Chapter II. 1953
CHAPTER II
Mary Shephard stared at her kitchen counter, where her third loaf of bread of the morning was currently resting. It was barely nine, and she’d already cleaned up the breakfast dishes and dusted the living room and mopped the floors. And the damned bread. She’d done that, too.
Her daughter was sleeping peacefully in her crib, the house a sparkling, domestic quiet any new mother would envy.
She washed and dried her hands, the diamonds in her wedding band catching the sunlight, and stared out the back window into the wooded expanse that stretched over the ten acres of her husband’s land.
He told her when they got married he would clear out a section of it and plant her a rose garden, but she got pregnant and then the baby came, and he hadn’t quite gotten to it yet.
But she wasn’t upset with him. Robert was so busy—exhausted when he came home from work and practically falling asleep over his dinner.
Besides, she could always ask around, see if any of the other Hawthorne Springs ladies could recommend a gardener.
She wiped down the kitchen counters again, and wondered how many times she could clean the same rooms before she crawled out of her own skin with boredom.
Leaning against the counter, she looked at the loaves of bread, how prettily lined up they were, and before she could think, seized the loaf still in its pan and marched outside.
The grass was cool against her legs, the morning call of birds raining over her as she walked to the tree line and, with a scream, hurled the bread as far as she could into the woods.
Shoulders heaving, she turned back to the house.
The bread had not been enough to fill whatever it was that was hollowing her out.
Her hands itched with the need for destruction.
For broken glass and shattered porcelain and the delicate give of something breaking.
Robert’s golf clubs were still in the entryway closet, and for a moment, she let her eyes drift closed against the sun and imagined what it would be like to take his nine iron and smash the oven he’d given her on their wedding day.
She wondered if it would feel something like freedom.
She wished she had a cigarette. But Robert had not liked women who smoked, and she gave it up after their second date.
Maybe she’d throw out all the bread, and Robert would ask where his toast was in the morning, and she’d tell him—what, exactly?
She’d never been intelligent enough to come up with a lie that was remotely believable, and even if she did somehow manage it, she knew he’d sense it the moment it crossed her lips.
Her own body was little more than a series of betrayals.
She went flush across her neck and chest when confronted for even the tiniest thing, and on their wedding night, he’d kissed the lines of scarlet embarrassment that appeared on her chest and laughed as he called her his “nervous little bird.”
From the house rose a wail that Mary knew would soon turn to screaming, and she turned and hurried back inside to the pink-and-ivory nursery where her daughter had wriggled free of her blanket.
Mary lifted the baby from the crib and hushed her as she buried her nose in the top of her daughter’s sleep-scented hair. She wished she could bottle that smell so even as her daughter grew, she’d always remember her as she was now: tiny and beautiful and perfect.
“You were supposed to sleep for another half hour, my beauty,” she said as she carried the baby into the kitchen to start a bottle. Mary settled her in the playpen, where she stared around her with bright, tear-damp eyes.
Mary started the water boiling and pulled a can of evaporated milk formula from the pantry.
She’d tried to breastfeed, but her milk was slow, and Dr. Benson told her it would be better in the long run to make the switch rather than trying to force something that simply wasn’t working.
She’d been secretly relieved when he told her.
They could afford the formula, and the vitamins were better for the baby.
The baby cooed as the water heated, and Mary flipped through the April issue of Vogue, bypassing the advertisements and then pausing at a full-page photo of Mrs. Leopold Stokowski, née Gloria Vanderbilt.
Mary stroked glossy red fingernails along the graceful curve of her jaw, accented by a daringly short, scalloped haircut, the slim contours of her waist, the subtle swell of her mouth.
The knot Mary carried in her chest tightened, and she told herself it was envy.
That it was a desire to possess the same striking figure and delicate features rather than wondering what it would be like to press her lips against that bowed mouth and then let them part, her tongue tasting the sweetness there.
The very thing she knew was an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and in the eyes of The Path.
She was happy. Her husband was handsome.
Kind. Wealthy. Not that the last part mattered because everyone in Hawthorne Springs had more money than they knew what to do with, but she’d been raised for a good marriage and a cherubic daughter and a beautiful home.
All the things, as women, they were supposed to seek out because it was as God intended.
She traced the page once more before guilt and shame burned like acid at the back of her throat, and she seized the magazine and buried it at the bottom of the trash, making sure she covered it in coffee grounds so she would not be tempted to dig it back out.
She was happy. She was. She offered the words up like a prayer as she fed her daughter, marveling at the tiny fingers that curled around her own.
She would raise her daughter and keep the house and sit beside Robert every Sunday in his family pew.
These were simple, straightforward things, and she was a simple, straightforward woman. There was no need for more.
The rest of the day passed in a series of repeated motions—cleaning, feeding, burping, diaper changing.
Golden light softened the edges of the house as the afternoon wore on, and Mary made dinner and changed out of her housedress and into the red silk dinner dress Robert ordered for her as an early Mother’s Day gift.
She sent up a silent prayer of gratitude when it zipped, the darts at the bust straining against the extra baby weight she still carried.
Keeping trim was next to holiness according to her mother, and the last time she’d seen Mary, she pursed disapproving lips and reminded her that her own waist had gone back to a svelte twenty-six inches only two months after she gave birth to Mary.
Glancing in the mirror, she smoothed her hands over the decorative cummerbund loop at the waist before touching up her lipstick and dabbing a bit of Givenchy perfume on her wrists and neck.
Robert had never placed any sort of expectation on her about her appearance, but she was her mother’s daughter.
Her most devoted student in the art of snaring a good husband and then keeping him.
These survival tactics would ensure she outdid any potential rivals.
At the top, resources were slim, and if she wanted to marry well, there were rules to follow.
Rules Mary eventually swallowed as truths.
Robert might claim to love her with no makeup and undone hair, but he knew nothing of feminine competition.
Mary was changing the baby when she heard her husband’s truck pull up the drive. He honked the horn twice, and she lifted the baby and went to peek through the window.
“What is Daddy doing?” she asked. Robert was standing in the front yard, his tie dangling from his neck as he reached through the truck’s window and gave another series of honks. When he spied her in the window, he waved and then bounded for the front door.
“Daddy is silly,” she said. “Let’s go see what he’s doing.”
Robert was framed in the doorway, his dark hair falling against his temples as he grinned at her.
“Give me the baby and close your eyes,” he said.
“What in the world?” She giggled and handed over the baby.
“All right, take my hand. Go slow now.”
He led her outside, the wind lifting her hair from her neck as she let him guide her off the porch and into the grass.
“Okay. Open your eyes,” he said.
She opened her eyes and looked at the two boxes that were loaded in the bed of the truck. “What is it?” she asked.
“I thought you might like a present.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and gestured toward the boxes.
“You’ve not quite been yourself lately, and I know it’s hard with the baby and all.
And since you wouldn’t let me get you a nanny, I thought this would help make things easier.
The salesman said they could do double the clothes in half the time. ”
“A new washer and dryer,” she whispered, and he hugged her to him even as the baby squalled. A strange heat had woken in her chest, and it clawed up into her throat.
“But we already have one.”
“Not anything like this. This has all the bells and whistles. The salesman says you can even put those new miracle fabrics in there, and it won’t mess them up.”
Her body refused to move, her cheeks pulling her mouth into a rictus of a smile.
She learned long ago how to mold herself into what people expected of her.
Painted, practiced smiles and graceful, demure head nods.
Like a corpse dolled up and ready for viewing, the strings pulling her forehead smooth and eyes up at the corners to give the appearance of life.
The murmured voices passing over her cold skin: Isn’t she pretty?
“Honey. Your nose is bleeding.” Robert pulled his handkerchief from his pocket—the one she gave him when they were married, his initials embroidered by her careful hand in the corner—and blotted her face.