Read Online What We Keep by Elizabeth Berg - Free Book Online Page B

my knees yet. But Sharla went with her and when they came out shewas eating a Baby Ruth. I was annoyed until Jasmine handed a Milky Way to me.
    “Thank you,” I said. “Did Sharla tell you this is my favorite?”
    “No, I guessed. You’re a Milky Way type, don’t you think?”
    I unwrapped the candy bar, shrugged. I was all of a sudden in a bad mood. I didn’t want to be so easy.
    I liked Monroe’s department store. It was big, but not intimidating, and carried enough merchandise to always be interesting. It had wooden floors and high ceilings with intricate engravings, white on white. I used to lie on my back to admire the ceiling whenever my mother wasn’t looking, until the day I was stepped on by Mrs. Reginald Whalen, the principal’s wife, who apologized profusely to my mother for the dirty mark she left behind on my white blouse. I myself feared (and hoped) that my ribs had been broken, and felt around gingerly while my mother held me to her and nervously reassured Mrs. Whalen that no, a visit to the emergency room would not be necessary. Alas, I was not even bruised, and after my mother mildly chastised me for nearly tripping such an important person, we finished our shopping without incident.
    Sharla liked the department stores in the big cities that we visited at Christmastime, but I felt mostly in the way there, out of place. I didn’t think a choice of fifteen or twenty winter coats was necessary; at Monroe’s, there might be a choice of three, which felt exactly right to me. And there were no mysterious bonging bells there, no glitzy counters staffed by impatient young women wearingtoo much makeup. There were no escalators; if you wanted to go upstairs to the second or third floor, you simply walked. There were large departments for men’s clothing, women’s clothing, juniors, and children’s; and there were smaller sections for many other things. Cardboard rounds of satin ribbons were lined up on wooden dowels in the stationery department; soft linen handkerchiefs featuring pastel embroidery overlapped each other in glass display cases in Notions—the woman who usually worked in that department had a whispery voice like a librarian, and she sucked continually, though inoffensively, on hard candies. Nylon stockings were stacked high in their thin blue boxes along the side wall in Hosiery, and this department was always busy. Women waiting their turns chatted softly with each other, rested their pocketbooks on the counter, removed one foot from a high-heeled shoe to rub the top of the other. The jewelry department featured a small selection of watches, necklaces, and bracelets that, despite their sparkly allure, did not need to be locked up.
    There was a fairly large hat department toward the front of the store, and this is where Jasmine headed first. She tried on every hat displayed, and encouraged us to do the same. Sharla did, but I stopped after three; the hats looked too silly on me and too perfect on Jasmine. I liked watching her in the mirror more than looking at myself. She lifted her chin, turned her head this way and that when she tried on one flamboyant offering. It had a huge white brim with a dip over one eye; I thought she would buy it, and she did. She offered to buy Sharla a hat as well, a small black cloche, but Sharla declined with a mixture of propriety and regret.
    We went next to Intimates, and Jasmine disappeared into a dressing room with an armload of brassieres, panties, and slips. She had told Sharla and me to pick out something for ourselves, but we were uninspired to do anything but rifle through the nightgowns, looking to see if one might work for my mother’s birthday, which was exactly two weeks before my own. I did not want to give my mother a nightgown; I thought the idea lacked imagination. However, my offering last year had been licorice and a book of riddles, which I now saw differently.
    “Girls,” Jasmine called, her head sticking out from her dressing room.