The Sisterhood of the Queen Mamas Page 12

  Chapter Nine

  I hope you’re not looking here for some opening remarks by Odessa, because she is indisposed right now. You see, she has totally lost her mind.

  Not gone-around-the-bend lost her mind, but more gone-hog-wild-with-this-whole-making-over-Chloe-deal lost her mind. Lost track of time, and certainly lost control over her action council, which had gathered here to discuss complaints against the flea market and what actions we would recommend to address them. Unless we can slap some moisturizer on those complaints… (Odessa says, “This is Texas. We have big winds, bright sun and bad habits. If you want to have a dewy complexion here, you either got to sleep facedown in the grass or start moisturizer young!”) Now where was I? Oh, yes, unless you can slap some moisturizer or costume jewelry on those complaints and call them intriguing alternative impressions, they will stay pushed to the side for today. Just like some sad wall-flower that never had the benefit of what henceforth I shall call Odessaizing.

  I have to admit, last time I peeked in, our scary-haired Chloe had cleaned up pretty good. Not that she was dirty. Around here, “cleaned up” refers to what you do when you get out of your everyday work or play clothes and put on what we used to call your “Sunday best,” though people don’t even dress all that well for church anymore, have you noticed that? When I was a young woman, even social invites came with “Sunday dress acceptable” printed on them, right where they might otherwise have put “Black tie,” “Formal” or “Casual.”

  Not that that has anything to do with what’s going on in the back bedroom of Jan Belmont’s home. Guess now you know why I don’t do these introduction bits. I tell y’all, if this story were a sandwich, this right here would be the cheesy part!

  Now, I know Odessa tries to impart some wisdom or offer something to think about before just jumping into the next part of the story, but for the life of me I can’t imagine what we can learn from all that primping and pretty-making. Unless you need grooming and hair tips. I am in awe of what Odessa can do with a rattail comb and a can of Aqua Net. Guess it just took the challenge of taking a young girl’s look from havoc to, as Chloe puts it, hot.

  Oh, there you go. That’s it. Hot.

  Sometimes you just don’t know what another person is capable of doing until you see them under fire.

  “No open flames, Maxine!”

  “You said you didn’t have time to do this, Odessa.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then stay out of it, or get out here on this page and do it proper.”

  “I can’t leave right now. It’s a crucial moment in completing the structure of the hairdo.”

  “Why do I suddenly feel like that child is going to walk out here with her hair sculpted into a replica of the Alamo?”

  “It won’t be the Alamo, but it will be worth remembering, I tell you what, Maxine. And in the meantime, no open flames. There’s so much combustible vapor saturating this room that one flicker or wayward flash and Jan’s house is liable to go up in a blaze like…well, like a house afire.”

  Picture me rolling my eyes at that.

  Okay, how about this for the introductory life lesson or thing you might not otherwise have considered?

  Most folks are like a big ol’ can of hair spray. You never can tell what they’ll pull together until you put them under serious pressure!

  “Ta-da!”

  “Odessa?” Maxine sat dead center on Jan’s couch, looking for all the world like someone terrified of so much as denting a throw pillow.

  “What?” I asked.

  My dear friend tipped her head only slightly. “You’re tadaing an empty doorway.”

  I spun around.

  No Chloe. No ta-da!

  To play up the big revelation of the brand-new Chloe, I had sent everyone out of the master bathroom while I put the finishing touches on the girl.

  Before taking her place in a straight-backed chair by the white brick fireplace, Jan had tucked Morty and his ever-blaring TV in a back bedroom—heard but not seen, as it were.

  That left his recliner open for Gallina Roja, and she snuggled down into her roost until she was all skinny legs and arms, with two beady, watchful eyes peering over her crooked nose.

  Gloria Alvarez, who I thought would have put up the most fuss about me throwing her meeting out of whack, had instead gotten right into the spirit of things. Maybe she had wished she could do the same kind of thing for her daughter, I don’t know. But I do know she had taken it upon herself to remove the full-length mirror from inside Jan’s closet, carry it into the front room and hold it up so that Chloe could enjoy the full effect of my—of our—efforts.

  “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s having a ta-da moment go to pot,” I said. I leaned toward the door, careful in case the child should come hurrying down the hall and run head-on into me. I knew how stiff we’d made the hair on that particular head, and figured one wayward curl could probably put an eye out. “Chloe?

  No answer.

  Maxine shifted gingerly on the couch. “Maybe that hairdo is working like earmuffs and she can’t hear you.”

  Jan blinked like a bored housecat.

  Gallina Roja slapped the sides of her elevated feet together on the footrest and chirped something in Spanish about the girl not keeping us waiting. Or about time being fleeting, or maybe about time being a big girl. I’m not sure. The words are close, the woman was speaking fast.

  Either way, Gloria glanced in the mirror as soon as she said it and prodded the soft pad of flesh under her chin and frowned.

  From the looks of things around me, I could see if Chloe didn’t get out here soon, the moment could go downhill fast.

  “Chloe?” I stretched my neck out, as if those few extra centimeters might make all the difference in her hearing me through the long hallway, two sets of doors and those carefully coiled curls. “You coming out, honey?”

  “Not until you promise” came the terse reply.

  I jerked up straight and pressed my lips tight.

  “Promise what?” Maxine called out, when I failed to respond.

  I glared at my friend, shaking my head and hoping she would get my message: Do not negotiate with rogue makeover models. You know where this girl has worked and seen the tattoo ink and metal studs she has applied to lesser folks than us. Pipe down. She will eventually come out if we don’t say a word.

  Even in my silent moments, I tend to say too much.

  “Ms. Pepperdine?” Chloe called again.

  “Come out, Chloe.” I said it all sugarcoated, too, and like I had never heard her request. “Everyone is so excited to see you. Don’t make them wait any longer. Why aren’t you coming out?”

  “My hair is too poofy!”

  I sighed real big, so everyone could see what all this was taking out of me—you know, like a regular tortured artist. Then I put the back of my hand to my forehead, extra-dramatic-like, and closed my eyes. “The poof, my dear, is the pièce de résistance.”

  “It’s resisting my pushing down on it, if that’s what you mean” came the answer from the dark end of the long hallway.

  “Oh, my dear! Don’t do that! Don’t push down on it.” I raised my hands and tried not to dwell on the image forming in my mind. All that time and work with the curling iron, reduced to a lopsided flop under the pressure of a sweaty, determined palm. “Smooth over it. Shake it out. Even compress gently, if you have to, but don’t ever push.”

  Maxine broke out in a hearty laugh. “Don’t push?”

  “What?” I said, snippy but dignified.

  Still laughing, Maxine shook her head. “It’s just those words coming from you, Odessa. ‘Smooth over.’ ‘Shake it out.’ ‘Compress gently.’ That might be advice we could politely overlook without a snicker, but ‘Don’t push’?”

  I got her point. As I may have said before, Maxine is nothing if not a woman with a point. That kind of thing can really get on the nerves of those of us who, while not entirely pointless, might embrace a less direct
line of reasoning in forming our opinions and world views.

  “‘Don’t push’ is not a term I associate with the woman who just marched into Jan’s home and strong-arm commandeered Gloria’s subcommittee.”

  I glanced from Jan to Gloria. Both of them smiled to let on that they did not hold my actions against me.

  Maxine was just being testy because she had signed on, and reluctantly so, only to help me give romance a little push where Bernadette was concerned. Now she suddenly found herself taking on Chloe, too, and Chloe was not cooperating.

  “You came in here and ambushed that young girl.” Maxine silently tacked on “and me” with a stern glance. “Now you tell her that the last thing she should ever do is push?”

  I tightened my lips against my teeth. It was not quite a pout, but it was certainly not a sign of concession, either. On the one hand, Maxine was dead right. No argument. No justification offered to try to sway things even the slightest bit in my favor. On the other hand…Maxine was right.

  Yes, no matter how you looked at it, my friend was right.

  That made me wrong. Or wrong-ish. A state made all the more irritating by the fact that the longer she looked at me, the closer Maxine got to busting out laughing about my getting all petulant and…well, downright pushy, even as I warned against it.

  But what could I say? Maxine just wanted to remind me that this was a case of reaping what I had sown. And while I wouldn’t strictly compare Chloe to the whirlwind in the Bible passage she was causing something of a dustup where my plans were concerned.

  “Well, thank you very much for your input, Maxine. I will certainly take that into account in my dealings with my action council and our little friend. Now, if you will excuse me…” I swiveled my head and hollered down the hall in a voice pulled from the depths of my gut, “Chloe, get out here!”

  “Only if you promise,” she called again, matching my indomitable tone with every syllable.

  I held my breath. On the one hand, God had given me this marvelous opportunity to witness to and show His love incarnate in the kindness of others to this hurting, seeking, fragile soul. On the other hand, the girl had worked in a tattoo parlor sticking metal rods in people for a living, when she wasn’t shoving compost-quality swill at them as a means of improving their health.

  I had to ask. “Promise you what?”

  “Promise if I come out there and pirouette and curtsy around for y’all that at some point you, Ms. Pepperdine, will let me take you shopping to get you a new outfit of my choice.”

  Maxine pointed a finger at me and giggled silently.

  “Can Maxine come, too?” I asked.

  “Does Maxine want to come?” Chloe shot back, without missing a beat.

  Maxine shook her head so violently I thought it would send her lipstick sliding off onto her earlobe.

  “She’d love to,” I said, smiling in self-satisfied triumph.

  “Okay.” The voice from down the hallway got louder, and I could only assume that Chloe had left the bathroom at last and was moving into the master bedroom.

  The TV droned through the door across from the bottom of the stairs.

  “As long as I don’t have to pay for anything, you can all come.” Chloe’s voice was moving closer to the hall.

  Jan glowered, just daring me to try to include her in that expedition.

  Gloria held her hand up in the universal sign for “Stop in the name of love,” only I don’t think love was her main motivator.

  Gallina Roja alone clapped her hands together in delight and asked, “When do we leave?”

  “All right, then.” I spoke with my eyes cast upward, just imagining what David would think about this new twist in my evolving personality. No, not evolving, growing. Growing was better. I was not turning into something altogether new and strange, something adverse to my customary nature. I was only becoming more like the me I truly always was, or wanted to be. I was growing to take up more space in the world, in my relationships and inside myself. Blossoming. “Yes. Yes, I promise, Chloe. Now come on out and show everyone how lovely you look.”

  And she did look lovely. A bit retro, I suppose, given that the last time I had done a young woman’s hair up like this, that young woman had been…me. Well, as we say at the flea market, everything old is new again, and Chloe looked fresh and new and just darling.

  Everyone oohed and aahed, just as they should have. And just as she had assured me she would, Chloe spun around for all to see.

  I played fashion commentator, of course. “We borrowed the top from Jan’s things. I can’t believe it. Even though she’s over forty, she still has the figure of a twenty-year-old.”

  “Twenty-one,” Chloe corrected, stating her age proudly.

  Maxine mouthed the number, rolled her eyes just a little, and rounded her lips to mimic an astonished whistle. “I don’t know which one of them to be more jealous of. Chloe for being so young, or Jan for being so trim. And after…how many children, Jan?”

  “Three,” she held up her left hand and wriggled her fingers, making her heavy gold wedding band glow and her impressive diamond engagement ring wink in the afternoon sunlight. Then she turned her head toward the mantel and the photographs there, and the smile she had been wearing faded. She dropped her hand to her lap, curling her right hand around the three fingers she had raised before. “One right after the other. And that’s how they left when they moved off to college, one and then the next and then the next. It all happened so fast. So fast.”

  “You look trim enough to be in college yourself,” Gloria said, and we all nodded as if we actually thought shallow compliments might actually cheer Jan up a little.

  “When I was young, they told us you should count on gaining a dress size with every child you had.” Gallina Roja patted her flat tummy and cackled. “What did they know?”

  “You are not a fair example, Grandmother Alvarez.” Gloria shifted her expression and spoke with terse deference to her mother-in-law. “You only had the one baby.”

  “Yes, but I’ve had him for fifty-five years now. If that doesn’t put the pounds on you, what will?” Again she cackled, and the rest of us joined her.

  Except Gloria, who moved to prop the full-length mirror against the wall. “I’ve had him for thirty-six of those fifty-five years. If either of us was going to gain weight from babying that man, it should have been me.”

  “You got married when you were…” Chloe started to scratch her head, then froze when her pink-painted fingernails brushed a stiff curl. “Um, when you were that young?”

  “We were both nineteen,” Gloria said, shaking her head.

  “Wow,” Chloe whispered.

  “Twenty-one,” Maxine said, raising her hand.

  My hand went up too. “Twenty-two.”

  “The day after my eighteenth birthday.”

  “Really?” Being young herself, Chloe did not hide the surprise we all felt at Jan’s disclosure.

  I guess the others had probably felt, like me, that Jan Bishop Belmont had always done everything in perfect order for Texas girls of that day. High school cheerleader, pledge the right sorority, graduate with honors and marry your college sweetheart.

  “My parents didn’t like Morty.” She sighed and gazed toward the doorway and the room near the unseen bottom of the stairs. The TV roared. She chewed her lower lip, and for a moment I thought she might add some other observation about what she or others thought of the man now. Then she shook her head, blinked and fiddled with her bangs. “He’s almost a decade older than me, you know. He was a football coach, and we met the summer after I graduated high school. They wouldn’t let us get married, so as soon as I reached legal age…”

  “So you just…ran off together?”

  “Actually, yes. We eloped.”

  “Was it romantic?” Only Chloe would ask that. The rest of us—and I know this isn’t the best of Christian behavior—were trying to wrap our minds around the idea of a football coach and a cheerleader running
off together. What bitter feelings it must have engendered. What scandal. What…are the odds they really didn’t date one another until after she graduated?

  “I thought it was romantic.” Jan looked to the mantel again, leading the rest of us to do the same. I don’t know what she had expected to see there, but I had thought we’d find a wedding photo or some evidence of the connection between Jan and Morty. There was none. She exhaled in one hard rush, her shoulders slumping. “But then, I was young and in love.”

  “And you’re still in love, all these years later.” Chloe didn’t ask it, she declared it, in that hopeful way young people have of speaking their fondest wishes, then looking to others for confirmation.

  Jan smiled weakly.

  Chloe turned away from our hostess then, her face ever bright, and addressed the rest of us. Her eyes pleaded for someone to salvage the conversation. “How did you all know so young that your marriages would last?”

  “I listened to my heart,” I blurted out, without really giving it much thought.

  “I listened to the Lord,” Maxine added, and it could have sounded all snooty and like a bad case of one-upmanship, but it didn’t.

  “Gloria listened to me!” Gallina Roja said, shaking her carrot-topped head.

  We all looked from the older woman to Gloria, either for confirmation or to see if there was going to be an argument. Which—I confess it did cross my mind—would have been a really good way to get us off of feeling sorry for Jan and trying to tiptoe around the situation with Morty. Nothing detracts from one person’s obvious unhappiness like another person’s petty squabbles.

  “Tell them, Gloria. You knew you that if you married my son you would have to work to make it last forever, because you listened to me.” The old woman made repeated staccato motions with her index finger. “Tell them.”

  “I listened to my mother-in-law,” Gloria conceded, spreading her hands open. “How could I not? She talks to the Lord.”

  That broke the tension just enough for all of us to catch our breath.