to keep the eye pencil very sharp,” she would say, “and then come up like this from under the lashes, and that way the line stays very thin and very close to the top of the lashes. Then I like to put a little bit of loose powder on both the upper and the lower lashes, too, because it gives the mascara something to grab on to and makes it hold better.”
Dahlia sat on the floor marveling as she watched, and soon the finished product of all that perfectly done makeup was as glamorous as any movie star. More glamorous and more wonderful than any movie star, because this one hugged her little cousin and teased her and wanted to play duets with her and write songs with her to bide her time while they waited for Sunny’s various dates to arrive.
Dahlia would hear a car door slam and run to the window to watch the nervous dates get out of their cars and approach the house.
“Another victim is about to fall into the clutches of my baby sis,” Louie would yell from the kitchen, and Dahlia would be embarrassed for Sunny because her brother was such a jerk that he was calling her dates victims, right in front of them. Sometimes the date would be carrying flowers. One of them, who wore a tweed jacket in the summer, lifted his arm over his head on the way to the door and sniffed his armpits,not knowing Dahlia and Sunny were watching through the window.
“He’s poor,” Sunny explained, “so he only has that one heavy wool jacket.”
And all of the dates looked at Sunny with that same hungry look in their eyes. Boys that Dahlia found stupefyingly handsome would seem to go weak at the sight of Sunny, and Dahlia wondered if any boy would ever look at her that way. But after a while some of the boys would be scared off when the incidents began happening too frequently. Like the time Sunny deliberately drove one of their cars into a telephone pole. A week later she shaved the head of another when he fell asleep at a romantic picnic they’d been having at the beach. Not long after that, she stood on the lawn of another one’s family home naked, hollering for his parents to come out and meet the girl their son was “boffing.” It was a word Sunny often used that sounded to Dahlia like a game you played in gym.
It didn’t take long for Sunny’s reputation as a nutcase to get around, and there would be extended periods where no boys called or came to take her out. A lot of the time her behavior at home was lethargic and insolent, and soon her parents started having her put away in a hospital or “a home” for a little while here and a little while there, hoping at the end of each limited stay that this time she’d improve and be well. But she never was.
Dahlia remembered how in the early years, in between the hospitalizations, Sunny would come homeand, in spite of whatever she’d gone through in her treatment, still look gorgeous. And within a few days, a new boyfriend would surface, because her beauty was such a magnet that everywhere she went, young men fell all over themselves to talk to her. For a while “the boyfriend of the month,” as Louie called them, was Bob Hirsch, the son of the pharmacist on the corner, even though he had to know better than anyone about all the drugs Sunny was taking for her mental-health problems, because she refilled her prescriptions at his dad’s drugstore.
And then she was back at the makeup table, first applying the creams, then the colors, then the scents, able to make herself as beautiful as ever. All right, Dahlia admitted to herself, so the last few times she had started to look a little worse from the wear and tear of whatever they did to her in those hospitals. And what they did must have been bad because Dahlia’s parents would shoo Dahlia out of the room when they talked about it. But in her little cousin’s mind Sunny always had the radiance of an angel.
Unfortunately, the Sea View didn’t have a view of the sea or anything else besides another run-down
Dahlia sat on the floor marveling as she watched, and soon the finished product of all that perfectly done makeup was as glamorous as any movie star. More glamorous and more wonderful than any movie star, because this one hugged her little cousin and teased her and wanted to play duets with her and write songs with her to bide her time while they waited for Sunny’s various dates to arrive.
Dahlia would hear a car door slam and run to the window to watch the nervous dates get out of their cars and approach the house.
“Another victim is about to fall into the clutches of my baby sis,” Louie would yell from the kitchen, and Dahlia would be embarrassed for Sunny because her brother was such a jerk that he was calling her dates victims, right in front of them. Sometimes the date would be carrying flowers. One of them, who wore a tweed jacket in the summer, lifted his arm over his head on the way to the door and sniffed his armpits,not knowing Dahlia and Sunny were watching through the window.
“He’s poor,” Sunny explained, “so he only has that one heavy wool jacket.”
And all of the dates looked at Sunny with that same hungry look in their eyes. Boys that Dahlia found stupefyingly handsome would seem to go weak at the sight of Sunny, and Dahlia wondered if any boy would ever look at her that way. But after a while some of the boys would be scared off when the incidents began happening too frequently. Like the time Sunny deliberately drove one of their cars into a telephone pole. A week later she shaved the head of another when he fell asleep at a romantic picnic they’d been having at the beach. Not long after that, she stood on the lawn of another one’s family home naked, hollering for his parents to come out and meet the girl their son was “boffing.” It was a word Sunny often used that sounded to Dahlia like a game you played in gym.
It didn’t take long for Sunny’s reputation as a nutcase to get around, and there would be extended periods where no boys called or came to take her out. A lot of the time her behavior at home was lethargic and insolent, and soon her parents started having her put away in a hospital or “a home” for a little while here and a little while there, hoping at the end of each limited stay that this time she’d improve and be well. But she never was.
Dahlia remembered how in the early years, in between the hospitalizations, Sunny would come homeand, in spite of whatever she’d gone through in her treatment, still look gorgeous. And within a few days, a new boyfriend would surface, because her beauty was such a magnet that everywhere she went, young men fell all over themselves to talk to her. For a while “the boyfriend of the month,” as Louie called them, was Bob Hirsch, the son of the pharmacist on the corner, even though he had to know better than anyone about all the drugs Sunny was taking for her mental-health problems, because she refilled her prescriptions at his dad’s drugstore.
And then she was back at the makeup table, first applying the creams, then the colors, then the scents, able to make herself as beautiful as ever. All right, Dahlia admitted to herself, so the last few times she had started to look a little worse from the wear and tear of whatever they did to her in those hospitals. And what they did must have been bad because Dahlia’s parents would shoo Dahlia out of the room when they talked about it. But in her little cousin’s mind Sunny always had the radiance of an angel.
Unfortunately, the Sea View didn’t have a view of the sea or anything else besides another run-down
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