Free Leeway Cottage by Beth Gutcheon

startled, as in his experience mothers could be counted upon to have nothing but exceptional children. He’d forgotten the daughter’s name but had expected to hear Mrs. Brant drone on about her through the soup course, which would leave him free to eat.
    â€œAh?”
    â€œFirst she decides to change her name. Now she thinks she wants to go to college. It’s ridiculous. What good does it do those girls? They just come home and turn into the kind of female who’s always running around asking people to give money to things. It’s not as if Anna were an intel lec tual.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œI think she should take a lovely finishing year in Florence or somewhere. Then if she wants to do something useful before she gets married she can join the Junior League. But no. You’ll never believe what she said to me this morning. She said, ‘Mother, I’d like to learn to cook.’” Candace did a very good Annabee imitation.
    â€œCook?”
    â€œThat’s what I said. I said, ‘Cook? What on earth do you want to learn to cook for?’ And she said she’d been to a picnic or hoedown or something this summer where the family lived in a cabin and the mother did the cooking. Can you imagine the sort of thing?”
    He could, actually.
    â€œI said, ‘Fine, but what kitchen do you plan on using?’ She said, ‘This one.’ I said, ‘Velma’s kitchen, you mean? And when she quits, are you going to do the interviewing and hiring, and firing when the new ones turn out to be drunk or pregnant?’”
    â€œOr—”
    â€œYes, not know how to turn on the stove…Children have no idea, do they? The cook I had before Velma couldn’t cook but she could eat—she was so fat she broke the toilet seat in the servants’ bathroom. And before that—oh, before that was the one who got drunk during Anna’s birthday party. Here I am, trying to give her a perfect day, with thirty little children all washed and starched and waiting for their creamed chicken, waiting and waiting, and when I went to the kitchen, the cook was com pletely drunk, in tears because I didn’t love her.”
    The dinner partner started to laugh.
    â€œYou laugh—that wasn’t the worst, the worst was that she was sitting on the birthday cake at the time.”
    He laughed louder.
    â€œShe was—I had ordered one from the baker to save her trouble, ‘Happy Birthday, Annabee,’ it said, with an elaborate picture of a merry-go-round in icing. Anna was mad for carnival rides of all sorts at the time. The chauffeur had left it on the kitchen bench and this creature was sitting on it. Too fat to notice.”
    The dinner partner was laughing so much the hostess looked down the table to see what was happening. Bill for his part was extremely sorry when the next course was served and he had to turn to the partner on his left. He thought Mrs. Brant was delightful.
    Â 
    Annabee couldn’t see how she was going to get out of the box she was in. She wanted her mother’s respect. She couldn’t imagine making life plans without her blessing. And yet everything her mother pictured for her future struck Annabee with horror. To go to Europe to be “finished”? Then loll around Cleveland waiting for some booby to marry her? There had to be something better than that. Yet whom could she talk to? Elise was going to Vassar, but Elise was brilliant. And Elise’s mother was “one of those females who serve on boards and run around asking people to give money to things.” Gladdy was going to be finished, and she thought that was fine. Her father couldn’t afford four years of college for her. She felt lucky that she’d have the year in Rome.
    College? As a matter of fact Annabee wasn’t an intellectual; higher math was agony for her and she hadn’t a very large curiosity. She didn’t even much like to