Free Enter Helen by Brooke Hauser Page A

Helen politely thanked the saleslady.
    â€œHow about a bathing suit?” Helen offered next. If anyone was prepared to help a girl find the right fit of bathing suit, it was Helen, who had worked on the account for Catalina Swimwear.
    But Lou told her that she already had a bathing suit.
    â€œA cover-up,” Helen said as they continued past boutiques selling sundresses and swimwear. “A cover-up would be good.”
    â€œWell, I actually made a cover-up out of a towel,” Lou said. “I made it with pockets, and I really like it.”
    Helen looked at her cousin. She was wearing loafers.
    â€œHow about some shoes?” she asked.
    Lou was doubtful, looking at the sophisticated heels on display in the windows. She wore loafers to school, low flats to church, and cowboy boots to the stable. What was she supposed to do with a pair of strappy high-heeled sandals back in Oklahoma?
    â€œW HERE ARE ALL the bags?” David asked when they got home. “When girls go shopping, you come home with lots of bags.”
    Lou showed David the copy of The Good Earth that Helen finally bought for her at the bookstore. “I like books better than clothes,” she said.
    He smiled at her. “You’re my kind of girl.”
    It turned out that, even though she had just graduated from high school, Lou had read many of the same books that David had read, classics like Les Misérables , authors like Dickens. They talked about books a lot, and sometimes they talked about boys. Specifically, they talked about boys who were the same age as David’s son, Bruce, who had been skipping school more and more—to do what? His father didn’t really know.
    â€œWhat do boys at your age do?” David asked Lou once.
    â€œWell,” Lou said, thinking of her boyfriend, her brother, and his friends. “They go to school, and on the weekends they might take their girlfriends to the movies, or they might work on their cars.”
    â€œHow does it work when they skip school?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t know any boys who skip school,” she said.
    David said Bruce was so smart he could show up for tests and make an A without studying. But Lou could see that David was distressed about his son, and she felt sorry that he worried so much. Both David and Helen talked quite a bit about Bruce—his mother, Liberty LeGacy, was David’s first wife—though Lou didn’t meet him on that visit. She wasn’t sure where he was, but he wasn’t at their house.
    Lou could tell that David liked her company, and she suspected that Helen enjoyed having a little “home person” around—someone to remind her of the Ozarks without actually having to go there. She knew that Helen appreciated her updates about the family, especially about her sister Mary, who was living in Shawnee, but it was hard for Lou to know what Helen liked about her, specifically. Helen just took an interest in her life. She always had. “You’re going to college, right? You need to do that,” Helen told her one day. Yes, Lou said, she had enrolled at the University of Tulsa. She was thinking of studying French, maybe becoming a translator. Helen looked pleased and emphasized how important it would be to stay in school and receive a degree.
    When Helen gave advice, Lou listened.Her cousin had been her “glamorous go-to,” the person she consulted with about all of her worries, since she was fourteen. It’s not that Lou didn’t get along with her mother—she did—but sometimes they crossed ways. Helen always knew just what to say to make her feel better. Lou first got to know her when she would come to stay at their house in Tulsa while on business. When Helen was a copywriter at Foote, Cone & Belding, working on the account for Catalina Inc., she used to visit department stores around the country. In Tulsa, Helen invited Lou to watch her sell swimsuits and help customers