I hear she does lots of famous people in New York: Victoria’s Secret models. Sometimes Barbara Walters!”
“Really?” Frannie was impressed.
“She told me that it’s a worldwide franchise and she owns two. Ours, here in St. Louis, and one in New York.”
“Really?” Frannie was doubly impressed. New York!
Arlene seemed mollified. She leaned back in her chair.
“Ready for dessert?”
On her return, Frannie found Stanley asleep in his chair with his “second lunch” still in its transparent wrap in the icebox. She hung up her coat, tiptoed to the bedroom and perched on the edge of the crisply made bed. (Good, she’d remembered.)
Opening her handbag and fingering through her worn brown wallet, she found it: the beauty shop’s number on the back of a Nordstrom’s receipt. She could, of course, wait a month or six weeks if she wanted to. She’d just had color, after all. Still …
She reached for the phone.
“Hair House.” The nasal voice of a twelve-year-old bored receptionist.
“This is Mrs. Stanley Turner. I’m calling for an appointment with Randi. Arlene Mann gave me her name?”
“Hold on a minute. I’ll check the book.”
A longish pause, during which Frannie heard the dull whirring of … blow driers?
“What did you say your name was again?”
“Frannie Turner. I’m friend of Arlene Mann’s.”
Muffled conversation.
“Hold on a minute, would you? I have to check something.”
“Fine.”
It was a full twelve minutes by the nightstand clock, in fact, during which Frannie cleaned scraps of dog-eared papers and receipts out of her wallet and counted her change in her lap and, after that, wandered over to the closet wall to gaze, possibly for the thousandth time, at her cherished print of “Primavera”.
She’d bought it in college, just before her last art history finals. It was a superb reproduction. It had been expensive, too, but she’d treated herself – not just because the image was head-spinningly beautiful, but because the owner of the store had taken the time to point out that Botticelli’s original painting actually represented love, marriage, and fertility.
Love. Marriage. Fertility. She and Stanley had gotten married before she’d had time to do anything with her precious art degree and, of course, married women didn’t work back then. She regretted not having used her education now, she’d enjoyed those classes so. But this print still gave her visceral pleasure, and reminded her every day that art and beauty were the truest joys in a disappointing world. More than once, “Primavera” had saved her.
The phone in her hand sizzled to life.
“Well, you’re really lucky, Mrs. Lerner.”
“It’s Turner.”
“Awesome. Really awesome! Randi says she can fit you in tomorrow at 2:00!”
“Tomorrow! Oh, I am lucky. Thanks so much! So I’ll see you then. Oh, wait.” She was an idiot. “Where are you?”
“We’re on Clayton Road, about a mile past the Starbucks in the Arch shopping strip. Right next to the Schnucks there.”
“Okay. I’ll be there. Thanks!”
For the second time today, she stood before the bathroom mirror. This time, she was grinning foolishly at – she wasn’t sure what. She tugged at some strands of lifeless hair. Bangs? Blonde, like Arlene? Tomorrow she’d be a new Frannie Turner, maybe. Maybe she’d treat herself to a new hairbrush. Or a lipstick.
She returned to the bedroom.
Nothing would really make a difference, though. Not a haircut. Not a color change or a new hairdresser. She’d been here before.
And yet – Frannie made a mental effort. She smoothed the lank brown strands of hair behind her ears, sat on her own side of the bed and, opening her night-table drawer, cupped a well-worn deck of cards in her hand and dealt them out on the bedspread.
Some women ironed clothes to quiet their minds. Some worked crossword puzzles. Frannie preferred her cards: sometimes Chinese Patience, sometimes Solitaire.
She cheated a little at both.
When Stanley coughed himself awake at 5:30, it was dark outside and she was winning.
She swept up the deck, slipped it back in the drawer, and went to the kitchen.
Just a night like every other, she thought. Early dinner – this morning’s chicken and broccoli for Stanley, some frozen thing for her, the dishes in the dishwasher, TV, bed. And the silent phone.
She sometimes imagined her son.
If she’d been a good mother – and of course she would have been –they’d have played trucks on the linoleum kitchen floor when he was small and gone Halloweening on chilly, moonlit nights. She’d have helped him with the hard spelling words and with his art and music (science and math would have been Stanley’s responsibility). And because she’d been that good mother, he’d have grown up to drop by for dinner on nights like tonight. She’d have cooked his favorite food: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, lima beans. (He would have loved lima beans.) And afterwards, he’d have given her a hand with the dishes and while she washed and he dried, maybe, they’d have laughed as he described how her granddaughters were the best spellers in school. A family tradition, he’d say, smiling down at her. And maybe they’d talk together about the time she taught him walk-the-dog with his yoyo and took him to the St. Louis Museum of Art. Which he’d hated.
He’d call, now and then, too, just to see how she was.
Because, in the entry hall lately, Frannie had been smelling something. Something like bad breath and stale clothes. Like unwashed hair. Like mothballs.
The scent of people growing old.
But tomorrow. Tomorrow smelled like hope.
Frannie left so early for her hair appointment that she had time to kill, so she stopped by her favorite store. Still, crossing Aunt Teeks and Uncle Junks’ parking lot, she found herself explaining to the Stanley in her head for the umpteenth time, that she never spent much, really. Nice little things for the house, mostly: an antique cup and saucer; a dented brass warming pan once; a figurine; and if she was really lucky, every now and then, a painting. She loved paintings best. Especially of mothers and children.
And yes, she told that mental Stanley, I know what that means!
Closing Aunt Teeks’ jingly door behind her, it struck her, not for the first time, that thirty or forty years ago, antiques shops smelled like old people’s hatbands and mildewed attics. Now they smelled of lemon-scented furniture polish and, God … was that incense? No, just a terrible perfumed candle on the desk of a young man she’d never seen before. Minding the store for Sally, she supposed, although he seemed transfixed by the computer on his desk and barely looked up as she entered.
Frannie ventured a modest “hi” and a perfunctory smile that was meant to indicate her sincere hope of avoiding conversation. She really had only a half hour before her appointment.
He looked up at last and returned her smile. “Hi. How are you?” He’d closed his computer. Oh, dear.
“I’m good. In a hurry. On my way to an appointment. Just thought I’d stop by to see what Sally’s got in lately. I haven’t been in for a while.”
“Well, you just go right ahead and have