“Not everyone. You cared much more for clothes than you did for any of your husbands.”
“The clothes gave me more pleasure,” Berni said. “And besides, they got what they wanted. They weren’t innocent in this. If they’d given me what I needed, I wouldn’t have divorced them.”
Pauline had no more to say. Having grown up in the eighteenth century, she didn’t know that Berni’s words were the product of years of expensive therapy. Berni only went to therapists who asked, “What do
you
want out of life?” “What do
you
need?” “What are
your
priorities?” Berni had always found someone to help her justify her belief that what she wanted was more important than what anyone else wanted.
With a little sigh, Pauline turned away and began walking again. “It looks like you may be here for a while,” she said softly.
Berni followed her, thinking that Pauline sounded just like her four husbands. They were selfish through and through, always complaining that Berni never cared anything about them, that she only wanted them for what they could do for her.
Pauline stopped, and Berni halted also. Around them the fog began to clear, and she could see that they were standing in a circular room, very bare, and set in the walls were arches. Above the arches were signs: “Romance.” “Fantasy.” “Clothes.” “Feasting.” “Indolence.” “Luxury.” “Parties.”
“Choose,” Pauline said.
“Choose what?” Berni asked, turning about and reading the signs.
“You must wait while an assignment is found for you, and you will wait in one of the halls.” Pauline could see that Berni still didn’t understand. “What would you most like to do now?”
“Go to a party,” Berni said without hesitation. Perhaps a loud, energetic party would get her mind off her own funeral and all the talk of ex-husbands.
Pauline turned toward the arch marked “Party,” and Berni followed her. Once through the arch there was another fog-filled arch to the right. Above it was a sign: “Elizabethan.”
Pauline stepped through the fog, and Berni saw a scene from Shakespeare. Men in capes, their legs in tight hose, were leading corseted women through the intricate moves of a sixteenth-century dance.
“Would you like to join them?” Pauline asked.
“This is
not
my idea of a party,” Berni answered, appalled.
Pauline led her back through the arch and across the hall to another arch.
All in all they looked into half a dozen parties before Berni saw one that appealed to her. They saw a Regency party with women in muslin dresses sipping tea from saucers and talking about the latest escapade of Lady Caroline Lamb. There was a square dance with cowboys, a Victorian party with parlor games, a thirteenth-century feast with some fine-looking young acrobats that tempted Berni, a Japanese tea ceremony, and an amazing Tahitian dance, but in the end she chose a party from the sixties. The blaring music of the Stones, the bright mini dresses, the Nehru jackets, the smell of marijuana burning, the writhing bodies of the long-haired people reminded her of her youth.
“Yes,” she whispered, and she stepped inside. In a moment she was wearing a micro-mini dress, her hair was long and straight, and there was a boy asking her to dance. She never looked back to see what had happened to Pauline.
Berni was huddled in a pile with other flower children, smoking grass and listening to Frank Zappa talk to Suzie Creamcheese when Pauline came for her. Berni looked up and knew she had to leave. Reluctantly, she left the party and followed Pauline out of the room.
Once they were through the golden archway the fog closed in over the room and hid all sights and sounds from them. Berni’s beads and tie-dyed shirt disappeared along with her headband. Her head cleared of the effects of the marijuana, and she was once again wearing the silk suit in which she’d been buried.
“I just got here,” Berni said sulkily. “I was just beginning to enjoy myself.”
“By earth time you have been partying for fourteen years.”
Berni could only blink at Pauline. Fourteen years? She felt as though she’d entered the party but moments before. She had been aware that now and then her clothes were different, but surely she couldn’t have been in there fourteen years. She hadn’t slept or eaten, had drunk very little, and hadn’t had a single conversation with her fellow party-goers. She’d meant to talk to them about the Kitchen and about their assignments, but there had never seemed to be an opportunity.
“There is an assignment for you,” Pauline said.
“Great,” Berni said, smiling. If she passed this test and went to heaven, what pleasures awaited her there? Heaven must be some super place to be better than the Kitchen.
Pauline led them down a hallway, past several golden arches that Berni was dying to explore. One said “Harem Fantasy” above it, another “Pirates.”
At last Pauline turned through an arch labeled “Viewing Room” and led them into a large room with a half circle of banquettes covered in peach-colored velvet. All around the seats was thick, white fog.
“Please make yourself comfortable.”
Berni snuggled down into the soft, velvet-covered seat and looked where Pauline did, at the foggy wall in front of them. Within seconds the fog drew back and a scene appeared before them. It was like a movie, only not as flat, and like a play, only more real.
A young woman, slim, pretty, with light brown hair pulled back from her face, was standing before a full-length mirror. She was wearing a long dress with very large puffed sleeves. The dress was of dark green silk with sparkling black beads across the bosom, and it was so tight in the bodice it was a wonder she could breathe. There were three hatboxes on the floor, and the woman was trying on one hat after another. The room was pleasant, with a bed, a wardrobe, a dresser, a washstand, a rag rug, and a fireplace, but it certainly wasn’t a palace. There were invitations open on the mantelpiece.
“I don’t guess she can see us,” Berni said.
“No, she has no idea anyone is watching her. Her name is Terel Grayson, she’s twenty years old, it is 1896, and she lives in Chandler, Colorado.”
“You mean I’m to make a Cinderella out of some antique girl? I don’t know anything about history. I need someone from my own time.”
“In the Kitchen all earth time is the same.”
Berni looked back at the screen and sighed. “All right. So where’s Prince Charming? And where’s the wicked stepsister?”
Pauline didn’t answer, so Berni watched in silence. Terel moved about the room quickly, looking at her invitations, then rummaging inside the big mahogany wardrobe. She sighed and looked disgusted as she pulled out one dress after another and flung them on the bed.
“That’s just like me,” Berni said, smiling. “I always had lots of invitations, and I was always worried about what I was going to wear. Not that I needed to worry, of course. I could have worn rags and been the belle of the ball.”
“Yes,” Pauline said softly, “Terel is like you.”
“I could do something with her,” Berni said. “A few cosmetics, soften her hair. She doesn’t need much. She isn’t as pretty as I was at her age, but she’ll do. She has a lot of potential.” She looked at Pauline. “So when do I start?”
“Ah,” Pauline said, “here comes Nellie.”
Berni looked back at the scene. The door opened, and in came another woman, older than Terel and about twice her size.
“Gross,” Berni said, looking at Nellie. She had a slim woman’s horror of obesity, and Berni’s fear of fat was amplified by the fact that she’d spent most of her life starving herself in order to remain slim. Deep down she feared that if she made the least slip she’d be Nellie’s size. “Two hundred pounds if she’s anounce.”
“One hundred and sixty-two, actually,” Pauline answered. “She’s Terel’s older sister, Nellie. She’s twenty-eight, unmarried, and she takes care of Terel and their father. Their mother died when Terel was four and Nellie was twelve. After his wife died Charles Grayson had Nellie quit school and take care of the house and Terel. Nellie has been Terel’s mother, so to speak, for most of Terel’s life.”
“I see,” Berni said. “A wicked sister and mother combined. Poor Terel. No wonder she needs a fairy godmother to help her.” She looked at Pauline. “Do I get a magic wand for this job?”
“If you would like. We can supply you with any magic you want, but you must supply the wisdom.”
“That’ll be easy. I’ll see that Terel gets whatever she deserves, and I won’t let that fat sister of hers keep her from getting the most out of life. Did you know that I have a fat older sister? She was so jealous of me, always trying to horn in on my life.” Berni could feel the remembered anger rising in her. “My sister hated everything about me. She was so jealous that she would have done
anything
to make me miserable. I fixed her, though.”
“What did you do?” Pauline asked softly.
“My first husband was her fiancé,” Berni answered, smiling. “He really was the most boring man, but he had a little money, so I made him pay attention to me.”
“You seduced him, didn’t you?”
“More or less. But he needed seducing. My sister was—is—such a bore, and…” She looked at Pauline sharply. “Don’t look at me like that. That man had more fun with me in the five years we were married than he would have had in a lifetime with my fat, dull, stupid sister. Besides, she turned out okay. She married and had a couple of fat kids. They were all quite happy in their middle-class way.”
“I’m sure everyone was very happy. You most of all.”
Berni wasn’t sure she liked the woman’s tone, but before she could reply Pauline said, “Shall we watch?”
Berni looked back at the scene before them, at the two women in the bedroom, and settled back to watch. She had to figure out how to help the slim, pretty Terel.
Nellie moved about the room, picking up Terel’s clothes and hanging them back in the wardrobe. She also picked up the hats Terel had discarded and carefully put them back into the boxes.
“I cannot decide,” Terel said petulantly. “Why do we have to live in this forsaken town anyway? Why couldn’t we live in Denver or St. Louis or New York?”
“Father’s business is here,” Nellie said softly, straightening a feather on a hat. The hats weren’t theirs but were on loan from the milliner. She was sorry they could afford only one hat and the others would have to be returned, but she meant to keep the ones Terel didn’t want as clean as possible.
“Business!” Terel said, flopping down on the bed. “That’s all anyone in this town talks of. Business! Why can’t there be any society?”
Nellie straightened out another hat, stroking the dried hummingbird on the crown before she put it away in the box. “There was the very nice garden party at Mr. and Mrs. Mankin’s last week, and the Harvest Ball will be at Mr. and Mrs. Taggert’s.”
Terel snorted. “All that lovely money and a family as crude as that. Everyone knows the Taggerts are little better than coal miners.”
“They all seem very nice.”
“Oh, Nellie, you think everyone is nice.” Terel propped herself on one elbow and watched her sister putting away clothes. Just last week, for the thousandth time, she’d heard someone say what an extraordinarily pretty face Nellie had, that it was too bad she was so heavy. Terel had even seen Marc Fenton watching Nellie. Marc was handsome and rich, and if he looked at anyone it should be at Terel.
Terel got off the bed and went to her dresser, opened a drawer, and withdrew a box of chocolates. “I have a gift for you, Nellie,” she said.
Nellie turned and smiled at her beloved little sister. “You shouldn’t give me things. I have everything I need.”
Nellie’s whole face lit when she smiled. Terel had heard women say that Nellie could light up a room with the warmth of her smile. “You wouldn’t refuse my gift, would you?” Terel asked, lower lip extended in a pretty pout. She held out the box of chocolates, and Nellie’s face fell. “You don’t like it,” Terel said, on the verge of tears.
“Yes, of course I do.” Nellie took the chocolates. “It’s just that I’ve been trying to eat less and lose some of this weight.”
“You don’t need to lose weight,” Terel said. “You look beautiful to me.”
Nellie’s smile returned. “Thank you, dear. It’s nice to have one person love me just as I am.”
Terel put her slim arm around Nellie’s plump shoulders. “Don’t let anyone change you. You’re beautiful just as you are, and the fact that men don’t like you doesn’t mean anything at all. What do they know? Father and I love you, and even if we’re the only ones, that’s all right. We love you enough to make up for all the men in the world.”
Nellie suddenly felt very hungry. She didn’t know why Terel’s words of love should make her feel hungry, but quite often they did. It didn’t make sense to her, but it seemed that love and food were mixed up together. Terel told her she loved her, and Nellie felt hungry.
“I believe I will have maybe just one piece of that candy,” Nellie said, her hands trembling as she opened the box and jammed three pieces into her mouth at once.
Terel turned away and smiled. “What should I wear tonight?”
Nellie sneaked a fourth piece of candy. “What you have on is lovely,” she said, swallowing. She was gaining control of her hunger.