You did a nice job with the food, Bunny,” Dean said, casting an approving eye over the culinary handiwork I’d arrayed across the kitchen table. As though none of it had been there before his shower.
His wet hair was neatly combed back, his pink Brooks Brothers shirt crisply starched and pressed by the cleaners on Pearl Street. Even his boxers were from The Brothers—my Valentine’s present to him the previous month.
I thought of Edith Wharton’s once having described a character’s husband as being blond and well dressed, with “the physical distinction that comes from having a straight figure, a thin nose, and the habit of looking slightly disgusted.”
He walked behind me, smelling of shampoo and peppermint, then sat down to slide his feet into a pair of Belgian shoes, brown with black piping and topped with discreetly tiny black bows (my Christmas present).
These were pretty much the WASPiest footwear in the history of the universe, and I had a momentary flashback to what Dean had been wearing the night we’d met: green garbage-man pants, white poly-blend Sears dress shirt through which you could see the outline of his undershirt (a pack of Viceroys rolled up in one of its short sleeves), thick-soled black cop shoes. Not to mention ugly glasses and a bad haircut.
None of which had mattered to me. We stayed up talking about FDR’s policy of farm parity until four in the morning after a party at my pal Sophia’s parents’ apartment, and then he’d carried me up the stairs to an empty bedroom with a view of Central Park.
I apologized the moment we were naked in bed for not having shaved.
“That’s perfectly all right,” Dean replied. “I’ve dated English majors before.”
At which point I realized he might well be a keeper.
Since then, I had taught a Syracuse farmboy to look carelessly effete.
Perhaps that explained at least part of his bad mood. I’d become the man behind the curtain to whom one was supposed to pay no attention.
I rubbed at the smear of cake-batter craquelure on my sweatshirt’s cuff. “Could you watch the girls for a minute while I go change?”
It was only Setsuko and Cary coming over, but I felt like a fat lumpen mudhen compared with my minty-fresh spouse.
He glanced at his watch, lips pressed thin.
I hustled back upstairs to our room, throwing on a longish red skirt from Target and this dumpy black Goodwill sweater Mom had found me, then scraped my hair back into a ponytail.
I spent money on the girls’ clothes, or Dean’s. There never seemed to be enough for mine, too.
I looked myself up and down in the closet-door mirror: Ellis Island, fresh out of steerage—minus only the kerchief and hobnail boots.
Fuck that.
I yanked the skirt off, dumped it on our floor, and changed into my last pair of jeans and a pair of black Converse sneakers.
Low-tops, no socks.
Because I didn’t actually own any socks, either.
I’d never been a big sock person. And in a pinch—snowstorms, et cetera—I could always wear my husband’s.
Back downstairs, I found Dean with his pink sleeves crisply rolled back to each elbow, talking cheerful nonsense to make Parrish laugh as he replaced her diaper.
He looked up at me, smiling. “The food really does look amazing, Bunny. I can’t believe you pulled all that together in one morning.”
“Thank you for changing her,” I said, stepping up close behind him to wrap my arms again around his waist. “I’m sorry the house was such a pit.”
I squeezed my arms tighter, planting a kiss on his back.
He leaned forward over Parrish.
“Darling petunia,” he cooed, “your dad missed you so much.”
Through the living room window, I watched Cary’s truck pull up to the curb.
Setsuko swung her long legs gracefully out from its passenger door when he’d walked around to open it for her, extending a hand to help her down.
She was willowy—tall for a woman who’d grown up in Tokyo. A breeze fluttered the silky hem of her blossom-pink dress, tossing the artfully curled ends of her long black hair.
I liked her well enough. She was the receptionist at Dean’s office, unfailingly sweet to me when I called him at work—but our small talk always ground to a painful halt right around “I’m well, thanks, how are you?”
“They’re here,” I said.
Cary said something that made Setsuko giggle, and she lowered her lashes, raising a demure hand to hide perfect teeth.
The woman was so indelibly feminine she might as well have worn a powder-blue T-shirt that read I AM THE ANTI-MADELINE across the front, in swirly girly paste–hued script.
I’d read once that the Japanese language has gender-specific first-person pronouns, which I immediately took to mean that women weren’t allowed to use the same “I” and “me” as men were. Perhaps because I also knew it was still perfectly legal to fire a woman there for having gotten married—or just having reached, say, her mid-twenties, should the male bosses decide they were in need of a fresher “office flower.”
Granted, this prickly attitude may well have been pure cultural chauvinism on my part, or the result of having read far too many smugly misogynistic stroke-lit James Clavell novels, but I did try to cut Setsuko a little slack and at least think of her as involuntarily insipid.
If I’d been raised female in her milieu, I suspected I’d’ve long since stormed a bell tower brandishing twin AK-47s, my belt strung with grenades.
Setsuko reached back into the truck’s bed for two bags of groceries, waving Cary away when he offered to help.
Dean pushed past me to open the front door for them. I followed him out onto our front porch, fighting a sudden urge to plant my foot firmly in the exact center of his ass and shove him down the stairs.