Well Behaved Wives(40)
Lillian sighed. “I just meant I was interested in you, Pammie. Penny too. I want to know what you’d like to have in that same breakfast with Donald. So both of you are happy.”
“I’ll take pancakes, please,” Penny said. It pleased Lillian that Penny could be so willing to assert her own preferences at her young age. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad mother.
“Why can you teach all those other girls to be wives and not me?” Pammie stomped her foot.
“Pammie!” Lillian looked square in her daughter’s face. “I’ll be happy to show you how to make breakfast, but you need to watch your tone.”
Lillian wiped her hands on the dish towel and tossed it on the counter. When she turned to crack eggs into a bowl for the breading, she realized Peter was standing in the doorway. She hadn’t heard the front door open.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Dinner’s not ready?”
Lillian glanced at the clock. She was behind in her timing to get the food ready and set the table. Not by much. But enough to have missed meeting her husband at the door.
“Just a little behind schedule. I can make you a cocktail.” Lillian knew she looked flustered, an unusual state for her to share with the world. When she glanced at Penny, the girl had a sheepish look, yet Pammie hadn’t released any of her steam. She needed to set them a better example.
“How did things go at work today?” Lillian asked. “Did you win that client away from Fine Fabrics Mills?”
Peter ignored the question. “What’s this about her tone?”
“We were talking shopping, that’s all. I took my etiquette class to Saks today.”
Pammie huffed. “That’s not fair. I’m the one that needs a new coat, Daddy.”
“Your coat is fine,” Lillian said. “No one here needs a new coat.”
Would Maryanne’s daughters expect new coats, knowing how hard their mother worked? Lillian had never asked for anything—her grandparents had provided the necessities without spoiling her. She had always had what she needed, and occasionally what she wanted. She’d never stopped to think whether providing every little thing for her daughters might be turning them into young women who expected everything and gave nothing.
“Your mother knows these things,” Peter said.
Pammie slumped with disappointment.
“May I be excused?” Penny asked. “I have math homework.”
“Me too.” Pammie’s voice betrayed her resignation. “Except it’s vocabulary.”
Peter pointed to the dirty dishes on the counter. “Put those dishes in the sink for your mother, and then yes, you may be excused.” He had taken her side in front of the girls again, but Lillian could tell he wasn’t happy with the late meal and the dramatic encounter. The girls scooted upstairs, and Peter padded to the den. She heard the click of the television and the newscaster’s voice.
The middle of the night brought a special silence, Lillian thought, as she watched Peter sleep soundly beside her in bed. She wondered if her tossing and turning would wake him. A well-behaved wife made sure her husband was rested in the morning, yet her turmoil wouldn’t allow her to relax.
Peter had rescued her like a knight in a shining Chevrolet. Rescued her from hovering grandparents in an Overbrook Park row house. From being the girl whose station in life would be defined by a crazy mother, making her less than a solid choice for marriage. He’d known about her mother and married Lillian anyway. The man was a mensch, when it came right down to it. But she had always felt that she owed him unalloyed loyalty because of that.
Without marriage, how would she have been seen by society? As a spinster. She could never have afforded the type of affluence and privilege she enjoyed now, even with a career. She would never have had her daughters.
As she watched Peter sleep, she was grateful he’d seen her as a Diamond in the rough. And, while he had rescued her, she had rescued him right back by becoming the perfect housewife, someone who impressed clients and colleagues. Who contributed to his success.
But her nagging thoughts wouldn’t let her sleep. She tiptoed downstairs. There was no harm in jotting down some of her ideas, was there?
Lillian padded to the dining room and pulled out her blue notebook. She set it on the table and flipped to the back, where she’d stashed blank paper and pencils. Maybe it wasn’t time yet to approach Peter—or anyone—with her new ideas on how to expand the etiquette classes, how to broaden women’s sense of self, but she could prepare. She could shape her ideas for when the time was right. After all, did she need his permission to head in a new direction with the classes? These women needed to know more than just how to be well-behaved.
Lillian wrote furiously. She started with her misconceptions about pregnancy and motherhood. Next, her ideas on the realities of marriage and men gushed out like clean water from a hydrant.
She stopped to read her words and a sigh coated her insides. Though the picture she painted was a dreary one, laden with loss and systemic apathy, the more she emptied her heart, the more it filled with hope. By sharing where she’d been complacent with herself, she could help her girls go right. Her daughters included. Their lives could be meaningful and informed. They would understand that they had choices.
She scribbled away, optimistic and inspired, lost in her new endeavor. When she registered the footsteps descending the stairs, she gasped. She gathered her papers and tucked them out of sight, then closed the notebook, feeling more like the cat that ate the canary than a housewife, awake too late.