Broken Ground by Karen Halvorsen Schreck Page A

anyone but my roommate to see me in this state.
    â€œCruel girl,” I say.
    â€œTerrific!” Her face brightens as if I’ve paid her the finest compliment. “I’ll get the room ready. Once you’re dressed, I’ll get you ready.”
    â€œI’LL SAY THIS.” Helen gives me the once-over outside the football stadium, adjusts the blue dress’s belt buckle so that it’s centered on my waist. “You clean up real nice.”
    â€œI should.” I duck my head, dodging the compliment. “You only spent an hour on me.”
    â€œNot so. I spent twenty minutes on the room and thirty minutes on you.” Helen tosses back her shining hair, free of twigs and leaves. “I spent the other ten minutes on me. Really, though, you should let me dress you up more often.”
    â€œI’m not a child.”
    â€œEvery morning, for instance.” Helen is as good at ignoring things as she is at taking things by storm. She gives a nod to the group of upperclassmen eyeing her, and me, too. “Just look at the attention you’re getting.”
    Not even on my wedding day did I wear lipstick, as I am now (Helen’s, waxy-tasting). On my wedding day, I simply swept my hair up into a loose bun. Whereas today Helen, having combed through the rattails, has crimped it into loose waves that “frame my face and graze my shoulders,” as she put it.
    Charlie never cared about such things. Charlie loved the way I looked, plain and simple. I wipe the back of my hand across my lipsticked lips, suddenly ashamed.
    Helen glances at me. “Oh, sweetheart.” She’s heard me calling out in the night; she’s been startled awake by my bad dreams; she’s held me while I cried. Her expression softens. “Come on.” She pulls a silk handkerchief from her dainty pocketbook and wipes the smeared lipstick from my mouth and chin, then links her arm through mine. “Let’s find us a seat where there’s less scrutiny.”
    We show our student identification cards to the barrel-chested, blue-uniformed campus guard at the gate, whose jolly “Welcome, ladies,” uttered through the bristles of his gray mustache, belies his threatening appearance. Helen navigates us through the crowd gathered at the concession stand and onto the sidelines. From there, she leads me halfway up the wooden bleachers, where we sit down. Soon she’s engrossed in a conversation with a fellow bearing a blue-and-gold Fighting Spartans pennant. To my relief, they allow me to keep to myself. This first football game will be my last; I might as well take in the scene. It does feel good to be outside on this balmy, clear day. The warm breeze carries the minty hint of eucalyptus. Flatlander that I am, I’m struck, as always, by the mountains that ring Pasadena. And there, in the distance, rises the Rose Bowl, a horseshoe-shaped structure that dwarfs this little stadium. The Rose Bowl glints in the sun, winking whitely at me. I’ve heard that in a few months the mountains will be white, too—capped with snow—but for now they’re as brown and dry as the turf of the football field before us. Turns out Pasadena—all of California—is also weathering a drought. The dust isn’t nearly as pervasive as it is back in Texas or Oklahoma; there are no black blizzards here. But the amount of water it would take to make this field green is beyond the university’s means. The surrounding parks and lawns have gone brown, too; they will stay that way or get worse until streams flow in the arroyos again. Only flowers flourish under the care of watchful gardeners—and there are fewer flowers than usual, I’ve heard (though to my eyes, vivid blooms accent every open space on campus). Flores . That’s what the gardeners say, tending the beds.
    Flores. Arroyos . Seven weeks ago, I would have known these things only as flowers and canyons. But now,