CLAIRE, 1961
Claire came from a generation of women who did not question things. A generation raised by women who didn’t question. Before her mother died, during the sixteen years when they got to be mother and daughter, she’d taught Claire the things she believed a woman needed to know: always wear a hat to keep the sun off your face so you don’t get wrinkles; moisturize every day; never go to bed with your makeup on; if you put Vaseline on your hands and a pair of white cotton gloves over them and go to bed like that, your hands will always be soft; a man likes soft hands; always get up before your husband so that you can do your own morning routine in private, make yourself look pretty, and have his breakfast ready when he wakes up; keep up on current events; agree with your husband’s opinion, even if you think he’s a horse’s ass for believing that; buy lard fresh from the butcher and use it in fried chicken, piecrusts, and seven-minute frosting; the key to a perfect dinner is to serve meat with a starch and a vegetable and to always have candlelight; everything tastes better when eaten by candlelight; know how to sew a hem, darn a sock, replace a button—these skills help to make you indispensable; never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink or cigarette butts in the ashtray; never refuse your husband’s sexual desires; get your hair done every week; when asked to bring something to a dinner party, bring it on a plate that you leave as a gift; always let the man drive; men take out the trash and mow the lawn; always wait for the man to open a door for you and light your cigarette; a woman needs to know how to swim, skate, and ride a bike; never swear in front of a man; and Claire, honey, love goes out the window when there’s no money. A woman knows how to live on a budget, to stretch a dollar, to cook hamburger meat at least six different ways, in patties and Salisbury steak and chili and poor man’s beef Stroganoff and Sloppy Joes and meatloaf.
Her mother spoke, and Claire listened.
“At thirty cents a pound,” her mother would say, shaping hamburger with chopped onion and Worcestershire sauce into perfect patties, “I can make four of these. One for you, one for me, two for Daddy.”
Claire watched her mother, always in a dress covered with an apron, always in high heels and earrings, move around the kitchen like it was a dance floor. The wallpaper was yellow with a pattern of red and blue teapots. The stove and refrigerator matched, both a shade of yellow that even now, when Claire saw something that color, made her think of her mother. If she closed her eyes she could even smell her mother’s L’Air du Temps and Aqua Net.
“Why does Daddy get two?” Claire asked. She sat perched on the sink with its blue plastic drainer, neat stack of Brillo pads, gold container of Borax, and the ceramic frog whose gaping mouth held sponges.
“Number one,” her mother said without breaking stride, slicing tomatoes and shredding iceberg lettuce, “because he’s worked all day, and number two because women have to watch their weight.”
On warm nights, Claire and her mother sat together on the glider on the screened-in porch and listened to the crickets. In the distance, where the houses stopped and the fields began, they could sometimes see fireflies. As a little girl, she would join other neighborhood children and collect them in an empty mayonnaise jar. Her mother poked holes in the lid so they could at least live a few hours.
“Watch,” her mother said. “They flash for six seconds, then go dark for six seconds.”
Claire watched and counted. Six seconds of flashing. Six seconds of darkness.
“Like Morse code,” her mother said.
From the basement came the sound of her father’s electric saw.
“What message are they sending?” Claire asked.
“The males are calling the females, I think. Look at me! Look at me!”
Claire smiled, but her mother looked serious, staring off at the light show.
“Are you happy?” Claire blurted, surprising herself. She had never considered such a thing before, if her mother was happy or not.
“Don’t be silly,” her mother said softly.
“What is love?” Claire used to ask her mother as they sat together at the kitchen table waiting for their nails to dry, blowing on them and waving them in the air. China Doll Red or Bermuda Pink or Coral Reef, the shiny colors glistened and her mother always answered the same way.
“You just know.”
Such an unsatisfying answer. Claire would scowl and try to figure out what her mother meant. Was love so unique, so special, that when it happened it made itself absolutely known? The way Gloria Delray performed her cheers every Saturday at football games. She shook her pompoms and shouted Give me a W as if no one could possibly be a better cheerleader, a prettier girl. She jumped the highest and did the most cartwheels and smiled the widest brightest smile.
“Sometimes,” Claire said softly, “I hate Gloria Delray.”