Earning Her Keep
Earning Her Keep
As Ruth’s leaving for the day, she sees Stevie’s light on in the back. She’s noticed that Stevie is usually among the last to leave, and even when she goes to the beach after work with the others, she’ll often return to the office for an hour or so. Ruth respects Stevie’s work ethic. She was much the same way when she was starting out, although Stevie is more focused than Ruth was at her age. At twenty-one, Stevie already knows where her talents lie, whereas Ruth was still trying to figure that out.
Ruth was practically raised inside her sister’s drugstore and fountain shop. Since they couldn’t afford a babysitter, Sarah brought young Ruth to work with her. While Sarah and Louie loved her, they’d just gotten married and wouldn’t have taken her in by choice. Never wanting to be a burden and feeling she had to earn her keep, Ruth went to work at the store when she was just ten years old. She polished the glass and mahogany cases that housed everything from hearing aids to Bromo-Seltzer. Ruth watched her sister at work. Sarah knew all the customers by name and gave their children lollipops. She met with vendors peddling Epsom salts, glycerin, licorice powder and all kinds of snake oil products. Sarah washed and squeegeed the front window herself and did her own displays for holidays and special sales. In time, Ruth helped with all that and more. By age twelve she was in the back, working as a soda jerk, making chocolate phosphates, ice cream sodas, malteds and banana splits. Every day after school she headed straight for the fountain shop. Her friends gathered there, too, crowding into the booths and around the circular marble tables. She never felt subservient waiting on them. Just the opposite. She took great pride in bringing them extra sprinkles and chopped nuts or adding a splash of cherry syrup to their Coca-Colas. She saw it as a way of being useful to them—a theme that would guide her through adulthood . Be useful, be helpful and they’ll keep you around. If not for that soda fountain, Ruth feared she’d have nothing to offer in the way of friendship.
As she grew older, Ruth assumed she’d open her own drugstore and fountain shop one day. Then she started helping at her brother’s law practice. She found the work fascinating and decided she’d go to law school, but when she turned nineteen that all changed after she went on vacation to California. Ruth fell in love with Los Angeles—the sunshine, the mountains, the beaches. It was a wonderland. Sarah, who initially didn’t approve of Ruth’s courtship with Elliot and who wanted to keep them apart, had encouraged Ruth to stay out there and get a job. The job she landed was typing up movie scripts at Paramount Pictures, making $25 a week. Much to Sarah’s chagrin, it wasn’t long before Elliot followed Ruth out there. And despite having a boyfriend who was waiting for her to get off work, Ruth often stayed late, looking for extra jobs and ways to make herself useful so Paramount would keep her on.
“Burning the midnight oil again?” Ruth calls out to Stevie.
“Oh, I’m just organizing these new patterns for Mia,” she says. “I never seem to have time during the day.”
“Well, don’t stay too late.” Ruth hears herself and it takes her by surprise, even makes her a tad bit uncomfortable. She’s usually not this solicitous when it comes to her staff.
—
It’s almost nine o’clock by the time Ruth gets home that night. She’s exhausted and still preoccupied with work. She sees Elliot and Barbara in the family room. Her daughter is stretched out on the sofa, her reddish-brown hair framing her face, her bare feet propped up on the glass coffee table, pink toenail polish chipped. She’s leafing through Bazaar . If only Barbara spent half as much time on homework as she does on fashion magazines.
Ruth goes over to Elliot, who’s reclining in his favorite chair, parked in front of the television set. He’s watching that Steve McQueen program he enjoys and is so engrossed he barely stirs when she kisses the top of his head. She turns toward her daughter but hesitates, uncertain as to the best way to greet her, the way she’ll find the least offensive. Barbara’s too old for a cuddle and would surely wipe her cheek dry if, God forbid, Ruth kissed her. Finally, she opts for a friendly, nonconfrontational “Hello?” It’s tentative, comes out more like a question.
Barbara looks up from her magazine as if being pulled away from something monumental, about to discover the Holy Grail or the eighth wonder of the world. She doesn’t say anything.
“Everything okay?” asks Ruth, tiptoeing about the land mine.
“Fine. Everything’s just fine.”
“Doesn’t sound so fine to me.”
With that, Barbara tosses her magazine on the table and storms off to her bedroom. A moment later the door slams.
“What’s eating her?” Ruth asks. “Did she and Allen have another fight?”
“We should be so lucky.” Elliot shakes his head and goes over to turn off the TV before he tidies up the coffee table, where Barbara’s magazine has jostled some coasters and kicked up ashes from the ashtray. “Unfortunately, I think the lovebirds are just peachy,” he says, borrowing one of Jack’s pet phrases.
Neither Ruth nor Elliot is crazy about this new boyfriend. On the surface, Allen Segal is a nice Jewish boy, just what they would want for their daughter. But Allen is three years older than Barbara, wears his hair like Elvis Presley’s, smells of cigarettes and never looks them in the eye. He works in a sporting goods store and seems awfully fond of kayaking and miniature golf. Ruth has a sneaking suspicion that Barbara dips into her allowance when they go out and sometimes gives Allen gas money.
After fixing herself a drink and taking a few fortifying sips, Ruth climbs the curving staircase and goes to check on her daughter. After a deep breath, she knocks on Barbara’s door and accepts the irritated “Whh-aa-tt” as permission to enter.
Ruth finds Barbara lying on her bed, her back to the door. For a long time, they sit in silence, aware of each other’s breathing. Ruth isn’t sure what to say, and this is unlike her. She never second-guesses herself at work, never doubts herself this way with anyone else. Only Barbara has this kind of power over her. She can’t even pinpoint when or how this started. There was a time when Barbara never would have talked back to her. As a young girl she was nothing but grateful and loving. How many times did Barbara curl up in Ruth’s lap, asking to hear the same stories about the movie stars Ruth met when she was a Hollywood secretary? “Did you really meet Lucille Ball and W. C. Fields, Mommy?” Or, back when they couldn’t afford a sitter, how Barbara loved to accompany Ruth on sales calls, being introduced as “my new assistant.” What happened to that little girl? And more importantly, what happened to the young mother who couldn’t bear to be away from her daughter for even a few hours? Now she walks on eggshells with her own child.
She wonders if she ever made Sarah feel so apprehensive. She doubts this because in Ruth’s eyes, Sarah could do no wrong. The real person to ask would have been Ruth’s mother, but when Ida Mosko was alive, she hardly acknowledged Ruth as her daughter.
She’s still haunted by the time Sarah and Louie went to Fort Collins for a few days and left ten-year-old Ruth with Ida. The whole concept of mother versus big sister was something Ruth grappled with. No one ever hid the truth from her. She knew this wasn’t her grandmother’s house, it was her mother’s, the same house that her nine siblings called home. The six boys doubled and tripled up, sharing bedrooms, and the three girls did the same. But there was never any room or a bed for Ruth and she couldn’t understand this, especially now that Sarah was married and had moved out.
She was fascinated and bewildered by her mother. Who exactly was Ida Mosko and why did Ruth feel a strange sense of attachment to her—almost a primal need to be close to her? She followed Ida from room to room, always underfoot, watching as she sat at the kitchen table peeling potatoes, chopping onions. As soon as that task was completed, she picked up the broom, or a dustrag, or a basket of laundry. She never stopped moving. Never did Ruth see her mother resting, doing nothing.
Her mother spoke no English. The only Yiddish Ruth understood was gey avek , go away, and gey shfiln indroysn , go outside and play. Play was as much a foreign word as the others. Ruth would watch her brothers Aaron and Muzzy climbing trees and flying kites, and it all seemed so pointless. You climbed the tree only to climb back down. You got the kite in the air only to have it crash a few feet away. What did that accomplish? When Ida told her daughter gey avek, gey shfiln indroysn , Ruth didn’t budge. She wanted to be where her mother was, wanted to help set the table, dry the dishes, fold the laundry, mop the floor—whatever it took to prove she was a good girl, a helpful girl, a girl worth keeping. But her mother didn’t want to keep her, and when Sarah and Louie returned, Ruth and all traces of her were packed up. That was that. She had failed to win her mother’s love.
Her mother and father are gone now, but really, Ida’s been dead to Ruth since the day she gave her away. That one turn of events has left its footprint in her life, affecting her more than she realizes. It’s why she’s built such a hard shell around her heart, why she drives herself to exhaustion. Every day she wakes up thinking she has to be useful and productive in order to prove her right to exist.
“What do you want, Mom?” Barbara asks, tugging Ruth out of her past.
“What’s going on, Barbara? What’s the problem?”
“Nothing,” she says in that way that indicates it’s something .
Barbara is going to make Ruth work for it, but she doesn’t know how to go about it. She’s intimidated by her own child, and the longer she sits there saying nothing, the harder it will be to say anything. “I know you’re upset, but sweetheart—” She dares to stroke Barbara’s back, only to have her scoot away. “Well, I can’t help you unless you tell me what it is.”
“You won’t do anything to fix it anyway, so what’s the point?”
“Why don’t you try me? Is it Allen? Did you two have a fight?”
Barbara slaps her pillow and flips onto her back. “No, it’s not Allen. I’m surprised you even remember his name. Or mine for that matter.” She stares at the ceiling, her lower lip crumbling, her pride refusing to give way to tears. “You’re never here,” she bleats. “No one else’s mother has to work.”
“Well, I don’t have to work, either. I choose to work.”
“And I hate that Edna makes us dinner every night.”
“Would you rather I made dinner?” Ruth attempts a joke here because they both know she’s a lousy cook.
Barbara doesn’t even crack a smile. “I hate this stupid house. Why can’t we live in a normal house like everyone else? None of my friends have stupid trees growing out of their living rooms.”
“You used to love that tree.” Ruth remembers when they first moved in, Barbara always had slumber parties with her girlfriends down in the basement, their sleeping bags at the base of the tree like they were camping out. She played down there constantly, and Ruth would find her leaning against the trunk, a book in her lap. Back then the tree was great, but now, like everything else, it’s no good.
“And why can’t I walk to school like a normal person? No one else has a chauffeur. It’s humiliating.”
“It’s for your safety.”
“I hate it,” she says before returning to her original assault on Ruth. “And I hate that you’re always at the office. All you care about is work. Sometimes I swear you care more about that doll than you do me.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Barbara turns her back to Ruth once again. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“Okay, all right. Fine.”
As she gets up to leave, Ruth scans the shelves of dolls that Barbara’s been collecting since she was a little girl. Among them are porcelain dolls, rag dolls, oilcloth dolls and baby dolls in bonnets and nightgowns and oh my— At first glance Ruth thinks it’s Barbie. But no, it’s Bild Lilli. An uneasy feeling begins burbling in the pit of her stomach. Bild Lilli’s cunning expression seems to know what she’s thinking. It’s unnerving. Despite all the work they’ve done, Barbie is still the spitting image of Bild Lilli. How is that possible? Had they forgotten what Bild Lilli looked like? Could they have subconsciously embedded her face and body in their minds, reproducing her to a tee? No, no. Impossible. They made countless changes to their design. Jack spent months and months working on her. They even hired Bud Westmore, a Hollywood hair and makeup artist, to consult on reshaping Barbie’s eyebrows, softening her lips and eyes, reworking her hairline.
Ruth thinks about that licensing agreement her legal department begged her to secure. She never did it. Neither did Jack. She feels a little sick inside. Surely Jack made enough critical changes along the way, and she knows he’s already applied for a patent for Barbie’s construction. They didn’t cross a line, did they ? No one could accuse them of stealing the idea for Barbie. And even if they did, they couldn’t prove it. Barbie is not Bild Lilli. They have nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. No, they’re perfectly fine.
She takes a deep breath and looks again at her daughter, a little sausage of rage and adolescent angst. She pauses at the door, her hand resting on the light switch, wondering if she should turn it off or leave it on. “Barbie, honey, do you—” Ruth stops. She’s caught her mistake, but it’s too late.
Barbara flips over with a propeller-like force. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your stupid doll.”
—
That night Ruth lies awake in bed. She assumes Elliot is asleep when suddenly he flings off the covers.
“Did I turn off the pool lights?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Probably.”
“I can’t remember if I turned them off.” He’s up now, stumbling over the pair of shoes at his bedside, always there in case of an earthquake, in case he needs to make a fast escape over broken glass. He slips into his bathrobe at the foot of the bed and goes to the top of the stairs, where he sees nothing but darkness. Not a pool light in sight.
“Were they off?” she asks when he returns to the bedroom.
“They were off.” And within moments, his eyes are closed.
She’s always known Elliot is a worrier. She’d love to disconnect that part of his brain prone to incessant concerns: Do we have enough life insurance? What if the sprinkler system goes out? When did I last have the oil changed in my car? It used to be endearing, and one day it will be again, but for now it baffles her. She doesn’t operate that way. She’s about speed and following her gut. Hesitation and apprehension kill inspiration just as surely as time kills deals.
She looks over at Elliot, already back asleep. So serene. It’s a wonder he can sleep with so much to worry about. Ruth sits up in bed and reaches for her cigarettes. Elliot doesn’t like for her to smoke in bed, afraid she’ll burn the house down, but he’s out now and nothing wakes him. She raises her knees, resting her elbows on top as she lights up, taking a deep, satisfying drag, wondering how she can make things right with Barbara. She accepts that her unconventional childhood explains why she isn’t a conventional housewife and mother. But the very thing she is most proud of—growing a successful business—is the same thing her daughter resents.
“I’m a latchkey child,” Barbara has repeatedly said, tears in her eyes.
But Ruth can’t stay home waiting for her children to return from school. She’ll never know how to fold a fitted bedsheet or how to tell if a cantaloup’s ripe. She doesn’t want to attend luncheons and PTA meetings. She has no desire to play bridge and mah-jongg. Ruth would rather play poker. In fact, she and Elliot have a standing game with two other couples, and she often feels she has more in common with the husbands than the wives.
Ruth’s not a girls’ girl. She knows Barbara wants her to be more like other mothers, and Ruth wants—well, she wants Barbara to be more like Barbie. My goodness. This is an epiphany, a branch of lightning already beginning to vanish as quickly as it’s appeared. Ruth might not even remember it in the morning, but right now, in the darkness, it’s clear that she thinks of Barbie as her daughter’s alter ego. Or rather as the young lady she wishes her Barbara to be.