harriet said.
Ruth turned away. It had been risky revealing her graduate degree in front of Harriet, but she had tired of life’s charades since coming to Wynnefield. “Not an expert. Just educated in that field.” She wouldn’t mention the work she’d done for the MWLAS, and the abused women she’d met there. Better to downplay things for now. She had shocked the girls enough for one day. She didn’t feel like making any more excuses for her life.
She and Harriet loaded the picnic supplies into the car while Irene walked to the sand pit and scooped up Heidi.
How much could Ruth trust these women? Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut about law school and the bar exam. What if Harriet blurted out about the bar exam to Shirley the next time they were all at Lillian’s? Ruth wanted to be the one to tell Shirley. She didn’t want to make a choice between Asher and her career. Getting a law degree was a lot more complicated for a dutiful wife than a standard bachelor’s that your husband could mention in social circles as one of your many accomplishments. If Shirley found out, she’d want to know more. She would be concerned about Ruth’s plan of taking the bar. After all, no one took the bar if they didn’t plan to practice law. What a can of worms that would open if her in-laws heard about it before she and Asher told them! The elopement was hurtful enough. She didn’t want Shirley to feel left out of another big decision in her life.
“Harriet,” Ruth said in a sweet, but not patronizing, tone. “I know you don’t agree with me about law school, but my in-laws don’t know about my graduate degree yet, so please don’t say anything. My mother-in-law is so old-fashioned.”
“So much for not needing permission.”
Ruth bristled. Harriet had a point, but her situation was only temporary. To keep the peace in the family.
Like a good lawyer, Ruth would not allow herself to be goaded into verbal sparring by the likes of Harriet. “We’re just waiting a little longer to tell them. Until I settle in.”
“Whatever you say. I don’t stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong.”
Ruth banked on that being the truth.
Chapter 12
LILLIAN
Monday morning, after Lillian had given Peter two reminders and one complaint, he left her the car and called a taxi to drive him to the office.
She backed the car out of the driveway. Etiquette lesson two had always been her favorite and, even with bobbing doubts, she didn’t want to be late. Today they would be shopping at Saks, and she’d be helping the girls choose new outfits to fit their bodies and this lifestyle, helping them see themselves as sophisticated, even grown up.
That had seemed like a worthy cause in the past. Yet Lillian had started to redefine “worthy cause.” Her focus had changed from how the girls looked or behaved, to how they felt.