by Ann B. Ross
“Why? What’s going on?”
“Let me get this mess cleaned up,” she said, as she gathered a pile of husks from the corn ears she’d just shucked and dumped them into a waste can.
Wiping her hands with a towel, Lillian said, “Miss Trixie jus’ come home cryin’.”
“Oh, my, I was afraid that was coming sooner or later. What did she say?”
“She don’t say nothin’ to me. I jus’ see her come flyin’ through here, her face all red and drippy. She run upstairs an’ I hear the door slam. That’s all I know.”
I plopped down in a chair by the table, wondering if I had the energy to deal with Trixie so soon after my confrontation with Thurlow.
“You want some lunch?” Lillian asked. “I don’t know where you been, but it past time for it.”
“Yes, I guess I do. Just a bite, though, enough to see me through whatever’s going on with Trixie. But if I had to guess, it’ll be something to do with Rodney. Oh, me, Lillian,” I said mournfully, “I’m not cut out for this, or for electioneering, either.”
“What you mean?” Lillian said, glancing at me as she prepared a sandwich.
“I mean giving advice to the lovelorn, for one, and for another, trying to talk friends—longtime good friends, too—into supporting Sam for the senate. You’d think they’d be eager to have him represent them, but, no, they have to think about it or talk to their husbands about it or pray about it. All except,” I said with a heaving breath, “Mildred, bless her heart. She just asked how much I wanted and wrote a check.”
“Miz Allen, she a good lady. But you don’t need to worry ’bout Mr. Sam, everybody I know gonna vote for him. I tell ’em they better.”
“Well, that’s reassuring,” I said, leaving half the sandwich as I stood up. “Thank you, Lillian, more than I can say. Now, I better get up there and see about Trixie.”
—
After trudging up the stairs, I tapped on Trixie’s door, softly calling her name. When no answer was forthcoming, I opened the door and walked in. She was on the bed, turned toward the wall, her shoulders heaving with shuddering and, as I approached, increasingly loud sobs.
“Trixie? Honey?” I murmured as I leaned over her. “What’s wrong?”
No answer, just more sobbing. I sat on the side of the bed and put my hand on her shoulder. “Can you tell me what the matter is? Maybe I can help.”
“Nobody can help! Not you, anyway. You don’t even care what happens to me.”
“Well, but I do. I don’t like seeing you so unhappy. Tell me and let’s see what we can do.”
“Susan Odell fired me!” Trixie screamed. “They’s nothing you can do about that!”
I was taken aback, not expecting such news. From what I’d seen, Trixie could lift and turn tractor tires as well or better than any of the other exercisers. “I don’t understand,” I said with true sympathy, “you’ve been doing so well there. What reason did she give?”
Trixie half turned toward me, revealing her red, mottled face with no embarrassment. If it’d been me, I’d have covered up. “She said,” Trixie said, sniffing as she stumbled on the words, “she said I wasn’t responding like I ought to.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means,” Trixie practically shouted in my face, “I didn’t get thin like I was s’pposed to! And it means I’m too ugly to work for her!”
“Oh, no,” I said, drawing back, shocked. “She couldn’t have meant that. No one would be that cruel. Besides, it’s not true.”
“Yes, it is,” she said, lying back, seemingly resigned to Susan Odell’s verdict. “ ’Course she don’t know it, but I was gonna quit anyway and go work for Rodney.”
“Ah, Rodney.” I sighed, wondering what was to come next. “I would think he’d reassure you. He’s been so helpful and interested in you and your future.”
“Not no more, he’s not. He thinks the same thing she does.”
“I find that hard to believe, as attentive as he’s been to you. What does he say about your losing your job?”
“Nothin’. He don’t know.” Her fingers picked at the picot edging of the sheet, and I heard for the first time real pain in her words. “He said . . .” She stopped as tears flooded her streaked face. “He told me we ought to see other people.” She took a long, wracking breath that moved me. “And I don’t have nobody else to see.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, and tried to think of something encouraging to say, even as I had a surge of joy that the Binghams would stay where they were. “Well, Trixie, I’ve found that young men often get cold feet just as they’re about to commit themselves to someone. Maybe that’s what’s happening with him. Maybe he thinks things were moving too fast, and he needs to step back a bit to be sure of his feelings, and yours.”
“He knows mine.”
“I’m sure he does, but marriage—if that’s what you’re thinking of—is a big step for a young man with so many irons in the fire. He has such big plans that maybe he’s afraid to take on anything else for a while.”
She gave me a speculative glance that I couldn’t interpret, but I could see that the tears on her face were beginning to dry up. “You reckon?” she asked, frowning. Then, right before my eyes, her face began to clear. “I bet that’s what it is. I bet he’s got too much on his mind right now. He probably wants to get his ducks in a row before taking on anything else.”
I nodded. That’s what I’d just said.
“So I’ll just wait till he’s ready.” Trixie’s eyes lit up at the thought. “And as soon as he straightens things out, he’ll have time for me—he’ll need me then. Besides, it don’t matter what he said, I’m still gonna help him. He won’t be scared to take me on then.”
“I’m glad to hear it. The thing to do is to make your own plans, work on yourself and your feelings, and try, as best you can, not to let him know how devastated you are. Nothing intrigues a young man more than to have his former girlfriend appear to do well without him.”
“Yeah,” she said with some strength as she pushed herself into a sitting position, “he’ll be sorry when he hears about it. Then he’ll want me back, see if he don’t.”
There was no telling what she had in mind, and I didn’t care to ask. Instead, I suggested she talk again with Hazel Marie. “I know you weren’t enthusiastic about the changes she suggested at first, but it might be worth a try.”
“I wadn’t, ’cause Meemaw always said natural’s better’n unnatural. She don’t like a whole lot of primping and putting on, either, but, like you said, that’s what she sent me up here for. And if she finds out I let Rodney get away, she’ll be mad as fire, so I better do something whether she likes it or not.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, hoping I’d heard the last of what Meemaw wanted. “Let’s ask Hazel Marie to give you a complete makeover. It might not bring Rodney back, but it’ll make him think twice when he sees you. And it’ll give you something to do, and make you feel a whole lot better.”
“Okay. Can we go now?”
“Well, no, it’s too late in the day to start something like that. I’ll call Hazel Marie, though, and maybe she can see you first thing in the morning.”
“Tell her I want the works—whatever she wants to do, I want it. And when I get all fixed up, I’m gonna go show ole lady Odell what I look like so she can eat dirt.” Her face grew hard, and I heard the screech of teeth against teeth. “Then,” she ground out, “I’m gonna let Rodney know what he almost throwed away and watch him come crawlin’ back.”
My word, I thought, as I made haste to withdraw with the excuse of calling Hazel Marie. I hadn’t been wrong to think that Trixie had a lot of anger stockpiled inside her, started by her grandmother, and apparently added to by whomever else crossed her. It gave me pause to realize that I’d probably been one of them.
—
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“Lord, Sam,” I said as I came downstairs to find him home. “Trixie’s about to go on the warpath, and I don’t know whether to rejoice or get out of her way.”
Sam put aside the papers he was working on—something to do with the campaign, I assumed. “Oh? What’s going on?”
“Well, first thing is she was fired. Or else she quit, which she said she was about to do anyway. And the next thing is that Rodney told her they should see other people, and that seemed the worst. Although if what she said your friend, Susan Odell, told her is true, that would be the worst in my book. I’m not sure I believe that she flat-out told Trixie she’s too ugly to flip tractor tires. But it all culminated in her resolving to make them both sorry, and that’s when I left.” I sat down in a wing chair across from him. “Oh, and now she wants, and I think expects, Hazel Marie to work some makeover magic to help her get even.”
“That’s some pretty heavy blows to hit her all at once,” Sam said, stacking his papers and putting them aside. “Should I talk to Ms. Odell?”
“No, I think not. We should stay out of it. Even though I can’t imagine that anyone would say such a thing, Trixie feels that’s what Ms. Odell meant, so I doubt she’d go back anyway. No, if she’s now willing to give Hazel Marie a free hand, let’s let that play out and see if it improves not only her looks, but her attitude.”
I sighed and went on. “As for Rodney’s wanting to see other people, there’s nothing we can do about that, either. Actually, the surprise for me was his interest in her in the first place.”
“I’m sorry to say it,” Sam said, “but I’ve wondered about that, too. A mismatch, if there ever was one.”
“I believe we’ve had this conversation before,” I said with a smile. “But of course, I agree with you. Well,” I went on, rising, “let me call Hazel Marie and see if she’s up for it. I couldn’t blame her if she’s had her fill of Trixie’s headstrong ways. And all that sulling up when anybody suggests something for her own good, too.”
“By the way,” Sam said before I left the room, “you remember Lamar Owens? We picked him up the other day when he’d run out of gas.”
I smiled. “You mean the man who offered to vote for you several times?”
“That’s the one. He showed up at headquarters today wanting to volunteer. The ladies who were there didn’t know what to do with him, even though he told them he could do anything—take out trash, lick envelopes, whatever we needed.” Sam laughed. “But they were really done in when he said if we’d put gas in his car he’d bring in voters by the dozen on election day. And make ’em vote right, too.”
“How in the world could he do that?”
“That’s what they asked him, and he said he just wouldn’t drive anybody to the polls until they swore up and down and sideways that they’d vote for me. He said that anybody who’d give a man a round-trip ride for gas was worth electing. And it was you, Julia, who made the round trip that got him on board, so,” Sam said, enjoying my dismayed expression, “thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “I think.” Then I did a little teasing of my own. “I’ll visit you both when you’re in the Atlanta Pen for voter fraud.”
Chapter 30
Trixie hadn’t come down for supper so, giving her a pass because of her understandable misery, I took a tray up to her.
“I can’t eat that,” she said as I put the tray on the bedside table. “I’m goin’ on a liquid diet.”
“Liquid diet? Why?”
“ ’Cause it makes you pee a lot, and that makes you lose weight.”
I blinked. Lloyd wanted to gain weight, and she wanted to lose it. And both of them were turning to some kind of liquid to accomplish their goals. I wasn’t sure it made sense, but what did I know? One thing I did know, however: the word she used was another of those cringe-producing words about which I’ve already spoken. How much more refined and soothing to the auditory nerves to say use the ladies’ or simply ask to be excused. I mean, if it has to be mentioned at all.
“Well,” I said, not wanting to argue with her, “I brought a glass of tea, so you can start with that. And I talked to Hazel Marie, and she’s excited about what you want to do. In fact, she suggested that you move over there for a few days so you can have what she called twenty-four-hour instruction. Would you like to do that?”
“I don’t mind. I just as soon live over there as here, anyway.”
I did my best to ignore the insult, just rolled my eyes and said, “Well, but let me caution you, Trixie, I emphasized to her that you’re serious about this, and she’s taking you at your word. She intends to cover everything, not just cosmetic applications and appropriate dress, but posture, table manners, social interactions, elocution, you-name-it, she expects you to be willing to do it all. So I hope you’re ready to put yourself totally in her hands. No more wishy-washy, back and forth about it, and no more quitting because you don’t like something, or because you think Meemaw won’t approve.”
“I’m ready, all right, and more’n willing,” Trixie said, sounding as if she meant it. “I just hope she knows enough to help me.”
“Believe me,” I said firmly, “if anybody knows enough, it’s Hazel Marie.” I thought of the overly made up, gum-chewing woman who had first appeared on my front porch that day when my life turned upside down. I recalled the brassy hair—teased within an inch of its life—the tight, thigh-revealing dress with cleavage that had made my eyes pop, the long painted nails on her hands and the same peeking out of the open-toed shoes she teetered on.
Oh, yes, Hazel Marie knew about makeovers. She’d made herself over from the inside out, and she hadn’t needed an instructor to do it for her, either. She’d watched, listened, read, and, I must admit, conformed to my example and heeded my carefully worded advice. Now she was a model of gracious beauty, carriage, and conduct. Not, I hasten to add, that she’d given up dyed hair, cosmetics, and tight-fitting clothing—far from it. But she now knew the difference between the decorous presentation of oneself and making an in-your-face, inappropriate impression by what she wore, did, and said.
—
Early the next morning, I helped, or rather watched, Trixie pack to move temporarily to the Pickens house. It crossed my mind to recall all the times I’d dreamed of packing Trixie’s things up right before packing Trixie herself off. This wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for, but it would do for the present.
The only thing that concerned me was how Trixie would fit in with an active family like Hazel Marie’s. There were the twin baby girls, just toddling around, and Granny Wiggins, Etta Mae’s grandmother, who helped with them and who didn’t mind adding her two cents’ worth to anything that came up. And, of course, there was James, who did the cooking, and Mr. Pickens, who did whatever he wanted. Trixie’s joining them made for a potentially volatile situation. But, I reminded myself, it had been Hazel Marie who’d suggested the move, so who was I to demur? Maybe it would work.
And maybe Hazel Marie could work some transforming magic on Trixie, especially now that Trixie had set her eyes on the prize. But what kind of prize? Revenge was what it had sounded like—getting back at both Susan Odell and Rodney.
I could understand wanting to make them regret that they’d treated her so dismissively, but how much more admirable it would’ve been if Trixie had wanted to improve herself for herself alone. As it was, she seemed to have only one goal in mind, and that was getting even. For that reason, she was putting all her eggs into Hazel Marie’s basket, expecting not only to be made over, but made into something else entirely.
Hazel Marie, however, was not a miracle worker, and there was only so much she could accomplish, considering what she had to work with. One had to take into account, I mused, the raw material before projecting such an unrealistic result. And, as far as I knew, every effort to transmute base metal into gold had proven to be not only an unsatisfactory pursuit,
but entirely futile in the end.
“I’m ready,” Trixie said, snapping her hard Samsonite suitcase closed and turning to me, the bulging shopping bag she’d arrived with in her hand. She stood there, waiting, it seemed, to be told what to do next.
“That’s pretty much of a load to be carrying,” I said. “Don’t you want to leave some of it here?”
She shook her head. “I might stay over there.”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t count on that, Trixie. You’d have to be invited to stay.” Not, I thought, that she or her grandmother put much stock in invitations. “Remember that Hazel Marie already has a full house, and she’s doing you an extraordinary favor by having you for a few days. Let’s not expect more than she’s able to give.”
“I won’t be no trouble,” Trixie said. “I aim to help out.”
“Good, I hope you will. A guest does have responsibilities to her hostess,” I said, picturing a table full of dirty dishes and wondering why she hadn’t helped out in my house. “Well, come on and I’ll drive you over.”
“I’ll walk.”
“But you have so much to carry.”
“Yeah, but it’ll make me sweat off some weight.”
“Oh, well, maybe it will.” Since the day was edging up into the nineties, I had little doubt of it. And, on reflection, I decided that her decision to walk four blocks with her hands full was a hopeful sign of her determination to make some deep changes.
“Off you go then,” I said, waving her toward the stairs.
As she bumped the huge suitcase down the stairs, I followed, then opened the front door for her. Mentally biting my tongue, but wanting to set an example of graciousness, I said, “I hope you have a good time, Trixie, but we’ll miss you.”
“Yeah, okay,” she said, then stopped on the porch to look back. “You can come see me over there.”
“I’ll do that, but I’ll call first in case you’re busy.”
She nodded, then bumped the suitcase down the front steps, gave it a hefty swing, and strode off down the sidewalk.