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It had been twenty years since they'd lived here, but the people who had bought the house from the people who had bought the house from the people who had bought the house from Blanche were very willing to let them shove all their belongings in the bedrooms and the garage so they could put the living room and the lanai and the kitchen back just as they had been back then. The people from the television station had found wicker furniture and copper bundt pans and, somehow, an old twenty-three-inch tube TV set; they’d made the place look just like the girls remembered it.
Nobody really knew why they were doing this, of course. They wanted to make a special about Sophia, now that she was the oldest person in Florida, but why they wanted to film it in Blanche's old house was something of a mystery. True, the four of them had lived there for years and years, and that house may have been the site of Sophia's happiest memories¬—at least, the happiest ones that weren't in Brooklyn or Sicily. Of course, Dorothy might say Sophia didn't really have any happy memories from Brooklyn, and Sophia herself might say she didn't have any happy memories from Sicily. So maybe that house on Richmond Street might have been the happiest place Sophia had ever known. Certainly if you wanted to talk to Florida's oldest living citizen "at home," you'd rather do it in a comfortably-furnished rambler instead of at Shady Pines.
So it seemed they were hoping the familiar setting would be a good place for Sophia to relax and open up about her life and experiences on the way to becoming Florida’s oldest person. But the others hadn’t counted on how startling it would be to walk into the old place and find it so close to exactly how they’d left it on the day Blanche and Rose and Sophia had moved to the hotel.
They stood in the living room not really sure whether or not what they were looking at was real. Blanche reached out but didn’t quite touch the back of the sofa—she pulled her hand back before it had the chance to pass through the cushion in case the whole thing was an illusion.
“You have to admit, they did a good job,” Dorothy said.
“Too good,” Blanche said. “It looks just like it did when I lived here with George. Gives me the creeps.”
“You know, back in Saint Olaf—” Rose stopped herself and went to look out the window.
Dorothy and Blanche looked at each other and then over at Rose. “Go on, honey,” Dorothy said. “I haven’t heard a Saint Olaf story in years.”
“Well, back in Saint Olaf, it was considered very bad luck to bring an old person back to a place they used to live.”
Blanche sighed. “Why is that, Rose?”
“Because it would probably make them sad!” Rose came back from the window and sat carefully on the replica of their old armchair, as if she thought it might vanish under her at any moment. “I don’t think I could ever go back to my old house in Minnesota, where Charlie died. I don’t blame you for having a creepy feeling, Blanche. And I know what you’re going to say, Dorothy, that Sophia’s the old person here and not us, but do you realize we’re older now than she was when she came to live with us?”
Dorothy raised an eyebrow. “But haven’t you heard, Rose? Eighty is the new fifty.”
“Then what’s the old fifty?”
“Fifty is the new thirty,” Blanche said with a nod.
Rose thought about this for a moment. “Does that apply to other things, like speed limits and the price of eggs? Because that would explain a lot.”
Dorothy’s I-can’t-believe-Rose-is-for-real face was the same as it had always been. “Yes, Rose. All measurements have been converted in every area of life. Haven’t you noticed that kids seem taller now? They’re actually all the same size; it’s just because five foot three is taller now than it used to be.”
“Then are they making record players that can play LPs at the new thirty-three-and-a— ”
“Oh, Rose, for heaven’s sake, when was the last time you saw a record player? It only means being eighty feels like it used to feel to be fifty.” Blanche sat huffily on the sofa and fussed with the hem of her skirt.
“Well, I, for one, am glad to be back in this house,” Dorothy said, “and I don’t find it creepy in the least. After all, this is where I met Lucas. And it’s where I had a lot of great times with you girls—and where I really cemented my relationship with Ma. Phil and Gloria didn’t have what I have with her, and it’s because of our time here. I wouldn’t change that for the world.”
“Where is Sophia, anyway?”
Dorothy waved at the front door. “In the trailer, getting her makeup done. They’ll call us in a few minutes.”
“I’m sure I won’t need any makeup. I’m ready for the camera in my natural, unaltered state.”
“Oh, please, Blanche. You’re eighty-two years old. Your natural, unaltered state was the ‘before’ picture thirty years ago. The circle of life doesn’t mean if you live long enough you get back to where you started with all the original parts and settings, you know.” Dorothy looked over at Rose. “What?”
Rose beamed. “I’ve just missed you so much! You’re right, Dorothy, it is good to be back.”
The door opened, and Sophia, who hadn’t changed a bit, shuffled in. “Oh, great. They said they were going to make the place just like I remembered it. Why didn’t I guess that meant they were going to reinstall the three of you too.” She started to make her way to the kitchen. A couple of guys with cameras and cables came in behind her and started setting up near the door.
“Hi, Sophia! How does it feel to be Florida’s Oldest Person?” You could hear the capital letters when Rose spoke.
“What, the interview’s already starting? I’m not using up my best stuff before the camera’s turned on.”
“Should we come to the kitchen, Ma?”
Sophia didn’t stop walking. “If you want to be in the show you should. But I’d put some makeup on Blanche first.”
Ten minutes later, everyone was made up and powdered and sitting around the kitchen table just like old times. On a whim, or maybe just out of force of habit, Dorothy had opened the refrigerator—and nearly fainted when what she found in there was a box from the bakery. So the four of them were in their old kitchen, under strange TV lights, with cups of hot coffee and plates of the same old cheesecake (well—a fresh cheesecake from the same old place; the first thing Dorothy did after finding the box was check to be sure it hadn’t been there all this time), getting ready to talk to the local-interest interviewer from the TV station. Who would ever have thought getting back together like this would feel so much like they’d never been apart?
“So, Sophia Petrillo,” the interviewer was saying. “You’ve recently been verified as the oldest person living in the state of Florida. And we’re here today in the home you shared for many years with your daughter and two other friends, who we’re also glad to have with us. I know you’ve all said how important having one another was through some difficult times in each of your lives, and without that you feel like you might not be here today. So I think the first question on a lot of viewers’ minds, Mrs. Petrillo, is, how did the four of you come to live here together in the first place?”
They could see the lights on the camera change, so the one aimed at Sophia was recording now. Sophia put down her coffee cup, dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, and gestured with her hands as she began to speak. “Picture it: Miami, nineteen-eighty-four …”