Enough with the lipstick.
The girls would arrive soon. No, the ladies would arrive soon. Boop chuckled. Ladies sounded stuffy, boring, and inaccurate. Even at eighty-four, Boop and her friends would always be girls—and they’d never be boring.
In the bathroom mirror, her reflection was framed by the floral shower curtain behind her. The hair she’d allowed to go white under the watchful eye and skillful hand of her Chicago hairdresser had lost most of its bounce but retained a bit of its wave. A year earlier she’d had it cut into a chin-length bob. She tucked it behind her ears. Boop looked nothing like the girl who grew up here, back when everyone still called her Betty. Back when she was Betty.
Boop turned her head from side to side. In the old days her hair would have brushed against her cheeks. Marvin wouldn’t have liked this ’do, but he’d never minded the lines on her forehead or the ones on her cheeks where the rouge liked to settle.
She’d been a widow for three years now; would she ever stop wondering what Marvin would think of her?
Boop believed her stylishness was like wine and had improved with age. Over the years she had taken bohemian bubbe and mixed it with beach chic. When her granddaughters Hannah and Emma were teenagers, they’d dubbed her flair “Boop-tastic.”
The woman before her had panache.
When the girls arrived, she’d also have purpose.
Boop dressed in a soft yellow rayon shift with bracelet-length sleeves and decorated her wrists with silver bangles. Then something unlatched in her brain—maybe the tinkling of the metal jewelry had an effect on her memory—and the location of Sly Pink tumbled forward, as if it’d been awaiting an invitation. Boop’s lipstick rested in her grandmother’s small white Lenox bowl among pennies.
Downstairs by the front window with lipstick applied, Boop tugged down her sleeves to guard against the late-May chill. She bobbed her head in time to watch the day’s flock of gulls resting on the shimmering surface of Lake Michigan. My lake. It looked like someone had called a meeting to order. Did the birds grow bored or did they know that the summer people would arrive with Memorial Day weekend, and with them an abundance of crusts and crumbs?
Boop rubbed her hands together, which didn’t work to warm them. There was a time she would have ignored the chill and slipped out of her sweater, allowing it to puddle on the floor behind her as she pushed through the door, which she’d let swing and slam even though she hadn’t been raised in a barn. She’d have abandoned her shoes, if she’d been wearing any, and then run onto the beach, kicking sand so high it would have landed in her hair.
Boop couldn’t recall the last time she’d walked on the beach, let alone kicked up anything, and that had nothing to do with her memory.
Canes were a bitch in the sand.
The shrill of Boop’s landline reverberated from the kitchen. By the time she reached the only receiver, where it had been attached to the wall since the 1960s, it had stopped ringing. They’d call back.
She sat at the kitchen table, then looked at her watch. The bedrooms were prepared with fresh linens, new towels, and bunches of dried lavender tied with purple ribbon. She’d raised the windows so the breeze would refresh anything she’d missed. Still, there was no time for lollygagging. She figured she had fifteen or twenty minutes before the girls arrived, just enough time to brew a pot of decaf and set out a late-afternoon snack. Boop filled a vase with daisies, Doris’s favorite flower, and broke out the embroidered cloth napkins she usually saved for holidays, as this was as close to a celebration as she’d felt like having in a long time. She’d defrosted some blueberry muffins and set out the chocolate bridge mix that Georgia loved.
Then the front door squeaked, and Boop gathered her thoughts as she left the half-readied feast and hurried to greet her friends, glad they’d coordinated flights and would arrive together for a double homecoming. Boop’s pulse quickened with girlish giddiness. What would they do first? Eat? Chat? Unpack? All of the above! Years had passed since it had been the three of them in South Haven—alone together, which meant not alone at all.
“I’m coming,” Boop called. “You’re early!”
“Boop?”
That was not Georgia’s voice. Or Doris’s.
After having only seconds to revise her expectations, Boop watched her granddaughter Hannah walk through the living room. She held a gray duffel bag in one hand, and in the other a bouquet of purple alstroemeria in a plastic sleeve. A smile tugged at Boop’s lips. She loved purple flowers and Hannah knew it.
But with Hannah here—a duffel bag didn’t signal a quick visit—all plans would change. Boop couldn’t ask Hannah to leave. She’d adapt. That’s what she’d always done.
“Hey!” Hannah hugged her with the force of undeniable love. Boop wrapped her arms around her granddaughter, and Hannah laid her head on Boop’s shoulder and sank in. Tears welled in Boop’s eyes. She hadn’t seen Hannah in a month or two. This was what she missed—regular hugs. The realization closed in around her with a hug of its own.
“This is a surprise, right?” Boop said. “I didn’t know you were coming, did I?”
“No, I wanted to surprise you. I hope that’s okay.”
Hannah stepped back. Her jeans hung low on her hips, and the fly was unbuttoned in an intentional way. The knees of her pants were torn, a fashion trend Boop tried to neither understand nor emulate. Hannah’s hair draped over one shoulder as if in a side ponytail without the rubber band. Not a stitch of makeup on the girl’s face, yet she was beautiful—big
