Excerpt from Absolution by Alice McDermott, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

He said, "Be a helpmeet to your husband. Be the jewel in his crown."

I said, "I will."

* * *

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO POSED so prettily with her parents and her baby brother was you.

She was about seven or eight, in her Sunday best like the rest of us: a crisp yellow dress, nearly gold, with pleats at the bodice, scalloped collar and sleeves. She held a Barbie doll in the crook of her arm, like a scepter. It must have been the first Barbie doll I'd ever seen.

After the family was introduced—my husband knew the husband, had already met the wife as well—I leaned down to ask her about the doll, as you do with children. To tell the truth, I was happy to give her my attention, pretending to be a kindly adult.

I hadn't yet lost the shyness that plagued me then; I had only managed to put it aside—to steady my hands before I extended them and to breathe deeply before I spoke. I wanted to be a helpmeet to my husband, and these gatherings, cocktail parties and garden parties and dinners with embassy people and military people and corporate people and advisors of all kinds, were, as my husband put it, how things got done in Saigon.

The little girl spoke softly, with the manners—she said, "Yes, ma'am"—that were taken for granted in children, in those days. Seen but not heard. Nearly whispering, she touched the doll's little shoes—open-toed high heels—and the pretty floral dress she wore, explaining that the doll arrived wearing only a bathing suit, but that any number of outfits could be purchased: cocktail dresses, uniforms—nurse or stewardess—even a wedding gown that cost, and here she grew breathless with the astonishment of it, five dollars.

From the small purse on her arm she withdrew a tiny booklet, illustrated with all the outfits the doll might wear.

Two men had joined the adult conversation that was just above our heads, blocking me, or so I saw it, from their circle. I didn't want to straighten up and turn away from the child—she was so earnest. Nor did I want to linger on the periphery of these grown-ups, waiting to be invited back in. So I took the little girl aside a bit, to a wicker settee just beyond the trellis of flowers. Together we turned the pages of the catalogue, and she told me which outfits she already owned and which she was "asking for." Many of these she had already marked with a careful X.

There was an aunt in New York City, she explained. A businesswoman who was the regular source for these gifts. Who, in fact, the child told me, sometimes wore a tweed suit with a matching pillbox hat exactly like the one pictured in the catalogue, an outfit called "Career Girl."

Well, it was all charming to me. I had grown up with broad-faced baby dolls that came with only a party dress or a coat and a bonnet, and my playtime consisted of pushing a doll carriage up and down the sidewalk, or holding to the doll's rosebud mouth a plastic baby spoon of imaginary food. But here was a doll that did not require naps or airings or pretend feedings. A doll meant for a thousand different games: nurse, stewardess, plantation belle, sorority girl, night club singer in a sultry gown ("très chic," I said to my little friend), bride.

The girl's mother soon joined us, her plump baby boy in her arms.

Charlene was young and freckled, with thick strawberry blond hair that she wore pushed back with a small headband. Her nose was pert, her darting eyes a deep hazel. There was something both regal and feral about the way the straight line of her scalp met her tanned forehead. I recognized her type from my days at Marymount: she had the healthy, athletic, genetic—as I thought of it—confidence of one born to wealth. The first thing she asked me, in fact, was if I played tennis; she was looking for a partner. I did not.

Then she leaned across her daughter, holding out the baby, offering him to me.

Copyright © 2023 by Alice McDermott