Prize Women, page 7
She does love him. He’s not cruel. This is what Mae tells herself, time and again.
Now Leonard scrapes his porridge bowl. “Any chance of more milk? No? Never mind.”
He grins at her and, for a moment, he looks like the handsome, carefree man who wooed her. Who whispered that he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Before his father died of a heart attack and he took over the business fully and spent every waking moment at the office. Now, when he smiles, there are deep lines around his bloodshot eyes, even though she heard him snoring all night while she was up three times with the children.
She shouldn’t keep count of such things. It only makes her angry.
She tries to return the smile, then turns back to spooning food into Alfred’s mouth. Leonard stands behind her, strokes her arm, presses his lips to the back of her neck. He smells of cologne. Later, she will have to wash it off, or Peter will cry when she feeds him and Robert will wrinkle his nose and complain that you smell funny.
“You were up early this morning,” he says.
“Alfred was crying. He’d wet the bed.”
“Perhaps we can both go to bed earlier tonight.” He runs his hands over her shoulders.
“Sarah is having nightmares, so I’ll sit with her until she’s asleep. I’ll be late to bed.”
“You can wake me when you come up,” he says, pressing himself against her, kissing her. He is gentle, as ever. He doesn’t dictate, only ever asks.
It’s not that she dislikes sleeping with him. Only that it feels like yet another demand, yet another person wanting something from her body. And, if she is unlucky, yet another baby.
She feels the familiar rising in her chest, the crushing compression, as if a giant hand is squeezing all the air from her lungs. She closes her eyes, draws a slow breath, then another. It doesn’t help. The darkness still squats there, a cold, tentacled ache.
“I really would like . . .” she says. “Can we talk about—”
“Can we talk about what? What would you like?” He breathes into her hair. He’s still pressed against her, oblivious to the children, who are clattering their spoons in their empty bowls and, no doubt, smearing the remnants of the porridge over their clothes and the table and each other’s hair.
“I’d really like to talk about getting some help,” she says. “With the children.”
He freezes. His hands on her hips are suddenly still. “What’s wrong? Are you ill?”
“No, it’s just . . .”
“If you’re ill, you should go to the doctor.”
“I’m not ill.”
“Then I don’t understand why you need help. They’re wonderful children and you’re an excellent mother. Surely you should be enjoying it all.” Again, his voice isn’t unkind, but she can hear a touch of impatience, can hear the slight emphasis on should. She can hear the question that he won’t ask, because they’ve argued about it before: why do you find this so hard when other women manage?
“Aren’t you happy?” he asks. “You have help with the cooking and cleaning.”
She keeps her back to him, grasping the table, and nods mechanically. Other women do manage everything, and she has no idea how. She doesn’t know how they make it through each repetition of clothes-on-clothes-off, don’t-shout, stop-hitting-your-sister, do-you-want-a-story, no-you-can’t-have-candy, day after day. And each day, she feels she’s doing something wrong, either being too strict or too lax, and never, ever loving them enough. She can’t help thinking that, if she had a nanny to help, she’d at least be able to see how a woman should be a parent. And then she’d have time to think about something other than the children, and that she doesn’t know how to be a good mother, that nothing she does ever feels right.
She swallows, dries her hands, turns to face Leonard. He is frowning, but his eyes slide from hers—he already has that distant look on his face. It’s not that he doesn’t care, but this is a minor distraction when he needs to be thinking about the day ahead at the factory. He needs to plan how much more steel will have to be bought to make the endless railway tracks. He has to decide whom to employ, whom to promote, whom to sack.
“I’d like to get a job,” she says. “They’re looking for women in the typing pool. I could get up to speed again, if I practiced.”
His gaze sharpens and he takes her by the shoulders. “And who will look after our children while you’re gone?”
“I thought . . . if we got help—”
“You don’t need to get a job. We have enough money. And you like spending time with the children. They need their mother. My mother was always at home with me. I’m still thankful for that.”
“I just want to do . . . something.” Something I’m good at.
“You’re too busy anyway,” Leonard says. “You don’t need a job as well—you’d be exhausted. It wouldn’t be fair on the children.”
She flushes and drops her gaze. The darkness inside her gut shifts. The hand around her chest tightens.
“I work so you don’t have to. I like to take care of you.” He kisses her forehead. “Would you like some extra money this week? Go buy yourself something special. You can wear it at the dinner party on Friday.”
“Thank you,” she says dully. She’d forgotten about the party, when she will have to host all of Leonard’s friends—bankers, factory owners, company directors—and their beautiful wives.
In the garden, the wind gusts through the trees. A pine branch squeaks against the windowpane.
“We’re very lucky,” he says. “We mustn’t forget that.”
She hears the reprimand: don’t forget how lucky you are. Remember to be happy.
He puts his coat on. “Don’t forget my cousin Jacques is arriving today. They sent word ahead yesterday and someone should greet them, settle them in. I’ve told the driver to be ready after lunch.”
Mae closes her eyes. She’ll have to take all the children with her across town. They’ll be hungry and grouchy. Peter hates cars and will cry all the way. Leonard sees her expression and says, “It won’t take long. Chin up.”
A fine spattering of rain hits the window.
When the doorbell sounds two hours later, Mae is trying to rock Peter to sleep, while Betsy and Sarah argue over a doll, and Robert is taking the coals out of the unlit fireplace while the maid, Clara, begs him to stop. Alfred is crying while trying to climb up her legs and calling, “Mama! Mama!”
“Just a minute, Alfred! Robert, stop that now. Girls, put that doll down.”
The doorbell shrills.
“Will you stop it and be quiet!” Mae snaps at the children, brushing Alfred off her legs and snatching the coal roughly from Robert’s hands. Both boys start howling, along with the girls, who have broken the doll. Even Clara takes a step back. Baby Peter, who has been woken by the doorbell and Mae’s shout, begins to wail.
Mae fixes a smile on her face and is ready to greet the postman or the milkman or the grocer’s boy but, instead, finds herself face-to-face with Leonard’s sister, Millicent. As always, she is perfectly turned out, her blond hair sleek under her cloche hat, her skin flawlessly pale and her lips in an affected moue of surprise.
“Oh, my dear, hello! Leonard did say you were in a mess, but I didn’t expect . . .” Millicent gestures at the crying children, Mae’s unruly hair, the shattered doll. She raises her arms and shrugs prettily. “Goodness! I thought I could watch the children when you go across to help your cousin—is that this afternoon? Leonard said—yes?”
Mae sighs. Jacques is Leonard and Millicent’s cousin, not hers, but Millicent prefers not to involve herself with relatives who require support or assistance, and Mae can’t find the energy to correct her. Millicent had spent quite some time in various “finishing schools,” although it’s never been clear to Mae why more than one finishing school would have been necessary. Millicent’s time at these places has given her a large number of strong opinions and a great confidence in her own abilities. Leonard says, with long-suffering indulgence, that Millicent went to three finishing schools so that she can finish everyone else off.
“Yes,” Mae says. “I’m going to help Jacques and Thérèse settle into their rooms. Leonard has given me some money to pass on, and I think Jacques has a job at the factory.”
“Yes, yes,” Millicent says. “Leonard always thinks of everything. Clever boy, always has been. You can go across after lunch. I was hoping we might find time for a little chat, but you don’t look quite right.”
Mae runs her fingers self-consciously through her hair.
“You’ve porridge on your cheek, my dear.” Millicent laughs.
That bright, lighthearted giggle has always grated on Mae, but she forces herself to smile. “Come in, Millicent,” she says, wiping her cheek and opening the door.
Millicent steps through, dodging Alfred’s attempt at an embrace and sidestepping the pile of stones that Robert collected in the park yesterday. “Goodness!” she says again, staring at the children, who have stopped crying and are gaping at their glamorous aunt. “Leonard wasn’t exaggerating. You really are in a mess. How do you manage it? I think I’d find it all terribly depressing. Now, don’t mind me, I’m here to help free you from the shackles of domestic drudgery.”
Millicent is active in the National Council of Women in Canada, and often tells Mae that she shouldn’t spend her life weighed down by children. Women, she tells Mae, should be free and liberated. There is no talk, of course, about how some women might be freer than others.
Now she surveys the hallway and smiles brightly. “So, children, if you could amuse yourselves. Go on, run away and play. Your mother’s just going upstairs to lie down. And”—she winks at the children—“if you’re very good, I’ll give you candy.”
“Actually,” says Mae, “they won’t eat lunch if they stuff themselves, so I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Oh, Lord, Mae! Don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. A little candy is just what you need, isn’t it, children?”
Against the children’s shrieks of “Candy!” and Mae’s vehement protests, Millicent has the children bundle up the bits of shattered doll and broken coal into a single grubby pile, which Clara gazes at in despair, then looks embarrassed when Mae tries to clear it up.
Millicent ushers Mae upstairs to her room. “Go and rest, dear. You look dreadful. Perhaps find yourself something nice to wear. That always cheers me up.”
Upstairs, Mae opens her wardrobe and stares at the rows of neatly hung dresses, many of them still in their store wrappings. She should wear them with Leonard when she goes to the functions and parties with his work colleagues, but all the clothes feel like the trappings of another person’s life—costumes for a capable wife and mother. Mae sits rigidly on the unmade bed, listening to the chaos from downstairs, and then the silence as each child’s mouth is closed with their promised piece of candy. Some part of her worries about the children choking, but the other part of her can’t seem to move.
A minute or so later, there is a gentle knock and Millicent peers around the door, her kohl-lined eyes widening as she takes in the rumpled bed, the open wardrobe, the unworn dresses.
“Oh dear. You poor thing.”
Millicent sits on the bed next to Mae and takes her hand. Her fingers are warm, her skin is smooth and her fingernails are perfect. Next to her, Mae feels like a chap-skinned old woman, even though Millicent is five years her senior. Along with her involvement in the National Council of Women, Leonard’s older sister is a perennial flapper girl, happily unmarried, childless, and merrily living off her half of the inheritance from Leonard’s parents, along with the monthly allowance he sends her.
Mae has always thought of Millicent as selfish and loud and shallow, but now, looking at her clean hands, her smooth stockings, her perfectly ironed skirt, she is consumed with envy. What she wouldn’t give to belong to Millicent’s carefree life of parties and drinks and late nights, followed by days of lunching and listening to speeches about the rights of women. Instead, Mae feels like an impostor a bad actress making a poor job of some other woman’s life.
As if reading her thoughts, Millicent says, “It’s exhausting.” Or perhaps she’s talking about Mae’s life—the sleepless nights, the bickering, the five screaming children.
“It is.”
“Look, my dear. I’m not wearing the right clothes for . . .” She waves a manicured hand toward the messy bed. “And the maid can do that, surely. But perhaps I can tidy you up a little. That always makes me feel better, if I look more . . .” she narrows her eyes at Mae, “. . . alive. You just seem a little down in the dumps. A touch of the doldrums—everyone gets them. Especially with all this . . . anarchy. As I always say, a woman should be able to choose her own life, but you do seem to have made rather a lot of choices, and they’re all very hungry and noisy.” She winks at Mae, who finds herself suddenly close to tears at the touch of Millicent’s hand—its tenderness and lack of demand.
“No sniffles now, my darling. So, powder. A little lipstick. See, I have one here. Turn your face this way.”
And Millicent holds Mae’s jaw as she paints her lips in the same scarlet shade that she is wearing, then brushes her nose with powder and runs a black pencil along her lower eyelids.
“There now,” she says, holding a pocket mirror up to Mae’s face. “Doesn’t that feel better? You’re so beautiful. This wonderful blond hair! And your skin is really rather good, you know, all things considered.”
Mae stares at the face in the mirror: the tired blue eyes, lined in heavy black; the papery skin, creased with powder, and the lurid red lips. She thinks of how much she looks like her grandmother, after the undertaker had worked on her face to make her presentable for the open coffin. The thought is so ridiculous, so awful, that Mae giggles, and tears well in her eyes.
“Oh, Lord,” Millicent says. “Please don’t cry. I’m no good with the weepies. Besides, your makeup will run.” She passes Mae a tissue. “People tell me it becomes easier over time. I have friends who seem to cope very well with children. Perhaps this is just a bad patch.” She gives a glossy smile.
“Peter is crying,” says Mae, and stands.
“Heavens, not more crying! No, I’ll get him. You stay there.”
Millicent taps from the room and down the stairs, and Mae listens to her lifting Peter and talking to him softly. She’s probably telling him she’s no good with the weepies but whatever she says seems to work, because when she brings Peter into the bedroom, he grins at Mae gummily and holds out his arms.
She pulls him close and he snuggles into her.
Millicent watches them, twirling the beads at her neck. “Listen,” she says. “Why don’t you rest with baby Alfred up here and I’ll watch the others?”
“This is Peter. Alfred is his brother.”
“Yes, yes.” Millicent’s smile doesn’t falter. “Peter. But when you breed at such a rate, my dear, you can hardly blame me for losing track. Now, you rest awhile.”
Mae wants to shake her head but finds herself nodding and saying thank you. She struggles to hold back tears again as she puts Peter into his crib for a nap and lies down on the bed.
Millicent draws the curtains, blows an extravagant kiss, and softly shuts the door.
Mae remains rigid in the half-darkness, listening to Millicent’s cheerful voice downstairs and the children’s replies. No shouting, no arguments, no tears.
She imagines staying like this: distant from her children, but knowing they are safe and well. And for the first time in months, the clawing sensation in her chest loosens. It occurs to her that they would all be much happier without her dragging them down. Quietly, she eases herself up from the mattress and fetches a small case from under the bed. In it she puts underwear and some dresses, along with two cardigans.
Peter stirs in his sleep, reaching out for her. She takes his little hand and he relaxes back into a gentle, soft-mouthed snore. And she knows she can’t do it—she can’t possibly go somewhere else, live somewhere else in the world, knowing that her children are growing older without her, knowing they are slowly forgetting her, wondering where she is.
It wouldn’t be fair to them. They would think it was their fault, and it isn’t. Far better if something just . . . happened to her. She imagines Leonard giving them the news that Mama is gone, that she had an accident, and that she’s not coming back, but that she’ll always love them. They will cry, of course, but they’ll recover. Millicent will help to look after them. Eventually, they will forget about her. Leonard will remarry and they’ll have someone new to care for them. Someone who can cope with it all.
Women have the right to choose. Isn’t that what Millicent says?
So Mae closes the suitcase, gets a pen and paper from the drawer, and writes two letters. One for Leonard, one for the children. Dry-eyed and resolute, she tucks both under Leonard’s pillow so that Millicent won’t find them when she comes to check on Peter.
She hides the half-packed suitcase, presses her lips against Peter’s warm forehead, and then walks slowly down the stairs. With each step, she feels more able to breathe.
The children are sitting at the table, bickering over a box of dry crackers. Millicent is leafing through Mae’s copy of the Canadian Home Journal that Leonard buys for her each quarter, and which Mae never has time to read.
“Goodness!” Millicent says. “This rag has a lot to say about cushions and pot roast. It reminds me of school. I’ve done my very best to forget as much of this as I can. Doesn’t your brain turn to cabbage as soon as you read it?” The horror in Millicent’s voice, along with Mae’s increasing feeling of lightness, actually allows her to laugh.
“Darling,” Millicent says, “it’s wonderful to see you looking happier. I can come once a week to help. Well, perhaps not every week, but I’ll certainly visit more often.”
“Thank you,” Mae says. “And are you truly happy to stay for the afternoon, while I settle Jacques and Thérèse into their rooms?”
“Of course. Take as long as you like. Look, you can borrow my dark glasses and then no one will see those ugly circles under your eyes.”
