Mom got a better job at Lord and Taylor while I was in school. She was the best saleswoman in the tie department, her manager said. She came home at 5:45 on the dot. Grandma Glad had figured out how long it took to walk from the store to the subway, and how long it would take to wait, and how long the ride was, and how long the walk was from the subway to home. If Mom was late, she wanted to hear why.
You could say that Grandma Glad raised me from age nine to thirteen, but usually I spent whole afternoons at the Crottys'. Mostly I remember Gladys plopped in the gold armchair, listening to Amanda of Honeymoon Hill on the radio and watching the clock like a factory foreman ready to dock Mom's pay. I knew she considered minding me as her patriotic duty, right up there with hoeing our Victory Garden. Tomatoes and her son's stepdaughter — we both broke her back.
Grandma Glad was always saying things to Mom like, "My, what a bright dress, Beverly" or "Maybe you need to go up a size on that sweater." I could guess Mom's reaction by how hard she stubbed her cigarettes out in the ashtrays. If you came into the room and saw them ground into little stumps, you knew that Mom and Grandma Glad had just had a chat.
Mom smashed the boiled potatoes in the pot, twisting her wrist, her bracelet jingling. Joe had brought it back from the war, and it had real rubies in it. Everything was cheap over in Europe now, he said. You could pick up stuff for practically nothing. The poor folks over there were glad to sell it. You Were doing them a favor.
She paused every once in a while, and I poured in a little milk from the bottle. We'd been making mashed potatoes together since I was four. It had been just the two of us back then, sleeping in the same bed in the little apartment over the candy store. Then Joe had walked in, with his hat on the back of his head and his eyes on Mom, and changed everything.
I stuck a spoon in the pot and took a bite. It was dark out now and steam had clouded the kitchen window. I heard Joe's car, and I ran to the window and made a circle with my fist to clear it. I saw him get out of the car, and for a minute I saw a stranger, his hat pulled over his eyes, his shoulders slumped in a way I didn't know.
That happened sometimes. He was away for so long, and even now, if he turned a certain way, or if I saw him on the street, it was like he was just another man in a suit. I let out a breath, and the window fogged up again.
I hurried out into the hallway, hoping Grandma Glad hadn't heard the car door. If she had, she'd be the first one at the door to greet him. But I saw the armchair pulled up next to the radio, and her wide back hunching forward to listen.
The door opened, and he walked in. I hadn't turned on the light, so he didn't see me at first. I saw his face, and he didn't know I was looking.
It was the war. You couldn't ask him about it. You didn't want to remind him. What every wife and daughter could give was a happy home. That was our job.
That's what the magazines said. I clipped articles for Mom and left them on her chair. Recipes and new fashions, all the things a wife could do to make herself more attractive to her husband. Mom had quit her job at Lord and Taylor the day after he came back. "Either that or get fired," she'd said. She had to make way for the veterans who needed jobs. Now she learned recipes and made Sunday suppers, rubbed Jergen's lotion on her elbows, and had time to be a wife.
"Son of a bitch," he said.
I almost stepped back into the warm steam of the kitchen. This wasn't the Joe I knew. He was a muscular man who made walking look like dancing. He had a special greeting for everyone on the block. He made up nicknames that stuck. He could flip a cigarette butt into the gutter, hail a friend, and toss a chocolate bar to a kid from the neighborhood without breaking his stride. I'd seen him do it.
So I switched on the light to make the magazine picture. The daughter welcoming the dad home, both of them so happy in the picture you could practically smell the pot roast.
I held out my hands. He punched his hat back into shape and then held it by the brim. He closed one eye, like he was aiming, and then spun the hat down the hallway toward me. I snatched it out of the air.
"The Dodgers need you, kiddo," he said. I hugged him and felt his whiskers, smelled cigarettes and the special sweet scent that came off his skin.
As I hung up his hat, Mom came out of the kitchen.
"Aw, Bev," he said, apologetic even before she spoke. "How am I going to keep you in mink and diamonds if I don't work late?"
Mom turned around, her arms out. "You see a mink here?"
Joe winked at me. "Well, maybe if you give your husband a kiss, Santa will be good to you this year."
"It's still summer. You've got to do better than that."
He walked to her and slipped an arm around her waist to draw her against him. She bent back a bit to look at his face.
"You started without me again," she murmured.
"Just a quick one."
They didn't move. She was bent back in his arms, one hand on his chest. Suddenly I was just like the chair, or the hat rack — just a stick of furniture in the room. Back then they were everything I knew about glamour. Everything I knew about love.
Grandma Glad poked her head out into the hallway. "Someone called for you, Joe."
My mother's mouth turned down. It was funny, how the two of them competed, even for the telephone. It made Grandma Glad happy to be able to give Joe his messages, like she outranked Mom.
"It's the same man who called before," Grandma Glad said. She folded her arms over one of the dark blue dresses she always wore. Some of them had flowers and some of them had dots, but they all looked the same. "The one who asked about you, were you the Joe Spooner from the Forty-second."
"Oh, for crying out loud! Next time he calls, tell him I'm not home," Joe said. "Another ex-GI looking for a job. I'm home now — I want to eat dinner and relax."
This wasn't like Joe. Usually he was happy to talk on the phone. He'd bellow into the receiver while he crossed his ankles and leaned against the wall. He'd say, "Hello, Al," or "Bill, how do?" And then, "Terrible, how are you?"
Joe had what Every Young Girl's Guide to Popularity called "easy charm." I didn't have it. It didn't seem to be something you could learn from a book, either. When girls at school called out, "Evie, how do?" I wished I could yell back, "Terrible, how are you?"
Grandma Glad disappeared back into the living room.
"I wouldn't look so forward to dinner if I were you,"
Mom said. "The potatoes are glue and the roast is overdone."
She said it like a challenge. Joe only grinned. "Whatever you cook, I'll eat, Gorgeous."
In the kitchen, Mom shoved the roast onto a platter. Joe poured himself his drink, Canadian Club on the rocks, and mixed Mom a Manhattan. He sat at the kitchen table. We heard the phone ring, and he took a long sip. He bared his teeth, sucking in the liquor, and then began rolling up his shirtsleeves.
Grandma Glad appeared in the doorway. The kitchen light flashed on the lenses of her rimless glasses, and I couldn't see her eyes. Her hands were folded over her shelf of a bust, like she was already apologizing for interrupting, even though she never apologized for anything.
Mom looked annoyed. She liked Grandma Glad to stay in the living room before dinner so she and Joe could have a drink and a cigarette together. If Grandma Glad came in early, she let her know it, down to the second.
Mom said the house was too small now. I knew that she and Joe kept arguing about moving, and whether they had to take Grandma Glad. When they got tired of that, they argued about where to move. My mother wanted an apartment in the city, but Joe kept reminding her of the housing shortage. He wanted to move out to Long Island or New Jersey.