Turn 11 of 44

Ask her to do the makeup on your face exactly like hers so you two match as you know housewife’s all have the makeup routine and stuff on their face. Soon she does that while you stay silent so that makeup doesn’t get in your mouth. Soon you look and the makeup looks the exact same as her. Your lips done in the permanent dark red lipstick. It will never come off and that’s prefect with you.

"Make it just like yours," you say, holding still on the stool, hands folded in your lap like a good girl. "Exactly. All you gals have the routine, right? The face, the lips — the whole thing."

"Well, butter my biscuits," Vivian says, pleased clear down to her pearls. "A copycat! Honey, imitation is the sincerest form of a good neighbor." She opens her compact and begins, and it is a lesson whether she says so or not — base first, powder pressed on with a puff until your skin goes pale and flawless as porcelain, then the little pots of shadow, the pencil, the blush swept just so on the apples of your cheeks. You sit silent as she works, lips parted barely, because a gal doesn't talk while things are going near her mouth, and the room is quiet except for her humming and the tick of a clock you don't remember owning.

The mirror does the telling. Face by face, feature by feature, the woman in the glass becomes Vivian's sister — same arched brows, same powdered glow, same eyes made up doll-bright. And then the lipstick. She uncaps a dark red bullet in a gold case, steadies your chin with two cool orange-tipped fingers, and paints your mouth with the precision of an architect, outlining, filling, pressing a tissue, painting again.

"There," she says, capping it. "And that, honey, is the permanent kind. Won't smudge, won't fade, won't come off for love or money. A gal puts it on once and it's *hers* for good."

You look at the tri-fold mirror and the three of you agree: it's perfect. Your lips are a dark red bow, identical to hers, and the word *permanent* lands in you like a warm coal and you find you wouldn't have it any other way. It's yours for good. Good.

"We match," you breathe, delighted, and Vivian squeezes your small shoulder.

"Two peas in a pod," she says. "Now — nails. Red or pink, and do hurry, sugar, that set's baking."