She had created a small scandal in town by taking on a few writing assignments for the local newspaper, pieces which had nothing to do with church socials, recipes or women’s fashions.
Although David, through skillful ordering, could obtain many comparatively modern products for their use, to get a decent shampoo still required brewing their own. Other personal items demanded innovative approaches as well. Lizzie and Helen Bledsoe had become great unlikely friends. Theirs was an improbable friendship because Elizabeth, with the vastly broader range of experiences to which she had been exposed, was savvy and sophisticated. Helen was wildly naive. Whereas Helen was grounded, by and large, in only the homely skills and her knowledge of the world was, by any standard, parochial, Liz had traveled much of the United States, had rubbed elbows with the famous, stayed in some of the finest hotels and dined in some of the best restaurants. Through books, magazines, newspapers, television and radio—even school field trips—Liz had a knowledge of the world around her and its possibilities, even in this time. She knew that men would walk on the Moon in three-quarters of a century, would perform open-heart surgery, and would cross the United States coast to coast in hours rather than months. Yet more importantly still, Liz had been raised with the idea that “The only thing a man can do that a woman can’t is piss standing up without getting his legs wet.” For a woman to compensate for the superior physical strength and endurance of the male simply meant—usually—the substitution of brain for brawn, even if that meant recruiting a man to do the strength-related task for her, such as twisting open a stubborn jar lid. Elizabeth was very much the traditional female, but realized that her horizons could be as broad or nearly so as she worked to make them. Helen was schooled in the idea of achieving full contentment and realization of personal abilities in keeping a clean home for a husband who was the ultimate authority and had the final say-so in every aspect of life, to raise their children so that the boys would be as he was and the girls would, however such meekness might not be to their liking, acquiesce, serve, obey.
In discussing this concept of female second-classcitizenship with their daughter once, Jack had described the arrangement in a manner at once bizarre, yet painfully accurate. “However much a man might care for a woman, genuinely love her, in certain societies at certain times— even today—a wife was/is expected to be a love dummy which does not require inflation, yet is capable of housecleaning and cooking.”
Despite a chasm of differences between the two girls— and, sometimes, Ellen imagined, to Helen’s mother’s consternation—Lizzie and Helen were pals, buddies, and Lizzie, Ellen aiding in the conspiracy as often as she could, was regularly and conscientiously planting the seeds of independence in Helen’s life, the idea that in order to have a free will and the intelligence to use it, testicles were not required.
Clarence’s wife, Peggy, a medical doctor possessing knowledge of which the finest doctors in the age had not the slightest inkling, would be considered an oddity, nearly a freak, merely because of her sex. So far, at least, Peggy had hidden her skills; Ellen doubted Peggy could perpetuate so distasteful a charade.
That Lizzie would someday move to a large city, where a woman’s role could be less constrained if she had the brains and the talent, was obvious to Ellen. Lizzie would still only be in her thirties in the 1920s, when skirts shortened and minds broadened—at least a bit.
But the thought of Lizzie moving off sometime was very depressing, would leave a hole in her own heart and in Jack’s.
Ellen buttoned her blouse, rolled up her sleeves, cursed her hemline and left the storeroom.
Soon, David and Clarence would be off to San Francisco, “sin city” with its enticing Barbary Coast brothels, its ruthless press gangs shanghaiing the unwitting and its vile opium dens where a night on the pipe was some men’s glimpse of paradise—their only glimpse. David’s and Clarence’s mission was to convert a modest quantity of the family diamonds into coin of the realm, the remodeling of the store and the completion of their house having seriously depleted the family’s cash reserves.
However, there was a plus to David and Clarence being gone; she would be so worried about them she wouldn’t have much time to fret over Lizzie moving