Turn 4 of 44

Agree with Vivian and ask her to teach you how she does it — the hair, the house, all of it. She says she could after dinner. Soon, you start cooking, you know that you can’t cook. But, you’re soon cooking up a Seafood Aspics salad. You and Vivian start talking in your 50s housewife voices about neighborhood gossip as your house changes to one from the 50s. The house is now similar to Vivian’s.

"Yes," you say, and the word comes out in that smoothed, agreeable lilt, easy as breathing. "Yes, please. Teach me. The hair, the house, the — all of it. How do you do it?"

Vivian clasps her hands under her chin like a girl handed a puppy.

"Well, lands sake, honey, I thought you'd never ask! After dinner, then. First things first." She claps once, brisk and bright.

"Now let's get cooking."

You can't cook. That is a documented fact — four years of takeout containers, one smoke alarm incident, a burnt quiche the association still teases you about. But your hands are already moving, pulling things from the refrigerator, and you know things you did not know ten minutes ago. You know to gel the consommé with lemon and bay. You know to arrange the shrimp in rings, to line the mold, to chill the aspic until it sets like amber glass. Your voice hums along to instructions you aren't reading, giving them in that pleasant pitched-up cadence, and Vivian watches you work with the satisfaction of a woman watching a cake rise exactly on schedule.

"There she is," she murmurs. "Natural as anything."

You talk while you cook, both of you now in the same register, two housewives trading gossip across a counter. The Hendersons' lawn is going to seed, you hear yourself say, and someone ought to say something. Ruthie Kessler's book club, Vivian agrees, is no way for grown women to carry on. The words come out of you already agreeing, already arranged.

And the house is changing around the conversation. You notice it in glances — the corkboard gone, replaced by a framed cross-stitch that says BLESS THIS HOME. Your curtains are gingham now, yellow. The compass-pink tile of the kitchen floor has become checkerboard linoleum, and your chrome-and-wood table has rounded corners and a oilcloth cover with fruit on it. Your spice jars stand in perfect ranks. The room hums faintly, the way a television hums, and when you look for what changed, the change has already finished being normal.

"Isn't it cozy?" Vivian says, and your house agrees with her.