Florida sat in the waiting room all throughout the shampoo, color, and perm; it nearly killed her. For all she knew, I was in there becoming a black person. To calm herself, she struck up an acquaintance with the woman in the fox fur, who turned out to be from Kentucky. Finally, curiosity got the best of her, and Florida came into the next room where I was sitting under the dryer, holding a tall glass of wine and a cigarette, giggling with Mike.
“And girlfriend,” Mike was saying, “he was a fudge packer if I ever saw one!” He waved his glass at Florida. “Is this Mom? Hello. I just put her under the dryer. Do you want me to turn her off so you can talk?” He lifted the plastic bubble, exposing my curlers. Drunk, I peeped at Florida, then, in a fit of laughter, lowered the bubble back over my face.
“Quit acting silly,” said Florida. “What color did you all decide on?”
“Red, honey,” said Mike. “Red as sin.”
“Oh, dear.”
“You’ll love it. Can I get you some wine?” Florida shook her head. “I’ll just sit under this empty dryer if that’s all right. She doesn’t like me to interfere.”
“Princess!” cried Mike, throwing up his hands.
“Let me tell you,” said Florida.
MY KNEE GRAZED Mike’s knee as he pumped me up to eye level, keeping the mirror behind me. I had not seen myself since he washed my hair.
“It’s red all right,” said Florida, who had pulled up a chair to watch the makeup. “I don’t know if you’ll like it or not.”
“You hush,” said Mike, flapping a powder brush at her. “Or I’ll have to do you, too.”
“No, this is just for Louise. I’m old and ugly; there’s nothing you can do with me.”
“Shame on you! You’re a head turner if I ever saw one. And you know it, too, don’t you?” Florida adjusted her earring while Mike admired her. “With your figure and those green eyes—I’d do you blonde in a minute.”
“How much would that cost?” asked Florida, and when he told her, she changed the subject. “Emilio must have gone back to his office.”
“Mmmm, hmmm,” said Mike, bending close to my face with a sharpened pencil. “Hold still, hon. You are going to be gorgeous. Close your eyes, pooh bear. Don’t squint. Squinting . . . Don’t make me have to beat you with this mascara wand.” With my eyes shut, feeling his warm, winy breath on my cheek, I tried to imagine the face he was drawing over mine. “Suck your cheeks in.” A short, stiff brush stroked my skin. “Grand.” He tweezed one last hair, then said, “Open your eyes, Cinderella,” and spun my chair around to face the mirror.
I stared. A new Louise stared back at me. The new Louise was older than I, of average-to-slightly-below-average intelligence. She did lunch, ditched girlfriends for dates, went to church, and read romance novels. She was immune to imagination. She wanted a husband—her own or someone else’s. Nothing extraordinary would ever happen to her. No matter how I moved her mouth, or her eyes, I couldn’t change her expression of sultry pique. My own expressions had been buffered out.
Mike stepped back and stood with his head cocked, one hand on his hip, smiling at his creation. Another hairdresser swung by, paused, and said, “Girlish! What have you done to this child!”
“Isn’t he fabulous? An artist. Is this her mother? I could tell. Do her, too, Mike. I want to see!”
I touched my hair. “Is it Murfreesboro Red?” I asked Florida quietly.
“Oh for goodness sake, Louise. No!”
“What’s Murfreesboro Red?” asked Mike, who was about to get his feelings hurt.
“Murfreesboro, Tennessee,” explained Florida. “We pass through there on the way to my home in Red Cavern, Kentucky. A lot of those people have red hair.”
“They’re inbred,” I added. “Whenever you look out the window, you see the same crazy shade of red hair.”
“She’s exaggerating. Some of them are normal. Anyway, that’s not the red he gave you. Now leave Mike alone so he can finish you.”
“Inbred Red,” said Mike. “Loving it!” He pointed another pencil at me. “Open wide, wide, wide; I have a big surprise!” I winced as he painted on my new mouth.
“How did you do that?” asked Florida, impressed. “Louise, did you see how he did it? That doesn’t look like your mouth at all! I don’t know if she can do that herself or not, every day. You’ll have to keep at it, Louise. You can’t just roll out of bed in the morning and go to school. Beauty takes hard work.”
A woman in a pink-and-white-striped smock with a head full of orange curlers came by. “Nancy!” said Florida. “I almost didn’t recognize you. I want you to meet my daughter, Louise.”
“Louise, this is Nancy. We met in the waiting room. Nancy is from Kentucky; she’s heard of Red Cavern. She has a daughter your age. Is she fourteen, Nancy?”
Nancy and I smiled blandly at each other. She looked older without her makeup, and less fierce without her fur.
“Sixteen, going on twenty.”
“She’s an ice skater, Louise. Goes to Westminster. What color is her hair?”
“It’s blonde, the same as mine used to be,” said Nancy.
“We talked about blonde. Emilio wanted her to go red. I tried to stay out of it.”
“Stunning,” said Nancy. “Absolutely stunning.”
“Louise, tell Nancy what you were telling me earlier today about the butterfly.” I feigned ignorance. “You know. What was it? At lunch. Something about this fellow who dreams he’s a butterfly. You know.”
“I forgot.”
Florida turned back to Nancy. “It was a real cute story. Philosophical. Gets that from her father, not from me. Louise, what was that man’s name? Chinese?”
Emilio walked in through the back door, carrying a pint of ice cream. “Ah,” he said when he saw me. “Fabulous, fabulous. I bet you didn’t even know you were pretty.”
“Do you two know each other?” he asked Florida and Nancy.
“We’re old Kentucky girls. We just found out.”
“Oh, Florida,” said Nancy, touching her shoulder. “I remembered something after you left the waiting room. I know somebody from your neck of the woods—Regina Bloodworth. I just met her awhile back, and she is the loveliest person. Just as sweet as she can be—cheerful—and a real hoot, too, when she wants to be. Do you know her? She said she was from Counterpoint.”
“The blind lady?” asked Florida.
“No, she’s not blind. She quilts.”
“I knew a Regina Bloodworth who was blind, but it doesn’t sound like the same person. She moved away.”
“Well, it must be someone else, then. Or maybe she said, Cartersville. I was almost sure she said Counterpoint, though.”
Suddenly, loud enough for the whole shop to hear, Florida said, “You don’t like it, do you, Louise?” I couldn’t bear to look at Mike or Emilio. “It’s sexy, and you’re not used to that. You don’t look like a boy.”
Everyone agreed that I certainly did not look like a boy.
In the car, Florida said, “You don’t like what he did, do you? I knew you wouldn’t. If you go home and wash all that out, I’m going to kill you. I spent almost two hundred dollars on Emilio. What don’t you like about it?”
I pulled the rearview mirror toward myself, still trying to find the real Louise behind my face. My eyebrows were gone. “I don’t recognize myself,” I said.
“That’s what we came here for.” Florida blew her horn at a woman across the parking lot. “There goes Nancy. She looks good.” I caught a glimpse of fox fur and sweeping red hair; I couldn’t bear to look at the rest. I lit a Virginia Slim; my nails were long and tapered, painted in a color called Very Berry.
“You don’t appreciate anything I do for you,” Florida began as soon as we hit the interstate. “I have tried and tried. It’s just ‘Me, me, me,’ isn’t it? Looking out for number one. You take and don’t give.”
I French inhaled. “Leave me alone.”
“Leave me alone. That’s all you say. ‘Ju
st leave me alone.’ What have I done to make you hate me? Just please tell me that. I’d like to know.” She started crying.
My head began to hurt from the wine. “I’m not going to wash the permanent out tonight, okay? Stop crying.”
“It’s not that! I don’t give a darn what you do with your hair. If you want to go around the rest of your life looking like a slob, that is fine with me. Next time, I just won’t spend two hundred dollars on you. Plus the clothes. How much did you spend on those? Did you get the right size?”
“Yes, Mother,” I said haughtily, glancing in the mirror to see if my face had any expression.
“Don’t talk to me in that tone of voice! Why are you so hateful to your mother? What have I done to deserve this? You used to be a sweet girl. When you were little, you were my sunshine. Always smiling, agreeable. Loving. Easy to please.” A note of coy sympathy crept into her voice; I braced myself for what was coming. “What happened to change you? Was it Roderick’s death? I want to know.”
“I’m the same,” I said feebly.
“Oh no, you’re not. You used to have Jesus Christ in your heart. You were a Christian. Now you’ve shut Him out. Rejected Him.”
“I don’t want to talk about religion,” I said firmly, and this rankled her. What is it about Christians, I wondered, that makes them do the soft shoe and then take out the whip? Frommlecker could never understand my problem with the psychological sadism of evangelicism. “So don’t go to church,” he said. “Sunday morning is a good time to run.”
“I am not talking about religion, young lady,” said Florida. “I am talking about your personal savior, Jesus Christ. You don’t want to hear what I have to say because you know it’s the truth. You don’t want to hear the truth. That’s why you ate the way you did. And now the smoking.” Her voice rose, became hard. “You are going down the wrong path, Frances Louise Peppers. I’m telling you that right now. Jesus is not pleased with you, and you know it. You can change your outside appearance all you like, but no amount of makeup or hair color will solve your problem. The problem is in your heart.”
“Shut up!”
“Don’t scream like that!” yelled Florida. “Do you want me to have a wreck? I’m going to pull over. I’ve had it. You can walk home.”
“Keep driving,” I said quietly, as if she were a hostage I held at gunpoint.
“This is just what I’m talking about. I never in my life told my mother to shut up.”
“You should have.”
“I’m going to call Henry.” She took the next exit and swerved into a gas station.
When Florida returned from the phone booth, her face looked haggard. “He didn’t answer the phone. I don’t know where he could be. Sleeping. I let the phone ring twelve times. Called twice.”
“Maybe he went to the store.”
“Your father doesn’t go to the store. You know that. Except for the hardware store, and that’s closed. I have no idea where that man is. Well, we won’t worry about it. Worrying doesn’t help.”
We worried in silence for a quarter of an hour, then I said, “I’m sorry I upset you.”
“I’m not upset. I’m used to the way you treat me.”
Even though it was dark and there was nothing to see, I pressed my nose against the window glass. When a car swooshed past, its headlights made a brief arc across the front seat, as if someone were shining a flashlight into the window. I couldn’t imagine what the author of Looking Out for Number One would do in this situation.
“THE HOUSE IS dark,” Florida said as she pulled into the long driveway of Owl Aerie. “Why didn’t Henry leave a light on? I bet he won’t even recognize you. You don’t look like the old Louise, that’s for sure. Now you’re feminine, sexy, more mature looking. People might even think we’re sisters.” She kept talking as she unlocked doors and switched on lights. When we entered the dark kitchen, she called out “Henry!” in a frightened voice. “Henry! Puff! Where are you?”
He stood in the doorway of Florida’s studio. He reeked of mouthwash, and he was so drunk he could barely talk.
“Well there you are,” said Florida. “What you doing with all the lights off? Where’s the dog?”
He said, “Paintin’.”
“Painting? In the dark? Henry, you don’t paint. What’s wrong with you?”
His shirt was rumpled and untucked. It was the first time in my life I had seen Henry with his shirttails out; I would have been less embarrassed to see him in his underwear. He took a couple of steps toward me, with his arms outstretched, then he stopped.
“Well,” said Florida. “What do you think? Isn’t she beautiful?”
He said, “Thasnoher.” His eyes grew wide. “You’re differin’! Who’re you?”
“Where’s Puff?” asked Florida.
Henry hung his head. “Awwlgoteem.” He flapped his arms like a bird and made his face sinister.
“An owl got him? Oh honey, no! I knew this would happen. What time? Why did you let him out without watching him? Did you see it? Was it—” Her face crinkled. “He was alive, wasn’t he? When the bird carried him off? Oh my God. I can’t think about it. This makes me sick!”
“Chased him,” said Henry sadly. “Gottaway.”
“Henry,” said Florida. “You are drunk.”
He made a sudden turn, flung out his hand. “Yamsnot!” His face turned dark red. Then he said something that sounded like, “You look nice,” lurched backward, and fell down.
CROUCHING BEHIND MY bedroom door, I heard Florida’s voice over Henry’s muffled protests. “She knows you’re drunk. Look at you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. She knows. You’ve scared her. Disgraceful! You’re going to be just like your brother, Earl.”
“Yamsnot!”
“Oh, yes you are. Alcoholic. What got into you? Are you worried about the dog? I guess he’s gone. There was nothing you could do about it. I’ve been letting him in the yard without watching him, too. Sitting here in the dark drinking like a bum. Is it Roderick? You’re dwelling on that, aren’t you? We can’t live in the past. What’s done is done. What’s gone is gone.”
I touched my stiff, strange new hair, which smelled like diesel oil, and let the tears run down my face, washing off a fifty-dollar paint job. When I had finished crying, I dialed a national help line in the dark.
“Do you want to hear a dream I had about my mother when I was five years old?” I asked the voice.
“In the dream, my mother and I are walking across a field to a shack with smoke coming out of a crooked chimney. A man with a black handlebar mustache, in a black top hat, steps out the door and begins walking toward us. He’s a bad man.”
“I’m listening,” said the volunteer.
“My mother screams, ‘Run!’ We turn around and run as fast as we can. He chases us. I run as hard as I can, but I fall behind. My mother keeps looking back over her shoulder, yelling, ‘Run Louise! Run!’ I can feel her panic, then I can feel him at my heels. ‘Hurry!’ she cries. ‘We’re almost there! Run faster!’ We’re trying to cross the invisible line that runs across the field. Once we cross it, he can’t get us. My mother gets across, but I don’t. She spins around, reaching out for me, but the man already has me.
“Are you there?”
“Go on,” said the volunteer. So I did, with my head bowed in prayer.
Chapter Seven
SOMETIMES FLORIDA SAID bitterly, “Henry is married to the plant,” and I would imagine him entangled in the embrace of an overgrown kudzu weed. When she was proud of him, she called the plant by its name. “Henry is the general manager of Southern Board,” she told strangers in a velvet voice.
Every pen, notepad, and calendar at Owl Aerie bore the name Southern Board. It was printed on windbreakers, penknives, and clocks. When Roderick was alive, he told people that Southern Board was stamped on the behind of each family member. During a confused period in my early childhood, I had used Southern Board as my last name. When I turned sixteen, Henry gave me a S
outhern Board key chain imprinted with the company’s motto: the best way is the safe way and the keys to a hand-me-down Pontiac Bonneville. The Bonneville, originally a company car, had smelled new for the entire year Henry drove it. When it he gave it to Florida, it picked up the odors of lipstick, Kleenex, and acrylic paint. In my hands, it had acquired the aroma of a saloon and was known about Bridgewater as Partyville.
During the long summers, I cruised Partyville up and down Front Street with all the windows down. I slurped Tanqueray and tonic through a straw while the B-52s crackled from cheap speakers. If Officer Fitzpatrick saw me, he paid no mind. Sometimes I put on a tennis skirt and drove to the Three Bears Country Club where I smoked a joint in the powder room with Drew. When I got really bored, I climbed around on the girders of the Meshack Bridge, daring myself to jump into the muddy waters of the New Hope River. Florida thought I should get a job.
“The clothing stores would want you to fix your hair every morning,” she said, “and they don’t pay anything anyway. I’d let you help me out with my Special Art class, but you don’t like retarded people. They get too personal with you. Henry always meant to put Roderick to work at the factory, during the summers.” Tears welled up in her eyes, but she brushed them brusquely away. “Southern Board pays good money, but your father wouldn’t let you work out there. With all those men.”
“A corrugated board plant is no place for a young lady,” Henry said, first looking me in the eye, then bending down to the newspaper in his lap to let me know the discussion was over. I appealed to Florida, but she was in menopause that year, and half mad.
“Oh honey!” She looked stricken, as if I had asked to be a stripper. “Oh baby, no. No, no, no! You’re too spoiled to work. You’d have to get out of bed in the morning. You know your father won’t put you in that dirty factory.”
In the end, Drew St. John paved the way by taking a job at Sweetheart Bakery, owned by her father. Mr. St. John, who owned a good chunk of North Georgia, was a gentleman and therefore, Henry deduced, must be making a lady out of Drew.
The School of Beauty and Charm Page 12