“Aunt Fiona, can you give Mom a makeover today?” Hannah asked as she approached.
“Are you kidding?” Fiona clapped her hands together. “I would clear my calendar to give your mama a makeover, any day of the year. And it just so happens that I have time this morning. Why don’t you girls go and get ready?”
So dismissed, the girls rose and made their way toward the house, clearing the way for Fiona to start in. “So,” she said in a clipped tone. “Caleb spent the night? What the hell, Charlotte?”
Charlotte groaned. “I don’t know.” She tumbled off the stone bench and lay flat on the patch of grass nearby. She folded her arms over her face and pressed against her eye sockets until she saw spots. “I am truly an idiot.”
“No offense, but, yes, you are. Caleb cheated on you. Probably multiple times. Surely I don’t need to remind you of that.”
“I’m not sure he did.”
“Of course he did.”
“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe I wanted out. Maybe I just wanted to blame him, and maybe I wanted to wriggle out of my marriage.”
Fiona bugged her eyes out. “Seriously? He is doing a number on you, isn’t he? One night with him and you are convinced that you are the bad guy. Not him.”
“I don’t think it’s like that.”
“Sounds like you think a lot, but don’t know much of anything.”
Charlotte was silent.
“What did you drink, anyway?”
“I don’t know. Evidently, loads and loads of tequila. I feel like barfing.”
“Yeah. That’ll happen.”
“So,” Charlotte said, rising to a sitting position. “You have time for a makeover today?”
“Oh, yes.” Fiona laughed. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?”
“Since I arrived on planting day?”
“No, no, honey. Long before that. I’m talking years.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I mean, you know, no offense.” Fiona sighed, then flicked her head toward the house. “You need some coffee. Come inside.”
***
Caleb sat in his car, staring straight ahead, still trying to get a grip on what had happened. She had pushed him out of the house. That wasn’t a Charlotte thing to do. That was a Fiona thing to do.
Caleb shuddered inside. She had asked him to take her home, to take her to bed. And then this morning… Like nothing had happened.
How could things have gone so dreadfully wrong? How could she not see how important she was? How could the very fulcrum of his existence just up and disappear?
All those years of coming home, of seeing her there, poking at ground hamburger in the skillet or leaning over the kids’ homework. She would smile and peck him on the lips and show him what was in the mail. Had she been unhappy all this time? Had she been slowly dying, all this time, and now it was too late?
And the idea of losing his daughters over this. Maybe, as Rachael had said, it was time to talk to a lawyer. Just to talk it out. To make sure there wouldn’t be a problem.
He could still smell her on his skin. His Charlotte.
***
In the kitchen, Fiona perched on tiptoes to fish a humongous coffee cup from the far reaches of her cupboard. She filled it from the carafe on the counter. “Here’s a venti, venti, venti. It might be almost enough to get you thinking straight again.”
Then Fiona disappeared into the pantry, emerging a moment later with her hands full. “Here’s some sugar. And a couple green liqui-gels.”
“Mmm. Ibuprofen.” The longer the morning went on, the more wooly her head felt.
“So,” Fiona said, once Charlotte had taken a gulp. “Why didn’t you tell me you almost died during your date with Leopold?”
Charlotte choked a little on her coffee and smiled. “It wasn’t a date.”
“Did you tell Leopold that?”
“I don’t think I needed to.”
“Did he ask you to wear a dress?”
“No. He told me to wear a dress.”
“Then, it was a date.”
“Mercy.”
“So what happened? You choked and then you peed?”
“How did you know about the peed part?”
“Oh, honey. Everyone knows about the peed part.”
“I thought I covered that up.”
“Nope.”
Charlotte plunked her head on the table.
“You sure are giving this town a lot to talk about.” Fiona said.
Charlotte popped her head back up, which made her dizzy. When the room stopped spinning, she said, “Even more after I arrived than before.”
“If that were even possible,” Fiona said, and she winked. “Miraculously, something about the entire experience has made Leopold a little smitten with you.”
“Ha ha.”
“I’m not kidding. He came by the salon yesterday, definitely smitten.”
Charlotte laughed, because smitten rhymed with kitten and because the world wasn’t making any sense just now. C’mon liqui-gels. Work your magic.
“What is the deal with you two anyway?” Charlotte asked. “With you and Leopold?”
“No changing the subject.”
“I think it’s on subject, actually.”
Fiona’s voice grew quiet. “Leopold helped me out of a dark, dark time. In some ways, I feel I owe him my life. I’d do anything to help him.”
Charlotte was quiet for a moment, considering.
“So what do you think of him?” Fiona wanted to know.
“He’s kind of…” What was the word she was looking for? “He’s kind of arrogant, at times. Don’t you think?”
Fiona thought for a moment. “He is a bit self obsessed, yes. But show me a man who isn’t.”
Charlotte thought instantly of Caleb and then of Special Ed. She shrugged.
“He said he was having so much fun with you, Charlotte. Why didn’t you tell me how you two hit it off so well?”
“I was mortified. Really, Fiona. It was one of the worst nights of my life. I begged him to take me home, but he wouldn’t.”
Fiona shrugged. “All I know is Leopold said he’d never had a better conversation in his life.”
“That’s ironic because I hardly said a word. He was talking about himself mostly.”
“Alright, I already conceded that he’s a little self absorbed.”
Charlotte took another swig of coffee. When she spoke again, her tone was quieter. “This is not where your Transformation Pact was expected to go, was it?”
Fiona snorted. “Sure it is. You are definitely hitting Number Five pretty hard. The clause about the men….And you must be hitting Number Three pretty hard, too. The fun clause. I mean, I can hardly wait to hear what people are going to tell me each day. All the ways you are going to surprise me.”
More shards of memory from the night before. The brightly lit restaurant. Too bright, and Caleb’s kind, kind eyes. And then what? What had happened? She suddenly wished she remembered. The whole thing was a blur…order margaritas, yadda, yadda, wah, wah, best sex of her life, bleh, bleh, she sent Caleb sprawling out the front door. She really shouldn’t drink. Really, really.
“So what do you think about Leopold?” Fiona tucked her hair behind her ears and then shook her head so it fell again, in perfect layers, around her face.” About going out with him again?”
“Did you just ask me out for your friend, like in seventh grade?” Charlotte looked down at her thumbs, wrapped around the coffee cup. Her cuticles were ragged. “Because I just got out of bed with my husband.”
“Yeah, but he’s your husband. He’s not a fling. I’m talking about Leopold.”
She stared down at the table, not wanting to meet Fiona’s eyes. “I just, don’t think I could date him. You know, with the line of work he’s in.”
“What’s wrong with it? He helps women feel better about their bodies. He teaches women how to use them. To gain strength and skill to go out into the world wit
hout him. It’s perfectly respectable.”
“But does he fall in love with any of them?”
“Evidently,” Fiona said, gesturing toward Charlotte.
“But I’m not a client.”
“Of course you are.”
“No. not like that. Not that kind of a client.”
“Oh, I see. You are saying that I am the client.” Fiona’s chin gave a tremble.
“Kind of,” she said. Maybe she shouldn’t be talking about this when she was feeling so out of it. “All I mean is, you are paying the bills.”
They were both silent for a moment, then Fiona said, “Well, I think you should give Leopold a chance. Not to marry him or anything. Just for a good roll in the hay. Or the forest. Or the meadow. Or whatever. He’s a good man. Inside there. Past the chauvinism and the self-absorption. Plus,” she whispered. “He has skills.”
“Skills?”
“You have no idea.”
Suddenly, Charlotte very badly wanted to go home.
***
“We bought this for you last week, with Aunt Fiona,” Hannah said, waving a strappy sundress in Charlotte’s direction as she walked through the great room. The boys were, apparently, going in costume. They were already dressed in brightly colored polyester suits and matching facemasks, ready to defend the universe against any of a number of cosmic threats. Just now, they were wrestling under the glass coffee table.
Fiona clapped her hands together, “Oh yes! We were going to surprise you with it one of these days, and we never got around to it. What a perfect day. Go put it on!”
Charlotte held the dress out and up to her. It was cut just above the knee, some kind of cotton blend in black with tiny red roses. And it dipped low in the front.
“Ah, a boob sling top,” Charlotte said. “I needed one of these, apparently. Someone told me this.”
Maxwell, who was applying a headlock to his little brother near her feet, said. “Did you say boob?”
“Ha Ha. Aunt Charlotte said ‘boob.’” Maddox sang. He had just wriggled out of the chokehold and was fighting to stand.
“What is wrong with you, mom?” Gracie gave her head a shake and turned away from her.
“No offense,” Fiona continued, “but you have kind of a farmer’s tan, Charlotte, so we bought you some airbrushing spray, too.”
“Is this like a spray tan?”
“Kind of. The girls have been using it, so they’ll show you how it’s applied.”
“The girls have been using it?”
“Well, you won’t let us go in the tanning bed.” Hannah said and crossed her arms.
“It’s no big deal, Charlotte,” Fiona said. “It just covers up all their little skin doodads and imperfections.”
“They don’t have skin doodads and imperfections. They are eleven and thirteen.”
“It just makes them look tan and glisten-y.”
“I don’t think I want them looking tan and glisten-y.”
“It’s just a spray, Mom. Not a big deal.” Gracie said, flicking her eyes toward the ceiling.
“What if you walk through sprinklers or you sweat or something. Does it come off?”
“You would worry about that kind of thing.” Gracie said, in a low voice.
“Yes. Because I’m the one it would happen to. People are just watching and waiting for me to do ridiculous things in this town. I’m going to fall off a curb or a stupid crow is going to flutter right into the back of my head and knock me out. Seriously. Things like that just seem to happen to me here.”
“Nonsense.” Aunt Fiona was sucking in her stomach and turning sideways, regarding herself in the mirror. Behind her, Hannah did the same.
“Today I’ll probably sweat my tan off and my boob will fall out of my new dress.”
“Aunt Charlotte said ‘boob’ again!” Maddox slapped his forehead and giggled.
Charlotte surprised herself by laughing with him. Boob was a funny word. And, through the headache and the nausea that she was managing to hold just at bay, she had to admit that she felt a glimmer of something. That the night with Caleb had made her feel loose in the limbs, made her breathe deeper, even as it complicated her life beyond words.
***
Once they arrived at the salon, Charlotte caught sight of her reflection in the enormous mirror that stood leaning against the entry wall. The mirror’s frame was silver and scrolling, and it reflected Charlotte’s strawberry blonde hair, which tumbled down her back today in loose natural curls. Caleb loved her hair. He loved playing with it. Burying his hands in it. Yanking on it. She got another flash of the previous evening. And then this morning, shoving him out the door. She winced. What the hell was she doing? How could she be so old, such a mother, so responsible, and yet so terribly, so enormously confused?
“So what are you planning to do today?” Charlotte asked, her voice tight. “To my hair?”
“Something a little edgy,” Fiona said. “More modern. A bit more bang. Streamline all this stuff.” She pulled up Charlotte’s hair in the back and flopped it back and forth in her fingertips.
Why did hairdressers always make you want to feel unattractive before they started? If she were a hairdresser, Charlotte thought, she would start by making the person feel like they looked amazing. Because it was the person inside that was really being nurtured, the whole time she sat in the salon chair.
“No offense, but you desperately need me to do this for you,” Fiona said. “So you’d better not be chickening out.”
“I don’t know.”
“Mom,” Hannah pleaded. “Come on. You promised.”
“I love my hair. My look. Just the way it is.” Tears surged to her eyes. “I don’t think I want to change it.”
“Mom. Good grief.” Gracie said. “You’re crying about your hair now? What is wrong with you?”
Hannah bit her lip. “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll go instead. Make me over, Aunt Fiona. Do it edgy. And modern. And do Gracie, too.”
Gracie moved toward Fiona with a little skip to indicate her consent, and the three disappeared, Fiona clucking her tongue.
She took a deep breath and turned to face her nephews. “C’mon, little monkeys. Aunt Charlotte is taking you to the candy store.”
***
While they waited, Charlotte and the boys strolled the entire Main Street, ate three chocolate bars and half a pound of gummy bears, and then headed to the park where they played chase, hide and seek, hot lava, pirates, and cops and robbers. Charlotte wasn’t accustomed to playing such games in a dress or a skimpy top, but she managed just the same.
After a few hours, they returned to the salon. Charlotte sank into one of the cheetah-print chairs in the waiting room and flipped through an issue of FanFair. Maxwell plopped in the chair next to her and leaned in close.
“Aunt Charlotte? Are you named after Charlotte the spider, like in Charlotte’s Web?”
“No, Max, I don’t think so.”
“Because I really liked that movie.”
“It is a good movie. A good book, too.”
“I haven’t read the book, but I really liked the movie.” He poked a finger into his bellybutton, which appeared as a dark shadow in the center of his nylon suit. “It’s sad. Charlotte dies at the end. Do you remember that?”
Charlotte nodded. “I do remember that.”
“Wilbur loved Charlotte. And I loved that Wilbur.”
“You’re right, Max. Wilbur does love Charlotte. And he always will.”
Maxwell sighed. “Uncle Caleb loves you. He told me.”
“He did?”
“He did. He’s nice. I really like his bagels.”
Maxwell folded his legs underneath him and bounced on the chair. “Oh, pretty. I think those girls of ours are all done.”
And there they were. Two perfect strangers standing before her, each with purple-red highlights and chunky angled bangs and face-framing layers that Fiona had cut in with a razor. She had done their makeup, too. Black liquid eyeli
ner in a cat’s eye and pancake foundation and pink lacquered lips. The girls puckered and smooched their hands, then blew kisses out to Charlotte. It occurred to her, just then, that there are times you can actually feel the earth shift beneath your feet, when you know things will never be the same, even from the way they were ten minutes before. When you know something has rolled out that could never be rolled back.
“So, Mom, what do you think?” Hannah stood in front of her and pulled herself tall. She grabbed for her sister’s hand and they stood together. Their legs were long and skinny and their knees curved inward in a way that made Charlotte think of a knock-kneed foal.
“You look…older.”
“I told you that’s what she’d say.” Gracie nudged Hannah with the back of her hand.
“I know we look older,” Hannah continued. “We’re wearing makeup. But what do you think? Do you like it?”
“You both look beautiful,” Charlotte said, and she wished that Caleb was here to freak out a bit. To tell them to wash their faces. He had played the role of overprotective father, so she could be the kind and supportive mother. Keeping them looking like young girls had been his job.
“Ready to go, Char?” Aunt Fiona asked, tapping Charlotte on the shoulder. “Unless you want a turn after all?”
Charlotte smiled and shook her head, then followed them to the parking lot, where she slid into the third row of Fiona’s Range Rover. Gracie sat in the front and flung her hair from side to side while she chatted and whispered with Fiona. In the middle seat, Hannah sucked in her cheeks and snapped photographs of herself with her phone.
The boys, one on each side of her, leaned in to rest on her arms. Their sugar rush was a memory and they had crashed hard in their nylon Power Rangers casings, leaving her to sit and ruminate on the notion that something as simple as a child’s haircut could change your relationship with her forever.
Chapter Eleven
“Do you know what I think would be nice?” Charlotte asked.
Gracie circled her lips three times with the lip gloss wand, then checked her reflection in a rhinestone-bedazzled compact. “What’s that?”
“I was thinking it might be nice to go home. Don’t you miss those nice Missouri summers? Don’t you miss your friends?”
Shy Charlotte’s Brand New Juju (Romantic Comedy) Page 15