Chapter Fifty-Three Dottie
Chapter Fifty-Three
Dottie
I put her in the second-floor guest bedroom and showed her where everything is inside the kitchen, and she got right to work.
Then I went back to bed. But as I drifted off to sleep, I caught the scent of baking bread.
I hope it’s edible. Because if she’s as bad at cooking as she is at running the Selectric we’re all going to starve.
September 13, 1965
It’s been a week since Peggy arrived. She never seems to leave the house, but maybe she doesn’t have time, with all the cooking and baking and gardening she does. I can’t figure out if she got fired from the dealership, or if Dickie poached her from the office to be our domestic help.
I feel a little sorry for her. She wears scuffed shoes and these worn, shapeless dresses that hang on her petite frame.
She seems troubled. Scared. But she makes me delicious meals.
Scrambled eggs for breakfast, a small casserole with fresh fruit for lunch, and a lovely dinner that I eat on my own in the kitchen before Dickie comes home.
Then I go out in the garage and work on the ’57 Chevy until long after dusk.
I come inside around 8 p.m. and fall into a deep sleep.
I’d forgotten grief is like this. I felt this way after my mother died. Tired. Right down to my bones.
September 14, 1965
I learned a little bit more about Peggy today while eating my lunch.
She grew up in a small town in Missouri, near Fort Leonard Wood, with six siblings.
Put herself through secretarial school while working as a cook at a restaurant and a maid at a hotel.
She’s awfully pretty, and a much better housekeeper than I’ll ever be.
She cuts flowers from the garden and makes the most beautiful arrangements. Hydrangeas and foxglove and some of those roses still blooming on the east side of the house. I have to admit, she’s got a knack for making the house look pretty.
I shared my recipes with her to make her life easier and she’s been making them. She adds too much salt, though.
September 15, 1965
I came in from the garage last night to find Dickie and Peggy eating together in the dining room. It made my stomach heave, almost like having morning sickness again, as I watched them laughing and talking together as they ate.
She’s always so careful never to sit with me when I eat, to maintain this idea that she’s the staff and I’m the mistress, even though it’s just the two of us here all day together and we’re basically the same age.
She looked beautiful. And even though I don’t love Dickie anymore, something inside me twisted like a shard of glass.