Chapter Two
I didn’t mean to keep the secret from him. I knew he would be excited, and maybe that’s why I hesitated. What was the harm in waiting a few weeks to tell him? Though by then, it had been over a month. Every time I thought I would tell him, part of me still wanted to wait, still hoped I would be more excited like I was with Wesley. Sure, I had some hesitations, but this time was different. This time I knew how much work a baby took, how incompetent I could feel, how thin I could be stretched.
As I got ready for the party, my stomach pushed against the girdle, fighting the restriction. I needed to tell Henry soon, especially because of the nausea, but also because my stomach had begun to round. After the party, I told myself. I would start his new year with good news. For tonight, it would still be my little secret.
“You’re not going to be done in time,” Henry said. Though I had my eyes closed, waiting for the false lashes to set, I still knew what he was doing: adjusting the Windsor knot on his tie for the umpteenth time. I swear he could tie that in his sleep and it would look just the same, but he always fidgeted with it until the last possible minute. It was a good thing he was born a man, because if he also had to apply makeup, pin an updo, and slink into stockings without snagging a run, he would never get anywhere.
The neighbors would be there soon enough, ready to start drinking and celebrating the start of 1955. We had hosted the New Year’s Eve party every year since we had moved into Greenwood—Henry’s favorite tradition carried
over from his youth, when he watched his parents throw grand parties while he peered through the crack in his door. Now Henry relished being in the swing of the festivities, throwing the perfect party year after year. By this point, I knew what I was doing, but Henry still worried I was running behind schedule.
“Trust me,” I said as I blinked and adjusted to the weight of the lashes. I had managed to get all the food prepared, carpets vacuumed, and the bar ready to go. Did he not trust that I could also get myself ready in time?
“You put Wesley to bed?”
“Yes.” Though it hadn’t been easy, especially since I had to tuck him in earlier than normal. He asked multiple times if he could come to the party. I reminded him that it was only for adults. He asked that I do our nighttime routine a couple of extra times and I obliged, taking his hand—still squishy with baby fat—into mine. Brushing my index finger across his palm just lightly enough that it tickled, I recited his favorite poem that I had written for him:
With a circle and a pat
And a heart on top of that,
I give all my love to Wes
With not a single smidge less.
Typically, I only said it once before bed, but that night I spent a few more minutes lingering with him, reciting the poem on repeat until his giggles turned to cackles and his eyes teared from the tickles. I knew I had other tasks to complete before the guests arrived, but time was what he needed and I gave it to him. Especially before a sibling came along and stole the attention he had been bathed in for the last four years.
Henry continued his questioning. “You told him to stay in bed, right?” I
widened my eyes at him so the lashes tickled the skin beneath my brow line.
“Just checking,” he mumbled.
“If you continue checking, I won’t be ready in time.” Henry slipped his hand into my robe as he pressed his chin onto my shoulder and stared at me through the mirror. We had been married for nearly six years, but those eyes could still soften even my sharpest edges. We met his final year and my first at the university, when I was on assignment with the school newspaper. He seemed charming enough as he flashed his smile and I snapped a picture for the front page article about the rowing team’s winning season, but so did so many of those boys at that school. All with a sense of entitlement, as if the world and all it contained was theirs for the taking. I didn’t want to be taken, but I let it happen anyway.
I lost myself in his embrace for only a moment before his hand slid from my side to my stomach. I could’ve told him then, but instead I scooted out of his grasp and said, “I won’t be ready in time if you do this.”
He pouted his lips and drooped those brown eyes of his—a perfect reflection of our three-year-old son. “Fine,” he said, before kissing me on the cheek. “You’ve got five minutes.” But I knew it was more like fifteen.
With minutes to spare, I slipped on the off-the-shoulder fit-and-flare I hadn’t worn in more than a year, hoping that I had a bit more roundness to make it work. Until recently, my body didn’t fill the hourglass style. The dress typically hung from my spindly frame instead of clinging to the contours as it should. I sometimes wondered what Henry saw in my slenderness, too tall for most men, too thin for others, too harsh and lacking the soft, nurturing curves a mother should have.
“Look at my girl,” Henry said as he glanced my way moments before the first guests arrived. I wondered if he had really looked at me. If he noticed my clavicle’s angles, how my breasts still fell flat beneath the bodice. The dress tried its best to give me a waist and bit of hips, but I was no Marilyn
Monroe. Nor Nora Gray, who had been blessed with a buxom physique. Her ample bosom tested even modest necklines, her curves always evident. I wished our frames were similar enough that we could share clothing, borrow dresses, double our wardrobes, but I would have to find a new friend for that to happen. Maybe someone who didn’t adhere to cleaning schedules. Who didn’t apply a full face of makeup before leaving the bedroom each morning.
Who also understood that sometimes hiding in the walk-in closet for a few minutes helped get you through the rest of the afternoon.
I took a final look around the house. All was set. All those hours spent prepping had led to this moment, and it would all be over soon enough. Enjoy it, I told myself. But there was still more work to do: drinks to fill, dishes to replenish, photos to take, conversations to have before the cleaning started.
Then the weary could rest.
“Let me look at you,” Nora said when she and Dennis arrived that night, her heels clacking across our vinyl foyer, the same flooring that she and most of the other neighbors had. Before handing me her mink stole, she made me twirl as she examined the dress for herself. “Not your typical cut.” She squinted her eyes, searching every inch of my body, and I stiffened, wondering if she had detected my secret. “I like it. And if you weren’t such a string bean, I’d demand to borrow it.” I forced a smile and deposited the coats in our guest room, taking a moment longer than normal.
Our friend Hatti arrived a short time later carrying a cake saver (one book).
Because of course she did. A good housewife always brought a dish, even when asked not to.
“Hatti Brooks!” Nora scolded. “Don’t you know by now that you don’t bring a dish to Lulu Mayfield’s?”
“I know, I know.” Hatti blushed, her round cheeks reddening to the color of her swing dress. “But my mama always told me not to go anyplace empty-
handed.”
I took the dish from Hatti, smiling despite my frustration. “You know I won’t turn down your chocolate cake. Let’s make room for it on the table.”
“Oh, I have to see this spread,” Nora said, grabbing Hatti’s hand. The two gasped as they saw the table laid out before them.
For days, I thought about the menu, and in the rush of the last day and a half, I executed it all. There were bananas wrapped in ham and doused in hollandaise sauce, a Monterey soufflé salad with olives and tuna, a seafood mousse shaped into a smiling fish, a bologna and cream-cheese cake stacked a foot high, and a meat and vegetable loaf frosted in mayonnaise. Then, in the center of it all, standing taller than the rest, was the perfection salad: gelatin mixed with vinegar, lemon and apple juices, filled with shredded carrots, sliced celery, finely shredded cabbage, chopped green olives, and paper-thin radishes. A motley combination of ordinary ingredients molded for presentation, much like us.
“The Queen of Molded Food’s reign continues,” Nora declared.
“All hail, Queen Lulu!” Hatti giggled and they both curtsied. I smiled as I placed the chocolate cake in the corner of the spread.
Nora first gave me that title one afternoon as we tested vodka martinis in my living room and the kids ran around outside. A few drinks in, I admitted out loud that maybe I’d like to be known for something other than shaped salads. She had said we all had parts to play and then reminded me that it could be worse.
She was right. We did have our roles.
Henry was the all-American boy, brimming with optimism and a can-do attitude.
Hatti was the ideal mother, caring for everyone, sometimes at the expense of herself.
Nora was as funny as a sitcom and beautiful to boot. Every man’s dream
and we all knew it.
Her husband, Dennis, was the restless yet adoring spouse, overcompensating for his wandering eye.
And I could make impressive salads.
I begged Hatti and Nora to stop praising me. Little did I know that when I showed up to that first neighborhood carry-in with eleven layers of ribbon Jell-O, it would come to define who I was. By now, it was too late to change.
It was who they expected me to be. So I played along. I bought more molds (one-and-three-quarters books), tried new recipes, and even made up a few of my own. I told myself that it was a game to see what all I could get them to eat. But in truth, I was molding myself into someone I hoped they would see as one of them.
“Please, eat,” I said, handing them plates. “I don’t want leftovers at the end of the night.”
“Yes, Your Royal Highness.” Nora curtsied again and then took a plate.
We all knew she wouldn’t eat much. She never did. She had her measurements to adhere to. Every morning, she measured her waist, thighs, arms, and breasts, and kept the results in a journal. If the number was higher than an acceptable maximum, she reduced her food intake and increased her cigarette habit. Nora still put a few scoops of salad onto her plate, though I knew it would be scraped into the kitchen trash when she thought no one was looking.
“Lulu, did you see what Eddie gave me for Christmas?” Hatti’s face glowed, partly because she had gone heavy on the rouge once again, but her eyes danced as she pulled at the gold heart necklace. She opened the locket, revealing a tiny photo of her three children, one that Eddie had asked me to take for him as a surprise. “Now I can keep them close to my heart all the time.” Her sentiment was even sweeter than the icing on her chocolate cake, sure to cause a cavity.
“It’s beautiful,” I told her. She was so proud, so different from me. What did she have that I didn’t? What made her long to be with her kids all the time instead of desperate for a few moments away? I tried to squelch the questions, to blame them on the champagne fog that typically clouded my mind during parties like this. But I hadn’t had a sip of alcohol all night.
I excused myself to grab my camera. No party happened without at least one roll of film to document it. While Bing Crosby crooned from the RCA, I captured photos of men puffing out swirling clouds of cigar smoke in the den, women sipping champagne as bubbles effervesced, and couples clinging to each other as they waltzed across our living room carpet, while the dark night loomed outside the windows, a house so full of vitality, across the street from one that still sat vacant.
I watched it all through the viewfinder as I snapped photos from a distance.
All was in order. The guests seemed to be enjoying themselves and the food was a hit, but all I could see was the perfection salad in the center of the table moving, jiggling, swaying from side to side, looking as if it might fall at any minute.
I did my hostess duties, but as the clock dragged toward midnight, my insides felt like they were oscillating along with the salad, at least as much as they could, given the girdle restraints. I needed some fresh air, so I escaped to the backyard, welcoming the quiet and solitude despite the bitter cold. A sliver of a crescent moon hung overhead that night, a white curve in the sky, providing little light.
I sat in the darkness and watched the party through the sliding door. I saw the conversations, the laughter, how Mrs. Reilly piled her plate high once again despite the doctor’s advice to drop a few pounds. I saw the way Dennis had his arm around Nora while he looked across the room at Maureen—the youngest wife in Greenwood, her eyes and breasts so full of perk. I could tell
from his sway how many drinks he’d had and that he wouldn’t remember most of the party come morning. I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually I saw Hatti leave without saying goodbye, probably desperate to get home and check on the little ones she couldn’t bear to be away from for too long.
It seemed like all of Greenwood was there that night, but passing headlights reminded me that we hadn’t invited everyone. We may have thought we did, but of course there were neighbors we hadn’t yet met, names we didn’t know, families we didn’t choose to invite over to parties for a whole host of reasons, I suppose.
I had known most of these people for the last five years. On the surface, I would call them friends; they were more than acquaintances. But who within that house did I really know? And who really knew me?
As I sat in the darkness, the cold pricking my bare arms, Wesley found me.
Of course he did.
“What’re you doing up?” Henry must not have seen him, or he would have taken his son by his arm and directed him back to bed. I should’ve done the same, but instead I let him climb onto my lap.
“It’s too loud,” he said, his tongue still not cooperating, so the l sounded more like a y. It bothered Henry and his mother so much. I told them my brother, Georgie, used to talk like that and assured them that our son would outgrow it, but they didn’t seem to believe me. Or at least Mrs. Mayfield didn’t and Henry followed suit.
“You need to go back to bed,” I said, but I let him stay. I suppose my mother-in-law would say that was another way I spoiled him. I stroked his hair, stretching his curls out straight before they bounced back as I released them. He looked so much like Georgie—those curls, the long eyelashes, the freckles across his cheeks. Did Georgie still have all those freckles? Or had they begun to fade?
Wesley pushed his body against me, taking as much of my lap as he could.
He didn’t know yet that soon his world would change.
Our world.
My world.
Henry would be so pleased with the idea of having a complete family. But did he remember what a baby was like? How some days I was so exhausted I would forget to eat? How Wesley cried for hours every evening? How my nipples chafed from the baby’s constant need to nurse? Of course he didn’t. I didn’t bother him with those details when he got home from the office. After all, I was the mother; caring for the baby was my job.
And I hadn’t told him that sometimes I still woke in the night, swearing I heard a cry. Only a few nights prior, I was nearly out our bedroom door on my way to quiet the sound, when I woke enough to realize there was no baby.
No noise at all.
I missed the countdown to the new year as I tucked Wesley into bed for the second time that night. When I rejoined the party in the living room, Henry pulled me to him.
“Where’ve you been?” The syllables slurred into one long word before he pressed his lips to mine, his whiskers poking into my skin. He had shaved just before the party, but those whiskers never stayed hidden for long. “You missed the toast.”
He tried to hand me his glass of champagne, but I told him no thank you.
The room was already beginning to spin. The last thing I needed was a drink.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Just tired.” I told the partial truth and hoped it was enough, but what I needed then was for everyone to leave before the room spun even more.
In that moment, I don’t know why I did it. Maybe I was trying to hold on. I wished I would’ve had a glass or something to occupy my hands, because as the neighbors chatted and some began to say their goodbyes, Henry looked at
me. Even through his champagne haze, he saw my hands reach for my stomach, my subconscious attempt to comfort what had been gripped by my girdle for far too long.
“Lulu—” he began. His eyes widened. I hoped he was too drunk to put the pieces together—the nausea I had failed to hide from him that morning, the curves that better accentuated my dress that night, my hands upon my stomach. “Are you—”
“Henry—” I tried to interrupt him. Yes, I needed to tell him, but not there, not in front of everyone. Plus, wasn’t it bad luck to tell people before the end of the first trimester? I may have been close to that, but I wasn’t through it yet. “Listen—”
I tried to use words to distract him, but apparently the look on my face had given everything away. He couldn’t listen. Not then. The party. The friends.
The champagne, all of it numbed him to my pleas. He turned from me and began to clang his wedding ring against the goblet (one book for a set of six), demanding the room’s attention.
“What’re you doing?” I forced the question past the lump of fear that had lodged in my throat.
“Making a toast.”
“Please, not now,” I begged, but I struggled to find words as my heartbeat quickened.
Henry slumped his arm across my shoulders. “A toast,” he began, “to good neighbors, better friends, and—” He turned to look at me as he said the next words, his eyes sparkling. I couldn’t look. I buried my face in his chest. With my ear pressed against him, I could hear our hearts beating at different rhythms, his slow and steady, mine thumping, panicked. I wanted those beats to drown out what he said next. “And the most perfect wife.”
Did I hear him correctly? Had he listened to me? He tightened his arm around me and kissed my forehead as the thump of my heartbeat slowed. I
thought he was done. We all did. A few glasses clinked. Some people took a sip. But then his voice rose higher, above the chatter that tried to resume.
“And to the year our family is finally complete.”
An invisible current pulsed through my veins like an electric charge. I prayed they were all too drunk to understand. But he wasn’t done. To get his point across, he removed his arm from my shoulders, placed his hand on my stomach, and pressed against it.
Unfortunately, the neighbors understood. They gasped and cheered as I wanted nothing more than to dissolve into the carpeting, let it act like a sponge and soak up every part of me. Instead of disappearing, my body began to shake as heat rose from my toes to my cheeks, a storm of unease brewing inside me.
Henry’s words slurred together as he continued, “A-dream come-true.”
That’s when Dennis lifted his glass and toasted, “To dreams!”
“To dreams!” our living room echoed his cheer, as men kissed their wives and neighbor toasted neighbor all over again.
But Nora didn’t cheer. She watched me from across the room, her eyes locked on mine, her lips pursed shut. I nodded my head in recognition. She held a hand to her heart and raised her goblet in my direction before Dennis grabbed her and kissed her.
To dreams, the toast echoed through my mind as the final moments of the celebration continued. Those words replayed as I handed the neighbors their coats on their way out the door, as they kissed me on my cheek and congratulated us, even as Nora reminded me that the baby blues don’t happen every time. It whispered to me as Henry went to bed and I gathered the dishes, tossed the empty champagne bottles, and placed the leftovers in the Frigidaire.
To dreams.
Of course, sometimes we forget that dreams and nightmares are two sides
of the same coin.
