Indiana-Michigan line, 1934
In the kitchen, as Mother clanged a pan on the burner, Ruth’s twins, June’s eager guides, had grabbed June’s hands and pulled her up the creaking stairs to what was to be her boudoir. They crowded behind her now as she unpacked her suitcase, the heat of their young bodies adding to the stuffiness of the room. What kind of oven would this be by night?
Ilene, the twin with the bigger gap between her saw-edged new front teeth—the only way June could tell the little girls apart—darted a finger to a dress. “Pretty!”
“Thank you.” June let her caress it, the child’s hot, grubby-sweet musk catching at her heart. She smelled like Ruth as a kid.
From the start, June’s feelings for Ruth had overwhelmed her. Just the smell, the sight, of baby Ruth released a warmth in little June that was so powerful that she had not known what to do with it. When baby Ruth had taken her first steps, her proud grin forming three chins against her neck and her diaper saggy over chunky plodding legs, June had darted forward and gripped her baby sister’s arm, squeezing it, hard, until Ruth had squawked and Mother had screamed.
Dad had whisked June off. She was confused, ashamed, and scared of her own self. She had only wanted to love the baby. After that, whenever she squeezed her little sister’s arm, teeth and body clenched with the force of it, her insides hot with love, she made sure her mother was not around. But she loved that little baby. She did.
Now she took a dress from the suitcase and shook it out.
“Our mother never wears pretty dresses,” the other twin, Irene, said matter-of-factly.
“You shouldn’t say that,” June said.
Irene hopped on the bed next to the suitcase. “Mother tells us to always tell the truth.”
“She does?”
Irene peered into the bag, a cat inspecting a chipmunk hole. “Yes. She says to never lie.”
“That’s good.” June wondered if by not lying her sister meant that as long as no one asked, she could carry on with her blue-eyed farmhand. No wonder Ruth had not seemed thrilled to see her, even after Mother had written and begged her to come because Ruth “missed her so.” That was obviously not the case. “Could you get me a hanger, please?”
Irene ran over to the wardrobe and threw open a door carved with a preschooler’s all-head-and-rickety-stick-legs scrawling of a person. She unearthed a hanger from the bottom of the wardrobe, and with it, Mother’s cat.
The animal shot under the bed as Irene brought back her wooden trophy. “Here you go!”
Not to be outdone in helpfulness, Ilene rooted around the suitcase and pulled out a pair of pumps pilloried on shoe-trees. “Want me to put these away?”
Her twin, Irene, apparently the dominant one, elbowed her sister out of the way. “What else can I get?”
June held up her jewelry case. “You can put this on the dresser, please.”
Irene snatched the box and popped it open. Both girls gasped at the contents, as if the mostly costume jewelry were golden treasure.
“No fair!” Ilene cried.
“Girls!” Ruth called, trudging up the stairs. “Leave Aunt June alone.”
“We are helping her!” Ilene said when her mother entered the room.
“She said we could!” cried the other.
“They are helping,” June lied.
Ruth dropped on the other side of the suitcase. “I know what sort of help they are.”
June thought that wasn’t kind to say about her daughters. She was surprised when Ruth allowed Ilene to come over and root her way onto her lap, then let her coltish legs dangle to the floor. The child put her thumb to her mouth then took it away when she saw her mother watching. June bet Ruth was a tough mother to please.
Irene snapped the jewelry case open and closed. “Aunt June, why do they call you ‘Betty Crocker’? Why don’t they call you by your real name?”
“ ‘June Whiteleather’ doesn’t sound as catchy, does it?” June said lightly.
Ruth wrapped her arms around the daughter in her lap. Up came the thumb again.
“The problem is,” Ruth said, “there is no Betty Crocker.”
“That’s not you on the radio?” Irene’s voice went high, as if she didn’t want to believe it.
“Nope,” said Ruth. “Not her. I told you that, nut. The radio Betty Crocker is one of the bunch of ladies who pretend that they’re her.”
June felt a prick of annoyance. This must be one of the instances when the truth must be scrupulously told. “My job is to help Betty.”
“But if there’s not a Betty Crocker,” Ilene said around her thumb, “how can you help her?”
“You have a very good point.” Ruth tickled her daughter’s ribs. “What Aunt June does,” she said over Ilene’s giggles, “is works for a company that made up a woman to sell their flour.”
Irene kept flipping the jewel case open and closed. “Why don’t they just use a real woman to sell their flour?”
The twin on Ruth’s lap agreed. “Yes, you should sell it, Aunt June.”
“Your aunt was pretty good at selling a bathing suit in high school.”
June looked up sharply.
“I’m being complimentary, June.”
“Thank you,” June said, uncertain. Ruth was even more sour than she remembered her. She reminded herself of the hardships her sister had to bear.
Ruth removed her daughter’s thumb from her mouth with a pop. “The company made up Betty Crocker because a make-believe character can say anything they want her to say. She’s not beholden to the truth, you see.”
“Huh?” Irene wrinkled her nose.
“But I like Betty Crocker,” said her twin. “We hear her on the radio.”
“Made-up,” said Ruth.
Such a stickler when it suits her, thought June. She wondered what Ruth’s policy was with her children on Santa Claus.
“Girls, I want you to know that there are real people behind Betty. Like me. There are twenty-one of us ‘Bettys.’ We try out recipes and write cooking publications and make suggestions for the radio show. One of my favorite parts of the job is to answer letters from people. We get thousands of them every day, can you imagine?”
“You do?” they breathed. “About flour?”
“About everything. No one tells me what to say in my letters. I have to answer from my heart.”
“You mean people write to you about more than how to frost a cake?” Ruth held away her daughter on her lap then fanned her own face. “Geez, you’re a little hotbox!”
June took a dress to the wardrobe. “The other girls and I have become regular agony aunts. I suppose women—it’s mostly women who write, although we do get our share of marriage proposals from men—believe Betty can solve their problems, which is rather astonishing to me.”
“Really? Isn’t that what you Bettys are working so hard for, to get women to think that they can fix anything with a cake and a smile—just be sure not to stint on the flour.”
“We’re just trying to help people, Ruth. These are terrible times.”
“Ha. I’m not the one you have to convince how hard these times are. But I’m not sure that lying to people helps them.”
“I don’t know, maybe it does—not lying, I mean by giving them someone who they can turn to. I suppose many women don’t have a soul to sound off to, so they unburden themselves on perfect strangers. You wouldn’t believe what they tell Betty Crocker! I’ve had to become an amateur psychoanalyst.”
“I’m sure you’re perfect at it.”
June leveled her brow at her sister. Was it too much for Ruth to acknowledge that June was trying to do something good? All right, Ruth was less fortunate. All right, she was in a terrible situation. June was absolutely sick about it—even more ill now that she had seen John. But did she have to be punished for her own good luck every waking moment she was around Ruth, when she was not the transgressor here?
Around her thumb, Ilene asked, “Mommy, is Daddy awake yet?” She looked up at her mother.
“No.”
The child slouched back against Ruth.
Irene closed the jewelry case with a final pop. “Mommy and Daddy used to sleep in this room. Now it’s Grandma’s. Stinks like her baby powder.”
“And her throat lozenges,” Ilene added around her thumb.
“And her girdle.” The twins tittered.
“Girls,” Ruth said.
June felt terribly weary all of a sudden, flattened, as if the oppressive roar of the airplane propellers were battering her ears again.
“Thanks for helping me to unpack. Uncle Richard and I shall be quite comfy in here.”
“Not exactly what you’re used to,” said Ruth.
“It’s lovely. It’s wonderful to be out in the country.”
“We have twenty-one cats!” piped up Ilene. “Out in the barn.”
June smiled. “You are in heaven!”
Ruth rolled her eyes.
This was going all wrong. Everyone should be thrilled—John had a chance to be cured. Their family was reunited. The sisters were back together again. She touched Ruth’s arm. “I really am glad to see you.”
Ruth’s eyes flew open. They were brown, like Dad’s, and fierce. “Why?”
June had squeezed this woman’s arm as a baby, not knowing what to do with the love surging through her. “I just am.”
Ruth blew a breath out her nose, then looked away, before resting her chin on her daughter’s head. Suddenly, she said, “Why are you a Betty, anyhow?”
“What?”
“Why do you work as a Betty? You don’t need the money.”
“I don’t know. I suppose because I get to use my creative side.” She would not admit that she loved how the girls looked up to her. Ruth would have a field day with that.
“Well, don’t stop. I need the money.”
When June didn’t answer quickly enough, Ruth said grimly, “That was a joke, June. Ha—what I would give to be the one supporting you for a change.”
“Lunch!” Mother yelled up the stairs.
“The can’s on, ready to be served.” Ruth stood up, letting her daughter slide from her lap. “Come on, girls.”
The twins sidled over to June. The worship on their faces was obvious even to her.
Ruth shrugged, then sauntered out of the room, leaving them behind.
June clasped their warm hands. “Ladies, let’s go eat.”
She still didn’t know what to do about Ruth.