by Tonya Kappes
There was just something about a creature that pooped bigger than me that I didn’t like. Plus, horses scared me, especially the big race horses, which didn’t make sense, given the life I grew up in.
“Lucia is a sheep, not a wolf,” Granny snickered about her daughter-in-law.
“Better to face them now rather than later.” Vivian twirled her ponytail around her finger. Her big green eyes sparkled in the bright morning sun. She had a style not many girls could pull off.
Vivian never wore any shoes other than cowboy boots. Today was no different. She had her red plaid button-down tucked into those dirty jeans.
Vivian was the one friend I loved to play dress up with. That was probably how I came to love fashion. Her parents bought her clothes from the Goodwill and my parents got mine from Saks Fifth Avenue in Cincinnati. We loved to mix and match, using scissors and thread to cut and sew, creating our own fabulous designs.
“I guess you’re right. It’s better that I get it over with and find out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. Are you ready?” I put the watering can back under Granny’s wrought iron bench and sat down.
“Yes.” She tapped her watch. “I have to go to work. Unlike some of us.” She jokingly jabbed.
I walked inside to get my bag and Iggy, leaving Granny and Vivian outside.
“Are you ready?” I scooped Iggy up in my arms and grabbed the duffle with my other hand. We went back outside where Vivian was already in the truck waiting.
I gave Granny a bunch of hugs and kisses after we confirmed our plans for tomorrow morning. She was going to pick me up in the morning so we could grab a few grooming supplies from St. James Pet Store before I had my first grooming client.
“Thanks, Granny.” I waved out the window as Vivian pulled out.
On the way over to the Beiderman plantation, as I so aptly named it, I filled Vivian in on everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. New York already seemed like a lifetime ago, but the grooming gig scared the hell out of me.
“I think it will be an adventure. Creative flow will let your mind settle and figure out the direction you want to go in.” Vivian took the curves of Versailles Road with ease in the old farm truck.
“Creative flow?” I laughed. “Can you imagine what will happen when I try to give a dog a bath and then accidentally scissor cut his tail off?”
“I’m sure Gloria has it all figured out.” Vivian pulled off the road onto the blacktopped entrance of the Lady B, the official farm name of my childhood home and sprawling mansion to the millionaires, Lucia and Leonard Beiderman.
Chapter Six
“May I help you?” Lillian, the housekeeper I grew up with answered. Her voice echoed out of the black box after Vivian pulled up and pushed the button at the entrance of the wrought iron gate.
I told her to drive to the back of the property like she does when she goes to work, but she insisted we use the front entrance. Even though she was like family, she knew Lucia as well as I did, and Lucia would have a fit if I came home through the worker’s entrance.
“It’s me, Lillian…Luvie!” I leaned over and shouted in the intercom.
“Sure enough?” Lillian asked.
“Yes!” As much as I hated coming home to tell my parents that I failed, I was excited to see Lillian. She had been part of our family since I was five years old. Lucia found her working as a seamstress at a local dry cleaner.
With all the hemming and sewing Momma had done to our clothes, it was cheaper for her to hire Lillian full time. One thing led to another and before I knew it, Lillian had taken over the duties of the entire house staff, replacing many of the temporary people Lucia hired through temp services.
It was a good fit for me, because Lillian loved to pretend-play and we spent hours in my room. It was hard for me to understand that she had a daughter of her own to take care of, so when she left for the day, I would become angry and throw a fit. It wasn’t until Lucia let Lillian bring her daughter to work with her that I stopped my bad behavior.
“Yes, Momma. I picked her up from her Granny’s. Now let us in.” Vivian and I never discussed that she and her mom worked for my family. But it was a win-win situation all the way around. My life would have never been complete without them in it.
They had become just as much family to us as any of our relatives. In fact, Lillian and Lucia were best friends like Vivian and me.
The gate slowly opened and Vivian kicked the old truck into gear.
Seeing the redbrick mansion still took my breath away every time I came home to visit. I always knew I was a lucky girl growing up with a family who loved me. When I turned eighteen, I’d felt like enough was enough. They had sheltered me long enough. And I had never looked back…until now.
Lucia had the white wicker furniture strategically placed on the large veranda, so there could be several conversations going on at once when visitors came for afternoon tea or when she had her Humane Society friends over. The black curtains were neatly tied around each post and were let out in the evening to shield the bugs away or keep the late afternoon sun at bay.
The front of the house had the most spectacular views of Lady B and the powerful horses that lived and trained here. I turned around and looked out of the truck’s back window. It was breathtaking, and for the first time, it felt good being home. Comfort for my soul.
Then I turned around. The comfort quickly started to disappear.
Lucia, Lillian, and Leonard were standing on the third step of the fifteen steps that led up to the veranda. The reason I knew there were fifteen steps was because Vivian and I used to count them every single time we went up or down.
Lillian and Dad had big smiles planted on their faces. Lucia…not so much.
“Princess!” Dad came to the truck, looking as dapper as always in khaki pants and button-up collared shirt. The comb-over on his light brown hair had thinned more since I last saw him. The twinkle in his deep brown eyes gave way to the wrinkle lines around them. Something I had never noticed. He opened the door and drew back. “What is that?”
I held Iggy in the air for him to take. “That is an Iggy.” I got out and gave him a big hug before I reached in the truck bed and grabbed my bag.
“More importantly,” Mom pointed her red-tipped finger toward the bag. Her long red wavy hair was pulled up in a tight bun, making her already thin face even thinner. She crinkled her nose, causing her freckles to blend into each other when she asked, “What is that?”
“What, Mom?” I threw the bag on the bottom step. “No ‘welcome home dear’? No hugs?”
“Don’t be so silly.” Lucia gracefully floated down the stairs looking just as beautiful as Vivian Lee. She was the epitome of beauty; there was no denying it. There was never a day that I wasn’t thankful, but there also wasn’t a day I hadn’t tried to live up to her expectations. Today was no different.
Lucia always knew when eyes were on her, including my father’s. She wrapped me up in a warm hug, one that if I didn’t know better, felt like a true-to-God loving hug. Was she truly happy to see me?
“Let’s get your things to your room.” She pulled away and tapped the pads of her fingers together. “Really, where are your bags?” She asked as if I was trying to pull a fast one on her.
“There.” I pointed to her feet where the camouflaged duffle sat.
“Where are your clothes?”
“There.” Again, I pointed to the bag.
“Are you only here for a night?” She reluctantly bent down and picked up Birdie’s disgusting duffle bag. Inwardly, I giggled. Who knew where that bag had been?
“Nope.” I followed her up the steps, sashaying from side to side exactly like her. “I’m here for a while.”
“Don’t ask questions.” I heard my dad whisper to her when I walked into the house. I could only assume Granny had told him what had happened.
“But Leonard,” Lucia was good at giving angry whispers that were loud.
“N
ot today.” Dad warned her in his I mean it voice.
That was the deal with Dad. He never said much, but when he did, he meant it and Lucia knew it.
“I’m going to go rest, Mom.” There weren’t too many times I called Lucia “Mom,” because she preferred to be called by her name. It was a quirk of hers that I lived with. But today it seemed fitting to call her mom. Dad was giving me permission to go in my room, pull the shades down, and take it easy – for today only.
“We will take care of Iggy.” Dad still had the little bundle of cute pain-in-my-neck.
I walked up the steps and turned at the top, briefly stopping before I made my way down to my wing of the house. Uncertainty of what this new adventure was going to bring me tangled in my gut.
“We are going to have to change his name to something starting with an L,” Lucia informed Dad before she stomped off toward the kitchen. Silently, he followed, rubbing Iggy the whole way.
Chapter Seven
“Hello old friend.” I dropped the duffle bag on my childhood bed. The canopy was still white and pristine. My dad had been the one who wanted his princess to have a canopy while Lucia looked at it as a dust collector.
I lay down and looked up. The pictures of Vivian and me were still in the slats where I had put them; a perfect replacement for the corkboard Lucia would never let me have. She claimed that corkboards were unorganized and looked messy. She had never lain in my bed with me so I stuck all of my mementos under the canopy. What Lucia didn’t know didn’t hurt her – I grew up repeating that mantra to myself.
I got up and dumped the contents of the duffle bag on the floor and threw whatever I wasn’t sure was clean or dirty in the laundry chute. I made a mental note to freshen up and then head to the laundry room before Lillian saw my clothes and felt like she needed to do them. I was a big girl and could definitely wash my own dirty clothes.
The small white desk, where I did all of my daydreaming of becoming the next big fashion icon, was still in front of the window overlooking Lady B and it had my old dinosaur of a computer still on top.
I pushed the button on the monitor. When the green light came on, I knew it still worked, so I continued to turn on the old tower.
Buzz, shhhzzz, buzz. The dial-up rattled. The Internet finally popped up in what seemed like years and I had to bypass the Norton protection screen that my parents had thought was a good idea to protect me from all the big bad internet scammers.
I typed “dog grooming” in the Google search box. I had better learn a few techniques before I see my new clients in the morning. Not that I was going to become a full-time dog groomer or anything, but it was a way to get some cash and start to live again while figuring out what I was going to do with my life and my fashion design degree.
I regret that I wasn’t smart enough to save over the past three years, so if I did have to look for a new job, I could have stayed in the city. Clearly, that was water under the bridge. Like Granny always said, “If you are in bad water, you need to paddle as fast as you can.” I was definitely paddling.
There were hundreds of sites that popped up for dog grooming. The two main concerns I had to figure out were: how much I should charge and how in the hell do I give a dog a haircut.
I took the piece of paper out of my jeans pocket that Granny had given me. It had the name of an online pet grooming school. There were two classes that I could probably get into today. One was “how to bathe a dog” and the other was “basic techniques to clipping.”
Those seemed like the two I needed right off the bat. With Granny’s credit card number written on the paper, I signed my name with an IOU. I vowed then and there to pay Granny back as soon as I could.
With a few simple forms to fill out, I was ready for the first class, only they weren’t the type of classes that you took in a day and you were done. There were internships and bathing and clipping tests. I had to have instant instructions.
YouTube. Everything was on YouTube and I bet everything about grooming a dog was too. How hard could it be? Iggy looked pretty good and I had no idea what I was doing.
My old dinosaur computer took forever to bring up YouTube.
I typed “dog grooming” in the search box. Every video imaginable came up. Who knew there were so many types of brushes, combs, and even shampoos to use on different breeds of dogs? This was proving to be a little more in-depth than I was expecting. But how picky could the residents of the home of the near dead be?
The how to bathe a dog video had a lot of views, and that seemed to me like the first logical step in the grooming process. I clicked on it and took a lot of notes and started a to-do list. I would have to go to the local pet store and grab a few supplies that included shampoo, something called a slicker brush, combs with rubber bits, thinning shears and a set of clippers.
The other videos I clicked around on had to do with the basics of clipping the dog. There seemed to be a lot of different techniques, so I chose the one with the most views. My theory was that you couldn’t go wrong with the most popular kid on the block.
After spending hours clicking around and jotting down notes, I went to my bathroom and grabbed a pair of old scissors from the drawer. It was time for my first client…one of my stuffed animals.
I eyed the corner of my room where all of my stuffed animals hung in a netting from the ceiling.
“Who needs a haircut after all of these years?” I asked them like they were going to answer me.
It had to be one with a lot of hair, so Mufasa from The Lion King was the chosen one.
Holding the scissors like the YouTube instructor said, I started to get a feel for them. Unfortunately, there was a pull between my thumb and pointer finger, so these scissors were too big for my reach, just like the instructor said.
“Check scissors to make sure they fit properly,” I said while jotting it down on my to-do list. “Hmm.” I looked at the list that was getting longer and longer, knowing the cost was mounting and I really couldn’t use Granny to get it all for only a handful of clients, so I would get only the basic necessities.
I watched a few quick videos on scissor cutting and marked the thinning shears and clippers off my list. I could get by with shampoo and a good pair of scissors.
“Okay, buddy.” I cleared off a spot on the desk and put Mufasa on top like the groomers in the videos did with the dogs on the grooming table. I talked to him like they did as well and used my brush to brush his fur down the way his fur lies. “You are being a very good boy.”
The instructor said the animals knew when you were sincere, and I tried to come across that way so I wouldn’t get bitten.
I hit the play button in one of the grooming videos and followed the way the instructor groomed the dog exactly. Mufasa would make a great poodle. I laughed when I finished scissor cutting the stuffed animal.
I stood back and admired my work.
“Not bad.” I looked back over Mufasa and made a couple more little snips here and there. “I can do this.” I assured myself so I could go along with my Granny’s harebrained idea.
A few snips later and I decided it was time to face the music with my parents. It didn’t hurt that I smelled something yummy cooking. The clock told me it was suppertime and my tummy told me that I had skipped dinner, which was what we Kentuckians called lunch, because I was crafting my new talent.
I used the brush I had used on Mufasa to brush down my ponytail, applied a swipe of lip gloss before I took one last look in the mirror and headed downstairs to face the firing squad.
Chapter Eight
The house was silent. Well, it was silent for the time being. I padded down the hall and down the steps to the kitchen where Lucia and Dad were having their before-supper cocktail. Dad was reading the paper and Lucia was reading her book.
“Good afternoon.” I opened the cabinets to find something bigger than the tiny teacups they used to drink their morning jolt from, because that was just a shot for me.
Lucia looked love
ly in her leopard-print robe with matching slippers she liked to call her “lounging” clothes. “I know you love coffee, so I made a fresh pot.” She put her book down next to her and started to get up.
“I’ve got it.” I ushered her back to her seat. I was setting the tone to butter her up. The news of me being fired was not going to sit well.
I opened and shut cabinet doors all over the kitchen until I found an old mug I had given Lucia when I was a kid that said “NUMBER ONE MOM” on it.
I picked it up and vividly remembered the day I got it. My school was having a Christmas sale where the kids could bring in a buck or two. I didn’t have any money so I borrowed a couple of dollars from Lillian. It took me three weeks of putting away my own clothes to pay off that debt.
“Got one!” I held the cup in the air. I went over and rubbed Iggy who was delightfully happy in Dad’s lap. “See Iggy, I am ‘number one mom.’”
“We have to change his name.” Lucia got the creamer out of the refrigerator and put it on the granite counter next to the bar stools.
Lucia hated the look of appliances. She hired some big wig fancy interior decorator to come in and resurface them to look like cabinets. It took several weeks of opening and shutting the real cabinets to learn where the milk jug was.
“I can’t change his name.” I set my steaming cup of coffee on the bar and added a little creamer to it. I pulled up a barstool to sit on. “He belongs to Birdie.”
“Oh dear,” Lucia shook her head. “How is Birdie?”
“Off donating her eggs to needy couples.” I left it at that. I wasn’t in the mood to hear them complain about her and then listen to my story, only to make me explain that whole situation.
Lucia’s mouth dropped, so I felt it was a good time to tell them my news.
“I got fired from Sasha Designs yesterday, and I don’t have a pot to piss in, so I sold my Prada book bag and used the money to pay my rent and buy a bus ticket home.” I sucked in more air. “I didn’t want to wake you up in the middle of the night with a collect call to pick me up at the bus station, so Granny and Charlie picked me up. Plus I didn’t want to have to come here and explain why I was home, why I took the Greyhound, and why I had a dog whose name doesn’t start with an L.”