The School of Beauty and Charm (14 page)

I lit a Virginia Slim Menthol, cracked the window, and picked up my tattered copy of the book Florida abhorred,
Looking Out for Number One
. I read to myself:

If a troublemaker refuses to be ignored, should you do nothing about it? You certainly know that doing
nothing is not the answer, because looking out for number one involves effort; to remain stagnant makes you a sitting duck, waiting to be controlled by others.

“We're almost there, Number One,” said Florida.

I did not reply.

“Now don't you get in a snit with me. You've been real sweet up till now. Let's not blow it, okay? You need to be thinking about your hair and your makeup. Your image. What you want him to do to you. I guess he's got pictures; I don't know. He'll have some suggestions. You've got to speak up though. Be firm. Some of these Atlanta hairdressers, Counterpoint ones, too, for that matter, will go to town if you let them. Last time I went to Agnes, she wanted me to go strawberry blonde. I almost let her do it. She was talking my ear off. I guess the price is the same no matter what Fernando does. We'll ask him.”

“I brought a picture,” I said, still sulking.

“Think about what you need to wear to school. We're not going gung ho. I'm telling you that right now. Be sensible. Don't buy a lot of sloppy clothes—now that you've lost weight you can show off your figure. Do you want a blazer? Henry's is too big for you. It looks ridiculous. But you like his clothes; you don't like mine.”

“I wore your mouton.”

“That's when you were unstable.” She swerved the Bonneville into the parking lot of Morris Plaza and said, “Now, pray for a space.”

Florida believed that one should never pull out a credit card on an empty stomach, so first we had lunch in a swank little
café on the third floor of the mall, under the skylight. The place was called Le Tigre. It was decorated in the style of a Paris bistro, with a dark wooden floor, red-and-white-checked tablecloths, and oil lamps. Handwoven baskets of French bread sat on every table. There was no evidence of a tiger motif until one encountered the waiters, who tiptoed about on the fine line between haughty and rude. Our waiter was named Henri.

“That means Henry, doesn't it?” Florida asked him.

“I believe so,” he said, looking over her head.

“That's my husband's name. What a coincidence.” She studied the fellow, dressed in tight black pants, with a white poet's shirt and flowered vest, and added, “He'll be tickled when I tell him.” Henri tapped his pencil on the order pad he had whisked out of his pocket while she was talking and began to recite the wine list.

“Oh, no, no,” she interrupted. “We don't need alcohol. My goodness. Do you have iced tea?” Here, I broke in, suggesting coffee.

“I didn't know you liked coffee,” she said. “That's fine with me.”

“The St. Maarten Java,” I told the waiter, and quickly closed the menu before Florida could look it up—a rich, dark roast in a Caribbean elixir of dark rum, light rum, brandy, and old-fashioned whiskey.

“A lovely choice.” Henri smirked, then ran through the menu at ninety miles an hour, in French. “Our speciality today is bouillabaisse crouton rouille. The chef has made it with fresh tilapia. For appetizers, we offer—”

“Go back to that booled one,” said Florida.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Booled. Bilay. I can't pronounce it.” They stared at each
other for a moment. He straightened up a fraction of an inch, lifting his chin, and Florida squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Go back to it,” she said. “Say it in English.”

“In Southern English?” offered Henri. Across the room, he received a cool look from one of his superiors and immediately smiled at Florida, showing his dimples. When the head waiter was called to the phone, Henri's smile vanished. Once again, he looked as though he might have to ask Florida and me to leave.

“If you can do it,” she said. “If not, regular English will work just fine.”

“Soup with Jesus fish,” I said. “Tilapia is the fish Jesus multiplied and gave to his followers.” I raised one eyebrow at Henri, who was probably the son of a gas-station attendant in Smyrna.

“Bien sûr,” he said. He raised his own eyebrow.

“He's a snooty one,” Florida said, when he was out of ear-shot. “Henry would be critical of this place—I can't bring him everywhere I bring you. Men are so conservative. Shirley said the food was out of this world. She said be sure and try the—oh shoot, what was the name of that? It began with an
s
. . . Louise, tell me. Roderick would know. Oh, where is my mind!”

“Look in your purse,” I suggested.

“You're hungry, I can tell. Go ahead and smoke a cigarette if you have to. I don't like it, but you have to do it, I guess. I don't know how long it will be before that boy gets back here.”

After the first St. Maarten Java, the conversation improved.

“I'm so proud of you for losing your weight,” said Florida. “Crystal, she's the girl who works with Agnes at Cuts and Curls, said she saw you walking around the lake at Bridgewater and
hardly recognized you, you were so skinny. She was out there to pick up her niece, Laurin, I think her name is. I don't know where they got the money to send her to Bridgewater, but I guess they did. Saved. Last time you came into the shop with me you were heavy. I told them I was taking you to Emilio. Agnes was jealous, but she's like that. She said, ‘I could charge twice as much if I had a shop in Atlanta.' She's got a big head. I didn't say anything to her. She could stand to lose ten or twenty pounds herself. I think you'll be much happier, don't you? I want you to be happy.”

I lifted my empty coffee mug. “I don't think that was me, the fat girl.”

“No, I don't either,” said Florida. “You got depressed. Blamed yourself. Roderick always liked slender girls. He'd be proud of you.”

“But I don't know if this is me.”

“Wait till Fernando fixes your hair. And your makeup. Of course you have to keep at it, what he does today won't last forever. You've got to get out of bed in the morning and apply what he teaches you—”

“That's not what I mean.”

“I'm sorry. What do you mean?”

We looked at each other impatiently. Florida offered me the rest of her coffee, seeing that I had already finished mine.

“Thank you,” I said, taking a quick swallow of the stinging drink. “Well, what I mean is . . . there's this guy, Lao-tzu or somebody, who said, ‘I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither . . . and now I don't know if I was a man dreaming that I was a butterfly, or if I am a butterfly dreaming that I'm a man.'”

Henri sashayed by and paused to ask if we needed anything.

“Two more St. Maarten Javas,” I said, and he was off before Florida could finish asking if these drinks had liquor in them.

“No,” I said. “It's just strong coffee.”

“Well, my toes feel warm. My toes never feel warm.” Then she actually laughed. I laughed, too, flushed with love, butterfly or not.

T
HERE WERE NO
ugly people in Morris Plaza. It wasn't like Magnolia Mall in Counterpoint, where you'd see a man bobbing along with an enormous belly bouncing over his belt, or a woman wearing a really hideous pair of corrective shoes, or a gaggle of teenage girls in tight, cheap clothes with their hair all gooped up and their faces painted into bad art. If you were a bearded lady, you'd feel comfortable at Magnolia Mall, but not in Morris Plaza. The interior of the plaza was all glass and soft lights and shine, like a mirror. Here walked some of the most beautiful people on earth.

“Money,” said Florida flatly as we descended an escalator, looking down into the crowd.

I was not so cynical. All shot up with St. Maarten Java, I breathed in the essences of white rose oil, frangipani, and musk. Passing by a mannequin in Saks Fifth Avenue designer formal wear, I dipped my hand into the sea-green folds of a mermaid's gown. Everywhere, I saw gold, diamonds, pearls, sapphires, rubies, and emeralds, irreverently pressed against human flesh. But what flesh! Even the old people looked somehow new, and the babies, gliding along in their carriages, wrapped in gossamer threads, seemed powerful and important. I saw girls my age, be-jeweled and coiffed, clad in suede, cashmere, and Egyptian cotton,
who looked like walking sculptures, and men so handsome it hurt my eyes to look at them. While Florida went into Cutlery for Kings to look for a bread knife sharpener, I sat on a bench, gazing into the crowd, sniffing the rich delicacy of their perfumes as they passed me by.

I wanted to be beautiful. If you were beautiful, you didn't need to be nice to people. If you were really gorgeous, you didn't even have to be clean. Policemen were always disarmed by beauty—had a beautiful woman ever been sent to the electric chair?

Then Florida was standing before me, talking a mile a minute and looking very provincial in her wool/acrylic blend blazer. Her MacMe earrings swung as she talked. “Remember to be practical. Try on before you buy. I don't want you doing what you did last time. I'm trusting you now. Those size 4 clothes are still hanging in your closet, never worn. Get something that fits you right now, not in the future. You don't need to lose any more weight anyway. Black, white, and beige wash you right out. Short people need color, or they don't get noticed. You need some socks, and a good bra. Stay out of Victoria's Secret. Try Sears.” While she rattled on about underwire and adjustable straps, she dug into her pocketbook and pulled out Henry's credit cards. She dropped the Sears card, which I didn't want anyway, and when she bent over to pick it up, the heavy bag fell off her shoulder, spilling its contents all over the floor: a pink comb with broken teeth, several wads of Kleenex imprinted with lipstick, a pair of knee-highs, a half-eaten package of crackers, last year's Christmas card:
JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON, FROM THE PEPPERS
, a chrysanthemum bulb, two pairs of broken sunglasses, and
to my horror, slipping out of a wrinkled paper bag, a pair of my own panties.

“Mom!” I screamed as I snatched up the bag.

“Shoot,” she said. “Louise, help me. I just knew I would do that. There's a penny. Get that. Is my lipstick broken?”

“What is this?” I demanded in a low voice, shielding my underwear from the sight of the beautiful people.

“Oh honey, don't start fussing at me. I just brought that in case you forgot your size. The store won't let you try them on. It's a federal law. Here, give me the panties. You don't have to take them into the store. Don't be so self-conscious for goodness sake. There's no sense in getting a makeover at Fernando's if you're going to act little.”

I wanted to hit her.

Instead, I took some credit cards and spent the next hour shopping for the person I wished I was. A few hours later, I entered the waiting room of Salon di Emilio, carrying several shopping bags of clothes that would have looked wonderful on someone else.

Florida was already there. “Did you get lost? I had to come in and sit down because these shoes are killing me. Never buy uncomfortable shoes, Louise. Don't put your bags there; someone might steal them.” A silver-haired woman in a fox fur sniffed and looked away.

“Remind me to make an appointment for Puff at Styles for Pets when we get home,” said Florida. “I am not paying for the pedicure this time. He almost took my head off when he found out what they charge to paint that dog's nails. Roderick never liked that anyway—said it was sissy.” I sighed. Would all my wishes come true after I was dead, too?

Everything in Salon di Emilio was black and white. The floor was made of black-and-white tile, shooting out in diagonal lines that made my head swim. Track lighting ran around a chrome maze on the ceiling, casting no shadow on the boys di Emilio, blondes in black turtlenecks who floated like the swans on the lake at Bridgewater, craning their necks now and then to catch glimpses of themselves in the mirrored walls. Jazz played from hidden speakers, and I smelled incense.

At Cuts and Curls, Agnes' beauty shop in Counterpoint, there was no waiting room. You stepped right into the scene, into the drone of hair dryers and high-pitched voices rattling off confessions: “I ate the whole pie. I couldn't stop myself, Agnes. Tiffany said she thought I'd like to choke before I was done.”

“I told him, ‘Well, you may be my only son, but I will be damned if I'm going to let you bring that girl into this house.' Just between us, I think he was relieved. She had her claws in him good.”

“Five thousand three hundred and eighteen dollars. I'm not kidding you. I said, ‘Darling, that's too much to spend on me!' Of course it wasn't.”

“Ain't it the truth!” Agnes would say, moving from one customer to another with a curling iron or a bottle of spritz. “You're telling me.” Most of the women had satisfied looks on their faces, as if Agnes had solved some compelling dilemma. Once or twice, I tried to join in with a confession of my own, but I never quite got the hang of it. As soon as I walked into Cuts and Curls, the gases from permanents and industrial hair spray assuaged my senses and glued my thoughts fast to my brain. I did well to muster a “yes ma'am.”

Now, at Salon di Emilio, I sniffed the delicate incense, sank back into a white Naugahyde armchair, and began to worry about what people thought of us.

If Florida recognized any snootiness on the part of the woman in the fox fur, she did not care. She was looking for Emilio. She stood at the carved ebony reception desk, tangling with an uppity young man who had invented a European accent all his own.

“I'd like to see Fernan . . . I mean, Emilio,” she said. “We have an appointment.”

The receptionist studied his manicure. “Someone will be with you in a moment,” he said. “Please have a seat.”