“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.
So what if she was conflicted about her life? Today wasn’t about her. There was nothing wrong with teaching the girls how to look better. Then she recognized the judgment that thought implied and cringed.
Well, if she was honest, her assessment might be judgmental, but it was the truth. The girls could look more refined, maybe except for Harriet, who seemed to have a knack for current fashion and trends.
Lillian didn’t blame the girls for their shortcomings—not the way she blamed herself for her own—and wasn’t that what mattered?
She stubbed her cigarette in the ashtray, eased the Lincoln onto City Line Avenue, and left her doubts on the road behind her as the car turned onto Fifty-Fourth Street.
Lillian pulled into a parking spot. She checked her face in the rearview mirror and reached into her purse for her compact. She dabbed powder on her nose and chin to ward off any shine. After snapping the compact shut and tossing it back into her purse, she was ready. Threading her arm through the bag’s leather handles, she stepped out onto the asphalt. The routine comforted her as much as a bowl of chicken noodle soup.
She strode toward the revolving door, head high, adrenaline coursing and buzzing through her, adding a rhythmic bounce to her step. She felt solidly in her element. The stores Lillian frequented—Saks, Gimbels, Lord & Taylor—the places she was seen without Peter, were where she floated with an effortless, even autonomous, grace.
Lillian flushed with shame at the thought, deepening the color of her cheeks.
Because without Peter’s charge account, she couldn’t buy dresses, coats, cosmetics, or the latest fragrance. She gazed at the ground; the stones embedded in it sparkled, cheering her slightly. Surprising—the places she could find beauty if she just looked.
Did it irk her that her social status and shopping privilege—while generous—were reliant on Peter’s permission and the money he provided? Or was she grateful?
She couldn’t deny it. Both were true. Lillian was unaccustomed to being wishy-washy. It didn’t feel good, and she strode toward the shopping experience to keep on solid ground.
Ten minutes later, Ruth, Irene, Harriet, and Carrie were gathered beside Lillian, surrounded by the cloud of new perfumes and the crystal atomizers of the fragrance department. The rich, sweet scent of jasmine assaulted Lillian, sending her into the past. Every night before Lillian’s father had walked in the door from work, her mother had patted her neck and wrists with Dorothy Gray Jasmin Bouquet eau de cologne while sitting at her vanity table.
“It’s his favorite,” her mother had said between dabs. As a girl, Lillian had giggled and swooned at the idea of her mother’s romantic gesture. Did her father ever acknowledge it? Comment on the scent? She didn’t remember.
As an adult, Lillian fixated on the choice of that perfume. Had it also been her mother’s favorite fragrance? The question vexed her.
“Is Shirley coming?” Harriet asked Ruth. Lillian knew the answer.
“Not today,” Ruth said. “On Mondays she plays mah-jongg.”
And, of course, the meat loaf. Lillian knew Shirley also made meat loaf on Mondays. Her friend and mentor was a creature of habit, set in her ways. Inflexible. Maybe it was a good thing this shopping day was on Monday. She didn’t need Shirley to check up on either her or Ruth.
Lillian turned to the counter girls. “Thank you, ladies. We’ll be sure to stop back.”
She smiled and waved, always polite to anyone who assisted her, whether at the San Marco with Peter on a Saturday night for surf and turf, or at Gimbels when she wanted a yontif dress for the holidays. And at Woolworth’s when she needed a new pencil.
Lillian might have been a stickler for propriety, but not at the cost of kindness. She’d learned that from her mother, who’d worked in the layette department of Gimbels. The precious employee discount enabled Anna Feldman to afford the store’s holiday clothes for her daughter. Ill-behaved and snooty customers often insulted her mother and sullied her pleasant disposition. On more than one occasion, Lillian had heard her mother cry in the bathroom at home. Little Lilly couldn’t imagine any other cause, so she blamed the cruel, rude characters in her mother’s Gimbels stories.
Still, department stores brought primarily happy thoughts of her mother. Her father, a broad, brawny navy yard mechanic who used coarse language, had wanted her mother to quit the job. Anna was a realist who knew better—they couldn’t afford it.