He shook his head emphatically. “I should have made you quit the day you got married like we do with all the other girls.”
I smiled. “But you couldn’t because I’m indispensable.”
“You know the policy.” He brandished his gold pen at me. “We can’t have pregnant secretaries running around a car dealership. How would that look?”
“Please Daddy, just a little longer.” I felt like I was six years old again, begging to stay up past my bedtime.
“Absolutely not. Today is your last day, just like we planned. We’ll give you a nice send off.” His face softened. “Then you go home and take care of your new husband and my future grandson.”
I rested a hand on the not yet visible bump on my belly. “Or granddaughter.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “Nope. It’s a grandson. I feel it in my bones.”
I gazed through the window overlooking the showroom floor and spotted Dickie, my brand-new husband who supposedly requires so much care. His big hands caressed a powder-blue 1965 Chevy Impala. They remind me of sharks, those Impalas, the way the hood hangs over the grill.
Dickie spoke to a dazed-looking young couple, charming them with his wide grin and square jaw. Just like Paul Newman. That’s what all the girls in the office say. “You’re so lucky, Dottie. Your husband looks just like Paul Newman.”
The next part is implied. What’s a gorgeous guy like that doing with a girl like me? Because I’m plain. Unremarkable. And a little ... different.
Mechanically inclined.Those are the worried words my mother used to whisper to her friends as Ibuilt towers with Tinkertoys instead of playing with dolls like a normal girl.
Daddy didn’t have a problem with it, though. In those terrible days after Mother died, he let me spend my time at the dealership with him, or out in the garage with Oscar and Herman and all the other mechanics, learning about spark plugs and carburetors.
Daddy indulged me, I suspect, because he knew I had a broken heart, just like he did. He let me stay out there doing oil changes until I turned fourteen. Then he put his foot down, and said I could only help out if I worked in the secretarial pool.
So I learned to type and run the mimeograph machine and take dictation. I loved working in the office with the other girls, typing up sales contracts and purchase orders after school and over the summer.
And that’s where I met Dickie, the day after I graduated from high school. He came into the break room to get a celebratory cup of coffee after selling a car.
He leaned against a file cabinet, tall and lanky with those bright blue eyes. “You must be the boss’s pretty daughter I’ve been hearing so much about.”
I blushed, stammered, and fell in love right there on the spot, standing next to the Bunn coffee machine.
And he does look like Paul Newman, which is why I should be over the moon right now. A handsome husband with a job working for my dad at the biggest car dealership in the mid-Atlantic. A couple months pregnant and carrying a healthy baby, according to Dr. Carlyle.
But ... I thought we’d have more time before the baby. We went to Florida for our honeymoon, we came home, and now I’m expecting. I wanted to trythat new pill that keeps you from getting pregnant. Not forever, of course, but just to delay things for a little while, just for a year or two.
I asked Dr. Carlyle about it before the wedding and he told me I had to bring Dickie to my next appointment, that I needed my fiancé’s permission before he’d write me a prescription.
And when I told Dickie, he looked at me like I was crazy.
“But honey, don’t you want to be a mother?”
“I do but ... I just turned 19. And you’re only 23. Maybe we should wait ... just a couple years. Maybe I don’t want to share you yet,” I added, pulling him closer.
He kissed me then and whispered in my ear and I forgot all about that pill until after the honeymoon and then it was too late.
There are ... other things too ... about Dickie. But maybe this is all just part of being married.
Like The List.
He says it’s designed to help me be a better wife, to make our house run more smoothly. He sits me down every Sunday night in the den and we go over it together.
For example, on Fridays I’m supposed to wax and polish the linoleum, dust the baseboards and clean every silver, copper, and brass item in the house as well as the insides of the windows. On Mondays, I’m supposed to wash all the floor mats, in addition to laundering and ironing the sheets and all our clothes.
In the evening, I like to read. But instead I’m supposed to plan out my menu for the next day and make my grocery list so I’m never without the ingredients I need to make a proper three course meal for dinnereach night. Not to mention all the baking I’m supposed to do.
I did all the cooking and some of the cleaning after Mother died, but we also had a housekeeper, so I guess I never realized how much work it takes to run a household.
