Read Online The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg - Free Book Online

those false fingernails. “You’ll love them,” the woman had said. But they were awful! It hurt when you got them put on, and you had to get them filled all the time and they made your real nails a fragile, peeling mess, and you could never keep them clean under there. Oh, how she cringes when she’s handed food by people with nails so long they couldn’t clench their fists if their lives depended on it. Those long nails with things all over them, like hieroglyphics. She herself finally had the false nails removed, and after a few months her own nails were back to normal. She’d only gotten those nails because she had been relentlessly schooled by her mother in what a girl was required to do: Maintain ten long painted nails at all times. Put your fork down after each bite, and make sure each bite is minuscule. Practice walking with a book on your head to ensure good posture. (Dorothy actually did that, up and down the hallway, over and over.) Sit with your knees pressed together and your legs slanted to the side. Cream your face, powder your feet, know when to use “who” and when to use “whom.” Never let anyone see you in rollers; those women who went out with scarves on their heads weren’t fooling anyone.
    There were a million rules that Dorothy endeavored to follow and still her mother never seemed satisfied. Or her father. Dorothy’s mother had been a bona fide beauty queen, Miss Ohio, and Dorothy had never lived up to her parents’ expectations of her, she knew it. She would lie in bed at night vowing that the next day would be better, and it never was. She was the worst in dancing class. The ringlets her mother put in Dorothy’s hair were ruined by cowlicks. She fell off her horse the first day she rode and many times thereafter. The one and only time she tried to kiss her parents goodnight, it went so badly, she never tried again. They were not big on touching in Dorothy’s little family, which is to say they did not touch at all. They did not praise or say “I love you”; that was too effusive, utterly unnecessary. But one night when Dorothy was four, a summer night, the sky still blue at bedtime, she was overwhelmed with a desire to kiss her parents goodnight. Dorothy remembers every detail: her hair was put up in bobby pins, and she was wearing a new white nightgown, white ribbons and white lace, a ruffled bottom. She remembers how her mother sat stiffly, her hands clenched, when Dorothy embraced her, and how her father smiled indulgently and then pushed her away, saying, “Now, now.” And Dorothy had felt full of shame. Full of it. She had understood that you do not do that, no matter how your heart may be calling for it. It was yet another mistake she had made. The only thing she is good at is inspiring a certain kind of friendship and loyalty in some people, and she still doesn’t know how she makes that happen.
    But children. She recalls a night when Hilly was maybe six years old and Dorothy was tucking her into bed. She pulled up Hilly’s covers and kissed her forehead and said, “Now I’m going to make a magic sign so you will have wonderful dreams.” She made a kind of swirling motion with her hand and Hilly watched solemn faced, believing absolutely in her mother’s powers in the way that children do. Up to a certain age, anyway, after which they believe nothing you say, but never mind. That night, Dorothy had tucked a little blanket she’d made for Hilly’s favorite stuffed animal—a bedraggled Snoopy dog, who at that point seemed held together purely by Hilly’s love for him—around him. Then she’d kissed his nose and said, “Goodnight, Blackie,” and Hilly had said, “Make a sign for Blackie’s dreams, too,” and Dorothy had; and at that point she’d kind of believed in her powers herself. Hilly had sighed and said, “You’re a good mommy.” And something had swelled inside Dorothy’s chest, and she’d thought, If I never have anything else, at least I had