Mr. March shook hands with her father, then escorted Claire to her seat — he can be nice sometimes. The American dad hesitated in the doorway and waved to Claire. She waved back and blushed. Madeleine understood that. Finally her embarrassing dad left and everyone stared at Claire as she sat and folded her hands on her desk. And everyone — at least all the girls — noticed her beautiful silver charm bracelet.
Mimi, Betty Boucher, Elaine Ridelle and Vimy Woodley are in mid-protest on Sharon McCarroll’s front step.
“We wouldn’t dream of it,” says Vimy.
Sharon has invited them in but the ladies have only dropped by to welcome her, deliver an information kit and a plate of squares, and extend the formal invitation for the young woman to join the Officers’ Wives Club. Sharon was immediately endearing because she instantly asked them in, allowing them to decline vigorously. She’s a pretty little thing. Mimi is reminded of an actress … which one?
From the front porch it’s plain to see that the McCarrolls’ house contains the usual forest of cardboard boxes and errant furniture, but Sharon is neatly turned out in pumps and a bright little short-sleeved dress, a Willkommen plate already graces the wall of the tiny front hall, alongside a commemorative plaque of her husband’s squadron at Wiesbaden, and the smell of baking is coming from her kitchen. Impressive, but not surprising in an American service wife. Their ability to march in and out on a dime and a blaze of home-baked, fully accessorized glory is legendary.
What is surprising — and the women will discuss this later — is that Sharon McCarroll is not what you would expect of a fighter pilot’s wife. Especially an American one. She is shy. Soft-spoken. She makes Mimi, and perhaps the other women too, feel … American.
“We’re just the Welcome Wagon.” Elaine Ridelle is in pedal pushers and tennis shoes, still managing to look girlish six months into her pregnancy.
“We aren’t here to see you put the kettle on, love,” says Betty. Betty unfailingly wears a dress — in this instance a crisp shirtwaist. Not due to any old-world view of proper female attire, but because she knows how to bring out the best in her figure, which is pleasingly plump. “Put a pair of trousers on me and I’d look like a beached whale,” she has said. Which is an exaggeration, but Mimi respects a woman who knows her own good and not-so-good points. Mimi herself is in a pair of lemon-yellow cigarette pants and a sleeveless white knit turtleneck.
“You’ve got your hands full enough already,” she says, handing her new neighbour a foil-covered Corningware dish, and before Sharon can object, “It’s only a fricot au—a lamb stew.”
Sharon is so young. Betty and Mimi are moved to take her under their wing, and Elaine says, “Do you and your husband golf, Sharon?”
At which Sharon smiles, looks down and half-shakes her head, no, and Vimy says, “Give the poor girl a chance to catch her breath, Elaine.”
“That’s okay,” says Sharon, a gentle Southern sigh in her words. Lee Remick, that’s who she reminds Mimi of.
Vimy says, “Here’s your survival kit, my dear, my number’s at the top and my house is over there.” She points up the street to the detached white house with the flagpole on its lawn. She hands the young woman a binder and adds, “My daughter Marsha babysits, and that’s probably enough out of us for the moment.”
Mimi observes Vimy closely. Her manners, her ability to put others at ease; that is the definition of breeding, and a must in a CO’s wife. Mimi learned a lot from her mother and her twelve siblings back in Bouctouche, New Brunswick, but she didn’t learn what women like Vimy can teach her. Jack will one day be in Hal’s position, and Mimi knows she will have to entertain “wheels,” as Jack calls them, in her own home. She will be promoted too. The men all have to take exams and pass courses in order to qualify for advancement; the wives have to train on the job. Mimi notes how Vimy smiles graciously, and doesn’t shake Sharon’s whole hand, but instead lightly presses her fingers.
Of course, they all end up trooping into the little green bungalow, because Sharon insists — not in hearty tones, or with brash protestations of Southern hospitality, but by blushing and retreating to her kitchen, where she puts the percolator on and takes a pan of hermits from the oven.
“This is Bugs Bunny. He’s a rabbit.”
Laughter. Madeleine pauses. Silence, all eyes upon her. Mr. March has ordered her to go first. She has looked him in the eye and proceeded to the front of the class. Clean slate. Concentrate.
“I like Bugs because he speaks his mind,” she says loud and clear.
Laughter. She didn’t mean it to be funny. She’s merely telling the truth. Show-and-tell. Just the facts, ma’am.
“His favourite food is carrots and his favourite expression is, ‘Nyah, what’s up, doc?’”
Laughter. She can feel her face reddening. She consults her recipe cards, where she wrote her presentation in point form with the help of her father.
“He is wily. He lives by his own rules and he always gets away from Elmer Fudd. Once he dressed up as a girl and sang, ‘The Rabbit in Red.’”
Giggles.
She departs from her notes and sings tentatively, in Bugsy’s voice, “‘Oh da wabbit in wed …’”—a little soft-shoe—“‘yah-dah dah-dah-dah dah-dah de wabbit in wed.’ And he put on false eyelashes and even, you know”—she spreads her fingers and makes a circular gesture over her chest; the class screams with laughter. She raises one eyebrow, twists her mouth like Bugs and improvises—“Falsies, I pwesume.” Rapidly now, can’t put a foot wrong, “Like the time he pretended to be a girl Tasmanian Devil with lovely big red lips?”—one hand behind her head, the other on her hip—“‘Well hello there, big boy,’ meanwhile he’s got a bear trap in his mouth for teeth, chomp! — ‘Yowww! Yipe-yipe-yipe!’”
It is out of hand. Mr. March quells the merriment. “Enough mirth. You may sit down now, Miss McCarthy.”
Madeleine instantly sobers up, gropes for her recipe cards where they have fallen under Mr. March’s desk and returns to her seat. It’s just as well that she has been cut short. It means that she didn’t have to pass Bugsy around the class — standard operating procedure for show-and-tell. She doesn’t like the idea of everyone handling him — although Bugs probably wouldn’t mind. Nothing sticks to Bugs.
Grace Novotny has brought in a rag doll named Emily. It’s homemade. “My sister made it for me.” One of the sluts, thinks Madeleine involuntarily, then feels terribly sorry for Grace having a kind slut for a sister. Grace can’t pronounce the letter “r.” She says sistew.
Grace whispers something into the side of Emily’s soft dirty head, then Emily gets passed around. Some kids are openly mean, handling the doll with their fingertips, holding their noses. Grace doesn’t seem to register any of it. Madeleine holds Emily in both hands, not by her fingertips. Emily is grimy, but a lot of dolls are if they are loved. What if there is pee on Emily? There probably is if Grace sleeps with her. She is missing a felt eyebrow, her mouth is stitched in red wool. The effect is not of lips but of lips stitched shut with red wool. She wears a bikini, yellow polka dots like the song.
When Emily has been passed back to Grace, she tucks her in her arm and, without warning, starts singing, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini.”