The Last Bathing Beauty

by Nathan, Amy Sue

  “What’s this?” Boop’s heart rate quickened. She knew.

  “Open it,” Hannah said.

  Boop needed only to unfold one flap and see a pink edge with a fragment of embroidery to know for sure. It was her Miss South Haven 1951 sash. Despite all of the yearning, she hesitated to look at it, let alone touch it. She laid her hand on her chest as if pledging allegiance to the flag, and her heart pounded, maybe as rapid and strong as it had the day her name had been called, her dream realized. Maybe this was a mistake after all. Had Georgia, though imprudent, been right all along?

  “Where on earth did you find this?”

  “You know our Emma. She doesn’t throw anything away. I had her overnight it.”

  Boop smoothed away the remaining tissue paper but didn’t lift the fabric.

  “Pop shouldn’t have given it to us.”

  “Emma had it cleaned. It looks like new, but it’s the real thing. Do you want me to unfold it for you?”

  Boop laid her hands atop the cool satin, the hills and valleys of the embroidery caressing her palms. She shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “You should own all pieces of your life, good or bad,” Hannah said. “They make up who you are.”

  With her uncertain relationship and delicate condition, Hannah was brave, not afraid of the truth.

  Boop could learn a lot from her granddaughter.

  Betty closed her hands into fists, not as a show of anger, but as a way to garner strength. “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then I want you to find out about Abe. Even if it’s an obituary, I want to know.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Boop needed certainty, even if that didn’t come with answers. “I’m sure. And there’s one more thing that’s nonnegotiable.”

  “What?”

  “After you drop me off to see Georgia, don’t stop driving till you’re home. It’s time for answers for both of us.”

  It was no accident that Boop’s purple cane coordinated with her lavender tunic—not that she had ever needed an excuse to accessorize. Not only did Boop need the cane to help her navigate the grid of hallways that comprised Lighthouse Rehab, but she also needed the fashion to avoid being mistaken for a patient. Boop walked slowly and deliberately, using the cane to keep her steady and also to alleviate some pressure. She headed up one corridor and down the next, past rows of wheelchairs and a small collection of walkers with tennis balls stuck onto their feet.

  Boop didn’t yet need either of those contraptions. She was grateful to be getting old. To be old. She had outlived Marvin and most of her friends. The fact that Georgia and Doris were still alive was an anomaly, she knew that, and didn’t want to take it for granted, waste it, or have regrets. If Boop had been a Catholic, she would have crossed herself, but instead she just stared ahead and continued with the confidence and purpose of a visitor on a mission.

  Georgia needed her.

  And she needed Georgia. No matter what she did or didn’t do, Georgia was family. Boop didn’t turn her back on family.

  Boop stopped and checked her reflection in the glass of a framed generic floral print. She’d had a similar ritual every day before stopping to see Marvin in the nursing home. Even when he didn’t recognize her, Boop had always insisted on recognizing herself.

  A few moments later, with anger set aside—perhaps shoved aside—and her tote bag behind her back, Boop stood against the open door. Georgia lay back in bed against a stack of pillows. She was dressed in a zipped peach terry-cloth housecoat, though it wasn’t even six o’clock. Her hair was combed but not styled. She looked paler than usual, smaller too. How could that be? It’d just been a few days. Weren’t they feeding her?

  Georgia looked at Boop and smiled. “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

  “Me either.” Boop smiled. “You look awful.”

  Georgia ran her hand over her hair and laughed. “I do, don’t I?”

  Boop stepped inside. The space was less crowded than a hospital room. Though the bed still had sidebars, there were no monitors, machines, or IV poles. A TV protruded from the wall on a metal arm. There were three institutional-yet-padded chairs, a small dresser, a nightstand, and two wide windows with vertical blinds that let in the remaining summer daylight. Without a word, Boop set a paperback on the bedside table next to a stack of sealed Jell-O cups, and then sat in the chair by the foot of Georgia’s bed.

  “You should tell them you don’t like green Jell-O,” Boop said.

  “Does anyone like green Jell-O?”

  Years ago, Boop would have slurped it down without a spoon, simply because it was forbidden. As soon as she and Marvin had agreed they wouldn’t keep a kosher home, Boop learned the fine art of making fruit-and-marshmallow Jell-O salads and colorful, layered Jell-O molds.

  “What does the doctor say?” she asked Georgia.

  “That I’ll be here two to four weeks, depending.”

  Georgia would recover. Maybe she’d get out early for good behavior, as if it were a prison. Boop wiggled herself up straight and tall in the chair. “And then what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? They’re just going to push you to the lobby and tell you not to let the door hit you on the way out? There has to be a plan.”

  There were two things Georgia always had: a plan—and a backup plan.

  “My only plan is to apologize again. And to make it up to you, if I can. Can you forgive me?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t.”

  Georgia sniffled and inhaled so deeply her whole body expanded. Then she cried.

  Though the betrayal would stick to Boop like a burr, relentless and prickly, she’d continue to pluck it off each time she noticed it.

  “None of that,” Boop said, handing Georgia a tissue.

  “I’m just so grateful to get a second chance.”

  “You need more than that—you need a place to heal and rest when they’re finished with you.”

  “I’ll go home. I’m sure I can get some of my friends to help. I can hire someone.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. You’re coming home with me.”

  Georgia couldn’t go back to Boca, where she had no family. Boop was her family. Her plans to move would have to wait until Georgia was literally back on her feet. “We’ll set up the TV room as your bedroom and you’ll stay as long as you need.”

  Georgia placed her hand over her heart. “Are you sure?”

  Boop nodded, her throat thick, her heart bursting with the memory of herself and Georgia as little girls who thought they’d grow up and be next-door neighbors. Now they would be housemates.

  With that, Georgia closed her eyes, and her chest began to rise and fall with slow, deep breaths. Boop watched her friend the way she had watched a sleeping newborn Stuart in 1952 and their fifteen-year-old dog, Lizzie, in the seventies.

  Once Boop was satisfied the breathing would continue, she lifted her tote onto her lap and peered into the abyss. Wallet, a comb, a deck of cards, tissues, Tic Tacs, Life Savers, a compact, a comb. She set the tote onto the nightstand, then dug her hand in and around to the bottom and pulled out two abandoned lipsticks. She fiddled with them, waiting for Georgia to wake up.

  Minutes later, Georgia opened her eyes. “You’re still here.”

  “You bet I am.” Boop held out the lipsticks to Georgia. “Pick one.”

  She placed the closed cases on the bed and Georgia opened each and examined the colors. One, a neutral mauve. The other, a glittery peach. Boop didn’t care which one Georgia chose. That wasn’t the point. “If you look good, you’ll feel good—or at least you’ll feel better.” Boop believed that. “By the way, when was the last time you had a manicure?”

  At first, Boop’s daily visits to Lighthouse Rehab were all about Georgia. Boop sat in on consultations with the therapists and doctors. They walked the hallway, and Boop brought in blueberry muffins to share with the staff
. Another day she ordered in Delightful Buddha to give Georgia a break from rehab food.

  “You’ve already done so much for me. But could you do me a favor?” Georgia asked after winning yet another hand of gin rummy.

  Boop was prone to sarcasm at serious moments, and I just did rushed through her thoughts. She resisted in deference to the circumstances. “Of course.”

  “I’m pretty sure that Charlotte in 209 could use a little Mauve Luster. And maybe a friend.”

  Georgia had always been good with people and names, but now she was citing lipstick colors too. Just the way to Boop’s heart.

  “That’s the favor?”

  “Yes. She was here before me and she doesn’t get many visitors. I met her in the PT room. A nice lady. A little pale, perhaps. You know just what to do to lift her spirits, I’m sure of it.”

  “Knock, knock,” Boop said through the open door of 209. She peeked in.

  A woman sat in bed with a beige waffle-knit blanket draped over her legs. Hannah had brought a lightweight floral comforter with matching pillowcases for Georgia’s bed to spruce her room up a bit. No beige waffle-knit for Georgia.

  “Come in, come in,” the woman said. “I’m Charlotte Levy, meniscus tear.”

  “I’m Boop Peck—”

  “The one with the lipstick, yes, I know. Any chance I could have a look?” Charlotte motioned to her face like she was Carol Merrill from Let’s Make a Deal.

  “I just brought my own lipsticks to make Georgia feel better,” Boop said.

  “I should have my niece bring me something nicer to wear.”

  “It’ll make you feel better.”

  Boop realized this was what Charlotte was asking for, a way to feel better as she healed. No one here considered the woman herself in 209, just the patient. Boop pulled a zippered case out of her tote bag.

  “I cleaned them with alcohol before I came. Try what you like.” Boop set a small magnifying mirror on the bed tray.

  “Really?” Charlotte pulled the cover off each lipstick bullet and examined it. Then she went in for round two before applying, as Georgia had predicted, Mauve Luster.

  “That color on your lips makes your cheeks look rosy,” Boop said.

  “Which is so important here.”

  “If how you feel is important, and you feel good wearing this, then you’re right. Keep it. It’s not my color.” It definitely was Boop’s color. “So, how has your day been? Had any visitors?”

  Charlotte smiled. “Yes. You.”

  The day after she met Charlotte, and then every day for the next two weeks, Boop showed up at Lighthouse Rehab with as magical a bag as Mary Poppins. She went on her own rendition of rounds, ducking out of the way of nurses, therapists, doctors, nutritionists, visitors, and uninterested patients.

  One day, as soon as Georgia headed to physical therapy, Boop loaned a hand-painted silk scarf to Poppy Miller in 226 and showed her how to tie it into a perfect droopy bow around her neck and as a bohemian head covering, and to drape it like a shawl, but one that wouldn’t fall off.

  For Charlotte, Boop unfolded a cotton throw and draped it over the footboard. It was blue with sunflowers. Definitely better than beige waffle.

  In room 202, Maureen Turner’s catawampus wisps of gray at her hairline behaved like Stuart’s cowlick had when he was a boy. Catawampus was not a word Boop fancied associating with seventy-nine-year-old Maureen and her hip fracture. Luckily, Boop discovered a set of delicate floral barrettes that served as the solution.

  That particular day, Boop learned she and Maureen had more in common than a fondness for L’Oréal Peach Fuzz. (The color suited Georgia best, but Boop knew she wouldn’t mind sharing “the look.”) Maureen had been an army nurse and a war widow; she’d grown up in Detroit and then moved to the suburbs when she married—and, like Boop, had moved to Skokie.

  Growing up in Detroit in the thirties and forties wasn’t an unusual origin story for a Michigander. It was the biggest city, with the most jobs. Or that’s how it once had been.

  If things had been different, Boop might have ended up in Detroit with Abe. Though New York had been their plan, Boop possessed the wisdom of hindsight. She understood that had they been together, their lives might have been different than expected. What if was the only question for which there was never a sufficient answer, because no one knew. No one could know. But maybe she could get closer to knowing.

  “Did you ever hear of a store owned by a family named Barsky?” she asked.

  “Barksy? No, can’t say that I did. Why?” Maureen asked.

  “No, it was Barsky. B-A-R-S—never mind. Just a memory. It’s not important.”

  “All our memories are important. You should hang on to them as long as you can, don’t you think?”

  Boop knew Maureen was right. But that wasn’t why she was there.

  “Why don’t you ask your daughter-in-law to bring you some different clothes? Wouldn’t you like to get out of that housecoat? I’m sure you have something at home that looks less like Pepto-Bismol.”

  They laughed.

  Way back when, before she’d become a bride and a housewife and a mother, Boop had wanted to share her passion and knowledge of clothes and makeup with others. In her younger imagination, she’d heard the click of high heels and the ping of a typewriter. In reality she heard shuffling slippers and institutional televisions with volumes turned up.

  Fashion had always been a source of camaraderie and happiness for Boop, and she’d always believed it would bring others joy as well.

  Better here and now than never.

  The next day was manicure day.

  Boop stepped out of Georgia’s room and looked down the hall. She saw no one except Mr. Marco with the walker he called Lucille.

  “I hope nothing happened to Natalie,” Boop whispered. She sat on the chair she’d come to think of as “hers,” where she’d left a cardigan hanging over the back in case of a chill. “She’s always on time.”

  “I’m here!” Natalie barreled into the room and strode right to the edge of Georgia’s bed. “I’m sorry I’m late. It’s not professional. It’s just that Piper came home a day early, which is great because I get to see her, but I’m finalizing the program for the pageant and working on the schedule for that day, which is taking more time than I’d thought.”

  “How can I help?” Boop asked. “Stuff envelopes? Yell at someone?”

  Natalie chuckled, then blushed the color of pink peonies. “Would you consider being onstage to crown the new Miss South Haven?”

  Boop stared at Natalie, and Georgia stared at Boop. Onstage at a Miss South Haven pageant? Boop wasn’t sure she could do that.

  “There must be someone better than me. A local celebrity? The mayor?”

  “I think you’re the local celebrity,” Georgia said. “If you want to be.”

  “Think about it,” Natalie said. “The last Miss South Haven crowning the current one. I think it would be perfect. And selfishly I could go out with a splash.”

  “What does that mean?” Boop asked.

  “I just had another meeting with my accountant. It looks like this will be the last summer for the salon.” Natalie pushed her wavy black hair away from her round face, eyes glimmering with tears.

  Boop unzipped Natalie’s case and pulled out a shimmery champagne nail polish for Georgia. She shook the bottle and then handed it to Natalie. “What happened?”

  “I don’t really have enough business to pay rent on the shop and the apartment between October and May. And the projections for the rest of the summer won’t be enough to make up for it. Last year it was close, but I made it. I really don’t want to uproot Piper before her sophomore year, but kids are resilient, right?”

  “Are there any other options? It can’t be so black and white,” Georgia said.

  She was right. The problem was green.

  “I’ll have to get a job but after I sell the furniture and equipment, I should be okay for a few months, and my paren
ts will help a little. The most important thing is that Piper have stability. If it was just me I could live anywhere. On a friend’s couch, in the back of the salon, but not with Piper. She needs a home.”

  “You’re her home,” Boop said. “But I have an idea.” She whispered to Georgia. Georgia whispered back.

  “Move in with us,” they said in unison.

  “What?” Natalie screeched.

  “Move. In. With. Us,” Georgia said, as if Natalie hadn’t understood the words.

  “I have plenty of room,” Boop said.

  “Have you seen that rambling old house?” Georgia asked. “You’d be doing Boop a favor. Both of us, actually. I’m moving in with her for a while.”

  “You barely know me. And I have a teenager.” Natalie gulped. “Why would you do this?”

  Boop had wanted a full house again; now she would have it. “I like you. I always have. You’re kind and generous; you’re a single mom who needs a break, and teenagers don’t scare me.”

  San Diego would have to wait.

  Natalie’s eyes welled with tears as she filed Georgia’s nails. “You’re a lifesaver.” She coughed as her voice cracked with sadness and gratitude. “But are you sure you don’t mind helping us out?”

  “Will you mind helping us?” Boop asked. “We’re two old ladies who are pretty feisty.”

  Natalie laughed as she wiped away tears and streaks of mascara. “Of course not,” she said. “That’s what friends are for.”

  Chapter 24

  BETTY

  The lightweight bedspread pressed on Betty’s legs as if she’d had her limbs buried under sand. She folded back the pink blanket and saw that her shoes and hose had been removed. She sat upright. How did she get here? Why did her head hurt? “I’m fine.”

  She knew she wasn’t fine but that was what you said.

  Nannie pushed gently on her shoulder, and Betty lay down again. “Forget about the fact that you knocked over half the girls and ran off the stage; you vomited, and you fainted. Heatstroke maybe. Exhaustion, definitely.” Nannie fancied herself a superlative diagnostician. “Dr. Silver’s on his way.”

  “I don’t need a doctor; I need Abe.” Please don’t send a doctor. Nancy Green’s words reverberated in her head. If Nancy was right—no. Nancy just wanted to believe that. But why wish that on anyone? “Please, just get Abe. I need to talk to him.”