by Karma Brown
grow and burst. She felt exposed, and stupid for assuming oth‑
erwise. Also, she couldn’t explain why had she taken things so
far, even to Bronwyn, who probably understood her better than
anyone. What did it say about her, and her marriage, that she
hadn’t simply been honest with Nate from the beginning?
“I’m here if you want to talk, okay?”
Alice considered whether perhaps Nate had put Bronwyn up
to this call.
“Yeah. Thanks.” But she couldn’t talk to Bronwyn about
this now— Nate had beaten her to it. No matter how she spun
it, she would forever be the wife who went to extraordinary, se‑
cretive (and some might say irrational) lengths to avoid getting
pregnant with her husband.
“I mean it, Ali. Anything, anytime. Well, except right this
second because I have to meet my husband for lunch. Still getting used to calling him that.”
“Off you go, you lovesick newlywed. We’ll chat later.” Alice
kept her tone light, even though her stomach felt like it was filled with cement.
“Bye. Love you.”
“Love you too,” Alice said, just as Nate came into the kitchen.
“Who was that?”
Alice pushed a piece of sopping toast around her bowl.
“My mom.”
“Again? What was it this time?”
“She wanted to talk about Thanksgiving. In California.”
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“Hmm. Maybe we should go. Could be fun.” Nate shrugged,
then took a fork from the drawer and speared a piece of toast in
Alice’s bowl. “This stuff is addictive.”
“Have the rest. I’m not that hungry.” Alice frowned, pushing
it toward him.
“You feeling okay?”
“Perfect,” she said, smiling for good measure. She had been
lying a lot recently, and it was becoming disturbingly easy to
do so.
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Nellie
septeMber 9, 1956
Lemon Lavender Muffins
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1⁄ 2 teaspoon salt
2 beaten eggs
1 cup sweet milk
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons melted butter, cooled
Zest from a lemon
2 teaspoons lavender buds
Sift flour and mix with baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Combine eggs, sweet milk, honey, and butter. Make a well in center of flour mixture and pour in milk mixture. Mix quickly, but not until
smooth (mixture should be lumpy). Grate lemon zest into mixture,
and add dried lavender. Stir to combine. Fill greased muffin tins until two- thirds full. Bake in hot oven (375°F) for 20 to 25 minutes.
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N ellie crushed and sprinkled the dried lavender buds into the bowl with her fingers, stirring with a wooden spoon to make
sure the flavor would be well balanced throughout. The lav‑
ender was meant to be subtle, marrying well with the tart lemon
rind, all without being overpowering. Therefore, precision was
imperative, or else the muffins would taste like the perfumed
satchels Nellie kept in her chest of drawers. She was baking for
Martha’s baby shower, which wasn’t until later in the afternoon,
but Nellie had started first thing— right after Richard left for
work— so they’d be cooled in time.
Nellie didn’t make these lavender muffins often, as they
brought forth memories of her mother in better days, which was
difficult. Yet, it remained one of her favorite recipes. Lemon the
flavor of sunshine, and lavender, a most powerful herb. It sym‑
bolized feminine beauty and grace, and Nellie could think of
nothing better with which to celebrate Martha’s recent delivery.
Martha had confessed, when Nellie called to congratulate
her on little Bobby, that she felt like an old, broken‑ down vessel beyond repair. “Dan hasn’t touched me in so long, Nellie. And
I can’t say I blame him! Everything is just so . . . so lumpy.” She had burst into tears, Bobby crying equally hard in the back‑
ground, and Nellie had done her best to reassure Martha that
she was a beautiful woman. Motherhood has made that only more
true, Nellie soothed. After hanging up with Martha, Nellie thought about the upcoming shower, and lavender immediately
came to mind. Poor Martha needed those muffins as much as
she needed a good night’s sleep, along with a husband who ap‑
preciated the sacrifices she had made.
Nostalgia flooded her as she gave the mixture a few more
stirs, noting the small clumps that were not to be smoothed
out, before she filled the muffin tins. Nellie had made these
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muffins more times than she could count in the years she lived
with Elsie, as it was also one of her mother’s favorite recipes.
Elsie was forever reminding Nellie about the lumps, and Nellie
smiled as she remembered her mother’s predictable, “Don’t
overmix, Nell‑ girl. Too many stirs and we’ll have to throw it out with the burrs!”
She set the timer, and while Martha’s muffins baked, Nellie
sat at the table and smoked, thinking about the last time she
and her mother had made this recipe. It was shortly before Nel‑
lie’s birthday— her seventeenth— and they were baking for one
of her mother’s friends, who had the flu. Elsie, seated in their
small kitchen, plucked lavender buds from the stems fanned in
front of her. Too thin and always cold, Elsie wore a red‑and‑
green winter sweater buttoned to the top, the wide collar high
up her neck even though it was summer. She gathered the buds
on top of the tea towel she’d laid out across the tabletop. That
morning there were other sprigs of herbs on the table as well—
oregano, thyme, rosemary, dill, mint, basil, tarragon— set in
neat piles, ready to be macerated for future recipes, for satchels
to scent closets and drawers, to add to the bathwater.
The herbs had been harvested from what was left of her
mother’s Victory garden that year, planted three summers
earlier after she was inspired by the grow your owN, cAN
your owN posters popping up in shops around town. The war
garden movement had been amazingly effective, and nearly ev‑
eryone in the Swanns’ neighborhood had planted one, but when
the war ended most were abandoned.
Nellie, sitting beside her mother, rolled a lemon between
tight palms, loosening the flesh from the rind. Later she would
use the juice to make lemonade, but for now she grated the
bright yellow zest, the oils from the puckered rind coating her
fingers with e
ach turn of the fruit. Soon she had a small heap of
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the grated rind, which she collected in her palm and plopped on
top of the wet mixture.
“Nearly done with the lavender?” she asked her mother.
Elsie passed Nellie the buds in a small dish. The recipe called for two teaspoons of dried lavender, and Nellie, after measuring
like she knew she was supposed to (especially for this recipe),
was amazed, like always, at how her mother could eyeball the
precise amount of an ingredient.
“I will never grow tired of the scent of lavender in my
kitchen,” Elsie had said, pressing her herb‑ infused fingers to her face. “It smells of contentment, doesn’t it?” Contentment was a
hard thing to come by for Elsie, so any mention of it had made
hope blossom inside Nellie’s chest. Elsie began to sing, and
Nellie joined in— their voices blending as pleasantly in the small kitchen as the lemon rind and lavender buds within the muffin
mixture.
Their frequent cooking sessions in those days weren’t only
an education in home economics; they were also a housewifery
training program passed from mother to daughter. Elsie taught
Nellie how to make her own bread yeast, and why one should
add a dash of oatmeal to soups (to thicken it), and how vinegar
keeps boiling cauliflower pristinely white. And underpinning
those lessons was Elsie’s wish for Nellie to marry a good man,
unlike the one she herself committed to. They lived modestly,
without luxuries, but Elsie’s love for Nellie was as bountiful as
her gardens. “You have been my greatest joy,” Elsie would
murmur to Nellie when she tucked her into bed, kissing her on
the forehead, on her cheeks, her eyelids, smelling of roses and
dusty baking flour. “My greatest joy.”
“Nellie, I wrote something out for you. Here, darling.” Elsie
had held out a recipe card, her swooping letters as familiar to
Nellie as the sound of her voice, while they waited for the
muffins to bake.
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“What is it?” Nellie took the card and glanced at the ingre‑
dients. “Oh, I know this one, Mother.” For a moment, she had
worried about Elsie’s state of mind, as on the card was a Swann
family recipe Nellie already knew by heart.
“I should say your version may in fact be better than mine,”
Elsie replied, a smile gracing her lips. “I think it might be the
dill. It really gave it something special.” Oh, if only that smile would hold, Nellie thought. Her mother was so beautiful when she smiled.
Elsie leaned forward onto bony elbows, gently cushioned by
the thick wool of her sweater, and waited until she had her only
child’s full attention. Nellie, seated across from her mother at
the small table, held the recipe card tightly in her hands. Her
fingertips, still dewy with lemon oil, left small prints on the
card’s edges.
“But there’s something else. You’re old enough now, my
love.” Elsie lowered her voice, forcing Nellie to lean in too, so
the women’s faces were only inches apart. “Something only
shared from lips to ears, never to be written down. So listen
closely to me now, all right, my girl?”
Nellie’s heart had raced at the intensity of her mother’s voice.
She listened carefully to what Elsie said next, her eyes growing
wide for one, sharp moment, before they settled back to normal.
Though her heart continued thumping wildly for some time,
long after the muffins were cooled enough to pack up and de‑
liver to Elsie’s ailing friend.
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q
Now, if you are one of those frigid or sexually anesthetic women,
don’t be in a hurry to inform your husband about it. To the man
it makes no difference in the pleasurableness of the act whether
you are frigid or not unless he knows that you are frigid. And he won’t know unless you tell him, and what he doesn’t know won’t
hurt him.
— William J. Robinson, Married Life and Happiness (1922) Alice
August 20, 2018
A fter Alice had the IUD removed, which was much simpler
than its insertion, and picked up her prescription for the birth
control pill, she stopped to browse at the vintage consignment
shop close to Dr. Sterling’s office. The saleswoman, looking like
she’d stepped out of a Ladies’ Home Journal magazine right
down to her sleek pageboy and emerald‑ green pencil skirt, had
been outside on a smoke break. After Alice complimented her
on the outfit, the woman, Sarah, offered her a cigarette, with
the warning that it was unfiltered.
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“Thanks,” Alice said. “I’ve never tried one of these.” She set
it between her lips.
“Lucky you,” Sarah said, extending a lit match to the ciga‑
rette’s end. “You won’t believe the difference.” Alice took a drag
of the cigarette and promptly started coughing, a raw burn of
heat in her throat.
“Yeah, you get used to it.” Sarah sucked deeply on her own
cigarette before exhaling a long plume of smoke. “I used to cut
the filters off myself, which is way cheaper, but it’s not quite the same. I buy them online now.”
Alice nodded, her eyes watering from coughing, and took a
tentative puff. The burn was less, and she didn’t cough. Sales‑
woman Sarah was right: without the filter, the toasted taste of to‑
bacco and its effects were more intense, the nicotine quick to hit
Alice’s bloodstream. The head rush lingered pleasantly, and after
she browsed the vintage shop she headed home and promptly cut
the filters off the last of her pack of cigarettes. Rather than write, as she had planned, she sat in her new‑ to‑ her vintage dress on the back patio so as not to smell up the house, and blew smoke rings into the air, imagining Nel ie Murdoch doing the same half a decade earlier.
The rest of the week flowed easily, Nate, off to the office each
morning but home for dinner at night as promised, and Alice,
trying to work on her novel. Which mostly meant hours online
researching details of life in the 1950s, as well as rereading the
magazines and Nellie’s letters, and smoking unfiltered cigarettes
with the mother‑ of‑ pearl holder outside while Nate was at work.
She was smoking every day now and knew she’d have to stop
soon— she wouldn’t be able to hide it from Nate indefinitely. It
was tiring, worrying about him finding out. But the cigarettes
helped her concentrate and smoothed her frustrations. Plus, it
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seemed everyone smoked in the fifties— back when even doctors
believed it had health benefits— and so it felt almost poetic every time she slid a cigarette into the antique holder; a necessary part of her research.
Sally returned from visiting her ill friend and came over for
dinner on Saturday night, which was long overdue. Alice made
a simple supper of Welsh rabbit (toast points smothered in a
sauce of cheddar, cream, dry mustard, and spices) with tomato
slices, from Nellie’s cookbook, and barbecued sausages, along
with a “fluffy white cake” that turned out not to be that fluffy
but was still delicious. The three of them stayed up far too late
and had too much wine, as Sally regaled them with stories of
her adventures.
When Alice and Nate went to bed, quite drunk and unchar‑
acteristically (these days) cheerful, they hatched a plan to set Sally up, even though they couldn’t remember the name of the
handsome elderly gentleman who lived on the street and who was
always raking his lawn. They had sex for the first time since the
ruptured‑cyst fiasco, and it was overall a quite pleasant evening,
Alice feeling more optimistic about things than she had in some
time.
By Monday Alice was back at her desk, feeling bloated and
moody thanks to being on the pill and her overall lack of inspi‑
ration on the novel. She was staring out the front window,
smoking a cigarette and definitely not writing, when Nate rode up the driveway on his bike. Panicked, she glanced at the time
on her computer screen— 3:07 p.M.— and sat paralyzed for a
moment, the cigarette burning in her fingers. The window was
open, but a thin curl of smoke floated above her like a gauzy
veil, and she waved furiously at it, trying to make it disappear. It had been stupid to risk smoking in the living room, but it was
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pouring rain and Nate was supposed to be late because he was
meeting up with a college friend who was in town on business.
He wasn’t supposed to be home on time, let alone early.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she mumbled, tugging the cigarette from
the holder and plopping it into her glass of water. She used one
of the old magazines to fan the smoke out the open window.