There's more than one way to get even with a cheating husband.
I don't want to go to Shirley's for Thanksgiving. "Doris, you've gotta," Pete wheedled. The very idea makes the blood in my veins turn to ice. The worst thing is, his wife Shirley knows. Pete came clean with her just last week. They didn't even have a fight over me. It was her idea to invite me, to welcome me into the family. Pete claims it's the one thing Shirley insists on, that I show up from now on at all the Bailey family gatherings. What the hell kind of deal is this? I've had nightmares about it where she mashed the mincemeat pie in my face. Sometimes my imagination makes me laugh. But who's laughing now? Do I look like I'm laughing?
It's my fault. My stupid dark-red lipstick accidentally smeared his shirt collar. You wouldn't believe how hard I tried to be careful. I didn't wear perfume on our dates, not even the expensive Estee Lauder he gave me all wrapped up in silver paper with a purple bow. He's generous, Pete is, the nicest man I ever knew. Treats me like such a lady, would literally throw his uniform jacket right smack down over a mud puddle to let me walk across and not get my shoes dirty, he would.
He'd marry me if he wasn't so proud, so afraid of upsetting that family of his. He'd divorce Shirley. I know he would. He hasn't said as much, but actions speak louder than words, don't they? A woman has a way of knowing things.
From here on out, I can wear all the perfume I want, leave Estee Lauder all over his uniform, because it's not going to change anything now that she knows. But dear God, I wish I didn't have to go up there for Thanksgiving. Gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking of it.
And Thanksgiving's not all. Not by a long shot. Shirley requires the honor of my presence at every single Sunday from Thanksgiving on to the end of the world. Pete swears up and down she's okay with us, but how could she be? He says I have to come or she'll spill the beans about us. And he's from such a proud family, their roots in jolly old England.
To hear him tell it, their boat come over practically in the wake of the Mayflower. One of their relatives was an earl to a king, can't remember which king, but it was quite, quite some time ago. He's so proud, Pete is, that I can't do anything outright to shame him worse than he's already shamed. He's a Bailey.
He's let me know, dropped hints along the way, that the Baileys have always been pillars of the community, the Baileys this, the Baileys that. I confess, I get a little sick of it sometimes, he brags 'em up so, all of them are faithful Episcopalians, practically built their church from the ground up, and they're proud of their family and their family's all proud of him, of him being the chief of police there and all, proud of his wife Shirley, who invites the whole bunch over every Sunday of the universe and Christmas and Easter and God Almighty, Thanksgiving, too.
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Not a one of the Baileys will ever guess that it was I who insisted on bringing that concubine, Doris, into our fold. They think highly of me, yes, they even say I am more Bailey than a Bailey, which is the highest compliment they ever bestow upon any human being not genetically infused with Bailey blood.
I smile when I hear such praise. I don't refute it, but neither do I revel in it. I am not the type to revel. My role within this great family is muted, an imposition I have chosen, and, because I say little, it is assumed my manners are impeccable, my disposition even and always sweet. I am the quiet little house mouse, the baker of bread every Monday morning, seven loaves to last all week, an old-fashioned task, but not thankless. Pete loves my bread, fresh out of the oven when it's soft and white and dimpled, melting hard pats of yellow butter, sagging under rich spoons full of the strawberry jam I put up every summer.
Also, I am their seamstress, glad to be of service when the Bailey men need someone to alter their longish trouser cuffs, even if their wives can sew. I am fast with a needle and my machine. More than once has a Bailey male stood outside my sewing room, towel around his waist, waiting for his garment, like an obedient school boy.
Pete brags up my sewing skills, so I am kept busy even with the girls grown up, married, and gone. I created all their dresses when the girls were in the public schools. Good dresses, too, not clothing that seemed homemade in the antiquated sense, you know. Clothing you might see in a fashion show, if I do say so myself. So I have been told! No Bailey has ever heard me cluck about it, however. When I need praise, I praise myself, quietly. I have my pride. Indeed, I have my pride. A born and bred Bailey is not the only person with pride. Let them think what they will about my passive, unassuming ways.
I am, in fact, a bit wicked. Something I realized about myself just recently. All people are capable of a dark side, I truly believe. Pete and I never spoke a cross word before, and I did not raise my voice when I confronted him with the lipstick stain. How crushed he was. He has been proud of me all his life. Has taken it for granted that I host all the family dinners, weighty affairs, the dining table sagging, the turkey browned perfectly, the carving knife sharpened and ready for Pete's hand. I put it there, into his outstretched hand. He says the blessing. He then carves the turkey. The windows in our dining room and kitchen steam over, so's you can't hardly see outside. The Baileys tend to stay all day long. The men play cards while the women gather the dishes and take them to the sink. This is when Hannah always gets a spell and has to sit down, because she feels so, so dizzy. It is your overeating, I would like just once to tell her, but I always say, "Oh, go rest, Hannah. It's all right. Have a nice lay-down in our bed if you wish." I always washed the comforter just for her.
When I discovered the lipstick, it wasn't a revelation. Because I knew, of course. I had known almost to the day when Pete began his frolic with Doris. I didn't know her name, of course, but I knew the shape of her lips and the bright scarlet color she favored. The stain gave me the proof I needed, and when I approached him, I said nothing. I merely held out the shirt to him and looked him in the eye.
The Baileys are all ruddy-complexioned. Pete turned red as a firecracker when I stuck that shirt under his nose. He spluttered and tried to tell me that a woman he hauled off to jail begged mercy and fell upon his neck. I looked at him. I raised an eyebrow. He broke down and begged my forgiveness. It won't happen again, he vowed. He got down on his knees and told me he'd do anything, anything at all, to be forgiven. I'll never see her again, he said.
Yes, you will, I said. I had no idea what I was going to say next, but I said it and it still surprises me. Thanksgiving is just two weeks away, and I want to meet her. You will bring her here and introduce her as your friend.
He pleaded with me. Don't ask me this, he moaned. Anything else. I'll hire the contractors to enlarge our kitchen, he said. This was something I had meekly requested for the last ten years, a request always met with stony silence. Pete didn't take long to get to the crux of his discomfort. What will they think? He went quite ashen and then his face flared back to firehouse red. The precious Baileys, of course. What would they think, indeed?
Is this why I had him bring Doris in to the family? So they would think the worst, no matter how Pete chose to explain her.
There was also the matter of sex, a word never spoken aloud in the Bailey family, yet their record of procreation signifies that the act has been achieved more than once among the lot of them. I was, to put it bluntly, more than a bit tired of it, but how does a woman make a man stop? For over a year now, when he turns to me, my skin flinches, like a horse's skin to shake off a fly. I want no more of that business. Doris can provide that service and nobody'll be the sorrier.
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I don't know what the hell Shirley was thinking, wanting me to trot Doris out before the whole family like that. Like a brood mare. I was to bring her into the paddock where Doris would show them her stuff. Doris with her lovely long legs and her front teeth, a little prominent. Her lean face just shy of beautiful, but pretty enough. Her glossy black hair caught in a ribbon at the back and trailing between her shoulders like a mane. Her horse laugh, big and hearty, revealing her long white teeth.
All kind of hellfire burned my brain as my wife stood up to me, face to face, her chin stuck out hard as an anvil. No matter what I said, she wouldn't let it go, this insane demand of hers. I'd never seen this side of her. Married forty some years and had no idea. She wouldn't tell me why she wanted Doris brought here, under this very roof. I had crazy theories zigzagging through my addled brain. Standing there unprotected, without my bulletproof vest. She'd gone plain nutty as a fruit cake. Seemed capable of anything. All this time, I thought I was married to the sweetest, gentlest woman ever. Maybe a little weak on the passionate side, but sweet, yes, sweet as a sugar lump. Dependable.
"You bring her," Shirley told me, "or I leave you, and then you will be scandalized. Before I move out, I'll let them know about her. Your precious, blue-blood Baileys. So they'll understand, you know?"
I stared at her dumbfounded. My precious, blue-blood Baileys? This wasn't my Shirley, my Shirley, who was more a Bailey than a Bailey.
"Doris is the new member of the Bailey family," she said. And that was pretty much that. No sir, that was that.
When I introduced Doris on Thanksgiving Day, I told my people as much of the truth as I could. We met at the Greyhound Bus Depot in St. Louis that time I was on the trail of a criminal. You remember, Bob Johnston, aka, The Edge? Yeah. Who could forget that gentleman? That was one for the books!
She's a manager down there at the depot, arencha, Doris? Moved up the ladder fast, dincha, Doris? Come to find out, she'd been called out of her office because The Edge handed the ticket lady a hundred dollar bill and that gal wanted Doris to check, to make sure it wasn't counterfeit. Doris studied the bill. It was counterfeit. She could tell in a second. Meanwhile, she got a good look at him, remembered every little detail, dincha, Doris? And by golly, we nabbed that fella before he got to New Orleans.
Doris and I got to talking, y'know how you do when someone's lent you a hand? You hang around and have a little parley-voo. And she got round to telling me how she loved playing bridge, but didn't have a group anymore, since two of them moved away and how she loved big families, but hers was all back East, most of them long since dead. Well, now it came to inviting her here.
I cleared my throat and didn't look at Doris.
I told her all about the big meals us Baileys share. Every holiday another great meal. In fact every Sunday, a good solid family meal for all those like Mike who don't want to putz around in the kitchen by their lonesome and fix themselves a bologna sandwich and some Campbell's chicken noodle soup after church. Shirley's the best cook this side of the Mississippi. They all say so, makes her own bread, you gotta taste it to believe it.
Anyhow, I tell Doris all this about us and she says, boy, I'd sure like to have a family like that, you lucky dog, and when I tell her we all play a mean hand of bridge, she's beside herself. So I just decide we'll make her one of the fold, that's what I'll do. She doesn't want to barge in, but I say, Oh, they'll all take to you. The Baileys are good, good people and they don't like to think of anyone without a bridge partner.
I give Shirley a quick look out of the corner of my eye, and see a funny smile on her face. I wonder what she's gonna do. But y'know, she does nothing. Nothing at all. And that Doris. She bares her teeth and says, Glad to meetcha. I've heard so much aboutcha. Anyone up for bridge this afternoon? Like everything is regular.