6th Aprm

October 27

Letter from Mom. She gets here on the first. Dug out the long neglected W.P.B. chart and, taking my courage between my teeth, filled it in:

Waist, 28½ inches; Stomach, 35 inches; Hips, 39 inches; Bust, 35 inches; Weight, 120 pounds. But I can still wear the slacks if I let the zipper stop short. What with the long matching jacket you’d never suspect.

And still-despite all the things the girls, the books, the doctors, and the rules say-I’m sick every morning. But I have got over the 4pm upheaval.

My appetite is anything but voracious. I’m still interested mostly in tomato soup but that added weight must be coming from somewhere. Maybe it’s those midnight snacks. And there is a difference in my face. The mask of pregnancy has never appeared, but some of the wrinkles are disappearing just plain fattened ‘out. Others will soon take their place, though; Lucretia fixed that.

Drove Pat to his office in Bridgeport today and stopped off at the first agency in the ‘phone book.

All the girls in town are working in munitions factories for three times a maid’s wages. Not one would prefer a nice family in the country to big money.

I tried Norwalk once more before I headed for New York, and they actually found a girl for me to interview. “All I asks is no baby care, honey.”

October 28

Went all the way into New York and an efficient “personnel director” seated me in one of those tricky little cubicles that always scare me tongue-tied. She produced a fat, sullen-looking woman of about forty, who demanded suspiciously, “How many children?”

“Well, none really, but-”

She smoothed her coat over her broad hips. “No, Ma’am. I’ve had thirteen of my own and I don’t want no more.”

Next came a carbon copy of Lucretia, only smelling of “Floor d’amoor”, I brushed her off quick. The third and last was a thin little girl, racked with coughs. She was sweet, but I can’t have Jake catching things.

I bought a newsp2per and looked up “situations wanted”, while I syphoned off the tomato soup surplus. There were columns of them, all stipulating “no country”. Only a few wanted more money than Pat earns.

Back home again empty-handed, I cooked us a gourmet’s dream of tomato soup, creamed canned tuna fish on toast, canned peas and carrots, and the bakery’s gooiest cupcakes.

October 29

Pat said I ought to be looking for a maid instead of teaing and bridging a~ the baby shower for Peggy. It certainly shows how little a man knows, for I discovered today where I may be able to get a maid. She sounds wonderful and her name is Eliza.

Everyone at the shower was “expecting” except one girl who must have been quarantined. Nobody spoke to her because there was nothing to talk to her about. “Can you still fasten your shoes? Just wait! Bob says he’s got me where he wants me. I can’t get out of the house unless he ties the laces.” …”There I was reading a book in the lobby of the Waldorf, waiting for Jim to come along, and all of a sudden the book zooped right out of my hands, and was I embarrassed! Such a kick, in front of all those people.”… “I got an awful shock when I was walking down the street and tried to look in a store window. I bumped right into it, my stomach was so far ahead of my face!”… “My hands are so puffy I can’t get my wedding ring.”

My own hands are still slim and I hope they stay that way. If there’s ever a time a girl needs to wear a wedding ring this is it.

October 31

Eureka-Eliza! Brother, if she’s as good as she’s cracked up to be, we’re in. “Marvelous cook …wonderful servant …perfect with children.”

I met her in town. She was neat and clean, but what impressed me above and beyond all else was that she actually picked up her feet when she walked. I told her what we could afford to pay, but 1 promised her a raise with the advent of Jake.

Eliza grinned, showing two rows of gold teeth.

“I knows you can’t pay for what you ain’t got.”

Right away quick 1 bundled her into the car and drove to her Norwalk home to pick up her bags and her boy friend. He said he’d follow us out to Weston and learn the way. Eliza’s face grew longer with the miles. “So far out, I’m sorta scared,” she shivered. “Somebody might get me.” 1 assured her that wasn’t likely at all and told her about our regular house that’s two and a quarter miles nearer town. She looked slightly stunned when she saw the Reiner estate, but 1 explained we were only looking after it.

Eliza took over like a veteran, and what a dinner she served! Biscuits light as a feather-they’re really too fattening for us but I hate to spoil such a gesture. Pat simply glowed.

To celebrate our lonely Hallowe’en I had carved a pumpkin face, complete with ears, my most ambitious art project so far, and had bought’ doughnuts and cider for a witching midnight hour snack.

But after that dinner we both fell sound asleep before the fire and only woke up for long enough to climb the stairs to bed. Being parents certainly takes the old night-life spirit out of you.

October 23

Big weekend ahead. Bob and Mary Hutton are coming out. She and I don’t get along too well and I really want to pour it on. Hope I can make Lucretia cooperate and wear her shoes.

October 24

This is a fine thing! Some dopey Joe called up when Peggy and I were out riding and this morning Lucretia told me to the accompaniment of her giggling cackle: “Pretty funny! Guess what Mrs. Irwin said over the ‘phone-wanted to know how soon you was expectin’. I told her you and I didn’t know nothin’ ’bout it! Heh-heh!”

I thought it was so uproariously funny I dropped an entire tray of night-before cocktail glasses I was carrying. “While I’m breaking things, Lucretia,” I said, hiding my face among the pieces, “I might as well break the news. I’m going to have a baby. Aren’t you delighted?”

She was so delighted you’d think someone had just dropped a caterpillar down her neck. “No babies for me! Reg’lar family work is all right, but no babies. Besides, I don’t like this big house nohow. I’m givin’ notice.”

So I kept Jake on the agenda and scratched Lucretia off. In stony silence I drove her to town, boxes and packages and paper bags and “Cleopatra’s Love Dream”. Then I headed for the nearest employment agency.

No sign of life. Only the janitor, who informed me: “The lady says to me, she says, why stay open? Everybody has gone to work in Bridgeport where they make good money. I’m going in the Army myself next week.”

At the other agency a little man peeped out of “Western Stories” to chirp, “Maybe in a month or so- Corne back in a month.”

Sacrificing next week’s gas I drove to Norwalk, where a flustered female was busy with three ‘phones. “Hello,” she said: “Hello-no, not today… Sure, I can get you- Hello! …Yes, we’ve plenty of girls- Hello! …Yes, I can get you a cook …Right away- Hello! …Yes- You’ll have to meet the prices they’re paying in the defense plants…”

Anyway, I don’t have to worry about Lucretia leaving her shoes off when we have guests.

October 26

I’m my own maid now and the only time I took off was a few minutes to be ill in. Couldn’t miss that. The guests arrived before the breakfast dishes were done or the beds made, but I just closed the doors and off we tore for New Haven and football.

Dinner wasn’t so bad. We had steak, my one culinary accomplishment, with canned Frenchfried onions, canned string beans, canned Frenchfried potatoes, and canned corn, plus salad and Lucretia’s apple pie left over from Thursday. And Pat-Pat who shuns dish towels like vipers (Oh, welll ) was actually shamed into helping with the astonishing stack of dishes my cooking seems to accumulate. But this morning’s breakfast! Whipping up scrambled eggs does no good to my morning stomach.

The guests went home after dinner. I had never tried southern fried chicken before and my peach dumplings are not the kind Lucretia used to make.

October 18

A wire from Mother: “Have stopped pulling out grey hairs. Hold everything. Coming to see that swimming pool.”

October 21

A date with Pat and the Ruppels for the theater.

Also I have to visit a couple of new mothers in hospital. Also I must do something about this morning sickness before Mother arrives. So, in my red corduroy and my top coat, and a red corduroy hat that’s last year’s-Oh, but believe me, Hannah, it matches-I set out to kill birds. There was a whole slew of bulging women in the Doc’s waiting room but, with the assistance of my roomy top coat, I was able to prance by ‘em and even take my time standing and selecting reading matter, instead of sneaking in guiltily the way the others did as if they were coming into church in the middle of the sermon.

My reading matter for the day was this little piece I found proudly exhibited on the table:

“Census bureau officials say the United States is experiencing the greatest boom in baby production since 192 I. Latest statistics show that the stork is making a new delivery every fourteen seconds. At that rate he is moving faster than the undertaker, who calls every twenty-three seconds. Provisional estimates show that approximately 2,500,000 babies will be born this year. Both the World War and the present defense boom are partially responsible for the latest upswing in the birth rate, says Dr. Philip M. Hauser, the Census Bureau’s assistant chief statistician for population. He said: ‘The large crop of babies born after the boys got back from W orld War I have now become old enough to have babies of their own. And they are having them.’”

The doctor was brisk and businesslike. He certainly brushes you off, but I can’t say I blame him with business booming like this. I asked him if the boom made him worry about his income tax. J could see him quiver.

To my complaint of continued morning sickness, he said, “If you’d do as I tell you and eat more often it would help.”

Then he gave me the questionnaire. “Are you taking those calcium and vitamin pills yet? No? Well, you should be… Do you feel any movement, any life? Just wait! … How do you sleep? Oh, yes, you told me about those sleepless nights…

Again a professional poke or two to my stomach. This time, no comments from me about no bulge! And he wouldn’t say what he learned from his poking. Just, “A lot of things. You’d be surprised.”

Another complaint from me about my tendency to gain weight through the hips and stomach.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s normal. I suppose it is a shame if you want it in your thighs and legs. Nothing you can do about it, though… No, don’t diet. You should be eating sugars and starches now… See you in a month.”

From there I went to the White Plains hospital to visit Sue who had had a baby ten days before. I got the shock of my life. The last time I saw her, eight months ago, she looked young and girlish and slim. Now that was all gone. She was mature, “busty”, maternal, and she had only one thing to talk about.

“Look,” my mind was saying, as I went through the usual listening act, “you’re not going to look like that. Even if you do gain a little, you’ll never look that maternal.”

“How was it?” I felt bound to inquire. “Just wait,” she said, eying my stomach.
“Oh, but I heard you had no difficulty at all. Pat told me that Bill said he was the one who had all the agony. You just slept through it all.”

“Just wait!”

“Anyway, how do you feel now?”

“Sorta like I’ve been doing a lot of horseback riding.”

When I left I was just in time to see the babies, each wrapped from head to toe in their individual blankets like withered mummies. I took one look and my gloom deepened. Such ugly, drooling, puny, red-and-blue faced little squallers! Not one of them cute and plump and pink and white like the pictures in the condensed milk ads! And the horrible sickly-sweet milkish odor that hung around them! If that’s the reward for being seasick every morning-But Jake’s not going to be like that.

So to my second call. At Harkness Pavilion Tish had just had her fourth baby four days before, and Tish was my model, my paragon, my beacon of hope and glory. It was on her I had based my ideas of how simple it was to have a baby. She had had three, was perfectly delighted about the fourth, and furthermore she was good to look at, tall and slim with her very trim figure quite unimpaired. If she could, so could I.

But today they told me she was much too ill to be visited. Her baby had weighed almost ten pounds and it had been a breach birth… I left Harkness with a definite case of willies.

To round out my obstetrical day I went to buy gifts for the “little strangers”, and found a cute woolly bear for Peggy’s “Robespierre”. Then slightly weary and worn, I bought myself a martini, fixed my face, tweaked my red hat, bought me a red carnation for my lapel, and went to meet Pat and the Ruppels. Ruppel razzed me plenty, but with my coat on I could take it. We had colossal steaks and then went to the theatre.

Faced with the closer-to-home thought of having a baby, the War has up to now seemed fairly remote. But “The Eve of St. Mark” dropped it into our laps. I was ready to end the day then and there, but rather than face more razzing I agreed to a drink at Sardi’s. We found a corner table and sat down with Ruppel’s friend, Lenny Lyons of the Lyons Den, and I coerced him into naming all the celebrities that wandered into the place.

It was awfully warm, I was dead tired, and the two whiskeys and sodas I had didn’t help. But it was Marge Ruppel who did the fainting when we finally fought our way to the open air. I was the one who held her up until someone brought a chair!

When I finally fell into bed in Connecticut I thought I’d never get out. My legs ached from unaccustomed high heels, my stomach ached from being held in, my eyes ached from being kept open, and my back ached just to be in the swim.

Wrote Mom again and told her to hurry up.

Told her we wanted to make the trip our present, and Pat will make arrangements and send her the ticket.

October 9

God bless the country! Birds and squirrels don’t gawk. Maybe it’s all my imagination but I’m certainly learning what it means to be the “cynosure of all eyes” . Yesterday a woman got up to give me her seat in a crowded restaurant. I thanked her politely and to hell with the effort it cost me!

October 12

A pal of Pat’s–one, Ruppel-was here with his two boys for the weekend. I walked with them, skipped with them, even kicked a football around with them just to fool their dad.

After dinner we were sitting cosily with a scotch and soda, when Ruppel observed, “Friend of mine saw you in Lane Bryant’s yesterday-congratulations!”

Face, throat, even my ears were crimson. I’ve never been so furious…

October 14

Those dear little dresses arrived today and maybe it’s just as well, for even the Reiners’ scale-conservatively set six minutes slow - admits 117. I hate to think what the doctor’s scale would reveal. I also got around to those long-avoided measure,ments. How times have changed! Waist, 27 inches; Stomach, 34 inches; Hips, 40 inches; Bust, 34¼ inches.

October 15

Braved New York again this nice cool day to buy some baby’s things. Peggy gave me a list of necessities for the “little stranger”, as the baby department clerks insist on calling him, and I added others from my volume on “Infant Care”. My idea was to go about the whole business very eB1J ciently, list in hand and clerk at the other elbow. But it didn’t work that way at all. What is this unaccustomed shyness that confounds me at odd moments? I got to the store all right and started picking out the “little things” (everything in blue, of course); but when a clerk arrived I meekly handed her the things and said: “Wrap them as a gift, please, and send them.” And I gave my own name and address.

So instead of buying everything in one store, I ended buying “gifts” in ten. I wonder if they thought it queer my buying three dozen diapers “wrapped as a gift”.

October 17

Businesslike, that’s me. This morning’s second breakfast put the idea in my head, and when I got on the bathroom scale, when I caught a glimpse of myself in those full length mirrors, when I looked at the W.P.B. chart-that settled it. Besides, I’m only gypping myself. Look at the price of hand-knit sweaters! And blankets! And everything! It’s time my family began to share the joys of motherhood.

So I wrote:

“Dear Muz: Sorry I haven’t written, but I’ve been so busy rushing around I just haven’t had the time. Look-Connecticut is at its best in the Fall so I’ve decided not to come to Chicago. Instead, you come here and see the lovely golden trees and our beauteous swimming pool. Anyway, the rest will be good for you. You’ll need it, for, Snooks, get out the knitting needles-you’re going to be a grandmother.”

Then I added a whopping lie: “The blessed event will be in late April.” That will keep them from fussing and worrying around the first, and I won’t let anyone tell them until I call from the hospital and break the news myself.