by Lynn Cullen
She was studiously doing just that as Stella wrenched her arm from its socket, when a football skidded on the sidewalk in front of her. The dog lunged for it, nails scrabbling on cement.
A boy slicked back the blond lock that was flapping in rhythm with the wide legs of his flannel trousers as he trotted up—a rich kid, or at least his family had been, before The Crash. He grinned. “Hey, gorgeous, has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful?”
The knee-jerk burst of relief that came from hearing that as a matron of thirty-two, she had not yet totally lost “it,” evaporated. The heat of shame leaped up in its place, her fig leaf of status snatched away. Her Chicago-bought clothes, her Bes-Ben hat, her diamond ring were for naught. She was back to being a nobody, just a good-looking broad, unworthy of respect. How did he know?
Aware of the ragged man watching them as he stuffed a fallen bird into his gunny sack, she pried the ball from Stella’s mouth to make her escape. And then, even as the sweat of embarrassment sprang into the dress shields under her arms, it came to her: she could do a football-shaped chocolate cake for Take a Trick, playing up Clark Gable’s image as an athlete.
Already scheming how this might be achieved—she could cut the layers and reassemble them!—the milk chocolate frosting could be dappled to resemble leather!—she had absentmindedly heaved back the ball to the startled youth. Here, shake your tail feathers, sonny!
Now, as she smelled the bacon Darlene was cooking, she realized a cake that looked like a football would never excite men as much as something with bacon in it. Although she wouldn’t eat the stuff—she felt too sorry for the pigs—she knew that her bosses thought recipes with fatty meats, and any other foods that men particularly liked, sold flour well, even though women were the ones usually buying the product. Maybe if she used bacon as a seam on a football-shaped waffle . . .
She took a stool. As sophisticated as she and her pearls were supposed to be, she wasn’t the best at developing recipes, one of every girl’s duties on the job. They were expected to follow their products from the time the items were hatched in the research lab, through the famous Betty Crocker “Kitchen-testing,” then through market testing and on to promotion on Betty’s radio show and in publications. They all chipped in to answer Betty’s fan mail, too—four thousand letters on some days, nothing to sniff at. They spent a portion of each day doling out their expert advice on cooking, homemaking, and, often, men. (Those letters were handed to Darlene.) They signed their responses in Betty’s rounded, uniform, maybe a tad childish signature. One of the fellows in Advertising had chosen it.
The glass doors to the test kitchen crashed open. In barged a substantial woman, hair-netted, wire-spectacled, and sprigged-cotton-clad. A large patent leather purse hung from one fleshy arm and a picnic basket from the other.
“We’ve come to see Betty Crocker!”
The girls stopped in their work, alert as a herd of deer.
Advertising had been stepping up their encouragement of Betty Crocker’s radio fans to visit her in her kitchen in Minneapolis. June worried about the wisdom of this. The country was oozing with lonely, desperate, destitute women, women anxious for something to cling to with so many of their men cut adrift. Over the last four years, America had become a nation of hoboes and Hoovervilles, bank robbers and soup lines, home foreclosures and skyscraper leaps. In Minneapolis, men walked around the Gateway District with a stunned, sheepish expression on their faces. Jobless single women lived in the stacks in the libraries or in the train station, speaking to no one, as elusive as ghosts. Packs of children snuck into the comforting darkness of the movie shows, where Frankenstein and King Kong scared them less than their own sleepwalking parents.
Even the weather had gone haywire, breaking heat and drought records across the country. In some parts of the West, waves of jackrabbits, grasshoppers, and spiders had descended, all of them hungry for the crops that had already been lost. Millions of families courted disaster of some sort each day, and they were starved for relief and diversion. Betty Crocker gave it to them. Oh, sometimes Betty’s radio shows sounded trivial, with her finicky football players looking for wives, her infantile bachelor doctors, and her no-roll pie crusts. She spent entirely too much time showcasing the thoughts, desires, and recipes of movie stars. Who gave two figs what Bing Crosby ate for supper?
But often what Betty Crocker did was heroic. She was at her best when she cheered on everyday women, making them feel proud of holding their families together. She gave them the strength to dry their eyes on their aprons and get cooking for their paralyzed men and frightened kids, no matter what disaster was on their doorstep. She gave women hope. She gave them advice. She gave them cookies. She was America’s mother. June wished, fervently, that she were hers.
It was a shame that Betty didn’t exist.
At the visitor’s hip wavered her thin, younger version down to the same flowered print, as if Mama had been cranked through some sort of grinder that took off years and pounds. She ducked her head at the girls. “We don’t know if she’s here, Mother. She might be on the radio now.”
The mother’s small steel-edged teeth shone along with her glasses in the artificial light. “Can’t be. It’s not showtime.”
Over bowls and clipboards, the girls exchanged glances. Would she go easily or hard? You couldn’t tell by looking. Sometimes the sweetest old ladies fought like bobcats.
“Nonsense. She said to come visit her in her kitchen and here we are!” The mother lifted her arms, bashing her basket against a refrigerator. Out from under the lid popped the flop-eared head of a beagle pup.
Darlene from Endeavor went first. “Good morning!” She kept stirring as she approached the visitors. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we don’t allow animals in here. Health department orders.”
The dog dropped back inside the basket as if he understood.
“There was nobody at home to watch him.” The mother placed a protective hand over the basket lid. “We’ve come all the way from Topeka. At great expense.”
June eased to her feet, a green feeling rising in her throat. In her peripheral vision, she could see the other girls cautiously leaving their bowls and pans and cookie sheets. She picked up one of the boxes of tissues placed around the kitchen just for these occasions.
“We’d better go, Mother.”
“No, Enid. Betty and I are friends! We’ve exchanged letters. I’ve got them right here.” The mother released her purse clasp with clumsy gloved fingers. When it gaped open, carefully slit envelopes, a handkerchief, a coin purse, a box of Milk Duds, a hand-colored portrait of a young man, and a copy of Betty’s 15 Ways to a Man’s Heart tumbled out in a colorful shower. The little booklet fell open to a photo of Betty Crocker. “It’s easy to have ‘A WAY WITH MEN,’ ” it crowed, “just try these recipes!”
The other girls were scooping up the items and stuffing them in the woman’s purse when June stepped up, smiling in spite of the nausea that always flared before a confrontation. “May I help you?”
The mother gasped. “You’re . . . Betty.” She grabbed June’s wrist. Her voice broke. “Betty! It’s me. Blanche from Topeka!”
“I’m so sorry, dear, but I’m not Betty.”
The mother thrust her face close, her gloved fingers digging into June’s wrist. “Look at those blue eyes, that sweet smile, that slim neck, just like in your pictures. Though you’re blonder than I thought.” She squinted at June’s hair. “Did you peroxide?”
June actually did somewhat resemble the painting of Betty used by Advertising, although it was just a coincidence. The forefathers had had Betty drawn up years before June was hired. “I’m afraid I’m not Betty Crocker, ma’am.”
“I guess you don’t really sound like her.” Reluctantly, the mother let go. “Then where is she?”
June swallowed back another green wave. Her head was starting to pound. Her whole life, conflict had undone her. She didn’t know why. You’d think that her life as a society wife would
have eased her discomfort, but it hadn’t. If anything, it had made it worse.
“I am sorry to tell you this,” she said, “but there is no one, single Betty.”
“What? What do you mean? I don’t understand.” The mother looked from June to the other girls, forming a semicircle around her. “Who’s that on the radio, the friend of all the movie stars and society folk, the peach who’s always helping gals to land men? She’s got those nephews who have that terrible habit of gobbling up all her goodies, the rascals. You know—Betty!”
“I think you might mean Agnes White,” June said gently. “Agnes performs on the national show. That’s her lovely voice that you hear.”
“Agnes who? Are those her nephews?”
June massaged her pearl choker. “You also might be interested to learn about Marjorie Husted. She writes all our marvelous radio scripts.”
The mother shook her head. “So she’s the aunt of those boys?”
“Wait a minute.” The daughter’s face had gone tight. “We know that Betty has a lot of helpers testing out her recipes and such. She says so on the radio and in her letters. Is that who you are?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Karen from Nebraska, perhaps too quickly.
“Well,” said the daughter, “we didn’t come all this way to meet them.”
The mother opened her purse again and drew out the portrait. “Here’s my boy Alvin who I wrote Betty about.” She displayed the picture with the edges between her palms so as not to fingerprint it. “I know that Betty says she’s having too much fun baking cakes to marry, but she’s got to be lonely.” She shifted as if irritated by her girdle. “I promise you, my Alvin will make Miss Crocker a bang-up husband. He’s a wonderful son and he’s got good work—he’s a brakeman on the railroad. Tell Betty that! She might be interested.”
“Mother,” the daughter said grimly, “don’t you see? What they are saying is that there is no Betty. I think they made her up.”
Still holding up the portrait, the mother gazed around the circle. “Why would they lie?”
“You’re getting double your money’s worth with all of us!” Darlene exclaimed. “We are all Bettys.”
“No, you’re not.”
The charade was over. Time to cut their losses. June held out the box of tissues, the sight of which released the woman’s tears. It always did.
The daughter’s voice was thick. “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
June offered her a Kleenex, too, the pearls around her neck suddenly heavy. It was the third marriage proposal that Betty had received in the mail this week but the first delivered in person by a parent. She drew an exhausted breath. “They need water. Could somebody please bring these tired women a glass of water?”
She felt her way back to her stool and dropped down as the other Bettys helped the visitors.
Ten minutes later, mother and daughter were at a table in the tasting room, sipping water and eating Cheese and Bacon Waffles, a stack of autographed Betty publications next to their plates. Judy from Duluth, the most junior Betty, smiled and chatted with them as she signed another booklet in the slightly juvenile Crocker signature. Under the table, the beagle puppy lapped water from a china soup bowl that someone had produced.
Darlene settled next to June at their table in the test kitchen. “I’m all thumbs when we get caught, but you are so good at soothing people. How’d you ever learn that?”
The sleeves of June’s white dress swished as she crossed her arms. She drew in a breath, then let it out with a smile. “What other recipes do you have for Clark Gable?”
TWO
Indiana-Michigan Line, 1934
The wooden head of the clothespin dug into Ruth’s palm as she clipped John’s undershirt to the rope line. She was surprised by how much it hurt. She didn’t think she had a tender place left on her body, what with all the milking, hoeing, hoisting, and hauling that she had to do with a husband permanently laid up in bed, not to mention having to ride herd over four kids. Work boots weren’t as tough. She was only thirty.
She glanced at the barn then walked along, swiping her forehead with the sleeve of her faded dress as she pinned. She must have been nuts to have told Mother she’d finish hanging up the wash for her in this heat. Today at dawn the thermometer outside the kitchen window said eighty-seven degrees. Who ever heard of such weather on May 8th in northern Indiana? 1933 held the record for the hottest year ever, but already 1934 was breaking it. Look at the grass, prostrate in the wake of her Sunday shoes, too juiceless to lift itself. It needed rain, the crumbling empty furrows of the field behind her needed rain, everything needed rain. There hadn’t been a drop since March.
Another glance at the barn, then she plucked a wet dress from her basket. A picture she’d seen in the paper last year reared up in her mind. Black blizzard sweeps plains, the caption said. In the grainy newsprint photo, a black billowing earth-to-sky cloud of dirt was devouring a town of white frame houses. She imagined frenzied deer and their fawns leaping over fences to escape, rabbits, foxes running, while earthbound cattle, trapped in their blocky bodies, huddled against the barbed wire while dust slowly filled their lungs. She saw women, children, old folks, hiding behind closed doors as dust spilled around the edges like sand through fingers. She heard children coughing.
She rammed a pin on the clothesline. Oh, quit scaring yourself. Black blizzards never made it past Oklahoma. One is never going to hit here. Her real worry was in finding what little hay there was left in the Tri-State area due to the drought. She needed to supplement her whisk-broom of a pasture, not that she had the money. Yet, at a time when so many people were losing their farms, she was never going to go under. Lucky, lucky, her. She was getting a handout from the most humbling of all sources: her own sister, June.
She threw another glance toward the barn. The scent of bleach in her daughter’s undershirt stung her nose as she clipped it to the line—her mother was way too heavy-handed with the stuff. Anyhow, she shouldn’t resent June. June was just trying to help. It had been Ruth’s own choice to marry a farmer, a risky line of work even in the best of times. She’d had other suitors back in Fort Wayne, where she’d grown up. While she might not have been the homecoming queen, the Pep Club secretary, or the girl voted Most Popular in high school as June had been, boys liked her well enough; at least the ones she wanted did.
When she had been a senior in high school, she had chosen John. No one had made her. She couldn’t say exactly why now. That she loved how he smelled didn’t seem like a good enough reason, or that he had fine brown hair that was almost black, just like her dad’s, or that he was tall. There had to be more to her attraction to him than that. Although it probably hardly counted as a reason—it probably did not matter at all—her sister, June, had wanted him, too.
Ruth had been surprised when June had first brought him home, back when June was in art school in Chicago. He wasn’t June’s type. He didn’t dress sharply, or talk a lot, or try to stand out. He wasn’t rich. Even back in high school, June’s usual boyfriends were sons of lawyers and doctors. Bigwigs. One had even been the son of a senator, if you could believe that. John was just a farmer. All he had going for him were those eyes that seemed to notice everything, and his calm. He was almost scarily calm. She could tell that June really liked him. Any little sister would have looked twice.
Now see how Ruth’s life had turned out. Then look at June’s. Was there anyone who knew them who would not have predicted this outcome?
Fury boiled up behind her breastbone. She stashed the extra clothespins into their bag hanging from the line, frisked her hair for bobby pins, then shouldered her way through the wet sheets Mother had hung earlier.
The farmhand, Nick, was leading her mother’s horse, JoJo, from the barn. “Thank you!” Ruth called out.
“You’re welcome,” Nick told her when she reached him.
Poor old JoJo started, her drooping whiskered lips flaring as if she’d been surprised that her leader had come
to a stop. Nick gave her a reassuring stroke. Beneath his slouchy brown fedora with its salt-streaked band, his whole face, lean and tanned, gathered into an easy smile.
“Thank you for what?”
He had a slight accent, having come over from Italy as a boy, his native tongue showing up only occasionally, like in the pronunciation of her name. He was from the northern part of that country, where they had light blue eyes, the same clear light blue as the aquamarine ring June had overgenerously sent Ruth’s oldest daughter, Margaret, for her birthday. How did people even have eyes that color? Such see-through blue irises didn’t seem possible to someone as cow-eyed as she was.
“Thank you for taking over when my sister comes. I feel terrible leaving you with everything.” The rage squeezing her lungs effervesced into butterflies. It was those aquamarine eyes.
After Dad had died last May, Mother had moved in with Ruth “to help with the girls,” but it was Nick who had saved Ruth. He’d shown up at the farm right before Mother had come, the day after Ruth had let go of the last of the farmhands who’d worked for her after John had fallen ill. It had taken him a few minutes to convince her that he was not just another hobo at the back door, looking for a sandwich—there were a surprising lot of them these days, even out here in the sticks. Or that he wasn’t a bank robber running from the law. Plenty of them were out here, too, another product of hard times, although she had yet to meet one and hoped that she never would.
He’d said he was looking for work, any work. She avoided those eyes that were already too much to look at as she told him that while she had plenty of work around the farm, she couldn’t pay him. That was the reason the last hand had left. Anyhow, she was selling the place; not that she’d get much for it in these rotten times. She was tired of holding everything together like human baling wire.
He said that until she sold out, he was fine with hiring on for room and board. He’d be happy just to have a job, as scarce as they were.