"Sometimes I'm here all day. I even have lunch brought to me, and occasionally dinner."
"I'd better see what Mommy's done. Thanks for showing your computer to me."
I went out to greet Mommy and see what her hair was like now and stopped dead when I saw. She had a hairdo that was practically a carbon copy of Charlotte's. She was wearing Charlotte's designer outfit and her makeup was different too: a far brighter shade of lipstick, and more vivid rouge and eyeliner. She had an armful of boxes, and there were more boxes at her feet.
"Oh. Rose, come quickly and help me with some of this," she cried.
"What is all that and what have you done to your hair. Mommy?"
"Don't you like it?" she asked, turning to model her coiffure.
"I took her to my personal beautician," Charlotte said, "who treated her with lots of tender loving care.'
She stood off to the side gloating at her new creation like a Doctor Frankenstein.
"Well?" Mommy asked, waiting for my response.
"We brought your mother into the twenty-first century," Charlotte bragged.
"It's not you. Mommy," I said. and Mommy's smile wilted quickly. "You're wearing too much makeup, too," I complained. "It's gross."
Charlotte laughed.
"Really, dear, your mother was made up by a cosmetic expert at the department store."
"I don't care. It's too much for her," I insisted. "You look... cheap," I said.
"Oh, my," Charlotte said, bringing her hand to the base of her throat.
"That's enough. Rose." Mommy snapped at me. "Help me with these packages. We're taking it all up to my room."
I gathered what I could.
"Where's Evan?" Charlotte asked.
"At his computer," I said.
"Really?" She grimaced like someone who had bitten into a rotten hard-boiled egg. "I was hoping you might draw him away from all that," Charlotte said and shifted her eves quickly toward Mommy, whose eves turned nervous with fear that I had somehow let her down,
"We did spend almost an hour and a half outside talking," I said.
"Good. A little more every day and maybe you'll get him to become social and normal.-
"He is normal." I insisted. "He's just in a great deal of pain."
"Not according to his doctors and nurses." Charlotte bounced back at me.
"I'm not talking about that kind of pain. I'm talking about the pain in his heart," I said.
"Oh, well, perhaps you can help him forget that," she continued. "It's why I wanted y'all here, you know," she added, the timbre in her voice colder, more formal.
"Of course she will," Mommy quickly said. "Won't you. Rose?"
"I don't know, Mommy," I said honestly.
"Well. I do." Charlotte said. "You will, We will lift the gloom and doom out of this house and bring it back to its glorious days when the halls were filled with laughter, the rooms were stuffed with wonderful, good-looking people and music and the clinking of champagne glasses, or we will die trying, won't we. Monica?"
Mommy smiled and laughed.