Mother of Prevention (15 page)

“Here you go.” I dispensed the cups, then went to my own station and flipped on the curling irons.

The phone rang. I took the handset out of my smock and said good-morning.

“I
quit.
”

I recognized Melody Turner’s nasal twang moments before she slammed the receiver down in my ear.

She quit. Great. Simply great. That was the second stylist that I’d lost this week.

Punching the off button, I took the short but succinct notice to be final. Well, fine. Melody had been skating on thin ice for weeks. She was habitually late, and inexcusably rude to clients. Good riddance.

Smiling, I moved to the desk, and walked right out of my three-inch pointy-toed black mule, which turned my ankle. Pain shot up my right hip. The one day I’d decided to “fit in” with the other stylists and wear a shoe that was about as comfortable as an ice pick in my ear, I’d turned my ankle. Muttering under my breath, I quickly stepped back into the fashion nuisance, nodding politely to the two waiting women. I would switch Mel’s clients to the new girl, due in any moment. I marked a distinct black
X
through Melody, and then carefully
copied her day’s appointments to Michelle’s relatively empty column. Some clients would be upset when they heard that Melody had “unexpectedly” terminated her employment, but most of them would be thrilled that the minor inconvenience had not interfered with a scheduled cut or color.

Susan and two fellow stylists breezed into the salon through the back door. In moments the salon had taken on the normal sounds of everyday life. Dryers were humming, the smell of shampoo coming from the bowls, the scent of fresh coffee in the air.

The tightness in my neck and shoulders started to ease. My first client wasn’t due until nine. I checked my watch and decided that I had time for a first cup of coffee. I was out of coffee at the house this morning, and anyway too hurried to make a pot if there had been some. Kris had misplaced her math book, and Kelli was cranky, complaining of a sore throat—her third in the past month. Both girls were struggling with their new routine. Where school had once been happily anticipated, they now dragged out the door as though facing a guillotine. Kris had managed to make some friends, but Kelli complained that nobody sat with her during lunch. Other than the birthday skating party, the girls had not penetrated a social circle. My heart broke, but I was too busy to grieve.

I was too busy to
live,
working overtime to pay for a house I now didn’t want.

I poured coffee, glancing up to check the wall clock over the shampoo bowls—8:50. The new girl was due in at nine o’clock. I was aware Melody’s first customer was sitting on the long white sofa, leafing through a
Vogue,
blissfully unaware of the crisis.

I carried my coffee back to my station.

Eight fifty-five. I was starting to get antsy. If this were my first day at the salon I would be here by now—early, even. I don’t like to be rushed, so I would have arrived thirty minutes before my scheduled time. Set up my station. Caught my breath.

The clock hand ticked off another minute.

Relax, Kate. You were impressed by Michelle Tate. She seemed bright, energetic and dependable.

What if she didn’t show? Melody had nine clients with appointments but no stylist! It wasn’t possible to fit nine people into the other stylists’ appointment books if Michelle didn’t show. I reached for the coffee and took a fortifying swig.

The woman flipping through
Vogue
eyed her watch, then the wall clock.

I took another sip of coffee, pretending interest in the long row of gels, mousses and conditioners lining the back of my station.

The woman glanced at me, then back to the magazine.

Please, dear God. Don’t do this to me.

Another five minutes crawled by. Then ten.

My client had arrived right on time, and I headed her straight for the shampoo bowl, smiling patiently at the orphaned customer—though she still was clueless.

“She’ll be here any minute,” I chirped.

Fuming on the inside, I wondered what kind of person took a job, then never showed up! I couldn’t do that. Good ole dependable me would have been there regardless. Hell or high water. I’d have been
here.

That’s your problem, Kate. You’re too dependable. Too responsible. You should go wild—do something totally absurd. Abandon your customer with a head full of lather and go shopping. Buy something thoroughly extravagant. Go have a picnic. Go back to Oklahoma. I was giddy with worry.

Overreacting, Kate. Calm down.

I glanced at the clock, frantically scrubbing my patron’s head. Bubbles lathered. The woman shifted in the chair.

“Ouch.”

“Sorry.”

The hose slipped out of my hand and I lunged for it. It sent a geyser across the shampoo bowls. I wrestled the gyrating hose
as if it were a python. My customer shot out of the chair like a wounded hen. She stood there watching me chasing the stupid hose around the chair bottom in my equally stupid mules, looking as if she was going to hit me. I finally regained enough sense to reach up and turn off the water.

Miraculously—I would
never
again accuse God of ignoring my pleas—the front door opened, and inside marched Michelle looking as confident as four aces. My knees buckled.

Hurriedly draping my furious client in towels, I excused myself, clopped to the front and took the young blonde aside. Then in my typical shrewish pitch—mind you, there wasn’t a dry thread on me—I asked why in the
cat hair
she was almost fifteen minutes late!

The young girl’s brow lifted with resentment. “It’s only twelve minutes after nine.”

I lowered my voice, trying to maintain a pleasant demeanor for the customers between clenched teeth. “You were due at nine o’clock.”

Michelle straightened. “You said ten o’clock—‘Be here at ten o’clock.’ That’s what you said. I like to come early when I start a new job….”

Her voice faded and I suddenly felt light-headed. I groped for a chair and sat down trying to reroute my thoughts. I remembered. I
had
told Michelle to come in at ten. I’d figured that Melody and Susan would be in early, and Michelle, since she would be building a customer base, could come in later.

I got up and went into the break room, leaving a confused newbie to cope with the stares.

You’re losing it, Kate. I sank to the nearest chair wondering what Kris and Kelli would do when I was institutionalized.

I hated this change in my life, and more to the point, I was not coping. I was only fooling myself if I said that I was. I knew that I had to accept my new role in life, which right now seemed about as plausible as a pig on roller skates.

T
he phone rang around six Saturday evening. Mazi’s perky voice came over the line. “Let’s howl tonight.”

“After the day I’ve spent, howling is the last thing I planned to do. I’m going to soak in a hot tub.”

“Ah, come on. There’s this great chick flick on at the Palace. Only three-fifty a ticket because it’s not a first-run kind of theater. Let’s go.”

“A movie? But the kids—”

“I’ve already arranged for Alissa to baby-sit. She’s thrilled. She needs the—”

“Extra money,” I finished.

We laughed.

“Okay, you’re buying the popcorn.”

“And you’ll get the Milk Duds.”

Alissa arrived shortly after dinner. The girls were almost ready for bed, so she had nothing to do but her homework and kid patrol.

“Make them go to bed early,” I warned. Tomorrow I should get up and take them to church, but increasingly it was easier to sleep in.

At first the girls had protested; they liked church. But last Sunday, when I’d failed to set the alarm, they weren’t upset. They had seemed content to play video games and read. That ought to tell me something. Back in Oklahoma I wouldn’t have missed two Sundays in a row without someone holding me accountable, but here nobody knew me.

I gave the kitchen countertops a final wipe down and rinsed the dishcloth.

A movie.

I’d rather stay home.

Mazi showed up decked to the gills in a spiffy-looking new red pantsuit. I looked positively dull in my gray pants, black silk turtleneck and rose-patterned tapestry vest.

“Have you lost weight?” I asked.

She pivoted in front of me. “Five pounds. Does it show?”

“It shows. You look fabulous.”

“That’s me. Fabulous Mazi.”

Kris and Kelli ran to hug her. Kelli gave her the once-over and I braced myself because I never knew what would come out of the child’s mouth.

“You’re wearing red. Are you someone’s Valentine?”

I thought Mazi’s smile dimmed a bit, but if so, she recovered. “How about letting me be your Valentine?” She parodied Elvis’s “Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear,” rolling her eyes and singing.

Kelli laughed and clapped. “Okay, you’re my Valentine. Where’s my candy?”

“Are there going to be men at the movie?” Kris interrupted, her expression anything but sunny.

“I would imagine,” I said. “There usually are.” I hadn’t been to a movie since Neil died, but unless they’d passed some law, the theater wasn’t divided by gender.

“Is tonight like a date?” My eldest daughter wasn’t easily satisfied.

“No!” I said. I didn’t know where she came up with those things.

“You gonna talk to men?” Kelli demanded.

“Not unless I have to.” I was starting to feel like a teenager getting the parental third degree.

“We don’t want you talking to men,” Kelli said sternly.

“Yeah, Mom. We’re a family and we don’t need anyone else.” Kris met my eyes suspiciously. “Kids at school say you’ll be getting married again.”

I glanced at Mazi and Alissa, not sure how to handle this. Mazi stepped in. “Tell you what—I’ll keep an eye on your mom and if a man looks like he’s getting too friendly, I’ll scare him off, okay?”

“How?” Details were important to Kelli.

Mazi pretended to concoct a plan out of thin air.

“Well, I could spill a cup of soda on him.”

“Or cut his tie in half,” Kelli suggested.

“Tell him she yells when she’s mad,” Kris suggested.

“I don’t
yell,
I speak loudly to get your attention,” I rebuked, trying not to laugh.

“Tell him she has seven kids.” Alissa joined the fun.

“And six dogs,” Kelli contributed.

“Five cats!”

“Four fish.” Mazi was laughing now.

“And a partridge in a pear tree,” the five of us sang in unison.

“She snores.” Kelli grinned, dancing just out of my reach.

Now, that stung. “I do
not
snore.” This certainly had no relevance anyway. “I can stay home if you want.”

“No, we’re going to the movie and we’re going to have fun if it kills us.” Mazi caught my arm. “Be good, girls. We’ll see you later.”

She pushed me out the door and we walked to the car and got in. I turned the key, then snapped my seat belt shut. “What do you think? Were they serious about men?”

“They’re still grieving, Kate. Give them time. They’ll adjust. People do.”

I supposed she was right, but how could I expect the girls to adjust when I wasn’t doing all that well myself.

We eased our way through the crowded aisle, trying to avoid feet. Two seats were empty in the middle of the row. Coke ran down my right wrist. Someone had jostled me as I left the lobby. Settling down, I shoved the bag of corn at Mazi.

The movie had started. The plot involved a group of older women in England who had posed nude for a calendar in order to raise funds for cancer research. I was almost certain I wasn’t going to like the story. Older women and nudity were not funny.

Mazi shoveled corn into her mouth, enthralled as the plot unfolded. Soon I was equally caught up and found myself truly enjoying the picture.

“Would you do that?” I asked when the women began to plot the calendar.

Mazi turned to give me a wide-eyed stare. “Me? With this body? I take a shower in my housecoat.”

“You don’t.”

She laughed. “I should, purely for humanitarian reasons.”

Once or twice I glanced over to see my friend wiping tears out of her eyes. The story was touching in places, funny in others; the kind of chick flick that makes close friendships even dearer.

“Warren would like this,” Mazi mentioned a couple of times. “I need to bring him to see this.”

I’d just like to
see
Warren. I was beginning to think the husband was a figment of Mazi’s imagination. Oh, I’d caught glimpses of a man coming in and out of her house, but the guy was as elusive as an echo.

“Isn’t this sad?” Mazi asked once, holding a tissue to her nose.

“Yeah, Maz. Just what I need. A good cry.”

Mazi laughed and whispered, “I’m going to the rest room. Be right back.”

“Don’t talk to any men.”

I laughed at my own wit as she walked up the aisle and promptly sucked a piece of popcorn down my windpipe. Where was Mazi when I really needed her? I was choking.

I flailed my hands and struggled for breath, feeling my face turning blue from lack of oxygen. I gasped for air like a beached fish.

The woman on my left must have realized I was about to pitch face-forward into the row in front of me, because she leaned over and whacked me across the back, and the lodged popcorn kernel shot across the row of seats with the aplomb of a runaway bullet, slicing between a white-haired couple seated in front of me.

The man turned halfway in his seat and stared in my direction.

Mazi returned, fumbling for her seat as she stared at the action on the screen. When she saw tears streaming down my cheeks she absently pressed a tissue into my hand. I wiped my eyes, no doubt smearing mascara until I resembled a raccoon on a crying jag, and blew my nose.

I don’t think she ever knew what had happened.

“Great movie,” she murmured, her eyes glued to the screen.

When we left the theater we were both bone-dry from weeping—me from choking—and laughing. On the ride home we discussed at length what we perceived the moral of the story to be, which was: what would you do to help eradicate cancer?

The answer was anything it took.

And to my immense relief, I had encountered only one man—a scruffy-looking teenager at the snack bar when I bought my Coke.

When we got home I helped Mazi across the hedge, catching her elbow when she tripped. “These high heels. I don’t know why I wear them,” she complained. “They’re going to cause me to break my neck one day.”

My sentiments exactly. I’d pitched the mules when I’d got home from work last week, vowing to go barefoot before I bought shoes like that again.

Mazi fumbled with the locked door, her hands unsteady. “Night, Kate. It’s been fun.”

“Hey—are you okay?” She’d been a little unsteady all evening.

“Fine, just a little tired. Talk to you in the morning.”

I stared after her, puzzled. There’d been a frenetic touch to her laughter tonight. I’d noticed her placing her hand on her chest during parts of the movie as though she was having difficulty breathing, and while she always wore high heels, she hadn’t ever complained about them before. I made a mental note to check on her in the morning. She was probably coming down with a virus, and being Mazi, she wouldn’t complain.

I stepped back across the hedge and paid Alissa. After she left I checked on the girls. They were both sleeping soundly.

Later I lay in bed and stared at the thin shaft of streetlight coming through the blinds. I felt as if I should pray before going to sleep, but the longer I went without talking to Him, the easier it was to skip evening prayers.

I rolled to my side and closed my eyes, but instead of counting sheep, I thought about the movie and the extent one friend would go for another.

San Francisco had given me one priceless thing: Mazi.

If I could only hold on a little longer, I would adjust.

Patience.

I needed a boatload.

Tuesday afternoon I was sitting in the porch swing, wondering which of the many tasks waiting for me I should do first, when I saw Lee, the postman, coming up the walk. An alarm
immediately sounded. I’d studiously avoided him since our previous conversation.

He climbed the porch steps and handed me a stack of bills. I didn’t need to look; I knew they were bills.

“Hey, there. Getting some fresh air?”

“Got home early, which doesn’t happen often, and I was sitting here enjoying the day.”

He hoisted himself onto the porch railing. “I, on the other hand, am running late. What a coincidence. If you hadn’t been early and I hadn’t been late, we’d never have had a chance to visit.”

I grinned. “Don’t you have other customers waiting anxiously for your arrival?”

“Nope. You’re the last house on my route. I’m done for the day.” He paused, and then plunged deeper. “Would you like to go get something cold to drink?”

“Thanks, but the girls will be home in half an hour.”

“Then could I bother you for a glass of water?”

I thought of the fresh pitcher of iced tea sitting on my kitchen counter. It never hurt to be nice; being nice didn’t mean accepting a date with the man.

“I can do better than that. Stay where you are.”

I returned in a moment with two frosty glasses of iced tea. Lee had moved to the porch swing. When I handed him a glass, he smiled. “Thanks.”

He moved over to accommodate me. I sat down, easing to the right as far as possible, my daughter’s admonition about speaking to men running through my mind. Apparently he sensed my uneasiness, because he kept to his side.

I set my glass aside and absently leafed through my mail. I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the avalanche of statements with a balance due.

I sighed and he glanced at me. “Problem?”

“Yeah. Lots of problems. All of them are costing money. Moving expenses, both girls need shoes and school clothes. The
hot water heater quit. Thermocouple. That one word plus labor cost me a hundred dollars. This move has been a disaster.”

Lee swallowed tea and crunched an ice cube. “Maybe it just seems that way. You’ve not been here long.”

“Long enough to know I’m in over my head.” I shook my head, knowing I shouldn’t dump my problems in his lap, but frustration took over. Words spilled out. “Honestly, I think I made a mistake. I should never have uprooted the girls and left everything familiar because I trusted God to lead me in the right direction.”

“Well, maybe it will eventually work out better than you think. You’ve been here how long—just a few months?”

I nodded.

“Give it time, Kate. I’ve been writing my novel for three years. You can’t rush the good stuff.”

“Right. Your novel about gophers.” I had to tell Mazi about this.

He leaned toward me, his eyes holding mine. “I wish you’d let me read it to you some night.”

Read it to me? Was this his idea of a date? Evidently it was. Talk about cheap. I didn’t know many writers, but the few I had met seemed almost fanatical about “their novels.” One of the women in my church back in Oklahoma talked about her characters as if they were real people. She was insulted if you didn’t ask how they were doing.

Maybe you had to be a little quirky to be a writer. If so, Lee definitely fit the pattern. He swigged iced tea. “A lot of important writers have readers who read their books and make comments. You could be mine. I’d acknowledge your help and you’d see your name in print.”

In a book about gophers? I could probably live without that. “I don’t know, Lee. Between work and my children and taking care of a house, I don’t have much free time.”

“No room for a man in your life?”

“Not at this time.” Not anytime as far as he was concerned.

He sighed. “I miss my wife at times like this. She could work and bring in the money and I could spend all my time on my novel. It’s difficult to go to work at the post office when genius is burning.”

“I’m sure it must be.”

“Writing is lonely work, Kate. I sit in front of my computer with no one to talk to. No one to enjoy the beauty of the words I write. All I want is someone to share my life, ease the loneliness. Is that too much to ask?”

“Probably not. You need to pray about it.” All he wanted was a roof over his head, clothes on his back, food in his belly and someone to provide it. I wasn’t available. No wonder his wife preferred painting sunrises.

He started to say something, but I cut him off. “Here come the girls. It’s been nice talking to you, Lee.”

I set my glass on the porch railing and walked down the steps to meet my daughters. When I looked back, Lee had left.

“Was that the postman, Mommy?” Kelli asked.

“Yeah. We were visiting while he rested and drank a glass of tea.”

“Do you like him?” Kris frowned.

I watched Lee’s retreating back and felt utterly foolish. And I suppose I was. What a discussion.