Chapter II. 1953 #3
“Just you wait until you have a little one of your own. You’ll learn an entirely new definition of not having time.”
Vera cleared her throat and stood, the lacy napkin across her lap falling to the floor. “I should get more cookies.”
Mary glanced at the table with its plate of cookies still half-full, but Vera was already gone.
Mary lifted the napkin and folded it neatly before placing it next to Vera’s saucer.
Vera had never been like Mary and the other young, married women—their discussions filled with baby talk and unabashed longing for houses filled with children—but as of late, she’d begun to blatantly avoid it.
Yes, her own domestic ennui was a thorn in her side, but she wouldn’t trade her daughter for the world.
“Did you hear Pauline Johnson is sick?” Vera held another plate of cookies, and Mary inwardly groaned. Vera would force her to eat at least two.
“I hadn’t. That same virus that’s been going around?”
“More than likely. A couple of us went out to visit her the other day, and she said the doctor told her she just needed lots of rest, but she told us she’d been sleeping nonstop.
Didn’t look it though. Her skin was practically gray, and she looked like she hadn’t eaten anything in weeks.
It’s no wonder with those sores in her mouth. Bless her heart.”
“I’m just glad I haven’t gotten it. Evelyn Manley was out with it for weeks, and even once she came back, she looked terrible.
My mother went on and on about how if she’d just put on a little lipstick, it’d go a long way to at least making her look better.
What a shame how women let themselves go nowadays.
You know how she is.” She sighed, picked up a cookie, and took a bite. Good Lord, she missed sugar.
“You’ll have to call the second you get home from your first day and tell me all about it,” Vera said.
Mary brushed cookie crumbs from the edges of her mouth, careful to avoid smudging her lipstick. “I should be getting back. Any longer and Mother will have turned the baby into a tiny version of herself.”
“Take a cookie with you. You only ate one.” Vera thrust the plate at Mary, and she shook her head. She’d conceded enough of her willpower for one day. She smoothed her skirt and stood.
“I’ll call you Monday once the baby’s asleep,” she said, and Vera reached for her hand and squeezed.
“You’re going to be wonderful. I just know it.”
FOR TWO WEEKS, it was wonderful. The mornings breaking over her in glorious bursts of pale pink and orange as she drove into the city.
The buildings rising around her—monolithic and commanding and filled with purpose.
The quiet of her drive had become a sort of invocation—an offering of holy tongues unfolding as she let the windows down just enough to feel the wind lift her hair from her shoulders.
The subtle rise and fall of sound in the office as fingers flew over keys and low voices murmured back and forth.
The delicate chatter of female voices so much younger seeming than her own over finger sandwiches and tea before the lunch bell rang.
And the baby seemed happy. She squealed whenever Mary walked through the door, her tiny arms dancing as Mary gathered her up and dropped kisses all over her blessed face.
The house was still clean as a pin, and Robert still kissed her every night and called her his little dove and didn’t grumble over his dinner if she was a few minutes late.
She was able to push her thoughts into some dim corner of her mind, and she’d not looked once at the new issue of Vogue even if she desperately longed to press her cheek against the slim contours of the model’s waist in the spread on beach dresses.
It remained unopened on the coffee table—a testament to this step forward into the woman she should be.
In the most secret parts of her heart, she knew her longing had nothing to do with wanting whatever dress the model wore or whatever hairstyle she had.
But she could not speak anything of it aloud.
The thoughts themselves may have damned her soul according to The Path, but to act on them meant losing her husband, her home, her daughter. Everything.
For those two weeks, Mr. Letting, her boss, came and went without incident.
He took his coffee in his office and remained there until he emerged for a three-martini lunch.
Then back into his office to smoke cigarette after cigarette as he yelled into his phone long after the typing pool had placed the dust covers over their typewriters and gathered their purses.
He’d introduced himself on the first day, his eyes traveling over her body in a way that made her skin creep, but since then, she’d seen him only enough times to count on her fingers.
But one of the girls asked if she could cover her that Friday: she was certain her boyfriend was finally going to propose, and she needed the time to find the perfect dress.
Mary smiled and agreed. Her mother-in-law told her at the start she was happy to keep the baby any time, and an extra day here and there wouldn’t hurt.
What Mary hadn’t realized was that on Fridays, the office ran on a skeleton staff, and the normal bustle that filled her hours was a vacuum of silence punctuated now and then by someone clearing their throat or a solitary phone ringing only to be answered in hushed tones meant not to shatter the cathedral quiet.
Mr. Letting was already enshrined in his office when Mary arrived, but he emerged shortly after and asked her to come in and take a letter.
He closed the door behind them. It was only wood—a small divider between herself and the world outside it—but she was small, and he was large, and she was suddenly aware of the acrid scent of his sweat as he waved her toward the typewriter that sat in the corner.
As she typed, he rested a meaty hand on her shoulder.
She felt the weight of his gaze on her chest. She wished she’d thought to drape her sweater over her shoulders before she followed him into this godforsaken man den with its leather chair and oversized desk and stuffed quails and foxes that proved he knew how to shoot a gun and kill something that had no intention of attacking him.
His hand drifted down her arm, and he squeezed the extra flesh she still carried there.
She froze under him, her fingers hovering over the keys as sweat trickled down her lower back and into the waistband of her slip.
She wondered if he could smell her fear.
If it smelled of the forest where he hunted. Of something small caught in a trap.
“I can appreciate a woman who doesn’t worry too much about losing the baby weight. A woman should be soft,” he said, and his voice filled the room, filled her chest, and she wanted to bring her fingers to her collarbone and crack herself open so she could tear out the sound.
“My husband is very happy,” she said. Her body burned and burned, and still, he didn’t draw away from her.
He chuckled, his hand dropping lower. “I just bet he is.”
Behind her, the door slammed open, and she startled, Mr. Letting’s hand falling away as if it was the most casual thing in the world.
“You tell those Darlington assholes— Oops. Didn’t mean to interrupt.” The man in the doorway darted a worming, pink tongue along the bottom of his neatly trimmed moustache and grinned.
“Is that all, Mr. Letting?” she said and stood, her hands itching to tug her skirt down and her blouse up.
He’d not finished his dictation, but if she was forced to stay any longer in that chair, his fingers creeping farther and farther down, she was afraid she would scream.
Or gouge out his eyes. Her body felt like something beyond her control.
“Mmm. What do you say, Bruce? Figure we should let this pretty kitty scurry on back to her hidey-hole?” Together, they laughed, and she ducked her head, hoping they would not see the heat she knew colored her neck and face.
Mr. Letting sighed. “Darlington, you said? That’ll be all, Mary.” He caught her hand and planted a wet kiss directly over her wedding ring. “For now.”
She hurried out, the men still chuckling to themselves before the door swung shut.
Her sweater still hung over the back of her chair, her purse still tucked away in the drawer beside the typewriter.
Her neat, orderly world seemed to mock her racing heart.
Like so many other moments in her life, she had found herself on the other side of the illusion.
She blinked furiously at the tears forming.
She would not cry. She would not allow him any sort of triumph. Even if he wasn’t there to see it.
Instead, she snatched up her things—forcing her body to move quickly before her mind made her a coward—and dropped the dust cover over her typewriter.
It was only a quarter after eleven, but the room was too small, the air like thick dust in her lungs.
She could not stay there. If Mr. Letting’s door were to open once more, she would pitch herself out a window.
She kept her eyes trained on the floor as she walked to the elevator, her fingers trembling as she pressed the button and then again because her touch had been too light the first time.
Perhaps Mr. Letting would come out of his office, see that she’d gone, and fire her.
Perhaps he would remain there, closed behind that awful door, drinking Scotch and laughing until he forgot about her completely in the way he forgot about every woman for whom he had no immediate use.
Perhaps he would come out now and order her back inside, and the afternoon would unfold into a slow-moving nightmare.