Mum's the Word (20 page)

She recrossed her legs. “My grandmother used to talk that broken English. Came over as a girl from Li-ces-ter-shire, I think it was. You know anyone named Wright?”

“I'm sorry …” There went my discount.

“You passing through, or did you come with that Mangé group?” She made them sound as if they came in a packet with instructions for French onion dip on the back.

Shifty-eyed, as though confessing to membership in Jesse James's gang, I admitted the association.

“Tell me”—she reached over to a dish of mints—“what sort of goings-on is there … over to Devil's Island?”

“I really can't say.”

She juggled the mints in her hand. “Dice you into egg noodles, would they—if you squeal?”

“Nothing like that.” I was rifling through the rack of skirts with elastic fronts. “Society regulations demand absolute secrecy.”

“What?” She tilted her chair around on one leg to face me. “Passwords and contracts signed in blood—that sort of screwy business?”

I had nothing against her curiosity. It was, after all, perfectly natural. A healthy interest aroused by the possibility of unhealthy practices. Such attitudes abound. They explain the enormous success of books such as
Monster Mommy
. But all this talk of the Mangés was reminding me of that most covert of all operations—the … 
don't think ‘undercover' …
secret doings between Valicia X and my husband. On the verge of crying all over a candy-striped dress with a huge pink bow, I scooped it up along with several skirts and smocks and told Nelga Fashions that the Mangés might sign in gravy, but not blood.

One o'clock was still an hour out of reach; so on returning to the pavement I did a daring thing. I walked into the Scissor Cut, took deep breaths of hairspray and decided I was in luck.

My mission in the Scissor Cut was to be transformed from Before into After. I did not have Valicia X's flawless face and figure. My hair lacked amber highlights. But it was longer than Valicia's, and in a blaze of insight I knew that my marriage was salvageable. I was not compelled to tie Ben up with a red ribbon and hand him over to that woman. All I needed to do was get rid of my split ends.

Only one of the hairdryers was occupied and there were no heads in any of the three basins. The receptionist, who wore a T-shirt with “World's Best Great Grandma” on it, ran a finger down the book resting on the glass cabinet and said Barbara could take me.

Coming over, Barbara administered a quick smile without
looking at me. Usually the kiss of death from a hairdresser. But maybe she was embarrassed. Her eyes were a little red, and she spoke as though she had a cold. I followed her past the client under the hairdryer, an elderly lady sleeping as soundly as the terrier on her lap.

I was soon sitting on a black vinyl chair, neck arched back over the rim of the sink. Not the most comfortable of positions; the same I suppose could be said of childbirth.

The water was soothing. Barbara asked if I wanted conditioner and I gurgled a response. Hairdressers and dentists! Her massaging hands were relaxing. I was sinking into a warm well of comfort. Mendenhall brought in its drinking water, but there must be a well somewhere on the island. I wondered about the missing knives. Surely a Mangé competitor had not armed his or herself for the upcoming trials? I knew competition was fierce, but surely no one would carry things that far?

Suddenly water was splashing all over my face, gushing into my mouth, filling up my nose. I couldn't breathe, my neck was breaking and those hands, Barbara's hands, the hands of a woman who hadn't known I existed three minutes before, were pushing me down into a world of darkness where ghosts are the living. Strange, my last thoughts weren't of Ben, but of Rowland Foxworth, dear handsome vicar of St. Anselms. How awfully sad if the economics of returning me to British soil cheated him out of performing last offices.

“There, there cookie, you'll be fine. You've had a shock, is all. Here, take a couple of my nerve pills.”

A second voice—mentioning hot tea. Not too appealing considering it would be served the American way. Without milk. And none of my business, seeing I wasn't recipient of all this kindness. Great Grandmother Receptionist and Roxanne, hair stylist, were seated on a vinyl bench, arms draped around Barbara as she sobbed into a fluffy towel. I wore a similar one, which Grannie had absently dropped on my head, rather as though I were a parrot in a cage, whose squawks must be silenced before everyone developed screaming headaches.

“I'm so sorry!” Barbara lifted a face raw with tears. “I must have gone mad. You look like that little slut who stole my Dave. She bet Dave a
Bud Light
at the Catfish Fry she could eat him under the table. That's how it started. And I know I'll never get him back—not while she works at the bank!”

“Hush up, sweetie!” Roxanne rocked Barbara like a baby.

“If I don't let him see her Thursday nights, she could foreclose on the house. All week I've been thinking what if she comes in for a wash and blow dry. And just now it all got mixed up. That was Darlene's head over the basin …” The flood gates reopened.

“You cracked, is all!” Great Gran pressed a Styrofoam cup to the trembling lips, while Roxanne stroked the red hair.

“I'll lose my license. Then what happens to me and the kids? And
she'll
sue me for millions.” Her finger pointed at me. “Nothing else for it, I'll have to kill myself for insurance.” Barbara's voice rose, shrill as a whistling kettle.

Finally, the three of them were looking at me—not as a bona fide participator in this human drama, but as a witness who must be made to see reason.

Great Gran aimed a smile at me, guaranteed to warm the cockles of my heart, if not my soaked torso. “You do see, hon, how things are! Barb's been through one real hard time.”

Before I could answer, however, Roxanne grabbed my towel and began massaging my hair. “That red mark on your throat comes from wearing the neck of your dress too tight. Now how's about I give you a blow dry on the house and all the coffee you can drink?”

Gently but firmly I removed the towel and wadded it up into a ball. “Please, all of you, don't give my involvement another thought. I'm fine …”

“Are you sure?” Tears still splashed down Barbara's face.

“Yes.” Standing up, I patted her on the shoulder. Remembering Mary, I realized I'd been doing a lot of that today. “This has been a positive experience for me. When I came in my life didn't look too good—for reasons similar to yours, but I have been reminded that however bleak life is, it still beats the alternative.”

“Then you won't say a word?” Barbara said, still eyeing me suspiciously.

“Promise.” A wistful smile brushed my lips as I followed her to the loo to change. The Mangés had their secrets and so did I.

When I walked into Jimmy's Bar, I wasn't surprised that none of my fellow auxiliaries rushed up to me with cries of welcome. I was a changed woman. Roxanne had decided a blow dry was insufficient compensation. She had wound my hair on fat pink rollers, sprayed it with Stif-Set, and popped me under the dryer to bake until golden brown. And thus a country-and-western songstress was born. As for my clothes—I
had expected the switch over from regular wear to maternity to be an occasion worthy of a champagne toast, but it had happened in the loo at the Scissor Cut, without any beating of drums.

Jimmy's Bar might do great business, but I wasn't smitten with the red rubber floor or Styrofoam ceiling.

A good-looking chap in ultra-tight jeans wouldn't move fore or aft to let me pass. “Miss …” He was so close I could count his eyelashes.

“I'm trying to meet some people.” Scanning a tunnel between heads I saw Ernestine, from the neck up, over by the back wall.

“Miss, you are standing on my foot.”

“Sorry!” Men today are such frail creatures.

“You're also wearing a price sticker.”

Shucky dam! I climbed over three people to reach Ernestine and found her at a table with Solange and Henderson Brown, who was hiding out under his white sun hat. His gloom did not lift when the waitress headed our way. Probably disapproved of her substantial bosom refusing to be confined within the ruffled edge of her blouse. And from the looks of her Roman nose and iron jaw, she wasn't all that tickled with being decked out like Heidi on her way to Grandfather's chalet. Licking her thumb, she flipped over a page in her order book. “What's your pleasure, people.”

Henderson fought for the courage to speak out. “We need separate checks.”

“Ain't no extra charge.” Heidi had her pencil poised. “What you all want to drink?”

Solange and Ernestine ordered white zinfandel.

Henderson forced a thin smile. “I'm a chronic abstainer. Water please, if it's fresh.”

“Won't find better anywhere, with or without the French labels.” Heidi had a deep voice. “Natural spring water, crisp and clean as a spring day.”

For the first time post-Valicia X, I had to swallow a laugh. She sounded like a television advert. Flashback to the Mulberry Inn. Ben and I watching the excerpt from
Melancholy Mansion
and Mary Faith's interview with Harvard Smith. Now sitting there in Jimmy's Bar, the realization
swamped me that I was a puppet in the hand of fate, pranced and danced across thousands of miles to this place.

What can't be changed can be improved by a good lunch. “Hamburger, double fries, and a Coke, please.”

“Rest of you want to order?” Heidi cocked an eye at the big round clock above the bar. “Fashion show's due to start in ten minutes.”

Ernestine reminded us that Jeffries had turned down the chance to be a model. Henderson said he would have the vegetable beef soup, then changed his mind. Lois, he informed us sourly, made the best soup in the world. Trust Ernestine to hotly disagree. Her Bingo, at age three, could produce a
potage de légumes
that had your mouth watering a mile away. The comtesse, her heavy rouge darkening, stared into the crowd. Poor Eeyore—I mean Henderson! Mouth set in mutinous lines, he joined the rest of us in ordering a hamburger.

Before Heidi could escape, Ernestine asked if the man behind the bar was Jimmy.

“Him—grey-haired guy with chipmunk cheeks? That's our good old boy Sheriff Tom Dougherty. Comes in every day along of this time to check if there's any fight needs breaking up.”

“This town has its own sheriff?” Henderson would be writing his congressman to protest abuse of taxpayers' money.

Heidi looked him smack in the eye. “Believe it or not, sir, Mud Creek used to be the county seat. That's Jimmy up next to Sheriff Tom.”

“Jimmy's a
she
?” Henderson couldn't keep on at this pace, shocked one moment, aghast the next.

“You're looking at her! Name's Jemima on her birth certificate. But don't never let on I told.” Tucking the pencil behind her ear, Heidi was off with a rolling gait toward the door marked Private.

The crowd had shifted away from the bar providing us with a good view of the big-boned woman with hair that was stained, rather than dyed, a metallic red. She wore a satiny garment which could have been a negligee; a faded rose was stuck into her cleavage. Her face was caked with enough paint to do up a semidetached inside and out, and she had a
voice guaranteed to stop rabble-rousers dead. “Dad-blamed fly!” she roared, hand whapping down on the counter.

The conversation at our table flowed like water up hill. “Should always wear your hair like that, Ellie,” Ernestine said. “Makes your face look thinner.”

“You are an authority on fashion?” Solange surveyed the other woman's Friar Tuck coiffure, mustard dress and frog green beads. Did I detect a growing coolness between these two?

“Honey, I don't claim to be a glamour girl. Never could go out in the sun without turning into a hot dog. But that's all right with me because my family is what's important. Frank's and my money is spent on our child. But being childless, you can't know what real self-denial is. My Bingo's happiness, his …”

“His being a Mangé,
n'est-çe pas?
Mais oui
, you don't like so much when I tell you—before Monsieur and Ellee come—that my Vincent will not hand in his dreams to please you. He has tricks up his sleeve you don't dream!” Solange had changed from a photograph into a woman of fire. The cape collar of her black dress brushed the table as she snapped her flame-tipped fingers in Ernestine's outraged face. “I give this much for your Bingo. My poodles are the children of my heart. Angelique, Fleur, and the rest, how can they be content when their
papa
is sad? My Vincent is near to fifty and I am running close behind. He is bored of putting me in the oven on stage—making the big bang explosion before he brings out the burned chicken. My wish is for Vincent once in his life to find a dream that does not ask for me to be sliced in two.”