“June Hardie!” her mother bellowed up the stairs, twenty minutes after the alarm clock had gone off. “Breakfast, I said!”
Upstairs, June sat on the edge of her unmade bed, her short hair in a bird’s nest of a mess around her ears. The room was unkempt, the air thick with the smell of morning breath, and she went over to the window to open it for some fresh air.
It was a Saturday, what should have been a warmly welcomed break from school, which June found tiring and worrisome, although deep down she had to admit to herself that the real source of the anxiety came from those damned mathematics. Whenever June was being talked through a math problem, she often couldn’t even follow along with the first step, but the teacher would continue as though she clearly understood, and the idea of interrupting to admit that she didn’t made her heart race and her palms sweat. If only every class was English!
Despite the potential for math sweats, June thought she’d rather be in school today.
Outside, her older brother, Fred, was mowing the lawn, his hair combed to the side, his slacks rolled up around his ankles. June stared blankly out the window, unblinking as she combed through the tangle of thoughts in her head, until she realized that Fred had stopped mowing the lawn and was now staring up at her in uneasy confusion. After a moment, she stepped away from the window, letting the delicate white curtain fall back into place.
Yesterday, June’s mother had told her that by the time she came down to breakfast every morning, she needed to have already gotten dressed, with her hair brushed, her nose powdered and her lipstick applied.
“You need to learn to be a better young woman,” Mom had said, her arms crossed over her butter-yellow dress, the one with the white buttons that she always wore the first day after wash. “This week I’m going to teach you how to make meat loaf and boil potatoes and keep the house clean.”
June couldn’t think of anything more disgusting than squeezing mounds of raw ground meat in between her fingers, the waxy fat coating her skin and gathering under her fingernails, embedded with salt and pepper and dicings of onion. She was a lousy cook—always had been. Mom had a hard time accepting that. So today June would be touching the raw meat, forming it into a loaf, baking it into a bubbling brown log and then slathering it with ketchup before cutting it up into slices for Dad and Fred and Robert.
But first, June knew, the day would be filled with all sorts of other lessons. Cleaning, keeping house, being a better young woman. What was a “better young woman”? June had wondered, not for the first time. She stared at herself in the mirror atop her unorganized vanity, her wild hair and frowning face an unpleasant sight to behold. Someone who can bite her tongue during maddening conversations between men? Someone who can keep her house so it looks straight out of a magazine? Someone who can follow in the footsteps of Betty Crocker without mistakes or, God forbid, letting a curl fall hopelessly out of place?
June supposed she had other thoughts about what would make a “better young woman,” but she knew that her feelings on the subject didn’t matter, or at the very least, they weren’t supposed to. Still, she couldn’t resist fantasizing about being the type of woman who lived unapologetically, who experienced and learned and applied the knowledge gathered along the way to enable herself to thrive. The type of woman who learned to navigate her way out of the impossible labyrinth of family history and tradition. One who unlearned the inherited toxic traits that were handed down to her and bound her to an unstable and wildly limited path like angry, unbreakable vines.
It wasn’t about the cooking or the cleaning. The specifics were different for everybody. It was about the source of the expectation, what drove it. And in a world that seemed to constantly be going to shit, June thought, surely life was too short to spend it settling in the name of unthinking compliance.
“June!” The knock on the door was sharp, unrepentant. “For goodness’ sake, didn’t you hear me hollering for you? It’s time for breakfast now. We have lots of chores to get through today, if you don’t mind.”
“Be down in a minute,” June called back, shocked at how level her voice sounded, how devoid of emotion. Usually, she’d feel irritated or sassy or ready for an argument over this, but today she felt different: calmer, more dead inside. It was like she’d understood fully, for the first time, that Mom and Dad were who they were and always would be, no matter what June thought or how she felt. They’d never be happy with the idea of letting her go study in a college somewhere far away. They’d never support her dreams of travel. They would accept one thing, and one thing only.
Be a better young woman.
She chose a dress, green to match how her stomach felt, and used her comb to fluff out the bob haircut she’d gotten a few weeks before. It was miraculous, June mused as she brushed her teeth in the en suite bathroom, how much she’d aged in the last two weeks. She was still seventeen but felt about forty. Is that how changing into an adult worked? Overnight, and with the weight of a million pounds? If so, June sorely wished somebody had warned her.
June came down the stairs and had a quick look around the house, which already looked to her like it’d been cleaned, but she knew Mom had different standards. The kitchen smelled like eggs and bacon. The table had three dirty plates in the places where Mom, Dad, and Fred usually sat. June’s spot had a loaded plate waiting for her, with glasses of both orange juice and milk, as well as a small plate piled high with toast.
“Eat fast,” Mom said without turning from the sink, where she scrubbed at a pan and set it gingerly in the mouth of the brand-new dishwasher. They’d had it for a little over a month now, ever since Dad had closed the big business deal with his new partner, Mr. Dennings.
Mr. Dennings, whose son, Robert, was twenty.
Robert, who June had been agreeing to see on dates ever since the business deal was just a plan in Dad’s back pocket. What a tangled web that had been!
It had started one evening after dinner, a school night, and June had had her feet up on the couch while she read a textbook. Dad hadn’t been parked in front of the television where he usually had his drink; instead, he had turned his armchair around to face Mom as she wiped down the kitchen table.
“I have something to tell the both of you,” Dad had said. “I already talked to Fred about it this morning, since he has bowling practice tonight.”
Mom put her cloth down, wiping her hands on her apron front as she stepped into the living room and scolded June for having her feet on the couch. June sat up, put her book on her lap, folded her hands out of habit. She studied Dad’s face as he swirled his drink mindlessly in its short glass, but she had no inkling that something so serious was about to be broached. June and her mother sat silently side by side, waiting.
“There’s a chance I can take my business to the next level,” he finally announced, setting the drink down and leaning forward in the armchair. “You’ll both help me to secure a partnership with Stewart Dennings. The economy is booming, and we’re both ready to cash in on it. We talked all about it at Stan Reuben’s poker night last week. Now I just have to convince Stewart to make the leap and invest.”
The radio played in the background, some band playing live from New York City. June’s mother shifted in her seat.
“That sounds wonderful, honey,” she said softly. “But how are June and I supposed to help?”
“I’m getting to that,” Dad said. His fingers tightened ever so slightly around his glass. “If you’d keep your mouth shut and let me, please.”
Mom apologized and straightened her back. June fought not to roll her eyes.
“I’m going to start bringing Stewart around here for dinner some evenings,” Dad continued. “As well as his son, Robert, who’s just joined the family business. Stewart’s wife passed away last year.”
June was still waiting to hear the reason she was involved in any of this. Likely so she could assist Mom in whatever dinners were coming—not that she was any help with that sort of thing. Still, saying as much to Dad would be pointless, so June continued to listen.
“Oh, how tragic!” Mom said. “Those poor boys.”
“I know they’ll certainly enjoy being cooked for and fussed over, while they’re here,” Dad said. “It’s very important that we schmooze them as much as we can. When we walk through the door, you will offer us scotch on ice. Have the house ready for guests. Have dinner ready to eat as soon as the drinks are done. We’ll have two scotches each, then another at dinner.”
“Yes—” Mom nodded as she took in her directions “—of course.”
“As soon as the meal is finished, hurry to clean up the table and serve coffee and cake, and probably more scotch.”
“Of course.”
“Are you getting any of this, June?” Dad demanded suddenly. “Aren’t you wondering what your role in all of this will be?”
Maybe he wasn’t as thick as June often thought.
“I’m listening, Dad,” June said, working to keep her voice light and noncontrary. “I suppose you’d like me to help out Mom as much as I can, yes?”
“Your mom doesn’t need help,” Dad answered. “Although heaven knows you could certainly use the practice. No, I’ve got something more important for you to do.”
June’s stomach dropped, heavy inside her. What could he possibly want from her in all of this? “What is it, Dad?”
Dad finished the drink in his glass and handed it to Mom to take away. Understanding that her part in the conversation was done, Mom was quick to squirrel it away to the kitchen to be washed and dried and put away. By the time she returned, June was sitting there looking aghast.
“You want me to what?” June said.
“Don’t get sassy with me,” Dad said sharply, leaning forward in his chair a little bit more. “Robert is twenty years old, only three years older than you. There’s no reason you can’t go on a few dates with him. At your age, June, you should have boys lining up around the block to flatter me into letting them take you out. Feel lucky. Robert is an exceptional young man, the kind you want to look out for as a young woman.”
June’s cheeks had reddened considerably then. It was true, she’d never been asked out on a date. Never had much interest in it: she was always too busy reading, or working on her story, or taking the bus into town so she could go to the drugstore and look through travel magazines. Awful, horrible possibilities flashed through her mind: What if this Robert character was unkind or—worse—unfunny?
The only rule June had ever set for herself regarding a potential mate was that they’d need to be able to make her laugh, no exceptions. Laughter was all she had to get through life sometimes, and to lose it would be to lose everything.
“So it’s settled,” Dad went on without waiting for her to reply. “Tomorrow, I’ll bring Stewart and Robert. Then again on Friday. This deal could change our lives, girls. Our family needs it. If we all work together, we’ll achieve it.”
And so it started: the chain of dinners, the meat loaves and roasted chickens and casseroles, coffees and cakes and pies and puddings, always cocktails and cigars in the den to follow. Robert was strikingly handsome but painfully boring; June rather liked him in a nonromantic sense but often grew tired with his ideas of fun, like walks in the park, coffee downtown, or long drives in his car while he talked about himself and never asked about her.
Once the business deal between Dad and Stewart Dennings had finally been closed, June got the courage to teach Robert a little bit more about her real self, as opposed to the dressed-up, tidy little thing that Mom had transformed her into before every one of their dates. Dad and Stewart were on their fifth scotch each and had gotten into a particularly animated conversation about politics, both on the same side and simply repeating the same three or four tenets to each other over and over.
“I want to show you something,” June said, rising from where she sat on the couch and catching Robert’s eye. “In my bedroom.”