Suburban Turmoil
“Hel-lo, there’s a basket for shoes right by the front door,” I grumbled after tripping over Hubs’ gigantic sneakers for the umpteenth time. “Everyone uses it but you.”
“Hey,” Hubs shot back from the den. “I work hard. I can put my shoes wherever I want!”
Seething, I kicked his sneakers into a corner. Who the hell did he think I was, Donna Reed? I certainly wasn’t his maid and this was not how a modern-day marriage worked. I fumed silently for a while before coming up with the perfect solution.
I would be Donna Reed for one week. Hubs would totally hate it and realize that even with all my faults, I was infinitely preferable to a deferential ’50s housewife. To aid my transformation, I picked up a copy of Helen Andelin’s Fascinating Womanhood, a how-to-be-a-submissive-housewife guide that’s sold more than 2 million copies. According to Andelin, a woman’s chief goal is making her husband happy by cooking, cleaning, child-rearing and looking pretty.
“We must stop doing the masculine things and become the gentle, tender dependent women we were designed to be, women who need masculine care and protection,” she writes. “When we do, men will delight in offering their chivalry.”
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Gentle? Tender? Dependent? Snort. But since all of Pleasantville would’ve heartily approved, I decided to give it a whirl.
“Oh dear,” I sighed the next day after I’d read a few chapters. I crumpled to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” Hubs asked, standing over me. “Are you dizzy?”
“No, no,” I said quickly. “I wanted to get some heavy boxes out of the attic, but I just feel so…frail. So...dependent.”
Hubs laughed, but then a strange look came over his face. “I’ll bring those boxes down,” he said manfully. “Don’t worry about it.” As he tromped up the stairs, I stared at the ceiling, dazed. That was not the reaction I had expected. Still, I’d made a commitment.
“For a woman, a failure in the house is a failure in life,” the book went on. “Even though you fail only in one area, such as homemaking, you are somewhat of a failure.”
I looked up from my book at the kitchen around me. Potato chip crumbs littered the floor. A humongous coffee stain mocked me from the countertop. The cobwebs in the corner seemed to spell out L-A-Z-Y S-L-U-T.
Obviously, if I was going to be a Fascinating Woman, it was time to June Cleaverize the place. Over the next few days, I cleaned the entire house, only to realize dismally that if I truly were going to become a domestic goddess, I’d have to spend most of my free time scrubbing. BO-RING.
“The place looks great!” Hubs said enthusiastically when he got home from work. “Honey, you are doing a terrific job. And wow,” he said, noticing my hair and makeup (page 250). “You look really pretty.”
I had to dig my book out of the kitchen trashcan to read the next chapter a few days later.
“When a very feminine woman feels close to the man she adores, she sometimes coos and purrs.”
I waited until Hubs was almost asleep before gently whispering in his ear.
“Coo.”
“WHA?” Hubs jumped. “What the…?”
“Sorry. Let me try again,” I begged. I put my mouth to his ear again.
“Purrrrr. Purrrrrrrrr.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I just feel close to you,” I demurred. “Don’t you love it?”
“I’d love for you to scratch my back,” he replied. “Since you’re feeling close to me.”
I frowned in the dark and started scratching.
“Learn childlike mannerisms by studying the antics of little girls,” the book advises. “Stomp your foot, lift your chin high, square your shoulders, pout, put both hands on your hips…. Exaggerate his treatment of you by saying, for example: ‘How can a great, big man like you pick on a poor, helpless little girl like me?’ ”
“Where were you?” Hubs demanded as I hopped in the car to head to one of the girls’ soccer games. “I’ve been waiting out here for five minutes. You were trying to make us late, weren’t you?”
The old me would’ve said, “Shut the hell up!” But times had changed.
“Oh, you brute!” I said haltingly, tossing my hair. “How dare a big bear like you pick on a poor little girl like me.” I tried my best to pout before glancing over at him. Damn. He was laughing. Just as the book had predicted.
“I love you,” Hubs said tenderly, touching my knee. “I’m sorry.”
By the end of the week, instead of begging for his real wife back, Hubs was practically dancing a jig when he arrived home each day. And why not? I had replaced myself with a Stepford fembot. What was I thinking?
I know what I’m thinking now, anyway. I am totally screwed.