Machine Dreams

alive.
    Jean closed the front door quickly, trying to keep the cold out, and stamped her feet on the rubber mat Gladys put over the rug in winter.
    “Hello at last,” Gladys said from her chair. She sat quietly, Jean’s party dress on her lap. “I was just about to put out an alert for one Jeannie Hampson.”
    Jean turned to face her and brushed the snow from her shoulders guiltily. “I’m sorry I didn’t have dinner started, Gladys.”
    “Doesn’t matter. There’ll be plenty of food at the VFW. You know how some of the wives show off at these parties.” She smoothed the full black skirt of the dress over her knees like a coverlet. “You’d think they never got a good word from their husbands, and most of them don’t.”
    It was irritating sometimes, the way Gladys talked. “Gladys, for Lord’s sake,” Jean asked her, “how would you know?”
    “I sell women’s dresses, that’s how.” Gladys was matter-of-fact. “They tell me everything, from start to finish, whether I want to know or not.”
    Jean took off her coat and tried to fluff her dark hair dry withher hands. “I’m glad I work for men at the State Road,” she said. “They may be boorish sometimes, but at least I don’t get yakked at.”
    Gladys smiled and held the dress up. “Jean, you’d better try this on so I can press the hem.”
    “Oh, you finished the hem?”
    “Sure I did,” Gladys said easily. “Didn’t take a minute. Mitch said you’d gone to get thread, but I had a spool of black silk in my desk.” She shook the dress out busily, but Jean saw the spool of thread on the arm of the chair. It was the same spool Jean had hidden; of course, Gladys had sat down and felt the small lump under the cushion. My God, she was impossible to deceive.
    “Gladys,” Jean began, “I didn’t really go downtown. I—”
    “Oh hush, it’s no one’s business where you went. You can’t tell everyone what you do every minute or you’ll have no peace at all.”
    The two women exchanged a look, and then Jean took the dress and held it against her chest. “I’m sure it’s perfect,” she said.
    “You’ll look wonderful. Black wool is so classic, and you have the complexion to wear it.” Gladys smiled. “You can show off that little waist of yours while you still have it.”
    They heard Mitch in the hallway. The bathroom door closed and the spritz of the shower began.
    “I’d better hurry.” Jean stepped out of her wet shoes and stood for a moment on the heating vent. The furnace blower had clicked on and the floor grate was warm.
    “Yes, you had. He’ll have a fit if we aren’t ready in half an hour.” Gladys got up from the chair, rubbing her arms, and stood beside Jean over the heat. “Oh, I’m getting old. Arthritis is next, probably.” She fished in the pocket of her wool sweater and held out a small white bag. “Remember that tube of Fire Red you asked me to order at the store? Here it is, just in time.”
    “Gladys, thank you.” Jean was unaccountably, purely happy. “Really, thanks so much.” She put her arm around the shorter woman and rested her face against Gladys’ stiffly permed red curls. Gladys came to Jean’s shoulder and smelled wonderfully of Tabu bath powder and cosmetics: twice a day, she rouged hercheeks with red lipstick and rubbed in the color with tissues. Mitch’s proper Aunt Bess would say Gladys was painted, but Jean thought suddenly how perfect Gladys really looked, those red cheeks a brassy declaration of gumption, even in the middle of winter.
    Gladys chuckled and hugged Jean’s waist. “Here we are, two fools on a heat grate, 1949. Your mother is looking down and having a laugh on us.”
    “You think so?”
    “Of course. Gracie was a Danner, from Pickens, and there’s a special heaven for Danners.”
    “But it’s not 1949 yet, not until midnight.” Jean watched Gladys’ profile. The round, lined face seemed delicate, the powdered skin colored carefully as a doll’s.
    “Well,” Gladys sniffed, “if you want to be a stickler. You Danners are such sticklers.”
    “I’m a Hampson now,” Jean said.
    “You’re a Hampson legally,” Gladys corrected her, “like I’m a Curry. But you’ll be a Danner all your life—look in the mirror. You look like all the Danner women, dark-haired, dark-eyed—beauties, every one of them, and such sticklers. Stubborn and mannered as hell. Danners could be poor as church mice and walk around like heiresses.”
    Jean felt herself