to hand back the clothes.
Instead of accepting the clothes, Sandra grabbed Helen by the arm, pulled her out of her daughter’s bedroom and pushed her toward her own bedroom, which was at the end of the hallway.
“There’s a big mirror in my room,” Sandra directed. “Last door on the right. Come back here when you have the clothes on. We’ll be waiting.”
Unwillingly, Helen went to do as she was told, without a smile or a kind thought for Sandra, but that didn’t bother Sandra. She watched Helen go into her bedroom and shut the door. Striding back into her daughter’s bedroom like a four-star general, Sandra sternly informed Joan with her hands on her hips, “No more dillydallying. We have to help her. Bill may be a bozo, a big zero. I think like you do about him. But she thinks differently. Maybe she’s right about him. She knows him better than we do. I doubt it, but that doesn’t matter. We’re here to support her, whatever the outcome.”
The long and close friendship between the two women made this partly scolding speech palatable to Joan. She wasn’t upset at all. “You’re right, Sandy. You’re right. I can’t imagine her with Bill, but that doesn’t mean anything. There are other couples I know that don’t make relationship sense to me either. People are so unpredictable. I thought I knew Helen well. Maybe opposites do attract.”
“In this case, it would be polar opposites,” said Sandra. “Though, now that I think of it, Helen can keep a tight grip on her pocketbook.”
“She’s nothing like him,” responded Joan. “She just likes being economical.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“Oh, not everyone can spend like you do,” said Joan, “or like your daughter. I can’t believe these clothes. She must have spent millions.”
“I don’t want to know the exact figure. It’ll make me feel more guilty than I am about this stuff.”
“It’s too bad the clothes are for a young person,” commented Joan. “They are Helen’s size.”
“Helen will wear them,” said Sandra, firm as ever in her conviction. “You’ll see. Both of you will be amazed at the difference clothes can make. Now let’s get some more ready for her to try on.”
“OK,” said Joan. “I’ll try to keep an open mind, a mind as large and carefree as your daughter’s spending habits. The variety of stuff here is amazing.”
“I wish her mind was a little more closed,” remarked Sandra. “And if she ever started to spend like cheapskate Bill, I wouldn’t complain. It’d be a strange change for her, but I wouldn’t complain.”
In unison, both women began to pull more clothes out of the closet and assemble outfits on the bed in order of their revealing, sexy qualities. While they were busy laying out clothes for Helen to try on, Helen returned to the room barefoot, wearing a plush, white, terry-cloth bathrobe, which she had found in Sandra’s bedroom. She held it closed all the way up to her neck with both hands. Doing her best imitation of Marilyn Monroe, she walked playfully with quick mincing steps to the central viewing point in the room. The entire time, she smirked and batted her eyelids at Sandra and Joan, who were watching her critically, waiting. When Helen reached the right spot, she posed like the Hollywood star with her lips in a pucker, as if a dozen cameras were photographing her. With a shimmy, she opened her arms and let the robe fall to the ground. Sandra and Joan could now see what she looked like in the halter-top and shorts. Helen dipped a little at the knees, with her hands on her buttocks and her elbows flared. Her mouth formed big, lippy kisses, like a fish eating food from the surface of a pond.
“Oo-la-la,” said Joan in surprise and admiration. “Boys, watch out. There’s a new gal loose on Long Island.”
“Bill would be foaming at the mouth, if he saw you,” said Sandra, who wasn’t surprised by Helen’s new look. “He wouldn’t be running from you. He’d be running you down.”
Helen dropped her sexpot pose in an instant, replacing it with a frown. “I feel like a Playboy Bunny. I can’t wear this. Even when I was a teenager, I never wore so little clothing. Unless I was at the beach during the hottest day of summer.”
“But that’s what Bill wants to see,” argued Sandra. “He has no imagination. He wants to see your body.”
“He’s not that bad,” Helen answered. “He’s not some sort of animal.”
“He’s