That February, General Electric got a big contract and started hiring again. The men who’d been let go first were the first to be rehired, and Daddy once again packed his lunches in the early morning and walked purposefully away to contribute to the world’s needs in his own small and mysterious way. Mom got calmer. Vegetable dinner only happened on Wednesdays now instead of Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. There was roast pork the first Sunday after he returned to work. I’d watched my mother pull out flour and butter and precious eggs and line them up on the counter just to look at them for a minute or two before she was sure she could indulge in the spectacular luxury of a cake. She saw me so still there in the doorway and asked me if I wanted to bake with her, and the invitation felt almost illicit—intimate and just a tiny bit wild. I nodded, and we spent the next hour beating and separating and whipping. I was happy.
Spring was close enough that we could smell dirt under the snow on warmer late afternoons and the sun stayed with us all the way to dinner. We felt safe again. We didn’t listen to reports about what was happening in Europe. We didn’t imagine that the world we lived in now had only had a few more months of life left in it.
MRS. DANIELS AND ME, AGAIN
The Pirate Lover
Mrs. Daniels and I moved in and out of The Odyssey. She’d pull it out of my hands whenever I stopped reading too often to ask questions or comment, which irritated her. “For heaven’s sake, girl—stop asking about Penelope! The wife is in the story but it isn’t, essentially, her story. Enough of that.” She rummaged through the pile at her side. “Let’s return to the modern world.” She handed me some copies of Good Housekeeping and we made our way through several marital advice columns and a few of Mrs. Roosevelt’s contributions. I thought Mrs. Roosevelt was a very sensible woman, but her teeth frightened me. Just a little.
“We’ll mix it up a bit,” Mrs. Daniels promised me at the end of that afternoon. “You needn’t worry—I’ll have us read the chapters where Penelope takes her ascendant place in the adventure and gets to set Odysseus to his last tests, but we can read several stories simultaneously. When you come next I’ll have winnowed out some possible titles.”
On my next visit, we sat down beside a stack that included Leaves of Grass, Candide, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frankenstein, and Black Beauty. She pulled Candide out of the mix just as I was reaching for it. “That was an error,” she said. “There are things there that perhaps your mother would object to your reading.” So Candide vanished, but I paid attention when she put it back on the shelf so that if an occasion to slip it into my school bag at the end of a reading session popped up, I’d be ready. I pushed Black Beauty forward as a likely candidate. I liked the picture on the cover.
“Well, that was a mistake too.” She sighed, tossing it aside. “I don’t think I can sit through the trials and tribulations of a horse. I object not to the horse itself but to the fact that I am supposed to be sentimentally outraged over the sad parts of its story. Noble abused animals. Crippled children. Insufferably manipulative claptrap. Perhaps I can find something more acceptable to both of us.” She rooted through the pile and handed me The Call of the Wild. “How do you feel about dogs and dangerous climates? This one isn’t so sentimental.” I said I was enthusiastic about dogs, and off we went into the Arctic wastes.
At home I kept on reading alone in the closet—an activity that satisfied me in ways that I didn’t really understand. I knew that according to the standards of my mother’s world, Electra Gates’s adventures were bad. I knew I was thrilled by their badness at the same time that I sometimes hid the book under my mattress, not trusting that the back of the closet was safe from discovery. My mother might go rooting around for an old snowsuit, after all. In the meantime I would close the wall of abandoned leggings behind me and go with Electra Gates while she discovered where the dangerous dress from the Marais would take her.
THE PIRATE LOVER
Soon after the ball, Electra and her mother received an invitation to a private summer house very near Calais. “My dear, it is better than we could have hoped!” cried her mother. “An invitation from Mr. Z! A country-estate weekend! I hear he keeps this summer retreat on the coast so as to more conveniently enjoy his yacht—that it has dozens of rooms and an enormous staff!”
After so many hours spent in Parisian gatherings, any reserve that once might have kept Electra from repeating slander was quite gone. “They say Mr. Z keeps this country house in Calais, Mother, so that he can continue his illegal smuggling back and forth from England. He is British, is he not?”
“Many people are, Electra. They cannot help it. As to how the man has acquired his wealth, what do you care what is said? Who knows who will be present this weekend.”
“So, Mama, we are to care nothing of what is said about illegal smuggling, and to pay close attention to what is said about Mr. Z’s yacht and Mr. Z’s friends.”
“Impertinent creature. You know very well that this invitation could be the result of one of those friends specifically asking for your presence. Perhaps that horrible Marais dress did its work after all.” Her mother moved through their rooms quickly. “Mr. Z is sending a carriage for us. He has arranged everything—a true gentleman.”
They were swept off in a coach-and-four. A broken wheel delayed them halfway there and they arrived long after dark, dusty and hungry. They could hear laughter and music from somewhere else in the enormous house, but were told by the servants who greeted them that the other guests had retired. They were ushered to a private suite, where a meal was laid before the fire. None of the servants who poured their wine, drew their baths, and turned down their beds spoke more than a few words. “Breakfast in the dining room whenever you choose to rise, ma’am,” said the last as he slipped out of their suite.
“How wonderful!” Electra’s mother cooed. “How luxurious.”
That morning found them still oddly alone.
“It’s strange,” Electra murmured. “Mother, didn’t you hear others last night?”
“Of course not. The servant said they had all retired.”
“Are there not other guests?” Electra asked the pigtailed fellow who served them as they sat in splendid isolation along the long dining-room table.
“I couldn’t say, miss.”
“You are American?” she asked, surprised at his accent.
“There’s a lot of different types wash ashore here in Calais, miss. The quays are just down the road, you see, and I was one that washed ashore. Mr. Z found a use for me.”
“Where is our host?”
“I couldn’t say, miss. But I’m told to say a recently arrived friend of Mr. Z is asking to speak to your mum when she’s done with her breakfast. In the drawing room.”
Electra rose. “I am done with my breakfast. I’d be happy to see this person.”
“Just your mum, miss. Those were the orders.”
Electra’s mother dropped the bit of toast she had just spread thickly with marmalade and rose to her feet. “Just me? Of course. I’m with you entirely.”
Electra sat frozen in her place for a moment after her mother was led from the dining room. Then she rose and made her way back to their suite, as uneasy as she had ever been in her life. She would insist they leave here the moment her mother reappeared. The minutes ticked by slowly. They had become an hour before her mother returned.