with the new model Chevrolet. They’d pile into the car for a slow ride around the neighborhood, breathing the new-car smell, listening to their father talk about the car’s construction, what made the New Car better and safer than the Old Car. Sarah put her key into the ignition, gripped the wheel tightly in both hands, backed out of the parking space, and said, “You look like that Mama Cass.” Her jaw trembled and her nostrils flared, as if she were preparing to say more, or cry. Bethie checked the dashboard clock and saw that she’d won her bet with two minutes to spare.
“Mama Cass is rich and famous,” she said, trying to keep calm. She did her best to avoid mirrors, and her own reflection, but she knew how she looked, how far she’d come from the pretty, peppy, trim teenager with shiny hair and a big, bright smile. She tried not to let it bother her. A body was just a body, just a vessel for her soul, and she was under no obligation to keep her body looking any certain way, no more than she was obliged to do anything just because it was customary, or traditional, or expected of women in America. She didn’t have to get married, she didn’t have to have kids, and she didn’t have to be thin.
“If you were rich and famous maybe you could get away with it.” Sarah’s voice was waspish. “But you’re not. Unless I’m missing something. Do you have a hit record in Nepal?”
“I haven’t been in Nepal for a year and a half, Mom.”
“You look like a slob.”
“It’s nice to see you, too.” Bethie was determined not to let her mother draw her into a fight, and she’d taken a quaalude an hour before, just to make sure things stayed mellow.
“How long since you’ve been to a dentist?” Sarah asked.
Bethie shrugged.
“I made you an appointment with Dr. Levin for tomorrow morning at ten. And at Mister Jeffrey’s at two o’clock.”
“I don’t want my hair cut.”
“Just a trim, I told him.”
“Mom, it’s my hair. I can do what I want with it.”
“What is Barbara going to think when she sees you looking like this?” Bethie didn’t answer. She’d tried not to think about it. “It’s disrespectful,” Sarah continued. “It’s the biggest day of her life, and you’re going to show up looking like the Wreck of the Hesperus.”
Bethie smiled. She’d heard her mother use that phrase a hundred times, but only about Jo.
“Did you even comb your hair?”
“Leave it alone, Mom.”
Sarah made a huffing sound and gripped the wheel even more tightly. Bethie rolled down her window, feeling the softness of the misty air on her face. The new world, the settlers and the Pilgrims had called America when they’d first arrived, and Bethie felt, or imagined she could feel, how it was different from Europe, how there was a fresh, unspoiled quality to the air. Or maybe it was just a lack of history. In Italy and Spain, she’d walked on cobbled streets that had been there for centuries, slept in buildings that had stood when Columbus set sail for the Indies. In Michigan, things were considered old if they’d been around in 1924.
The house on Alhambra Street was unchanged. There was the beige carpet and the boxy television set in the living room, where the couch lived its life beneath a shroud of plastic; there was the worn linoleum and the red-and-yellow tablecloth in the kitchen, and the faded yellow curtains at the window above the sink; there were the twin beds, now covered in white chenille bedspreads, in the room she’d once shared with her sister, although the closet was now filled with Sarah’s clothes.
“Are you hungry?”
Bethie shrugged. It was eleven o’clock at night in Detroit, which meant it was approaching breakfast time in Madrid. If she’d stayed, there would have been strong coffee and crusty rolls with butter and jam, wedges of hard cheese, and ribbony pink-and-white slices of jamón. Bethie hadn’t wanted to eat the ham at first—the only pork she’d ever had back home had been at the Chinese restaurant, and the bacon that Barbara’s mother made when they had sleepovers. Eventually, she’d gotten used to it.
In the kitchen, Sarah pulled two plates out of the cupboard. With short, angry jerks, she opened a can of tuna fish, dumped it into a bowl, and cut a lemon into wedges. Bethie sat at the table, watching, as her mother tore half a head