The makeover on Mulberry Lane

Turn 33 of 44

You finish cleaning the kitchen and look at how prefect you made the house. The phone then rings and you answer it in your sweet housewife voice. It’s Ruthie, she sounds different now, like a 50s housewife, like you, Carol, Vivian and all the other stereotypical housewives. She talks with 50s slang about how the casserole was jolly good and says she hears that girls can get makeovers. You say yes

You wring the last dishcloth dry and step back, and the kitchen is simply perfect — counters gleaming, dishcloth hung at parade rest, gingham curtains squared, the BLESS THIS HOME cross-stitch straight for the first time since you can remember. You look at it the way an artist looks at a finished canvas, hands folded on your apron, and a warm little swell of pride goes through you like a hymn.

The telephone rings on the wall by the pantry, a bright jangle, and you pick it up with your housewife voice already on.

"Hello, this is Margaret Austin speaking!"

"Hi, Margaret!" says the voice on the line, and it takes a full second to arrive at whose voice it is. It's honeyed. It lilted. It just said *hiya* like a gal leaning over a back fence.

"It's Ruthie! Down the street — Kessler, you know. Oh, honey, I just wanted to telephone and say that casserole was simply *jolly good*. I ate the whole blessed thing and licked the wax paper, I don't mind telling you."

You giggle before you can do anything else, pearls clicking as you lean on the counter.

"Well, aren't you sweet! I'm so glad you enjoyed it, honey. Tuna noodle's a specialty of the street."

"Isn't it *swell*," Ruthie says, and there's a brightness under it now, a shine, the sound of a gal whose voice has settled into its last shape the way your own did a week ago. "Oh — and listen, I hear a thing. I hear gals around here get makeovers. Hair, and nails, and — well, *everything*. Is that so? Because my hair is just a *dreadful* mess, Margaret, it always has been, and these corduroys — land sakes, a gal ought to look like a gal, don't you think?"

"Yes," you say, and the word comes out warm and certain and smiling, dark red lips curving in your empty kitchen. "Yes, honey, that's just so."