The makeover on Mulberry Lane

Turn 42 of 44

All four of you make tea on Ruth's good china and gossip about the whole town. You all spend the night gossiping, talking in 50s slang about housewife stuff, the town and stuff you hear on the tv from your husbands. At 10. You, Carol and Vivian leave Ruth’s house to return home so that you all can do the housewife routine again. You arrive home and take your clothes off so you can sleep.

Ruth makes the tea on her good china, pouring like she's been doing it her whole life, and the four of you settle around her rose-papered parlor with cups balanced on red nails and petticoats spilling over every chair. The gossip runs all night — the trouser sister on Birchwood, the Delgados and their empty kitchen, the hardware store fella and his winking, the church raffle and what a gal ought to bake for it. Carol reports that David likes his meatloaf with extra ketchup, and Vivian nods along like she's taking minutes.

"Fred says the union fellas are fussing at the plant again," you offer, and Vivian's smile holds perfectly still. "Well, hubbies carry their worries so we gals don't have to," she says, and everyone agrees, and the subject floats on to curtains. The television murmurs low — a game show, a commercial for a new kind of mop — and each piece of news from it gets turned over and talked half to death, the way a gal talks a dress over before she buys it.

By ten the teapot is empty and Vivian rises, smooth as poured cream.

"Land sakes, look at the hour! A gal needs her beauty sleep if she's up at six-thirty sharp." Ruth walks the three of you to the porch in a swish of navy petticoats, pageboy gleaming under the porch light, and hugs all around — pearls clicking against pearls.

"Oh, honey, this was the *loveliest* evening," Ruth sighs at the door. "Tell Dick I said hello!" Vivian's smile does its little flicker, and then she's waving it away, calling goodnight down the dark street.

Carol peels off toward her house and her David's supper dishes, and you walk the last block alone in the cool night air, seams straight, heels clicking, thinking of six-thirty and Fred's eggs and the casserole by two. Home, you climb out of the sailor dress and the petticoats, unclip the stockings, hang everything careful in the closet that used to be somebody else's, and slip between the cool sheets smelling of hairspray and lemon polish. Fred's television murmurs upstairs. You're asleep before you can finish the thought it takes.