Lillian slipped the dinner rolls into the oven, set the timer, then hurried into the rec room. She slipped off her shoes, bounced onto the sofa, and tucked her stockinged feet sideways. Ahhh. She had a few minutes to relax, and she was going to savor each one of them.
She couldn’t stop thinking of her daughters’ futures. Of her future. Of the future of women.
She reached over for the small notepad Peter had left on the side table and scribbled.
What am I?
Housewife and mother
Teacher
Friend
Do I excel at some of it?
Yes.
Is my dissatisfaction hereditary?
The last question had popped into her mind before she even knew it was there.
Is it hereditary? Is that what made my mother . . . ? She would not even think the word.
Lillian tore off the paper and grabbed a stack of photo albums from the bookshelf. The blue one with the black pages that sheltered her childhood vacation photos—she made sure to grab that one too.
She needed to look her father and mother square in the eyes, imagine what they might say about their daughter’s life, imagine what she would want them to say—and how they would sound.
She could easily hear her mother’s voice in her head, always calm—as was her demeanor. Anna meant business but was kind. Lillian’s father sounded as if his voice rolled over gravel in his throat.
She wanted to remember them at the beach. They’d been happiest at the beach, hadn’t they?
Lillian set the photo albums on the floor and, since her dress was thankfully A-line, she sat cross-legged and pulled the older album into her lap. She tucked the torn list inside. If she threw away the paper, Peter or the girls might notice it.
Today she landed on a page with a square black-and-white photo of her family on the beach in Margate City—the same beach where she and Peter had met years later. The location had been painted in what she remembered as bold blue letters onto the lifeguard stand in the background. She must have been seven or eight then. In the photograph, she was digging in the sand, squinting at the camera. She peeled the photo out of its black, sticky corners. It was thicker than an ordinary photograph, more like cardboard than paper, and Lillian realized two images had stuck together, likely decades ago. She peeled the photos apart with relative ease, and only a minor tear.
A new photo. One she’d never seen.
The second image revealed Lillian with her father and mother, standing on the beach in front of a wooden lifeboat. Her father had a cigar in his mouth and his arm around her shoulder. Lillian’s mother, modest and unseasonably dressed in a light-colored skirt and long-sleeved blouse, smiled tightly, glancing to the side, as if caught unaware or embarrassed.
Lillian flipped it over. In her mother’s neat, loopy cursive it read: Me, Percy, Lilly 1938 Margate City.
Lillian looked at her family again, longing to be that little girl whose world had not yet imploded. The two-inch-square photo filed among Lillian’s cache was no more than black and white and shades of gray—so that if she didn’t know her father’s swim trunks were navy blue from her own memory, she could have imagined them green or black or something garish like purple.
But they weren’t, and when Lillian looked at the photo, she saw blue.
A photograph was like that. She could look at it and know what had happened before, during, and after the moment the shutter snapped.
With no one to confirm or deny her memories, Lillian processed them as fact—a happy childhood that had ended too soon. Early memories were replaced with a new, painful reality. Her life after all the dominoes fell.
Lillian’s swimming suit in the photo, as well as her mother’s skirt and blouse, was painted by imagination. Yellow with red rickrack for her suit and a sky-blue skirt and white blouse with embroidered blue daisylike flowers for her mother. Lillian rubbed her fingers together and swore she could feel the texture of the embroidery. She closed her eyes, inhaled through her nose, and smelled the sweet cigar mixed with pungent ocean air.
How different her life would have been if she’d been raised by her mother instead of her grandparents. They were set in the ways of the past and wanted Lillian to be too. How much more would she know about the world if her mother had coached her through her teenage years? Revealed the ins and outs of being a woman?
“Lil?” Peter said. “Lillian?”
She looked up. Peter. When had he come home? She hadn’t heard the door or footsteps. Then the girls walked into the den. When had they come downstairs? She tucked the photo into her waistband and stood.
She felt a bit woozy. Was it from the beach memories? From the tension of the etiquette lesson? The rumors about Carrie or Ruth’s discomfort?
She couldn’t put a finger on why she felt so shaken. Why something profoundly wrong—or maybe not wrong, but different—was throwing off her day. Snaking through her insides like a bad piece of food.
She had to put herself in the present. Let go of the rest of her day. There was her family, in front of her, staring at the woman who had always been their rock. Who was looking at old photos instead of preparing their meal.
She heard the ding of the timer from the kitchen. It was time to take out the dinner rolls.
Chapter 21
RUTH
Ruth had to admit that bedtime with Asher was her favorite time of day. She had washed up and donned her satin nightgown, and when she looked over at her husband, he was smiling at her and patting the bed beside him.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
She was lucky to have this man, who noticed how she was feeling and cared about her. Thank God he was nothing like Eli. She’d grown up being valued by the men in her family, and she would pass that tradition on to any daughters she had because Asher would be their father. She slipped into bed beside him, her satin gown folding sensuously around her legs.
“I found out something troubling today. About a friend.” A momentary doubt struck her. Would Asher believe her? She wasn’t entirely sure how much she could say, plus Asher had golfed with Eli. They shared the same social circles.
This Philadelphia world was new to her, and she was still learning the ropes. Things could get out of hand quickly if she wasn’t careful. What had they said in today’s etiquette lesson? That all the dominoes might fall.
“One of the other wives from the etiquette lesson?”
She thought about telling him who, but was still reluctant to betray Carrie’s confidence, even to Asher. Not yet. “Yes. And I told Lillian about it, but she didn’t believe me.”
“Why?”
“Because she said I didn’t have proof. And that it was none of our business what happens between a husband and wife.”
Asher seemed to chew on that. “Hm. Lillian has a point.”
Ruth looked at her husband askance. “But what if that friend needs help?”
“What if you only think she does?”
Was he right? He must have caught the look in her eyes, because he smoothed the covers over her. Gentle. Caring.
“Look, Ruth. People’s reputations are important. So is their privacy. Just like our privacy is important to us. Things we keep between our family and no one else. Lillian knows how things work. She was probably trying to save you from making a mistake that could hurt you. Hurt us. Hurt our family and our reputation. Indiscretion isn’t taken lightly around here.”