Well Behaved Wives(52)

Ruth grew up loving bakeries. With one at the bottom of their building on Seventy-Eighth Street, bakeries and the smell of baking were a part of home. She didn’t need to learn to bake; the Ostermans baked for her. She wouldn’t mind treating Asher to nostalgic and delicious desserts when they had their own home. Ruth hoped baking was something she would be good at—something she could ask Shirley to teach her.

Something they could bond over.

Ruth stepped into the kitchen and the aroma and stared at the sight that accosted her. Today’s baking had been for her benefit. Shirley had arranged perfect pastries on a platter, which sat in the middle of the kitchen table.

So much for taking charge of having coffee with her friends.

Ruth’s smile might have looked genuine, but it had the intention of hiding her disappointment.

“Good morning,” she said. “Something smells wonderful.” She had to admit, everything looked and smelled mouthwatering.

“Asher told me your friends are coming for coffee, so I made kamish bread.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” Ruth would have preferred to eat Liss’s cinnamon buns. Soft. Flaky. Loaded with cinnamon and butter and drizzled with a creamy, white sugar topping. “I asked Asher to tell you I’d get up and go to Liss’s.”

“I thought homemade would look better. Be better.”

Better for whom?

“Oh, okay.” But it wasn’t. After her dreadful day yesterday, Ruth had wanted at least one thing to go as she’d planned today, and the only thing she had control over was the darn cinnamon buns.

Ruth remained determined to help Carrie. She looked forward to having guests in her home this morning. If she ever needed allies, it was now. Could these girls, all domestic and homespun, step up and be who she needed them to be? Ruth didn’t consider it betraying a confidence when her friend was in danger.

The mission ahead darkened her thoughts. Maybe she should tell her mother-in-law. Feel things out in advance. Get guidance.

But would Shirley react as Lillian had? As Asher had?

It was risky. Besides, if there was one thing Shirley Appelbaum didn’t need to know about, it was Ruth’s troubles. She had nearly two weeks to go before Rosh Hashanah. Before they would break the news of the bar exam, and of her career choice to be a working attorney. She needed her mother-in-law to think highly of her by the time she and Asher told her.

“I didn’t mean to overstep,” Shirley said. “I know you don’t bake.”

Of course Shirley knew she didn’t bake. Another of Ruth’s shortcomings in housewifery.

“What time are the girls coming?”

“Ten.”

“So late?”

Ruth nodded. Yesterday, on the walk home, when she invited the girls over, she hadn’t thought to ask if there was a specific time that was considered appropriate. She should have suspected there were rules about coffee too. She’d gone to Carrie’s at eight thirty, but she’d assumed that was because Eli had just left for work.

“You can brew the coffee closer to ten. I showed you how, right?”

Ruth nodded, both humbled and annoyed. She had made instant coffee for her father since she was strong enough to pour a kettle over the Sanka. He always drank it black. She chuckled inside at the notion of her father using tiny silver tongs to dispense saccharin tablets, and it brightened her thoughts. A little.

“You can use the dishes and linens in the butler’s pantry,” her mother-in-law said.

“I thought we could sit in the kitchen, if that’s okay.”

“Of course. There are small round tablecloths folded on the second shelf.”

“The girls wouldn’t mind plain and simple.” Or bakery goods. “But this is better,” Ruth said, trying to cut Shirley some slack as she gently lifted a piece of kamish bread. She’d grown up calling it mandel brot, next to her Italian friends, who called it biscotti, but when in Wynnefield, do as the Appelbaums do, and say.

“Of course they wouldn’t have minded, but that’s not the point. The point is to always do your best. This is about you. Didn’t you tell me one of the girls made you a picnic lunch? Irene, wasn’t it? Isn’t she the one with a lot of children?”

Ruth gulped. “Yes, she did. It was lovely. And delicious.” Irene had four children and a husband, and she did the books.

Ruth thought that when Shirley looked at her, she probably saw a slacker. Maybe she was right. Ruth should have realized the need to exert a similar effort. Her effort was focused on passing the bar. Shirley wouldn’t think Ruth was a slacker when she knew Ruth was studying for four hundred hours.

But in the world of Wynnefield housewives, Shirley had saved the day again.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Shirley said. “Carrie phoned her regrets this morning. Said you’d know why she couldn’t come.”

Ruth cringed. She hoped Carrie was okay. Was this the beginning of the end of her new friendships? Was she destined to be alone in this new life? To earn scorn not only from Lillian, but from Shirley too? Perhaps even from Asher—since he warned her not to pursue things that might be rumors?

“Something wrong?”

Ruth snapped the piece of kamish bread in half. “No, no. I was just thinking how delicious your kamish bread is. I’d . . . I’d love it if you’d show me how to make it.” Kamish bread was a perfect distraction from everything else going on.