Free Seventh Heaven by Alice; Hoffman Page B

good deed,” Nora told the checkout girl as she bagged the four packages of Twinkies.
    Nora raced home in the Volkswagen, parked, and grabbed the grocery bag. She still loved coming home; she loved the way her high heels sank into the grass as she cut across the lawn, and the sound of crumpled leaves on the front stoop and the way her hand felt on the unlocked door just before she opened it. Rickie Shapiro had put on one of Nora’s Elvis records, and even though it sounded scratchy, Nora turned up the volume when she got inside the house. As she hung up her coat, she admired the closet space. She found James in the kitchen, stacking blocks on the floor. Rickie was at the table, singing along with Elvis and painting her nails pink.
    â€œBirthday boy!” Nora said. She picked James up and gave him a big kiss. “How were they?” she asked Rickie.
    â€œFine,” Rickie said. “Except Billy wouldn’t come out of his room.”
    Well, that was nothing new, so Nora put James down, and he clung to her leg while she unwrapped the Twinkies and arranged them on a plate.
    â€œWrong color,” Nora said over her shoulder to Rickie.
    â€œPink is my color,” Rickie said with confidence.
    â€œOkay,” Nora said. “Sure. If that’s what you want to think.”
    Rickie blew on her nails so they would dry faster, while Nora got her purse and paid Rickie the six dollars she owed her.
    â€œPink looks great on me,” Rickie said.
    â€œRed,” Nora told her. She went to the doorway of the kitchen. “Billy! We’re having James’s birthday.”
    â€œYou’ve got to be kidding,” Rickie said. “My mother wouldn’t allow me to wear red. Not with my hair.”
    â€œRed is your color,” Nora said. “Take it or leave it. You know, you really should stop setting your hair. Just wash it and let it dry naturally.”
    â€œAnd let it frizz up!” Rickie said. “Not on your life.”
    â€œAll right,” Nora said. She was poking candles into the Twinkies. “Fine. If you want to look like everyone else, instead of going with your natural beauty, that’s your choice. Did James have his bottle?”
    â€œYeah,” Rickie said. Her nails were dry enough for her to put on her coat. She tossed the bottle of pink nail polish into her purse, but when she looked at her nails the color looked weaker than she’d expected. That was what she hated about sitting for Nora Silk’s kids: she always left confused. She didn’t even know why she came back; she didn’t need the money that badly. The baby was cute, but Billy could drive you crazy. Some weeks he’d want to play Monopoly for three hours straight and other days he wouldn’t even talk to her. He’d stay in his room, wrapped in an old blanket, eating pretzels and potato chips and looking so mad Rickie didn’t dare to speak to him. Sometimes she thought she could hear him grinding his teeth through the closed door.
    She needed this like a hole in the head. She had always had everything she ever wanted, and, frankly, she felt awful about it sometimes. She developed a habit of giving people things, especially her best friend, Joan Campo, who had to work Saturdays and Sundays in her father’s deli. She had a new angora sweater she now decided she would give to Joan; it was seashell pink, and maybe Nora was right about her coloring, maybe she was more the crimson or scarlet type. If there was a problem that Rickie faced, it was simply that her father made more money than most of her friends’ fathers. He had a Cadillac Eldorado on order and he was always bringing home clothes from A&S; he even thought he might be able to get Rickie a job in the Junior Miss department next summer and she’d have her own ten-percent employees’ discount. Sometimes, especially when she was with Joan, Rickie didn’t think it was fair that good things just