From the Relief Society Magazine, April 1955 –

Steak for Thursday

By Rosa Lee Lloyd

Cristeen McCarthy put Tommy in his high chair and tied a bib around his neck.

“Mulk!” he crooned as his little hands went around the cup she handed to him. He gulped rapturously.

“Just like your daddy,” she observed, glancing at Tom as he sat contentedly eating his bacon and eggs. “Give your daddy enough to eat and a place to sleep, and he crows with delight. He likes to live in a rut. Even when he has a chance, he won’t get out of it!”

Tom put his fork down with a little sigh. The smile went away from his thin, Lincolnesque face.

“Cris …”

He reached for her hand, but she balled it into a little fist. Tom had to learn, she told herself with a determined shrug, that he couldn’t kiss away every argument they had. He always counted on her love and the warm touch of him to melt her down like maple sugar.

But this time she was going to hold out if it took all summer, as General Grant once said. Or was it General Lee? Cris was never too sure about American history. She was much better in arithmetic, even if she did get a little mixed up in her budget.

“Now look,” she persisted, “your Aunt Julia has left us her house on Circle Drive. It’s ours, every lovely inch of it. Your cousin Willa gets most of the furniture, and I’m glad because she loves all that old teakwood and those oriental rugs. I’m not the type for teakwood …”

Tom pushed his chair away from the table, unwound his long legs, and stood up.

“And I’m not the type for a mansion on Circle Drive!” he almost shouted. “I’m a hard-working commercial artist, a nine-to-five guy. You knew that when you married me. I can’t afford to own a home on Circle Drive!”

Cristeen’s smile was a nice combination of wisdom and supplication.

“But you do own one, Tom McCarthy. A very beautiful home just a little way from Verny Sherman’s. Think how wonderful! I can visit her every day. She and Arch entertain every night. She’ll surely invite us when we live on the Drive. Just imagine going to one of Verny’s parties!”

Tom groaned and sat down as though the thought was too much for him.

“Yes. Imagine. Me in my old tux I had in college and you in a budget formal from Karbecks!”

Cristeen glared at him. “I can get along in a budget frock … if I have to!”

His eyes had that haunted, hard-pressed look that Cristeen dreaded. Then he demanded, “But will you tell me how we can live on Circle Drive and still eat three times a day?”

Her voice chided him.

“There you go,” she said, “utterly earthy. Always thinking of food instead of counting the stars …”

“Milk!” Tommy yelled and banged his chair table with the empty cup.

Tom looked at the baby and his heavy brows were bushy points.

“See what I mean?” he countered.

Cristeen put Tommy’s cereal in a bowl and handed him a spoon.

“The house was a gift, Tom,” she went on. “Your Aunt Julia must have wanted us to live there or she wouldn’t have willed it to us …”

Tom shook his head.

“I can’t believe Aunt Julia was that stupid! She knew what my salary was. How did she figure we could furnish a ten-room house since she left the furniture to Willa?”

“Only the teakwood and the rugs.” Cristeen was eager. “There are a lot of old pieces Willa wouldn’t have. We can redecorate them.”

Tom got up again and began to pace back and forth. “Did she think I could take care of that three-tiered sunken garden and cut that two-acre lawn after I got home from work?”

“She counted on me, too,” Cristeen consoled him. “The last time I went to see Aunt Julia I told her how much I liked her home.”

He stopped pacing and glowered at his wife.

“You didn’t tell Aunt Julia you wanted to live there?” he questioned thickly.

“Of course not … not exactly …”

Tom tossed his hands up. His eyes were bleak.

“If she had only left us money, instead. Then we could have bought that little place out in Orchard Bend and had money left over .,..” he sighed. “Sleep money I call it. the kind that gives a fellow like me a little cushion of security so he can go to sleep at night …”

Cristeen met his glance and her eyes had fierce, challenging lights in them.

“Security!” she repeated. “You’re making me hate that word, Tom McCarthy. At least you’re making me hate what that word means to you – a safe little rut whether your wife is happy or not …”

Tom held her shoulders with firm, steady hands.

“Listen, honey,” he said, “security is what I do want for you and Tommy and for more children. Let’s sell that house on Circle Drive. We can get a good buy at Orchard Bend. Some of the gang from the office live out there. You remember Sid Garns and Buff Hatch?”

Cristeen did remember them. Nice enough fellows in their middle twenties, with nice enough wives who were willing to settle down in a nice enough rut. But that wasn’t what she wanted.

“They like it out there!” His voice coaxed her. “Only an hour from town – they have fruit trees and a little garden and there’s a golf course – their kids have a pony …”

She would die, thought Cristeen. She’d simply die. She had been reared on a small farm, and she was not going back again.

Verny would laugh when she heard about this! Verny had always thought that Tom wouldn’t get ahead. She had the condescending manner of a woman who has been smart enough to marry a man who was already rich. Why couldn’t Tom remember how Cristeen had struggled to get away from a small town? Did she have to remind him of the effort it took, after she was graduated from high school, to earn money to pay her tuition to business college? And had he forgotten how determined she was to make good on that first typing job at Lang’s? Hadn’t she progressed steadily until she was one of the top secretaries before they were married?

She twisted away from him.

“Orchard Bend!” she scoffed. “Where is your vision, Tom? If you’re contented with a place in Orchard Bend, you’ll end up being like Orchard Bend. If you want to live on Circle Drive, you’ll be like Circle Drive.”

Tom folded his arms across his chest. He had a worn, defeated look.

“I want a little peace and rest, Cris,” he said. “Maybe we who have been through one war and half expect another one and are now fighting taxes and inflation are willing to settle for a safe little spot without all the glitter.”

His face had that haunting appeal that always gave her a guilty stab. Her eyes flickered away from his. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she simply had to make him realize how much she wanted to live on Circle Drive and how important it was to take advantage of the opportunity Aunt Julia had given to them.

“When you sulk,” she said, dimpling, “you look determined to hold out till the end of time …”

His mouth curved a little. Then he caught her hand in both of his and pretended to bite the tips of her fingers.

Tom’s strong arms went around her and drew her close to him.

“Why do you have to be so persistent?” His voice was husky. “A guy doesn’t stand a chance with a persistent woman – if he loves her,” he whispered against her cheek.

Cristeen’s smile was a wide, sweet curve across her face.

“You mean – we’re moving to Circle Drive?”

“isn’t that what you want most of all?” he countered.

Her eyes were blue as sapphires.

“If you say so, Tom,” she murmured.

“If I say so,” he repeated. His voice was edged with misgivings. “As thought what I have to say means anything. I’m only the guy who pays the bills and does the worrying for this family …”

Cristeen hugged him.

“You’re the guy who carries the whole world on his shoulders – my world, that is. Now finish your breakfast. You’ll need strength for the big move.”

Tom sat down at the table again.

“I need my head fixed,” he muttered. “My state of mind is a perfect example of the world’s confusion …”

“You’ll feel like a king of Circle Drive,” Cristeen told him. Tom didn’t answer.

She was the busiest woman in the world, Cristeen thought two hours later, as she backed their little car from the garage and sent it humming down the highway. Tommy, rosy-cheeked and freshly bathed and in clean white rompers, cuddled close to her side. She was fresh and rosy, too, in her pink linen suit.

“You’re a nice young man,” Cristeen told him proudly. “Do you like to go with Mama?”

“Go – go!” he gabbled.

“First, we’ll stop at Central Market for the groceries. Then we’ll go up to Circle Drive and see our new home. Or shall we stop in and visit Verny first?”

Tommy clapped his hands, and Cristeen concluded that what they did wouldn’t make much difference to him. Just being alive was fun for Tommy.

Verny hasn’t any little boys – or girls either, she added to herself, her brows puckering. She is busy being Mrs. Arch Sherman and entertaining. Cristeen wondered if she even wanted children, but maybe she was misjudging her, she thought.

She and Verny had lived together in a little apartment on Bassford Street before they were married. Verny was LaVern Haynes then, a commercial model, slender, darkly fascinating, with a swing to her walk and a lift to her chin that told you she was going far in this world.

Was Verny the real reason she had been so persistent about moving to Circle Dive? Was it because Verny lived there? Did she want to show her they could live there, too?

Then her heart hurt a little as she remembered how Tom’s shoulders had drooped when he walked along the sidewalk to get the bus so she could use the car. He was too young to have drooping shoulders – only twenty-eight – two years older than she was.

Love, she thought, fiercely, is a necessity. And the kind of love she felt for Tom couldn’t be a mistake – it was the very essence of life, the magic that made the everyday heartaches endurable. It was her love for Tom that made her so determined for him to succeed; it was her love that would melt Circle Drive. She could hardly wait to tell Verny about it. How surprised she would be. Cristeen decided to go there right after she bought the groceries.

She parked the car, lifted Tommy in her arms, and hurried into the Central Market. He squealed with joy when he saw the wire baskets in their metal carts, so she placed him in the front end of one and wheeled him from one department to another.

The butcher gave her a gleaming white smile when she stopped before his counter, and as Cristeen smiled back at him, she thought how much she appreciated a neat-looking butcher. She would miss his cheerful greeting when she moved from his neighborhood.

“Hello, Mrs. McCarthy,” he beamed. “Isn’t this your steak night? It’s Thursday. How about a nice thick prime sirloin?”

Cristeen hesitated. It was their steak night, but they would have to cut down on things like that now they were moving. They would barely be able to get by if Tom gave up his Saturday golf and their Thursday steak, and their Friday movie and dinner out …

She shook her head.

“Not tonight. I think I’ll take some chipped beef …”

“You’re missing something,” he said, tipping the steak so she could see it better.

“I know,” Cristeen answered slowly, watching him put it back on the tray.

Tom needed that steak. He ate only a sandwich and a bowl of soup for luncheon. And he was thinner lately. But they just couldn’t afford it now, she told herself, with a frown.

It was after eleven o’clock when Cristeen turned the car from Edgehill Boulevard and entered the exclusive Circle Drive district. Her heart winged with pride as she looked at the expansive parkway, velvet smooth as though even the grass in this district grew to well-groomed perfection by some princely right. Each house was of a different design, individually characteristic of its owner. At the very top of the curving street, on a stately hill with a full view of both the mountains and the valley was the home Aunt Julia had left to them. It was a large white stucco house with a curving cornice and a rounded picture window that was unique, and yet as regal as Aunt Julia had been.

It’s the prettiest place on the Drive, Cristeen thought, as she stopped her car in front of Verny’s English gabled house about a block below it. It had charm and character and looked like something out of a Chadwick novel.

She jumped out, took Tommy in her arms, and was halfway up the steps that circled the terraced lawn, when she stopped dead, staring at the big sign on the grass in front of her. For Sale!

She couldn’t breathe. She put Tommy down by her feet and stood there with the world spinning around her. Why hadn’t Verny told her? They had lunched together only last week, and she hadn’t mentioned such a thing. Something must have happened, something serious …

She lifted Tommy again, hurried to the front door, and rang the bell. She could hear the chimes echo inside. After a minute she rang again and then the third time. Now she could hear someone close a door and then swift, impatient footsteps coming through the hall as though the one coming to answer was doing so only because the ring had been so insistent. Probably the housekeeper, Cristeen thought.

But it was Verny who opened the door, a pathetically pale Verny, thin, drawn, with a dark satin robe pulled tightly around her, buttoned crookedly.

“Verny! What’s happened? The house – I didn’t know …”

“Oh, Cris – come in –”

Verny’s hands smoothed her dark hair. Then she pressed them hard against her face.

“I can hardly think – things happened so fast …”

She turned and led the way into the living room, and Cristeen followed her. She sat down on the nearest settee and put Tommy on the floor.

“Tell me –” she said, feeling weak and dizzy.

Verny’s hands fluttered to her throat.

“It’s Arch – he’s in the hospital …”

“Oh, no …” Cristeen breathed.

“A complete breakdown.” Her voice was ragged. “He collapsed at the office – last Monday – I think it was – and he’s so young, Cris – only twenty-0nine. Too much work – and worry – Dr. Garns said.”

Cristeen couldn’t speak. She could feel her heart begin to thump inside of her. Too much worry – it might have been Tom!

“Oh, Verny,” was all she could say, and it sounded so inadequate. But she couldn’t tell her that she had thought Arch Sherman was rich, and that he didn’t have a worry in the world. She hadn’t dreamed that anything could happen that would take Verny’s house away from her.

“Cris – I was so wrong,” Verny was saying. “You don’t know what it’s like to know you’ve been so terribly wrong …” her voice trailed away.

Cristeen’s eyes squeezed shut. She couldn’t bear to see Verny so unstrung. Verny was the strong confident kind who sailed through life on a high wind.

“He bought this house for me when he really needed the money for his business – he gave me everything I asked for – and I kept on asking and asking. Oh, Cris – I’m so ashamed!”

She bent her head and turned away.

Cristeen touched her hand.

“Verny – please don’t – Arch loves you – he wanted to give you things. Don’t blame yourself.”

“But I do – I do. I didn’t know how much he meant to me until this happened. If you could see him so – so exhausted – so sick.”

Cristeen pulled her gently down beside her.

“I’m glad I came,” she murmured.

Verny’s eyes wavered and she wet her lips. At last she spoke.

“I’m glad, too – now that you’re here. But 0h, I wouldn’t have called you, Cris – I couldn’t.”

“Verny! Why not?” Cristeen demanded.

She shrugged and her shoulders were sharp under her black robe.

“I guess – because I’ve been so envious of you, Cris,” she said in a voice like dry leaves.

“Envious – of me!”

“Yes, Cris. That’s why I didn’t go to see you very often or invite you here. Seeing you and Tom – and the baby in your cute little home made me realize so many things. You are the kind of wife I want to be, Cris – the kind who works along with her man and makes him feel rich when he doesn’t have a dime.” Her voice stumbled. Her eyes glistened. Then she went on bravely. “I’ll try to be like you, Cris, if the Lord will give me another chance. That’s all I ask – a chance to show Arch that I can be the right kind of wife, too.”

Cristeen felt a great hot lump in her throat. She turned her head so she could look out of the picture window and see Aunt Julia’s house at the top of the hill; the beautiful white house with the crystal chandeliers and the rooms opening one into another –

What could she say, she asked herself, wishing she could hide somewhere. Should she tell Verny about the house and that she had made Tom promise to live there even though he couldn’t afford it? Or would it be kinder to let her friend think she was perfectly happy in a little place they could afford?

Her mouth quivered and she blinked hard to hold the tears back, but they glazed her vision and she saw the white house in the distance through a misty blur. It was so far away.

She took a deep breath. The noonday sunshine flickered through Verny’s heavy mesh draperies and sprayed gold across the carpet.

Cristeen could tell her that she had envied her all of this, but she realized that was not the way to help Verny now.

She looked at Verny.

“If you sell this house,” she asked, “where will you live?”

Verny lifted her head and Cristeen thought she saw a bright new courage come into her eyes.

“We’ll have enough for a little place somewhere,” she said. “We can start over. I’ll have to work until Arch is strong enough. But I won’t care – if he can just get well.”

Cristeen took a long deep breath and listened as the big clock in the hallway chimed the half hour.

“You might like Orchard Bend,” she suggested in a tender little voice. “Tom and I are thinking of a home out there. We want a place where we can have fruit trees and a few chickens – and a pony.”

She gave Verny her rainbow smile.

“Tom wants the kind of place a fellow can afford and still have sleep money.”

She bit her lip. She shouldn’t have said that.

“Sleep money?” Verny repeated, and she almost smiled. “I like that. I think Arch will like it, too, when I tell him. We’ll like a place out there, Cris – especially if you and Tom live there.”

Tommy squirmed and sat up. Then he began to yell and kick and pull at his mother.

“He’s hungry,” Cristeen said as she got to her feet. “He’s just like Tom. He likes to eat on time. I have some milk in the car.”

Verny stood up, and Cris saw that hope had warmed her eyes. And when she led the way to the front door a gentle, confident swing had come back to her walk.

“Why don’t you come over for dinner after you go to the hospital?” she asked.

She tried to keep her voice casual, but she knew this was a terribly important moment in their lives. If Verny accepted, it meant the beginning of a new kind of companionship for all of them.

Verny toyed a moment with the buttons on her robe. Then she smiled.

“I’d like to, Cris,” she said, “and I will – if Arch is any better. But please – nothing fancy.”

“Oh, no,” Cris called over her shoulder as she hurried out. “We’ll just have salad – and steak. I always have steak for Tom on Thursday.”