Nell Read Free Page B

it flew around her head, and she went around that way happily. She liked the scent and swish of her long hair when she turned her head. It gave her a feeling of exuberance. Men liked her long hair, too, the way it would sometimes fall forward over her bare shoulders.
    She still had fun with her hair, wearing it in different ways, just as she had fun with makeup. She had the definite, slightly exaggerated features that suited an actress or an opera singer: large eyes, high cheekbones, wide mouth. When she first worked in the boutique, she had used her skill with makeup to create an impressively dramatic face that“went” with her clothes each day. But soon she gave that up, believing that the makeup intimidated her customers—and she preferred to use the early morning half hour for extra sleep. Now she wore some blusher and occasionally a touch of eyeliner, mascara, lipstick. When she worked at it, when she was wearing the perfectly right clothes and makeup, she could look like the sort of woman who would fly to Japan or France to attend a fashion show or an auction of antiques.
    The gray elephant robe was not that sort of garment. Nell pulled it over her head and immediately was enveloped in a tent of shapeless warmth. She felt comfortable and cozy, but in the mirror she saw a new brown stain down the front of the robe.
    “God,” she muttered to herself. “What a glamorous creature I am.”
    She had intended to be a glamorous creature. She even had actually been a glamorous creature. She had been a cheerleader and homecoming queen in high school, an actress in college, and, in her early twenties, then the stunning wife of an important young director. Now she was the not-so-stunning ex-wife of a not-so-important director, and all the acting she did was purely personal. Sometimes she was her only audience.
    Now she grabbed all her long reddish hair and stuck it up in a glob on the back of her head with some long barrettes so that it wouldn’t get in her way while she was cooking. She was having friends to dinner that night.
    “Listen,” she said to her reflection in the mirror as she went out of her room. “God gave you your children and your cheekbones. Don’t expect any other gifts.”
    It was about eleven o’clock. Jeremy had biked off to the school for soccer practice and wouldn’t be home till afternoon. Hannah was in her room, playing “teacher.” This morning she had rounded up the younger children in the neighborhood and brought them up to her room. Before going down to the kitchen, Nell peeked in the door and saw four little children sitting dutifully on the floor while Hannah stood at the other end of her bedroom, holding up a stuffed animal.
    “Squirrel,” she said. “This is a squirrel.”
    “Squirrel,” Hannah wrote on the blackboard.
    “Squirrel,” the four children said.
    “Good!” Hannah said with sugar in her voice. “Now, Heather, you may hold the stuffed squirrel.”
    Hannah was wearing the navy blue suit her grandmother had sent her for Easter and a pair of Nell’s old black high-heeled sandals. She had smeared pink lipstick over her lips and cheeks and stuck her blond hair back in a severe bun that had several bobby pins dangling down, swinging with every definite nod of Hannah’s head. She looked absolutely demented, but the four children at her feet seemed completely at ease and even fascinated, so Nell shut the door without saying a word and went down the stairs to the kitchen.
    When Nell had been married to Marlow, they had bought this old, rickety shambles of a Victorian house, intending to restore it over the years to its former solidity, if not grandeur. Marlow had thought the large high-ceilinged rooms would be perfect for theatrical gatherings. Nell had thought all the bedrooms would be perfect for all the babies she would have. When Nell and Marlow divorced, Nell had gotten the house, along with full custody of the children; she had thought of selling the house