Mrs. Gold grabbed Duke’s leash, and Susie followed as they walked off across the lawn, waving at Sunny on the steps before she disappeared inside the front door. The girls changed into play clothes, which is how Lillian still thought of their casual after-school and weekend wear, even though Pammie and Penny had been too old to play for quite a while.
Lillian longed momentarily for the days of baby dolls, matching smocked dresses, and patent leather Mary Janes. She had taught her daughters about being a housewife because they’d watched her dote on Peter, watched how she single-mindedly focused on him and ignored herself.
It was time to rethink her daughters’ roles before it was too late.
Perhaps it was time to rethink her own and the example she set.
Lillian kissed the girls on their heads. “Mind your manners, but have fun.”
“What will you and Daddy do without us?” Penny asked.
Lillian pecked her younger daughter’s cheek for good measure. “We’ll think of something.”
Once the girls had walked past the hedges, Lillian turned to Sunny. “Why don’t you go home early? I’ll finish up dinner.”
Sunny’s mouth dropped open in faux protest while her hands began slipping on her sweater, buttoning it from the bottom up. “First a dog, now dinner. What has gotten into you?”
Lillian knew exactly what had gotten into her, and there’d be more of it before the night was up.
Chapter 10
LILLIAN
Lillian stood alone in her kitchen and pulled the red ties of her apron around in front of her and tied them in a large, symmetrical bow. She smoothed the fabric, her hand sliding over the blue rickrack trim and momentarily reaching into the empty patch pocket. The apron was a ploy, of course, as much as her Halloween hobo costume had been at age nine, complete with charcoal beard and a bindle fashioned from one of her father’s work shirts.
Lillian never cooked a morsel.
She peeked at the supper Sunny had prepared, as she had throughout her marriage.
These days, Sunny cleaned the Diamonds’ house twice a week and cooked on the third day, filling the Frigidaire with delicious family-style meals Lillian couldn’t have replicated if she’d tried—meatballs, meat loaf, brisket, pot roast, roast chicken. Baked chicken, chicken fricassee, chicken pot pie, cutlets, noodle soup.
And all the side dishes.
So long as supper was on the table, Peter didn’t care who had prepared it.
He never questioned Lillian’s happiness either, which could make tonight a challenge.
In college, there was work to be done by the motivated. Lillian, intent on making the world a better place, had stuffed envelopes until midnight for a local councilman, instead of attending parties. Her only complaint was the occasional paper cut, and she was content, knowing she was making a difference.
The exhilaration that accompanied her contribution had prompted her to volunteer for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis when a friend asked her to. How exciting to work alongside the activist and fellow Philadelphian Miriam Moore, who was researching a polio vaccine. Lillian had agreed that as a healthy young lady, it was her duty to help.
Then, that junior-year summer, she’d seen Peter Diamond again on the Margate City beach. In his own way, Peter had adored Lillian since the moment they’d met on the same beach when she was fourteen, Pammie’s age. He had been a skinny fifteen-year-old and his family lived in their oceanfront house every summer, not a walk-up rental two blocks from the beach, like Lillian’s family.
She was living with her grandparents back then, and she’d wanted nothing more than to be plucked out of Overbrook Park, to be married, and to have a husband provide a life for her. That was all her grandparents wanted for her.
Peter excelled as a provider even then—when his teenage care consisted of buying ice cream from a vendor and giving her carefully chosen seashells, instead of this five-bedroom house with an iron gate.
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.