Well Behaved Wives(2)
Ruth pushed away the flare of irritation. She’d promised Asher she’d do her very best to get along with his parents—and she wanted to. Really, she did.
She smiled. “Well, that sounds nice. Let me know when they’re getting together and maybe I’ll drop by.”
“Oh no, dear—that’s not quite how it’s done. Why don’t I just get you all signed up for the lessons?”
Ruth raised her daughter-in-law antennae. “Lessons?”
Shirley stood, meticulously squaring the magazine she’d been reading on top of the stack on the table beside her dryer. “Well, think of it more as a refresher course for young housewives . . . putting the final polish on the silver. Nothing you don’t already know, of course, but won’t it be nice to brush up while getting to know some other housewives your age?”
Ruth didn’t know whether her instinctive cringe was from dread at what kind of “polish lessons” her mother-in-law would rope her into, or from being lumped in with the other housewives. This was 1962, the world had changed, and she was going to be a lawyer, for goodness’ sake—if things went according to plan. “Brush up on what, Shirley?” she asked, forcing her tone to remain neutral.
“Oh, we call them etiquette lessons—silly, isn’t it? But really it’s just the simple common niceties we can all stand to improve on, don’t you think?”
Etiquette lessons. Oy vey. Her mother-in-law wanted to send her to charm school.
After a broiled flounder dinner, Ruth cleared away plates of escaped Le Sueur peas and scraped baked potato skins. She was glad to help, to earn her keep even, but the way Asher and his father were expected to just sit there flustered her. Ruth had grown up on New York’s Upper West Side in a fourth-floor walk-up, and her father had divided household chores among his five children in a rotation based on their ages, not their sexes. Jacob Cohen was like that. Just. Impartial. Egalitarian.
Unlike the entitled Appelbaum men, who didn’t budge.
Were their hands broken? No matter how much she loved Asher, the division of labor seemed unequal. Unbalanced. So unlike the scales of justice.
“Who’s ready for dessert?” Shirley asked.
Leon and Asher said, “I am,” and chuckled at some obscure family joke.
“Coming up.” Shirley brushed crumbs into a small silver dustpan, a tool Ruth had once seen in the hands of a tuxedo-clad waiter during a posh Manhattan restaurant birthday celebration with Dotsie, her best friend. Back then they’d tittered about the fussiness, each girl admittedly partial to the Automat.
The fussiness Ruth feared she was meant to emulate was no longer funny.
Here, the silver implement was part of Shirley’s cleanup repertoire. She spot-cleaned the tablecloth with the wet corner of a rag before dipping into the kitchen. Ruth followed.
But for the good of her marriage, and to earn Shirley’s favor, Ruth set aside her beliefs for now, hoping to promote shalom bayit, peace in the house. She’d known marriage required compromise but hadn’t realized only she would be compromising.
Things would start to change when she and Asher lived on their own, and when Ruth got a job. When that would be, she didn’t know. She and Asher had only agreed on “not long.” Or when Asher got established at his father’s accounting firm. Of course, Ruth had to pass the bar, which she’d never doubted before. But after a week in Philly, she was doubting her and Asher’s plan for her to sneakily study. They had wanted to win over the in-laws before telling them Ruth would work.
In the kitchen, Shirley handed Ruth two footed and chilled dessert dishes filled with rice pudding, sprinkled with cinnamon and polka dots of raisins. She carried them to the table on a doily-lined silver tray.
Spoons clinked against the sides of the bowls. Evidently, no one wasted any of Shirley’s rice pudding. Ruth had to admit she loved her mother-in-law’s cooking. It sure beat scrambled eggs or grilled cheese, or Campbell’s soup cooked on a hot plate in the boardinghouse room she’d shared with Dotsie for almost three years.
Once the desserts were done, Asher asked his mother, “Do you mind if we go sit outside?” He glanced at Ruth. Every night since they’d arrived in Wynnefield, Asher had checked with his mother for this particular time alone with his wife, as if he were a teenager asking permission to borrow the car. Shirley always said she didn’t mind, as if it were her job to manage the couple’s time together. Asher seemed bound to his role of obedient only son. Ruth didn’t know what to make of it, but she’d have to figure it out: They were married. Being single wasn’t an option for girls wanting a viable future, or for girls like Ruth—never mind that she loved Asher down to her bones and couldn’t—wouldn’t—picture a life without him.
In New York, Asher had been progressive, their relationship one of opinionated equals—Asher finishing his MBA at NYU and Ruth attending and graduating from Columbia Law, one of seventeen women. In Wynnefield, he had regressed to someone who asked permission to spend time with his wife. What was next? Cutting the crusts off his sandwiches?
Ruth stood and grasped Asher’s hand, tugging him toward the front door. “Of course your mother doesn’t mind.”
They sat outside on patio chairs, their backs to the sidewalk, foreheads slick with leftover summer humidity. Asher fanned himself with the Evening Bulletin and handed Ruth the front sections. She opened, folded, and folded again, laying a newspaper square on her skirt. She glanced at the screen door, then the open window.