Well Behaved Wives(35)
The petite blonde accessories clerk stepped aside, and Maryanne slipped behind the counter as smoothly as if she’d donned custom-made shoes. Maryanne seemed to breathe more slowly, her tight smile relaxed, as she returned to her element.
It had not occurred to Lillian that the job of helping the girls find clothes might be arduous. Was that how Maryanne felt when helping Lillian? Did Maryanne sigh with relief when Lillian left the store? The last thing she wanted was to be like one of her mom’s fussy customers.
She stared, trying to read Maryanne’s temperament, to extract her thoughts, but the clerk whizzed around, and all Lillian saw was the back of her head. Lillian had never meant to cause angst, but truth be told, she had never gone out of her way to set Maryanne at ease.
Lillian leaned across the counter. “Can I help?” she asked.
Maryanne opened her eyes wide and shook her head, without stopping what she was doing. She pulled out boxes of folded scarves, opened them, and fanned the selections like playing cards. She plucked a few from each box and laid them side by side on the counter.
Lillian never tired of seeing silk, that beautiful fabric produced by lowly moths, then nurtured and cajoled into becoming a delicate adornment for humans. Soft. Sensuous. A symbol of luxury and culture. She could relate to its path. “They’re all lovely,” she said.
“They are.” Maryanne pursed her lips and twisted her mouth to the side.
“What’s wrong?”
“Mrs. Diamond, forgive me for overstepping, but in all the years we’ve been doing this, I’ve never known you to yield so quickly. You know as well as I do Mrs. Blum doesn’t need a scarf—we chose that dress for the neckline.”
They had. Lillian stretched her back, deciding how best to put this. “How long have we known each other, Maryanne?”
“Four years. You were one of my first customers.”
“And I trusted you, even though you were new.”
“I had a decade of fashion experience.”
“And Carrie Blum has two decades of experience in her own body, so if she wants to wear a scarf, we bring her a scarf. She’s not intending to buy today, so her faux pas won’t reflect on you.” Lillian hadn’t meant to sound snooty, but face it, that had become her norm. Maryanne was right to be surprised, even disapproving. In the past, whatever she and Lillian agreed on, went. And they were always in sync. Now her grandmother would have said Lillian had gotten too big for her britches. As if Lillian would ever wear britches.
“Mrs. Diamond, that’s not what I meant.”
“Of course it is.” Lillian softened her voice to a whisper, hoping it evoked friendliness. “I know your clientele comes from word of mouth. And from wives admiring styles you’ve put together. And you don’t need to worry. People appreciate the chance to make choices of their own, don’t you think? I think it’s time the Diamond Girls were responsible for their own choices. I’m not dragging this group anywhere; I’m simply giving them a path to follow. If they so choose.” She sounded radical and right, her tone soft yet solid. Unwavering.
Lillian tapped her fingers on the counter and awaited Maryanne’s reaction. Maryanne had been the unwitting sounding board for Lillian’s newly unearthed point of view, and Lillian could tell that she was curating her response. She could tell because she’d spent years suppressing her own thoughts and watching her words around Peter. Her vigilance around her husband exhausted her.
Maryanne always had to watch her words in front of her clients, Lillian realized. As she was doing now. That wasn’t what Lillian had intended. Maryanne looked away, smoothing and straightening the scarves.
“What do you think? You don’t have to hold back with me. You can say whatever you want,” Lillian said.
“I imagine you have enough to do with looking after Mr. Diamond and your daughters and these girls. You don’t need to hear from me.”
“You’re wrong.” The universal assumption that a husband and children were all that mattered to a housewife was flawed. Eager to hear Maryanne’s thoughts, she leaned back against the counter. “Your opinion matters to me. What do you think of the girls having their own style? Do you think it might backfire?”
“Not if they follow your lead,” Maryanne said. “They could do a lot worse. And isn’t the purpose to guide them?”
Lillian wasn’t sure. The rules of her life—of society, of women and duty—were getting muddied. She had a job to do: to prepare these girls for the future. Yet the future of young women was beginning to seem like a Liberty Bell starting to crack. “Am I guiding the girls if I dictate what’s right and wrong instead of providing the information and letting them decide?”
“I think it depends how rigid you want to be. In the past, you’ve held on tight to your rules. Colors, styles, necklines, hemlines. I’ve always admired you for that.”
“Do you have children, Maryanne?”
She looked up, wide-eyed, as if Lillian had just shined a flashlight in them. “I have two teenage girls.”
It was only then that Lillian noticed the faint worry lines on Maryanne’s face. The crow’s-feet around her eyes. “Well, I admire you for working and raising your girls. I have two of my own, so I know that can’t be easy.”
Maryanne smiled. “It’s not, but it’s a decision Bill—that’s my husband—and I made. The extra money will pay for college or whatever they decide to do after high school. Bill makes enough to support us, but we decided we wanted more than to ‘get by.’”