Girlfriends Solid as Rock

Girlfriends Solid as Rock Jill Patterson The Renegade For my 14th birthday, my grandmother gave me knee socks with a crossword printed on the shins, the answers slang from a randy thesaurus— boobs, petting, pistol, fondle. Shopping for my prom three years later, she steered me into a shoe store and told the muffin behind the counter he needed to fit me with slinky crimson heels. When he disappeared behind his magic curtain to conjure the match, she grinned and undid the top buttons on my shirt. "Show your dinners, honey. He's cute." My grandmother was a renegade, a woman who favored no-nonsense operations when it came to lust and love, and marriage, too, so it isn't her suggestion that I abandon my husband that surprises me. It's how she's returned from the blue yonder, 16 years gone, to prattle in my dream. I find her in a hotel, deep in the night. It's the kind of resort I could never afford. The suites have a cordless telephone near the Jacuzzi in the bathroom, a stocked refrigerator with no lock, no tab, and an antique marble fireplace just for looks. I release my hair from the towel wrapped like a cotton swab atop my head. My hair is cut short. When I flip on my travelsize blow dryer, it whines. Any minute, I expect smoke to biUow around my head and sparks to fly from the waU socket, but then my grandmother is standing beside me, and the dryer's wail settles into her words: "I say, you find yourselfracing a bad marriage, your husband tailing you, breathing down your neck like an angry 18-wheeler in the rearview, you goose it, Sister." Her foot tips downward like she's giving it the gas, and from her mouth comes this warbling again like there's an engine—maybe a hair dryer—revving inside her rib cage. I hand her a brush so maybe she'U start styling and stop roaring. "How are you?" I shout. 43 44Fourth Genre A turban covers her head left bald by cancer, though her face seems flushed and brimming, not blanched like paper. She has a fresh manicure, an odd thing since, under the weight ofillness in her last years, she cut loose excess burdens such as beauty regimens. She smeUs healthy—Baby Magic hand lotion—a comforting switch from the hospital odor. She refuses the brush, picks up a comb instead, and tugs on my hair's tangles . "I'm losing beauty sleep. Your granddad wiU join me soon. I'd like to look pretty, too. I can't come rescue every grandchild that's mucking up life." "You could have stayed. No one mmded caring for you." "You watch," she promises. "You'U stick it out too long. You'll start saying —he's different, he's changed, he's nicer. They do that," she warns. "They sense trouble." She wraps a lock ofmy hair around a curling iron and counts to five before releasing it. "Or maybe our consciences knot up. We're desperate to see the good because it's much kinder than leaving. Either way—" She waves her hand to dismiss the conversation. She tousles my new fuss-free hair. The short curls wiggle like worms on my head. "I can't get this mop ofyours to do anything. Don't cut your hair so short. Why did you do that?" "I'm going on a long sojourn," I say. "Cut something else." Her mouth tilts. Her eyebrows cock. Her look says, You know who I mean. She yanks on a cowlick, rats it with the comb, then tries to pat it down. When she hands me a mirror and spins me around so I can inspect the back of my hair, she's gone. In the vanity, I watch my hair grow longer. It sprouts from my head like tendrils of prairie grass, soft and wavy. Near the bubbling Jacuzzi, the telephone is ringing and ringing and ringing. The Painter I wake in a Howard Johnson motel, nothing like the Shangri-La in my dreams. The remote control doesn't work; the clock...