Turn 15 of 44

Ask Vivian to brush them out slowly so you can savor every stroke. She does as the sides and back of your hair as the pin curls are unrolled and brushed slowly into a 50s bob. The front of your hair is then unrolled and brushed slowly into a s shape like all 50s housewives have. You then look at your hair. It’s a prefect 1950s bob. You now fully look like Vivian and a stereotypical 50s housewife.

"Slowly," you say, settling onto the stool one last time, hands folded over the sailor skirt. "I want to feel every stroke. It's the last step, Vivian. I want to savor it."

"Well, ain't that just the sweetest thing," she says, and reaches for the brush, silver-handled, soft-bristled, one you don't remember owning. She works from the back, and each pin comes out with a tiny click you feel in your scalp like a little chime. The released curl is warm and springy in her palm before she draws the brush through it — slow, slow, just as you asked — and it falls into place among its sisters, smooth and gleaming, shaped into a bob that curves in at your jaw like a sigh.

Click, brush, stroke. Click, brush, stroke. The sides go, curl by curl, the champagne hair swinging soft against your cheeks, and Vivian hums something that sounds like it's playing on a radio in 1955.

"A gal's first brush-out," she murmurs, "is one she remembers her whole life."

Then the front. She lifts the last pins free and rolls your face out of its wrapping, and draws the brush in one long sweep so the front falls into a great curved S, swept back from your brow and rolling forward again at the tip, polished and perfect, exactly like hers, exactly like all of theirs.

"There," she whispers, and steps aside.

You lean toward the tri-fold mirror and three women look back at you, and every one of them has a perfect 1950s bob, champagne blonde, gleaming under the vanity light. Pearl necklace, red lips, sailor collar, three petticoats, seams straight. You turn your head left, right, and the S-curl holds its shape like it grew there. You look like Vivian. You look like the woman on the Cross-Stitch pattern. You look like you were always meant to.

"Oh, *honey*," Vivian says, hand to her pearls, eyes shining in the glass. "Aren't we just the two luckiest gals on Mulberry Lane?"