The Future Homemakers of America

Praise

From the reviews of The Future Homemakers of America:

‘A warm, life-affirming novel that offers its readers pure pleasure’

The Times

‘Graham has a sure-fire comic touch and a wayward invention…Occasionally compared to Alan Bennett, Graham exhibits precisely the same blend of toughness and sentiment’

Guardian

‘Superlative…the writing sparkles from first to last…the detail is delicious…A rich, many-layered portrait of Middle America in the second half of the last century. Where others have heaped scorn on the American Dream, or peddled dewy-eyed optimism, Graham simply tells it like it was – and tells it brilliantly’

Sunday Telegraph

‘Crackles with energy and snappy dialogue…Graham has always been good at catching and compressing how people speak, but here she has pulled off an absolute triumph; the voice of her sassy narrator, the redoubtable Peggy, never falters as she unfolds 40 years of friendship’

Daily Mail

‘An absorbing, funny, lively and sometimes moving story’

Sunday Times

‘A warm, witty and wise novel about female friendship…A feel-good book that can’t help but make you smile’

Hello!

‘A tenacity of voice and a deftly judged lightness of touch have always been Laurie Graham’s strengths as a novelist…a fast-moving and often funny saga’

ALI SMITH, TLS

Dedication

For my own hardy perennialsBridget, Liz, Rachel, Trish and Vivvy

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

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About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

1

We were down at the commissary, just for something to do, me and Lois, pushing Sandie in her stroller. Breath puffing out like smoke every time we laughed and just hanging there in the air. The cold hadn’t killed the scent of the beet harvest, though. All my born days, I never knowed such a sickly smell.

‘I swear,’ she said, loud as you please, ‘this place is colder than a gravedigger’s ass.’ Lois always did have a mouth on her.

‘Uh-oh,’ she said, ‘here comes the Pie-Crust Queen.’

And sure enough, there was Betty running after us, flagging us to wait till she could catch her breath and tell us the big story.

‘Peggy!’ she said, gasping and wheezing and hanging on to my arm. ‘Have you heard the terrible news?’

When your husband flies F-84s, sitting up there on 3,000 gallons of jet fuel, cruising – now there’s a word – cruising at 510mph, hoping to get his tail waxed by some Russki so he can be Jock-of-the-Week back at the base, there’s only one kind of Terrible News, but we both knew, me and Lois, that it wasn’t that.

That kinda news comes quiet, on flannel feet. The base chaplain brings it to your door, and the CO’s wife follows through with a few brisk words about courage and dignity. After that, you better hope you got some friends. Some squadron wives to take turns answering your phone and feeding your kids and keeping you from falling into a thousand pieces.

When Terrible News comes to married quarters, there’s no pulling down of blinds. Military don’t hold with closing the drapes. Word gets round, but you’d never know, looking in from outside, that anything was happening, because heck, if air force wives went around yelling ‘Have you heard?’ the whole thing could run out of control. Next thing you know, every girl on the base’d be out there screaming, ‘His poor wife! His poor orphaned children! It’s so tragic. It’s unbearable. But I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s not me. Not this time!’ And that would never do.

Still, I guess we both missed a beat. Terrible news?

‘His Majesty King George of England,’ she said, ‘died in his sleep at Sandring Ham Palace.’

Betty always had a thing about royalty, clipping photos, pasting them in her albums, specially anything about that Princess Margaret, or the royal babies.

‘Princess Margaret had tea with General and Mrs Eisenhower,’ she told us one time. ‘She was fifteen minutes late, but it wasn’t her fault. They had angel-food cake and dainty little sandwiches, but the princess probably didn’t do cake, watching her lovely figure an’ all. She wore a yellow shirt and the cutest black dirndl skirt.’

‘Well, I’ll be dirndled.’ Lois was always taking the rise out of Betty, but she took it in good part. When you’re in a hole you gotta stick together and USAF Drampton was a hole, no two ways.

I knew Betty from way back, at Topperwein High, Class of ’42. I was captain of the softball team and she was president of Future Homemakers, stuffing toy bears for needy children and selling lunch-boxes for Healthful Living Week. We really didn’t run with the same crowd. But then she married Ed Gillis and I married Vern Dewey which made us both 96th Bomber Wing wives. By the time we were posted from Travis, Texas, to some frozen salt-marsh, East Anglia, next stop Siberia, we were blood-sisters, near enough. Never would have thought I’d be so glad of Betty’s everlasting cheerfulness. That’s homesickness for you.

‘He was found by a servant,’ she said. ‘That’d be a footman or a pageboy, taking him his coffee. Imagine. He’d put down the tray, all beautiful silver and jewels, and say, “Good morning, sire” and baboom, the king’s dead.’

Gayle Jackson was parked, waiting for us.

‘Y’all wanna come back to my place?’ she said. ‘Get a coffee or something?’ Time hung heavy for Gayle, poor kid, stuck out in a rental waiting for her darling Okey to come home.

Lois said, ‘Sure. You won’t mind if I bring along something, give it a little lift?’ She had a liquor bag hanging from the back of Sandie’s stroller.

Gayle’s face lit up. I guess there always was that weakness in her.

Betty said, ‘Honey, did you hear? About the king?’

‘He’s dead,’ Lo chipped in. ‘Ba-boom.’

‘Course,’ Betty said, ‘it had to be a servant found him, not the queen. They’d have separate bedrooms. Kings and queens always do.’

‘Jeez,’ Gayle said. ‘How come?’

‘Why, because they have such palatial homes, of course!’ We relied on Betty for that kind of inside information. ‘They have separate closets, separate everything.’

Sounded fine to me.

‘And poor Princess Elizabeth is thousands of miles away in Africa, having the news broke to her by her courtiers. She’s just going to have to pack her bags and fly right back here and get coronated.’

She leaned down to rub Sandie’s frozen little cheeks. ‘Hi, sweetie pie. Have I been ignoring you today? My, you’re so cold. Lois, is this child warm enough?’

Sandie gave Betty a big smile. ‘Told,’ she said. ‘Digger’s ass.’

So we all headed down to Gayle’s place, and Audrey came in from next door, for coffee and a little something from Lois’s bottle, just to warm us through and wish the old king God speed. Even Betty came along and that didn’t happen too often, on account of Ed keeping her on a short tether. Betty was allowed to go any place she liked, as long as it was the PX, the chapel or the school gate.

‘I’m just fine,’ she always said. ‘If Ed Gillis is happy, Betty Gillis is happy. Anyways, I don’t have time for gallivanting. My babies keep me busy. Caring for my home and my babies.’ Her babies were Deana and Sherry, but she included Ed too, for some reason we could never fathom, so that made three whining brats, leaving their skivvies for her to pick up and generally giving her the runaround.

Gayle and Audrey were off-base, on account of they didn’t have kids. The rest of us were in quarters. They weren’t much more than cabins, with flat asphalt roofs, but at least we had each other. At least inside that perimeter fence we were one Nation, under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.

Audrey didn’t seem to mind being outside. She was of a pioneering disposition. They could have put her in a mule wagon and she’d have made the best of things.

‘When in Rome,’ she always said.

Well, when in Rome, maybe, but not when you’ve been posted to the asshole of the universe.

Lois said, ‘Aud, you’re wasted here. Can’t they send you some place you’d have to live in a pup tent? I may just have a word to the CO’s wife. See if they got any mutinies need putting down. Any prairie fires need extinguishing.’

The rentals were just outside Drampton, in a place called Smeeth. It wasn’t a town. Just a couple of places growing sugar beet and a pumping station, supposed to keep the river moving along. It was called The Drain and it ran higher’n the roadway, which didn’t seem natural to me. I hoped and prayed that pumping station never broke down. Been me quartered there, I’d never have dared turn my back on it. I wouldn’t have slept nights for fear of waking up drowned.

Where they were, looked like one house but it was two, back to back, holding each other up but only just. Every house out there had that look about it, sagging in the middle, crouched down, like the sky was too much for it. They had a whole lot of sky in Norfolk, England.

Audrey and Lance were in one side of this broke-back house, Gayle and Okey were in the other, and oh how Gayle longed for a baby. A baby, and quarters, with steam heating and a Frigidaire.

‘Next year,’ Okey said, ‘next year.’

They seemed like a pair of skinny kids, playing house. Her with her ponytail and her bobbysocks. Him with his crewcut.

Gayle put on the coffee and Audrey fetched a kitchen stool from her place, Gayle and Okey not having much in the way of seating.

‘Right, this king?’ Lois said.

‘The king.’ Betty put her straight.

‘Whatever. They’ll have a fancy funeral for him, right? With a big parade and everything. And it’ll be in London, huh? Because he’s the king.’

‘Well, I guess.’

‘And where exactly is London?’

Audrey said it was in the south-east. Fact was, though, none of us had seen the sun since the day we landed, so that didn’t help much. Get to the base gate, we still wouldn’t know whether to turn left or right.

‘Anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?’ Lois was looking excited, jiggling Sandie up and down on her knee. ‘We go, girls. We go. Find London, see the parade, then have some fun. See a new movie, or a show. Find ourselves some top-hole toffs, what-ho, treat a girl to dinner, dontcher know.’

Betty said much as she’d love to go and pay her respects, Ed’d never allow it. For starters, who’d look after Sherry and Deana? ‘And Crystal,’ she said to me, ‘who’d mind her?’ She was looking to me to stop her building up any silly hopes. When it came to playing the mommy card, showing how you just had to rein yourself in once you had kids, Betty always turned to me for back-up because you sure as hell couldn’t rely on Lois.

Gayle said, ‘I will.’ Her love of children extended even as far as Deana Gillis. Deana was in third grade. Sherry, Betty’s youngest, was in first grade, same as my Crystal. Well, they should have been, except nobody ever heard of grade school in England. In elementary school there they just had names like Miss Boyle’s Class, Mrs Warley’s Class, Miss Jex’s Class. Crystal’s reading and writing seemed to be coming along okay. Still, every night I prayed we weren’t ruining our child’s education. Wrecking her future just so’s her daddy could save their English asses from the Red Menace.

‘And what about little Sandie?’ Betty now felt she had a watertight case. I could tell because she wasn’t furrowing her brow quite so deep. ‘You can’t drag a tiny tot thousands of miles,’ she said. ‘Not even knowing where you’re going to. Do you realise, they don’t even have enough food out there? I’m sorry, Lois, but it’d be just too crazy for words.’

Audrey said, ‘Well, I guess that’s the kinda attitude opened up the West.’

She never had a lot of patience with Betty. Besides, even I knew nothing’s thousands of miles away in England. You keep going, it won’t be long before you run outta country.

Then Gayle piped up. She said, ‘I’ll look after all of them. I don’t mind not going. I never even heard of this king.’

Betty said, ‘No. It’s a wild and irresponsible idea.’

‘Hey…’ Lois was pepping up her coffee from the bottle. Those little red patches were breaking out over her cheekbones. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I could care less. You’re the royalty freak. I can go to London any damn time I please.’ And everything went quiet, ’cept for Sandie, crying with the hot-aches, thawed her little fingers out too fast against the wood-stove.

Gayle said, ‘Okey’s Mom mailed me the new McCall’s pattern book. Anyone want a look at it? There’s a real easy pattern for a bolero.’ And she ran upstairs to get it. I whispered to Audrey, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers.’

‘Mm-mm,’ she said, ‘and the dressmakers.’

I took Sandie on my lap, tried to rub her hands better, and Betty squared away the bottle of Jim Beam behind a cushion; hoping Lois might forget it, I daresay.

2

We were just finishing up dinner, Crystal wriggling in her chair, wanting to get down and play, Vern waving his fork around, last piece of fried potato getting cold while he told me about some new Pratt & Whitney turbojet that could take you to over 1,000mph, when the phone rang. It was Betty.

‘Now, listen,’ she said. ‘Here’s the latest. They’re taking the king to London on Monday, along the railroad, travelling real slow, so folks can pay their respects. And here’s the best bit: it’ll be going right by here, no more’n a few miles away, and Ed says I can go, just as long as I’m home in time for the girls. So, could you drive down, tell Gayle and Audrey, and I’ll call up Lois? I thought I’d throw a coffee tomorrow, so we can plan what we’re gonna wear?’

I said, ‘Betty, that’s easy. Unless there’s a sudden change in the climate I’ll be wearin Vern’s duck field-jacket and his five-buckle snow boots. Heck, I might just see if we still got an Alaska-issue comforter. Get myself sewed up inside it.’

‘Peggy Dewey!’ she said. ‘Shame on you! The queen’s gonna be looking right out of that train, and Princess Margaret. We have to do this thing right. I think just a touch of mourning. A little black hat, maybe, or a pair of gloves. Jeepers, we’re gonna be seen by royalty.’

Vern thought I was crazy. He was all wrapped round me, after lights out, trying to keep me warm and get what he figured he was owed seeing he was gonna be three nights away, standing the duty.

‘What you wanna do that for?’ he said. ‘Standin’ out there, ketchin yer death. Be a bunch a breeds there, too. You seen some of them locals? Bunch a freaks. Now, you gonna get outta that passion-killer so we can mess around a little?’

Messing around was Vern’s main interest in life, after his baby, with her static thrust of 3,750lb. And Crystal, of course. He loved throwing her up in the air till she screamed. Arm-wrestling with her, pretending to let her win.

‘Did you know kings and queens bunk down in separate quarters?’ I got to thinking about that again, after we’d messed around.

‘Jeez, Peg,’ he said, ‘I was just dozing off.’ He made himself cosy again, hogging all the covers. ‘Who cares?’ he said. ‘Bunch a throwbacks, sitting round in robes.’

First time I saw Vern he was dancing with a girl, couldn’t have been more than four feet ten. She was looking him in the belly-button and he was giving me the eye over her head. He did look cute in his Blues. Still, I should have known better. My sister Connie married the army and that was a five-minute wonder.

Soon as Vern knew I had fallen with Crystal he done the decent thing and my folks were happy to see the back of me, twenty-two and still no sign of any Hollywood screen-test. We were married in August, in the chapel on the base, his folks come down from Costigan, first and last time they ever left Maine, and we had an arch of sabres and shrimp hors-d’oeuvre and the whole nine yards. November he got orders to Ladd Field, Alaska.

Crystal come along in a big hurry, waters busted in the mall at Topperwein and my mom grinding her teeth every time I got a pain, telling me how this was only the start of my troubles. Nine pounds eleven ounces, she weighed, and she was the living image of her daddy, only he didn’t get to see her till she was nearly four months old.

We landed at Elmendorf and while I was waiting for the transport up to Ladd, looking for a place to warm the baby’s bottle, a girl come up to me, little newborn scrap in her arms and another one at foot, and she says to me, ‘Why, Peggy Shea! It is you. I’m not usually wrong about a face, but you’re carrying a few extra pounds these days.’

Last time I remembered seeing Betty Glick was when Future Homemakers catered a Mother-Daughter Spaghetti Supper for the Class of ’42, and she was in charge, in her sweetheart apron, giving her orders, little piggy eyes and a real homely face.

She already knew Ladd. They’d been on the base nearly a year and she’d just been back to Texas for the birth of little Sherry. So we were a marriage made in heaven, me not knowing what in the world I was going to and Betty never happier than when she was showing somebody the ropes.

Four years of marriage and motherhood had left its stamp on her. She’d lost her puppy fat and got herself a permanent too. She seemed real grown up, compared to the way I felt, but then, I think Betty was born grown up. And she was so proud of her Ed. I never thought he was all that. Everything about him was kinda hard and square, even his head. Lois reckoned he was made outta sheet metal.

‘I swear,’ she used to say, ‘Ed Gillis was not born of woman. I think they just punched in a few rivets and rolled him off the line at Boeing.’

Me and Vern were okay, when he was around – which wasn’t much. They were putting in long hours, training on the Superfortress, and then when he did get a 96 he liked to go off fishing. Now I think back on it, we didn’t hardly know each other.

‘Love ya,’ he used to say, when he was drifting off to sleep. ‘Whoever y’are.’

So I started hanging out with Betty Gillis, née Glick, picking things outta the Sears catalogue and clipping recipes for tuna bake and generally raising hell. Summer nights up there, when it never gets dark, if Vern and Ed were standing the duty, I’d go round to her quarters, tuck Crystal in with Deana and Sherry, and we’d sit out front, drink iced tea and wonder what became of all those other big shots from Topperwein High.

Audrey I met later on, when we rotated through Kirtland. She rang my doorbell, told me there was a coffee klatsch at the Officers’ Wives’ Club and signed me up for the Blood Drive. Wouldn’t take no for an answer on either score.

You could go to some of those wives’ clubs not knowing another soul and come away in the same condition, none of the in-crowd being inclined to get off their backsides and welcome a newcomer. But I’ll say this for Audrey: she had an open and friendly way about her. She’d stride across any room in her white bucks and make herself known to lonesome strangers.

She was married to Lance Rudman and they made a handsome pair. They were the kind of people knew where they’d come from and where they were going. Lois called them the Class Presidents.

Lo came on the scene while we were stationed at Kirtland too. She was married to Herb Moon. He was kinda dopey-looking, seemed slow on the uptake, except when he climbed into the cockpit of a B-50. Up there, so I heard, he was one cool customer.