Читать книгу Beauty Shop Tales - Nancy Thompson Robards - Страница 6

I want to die.

Truly, I do.

Because I hate surprises. My mother knows it. Still, once she gets an idea in that red head of hers, she tends to forget everything outside the scope of her plan.

The surprise banner-flying airport welcoming committee—a collection of at least twenty of Sago Beach’s finest—has my mother’s name written all over it.

The scene unfolds as the escalator carries me from the main terminal down to baggage claim, and I reconcile that, ready or not, this is small-town life. It’s nothing like Hollywood, where you’re invisible unless you’re the It Girl of the Moment.

I have two choices: I can either turn and hightail it back up the escalator, or suck it up and greet them like a decent person. It only takes a split second to decide that despite the embarrassment factor of seeing my name along with the words Sago Beach’s very own beauty operator to the stars, emblazoned in bright letters on a long sheet of brown craft paper, I’m touched that these people would take the time to make a banner, much less come all the way to Orlando—a good hour’s drive from the coast—to make me feel welcome.

Ready or not, I’m home.

“All this is for you?” Max smiles and a dimple winks at me from his left cheek.

I hitch the tote with Chet’s ashes upon my shoulder, feeling oddly sheepish and a little unfaithful that all of them will see a strange man talking to me.

“Beauty operator to the stars, huh?” He whistles. “I didn’t realize I was sitting next to royalty.”

“They’re good people,” I say, suddenly protective of the folks, who, just a moment ago, embarrassed the living daylights out of me.

“I can see that. They’re really glad you’re back.”

The escalator reaches the bottom, delivering us to the baggage claim, and my friends and family surge forward.

“Nice to meet you, princess,” he says.

Princess? Normally, I’d spit out a snappy retort, but with my welcoming committee rallying around me, I don’t want to encourage any further conversation with Max. That would only lead to questions from the fine people of Sago Beach. Especially Mama.

I do the next best thing. I pretend I didn’t hear him as everyone envelopes me.

Mama is at the helm, of course, hugging me first. Her hair is the same rusty-carrot shade that it’s been for as far back as I can remember. It’s long and big, as if Dolly Parton had a run-in with a vat of V8 juice. She’s a beautiful sight, and I feel so safe in her slight arms that I want to cry.

There’s Justine Wittage and Carolyn Hayward, Mama’s longtime customers, Bucky Farley and Tim Dennison, among others in the crowd, who hug and kiss me and say, “Oh, darlin’ ain’t you a sight?”

My old friend Kally is conspicuously absent from the fray. It gives me a little pang that she didn’t come, but we haven’t exactly been on good terms the past five years or so.

“I suppose you’re too good for us now that you’ve been hobnobbing with them movie stars?” Marjorie Cooper, Sago Beach’s token busybody, smiles her wonderful gaptoothed smile.

“Of course not, Margie, I’m still the same girl you’ve always known.”

“I know ya are, hon. I’m just yanking your chain.” She enfolds me in a hug that threatens to squeeze the stuffing out of me. “It’s so good to have you home.”

Finally, after everyone has a chance to say hello, they decide to head for home.

“No sense in you all standing around and waiting for the baggage,” Mama insists. “Y’all go on back home.”

This incites another round of hugs and welcome-homes and I feel a twinge of guilt that they all made the two-hour round-trip for less than five minutes of togetherness.

“We’ll see you soon,” says Bucky Farley, who has lingered behind the rest of them.

“Bucky, you go on now and get out of here. We’ll manage just fine.”

Mama growls the words like a tiger. I wonder what’s got her back up all of a sudden. For a split second, I wonder if she’s going to object to any and all men who show interest in me. Not that I’m interested in dating Bucky. He’s not my type at all—not quite old enough to be my father, more like an uncle.

If there’s one thing I don’t need it’s my mother screening my friends. But she loved Chet. We’d been a couple so long, we were like one person. It would take everyone a while to get used to me being on my own.

Mama links her arm through mine as we move to carousel number four to get my bags. I glance up and see Max standing alone across the way. He smiles and tips his hat.

“Who is that?” Mama blurts.

I shrug nonchalantly, looking everywhere but in his direction. “He sat next to me on the plane.”

“Handsome.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“He certainly noticed you. Look at him staring.” So much for the Bucky Farley theory. “Did you give him your number?”

“Mother.”

“Well, he certainly is nice-looking—”

“Stop it.”

“Avril, honey, I know you loved Chet. We all loved him, but you’re a young woman. There’s no harm in giving a good-looking guy your phone number.”

I haven’t even been home for a full hour and already she’s pushing my buttons.

“He didn’t ask for my number. Okay? Besides, I don’t have to hook up with the first guy who’s nice to me.”

“I didn’t suggest anything of the sort. But you’ve got to start somewhere and well, why not go for one with looks?”

One of my bags pops out of the chute and I retrieve it with hopes this interruption will preempt further discussion about the cowboy. I don’t want to argue with my mother on my first day back. Now that I’m home, I’ll have the rest of my life to do that.

When I turn to haul the big, black bag over to her so she can watch it while I collect the rest of my things, she’s not there. I make a slow circle until I finally spot her on the other side of baggage claim talking to Max, pen and paper in hand.

“IF HE WANTED MY telephone number, he would’ve asked me for it.” I feel murderous as I heft my bags into the trunk of Mama’s pristine 1955, cherry-red T-Bird, which she’s parked catty-corner across two spaces in the airport garage.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her parking like this is begging someone to key the gleaming paint, but when I turn around, she’s standing there watching me with her arms akimbo, one hip jutting out, an undaunted smile on her face.

Vintage Tess Mulligan.

“Oh, don’t get your panties in a wad, baby. Do you really think I’d give your phone number to a total stranger—even if he was a tall hunk of handsome man? Even if the number I’d be giving out is my phone number? Hmm. Maybe I should’ve given him the number.” She mutters this last part under her breath and I want to tell her to go for it, to knock herself out.

I love my mother. We’re close, despite her ability to drive a stuffed elephant up the wall. If I’m completely honest, I suppose the things I do don’t make sense to her. It’s one of those weird codependent relationships.

I can get mad at her, but if anyone else uttered a cross word about her, they’d have to deal with me. And it wouldn’t be pretty.

When I lived in California, the miles between us helped. She flew out to see me about four times a year—and about every two months since I lost Chet—because of my fear of flying. In fact, I haven’t been home in years since she was so good about coming out to visit.

The distance was our friend. When she meddled, I could curtail the phone conversation, and the next time we talked she’d be on to something else.

The staccato honk of someone locking a vehicle echoes in the garage and a car whooshes by belching a plume of exhaust as the driver accelerates.

Mama brandishes a cream-colored business card like a magician making a coin appear from thin air. “I got his number for you. The ball is in your court, missy. You’ve gotta call him.”

“I’m not calling him.” I spit the words like darts over the top of the car, but she ducks and slides into the driver’s seat.

I slam the trunk and fume for a few seconds.

Why did I think she’d give me even a short grace period before she started her antics? It’ll be a small miracle if we don’t kill each other living under the same roof and working in the same salon—even if it’s only for the interim.

Moisture beads on my forehead, my upper lip, the small of my back. It’s warm for February—but that’s Florida for you—and my Dolce & Gabbanas suddenly feel like suffocating plastic wrap.

I don’t need someone collecting business cards for me. I can get my own dates. If and when I’m ready to do so.

Feeling trapped inside the four walls of chez Tess Mulligan—well, her car, anyway—finding a place of my own leaps to the top of my mental priority list.

Mama cranks the engine, and I open the car door and buckle myself in for a bumpy ride.

As she slips the gearshift into Reverse, her nails, the same red as her car, click on the metal shaft. Then she stretches her right arm over the seatback. Her compact little body lists toward me as she looks over her shoulder before cranking the wheel with her left hand and maneuvering the car out of the parking spaces.

In the graying garage light, I see the deep etchings time has sketched on her face. They seem more pronounced, shadowed, in this half light. At this angle, the crepey skin of her throat looks loose and paper-thin. In this quiet moment, I see beneath the bold, brassiness of her facade down to the heart and soul. She looks older, mortal, vulnerable. Funny, how these things go unnoticed during the daily razzmatazz of the Tess Mulligan show—until the camera fades and the lights go down and she’s not performing for an audience.

I swallow the harsh words sizzling in my mouth and wash them down with a little compassion. Even though the zingers stick in my throat, I turn the subject to a more amiable topic.

“How’s Kally?”

Mama’s jaw tightens. She shifts forward on the seat, her posture rod-straight, and shrugs.

Kally and I have known each other since we were in diapers. Once, she was my best friend in the world. Chet’s, too. In fact, she and this guy, Jake Brumly, and Chet and I used to be known as the fearsome foursome in high school.

Then we grew up.

She and Jake broke up. Chet and I got married and moved away. I’d like to say life just got in the way, but it’s not that simple. In fact, it got downright ugly—all because of money.

It’s awful. It really is.

About four or five years ago, Chet told her we’d invest in this business of hers, this artsy—or so I’ve heard, I’ve never seen it—coffee shop called Lady Marmalade’s. As much as we both adored Kally and as much as Chet wanted everyone back home to believe we were living the beautiful life in L.A., we didn’t have that kind of extra cash. I had to be the heavy and say no.

She got mad when we pulled out. Just like that. Can you imagine?

Then she had a kid and our paths sort of forked off in two different directions before we could make amends.

I suppose I didn’t help matters.

I’ll admit it, I was a little jealous when she got pregnant. Okay, I was a lot jealous because she had the one thing I desperately wanted and couldn’t have. A baby.

I would’ve traded all the Hollywood glitz and glam, all the movies I worked on, all the parties and elbow-rubbing with the stars for one precious little baby.

But when you’re infertile, all the bargaining in the world doesn’t make a difference.

And Kally wasn’t even married. Still isn’t as far as I know. If you don’t think that raised a few Sago Beach brows?

Mama is still ticked at Kally. Not because she had a baby out of wedlock. Because come to find out, even after I put my foot down about not lending her the money, Chet went behind my back and funded her business. In the aftermath of his death, I discovered Chet had a checking account I knew nothing about. Through it, I followed a messy paper trail of canceled checks made out to Kally. He was funneling her the money that was supposed to go into our 401K. Four freakin’ years of this. I had no idea the money wasn’t going where it was supposed to go. Chet was the financier of our relationship, paid the bills, set the budget—which is why I was flabbergasted when he suggested we invest in Kally’s business. He knew better than I that we didn’t have the extra cash.

This is not a good thing to uncover just weeks after your husband dies. This secret felt like I’d discovered they were having an affair—thank God for that twenty-seven-hundred-mile chastity belt. Or I might have suspected something, which was stupid because in all the years we’d known each other, never ever did I pick up one iota of a vibe that they might be interested in a little hanky panky.

It was too much to handle all at once, these two disasters. It’s not like I could get answers from Chet, and Kally was pretty tightlipped when I asked her to explain.

Mama went totally ballistic. She called up Kally, read her the riot act and asked her how she could take that money from us? I suppose she felt Kally had betrayed her by virtue of betraying me and took it doubly hard because Kally had always been like another daughter to her. Especially after Kally’s mother, Caro, passed away, gosh…not too long before Chet started giving Kally the money.

Mama went off, insisting Kally give me a stake in Lady Marmalade’s since the money that kept the place afloat should’ve gone to take care of me after my husband’s death.

For the record, I want nothing to do with that coffee shop. As far as I’m concerned, I’ll go five miles out of my way to avoid it, which might not be so hard since she chose to set up shop over in Cocoa Beach.

I’ve had months to make my peace with the situation. And I have, for the most part. Really.

Kally and I haven’t talked. But I’m at peace. Which is a good thing since I’m bound to run in to her now that I’m back.

All I know is if Kally Fuller could take the money and still look at herself in the mirror—Well, I suppose she’s ventured farther down that divergent path than I realized she was capable.

As my mother nears the line of tollbooths, she grabs her purse and roots around in it, alternately looking down at her lap and back at the road.

“Here, Mama, let me pay for this. How much is it?” I unbuckle my purse for my wallet.

She pulls out a twenty and waves me off. “I got it.”

“I wish you’d at least let me pay the toll. You drove all the way over here to get me—”

“I’m your mother. Of course I’d do that. You just hush.” She rolls down her window and hands the toll-taker the money.

I sink into my seat, twelve years old again, my mother running the show.