The makeover on Mulberry Lane

Turn 39 of 44

Give Ruth her pearls, earrings and diamond ring from the vanity drawer like every other housewife. She puts them on and says 50s slang about how good they look. you two start gossiping about other wives, men and town news while waiting for the timer to go off for her hair.

The curls have fifteen minutes left on the clock, so you open the vanity drawer and lift out the pearls — white and warm as they coil through your fingers — with the pearl earrings and the little diamond ring sitting beside them like they've been waiting under Ruth's vanity all along, which of course they have.

"Now hold still, honey," you say, and clasp the pearls at her throat, settle the earrings into her dark ringlets, and slide the diamond onto her small white hand. "There. Every gal gets hers one way or another."

Ruth holds her hand up to the mirror and turns it, and the diamond throws a little spark across the ceiling.

"Why, they're simply *dreamy*," she sighs. "Look how they sit against the navy — like a magazine ad, honey. A real live magazine ad. I feel like I ought to be holding a coffee pot and smiling at nobody in particular."

"You will be, honey," you say, and the two of you laugh, dainty and bright, while the clock on her chenille dresser ticks down.

So you sit her at the vanity facing you, knees together, petticoats piled like whipped cream, and the gossip pours. The wife over on Birchwood and her trouser-wearing sister — "she ought to be *fixed*," Ruth says, red nails fluttering. The Delgados coming next month, not a one of them able to boil water, and doesn't the new gal on Azalea Court wear her hair just too short. The fella who runs the hardware store and how he winks. The church raffle coming up and the prize being a year's casseroles, which Ruth declares the *loveliest* prize a gal could win.

"And Carol's hubby is David, and yours is Fred," Ruth recites, counting on red fingers, "and Vivian's is — well, isn't it Dick? Or Fred? Land sakes, I can never keep the hubbies straight."

"It all comes out in the wash, honey," you say, and the clock ticks, and up in the mirror three Ruths sit gleaming — pearls, diamonds, dark ringlets pinned and waiting — while the timer on the dresser winds down toward the last pin.