Chapter 7: A Little Gay

Rule 9 says, "Be a little gay and a little more interesting."

In 1958 that means cheerful.

I looked it up in the dictionary at the library to be sure.

I looked up "interesting" as well, because I wanted to be thorough, and it said, "arousing curiosity."

Hal had never once been bored with me, but a husband's curiosity is a thing you can improve.

On Friday I took forty dollars from my own savings book at the First National.

I had earned every cent in nine years of other people's ledgers.

Marlene took me to Main Street on her lunch hour.

"What are we buying?" she said.

"Something interesting."

"Honey, you're a married woman. You can buy something indecent."

We went into the department store and straight up to the second floor, to the counter where the clerk wore her glasses on a chain.

She looked at me over the chain.

"Slips are on the left, madam."

"Not slips," said Marlene. "The other thing."

The clerk went to the back and came out with a flat white box.

Inside, folded in tissue, was a red satin slip with black lace at the neckline and a hem that stopped well above my knee.

It was the color of a fire engine.

It cost eleven dollars and ninety-five cents.

"Rule 1," I said to the mirror, with my heart going like a drum.

"You'll give him a stroke."

"He's thirty-one. He'll manage."

I paid in cash.

Hal came home at ten past four.

By then I had the chops in the pan and the radio off.

Marlene's record player sat on the sideboard with a stack of forty-fives beside it.

I had my hair down.

Under my apron I wore the red slip, Marlene's black heels and a bit of lipstick.

I had taken the apron off.

He came in through the kitchen door with his lunch pail and his hat, and he stopped.

The lunch pail hit the floor.

"Hello, Hal," I said, in my low, soft, pleasant voice. "Welcome home."

He didn't answer.

His throat moved.

"Is that..." he said.

"It's Rule 9."

"What?"

"I'm being a little gay."

"Dolores," said my husband. "You are being a lot of things."

I put a record on.

It was Patti Page, and she was singing about a Tennessee Waltz, and it was slow and sweet and a little foolish.

Keep reading free with an account. Start To Be a Virtuous Wife, According to the Manual from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.