The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright

Author:Elizabeth Enright
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250102836
Publisher: Square Fish

“They’re perfect,” she said, and Miss Pearl’s smile was more pleased than ever as she began on the other hand. By and by, when Mona’s hair was cooked enough she reached over and switched off the tempest. In the sudden clear stillness Mona could hear the lady in booth twelve telling someone about how she’d eaten something that disagreed with her.

“Well, my dear, I was in agony!” she was saying. “Absolute agony. And hives! Well, I had hives the size of fifty-cent pieces all over me. I kept wondering could it have been the lobster? But my husband, Mr. Elenbogen, said, ‘Why, Grace, you know lobsters never affect you.’ Then I wondered maybe it was that rich dessert. That’s what I think it must have been, that rich dessert.”

“Maybe it was the combination,” observed a patient voice.

“No, I think it was the dessert. You know I almost never eat dessert,” said the woman as if this were a fact of the most vital interest.

“There we are, honey,” Miss Pearl said, wheeling away the drier, and beginning to take the hairpins out.

“I feel like a baked potato,” Mona remarked, “and I look a lot like one too.”

“Now you just wait, honey,” Miss Pearl told her. “You just wait till we get rid of these old pins and Mr. Edward combs you out. You won’t know yourself.”

And it was true. Ten minutes later, after Mr. Edward had combed and brushed and snipped and fussed over her hair, Mona did not know herself. Great curls and puffs and ringlets frothed above her shoulders and on her forehead. The result exceeded her wildest expectations. She was awed by the beauty of it. Why, I could go into the movies this minute, she thought; only what would Cuffy say?

“Honey, you’re a picture!” exclaimed Miss Pearl, clasping her hands in admiration. “I bet you somebody’s going to cause quite a sensation when she goes home. I bet her daddy won’t know her; he’ll be tickled to death!”

Mona had a small pang of misgiving when she thought of Father. Tickled to death wasn’t exactly what she expected him to be. But maybe he’d like it when he got used to it.

“Yes, indeed, little lady,” Mr. Edward was saying. “You are definitely the subdeb type. Definitely. Just remember I told you so, Myra.”

Mona wasn’t exactly sure of what he meant by “subdeb type,” but she supposed it was a compliment, so she said “thank you” and shook hands with both him and Miss Pearl.

Even the Tang goddess at the desk cracked her mask with a smile.

“You look real cute, dear,” she said. “That’ll be a dollar fifty.”

Well, that took the last penny in Mona’s purse, and it was a long way home, but never mind.

All over the city lights were coming on in the purple-blue dusk. The street lights looked delicate and frail, as though they might suddenly float away from their lampposts like balloons. Long twirling ribbons of light, red, green, violet, were festooned about the doorways

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