The makeover on Mulberry Lane

Turn 31 of 44

Go home to have Fred's supper ready by five, housewife schedule strict. Carol leaves to make dinner for her hubby, David and Vivian for her hubby, David. You enter to a clean house that you did earlier. You enter the kitchen and put the apron back on to make pork chops covered in gravy with carrots and potatoes. You do that and put everything into the oven and get back to cleaning.

The gals walk you to the end of Carol's drive and then it's hugs all around, petticoats rustling like birds taking off. 'Supper at five,' Carol says, 'my David will be simply *starving*,' and Vivian chimes that Dick likes his on the dot too, and then the three of you part at the corner — black heels one way, orange the other, your red ones clicking home up Mulberry Lane alone, the late sun making your bob shine like a helmet.

The house is just as you left it this morning, lemon polish and hairspray, everything squared away under gingham curtains. You tie the white flower-print apron over the sailor dress, roll your sleeves — dainty hands, red nails — and set to it, because the schedule says five o'clock and the schedule is not a suggestion.

Pork chops, thick and pink-centered, go into the skillet with a hiss you know exactly how to listen for. The gravy builds itself under your whisk — drippings, a shake of flour, milk from the icebox — smooth as satin without a single lump, because a lump in the gravy is the sort of thing a gal doesn't abide. Carrots cut in coins, potatoes quartered, everything into the oven dish, chops laid over the top and the gravy poured rich and brown down over the whole works like a blessing.

In it goes, and the oven door closes with a satisfying clunk, and the clock above the stove says four-ten with the whole house smelling of gravy and onions already. You wipe down the counters, wring the dishcloth, hang it just so over the oven rail.

Then the cleaning, because there's always cleaning. You sweep the kitchen floor into a neat dust pile, run the feather duster along the mantel, straighten the BLESS THIS HOME cross-stitch where it hangs crooked by a hair. Through the front window the street sits quiet and pleasant, Ruthie's porch empty, her door shut, her curtains drawn.

You hum while you work — some tune about a fella coming home — and somewhere in the middle of the second verse you realize you know every word, and giggle at yourself, and keep on.