I could still hear Tienne’s low, affectionate voice . . . Jasmine and Jade . . . Jasmine and Jade. What am I to do with the two of you? As if he’d loved us both and couldn’t decide.
“Who are those beautiful people with you?” Linda whispered, touching the photograph with awestruck care.
“Enough questions. This way,” I motioned her toward the kitchen—neutral ground. There had been little to bring from my former, professionally outfitted kitchen in the apartment I’d owned in New Orlean’s ultra-chic Garden District. I’d given most of the fixtures and equipment to my cook—she’d spent more time with the pots, pans and utensils than I had. Now I owned a simple, country kitchen with an antique, cherry wood table, matching chairs and a bench under the window, a collection of blue enamel-ware resting on shelves in the corner, and bonafide lace curtain—as nostalgic and old fashioned as I’d ever wished to be.
Over two glasses of sweet iced tea, Linda and I finally reached the subject she’d come there to discuss. “My mom says she wants to talk to you before—”
“That’s fine.” I nodded. “She’s welcome to hear everything I have to say to you.”
“You should know that she doesn’t really want me to doll myself up, but she isn’t gonna tell my dad until she has to.” Linda picked up her glass of tea and took a sip. I couldn’t discern what worried her more—her mother, her father, or me.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t afraid of anyone. I’d faced too many other, scarier things than a small town chauvinist and his un-emancipated wife. Between my profession and Jade’s meteoric fall from grace, I’d seen more human cruelty and frailty than I cared to recall. But, Linda’s case of the nerves made me seriously question whether I wanted to get involved in what could rapidly become a family dispute.
I wasn’t good at ‘family.’ And, I had the uneasy feeling I might mar the peace and quiet I’d moved to Mossy Creek to achieve. When it came down to it, this girl’s future would most likely fall into place nicely without my help. My own future, judging from what I’d seen happen in the past to me and mine, needed a bit more vigilance. I searched my ambivalence for a final decision.
It’s funny how the simplest things can touch a place inside you. As I sat across from my new wanna-be protégée, teetering on the brink of calling the whole thing off, a breeze ruffled the curtains at the window drawing my attention to some flowers I’d haphazardly stuck in a vase. The vase was white, old-fashioned, milk glass. Plain, wholesome, and proud of it. The summers-end flowers were daisies and coreopsis I’d cut from the garden. Yellow and white, ruffled and hard to ignore, they drew the eye like a pretty girl, laughing.
The comparison wasn’t lost on me. A plain vase, dressed up with my help, giving me and anyone who happened to notice pleasure and peace. Like a smile from a stranger.
I brought my attention back to the stranger sitting in my kitchen. She’d shown up and called me on my off-hand offer. I’d helped so many others as a business investment. What would it hurt to give one more girl the keys to the kingdom? A little feminine self-esteem could go a long way. If she really wanted my help, then I wouldn’t back out.
“I think your mom is right. She knows best how to handle your dad.”
Now, Linda looked embarrassed. “She also wants to know how much this is gonna cost.”
A not so out-of-line question. I knew what it was like to count pennies instead of fifties. “Well, let’s see. I’ve never hired out as a consultant for a young socialite’s debut, before—”
“Debut?” she echoed, wide-eyed. “Young socialite?”
I nodded solemnly. “Uh huh. Hmmm. The cost for my help? Nothing.”
Linda’s embarrassment fled, and she smiled, looking animated again. “Thanks!”
“You are going to have to buy some things, however. You’ll need money for a new hair cut, some basic makeup and a few new clothes. Shoes are essential. Here’s my first tip—the difference between a good pair of legs and a great pair of legs is usually the kind of shoes those feet are wearing.”
“I can use the money I make after school working for Aunt Effie. And my mom said she’d help out of her grocery money.”
“All right, then.” I put out my hand in a business-like manner. “We have a deal. I’ll help you as much or as little as you want. Your job is to learn to believe in yourself. You’ll have to work at it.” Linda grasped my hand, and her dark blue eyes sparkled.
“I’m a good worker. Even my dad says so.”
“Believing in yourself is the hardest part. Here’s your assignment. First, you have to promise not to call yourself plain or repeat anything your father says about you—unless it’s good.”
She nodded, as if that part was easy.
“I’m serious. In order to reinvent yourself, you have to let go of the past. Each time you catch yourself about to say the ‘p’ word, stop and change it to something complimentary. Each time your father’s frowning face appears in your head, saying that word, force yourself to think of something else. Anything else—a song you love, a person who smiled at you, even a good book you’ve read. Don’t allow anything to derail your transformation, or your brand new, shiny train of self-confidence will end up in a ditch.”
I could see her absorbing my words. How much she took them to heart was another question. I didn’t have the ability to explain how important self image is to outward beauty. It was a lesson a woman had to learn for herself. I’d learned it the hard way, year by year, man by man. When you go through life depending solely on yourself, you tend to learn your strengths and weaknesses early.
“Okay, now, the next thing is, I want you to go to the drugstore or the bookstore and pick up some magazines. Leaf through them until you see someone with a hairdo you like. Doesn’t matter if she’s a movie star or a waitress. Find some pictures we can evaluate. When’s your next afternoon off from Effie’s?”
“Not until Monday,” she answered glumly. You’d have thought it was a year away.
I walked across the room to study a wall calendar decorated with photos of roses that I’d hung by the phone. I slipped it off the nail, picked a pen out of a jelly glass, and returned to the table. “Today is Wednesday. Can you and your mom come by on Saturday morning, let’s say about ten, so your mom and I can make sure we’re in agreement?”
“Yeah.”
“Then if your mom gives us the go-ahead on Saturday, you could get your hair done on the Monday afternoon after that?”
“Mom will agree. She just has to,” Linda said urgently.
“She will.” I wrote ‘hair appointment’ on the calendar.
Next, I scrutinized Linda’s eyes. “Your hair is the place to start—it’s the frame for your face. Once we get it cut and styled, we’ll be able to see what makeup to buy. Okay?”
“Okay,” Linda said and got to her feet. “I guess I’ll see you on Saturday, then.” She stood there awkwardly.
“Don’t forget what I said about the ‘p’ word, and the magazines. And about your father.”
“I won’t,” she pledged. She gazed at me as if searching for words. I waited. “Thank you, Miss Jasmine,” she said finally. “I want to look great for all the parties and the reunion festival. But more than that, I want to look new.”
“Don’t thank me yet, chere.” I put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “You’re the one who has to do all the work. I’m just the beauty consultant.”
* * * *
On Saturday morning, Linda, a stack of well-thumbed magazines in her arms, and her mother, dressed in a neat but dowdy, at-least-five-years-out-of-style shirtwaist dress, knocked on my door ten minutes before ten. By the obvious energy running through the teenager, a direct contrast to the prim cautiousness of her mother, I could tell we were beyond the ‘no’ in ‘the point of no return.’
I took them through the house to the back porch overlooking the garden and sat them at a cloth-covered table complete with flower arrangement and silver coffee service. As I said before, entertai
ning had been my business, and I’d been good at it. I intended for them to be comfortable and impressed. That way it would be easier to accomplish Linda’s transformation goal with a minimum of anxiety on her part and with less interference from her mother.
After serving them both coffee, I folded my hands in front of me and prepared to present my disclaimer speech. I’d found it better in my dealings with people—men, customers, employees, or political allies—to set the ground rules up front. Many times the ground rule recipients would conveniently, or otherwise, forget what I’d told them, but I had no hesitation about reminding them as the need arose.
“Now, Mrs. Polk, I’ve promised Linda I would help her improve her image—with your permission. I’ve had some experience as a . . . beauty consultant, although I’m no longer in the business.” Saying that particular sentence tickled my perverse pleasure at the secrets of my past. Mrs. Polk would grab her daughter and run for the door if she’d had any idea of what my version of ‘beauty consulting’ had been.
I managed to continue with only a slight smile. “As I told Linda, any advice or help I give her is free. I’m not trying to sell her or you anything. I will make recommendations, however, and consider it holding up my part of the bargain to do so. Some of those recommendations will be to purchase items. Whether you and Linda decide to follow my advice is completely up to you. All I ask is that we give this effort at least one meeting a week for four weeks–six if we feel inspired. It takes time to change and then more time to get used to the changes.
“Is that agreeable?”
Mrs. Polk who, as she listened to my words seemed to be hiding behind her coffee cup, cleared her throat, then set down the cup. “What exactly are you gonna do to Linda?”
“I’m going to teach her how to feel beautiful.”
“Feel beautiful?” Mrs. Polk frowned. “How do you teach somebody to ‘feel’ beautiful?”
“By changing the way she looks on the outside until how she feels on the inside catches up.” Linda’s mother looked doubtful, so I did a little damage control. “We’re not going to do anything drastic,” I said. “I’m going to evaluate her best assets, then show her how to enhance them.”
“We can’t afford no nose surgery or—” Her face flushed“—other things like that.”
I assumed she might be thinking of breast implants which seemed to be the subject du jour when anyone mentioned improving their ‘assets.’ “Linda doesn’t need any surgery,” I said. “Come here, Linda.”
Linda obediently rose and moved to stand next to me. I stepped behind her and took her by the shoulders. “She’s tall,” I said. “That’s good. It means she can wear a greater variety of clothing styles. Unfortunately, that probably makes her taller than most of the boys in her class but that’ll change soon enough.”
I rested my hands on her hips, gathering the folds of the baggy style shirt she wore more often than not. Her waist appeared. “I’d guess she’s a size eight, a ten in some things.”
“Huge,” Linda moaned.
“Just right,” I corrected. “Short, tall, fat, skinny—none of that has much to do with beauty.”
Linda bowed her head. “But I’ve got no boobs, and you can’t tell me that doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, yes, I can.” With Linda’s shirt tighter, it was easy to ascertain that her breasts, although not large, were certainly enough material to work with for male approval. Men were silly creatures when it came to breasts, they had trouble telling the real from the artfully enhanced and by the time they found the truth, they usually didn’t care.
Linda fidgeted a little under her mother’s and my scrutiny, but I didn’t let her go.
“You could get her some falsies,” Mrs. Polk said.
“Hmmm. It’s always been my theory that it’s not what you can afford to add on, it’s how you present what you were born with. Beauty is an illusion. I’m going to teach Linda how to find her own look and maintain it.”
Linda blushed, but her mother nodded.
I released Linda’s waist and pulled her hair back away from her face. “All right, my sweet, the first thing we’ll do is get you a good haircut. One that works with your bone structure and shows off your eyes. It also has to be one that doesn’t take a lot of maintenance.” I tugged on Linda’s hair playfully, then let it fall forward into place. “The better the cut, the easier the style. Did you find some styles you liked in the magazines?”
“Yeah,” Linda answered eagerly. She pulled a stack from a paper bag.
We spent the next hour discussing hair textures, cuts, the pros and cons of highlights versus hair color and by the time they were ready to leave, we’d narrowed the field to one cut with another as a second choice. Mrs. Polk made few comments, either from genuine shyness or, more likely, the willingness to let me hang myself with my opinions. She did, however, say that Linda’s father would never allow her to dye her hair a brighter shade of blonde. The haircut in the photo Linda had chosen featured a singer with platinum blonde hair.
I shook my head. “We’re not doing any bleaching. We’re only changing the cut. I made an appointment at 3:00 on Monday with Rainey Ann Cecil at the Goldilocks salon.” The Goldilocks Hair, Nail and Tanning Salon. I’d been assured that Rainey Ann Cecil was the top stylist in Mossy Creek, and no, there was no need to drive twenty minutes south to Bigelow. I also knew that since Linda was too young to drive, it would be better to find someone close to do her hair the way she wanted it.
But with a folksy stylist named Rainey Ann and a shop named Goldilocks, I feared the attack of the big-haired hair-do. If my memory served me correctly, Goldilocks and the Three Bears had not come to a happy ending. That could have been my cynicism showing, however. At this point, my greatest hope was that this Rainey would take an interest in Linda and go all out to help an awkward, duckling of a teenager turn into a swan.
Just like me.
* * * *
“You want me to do her hair like that?” Rainey Ann Cecil said, loudly enough to be heard over the drone of three hair dryers and the conversation about The Young and The Restless taking place at the shampoo area.
Suddenly, every ear in the shop seemed to readjust, like antenna, in our direction.
“Her daddy would come in here with a gun if I made this girl look like that, that . . . tattooed punk singer,” she said, poking the magazine I held in front of her with a long, pink artificial nail.
“We don’t want her hair to look exactly like this, Rainey Ann,” I said carefully. “Just cut this way.”
“The name’s Rainey, not Rainey Ann.”
“Sorry.”
Rainey’s frown increased, but she took the magazine from my hands and studied it. Then, shaking her head, she handed it back. “That cut won’t look right on her,” she said emphatically. She spun the chair around. “Here, Linda, sit down. I’ll show you how we should fix your hair.”
Linda started to obey, but I stopped her. I held the magazine next to Linda’s face. “Rainey, don’t you see how it’s shaped around the eyes? In your professional opinion, wouldn’t that be a good frame for Linda’s face?” It wouldn’t do to order Rainey around. My quick assessment of her shop told me she ran a successful business. And she might be a little on the tacky side, personally, but I’d already noticed a couple of her customers leaving with impressively current hairstyles.
And, the most important part, she was armed with a sharp pair of scissors.
Rainey brought her pink enameled fingers to rest on the hips of her snug pink jeans. “Look. Time is money. You made the appointment. Do you want me to cut her hair, or not?”
I carefully closed the magazine and handed it to Linda. Every eye in the shop seemed to be on us but I couldn’t help that. Even the water faucets in the shampoo area had gone silent. Knowing I was still a stranger in this town, I’d done my best to dress casually and had pulled my own hair back into a non-descript, non-threatening jumble of curls. But, stranger or not, we were paying customers, and
I wasn’t about to allow a stubborn stylist to change the plans Linda and I had discussed.
“How much is the haircut?” I asked.
“Fifteen dollars with the styling.” She leaned close to me and whispered, “Look, I’m not trying to give you a load of grief, but I’ve got a lot on my mind these days, and the last thing I want is for Linda Polk’s daddy to go on a rant because I gave her a sexed-up haircut. I feel sorry for the poor girl just like you do, but if I send her home with a punk-hussy hair-do her daddy will kill her.”
Her choice of words sent a cold trickle of defense down my spine. “I never realized a hairstyle had anything to do with moral judgments.”
“Go tell that to Linda’s redneck daddy.”
I pulled my wallet from my purse and took out a bill. “Here’s a twenty. Keep the change.” I turned and captured Linda’s arm. “Let’s go.”
Linda, shocked into confused silence, allowed me to lead her through the shop to the front door. By the time we reached it, Rainey had found her voice. “Lor’, if that doesn’t put the ant in arrogant,” she said loudly.
The door closed before I had to answer.
“So much for Goldilocks.”
“Where are we going now?” Linda asked as I unlocked the car. “To Bigelow?”
“No, I don’t think so. Let’s stop by my house and make some calls.”
Forty minutes later, with Linda’s mother’s reluctant permission, we were on our way to Atlanta to a stylist named Leon in a shop called “Fresco’s.” I’d had my hair done there occasionally in the past year but had stopped going after being lectured on my ‘lack of attitude.’
“How can you not care that your roots look like corn rows?” Leon had tut-tutted the last time he’d seen me. Instead of insulting me, he’d made me laugh. He’d been scandalized when I’d explained that my hair was in retirement.
Reunion at Mossy Creek Page 15