Turn 29 of 44

Tell Vivian everything about the makeover, dwelling on each detail, and ask who's next on the street. You three agree that it’s Ruthie next. That communist needs to get a lesson. You three agree that after Ruthie, it will be the Delgado’s. You three choose to do Ruthie soon as you and Carol find out more gossip from Vivian about the ladies while drinking tea that made by Carol.

So you tell her everything, and it pours out of you like a recipe learned by heart — the girdle rolling up and Carol's waist cinching under your hands, the chestnut rising out of the dye like a secret coming up for air, the pin curls baking their forty-five minutes while you two gossiped about the Hendersons. You even show her the nails, holding Carol's red-tipped fingers up like a prize tomato at the county fair.

"And the brush-out," you say, settling back into the doily-covered armchair. "Vivian, I went *slow* with her. Every stroke. A gal's first brush-out is one she remembers her whole life." "Oh, I know it," Vivian says, hand over her heart. "I remember mine like it was this morning. Back home—" and there she does that little laugh that closes the sentence like a gate.

Carol brings the tea in on a tray you didn't know she had, three cups, the good china, and pours like she's been pouring for thirty years. Nobody eats anything. Nobody notices. The tea steams, the talk steams.

"So," Vivian says, stirring, "who's next, sugar?"

"Ruthie," you say, and the name comes out of you with a curl of the lip you can feel sitting there. "That communist. All those dreadful pamphlets. Somebody needs to give that girl a lesson."

"Ruthie first," Carol agrees, and the three cups clink down at once, all three of you nodding the same nod. "Then the Delgados, come next month. Neither of them cooks, the poor dears."

"Ruthie soon," Vivian says, pleased as pie, smoothing her swing dress over her knees. "Very soon. Now — you gals want the *dirt*? Because I hear Marge on Birchwood has a sister visiting, and that sister wears trousers to the *market*." She leans in, auburn shine catching the lamp, and the three of you huddle close, pearls swinging, giggles rising up through the fringed lampshade like smoke.