The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Recipe for Preserving Children

Take one grassy field, 1/2 dozen children, 3 small dogs, a pinch of a brook, and some pebbles. Mix the children and dogs well together and put them in the field, stirring constantly. Pour the brook over the pebbles. Sprinkle the field with flowers, spread over all a deep blue sky, and bake in a hot sun. When brown, remove the children and set away to cool in a bathtub.





TWELVE


Ophelia Goes Undercover



Ophelia took one look at her daughter’s choice of a birthday present and knew that Jed would not approve. Sarah, a long-legged, gray-eyed blonde with developing curves and a liberal peppering of freckles, had found the swimsuit she wanted on the second floor of Katz Department Store on the south side of the square in Monroeville. The suit was a bright red clingy wool knit, cut high in the legs and low in the bust. When he saw it, Jed would have a conniption fit.

But even though she felt a little disloyal to her husband, Ophelia went ahead and bought the swimsuit anyway. Times had changed—jeepers, had they ever!—and the swimsuits she had worn when she was a teenager (and which Jed would certainly approve) would be laughed at today. She remembered one fetching number her mother had bought her when she was twelve, before the Great War. It had a blousy, button-to-the-chin black top with elbow-length sleeves and a calf-length black-and-white striped skirt, and she wore it with black stockings, lace-up rubber shoes, and a frilly turban. Sarah was a sensitive young girl, and she ought to have what her friends had. In Ophelia’s opinion, the worst thing that could happen to a young girl was to feel different from all the other girls.

With the idea of somehow making it up to Jed, Ophelia went down to the men’s department and picked out a shirt for him—another boring blue plaid cotton, but it was the kind he liked and it was on sale for ninety-nine cents. She also bought a tee shirt for Sam (thirty-nine cents) and splurged on a white blouse for herself, tailored, with pearl buttons and short sleeves. It was $1.09, but well made and worth the money, she thought, and anyway she needed it, now that she was working five days a week, three of them out at Camp Briarwood, where she met a great many strangers and liked to look nice.

Then, with Sam’s baseball team picnic in mind, she shopped for hamburger (fifteen cents a pound) and hot dogs (eight cents a pound) at Haynes’ Meat Market, and got a frying chicken for twenty cents a pound for Sunday dinner. Kitty-corner across the street at the Value Rite grocery, she bought cabbage for slaw (ten cents a pound), yellow cheese to top the hamburgers (nineteen cents a pound), buns for the hamburgers and hot dogs (eight cents a package), and a dozen and a half lemons (fifteen cents a dozen) for lemonade. She had already made two apple pies for dessert, with apples that the Dahlias had canned last fall. And she had saved back a dozen eggs for an angel food cake—Sarah’s favorite—for her birthday dinner tomorrow. She didn’t have any cake flour, but she had a box of cornstarch and a bag of all-purpose flour and she knew how to make a very decent substitute for the more expensive cake flour.