Mrs. Everything (15 page)

When Lynnie was done with her, Jo flopped onto her back, and once she’d caught her breath, Lynnette reached over Jo and picked up the copy of
Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette
that she had on her bedside table, next to a white poodle with a transistor radio in its belly. Lynnette’s grandmother had given her the book as a gift for her sixteenth birthday, and Lynnette’s latest favorite postcoital activity was to find ridiculous passages and read them out loud in ostentatiously plummy tones.

“Listen to this,” Lynnette said. She was still flushed splotchy red, from chest to chin, and her hair was half-dry, curling around her forehead and her cheeks and flat against her back. She cleared her throat and warbled, “ ‘Occasionally in business it is necessary for a woman executive to pay entertainment or other bills for men clients or to take their share of checks when lunching with men business associates. In all cases (for the sake of the man) a woman tries to avoid a public display of her financial arrangements. Even if she is lunching a junior executive, it is courteous to allow him the dignity of seeming to pay the bill.’ ”

Jo half listened to Lynnie’s performance as she stretched her arms over her head. She felt wonderful, her body loose and relaxed, like she’d moved out of her head and entirely into her skin, where she didn’t have to worry about her mother, or her future,
or how much it would hurt when things with Lynnette were over.

“Does your mother ever lunch with anyone at her job?”

Jo shook her head. “And even if she did, it wouldn’t be a man.” All of the people her mother worked with, her boss and her fellow salesladies, were all women.
The girls
, Sarah called them. Some of the girls actually were just past girlhood, young women, some of them single, biding their time before marriage, some married, saving money before babies. Other of the girls weren’t girls at all, they were women in their forties and fifties, working to supplement a husband’s income, and some of them were widows like Sarah. There were even two divorcées (Sarah pronounced the word “divor-sees”), supporting themselves and their children, all on their own. Jo had heard her mother speak respectfully of her boss, Mrs. Lyons, and a young Negro woman named Toby Pettigrew, who’d worked her way up from seamstress to a sales position in Better Dresses, but she’d never invited any of her colleagues to the house, and Jo and Bethie had never met them.

“Or there’s this,” Lynnette said, flipping pages. “ ‘It’s hard to face this, but no woman can find happiness in putting career ahead of her husband and family,’ ” she read. “ ‘Once she has taken on woman’s natural responsibilities, whatever work she undertakes must be done in a way that deprives the family the least. Everywhere we meet women who seem to overcome the difficulties of the dual role, but the hard truth is that more women with young children fail at making happy homes while working full-time than succeed.’ ”

“Woman’s natural responsibilities,” Jo mused, and wondered if her mother had felt happier when she’d been a housewife, with a husband who brought home a salary, or if she enjoyed being part of the working world. As far as she could see, work made her mother no happier than keeping house ever had. Sarah’s mouth was still compressed in the same tight line, her face permanently set in its expression of displeasure whether she’d
spent the day cooking and cleaning at home or selling dresses at Hudson’s. “I don’t think she cares too much about making a happy home,” Jo said.

“She doesn’t have young children,” Lynnette pointed out.

“True. But I think she likes having somewhere to go every day. Something to do.”

“Maybe it keeps her from thinking about your father,” Lynnette suggested.

Jo drummed her fingers on Lynnette’s soft sheets. “I’m actually not sure she misses him.”

Lynnette looked shocked. “Of course she does!”

“I’m not sure,” Jo repeated. She believed that her mother enjoyed the independence widowhood had conferred, not to mention the power over the checkbook, the car keys, and the decision about where—and if—Jo would go to college.

“Are you still going to that thing on Saturday?” Lynnette asked, rolling onto her side and pulling the sheet up to her chin.

“That thing is a picket.” Jo felt a brief flare of annoyance. “And yes, I am.” Since her junior year, Jo had spent one Saturday a month picketing somewhere in Detroit. In March, she and a few other kids from Bellwood High had driven to Lansing to participate in an NAACP demonstration for housing equality on the steps of the statehouse building. For months, she’d tried to get Lynnette to come with her. First, she’d tried to make the case that, in a world where everything was equal, they’d be able to date each other. Lynnette had just stared at her, looking shocked, so quickly, Jo had said, “Just keep me company. It’ll be fun!” “I’ll see,” Lynnette said, but every weekend she had an excuse, saying that she had to help her mother with the boys, or study for a test, or wash her hair. “I’m sure you’ll have great stories!” she told Jo, and indeed, Jo came back full of tales of how Al Hymowitz had spent the entire ride in both directions quoting from
The Communist Manifesto
, and how Deenie Altshuler had seen a photographer from the
Detroit News
and had gotten so upset about her parents possibly seeing her picture in the paper that she’d dropped her
sign to throw her hands over her face.

Lynnette rolled onto her back, lifting her arms over her head in a way that made her breasts rise enticingly. “Remind me again why you care.”

“Because,” Jo said, bending to plant a row of kisses from Lynnie’s shoulder to her neck, “I believe in fairness.” She kissed one cheek. “I believe in equality.” She kissed the other. “And I think that people should be able to eat, or swim, or go to school wherever they want to.” She pulled down the sheet and blew a raspberry on Lynnette’s belly. Lynnette shrieked, then tried to push Jo’s head away.

“You know what I think?” Lynnette said, once she’d caught her breath. “I think you just like making your mom see red.”

“It’s a nice side effect.” Lynnette knew the story of Mae and Mae’s daughter Frieda. She also knew about the time Jo and Bethie had gone to the public swimming pool on Belle Isle on Memorial Day weekend the previous summer. The pool was scheduled to open at ten o’clock, and families had gotten there early to stand in line, mothers laden with tote bags and snacks and towels wrapped in rubber bands, fishbelly-pale kids running around in swimsuits that had gotten too small over the winter, or in ones that had been handed down from an older brother or sister and flopped around their legs or gaped loose at their chests. On the opposite side of the fence, four black boys had stood, with their fingers hooked through the chain link, watching quietly as the gates opened and the white kids whooped and cannonballed into the water, ignoring the lifeguard’s shouts and their parents’ pleas to slow down and be careful and watch where they were jumping. The kids hadn’t said anything, and of course they hadn’t tried to get into the pool, but the look of longing on their faces had stayed with Jo all through the summer. When she’d told Lynnette about it, Lynnette had shrugged, asking, “They’ve got their own places, right?”

“Come on,” Jo said. She set her feet on the pale-pink carpet that was a few shades lighter than the pink-patterned wallpaper
and bent down to collect her clothes. “Time to cook.”

Lynnette groaned, but got to her feet, pulled on her robe, and rummaged around until she found a magazine on her desk. “I have a plan. Your mother thinks you’re incapable, right?”

“You know she does,” said Jo.

“Well.” Lynnette was smiling, visibly pleased with herself. “Sarah’s not going to think you’re a failure as a woman if you come home with . . .” She opened the magazine to a page she’d marked, and beamed. “Strawberry Pineapple Ring!”

“Mmm,” said Jo, because “Mmm” was part of the recipe’s official name. She and Lynnette read it out loud, together: “Strawberry Pineapple Ring! Mmm!”

“I don’t have any pineapple,” said Jo.

“Well, today must be your lucky day,” said Lynnette, skipping downstairs to the kitchen and producing a can of pineapple from her mother’s pantry. Jo studied the label, thinking that this did not sound like a good idea. Experimentation was not her strong suit. “Maybe we should just keep it simple? Besides, I bought cherry Jell-O, not strawberry.”

Lynnette shook her head. “You’re overthinking. It’s red, isn’t it?” When Jo nodded, Lynnette pulled the magazine out of her robe’s pocket and continued to read. “Fresh strawberries. Got ’em. Pineapple syrup.” She frowned, then shrugged. “I’ll bet we can just use maple.” Quickly, she and Jo assembled the dish, adding hot water to the powdered Jell-O, pouring it into a plastic mixing bowl, and mixing in the canned fruit and the cut-up strawberries, as well as the lemon juice the recipe called for. Jo stirred and poured at Lynnie’s direction. After she slid the pan into the refrigerator, Lynnette looked at the clock and gave her a slow, saucy smile. “So now it’s got to thicken. Want to take a shower?”

Jo did. They stayed in the bathroom until the hot water ran out. When Jo flicked at Lynnette’s bottom with a rolled-up towel, Lynnette squealed and went racing out of the bathroom naked, with only a shower cap on her head, and Jo, wearing only a towel, in pursuit. Laughing, Jo rounded the corner to Lynnette’s
bedroom and almost slammed into Randy Bobeck, who’d just come up the stairs. Randy held up both of his hands in front of his chest in a warding-off gesture. His eyes and his mouth were both opened wide as his gaze moved from Jo to his sister and bounced back to Jo again.

Lynnette screamed—for real, that time. She put one arm over her breasts and stuck the other hand between her legs. “Randy, you fink!” she shrieked, before slamming her bedroom door. “ ’Scuse me,” Jo muttered, hurrying back to the bathroom, hoping that Randy wasn’t looking, imagining that probably he was.

A few minutes later, Lynnette knocked on the bathroom door. She was dressed in her new Jonathan Logan double-knit dress, dark brown, scattered with red and pink flowers, along with hose and shoes. “Did he see anything?” she whispered, stepping inside. Her face was pale; her eyes were enormous.

“No.” Jo tried to sound confident, when the truth was that she didn’t know what Randy saw, or what he might be thinking. Two girls, mostly naked, laughing and chasing each other. Would Randy think it was just the kind of thing girls did if they were very good friends? Jo swallowed hard. “Don’t worry,” she told Lynnette. “We weren’t doing anything. He didn’t see anything. It’s fine.”

Lynnette shook her head. She still looked terrified. “If he says something to my parents . . . if this gets out at school . . .”

“It won’t. Because we weren’t doing anything. It’s fine,” Jo repeated. Lynnette gave a single, tight-lipped nod, and she barely looked at Jo as she handed over the button-down shirt and dungarees that Jo had worn over.

Downstairs, Jo took the Bundt pan out of the refrigerator while Lynnette called her brothers.

“Randy! Gary! We have to go now!”

The whole way back to Alhambra Street, Jo could barely breathe. She listened to the boys in the back seat talking about the prospects of the Detroit hockey team, as opposed to how Randy had seen their big sister cavorting naked with her best friend.

“Bye,” she said to Lynnette, who’d gotten the car moving again almost before Jo had slammed the trunk shut. Jo rolled her bike into the garage, went to the kitchen, and slid the pan into the refrigerator, noticing, as she did, that the Jell-O seemed to be a little watery, wishing there was a way to check and see if it had set, knowing that all she could do was hope.

“Hi, Mom,” Jo said. The house smelled delicious. The wineglasses sparkled, the flowers brightened the room, but Jo still felt sick, her chest so tight she could barely manage a full inhalation.

“You’re late,” Sarah said. Her tone was clipped, her mouth compressed. She was still in her work clothes, with a frilly pink apron tied at her waist. The turkey, now cooked, was cooling on a cutting board next to the oven. “Go change.”

Jo waited until her mom was in the living room, then transferred her Jell-O from the refrigerator into the freezer, reasoning that colder temperatures would help it to set more quickly. In the bedroom, she pulled on a dark-gray wool shirtdress with white trim on the long sleeves and the collar, and slipped her feet into a pair of black flats, shoes her mother only deemed acceptable because, in heels, Jo towered over almost every man she knew. She did what she could with her hair, back-combing and spraying, in an effort that would at least show her mother that she’d tried, before pulling it back with a plastic tortoiseshell headband.

When she returned to the kitchen, Sarah was in front of the stove, whisking cornstarch into the gravy. “Fill the water glasses,” she told Jo without lifting her eyes from the pot. Jo was carrying a pitcher of water to the table when Bethie hurried through the door.

“I’m sorry!” she said. “I went to Denise’s house.” She sounded a little out of breath, but Jo’s quick glance did not reveal anything immediately amiss. Underneath her cardigan, Bethie’s light-blue blouse was buttoned correctly, tucked into her blue-and-green kilt. Her hair was neat and her lipstick was freshly applied. Jo looked at her sister and felt an ugly flare of jealousy, knowing that
Denise’s older brother was home from college and that it was possible Bethie had spent her afternoon with him. Knowing, too, that even if Bethie had looked like she’d just rolled out of bed, she wouldn’t have gotten in the kind of trouble Jo and Lynnette were facing, because she’d have been in that bed with a boy.

By five o’clock twilight was gathering, the sky deepening from blue to indigo outside the windows. All down the block, Jo could see lights shining through doorways and spilling onto the street, could hear the sounds of car doors closing and welcoming calls of “Glad you made it!” and “Come on in!” and “Happy Thanksgiving!” “Let’s turn the lights off,” said Bethie, and the darkness made the room look even more elegant, with the candlelight sparkling off the crystal and silver and the glass flower jars, making the white tablecloth seem to glow.