9
I fumed silently for the first ten minutes of our drive home, while my mother alternated between moaning and lecturing me about the perceived impropriety of my actions.
But somewhere in between her comment that it was bad enough I was about to be divorced, let alone working to support my family, and her insistence that she needed to close her charge account with Woodies because she could never be seen there again and would have to do all her shopping at Hecht’s and Garfinckel’s now, I’d had enough.
“Mama, stop. This isn’t like the time you caught me kissing Nathaniel Gordon in high school.”
“No, it’s worse than that. I just knew I should have sent you to your great-aunt Ada when that happened, but your father said no. If I’d sent you to her, you wouldn’t have married Larry in the first place, and we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
While I appreciated her use of we in describing my situation if it related to the divorce, I wasn’t sure if the mess part was the end of my marriage or her catching me working at a department store.
“Thank goodness your father isn’t still in office. Can you imagine?”
“I can actually,” I said. “It probably would have helped him secure some working-class votes—if you didn’t spoil that by making a scene about how inappropriate working is. Come on, Mama, it’s 162.”
She waved a hand, and the whole car swerved. “There’s nothing wrong with other people working, darling. But whatever is this about? You have the children. The courts will make Larry support you. This theater is unnecessary and is going to give me gray hairs.”
I suppressed a smirk. It was easier to miss when she wasn’t living with me, but her hair color had a distinct change when she returned from the salon two days earlier. That hint of a smile faded when I realized I had to answer her question. “Larry said I have to downgrade. He can’t afford to keep the house and someplace else for him to live.”
“Can’t afford? Nonsense. He’s just trying to scare you. Besides, we gave him money for the down payment. He can’t make you go anywhere.”
“You gave it to him , Mama. Not to me.”
“Whatever would you have done with it? You couldn’t have gotten a mortgage.”
I sighed. Yes, the courts would likely mandate that I got to keep the house. But my mother had grown up extremely wealthy, and since marrying Larry, who had not, I had learned more about the world outside of my mother’s privileged, upper-class New York upbringing.
“Money isn’t going to be unlimited—money hasn’t been unlimited. But with two households to run, it’s going to be tighter. If I have a job, nothing needs to change for the kids.”
I held my breath. Here came her suggestion that I move home with them. And I wasn’t looking forward to the resulting fight when I said that no, I would rather work than do that.
But no offer came.
Instead, my mother contemplated this, then nodded so infinitesimally that I wasn’t sure if I had imagined it or not. “We need to think about a more appropriate source of income. Something that won’t bring gossip.” She paused. “For your father’s sake.”
Papa wasn’t exactly the one soliciting the makeup counter at Woodward & Lothrop, but I refrained from pointing that out. That avenue was closed now anyway, and to be fair, even just one morning selling cosmetics had bored me. I wanted something where I was challenged and got to use my brain for more than complementary colors on my mother’s bridge buddies.
I just didn’t know what that was.
I dropped my mother off at the house and then took her car to go pick the kids up from Nancy’s house. Normally, I wouldn’t mind walking, but it was rainy and my feet hurt from being in heels all morning.
I rapped smartly on the door and heard Nancy’s voice yelling to come on in.
I walked into a scene of utter bedlam. The cushions were all off the sofa and assembled in a makeshift fort, buoyed by overturned dining room chairs, and the whole concoction was covered in sheets while the older children fought off the younger two with pillows as they tried to dismantle their older siblings’ handiwork.
“Nance?”
“In the den,” she called. A child screamed. “Fight GENTLY,” she yelled. “I already told you that. FIGHT GENTLY!”
The scene in the den lacked children but was far more chaotic as Nancy sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by tools and pieces of electronics. My gaze traveled toward the wall, where the whole television had been disassembled.
“What happened in here?”
She grinned up at me, tightening a bolt as she did so. “TV wasn’t working, but I think I got it now. Just need to put it all back together.”
“And you did it yourself?”
“Of course. It’s not hard. And if I tell Arnie that the repairman charged twenty-five dollars and I paid for it with my pin money, he’ll give me twenty-five dollars that I can put toward that new dishwasher he doesn’t want to buy.”
Had Nancy been born a man, she would be running an empire instead of a household. There was nothing she couldn’t take apart and put back together better than it had been assembled in the first place.
“That would be quite a business plan,” I said, thinking out loud. “You could charge women half what a repairman would and let them keep the difference. Everyone would call you.”
She tilted her head as she began fitting pieces back together. “Not a bad idea. Maybe when the kids are both in school.”
I wished I had a fraction of her skills. But I had needed her help just to hang my new curtains.
“How’s Larry going to like his bed being used as the Alamo out there?” I asked.
“I couldn’t care less. I told Arnie he has to tell him he’s out by the end of next week.”
“You did?”
She nodded, then walked across the carpet on her knees, holding the TV’s insides to begin putting them back in place. “He told Arnie what he told you about the house,” she said, still focused on the television repair. “He said that’d scare you into taking him back, and I thought that was rotten.”
I exhaled. “Then it’s just a ploy?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not letting him plot against my best friend from my living room. No sir. Pass me that Phillips-head screwdriver. Not the flat one. The one with the end that looks like a star.”
I brought her the screwdriver and leaned down and hugged her fiercely. “Thank you.”
She looked up in surprise. “You okay for now? I can loan you twenty-five bucks tomorrow if you need it.”
I laughed and told her I just might, before regaling her with my employment adventures of the past two days.
“I would have paid good money to see your mother’s face when she saw you there.”
“Worth twenty-five dollars?”
Nancy laughed. “Absolutely. I could always break the TV again next week.” She thought for a moment. “I can break yours too. Then we can go shopping.” She paused. “Maybe not at Woodies.”
“Definitely at Woodies,” I said, grinning. “Miss Llewelyn won’t know what to do with me as a customer.”
“Think Millie could handle watching all four kids?”
We both laughed at the idea of eight sticky hands assailing her. “Absolutely not.”