The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (21 page)

O
ne afternoon I was working particularly late on a dye job. It was a challenging case, as the client had come in asking me to fix a bad dye job she’d gotten the week before that had made her miserable. As Ricky had predicted, I was starting to get a couple of these kinds of referrals a month, as well as building my own loyal clientele. Anyway, as I was working that evening, I glanced up to my mirror and—I swear, it was like I had a vision. The most beautiful man I’d ever seen was standing behind me. He looked slightly Cajun, with dark, curly hair, golden skin, and a wiry, muscular body.

What was he doing at L’Académie? I knew everybody’s husbands, and he wasn’t one of them. He caught me looking at him in the mirror and gave me a little smile. My customer saw that and said, “Calla, now remember that I want my hair a nice soft black—but with just a hint of brown, not like the hair of some kind of woman with her head sticking out of a hovel in Portugal. I want an uptown black that looks good with things like a deep true red satin.”

Oh, what these women tell me!

I couldn’t stop glancing at the man, though. I had to keep pulling myself back, thinking, “This is your work, concentrate on your work.”

The man had on cowboy boots and old jeans that fit him very well. Those jeans looked like they buttoned up the front, instead of zipping. I don’t usually notice things like that on men, but there was something about the way those jeans
fit
. I thought maybe the buttons were part of the reason that those jeans looked that way.
That’s not it, Calla. It’s his body
. The man just wandered around, looking at the hairdo pictures on the opposite wall.

I could just see myself running straight to him, jumping up and wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck.
Girl, get a hold of yourself! This is your work. You have a reputation to uphold.

Finally, I finished the dye job, sent my new client happily back out in the world, and went to the ladies’ room to clean up. I looked in the mirror and thought,
Hmm, why don’t I loosen my hair a little bit around the sides. And you know, I could use another little dab of lipstick and just a little bit of blush.

But when I came out, the man was gone. I was surprised at how disappointed I felt.

I was cleaning my station a few minutes later when Ricky called out from his office. “Calla, come on back here.”

I did, and the man was right there, sitting across from Ricky. “Calla, I want you to meet my cousin,” Ricky said. “This is Sweet, Sweet Chalon. His boat is in New Orleans for repairs, so he just dropped by to see me.”

“How do you do?” Sweet said, standing. I must have been just staring, because Sweet then offered, “You are Calla?”

“Oh,” I said, a little embarrassed. “Yes, my name is Calla Lily Ponder.”

“Calla Lily Ponder? Calla Lily.” He twirled his tongue around my name, and somehow I could see all the calla lilies lined up, just waiting for his tongue to say their name again. Calla Lily.

I realized that I was staring again, so I made myself choke out, “What brings you to our lovely city?” Then I let go a laugh that was a little too high, and told myself,
Bring it down, Calla.

He said, “Well, my boat engine. I run my own boat—I ferry the guys out to the oil rigs in the Gulf. I just came in from Cutoff, which is one of my usual stops, and my engine was making a noise I didn’t like. So I brought it in, and then I thought I’d drop in to see Ricky.”

“Ricky never told me he had a cousin who came to town.”

“Well, I don’t come in often. I usually see Ricky back in Donaldsonville with the rest of the family.”

I reminded myself to scold Ricky later for waiting so long to introduce us. “Well, how do you like it in the Big Easy?”

He said, “I think New Orleans is far out.”

I just laughed. I loved the way he said “far out.”

“When I come to town, I like to go get myself fed at Felix’s with some really good oysters. Just line them oysters up with saltine crackers, a good dipping sauce, some Dixie beer, and I’m in heaven.”

Ricky said, “Calla, Sweet’s having dinner with Steve and me tonight. Why don’t you drop by?”

And I thought, Sweet knows about Steve
.
That was another good sign, as far as I was concerned. Not every guy could handle his cousin liking men.

I said, “Yes, I would love that. I’ll just run home and change after work.”

“Don’t keep us waiting all night,” Ricky joked. “I know how you gals can draw out getting dressed.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

I left them and got my station clean and set up in record time. Then I ran home, undid my braid, and shook my hair loose. I flung open my closet doors, thinking, What am I going to wear? After rummaging around, I pulled out a pair of black jeans and my three pairs of cowboy boots: the red leather ones, the black ones with purple running up the side, and the brown ones. The brown ones looked too scuffed, the red leather seemed—oh, I don’t know. It just felt natural to wear the black with the purple stripes.

That meant I should wear my purple crepe shirt, which had a V-neck and sleeves that came down in big poufs. I loved that shirt. And I’d wear my braided belt with the little tassel.

And underneath—I rummaged through my underwear drawer and came across the lacy black panties Sukey gave me for my birthday a couple years ago. Back then I’d said, “Sukey, they’re too fancy! I’m never going to wear them! And look at how they’re cut—so low on the hips and high on the legs! I’d feel naked.”

But tonight I looked down at those panties and thought,
Oh, you’re just going to make me feel so flirty tonight.

I was almost all the way to Ricky’s when I heard bells chiming, even though I was nowhere near a church.

“That’s a sign,” I told myself, as I walked up Ricky’s front steps. “Bells chiming.”

Steve opened the door, and I gave him a big kiss on the cheek. Then Ricky called out, “Calla! Come on in! Pop you open a beer.”

“Thank you.”

And there was Sweet. He’d changed into a plain black T-shirt. You know, not a lot of men in Louisiana wear black. Usually it’s just the guys who play music. That black T-shirt looked great to me. It fit him well, and I could see Sweet’s muscles at the sides of his stomach.

“Hi, Calla,” he said.

And the way he said it was so courteous, but also playful. It shifted me from being nervous and tongue-tied to actually feeling relaxed.

“Y’all go ahead and sit down,” Ricky said. “I’ll fix you up something to eat. But first I’ll bring you a little something to snack on.”

Sweet and I sat on the couch together. Not a big man, I thought, but wiry. Maybe a little bow-legged
.
“Have you ever ridden in a rodeo?” I asked, before realizing that might sound rude.

He said, “It’s amazing you’d ask me that. When I was in high school, I used to bull ride until my mother made me quit. You know, just around in small-town rodeos.”

“Really!”

“Yeah, and I am flattered that you might have thought that.”

I was glad he didn’t ride the rodeos anymore. I didn’t want this man to get hurt, I wanted his body to stay just as it was. I could feel myself blushing as I felt his body touching mine.

“Yoo-hoo!” Ricky came over with a bowl of spiced cashew nuts.

“Oh, my favorite!” I said. “I can’t get enough of these.”

Sweet said, “Same here. I just love cashews—spicy, salty, any way I can get them. I could cover the side of a building with all the empty cans of cashews that I’ve eaten.”

“I can just picture that,” I told him. “All those cans sticking out. In the middle of each one you could start a plant growing, put something in that really spreads, like ivy.”

And he said, “Or honeysuckle.”

Then we just looked at each other. The word
honeysuckle
just hung there in the air between us.

I can’t even remember what Ricky made for dinner that night. All I could do was look at Sweet, listen to his voice, watch his eyes under those long lashes. Think about reaching out and stroking his golden skin.

Sweet—that was the right name for him.

The thrill of meeting Sweet was all mixed up with the excitement of Ricky’s new salon opening. He and Steve had bought an old house on Burgundy Street just outside of the Quarter, on the other side of Esplanade. Their plan was to live in part of it and convert the front rooms for the salon. When they’d first bought the house, the yard in back was a run-over, junk-filled mess, all overgrown and tangled up in weeds. But Ricky and Steve rolled up their sleeves every day after work and gradually transformed that place into the most beautiful and magical garden.

Right in the middle they had discovered a fig tree all covered over in vines that became the centerpiece of the garden. They’d also put in banana and lemon and kumquat trees and all kinds of fragrant flowers. And they’d strung little white lights everywhere and installed
two
fountains—one with the water shooting out of old bowling balls! Then Ricky collected all the broken-up china he could get and called his friends and said, “Okay, it’s time for hammering. I’m going to make cement pavers for the garden path and stick that china in it.”

Ricky even drove out to Metairie to pick up a bunch of blue and yellow pottery and told his neighbors, “Listen, if you’ve got any extra pieces of garden decorations, I want them—I don’t care how broken they are.” Over time they gave him pieces of old fountains and iron gates and little angels with their wings broken off, and the walkway he eventually made was like a little piece of heaven, surrounded by the most beautiful and unusual plants and flowers I’d ever seen. Then one of Ricky’s neighbors told him that an antique chandelier of hers had crashed down out of the ceiling and was going to be thrown out. Well, Steve and Ricky got that cracked-up chandelier rewired and rigged it up right in the beautiful flourishing old fig tree at the center of everything.

“The garden still has a ways to go,” Ricky said, as he showed me around one day. “But we’re getting there!” Ricky and Steve had also gotten themselves a dog, a little cockapoo who they named Ginger Rogers because they claimed she danced when she walked. She loved to prance around their gorgeous garden, in and out of the gardenias.

I loved the way they fixed up that old house. They called the decorating style “Cuban Chinoiserie,” with a “Caribbean Fiestaware” kitchen done in turquoise, yellow, orange, and red. You walked from the colorful kitchen through screen doors out onto a porch that had turquoise-painted plank floors and white tables. It was a wonderful place for customers to sit and wait and take in the garden.

I could not wait for the salon to open. Besides Ricky, I would be the only other stylist. We all discussed a bunch of names for the new salon, but he had the confidence to keep it simple. So Ricky’s was born.

Finally the big night came—the opening party for Ricky’s! It took me ages to decide how to wear my hair, since after all, a cosmetologist’s look is her best advertisement. Ricky taught me that. Finally I settled on keeping it long, but curling it into what the latest hairstyle publications called “cocktail-party look,” soft and feminine, but romantically coiffed. It would be basically a deep dip of a wave, with long, loose ringlets held in place by a camellia.

I picked a little floaty chiffon dress to wear, with red and white swirls. It was ruffled around the neck and came down low, but not too low. Its waist was cinched in, and then the skirt flowed down. The ruffles around the skirt were just a little bit longer than mid-thigh to keep the lines going.

When I got to the party, the salon couldn’t have looked more beautiful. The entire front was decorated with sparkling Christmas lights, cowboy hats, all kinds of feather boas, Mardi Gras beads—you name it! Its French doors were flung wide open, and I could hear Ella Fitzgerald on the stereo.

I got there a little bit early, to help set up.

“I’m here!” I said. “Where’s my apron?”

“Ooh, la-la!” Ricky said as he greeted me. “My dear little Calla Lily of the Valley! Turn around. Yes, you look so flirty, sexy, fresh, and innocent—if I weren’t into my man a hundred and ten percent, I’d be into you.”

“Well, that’s a compliment!” I said. “Give me a kiss.” And he gave me a kiss on each cheek, like the French do. Then Steve came in and asked, “What are you doing, flirting with my girlfriend?”

Both Ricky and Steve were dressed to the ninety-nines, as they put it. Ricky was wearing a pair of vintage white baggy linen pants with a gold silk shirt, and beige-and-white two-tone shoes. Steve wore a stylish pair of slacks with a light pink oxford cloth shirt.

We were in the kitchen when the first guest to arrive was JoAnn, whom I’d invited. “Don’t worry,” she told me. “It doesn’t hurt me one bit that you are wearing a new dress. I am not offended. Not to worry, doll, my ego was removed surgically years ago.”

Then she gave me a big kiss. She had picked up a stunning indigo-colored vase as an opening gift. My own gift was a vintage set of beauty tools—combs, brushes, and a manicure kit.

Then, as I was tying on my apron, who should appear but Sweet, carrying a big heavy pot from which I could smell some good cooking. Ricky hadn’t told me his cousin was coming! My heart was racing. I’d just recently started wearing M’Dear’s ring on my hand, and now I rubbed it, trying to calm down.

Sweet gave me a big smile as he walked up and said, “Calla Lily, it’s good to see you again.”

I just melted at that smile. Sweet had on a pair of tight bell-bottom jeans with the most beautiful embroidery down the side, spelling P-EA-C-E. I liked that he wasn’t afraid to wear them. And his shirt was aqua, with rolled-up sleeves that were kept up by little buttoned tabs.

His hair was long—thick, black Cajun hair—and those dark eyebrows set off his blue-blue eyes. Oh! He was gorgeous.

“Did you come early?” I asked him, immediately realizing what a dumb question it was.