Well Behaved Wives(5)
She’d dressed the foyer as well. A jewel-toned arrangement of dahlias sprang from her favorite Orrefors vase atop the gold-trimmed, ornate marble table. Streams of sunshine, coming through the sidelights, painted colorful reflections on the white wall and floor and stretched as far as the blue-carpeted stairs—adding whimsy to Lillian’s formal decor. When Mother Nature grabbed the reins, it relieved a bit of the pressure to be perfect. No one questioned her.
Lillian smoothed herself from shoulder to hip and opened the front door. “Hello, ladies.”
“Hello,” the girls chirped in unison.
These two needed more wardrobe work than the two girls already inside. Lillian assumed the plain girl was Shirley’s daughter-in-law. If she’d had a proclivity for green eye shadow or dyed ginger hair, Shirley would’ve mentioned it. Lillian had known the older woman for a decade and was delighted to help the newest Appelbaum fit into Wynnefield society. A little makeup, the right clothes, words, and attitude and—abracadabra!—this girl would be just what Shirley intended to have in a surprise daughter-in-law.
“I’m Lillian Diamond. Come in.”
The girls stepped inside.
“I’m Ruth Appelbaum. Thank you for having me.” Ruth grasped Lillian’s hand, squeezed and released, then walked farther into the foyer. She bent to smell the flowers—though everyone knew dahlias had no scent—and turned to Lillian. “You have a lovely home.”
Soft-spoken and polite. Genteel, even. “Why, thank you.” What had Shirley been worried about? Ruth might be a plain Jane, but she wasn’t a barbarian. “You must be Irene.” Lillian turned to the redhead, who attempted a kind of curtsey.
“I’m so thrilled to be here I can’t even stand it. I can’t believe I’m in this house. I’ve always admired it from the street but, you know, I never thought I’d be inside.”
Was Irene planning to ever take a breath? “And here you are!” Lillian motioned as if she were herding a gaggle of housewives, not two. “Come with me.”
They walked under the floral hand-carved archway and down four blue-carpeted stairs to the sunken living room. The decor was intended to impress, so Lillian didn’t mind Irene’s gawking. Ruth only looked ahead and didn’t seem to notice the textured wallpaper in silvery blue that had taken months to arrive, or the ornate custom-made pleated draperies framing the large windows on either side of the fireplace, faced with the same marble as the foyer. Hanging over the fireplace was a painted family portrait—a younger Lillian, her movie-star-handsome husband, Peter, before his hairline had started to recede, and Pamela and Penelope (or Penny, as she liked to be called now), when they were six and eight years old (six years ago, oh my!). They had been happy, then, to dress alike in Lillian’s choice of outfits, and their questions could be answered without reading the encyclopedia.
Two matching dark-blue velveteen sofas faced each other, with a glittery gold rectangular coffee table between them. One girl sat on each sofa. The new girls stood alongside Lillian, who reached out her right arm. “May I present Miss Harriet Schwartz and Mrs. Eli Blum—Carrie. Girls, Mrs. Stephen Pincus and Mrs. Asher Appelbaum. Irene and Ruth.”
The girls nodded after Lillian sang their names.
“Please, just call me Ruth. Mrs. Appelbaum is my mother-in-law.”
A teaching opportunity! “Just remember, ladies, first names are too familiar for most business and social settings unless you’re among family or close friends,” Lillian said. “You’ll be identified by who your husband is.”
“I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but I like my name. I’d prefer it,” Ruth said.
“It’s not about preferences,” Harriet said. “It’s about the rules of etiquette.”
“Who sets these rules?” Ruth asked. Her tone was laced with curiosity, not boldness or impertinence.
“Society,” Lillian said. Though she wasn’t sure she knew.
“I don’t mean to be contrary,” Ruth said.
Lillian thought that was exactly what Ruth meant to be, while seeming as polite as possible.
“I love that marrying Asher meant becoming an Appelbaum. But I hadn’t realized it meant losing my first name. My mother gave me that name. She died when I was four,” Ruth said. “Influenza.”
“May her memory be a blessing,” the girls and Lillian muttered in somber unison.
Now Lillian understood why Ruth was there. Shirley didn’t want to step on the dead mother’s toes, so to speak, by showing Ruth what a mother might have shown her. She had handed the job to Lillian, who knew that was meant to be a compliment, not an imposition. Still, a little forewarning would have been nice.
She recognized something—a lilt perhaps?—in the way Ruth spoke her mind. Yet the girl spoke with great care. Lillian, too, had often spoken her mind to her mother, who always listened intently and pressed Lillian, whom she called Lilly, to study well and follow her dreams. What those dreams had been, Lillian scarcely remembered. By the time she was living with her grandparents she had been expected to be someone’s wife. What other reason could there be for allowing her to attend college if not to find a husband?
Sometimes she missed the part of herself who spoke up. That part had been submerged in an unquestioning life with Peter for fifteen years. Quiet compliance was easier than creating the waves that sometimes stirred her imagination.