Was one allowed to actually hate one’s daughter-in-law? I hoped not. I mustn’t put Joe in a position to have to choose between us, either. How I wished my mother were alive to advise me! Of course, if she had been, if there’d been no war, I’d be contemplating an arranged marriage to some stuffy Bavarian prince—or perhaps a mere duke or count; my father’s wealth would have warred there with my hemophilia-carrier handicap, and there was no telling which element would have prevailed—and the advice would have been quite different. I knew how to approach a queen. I wasn’t nearly as sure how to approach Mrs. Stark.
“Marguerite?” Joe prompted, and I jumped, resumed brushing my hair, then pulled my dress over my head. It was the green rayon one that Joe had brought me from Switzerland, and two and a half years of near-daily use—more than four hundred wearings, that would be, and how many washings?—had made it look very tired indeed. And as for my shoes!
I said, “This will sound terribly frivolous, I’m afraid.”
“No,” he said. “Whatever you like. We’ve never had a honeymoon, so I guess this is it.” He grinned. “A honeymoon with my parents. Maybe not the ideal choice. I still can’t work out why they wanted to come—Dad’s plenty busy at the law firm these days, with the war over and business going like gangbusters to catch up—but I couldn’t find a way to tell them to back off once they bulldozed through all my gentle objections. Some staff sergeant, huh? But they’re my folks, you know, so I figured—hey, it’s a long train. Maybe even long enough for us to get lost on it.”
“Oh, no,” I said, in a rather flustered tone. I couldn’t exactly say, “I’ve adored meeting your parents!” I also couldn’t say, “To buy me off and then console you on the way home, that’s why.” That didn’t leave much Icouldsay, so I jumped over the whole thing and said, “What I’d most like, if we are to be boarding a train this evening, would be to shop, and to buy cosmetics and learn to use them—not so many, I think, or so much of them, do you agree?”
“I think that would be a good idea,” Joe said gravely, but the twinkle in his eye gave him away.
“Yes,” I said. “I think we can agree on that. And a hairdresser as well. How does one know the best places to go?”
“We’re at the Plaza. If they can’t direct you to the right places, Dad wasted his money.”
“Talking of money,” I said, “I still have most of what I got from selling the brooch. Over seven hundred dollars, in fact. There was nothing to buy with it in Germany, especially once I wasn’t buying goods for the bakery anymore, andmostespecially once we married and you began paying for me. I’d like to use this money for my—I suppose we must call it my trousseau.”
“Now, wait just a minute.” Joe had a crease between his eyes and had sat up straighter in his chair. “I think a guy’s entitled to dress his own wife.”
I don’t know how I knew to do the next thing. All I know is, I went to him, sat in his lap, wrapped an arm around his neck, kissed his mouth, smiled into his eyes, and said, “But I want to so very much, you see.”
“I—” Joe began. “But I?—”
I kissed him again, taking longer at it. I’d learned some things from him in the five short weeks during which we’d been married and actually living together. For one thing, I’d learned that despite his fine mind and sensitive conscience, he was a physical being who loved being touched, and loved everything else even more. More surprisingly, I’d learned that I was, too. So I let us both enjoy it a while longer—he didn’t take much persuading—then sat back, my hand still on his face, and said, “If I’d married you in a normal way, my parents would have bought my trousseau, and I would have come to you fully prepared. Shoes, and furs, and suitcases of fine leather, and frocks for daytime, and evening gowns and capes, and silk stockings, and pearls and jewels, and lovely nightdresses made of silk and satin, and oh! so many other things, as well as a most beautiful lace gown and the emerald parure to be married in. And then the properties my father would have settled on me. But in a way, theyaresupplying it,aren’t they? For I sold the brooch, and now I can tell myself that theyarebuying my trousseau, and looking on me so lovingly.”
“Not looking onmeverylovingly, I’ll bet,” Joe said, but he was grinning.
“We’ll pretend,” I said. “An imagination is a beautiful thing.”
At which we both smiled, and Joe gave me a little slap on the bottom—husbands are very nice things to have, aren’t they?—and said, “My folks are down there at breakfast already. Dad’s a stickler for punctuality. They’re going to think we’ve gone back to bed, and if you sit here tempting me any longer, they’ll be right. If it’s that important to you, we’ll have breakfast, and then I’ll take you shopping for your trousseau.”
“But you won’t want to shop,” I objected.
He raised his eyebrows. “Who bought the dress you’re wearing?”
“Well, yes, but?—”
“Would you rather go with Mom? Is that it?”
Well,thatwas an easy answer. “No. I’d prefer to go with you.”
“Good,” he said. “And don’t worry. The minute you’re in good hands and have started wishing me gone, I’ll be finding a diner for a cup of coffee, a slice of pie, and theNew York Times. Sounds pretty much like heaven. Seems like I can’t get enough pie since I got home. You’ll have to watch what you give me to eat, or I’m likely to blow up like a balloon.”
This was probably not the time to explain that I’d never learned to cook. By the time I’d needed to, there’d been almost nothingtocook but potato soup, and I wasn’t making that again. Ever. I knew how to bake bread, though, and I could fry a sausage or a slice of Spam, and that was a start, wasn’t it? Besides, Americans ate soup that came in tins. I knew that,because I’d seen them in the PX back in Nuremberg. I knew how to open a tin.
Women all over the world cooked for their families every single day. How hard could it be?
Shall I admit how gratifying it was, at three-thirty that afternoon, to walk into the lobby on Joe’s arm and see Mr. and Mrs. Stark’s jaws drop? Perhaps it was the beautiful leather suitcase the porter was pushing on his cart along with my battered footlocker. The matching train case, I carried myself.
Or possibly it was my new hairstyle, which was called a “halo bob” and featured my pale blonde curls tousled fetchingly around my head. Or, of course, the traveling suit and matching hat—as flat and as stylish as Mrs. Stark’s own—in sage green. The nipped-in jacket with its peplum, I’d learned today, was at the heart of what was being called the “New Look,” with its hourglass silhouette, beautiful fabrics, and full skirts. That new suitcase held a white jacket and black skirt inspired by Mr. Dior himself, along with a much simpler plaid day dress, a pretty nightdress, and some underclothes; all I’d managed to buy in my abbreviated shopping day, but at least they were a start.
And, yes, Louisa had been right; itwaslovely to pop into Bergdorf Goodman for a new frock. It was even lovelier to pop into a place called Saks Fifth Avenue. I was wearing the first nylon stockings of my life, too, and new shoes. Flat ones for the journey, but I also had the most lovely black heels for … well, for wherever I might need to wear them. My conception of my future life, I’m afraid, was still very hazy. I’d lived in a palace and been, I knew now, an extremely pampered princess. I’d slept in a pile of straw in more than one barn and on the baggage counter at a railway station, and I’d lived over a bakery, woken at three-thirty every morning to bake bread, and owned two dresses. I hadn’t done anything in between, and I had a feeling my new life was going to consist almost exclusively of “in-between.”
Oh, and the indestructible black shoes that I’d been wearing for more than three years now, the ones that went with the hated Band of German Maidens uniform and lent absolutely no distinction to any costume? And the battered old gray coat with the moth-holes that a one-legged underbutler named Franz had worn through a Russian winter, with which I’d parted with much more tenderness? I’d handed them to the clerk at the shoe counter and said, “Will you dispose of these for me, please?” in my most regal tones. He’d said, “Certainly, madam,” and had manfully hidden his revulsion at touching such unattractive objects.
“Madam,” because of my wedding ring and the emerald-and-diamond engagement ring I wore with it. I couldn’t see the rings now, because I was wearing black leather gloves lined with cashmere. I had a coat of fine black wool, too, lined with red satin, and I was wearing pearls at my ears and throat. Those, Joe had bought. When I’d objected, he’d said, “The groom’s gift to the bride, if we’re talking trousseaus,” and how could I argue with that?
I was, in fact, properly dressed for the first time in years, and my hair was styled for the first time ever. The nails of my fingers and toes were painted red, with a half-moon left bare at the bottom and the tips left bare at the top, as I’d been told was the style, and they were lovely. My lips were red, my eyebrows were plucked and darkened, my nose was powdered, and my pale eyelashes were transformed by a careful touch of mascara. If I stood a little taller now and felt alittle more sure of myself as a wife, an American, and a daughter-in-law?—
