Chanel Bonfire Read Online Free PDF Page B

which was a good six inches above her scalp, making her look as though she’d been electrocuted.
    “Let me look at you.” She twirled her comb in the air as we turned in a circle.
    “Good Lord, Robin, come here and let me brush your hair. It looks like chicken feathers.”
    My little sister always had a look of dishevelment. Her flyaway hair and a big gap between her two front teeth made her look as if she’d been running backward through the briar patch. She usually had food on her face and looked slightly guilty, like she’d been playing with matches. She was a slob. I, on the other hand, always looked like the little girl in theBreck shampoo commercial. My blond hair was smooth and shiny, my teeth were straight, and I never had chocolate on my face or dirty fingernails. Robbie was seemingly untouched by the prospect of Mother’s disapproval, whereas I constantly sought to avoid it. I accepted the job of protecting Robbie as a part of my role as flawless older sister. The differences between us could have been a source of conflict in our relationship, but they weren’t. It was clear even then that being Miss Perfect never gained me any points.
    If Robbie’s crime was lack of grooming, mine was looking just like my father. “You look just like your father,” Mother would say, making her eyes all small and mean looking.
    “Ouch!” Robbie winced as Mother attempted to tame her wild-child hair.
    “All right, that’s better.”
    Mother leaned toward us, opened her arms, and drew us to her. She smelled like her new perfume, which was very sweet and expensive. It even had a name that went with her new life: Joy.
    “You are both very pretty.” Mother turned back to her mirror to finish her hair.
    “Are we really?” I asked.
    “Well, of course you are—if you hadn’t been pretty, I would have given you away,” she said casually, lacquering her bouffant with Final Net.
    My sister and I looked at her, confused. Mother caught a glimpse of our perplexed faces in the mirror and smiled. “You sillies, it’s just an expression.” She laughed, shaking hercomb at us as if it were a magic wand. “Now run along and don’t get dirty.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” Blushing with happiness that we had pleased our mother, Robbie and I went out into the foyer to practice our handshakes and curtsies with the wedding guests as Mother had taught us.
    My mother and stepfather were married in front of the mantelpiece in the living room by a man in a long black dress who must have been someone who officiated at the weddings of people who had been married before. Mother looked radiant in a chic Oleg Cassini suit of robin’s-egg blue. Her blond hair shone like Grace Kelly’s and her beauty lit up the room. She smiled as my stepfather slid three Cartier bands on her finger—she hadn’t been able to decide which one she liked best so, of course, he bought them all.
    It must have seemed to my mother as if she had finally realized the life she had dreamed about when she planned her escape from Kansas City. A million-dollar apartment in New York, servants, shows, nightclubs, shopping, and lunches with the beautiful and wealthy. But, after plucking Mother from her life as a Midwestern housewife, dressing her up at Bergdorf’s, and surrounding her with elegant things, my stepfather took off. I never knew if it was to work, to drink, or to screw—probably all three—but his intent was definitely not to squire her around.
    Once again, as in her first marriage, she was alone. The apartment in the Dakota was just a more glamorous cage tobe locked in, along with the rest of my stepfather’s possessions: his autographed first editions, his cavalry sword from military school, and the signed photo of his flight instructor, Charles Lindbergh.
    Mother started sleeping during the day and walking the halls of the apartment at night in a diaphanous, white Dior negligee, smoking, with a glass of something on the rocks in her hand, trying to figure