by Lynn Cullen
Dorothy shied away from him. “But not with you.”
Before she could react, June grabbed her arm and pulled her inside. Ruth went for the outer door.
“Wait!” Edward blocked it with his shoulder. “That was the past. This is now. Don’t you think I could do a lot for that sick young fellow in there?”
“Look!” Ruth pointed. “Baby Face Nelson!”
When Edward glanced behind him, Ruth grabbed the door and slammed it.
June locked it quickly. “Goodbye, Mr. Lamb.”
“Look at you,” said Ruth. “All fierce.”
June’s hand remained firmly on Dorothy’s arm as, through the glass, they watched Edward dab the back of his neck with his handkerchief while he wandered toward his automobile.
Just then, in the open car window, the cross face of a cat appeared. A lanky feline body followed, trailed by a remarkably long tail. Venus balanced on the window frame, her charmed-snake of an appendage swaying, before slowly, carefully, she eased herself down the side of the car, the prolonged screeeech of her nails against metal audible even in the house. She trotted off, the glory of her white nib bobbing over her head as Edward flung open the door and dropped into the vehicle.
“That’s going to leave a mark,” Dorothy said.
“Yep.” Ruth let her approving smile fall. “Enough of this nonsense. I’ve got to get back to John.”
Her entire being trained on June’s touch, Dorothy raised fearful eyes to her daughter. She glanced away in embarrassment. “Junie, maybe we shouldn’t misbehave like this.”
But the girl was not letting go. By degrees, Dorothy let her gaze return to the face that she loved so intensely, into the eyes of the woman whose affection she had never had, nor deserved. And what she saw there was not fright, not fury, not repulsion nor disgust, not judgment, not scorn, nor even rejection, just cautious . . . wonder.
June drew a breath. “There’s always a first time, Mother.”
She left to follow Ruth.
Her old heart pumping, Dorothy pivoted slowly from the door. But as she did so, a glance toward the basement revealed her grand-girls, peering up from the stairwell like bunnies whose nest was about to be mowed over.
“Grandma!” Margaret pushed up her wire-rimmed glasses. “Please! Is it okay to come up now?”
Fear scraped Dorothy’s chest as she gazed down at the next generation of her flesh and blood. What if she offered them her comfort and none of them chose to take it? What if none of them chose to come to her when she offered herself? She wasn’t even sure if Junie would forgive her, once everything sunk in.
In her mind’s eye, William raised his long chin to look up from his stack of bills. “Dorothy, dear. You’re not dead yet.”
Her hand went to the hair on her chin, bristly and recalcitrant, still growing in spite of everything, an upstart in old age, just like her. A salty lump threatened her throat as she let go of William. I’m not, yet, am I, dear?
She opened her arms to her granddaughters. “Come on up.”
PART FIVE
FORTY-FIVE
Minneapolis, 1950
The clopping of two pairs of sturdy-heeled white shoes, as rhythmic as that of a team of matched horses, rang from the painted walls. Across the lobby, Mr. Gustafson held open the elevator door. The past sixteen years had further wizened him, elongating his withered upper lip, knobbing his cheeks, and shrinking his spry figure to truly elfin proportions, as if time had a way of concentrating a person.
His eyes shone like mercury under the crepe garlands of his lids as the sisters clattered on board. “Morning, Bettys! Mrs. Whiteleather—good to have you back! Where’s your pearls?”
Funny, while June had given them up long ago, everyone was wearing pearls these days, although perhaps not the multiple strands she used to hide behind. “Thank you, Mr. Gustafson. It’s good to be back.”
“How are you, Mr. G?” Ruth brushed at her red swing coat—quite a fashionable coat, purchased at Dayton’s. June was surprised at her sister’s good taste, now that she had a little money.
Mr. Gustafson pulled the brass gate closed with knotty hands. “Oh, I can’t complain, can’t complain. Pretty flowers.” He nodded at the bouquet of blush pink camellias dampening June’s white gloves. “For the secret project?”
June aimed the downturned brim of her hat at him. “You are determined to get me to spill the beans yet, aren’t you?”
“I’m trying!”
“Only a few more months until the unveiling in September, Mr. G.” Ruth switched her black patent leather purse to her other arm. “You haven’t long to wait.”
He whistled. “September, 1950. Never thought I’d live that long. Never thought I’d be saying nineteen-anything for the date—where did the time go? Time’s our most precious treasure, and here we run through it like a box of Red Hots.”
On the fifth floor—the Betty Crocker Kitchens had moved a few blocks to 400 Second Avenue South, some time back—Mr. Gustafson folded back the gate like an accordion, then drew open the door. “Well, go on, girls. Go make someone happy.”
“We will!” they said in unison, then, to one another, “Touch red.”
Ruth rolled her eyes, feigning annoyance. June smiled to herself. You were ever the child with your sister.
In a blur of white gloves, bright hats, and black fedoras, visitors dressed in their Sunday best—mostly women and children but also a few men looking forward to the samples—were already gathering in the glassed-in reception area. Every day brought hundreds of them, which was only to be expected after Betty insisted her listeners come visit when she hosted The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show on the radio and in a cornucopia of current publications. There was talk of Betty taking her show to television, which seemed to be a promising new way of reaching a large audience, although perhaps not as effectively as Betty’s soon-to-be-released secret project.
Already Betty’s outreach was paying off. For several years running, Betty Crocker was the “Second Most Well-Known Woman in America,” according to Fortune magazine. Only Mrs. Roosevelt beat her in popularity. As Ruth said, Not bad for a real nobody.
June could feel eager eyes scrutinizing her and Ruth as they passed by the plate-glass walls of Reception, the nearly audible turning of the guests’ mental wheels ricocheting from the modern blond wood furniture: Are you Betty? Are you?
She held her breath until she had slipped into the dressing room area. She was still often mistaken for Betty, although Advertising had changed the official portrait of Betty Crocker in 1936 to that of a somber matron. In the wallows of the Depression, Advertising finally realized what June had always thought, that the nation needed a mother, not a blue-eyed girl next door. Regardless of what Betty’s portrait looked like, however, all the girls were confused for her, even Ruth. Desperate to meet their hero, people saw what they wanted to see.
Disappointing Betty’s fans when they found out that she wasn’t real had never gotten any easier for June. For reasons she now understood, she still inwardly writhed during any confrontation, even after finding success as an illustrator (her drawings of children for Kool-Aid had launched her career, as had the ones for Heinz Tomato Ketchup); even after training other women how to think like Betty, including her independent-minded sister, before June had left the job thirteen years ago; even after meeting the challenges of raising a son. The bleak insecurity at her core did not go away just because she knew its cause. But she was working on it.
Ruth and she took off their coats, laid their hats and gloves in their cubbies, and got out aprons.
“Tie mine,” said Ruth.
June tied her sister’s apron in a bow, then turned for her sister to do hers.
The swish of nylons, laughter, and conversation filled the dressing room, rather like a cocktail party, June thought, though this one didn’t make her as nervous as did those that she attended with Richard. Socializing would never come naturally to her, not like mothering had. She’d been astonished twelve years a
go, when, after traveling across the country to Seattle after the adoption agency call, one look at her new little boy and love had billowed up and drowned out her usual inner clamor of inadequacy. This little soul trusted her, and she could not, would not, fail. Simple as that.
With forty-eight women now working as Bettys—forty-nine, if you included June, hired on for the Secret Project—all seven kitchens on the floor would soon brim with activity. Exchanging nods and chitchat, June scooped up her camellias and made her way toward what was called the “Kamera Kitchen,” where she was to work on the setup for “Baked Alaska—A Dessert of Beauty . . . and Mystery,” a spread that was to be featured in the Secret Project. She parted with Ruth at the “Polka Dot Kitchen,” so that Ruth could go on to the “Kitchen of Tomorrow,” where, under the gaze of amusing Swedish figures spouting gay Swedish mottoes, Ruth would test new products, featuring flour, always flour.
Ruth had been on the staff since coming to live in the Twin Cities in the fall of ’34. She’d been hired in a nod to the novice bakers of the world—a pity hire, in truth, although no one would say that aloud. At least they had better not say so in front of June. The bosses had heard the whispers that June’s brother-in-law had relapsed into his slumber only hours after rousing from that first vitamin shot. Although Richard would administer more injections over the next few days—emptying in desperation all the vials that he’d brought with him on the trip—John could only wake for a few minutes at a time after that first burst of energy. It was as if the vitamin shot had been just a placebo, giving John the courage to rally every bit of his life force for that evening. Perhaps that push had been too much for his heart. He had died three weeks later. Heart failure.
June plunked the camellias in the vase on the table in Kamera Kitchen. It had turned out well for Ruth to work here. She was one of the loudest advocates for spelling out even the simplest cooking techniques in the Secret Project, like how to boil an egg, one of the aspects that made the project so different and special. It burst with pictures, menus, and foolproof recipes, a homemaker’s helper for when one’s mother couldn’t teach them. Advertising would be pushing the idea that it was a cookbook for the modern woman, but June thought it might even be better than that: a tool for women to control their own world. Once they knew how to cook, to entertain, to manage the house, women didn’t need Betty Crocker to tell them what they wanted. Given enough information, they could decide that for themselves.
June was directing the photography of a Baked Alaska with meringue peaks toasted into perfection by Janice from Milwaukee, when she heard a disturbance coming from behind the glass of the visitors’ gallery. From old habit, she glanced around for a box of tissues—unnecessary, really, when the tour guides were such dab hands at substituting tears of disappointment and loss with a Kleenex and a brownie. But this time it wasn’t a reader lamenting over her discovery of the truth. It was Richard, entertaining bystanders as he ushered Mother into the Tasting Kitchen.
Even though a frequent visitor to the Home Services kitchens, Mother stood shyly to the side. She’d never shed her awkwardness in a crowd, though she did find, as did her daughters, that her appearing in public was not the calamity for her or for them that they once feared. It was Richard who kept insisting that she go out.
Now Mother waited patiently, sidling up a hand to check on the smart hat that Richard had bought her. Being a stickler for plain speaking, June imagined that Mother did not enjoy his tall tales, with one of which he was no doubt charming his current audience. But Mother did appreciate how good he was to her—good to Ruth and the kids, too, insisting that the whole family come live with them on Summit Avenue (which prickly, proud Ruth only agreed to when he offered to rent their little carriage house). He brought up old JoJo, too, and stabled her in the garage for her last few years. Even Mother’s beloved horse had the Summit Avenue life.
Still, Richard had not forgiven himself. Though June and everyone told him otherwise, he blamed himself for John’s relapse. He felt the injection had falsely encouraged John to do too much and he had taxed his nervous system from the exertion. Perhaps it truly had damaged him. That no other physicians would try the shots after John’s case only confirmed Richard’s fears and deepened his guilt.
But it was June who had felt guilty. Especially those first few months after Richie came into their lives, when Richard cuddled the child, sang him songs, brought home teddy bears, baseballs, and pogo sticks, trying desperately to make up for the years they’d lost when he’d been afraid to tell June he was infertile. Yet she knew that she was the one in the wrong. She had sold Richard short for far, far too long, wasting precious time in loving a man who was already well loved by someone else, when a good man was patiently waiting for her. If Richard could forgive her, she could forgive him.
They were reasonably happy now, as happy as anyone who has to live at the mercy of their life-time’s and life-mate’s quirks. The fact was, they were comfortable with each other’s secrets. How many couples can honestly say that?
The photographer, Dale, popped the blown flashbulb from his camera.
“Say, isn’t that your mother?”
June nodded as she took one more poke at the camellias.
Dale produced a fresh flashbulb from his pocket. “I can shoot the last of this film on my own.” He fit the bulb into the reflector. “I think we’ve already got what we want.”
“Thank you, Dale.”
June clicked her way over the spotless tiles even as her sister emerged from the Kitchen of Tomorrow, as if it were nothing of consequence for them to go over and claim the elderly woman behind Richard, fidgeting with her new red hat.
HOW THE STORY BEGINS
1908
Little Ruth felt herself being shaken. She opened an eye. Six-year-old June leaned over her, the sleeves of her red robe dragging against Ruth’s covers.
“Get up! Santa’s been here!”
Ruth sat up and rubbed her eyes, then blinked at the top of June’s wavy gold hair as her big sister jammed slippers on her feet and buttoned her into her robe. She slid off the bed and let June lead her, slippers scuffing across the wood floor.
They crouched at the entrance to the front room. Empty pink sockets flashed where June’s baby teeth had recently been.
* * *
Ruth tears the paper from the typewriter with a rrrrip!
In this revision, she needs to start the book in a different place, somewhere more exciting. Who cares about kids at Christmas? Maybe she should start with Dorothy’s recollections. Or with June being one of the Bettys. Ruth read somewhere that you should always throw out your first chapter and go with the second.
She feeds in another sheet, adjusts the gooseneck light on her desk, then sits back. Problem is, she likes little Ruth. Such a spirited sprite, just like her own girls had been. When she stares out the tulle-swagged windows over the garage, the venetian blinds open to the night, she can still see the girls gamboling on the lawn like they used to, making up stories, bossing each other around, disagreeing, then agreeing, laughing, shouting, singing. Such brassy, bold, outrageous things. Such tender and forgiving hearts.
She thinks maybe she should start with the little girls after all. She leans forward to type, then flops against the wooden harp of the chair-back again. Who’s she kidding, thinking this book will see the light of day? What publisher is going to take it? They say to write what you know, but who cares what she knows? She’s no Dame Daphne du Maurier. She’s no globe-trotting Michener. She is just a former farm wife from Indiana who is fool enough to write.
Secretly, she thinks she’s got a bestseller.
She sighs heavily, listening to her mother scrubbing clothes in the kitchen sink, even at this hour, scrubbing to perfection with rickety old Venus chiseling at her ankles with her head. Well, don’t we all want a little perfection, to do something best, to have a little something more than everyone else, even if it’s just whiter underpants?
Ruth wants more,
she’ll admit it. She wants more than being a reasonably desirable widow (made even more desirable by turning all her suitors down), more than being a mother, more, even, than being America’s Mother, although she is actually grateful for her daytime job and decent pay. She lives on Summit Avenue, for crying out loud! Why these aren’t enough, she doesn’t know. All she knows is that she has this constant craving, this itchiness in her chest, this longing that makes her despair of her daughters leaving home, of the white streak at her temples, of her mother’s gnarled hands, of graying pets, of flowers fading, of leaves falling, of bare trees—anything that will not let her look away from the awareness that time is passing and will leave her behind.
She feels a little sick. But into her malaise floats the memory of her teenage self, bashing a broom over the head of the creep who’d threatened June. She sees teenage June, standing half-naked in a saggy swimsuit for all the town to see, mad as hell—for June. She sees herself traipsing alone to Chicago to become a genuine flapper.
Where are these brave girls now?
The mournful whistle of a train sounds far beyond the venetian blinds.
Well, she’s not dead yet.
Laying her hands to the keyboard, she types.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While it might appear that you are holding a book or electronic reading device in your hands, you are actually holding a chunk of a life. Mine. For some inexplicable reason, several years back I felt compelled to take some of the elements that most haunted my childhood and fit them together in a completely fictitious story. The Fort Wayne State School (formerly known as the Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth), with the howls of its institutionalized residents audible to those of us living nearby; the tornados that periodically raked the Midwest; the damage wreaked on my mother’s family when her farmer father was turned into a living dead man by encephalitis lethargica, or “sleeping sickness,” in an epidemic that swept the world during the Great Depression; my mother’s mysterious reclusiveness and my own fervent wish that she would be more like Betty Crocker: all these were bits that demanded to be part of a novel. It took four years of leaning on friends, family, and colleagues to put the pieces together and get the completed puzzle into your hands. I feel lucky to be able to thank them now.